Helios (Cerberus Group Book 2) Page 24
“Something like that.” Fallon advanced into the center of the chamber until he was face to face with Pierce. He looked down at the carved cross. “Templars. I’ve tangled with them many times.” He looked up and grinned. “Assassin’s Creed.”
“It’s a video game,” Fiona murmured, noting Pierce’s blank look.
“So,” Fallon went on, “where did they take it?”
“Why are you here, Fallon? I told you, we’ll take care of this. This is what we do.”
“Oh, I heard you. You made your intentions crystal clear. Find the Ark, and shut the Black Knight down for good.” He shook his head. “Have you stopped to consider the awesome opportunity here? I know, I know, mistakes were made. Tanaka… Don’t get me started on him. But to turn our backs on this now is just criminal. We can harness the full power of the sun. Do you even realize what that means? Unlimited clean energy. This is the solution to all our problems.”
“Isn’t that what they said about atomic energy?” Gallo remarked. Her tone was sarcastic, but Pierce detected the undercurrent of fear.
“She’s right,” Pierce said. “As great as it all sounds, I just don’t think we’re ready for that much power.”
Fallon did not appear surprised by the objection. “We could be you, Dr. Pierce. We—you and I—would control this for the good of all mankind. The Black Knight isn’t anyone’s property. The sun’s energy belongs to everyone. Think of the good we could accomplish.”
Pierce heard a note of insincerity in the other man’s voice. Fallon wasn’t interested in being the savior of the world. He wanted to be the man who owned the sun.
“We’ll take it slow, of course,” Fallon continued. “Establish protocols to ensure that we don’t trigger more tidal earthquakes. That shouldn’t be a problem. Set graduated goals, and once we’ve demonstrated that we’ve got it under control, we’ll begin developing infrastructure to—”
“Stop!” Pierce’s shout reverberated through the confines of the chamber. In a more subdued voice, he continued. “Just stop. This isn’t going to happen. The Black Knight isn’t some gift from the gods. It’s a Pandora’s Box. It’s a land mine, left behind by an alien species, and if we mess with it, it’s going to blow up in our faces. I’m not going to let Tanaka do that on purpose, and I’m sure as hell not going to help you do it by accident.”
Fallon smiled. “Good. That’s why you’re the best person to help me with this. Your caution will keep my enthusiasm in check. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Right now at least, we don’t have the means to do any of this.” He paused, maintaining eye contact with Pierce. “First things first. The Ark. Where is it? What did they do with it?”
“We are not working together.” Pierce spoke, enunciating each word for emphasis.
“You’re sure?” Fallon bobbed his head over one shoulder, to the pair of gunmen lingering near the passage.
“If you’re the man I think you are,” Pierce said, “you aren’t going to use threats of violence to get your way. And if I’m wrong about you…well, then I definitely don’t want you getting your hands on that much power.”
The other man burst out laughing, the sound harsh as it reverberated in the chamber. After a few seconds, he brought himself under control. “Well played. You’re right, of course. I’m not a bully. I despise bullies.” He sighed. “But I’m not going to give up, either. It’s a race, now, and I’m afraid I need to handicap you a bit.”
He gave Pierce a hard stare for several seconds, then turned to Gallo. “You’re a very intelligent woman, Dr. Gallo. I heard you talking when we came in. I suspect you know as much about the Templars, if not more, than Dr. Pierce here.”
“Fallon, don’t.” Pierce tried to inject a tone of menace into his voice, but it sounded more like pleading in his own ears.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. My friends and I are going to leave with Dr. Gallo. Pierce, you and your…” He stared at Fiona for a moment. “Whatever you are. You two are going to stay put a little while, to give me a head start.”
“You’ve made your point,” Pierce said.
“Oh, no. That ship has sailed. You two are staying here.” He turned to one of this hired gunmen. “When we get back to the entrance, I want you to stay behind for…let’s say three hours?” He looked back at Pierce. “Is that enough? Three hours. He’s going to watch the entrance, and if either of you pokes your head out, he’s going to shoot it off.”
He flashed a mock-helpless grin. “That’s why I brought them along. I could never do something like that, but believe me, they can and will.”
Gallo let out a plaintive wail and shrank into Pierce’s arms, hugging him, but when she whispered into his ear, her voice was steady. “George, what should I do?”
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised, but it sounded empty in his ears. “Just go along with him. Do what he says. We’ll be fine. One way or another, we’re going to find the Ark and stop Tanaka and his death cult. We can figure the rest of it out later on.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she whispered. “I don’t suppose you’ve got an idea about where to look next.”
“Ask the Templars.”
“This is very touching,” Fallon said, “but it’s time to go.”
Pierce gave Gallo another reassuring squeeze before releasing her. “Fallon, listen to me. The Ark is dangerous. If you do find it, don’t touch it. Don’t try to do anything with it. You’ll just get yourself killed.”
It seemed like the right thing to say.
The other man regarded him with a cool, skeptical look. “Thanks for the warning. For your sake, I hope you’re wrong.” He turned to Gallo. “Shall we?”
FORTY-TWO
Gallo’s heart raced as she stepped away from Pierce. She was afraid, no doubt about that, but she had been in stickier situations. She wasn’t that worried for her own safety. She was worried for Pierce and Fiona. Fallon was ambitious and greedy, but he didn’t strike her as a killer. The mercenaries with him however, seemed all too eager to carry out his threat. But she held her head high, willing herself to remain strong, to accept this reversal on her own terms.
They exited the chamber and started down the passage. Fallon walked ahead of Gallo, both of them bracketed by the hired guns. After a few minutes of walking, Fallon looked back over his shoulder. “So, where to next? I know you must have some ideas about this.”
Gallo considered Pierce’s parting advice. Ask the Templars. “Ideas are all I have,” she admitted. “What I need are facts, to help me start eliminating the least plausible scenarios.”
“Dr. Pierce mentioned the Freemasons. Is that a possibility?”
She resisted the urge to snap at him. “As I said, I need facts. People have been speculating about and looking for Templar treasure for centuries. Nothing has ever been found. If we’re going to find something, we have to take a different approach. We don’t have time to reinvent the wheel.”
He gave her a long, appraising glance before returning his gaze forward again. He said nothing more as they made the twenty minute long trek back to the end of the tunnel, giving Gallo a chance to review her own knowledge about the Templars. Her professional area of expertise encompassed the beginnings of the Holy Roman Empire, and she knew more than the average person about the Crusades in the broader context of history. But what she did not have was a working knowledge of the more radical ideas and fringe theories, and that was where she would find the golden thread that would lead her to the Ark.
Which raised the question of whether she ought to. Maybe it would be smarter to lead Fallon astray, clearing a path for Pierce and Fiona to find the Ark. Pierce had told her to go along with Fallon, but exactly what he meant by that was open to interpretation.
Fallon stopped and she almost ran into him. Ahead, the gunman in the lead had also halted as the ceiling sloped down to block their way. “Dead end, boss.”
“It’s just an illusion,” Fallon said. “Keep going.”
As the first man disappeared into the wall, Fallon turned around shining his flashlight down the passage behind them. “It looks like Pierce took my advice to stay put.”
“Looks that way,” agreed the mercenary.
“Did you bring explosives? C-4 or whatever you call it?”
The other man nodded.
“I don’t want Pierce following us,” Fallon went on. “As soon as we’re outside, I want you to blast the entrance.”
Gallo’s heart skipped a beat. “No!”
She started toward him, hands raised without any idea of what she intended to do if she actually landed a blow. As it was, she never even got close. The mercenary threw his arms around her, restraining her.
“Once we find the Ark, I’ll make sure they’re dug out. They’ll live, provided you remain cooperative.”
“You can’t do this,” she said, the protest tumbling from her lips.
“Oh, but I can.” Fallon leaned in close. “I told you it was a race. Now you have a personal stake in it.”
Even as Gallo struggled in her captor’s grip, the harsh reality of the situation filtered through her panic. Her protests would accomplish nothing. Fallon wasn’t going to change his mind. But she also knew something Fallon didn’t know. Fiona could walk through walls—at least some of the time. And that gave her hope.
She sagged in defeat and allowed herself to be ushered through the lightless haze separating the tunnel from the surface. Two more mercenaries were waiting outside, guarding the exit, and as soon as they were all clear, one of the men hurried to carry out Fallon’s orders. He produced a large satchel, almost overstuffed with blocks of plastic explosives, and re-entered the concealed passage, disappearing from sight. When he came back out again, he carried a spool of wire, which he played out until it was empty. He then attached a small plastic device that looked a little like a grip exerciser.
“Better duck,” he advised. “Fire in the hole.”
As soon as Gallo was huddled on the ground, the man squeezed the device three times in rapid succession. On the second squeeze, there was a resounding thump underfoot, and a cloud of dust rose up from the area where they had just been standing.
Fallon turned to her. “It’s up to you now, Dr. Gallo. If you ever want to see them again, find the Ark for me.”
Gallo nodded, pretending to be mortified. It would take more than a cave-in to keep Pierce and Fiona down.
FORTY-THREE
Pierce waited about five minutes after Fallon’s departure to start working on the problem of escape. He had no intention of sitting on his butt for three hours, leaving Gallo in Fallon’s clutches, but he also knew better than to test the tech billionaire’s resolve. Fallon might not have the stomach to pull the trigger himself, but Pierce knew the mercenaries would follow the standing order.
He studied the cross on the floor and the opening above for a few minutes, and reached a decision. “Fi, are you ready to get out of here?”
“Yeah,” Fiona replied. “But you heard what that jerk said.”
“I did. He said he was going to have one of his hired goons watch the entrance. But maybe there’s another way out of here that he doesn’t know about.” He pointed to the hole in the ceiling. “Think that goes all the way to the top?”
Fiona shook her head. “Maybe it used to, but I think if it did, someone would have found this place by now.”
“Good point. So maybe the Templars covered it over once they were done removing the Ark.”
“So how do we get up there?”
“That’s the flaw in my plan,” Pierce admitted. He sank down onto the floor to consider the problem.
He was still doing that when a hot breeze issued from the passage, spiking the air pressure and forcing him to work his jaw to pop his ears. A moment later, a loud boom, like the report of a cannon, rushed out of the tunnel and shook the ground underfoot.
“What the hell?” Pierce jumped to his feet as the tunnel vomited a cloud of dust over them. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to hold his breath as the grit filled the air. “Son of a bitch,” he coughed. “He blasted the entrance.”
Fiona covered her mouth and nose with a sleeve and squinted at Pierce through the haze. “He tried to kill us.” Then she lowered her arm and broke into a grin. “He doesn’t know what I can do.”
Pierce answered with a smile of his own. “No, he doesn’t.”
They didn’t wait for the dust to settle, but started down the passage at a jog. The air cleared as they ran, but a cloud of anger soon replaced it for Pierce. Anger at Fallon. Anger at himself for having misjudged the man. Anger at his inability to save Gallo. He barely noticed the cracks and fissures that now crisscrossed the walls and ceiling, or the piles of rubble that littered the floor of the passage. Then he saw something moving in the gloom.
He skidded to an abrupt halt. Fiona slammed into him from behind.
“Go back!” he shouted, spinning around. He grasped hold of her shoulders, then turned her as well. “Now! Faster!”
She waited until they were moving again to ask him why.
Pierce glanced back, his headlamp revealing dozens of writhing shapes. “Snakes.”
‘Why did it have to be snakes?’
They resembled diamondback rattlesnakes, minus the rattle. Most were two or three feet long, a couple—the fastest—were even bigger. All had a distinctive tiger-stripe pattern of black and gold scales and arrow-shaped heads, a feature common to the type of venomous snakes known as pit vipers. Pierce recalled the Nehushtan sculpture on the mountain above them. Maybe the story was only figurative, but the ‘fiery serpents’ mentioned in the Bible—Palestinian vipers—were a very real problem in the region.
The snakes were not moving very fast. In fact, even at a regular walking pace, Pierce and Fiona were already pulling away from the swarm, but unlike most wild animals, including snakes, which preferred to keep humans at a distance and attacked only when approached, these vipers were still coming, and appeared to be pissed off.
“That explosion must have cracked open their warrens and dumped them down here,” Pierce said, as they reached the domed chamber at the end of the passage.
“They’re between us and the exit,” Fiona said.
“Yeah.”
“We’re stuck down here. In a snake pit.”
“Yeah.”
“Got any ideas?”
“I’m working on it.” Pierce ran to the center of the room and stared up at the opening. “We’ve got to get up there.”
“It’s too high.”
“I’ll boost you up.”
Pierce bent over and laced his fingers together to form a step, but Fiona just stared at him. “Who’s going to boost you?”
“I’ll figure something out.” He glanced at the mouth of the tunnel, and his light revealed one of the vipers slithering out into the open. It was not alone. The creatures were still on the warpath. Pierce shook his joined hands. “Go!”
As Fiona stepped on his hands, he lifted her up, shoving her toward the opening. Even with the boost, her fingers just grazed the edge.
“On my shoulders,” Pierce grunted, keeping his eyes on the advancing snakes. “Hurry.”
Fiona planted one foot on his shoulder and stepped up. She wasn’t all that heavy, but her full weight pressing down on his collar bone nearly drove him to his knees. He gritted his teeth against the unexpected pain, and then, just like that, the pressure was gone. He looked up and saw her legs dangling down as she wormed herself up onto a concealed ledge.
There was no time to savor the minor victory. A snake, as long as Fiona was tall, was almost within striking distance. He danced b
ack a few steps, even as more of the vipers slithered out of the passage.
He slid out of his backpack and swung it at the closest snake. Instead of retreating, it struck at the pack, sinking its fangs into the nylon. As the pack continued through the arc of the swing, Pierce could feel the sudden change. The pack was a good ten pounds heavier and shaking. The snake was still attached, its fangs snagged in the fabric. He heaved it away and quickly regretted it.
Now he had nothing with which to fend off the rest of the swarm.
FORTY-FOUR
Fiona kicked her legs and wriggled the rest of the way onto the ledge. From below, it had not been visible, but now she could see that it was the bottom landing of a narrow, spiral staircase that corkscrewed around the shaft.
As soon as she was up, she squirmed around so she could see the chamber below. Pierce was gone, driven away from the center by the advancing vipers. “Uncle George!”
“Fi. You’ve got to find a way out.” Pierce’s voice was faint, muffled by distance and the acoustics of the chamber. “Tell Cintia to contact Erik. You’ve got to find the Ark. And save Gus.”
She beat her fists against the stone landing, feeling helpless. There was no loose earth with which to form a golem, and she couldn’t think of any other way in which her limited ability with the Mother Tongue might be useful.
What she needed was a ladder or some rope.
Stairs, she thought. They had to lead somewhere, and maybe at the top, she would find something…anything…that might help Pierce escape the snake pit.
She scrambled to her feet and started ascending, bounding up three steps at a time until the burning in her legs slowed her to single steps. She kept going, refusing to stop for breath, circling around the stairwell again and again, until she started to feel dizzy. Even then she did not stop until, with no warning whatsoever, the stairs ended at a balcony that almost ringed the vertical shaft.
The surrounding walls were smooth, save for a protruding square of rock, about two feet on each side, framing a carved Templar cross, on the opposite side of the balcony. There seemed to be no reason for it to be there, so Fiona figured it was either the release mechanism for a secret door or a booby trap.