Riptide (54 page)

Streeter moaned and went limp, and Hatch relaxed his grip. Suddenly, Streeter’s knee came up. Grunting in surprise and pain,
Hatch fell backward. Streeter went for his gun. There was nothing he could do but shove the man, hard, toward the floor.

Streeter lifted his gun as Hatch dove for the far side of the array. There was a roar and a burst of light, and a bullet sparked
off a titanium member to his left. Hatch ducked to one side, swinging around as another bullet whined between the braces.
Then Hatch heard a gasp and a low grunt: Bon-terre was grappling Streeter from behind. He lunged forward just as Streeter
gave her a brutal backhand that sent her spinning toward the mouth of the tunnel. Quick as a cat, Streeter brought the gun
forward again. Hatch froze, his fist hanging in midair, staring at the dim line of the gunbarrel. Streeter looked into his
eyes and smiled, blood from his nose staining his teeth a dull crimson.

Then he lurched to one side: Rankin, unable to use his hands, had risen up and was butting Streeter toward the edge of the
metal bridge with his body. For a moment, Streeter seemed on the verge of toppling. But he regained his balance and, as Hatch
brought his arm back for a blow, turned the gun on Rankin and fired point-blank.

The geologist’s head jerked back, a dark spray rising behind in the gloom of the tunnel. Then he slumped to the metal flooring.

But Hatch’s fist was already in motion, connecting heavily with Streeter’s jaw even as he wheeled backward. Streeter staggered
heavily against the railing and there was a protest of metal. Instantly, Hatch stepped forward, shoving hard with both hands.
The railing gave as Streeter sagged back. He toppled into space, scrabbling frantically for a purchase. There was a gasp of
surprise or pain; the crack of a pistol shot; the sickening sound of meat smacking metal. Then, more distantly, a splash that
merged with the general rush of water far below.

The entire fight had lasted less than a minute.

Hatch rose to his feet, gasping from the exertion. He walked over to the inert form of Rankin, Bonterre already at the geologist’s
side. A single flash of livid lightning, reflected down through the tracery of struts, made it all too clear there was nothing
he could do.

There was a grunt; the flashlight beam flared wildly; then Woody Clay heaved himself up onto the hundred-foot platform, sweat
and dried blood mixing on his face. He had come up from below slowly, as a decoy, while Hatch had clambered quickly up the
back side of the array to surprise Streeter.

Hatch was crushing Bonterre to him, his hands in the tangle of her dark hair. “Thank God,” he breathed. “Thank God. I thought
you were dead.”

Clay watched them for a moment. “I saw something fall past me,” he said. “Were those gunshots?”

Hatch’s answer was interrupted by a sudden crash. Moments later, a large titanium spar came hurtling past them, raising fierce
clangs as it bounced downward. The entire array quivered along its 150-foot length. Hatch pushed Bonterre and Clay across
the shaking metal bridge into the nearby tunnel.

“What the hell’s going on?” he panted.

“Gerard has opened the casket,” Bonterre said. “He’s set off the final trap.”

N
eidelman watched, paralyzed with shock, as a series of violent tremors shook the treasure chamber. Another sickening lurch,
and the floor canted farther to the right. Magnusen, who had been thrown against the far wall by the first jolt, now lay partly
buried in a great mass of coins, thrashing and clawing, crying out in an otherworldly voice. The chamber lurched again and
a row of casks toppled over, bursting in a rotten spray of wood, filling the air with gold and jewels.

The shifting of the casket beneath him shook Neidelman from his paralysis. He shoved the sword into his harness and looked
about for his dangling lifeline. There it was, just above him, rising through the hole in the top of the treasure chamber.
Far above, he could make out the thin glow of emergency lights at the base of the ladder array. As he watched they winked
out briefly, then flickered into life once again. He reached for the lifeline just as another terrible lurch came.

Suddenly there was a screech of tearing iron as the seam along the far edge of the floor split open. Neidelman watched in
horror as the masses of loose gold slid toward the open seam, piling up against it, whirlpooling like water in a bathtub drain,
pouring through the widening crack into a stormy black gulf below.

“No,
no!
” Magnusen cried, scrabbling through the hem-orrhaging flow of treasure, even at this desperate extreme hugging and grasping
the gold to her, caught between saving the coins and saving herself. A shudder that seemed to come from the center of the
earth twisted the chamber, and a hailstorm of golden ingots buried themselves in the masses of coin around her. As the weight
of the gold became greater and the whirlpool faster, Magnusen was sucked into the flow and pulled along toward the widening
crack, her cries
of no, no, no
almost drowned by the roar of metal. She wordlessly stretched her arms toward Neidelman, eyes popping as her body was compressed
by the weight of the gold. The vault echoed with the groan of buckling iron and the snapping of bolts.

And then Magnusen disappeared, sucked into the shimmering golden stream and down into the void.

Abandoning the lifeline, Neidelman scrambled up the shifting pile of gold and managed to grasp the swinging metal bucket.
Reaching inside, he punched a button in the electrical box. The winch whined and the bucket began to ascend, Neidelman hanging
beneath as the bucket scraped along the crazily angled roof of the iron vault before sliding up through the narrow cut.

As he slowly ascended the excavation toward the base of the ladder array, Neidelman hoisted himself into the bucket and glanced
over its lip. He caught the last glimpse of a vast quantity of treasure—tusks, bolts of rotten silk, kegs, bags, gold, gems—vanishing
in a great rattling rush through the crack in the treasure chamber below. Then the light, swinging wildly on its cord, smashed
against the iron wall and was extinguished. The entire shaft went dark, lit only by the emergency lights from the array above
his head. In the gloom, he saw—or thought he saw—the mangled treasure vault break free of the walls of the Pit and drop downward
into a swirling chaos of water, sucked under with a final groan of iron.

A great tremor shook the shaft. Dirt and sand rained down, and the titanium bracings above gave a howl of protest. There was
another flicker, and the emergency lights failed. The bucket came to a wrenching stop just below the ladder array, banging
both sides of the narrow shaft.

Making sure the sword was secure, Neidelman reached up toward the winch rope, groping in the darkness. His fingers brushed
against the lowest pilings of the array. Another terrible shudder twisted the Pit and he lunged upward with desperate strength,
hoisting himself to the first rung, then the second, his feet dangling over the ruinous chasm. The entire support structure
of the Pit was trembling under the strain, bucking like a live thing under his hands. There was a snapping sound in the darkness
as one of the lower struts popped free. In the glow of a remote flash of lightning, he could see a broken body, bobbing in
the watery ruin far beneath his feet.

As he hung from the array, gasping for air, the enormity of the disaster began to sink in. He dangled motionless for a second
as his mind sought answers.

Then a vast black rage crept over his features and his mouth opened, wailing even over the roar of the void beneath him.

“Haaaaatch!”

W
hat are you talking about?” Hatch asked, leaning against the wet tunnel wall, fighting for breath. “What final trap?”

“According to Roger, the Water Pit was built above a formation called a piercement dome,” Bonterre shouted. “A natural void
that goes deep into the earth. Macallan planned to snare Ockham with it.”

“And we thought bracing the Pit would take care of everything.” Hatch shook his head. “Macallan. He always was one step ahead
of us.”

“These struts of titanium are holding the Pit together—temporarily. Otherwise, the whole thing would have collapsed by now.”

“And Neidelman?”

“
Sais pas.
He probably fell into the void with the treasure.”

“In that case, let’s get the hell out of here.”

He turned toward the mouth of the tunnel just as another violent tremor shook the array. In the moment of silence that followed,
a low beeping sounded from beneath Bonterre’s sweater. She reached in, drew out the Radmeter, and handed it to Hatch.

“I got this from your office,” she said. “I had to break a few things to find it.”

The display was dim—the battery was obviously low—but the message displayed across the top of the screen was all too clear:

244.13 Rads/hour
Fast neutron flux detected
General radiation contamination probable
Recommendation: Immediate evacuation

“Maybe it’s picking up residual radiation?” Bonterre suggested, peering at the screen.

“The hell it is. Two hundred forty-four rads? Let me see if I can bring the locator up.”

He glanced at Clay, who obliged by turning the flashlight beam toward the machine. Hatch began stabbing at the miniature keyboard.
The warning message disappeared, and the three-dimensional coordinate grid once again filled the screen. Standing, Hatch began
to move the detector around. A blazing, rainbow-colored spot blossomed in the center of the screen, colors shifting as he
turned.

“Oh, my God.” He looked up from the screen. “Neidel-man’s not dead. He’s on the ladder now, below us. And he’s got the sword.”

“What?” Bonterre breathed.

“Look at these readings.” Hatch turned the Radmeter toward her. A ragged patch of white showed on its display, oscillating
wildly. “Christ, he must be getting a massive dose from the sword.”

“How much of a dose?” Clay asked, his voice strained.

“What I want to know is, how much of a dose are
we
getting?” Bonterre asked.

“We’re not in immediate danger. Yet. There’s a lot of intervening ground. But radiation poisoning is cumulative. The longer
we stay, the bigger the dose.”

Suddenly, the earth shook like a possessed thing. A few feet down the tunnel, a massive beam gave way with a loud crack. Dirt
and pebbles rained around them.

“What are we waiting for?” Bonterre hissed, turning toward the depths of the tunnel. “Let’s go!”

“Wait!” Hatch cried, the Radmeter buzzing in his hands.

“We
cannot
wait!” Bonterre said. “Can this tunnel lead us out?”

“No. The base of the well was sealed off when the reverend reset the trap.”

“So let’s climb out the Pit! We cannot stay here.” She began walking toward the array.

Hatch pulled Bonterre roughly back into the tunnel.

“We can’t go out there,” he hissed.

“Why not?”

Clay was now at their side, looking intently at the screen. Hatch glanced at him, briefly surprised at the look of suppressed
excitement, almost triumph, on the minister’s face.

“According to this,” Hatch said slowly, “that sword is so radioactive that even one second’s exposure to it gives a lethal
dose. Neidelman’s out there now, and he’s climbing toward us. If we so much as peek out into the main shaft, we’re toast.”

“Then why is he not dead?”

“He
is
dead. Even the most massive doses of radiation take time to kill. He was dead the moment he laid eyes on that sword. And
we’re
dead, too, if we get within a sight line of it. Neutron radiation propagates through the air like light. It’s vital that
we keep rock and earth between him and us.”

He stared at the Radmeter. “He’s maybe fifty feet below now, maybe less. Go back down this tunnel as far as you dare. With
luck, he’ll climb right past us.”

Over the uprushing of sound. Hatch heard an indistinct shout.

Gesturing for the others to stay back, he crept forward, halting just before the mouth of the shaft. Beyond, the web of titanium
struts shivered and swayed. A low-battery alarm began sounding on the Radmeter, and he looked down to check the display: