Deep Fire Rising - v4 (43 page)

Mercer tucked himself into a ball as the scalding pressure wave blew him over the steps. Rolling as he fell, he was hit repeatedly by Sykes tumbling right behind him. He caught a boot to the mouth that split his lip and another to the lower back that felt like it had gouged out a kidney. He smashed into a wall hard enough to arrest his headlong plunge and managed to get a hand on Sykes to stop him too. They climbed to their feet.

Mercer cleared his mouth of blood. “You all right?”

Sykes grabbed his trigger finger and winced as he straightened the misshapen digit. It had broken when it got caught in the trigger guard of his assault rifle. “Fine.”

A startled shout from below gave them a second’s warning to fall flat before auto-fire raked the staircase. Tufts of carpet and wood splinters filled the air as rounds tore through the steps. They were pinned. Above them the balcony was an inferno; the newel posts burned like roman candles, and banks of smoke poured over the landing. Below, the unseen gunmen were getting more accurate. Bullet holes appeared in the wall a foot from where Mercer lay.

“Bash — Snow and I are pinned,” Sykes radioed. “I don’t know where the hell we are, but we need help.” He fired over the railing, drawing redoubled counterfire.

“I hear you,” Happy replied. “Hold one.”

“We don’t have one, Hap.”

Down below, one of the fanatical Order members cocked an RPG-7 under his arm and fired the rocket-propelled grenade at the stairs. The explosive-tipped shell impacted well above Mercer and Sykes, but the charge blew the cantilevered stairs from the wall. The entire structure began to tilt, wood pulling from the wall with a sound like an agonized moan. The staircase had been pegged to the wall with two-inch-thick dowels that remained in place as the steps collapsed. Mercer reached across the widening gap between the stairs and the wall and took hold of one of these pegs just as the section he was lying on fell free.

Sykes just managed to grab his own dowel.

The staircase crashed to the first floor, leaving both men hanging on the wall twenty feet above the ground, exposed and unable to defend themselves. The killing shots were a moment away.

But the gunfire came from outside the foyer. Bashful and Happy had engaged.

Mercer didn’t waste a second. If not for the debris of the collapsed staircase he could have let go, but the pile of shattered wood was unstable and even a drop from a few feet invited a broken leg. The dowel projecting from the wall was easily two feet long. He shifted his grip and began to pendulum his body, arcing across the void to reach the next peg in line, about three feet in front of him and two feet farther down the curved wall. He snagged it with his left hand and let momentum swing him down to the third. Like a child on the monkey bars, he looped his way down the wall as bullets sliced crisscrossing tracks through the smoke.

At the bottom he found cover amid the demolished staircase, but he did not shoot at the robed gunmen across the foyer. Sykes was barely halfway down and Mercer couldn’t risk drawing fire until the commando was safe. The instant Sykes dropped next to him, Mercer sighted in on one of the gunmen and put a bullet into his chest. His partner fumbled with another RPG-7. Mercer fired again, catching him in the hip as he pulled the rocket launcher’s trigger. The missile went errant, climbing straight up on a column of flame until it impacted on the burning ceiling three floors above. The explosion seemed to shake the monastery to its foundation. More of the roof came down. One chunk landed on the gunman, crushing him flat.

The shooting suddenly ceased as Bashful and Happy dispatched the last of the killer monks. “I think we’re clear, Doc.”

“Roger.” Sykes stood.

Mercer and he teamed up with the other two and together they ran to the main mezzanine, where Grumpy, Sleepy and Dopey waited to continue the search. The first floor was ablaze now. The floor was littered with smashed tiles and soot lay thick on every surface. If not for the wind howling through the building, the monastery’s interior would have been hotter than a furnace.

“Where’d they go?” Sykes panted. He wiped grime from his face.

Grumpy nodded down a hallway. “There’s a door down there. I saw them as they went through. On the other side it looks like a cave or something.”

Mercer nodded. “This place was built on top of a geologic hot spot, like Yellowstone Park. That must be one of the old lava tubes they went down. I was afraid of this.”

“Why?”

“A typical building only has four sides and so many exits. You can’t get too lost. But down there you take one wrong turn and we could end up miles from where they’ve got Tisa.”

A tremendous crash on the far side of the monastery ended the rest of the discussion. The building was coming down. Either they had to get out now or follow Tisa’s captors into the subterranean labyrinth.

Sykes gestured Grumpy to take point. They ran to the doorway, fanning out as Dopey, their demolitions expert, checked it for booby traps. Finding nothing around the jamb, he stood aside to use the butt of his M-4 to ease the door slightly. It creaked on its hinges, swung open a foot and exploded in a blinding flash.

Dopey remained silhouetted against the blast for a fraction of a second before his body was blown ten feet down the hallway. He tumbled against a column. Much of his uniform had been stripped from his body, as well as most of his skin.

The blast wave rolled over the rest of the men, covering them in powdered stone and wood shavings. Behind them a stone column collapsed and a section of the second floor smashed into the foyer. Flames rose from the debris.

“Goddamn it,” someone screamed as they raced from their cover positions. Sykes was the first one at Dopey’s side. Grumpy and Mercer stayed back, covering the tunnel entrance with the M-4s in case the explosion brought an ambush. The rest of the men clustered around their fallen comrade. Their movements were purely reflex. There was nothing any of them could do. Dopey had been killed instantly.

“That’s two the fuckers got,” Sykes hissed. “I want them. So help me God I want them.”

They approached the still-smoking cave entrance. The men carried their rifles high, shoulders hunched, fingers curled around triggers. The barrels were in constant motion, sweeping corners and shadows.

Beyond the ruined doorway, the tunnel was a circular fissure that ran down into the earth. A few lamps bolted to the ceiling provided dingy light. It was deserted. The men stayed in a tight group as they inched into the shaft. In the tight confines, staying together reduced the risk of friendly fire and allowed them a denser barrage of counterfire if they were attacked.

The passage corkscrewed and twisted as they went, providing blind corners that needed to be scouted and slowed their progress. Mercer could feel Tisa slipping further and further away. How long ago had she come this way? How far ahead was she?

Sykes was leading the party and dropped down on his haunches, holding up a gloved fist. The men stopped and lowered themselves. From around the next bend a bright glow crept up the tunnel. Sykes moved forward cautiously, his boots making a bare whisper on the stone floor.

He paused at the corner. “Jesus. Come on.”

The men ran up. The chamber had once been richly appointed with antiques, desks, lamps, and tall bureaus. Two walls were dominated by bookshelves. Mercer recognized the texts from the single journal Tisa had stolen from Rinpoche-La. These were the watchers’ archives, the books on which scribes had written the oracle’s predictions that people had gone out to verify.

Everything was burning. The shelves, the furniture, and the books. There wasn’t enough air in the room for the flames to grow high, but enough remained for the priceless artifacts to smolder and blacken before their eyes. Mercer was certain that Donny Randall had set the fire to delay them.

As Sykes and his team searched through the growing smoke for an exit, Mercer tried to approach one of the shelves. The heat was intense, as if the room was an oven. He made a grab for one of the books, only to have it disintegrate in a burst of flame and ash. He tried for two more with the same results. At his fingertips was the knowledge to save millions of people and yet it was out of reach.

He unbuckled his combat harness and let it drop to the floor, then stripped off his battle jacket.

“Mercer, what are you doing? We gotta go!” Sykes had found the door out of the chamber.

“I have to save them!” Mercer shouted over the crackle of burning wood and parchment. He scanned the rows, hoping to find how the chronicles were arranged, but couldn’t make out the titles through the smoke. He made a guess that the last books were the most recent. Using his jacket, he swept the last three books from the shelf and bundled them as quickly as he could.

They were as hot as bricks from a kiln and his hands blistered. He ignored the pain, clamping the jacket tightly around the books, trying to smother the embers. He was too slow. Curls of smoke grew from the fabric and it began to blacken. He tried to beat at those spots with his hands, but it did no good. The entire bundle caught fire. Mercer jumped back, momentarily blinded by the flash. The precious collection burned like a torch — lost for all time.

“Mercer, let’s go!”

He turned reluctantly from the chronicles. The remainder of the shelves were sheeted in flames. Centuries of painstaking work was gone. He snatched up his harness and rifle and followed Sykes deeper into the ground.

For ten minutes the men wended their way along the tunnel until they came to another open chamber. This one was much larger than the archive, with towering ceilings adorned with chandeliers and ornately carved furniture. It resembled something out of the palace at Versailles.

Grumpy and Sykes entered first, staying tight to the wall as they made a circuit of the room. The rest of the men covered them from the tunnel’s mouth. A dozen paces in, Bashful barked a warning. Sykes and Grumpy dropped behind a massive urn. Bashful fired to his left, his rounds chewing the frame off a doorway. From across the room a monk stepped from behind a screen and fired back. Grumpy opened up from a prone position, stitching the monk from groin to shoulder.

In seconds other armed monks appeared all over the room. The level of fire grew to a roar that rattled the chandeliers. One of the monks tried to fire a rocket-propelled grenade but was cut down a moment before he got it to bear. Mercer loosed a long fusillade and ran for cover behind a desk. Another monk dashed out to recover the fallen weapon and managed a snap shot that cratered the rock face above the tunnel.

The men tumbled from the opening as stones and rubble began to fall around them. Sykes and Grumpy poured out rounds to cover them and as soon as Mercer changed out his magazine, he fired over the top of the desk, taking two monks and forcing several others to retreat.

No one needed to order an advance. The men knew they had only seconds before the enemy regrouped. In leapfrog dashes they charged across the room, holding their fire as they ran but opening up again when they had cover.

Mercer was halfway across when a grenade was tossed in his path. He jumped through a doorway to his right and backed himself against the wall. The detonation blew the door from its hinge but left him unhurt. He took a moment to look around as the commandos flushed the defenders from the outer chamber.

The room he’d landed in was dominated by a large bed. Tapestries covered the walls. He thought the room was unoccupied until he spied a naked skeletal man propped against the bed headboard. Through mindless eyes he watched Mercer watching him. The pitiable creature began to giggle.

“What the—?”

The giggle turned into a shriek and the madman started to claw at his skin. His long fingernails tore bloody trenches from his arms and legs. He threw the ribbons of flesh at the heavy cerulean drapes hanging across the far wall of the bedroom. The clots of skin and tissue clung to the hangings while droplets of blood trickled down the rich blue fabric. Horrified by what he was seeing, Mercer couldn’t help but notice that the curtain seemed to billow slightly at the spot where the man was throwing bits of his body.

He stayed low and circled around the bed. As soon as the crazed figure saw Mercer was moving to the drapes, he stopped tearing at himself and made a cooing noise. Mercer reached the spot and used his rifle barrel to probe the cloth. There was an opening behind the drape.

“Is that what you were trying to tell me?” he asked the old man.

The man’s expression remained vacant. His toothless mouth hung slack.

Mercer lifted the drape. Behind it was a door that had been left ajar. A warm breeze blew from deeper inside the complex of tunnels. It had a sharp scent, like machine oil.

“Sykes!” Mercer called on his throat mike. “Sykes, can you hear me?” He heard nothing but static. The team had fought their way out of the first room and was doubtlessly chasing the monks farther into the mountain. The intervening rock was blocking the radio signals. “Bashful? Happy? Anyone read?”

He turned to check the bedroom entrance, hoping that at least one of the Delta operators had stayed behind to find him. He’d barely taken a step toward the exit when the old man screamed again and ripped a strip of skin off his hip.

Mercer froze. “Easy, now. I just need to check something.”

He took another step. The lunatic heaved the piece of meat at the secret door and reached across himself to tear another chunk from his shoulder.

“Okay, okay. I get the point. I’ll go through the door.” As soon as he turned back to the portal, the old man settled on his bed, his thin chest rising and falling as fast as a hummingbird’s.

The tunnel beyond the bedroom was much smaller than the lava tube the men had used to get this far, forcing Mercer to crouch. There were no lights, and the lamp attached to his M-4 had been damaged during the fighting. Its beam was an anemic glow that barely cut the gloom.

Every twenty paces or so, Mercer paused, cocking his head to listen for any movement. He sensed more than heard the rhythm of heavy machinery farther down the shaft. The impression coincided with the oil smell that was growing stronger. The warm air felt charged with electricity.