Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (38 page)

David looked up, snapped a flash, then checked the image on the camera’s display.

The chamber’s roof was hemispherical, like a planetarium dome, but studded with metallic disks, silver. They’d flared in the lens flash.

He grabbed a second camera, chose a setting to reduce the flare, completed a full sweep of the ceiling.

Now for close-ups of the map.
David picked up a third camera, realized he’d need more light. He held a lightstick up. “Jess . . . I have to see the map.”

“Do it!”

He cracked the lightstick, shook it. Looked for Cornwall. Found it.

He snapped a close-up of the bladed-cross mark, the sign that showed where to find . . .

He paused, stood back, then moved the lightstick across the mural on the wall.
There.
Another bladed cross on an island in the Mediterranean.
And there.
In sub-Saharan Africa.

The thud of boots. Shouting.
German?
“Jess—”

She twisted around, gun in hand, her silhouette wreathed in green-glowing dust motes. “Did you get it?”

“Yes!” David stuffed all the cameras he’d used into his coverall pockets, discarding the canvas bag and backpack, leaving nothing that would identify them. Protein bars, water bottles, digging tools, batteries, a first aid kit . . . everything was expendable except for the memory cards in the cameras.

“Did you get it
all
?”

“Yes! Jess, we have to go.”
They were almost here. Couldn’t she hear them? At least eight . . .
David shook his head. His ears still thrummed with the white-noise rush of the explosions. There could be more than eight . . .

A glint of something metallic on the floor caught his eye. It was the source of the coinlike sound he’d heard when the second explosion shook the walls. One of the ceiling disks had dislodged. He picked it up, then ran to Jess, still by the doorway. He heard the nearby sound of whispers, the rustling of heavy fabric, the click of metal . . .

This time she heard them, too. “The lightstick!”

David berated himself for not thinking of it first, sprinted back for it, and shoved it inside his coveralls, restoring protective darkness.

The other lightstick they’d left outside had been shifted by the explosion, but it still glowed and lit the entrance to the intersecting passageway.

“This is where they’ll come first,” Jess said, her lips by his ear. “We have to find someplace else to hide.” She pointed to the other passage.

Neither he nor Jess had checked it. No way to know if it was blocked or clear.

“On three?”

David nodded.

Gunfire.

Merrit and J.R. were crouched in darkness, even the outlines of their bodies hidden by the rock pile behind them, beyond the reach of the glow from the lightstick at the entrance of the treasure room.

“We gotta get outta here!” J.R. started to get up, but Merrit grabbed his shoulder, forced him back down. Merrit knew exactly what was happening; he just didn’t know who was behind it. Whoever had blasted their way in here wasn’t interested in preserving anything or anyone. It was doubtful they’d leave witnesses.

He threw a lightstick over the mound of debris he and J.R. had just scaled, and its light winked out on the other side, safely out of sight. The water-damaged passageway beyond led back to the small opening in the bluff. That would be his escape route. By using explosives to blast through from the other side, the intruders had revealed they didn’t know about the shoreline cave.

“First we get Weir. Then we go.”

“What about the girl?”

“She can’t deliver your father to the Feds.”

“My father’s safe?!”

It was true. Ironwood’s escape, long planned and often rehearsed, had
gone off like clockwork. The moment Merrit’s inside source from the Atlantic City police alerted him to the staging of an interdepartmental task force at police headquarters preparing a raid on Encounters, Merrit had roused Ironwood and the helicopter pilot kept on standby to ferry VIPs and whales between the casino and local airports.

Twenty minutes later—more than an hour before the raid began—Ironwood was on his way to Philadelphia International on the resort’s Sikorsky. By the time Encounters was surrounded, Ironwood was airborne in a private 777. As much as his employer hated flying, it was preferable to prison, and the jet had the range to take him beyond reach of the U.S. government.

All of these precautionary moves were simply a holding action—denying the government the advantage of surprise. Ironwood could only stay away from the day-to-day operations of his business empire for so long. Nor would Ironwood’s empire remain an empire for long if the government announced the billionaire had been charged with theft of classified military computer assets.

Merrit felt vindicated. He’d predicted that Weir would be turned by the air force investigators, and that’s precisely what had happened.

But Ironwood’s son was thinking of himself as usual. “So if my father’s safe . . .”

“Only for a few days,” Merrit cautioned. “Maybe less if the Feds go public. But when I get rid of Weir, that threat’s over.”

“We have to kill the girl, too.”

“Why?”

“She knows too much.”

“About what?” Merrit asked. Then he heard running up ahead, commands shouted in what sounded to be German.

“Who the hell is that?” J.R. said.

Merrit was already on his feet, rushing forward. “Stay here!” He sensed movement far along the corridor straight ahead and, more from instinct than rational thought, fired three times into the darkness, then dove to the ground fast and hard as an answering volley of automatic fire sprayed overhead, sparking and ricocheting off the walls.

The instant the volley ended, Merrit darted forward again, firing as he rolled to the side, just avoiding a burst that stitched across the floor where he’d been moments before.

He was past the dimming lightstick now, the entrance to the treasure room on his right. The opening on his left was closer.

Merrit fired twice more, then threw himself into the intersecting corridor as more bullets whined past him. He positioned himself with his
back to the far wall and assessed his situation. To his right was the passageway that duplicated the one he’d swum through in the South Pacific. To his left, across the width of the passageway he’d just escaped, was the entrance to the treasure chamber. At his back were the shooters. Somewhere in the direction he faced was J.R.—presuming he’d survived the gunfire.

Merrit dropped the magazine from his Glock but caught it to avoid making noise. He quietly slipped another into place. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the almost complete absence of light. The faintest of pale green rays still shone from the almost exhausted lightstick that lay a few feet back in the direction from which he’d come.

A harsh voice called out, echoing against the stones. “Throw out your weapon and you won’t come to harm!”

Merrit risked a glance into the intersection, keeping alert for sounds of movement.

In that glance he saw, in the doorway leading to the treasure room, two silhouettes in the watery green light.

Weir and the MacClary girl.

David yanked Jess back from the entrance. “It’s Merrit!”

“Throw out your weapon!” the harsh voice in the corridor called again.

The unknown gunmen were edging forward, along the wall that led to the half-open doorway to the chamber.

“Did he see us?” Jess whispered.

“Couldn’t miss us.”

“But the others, they don’t know we’re here.”

“Maybe. Can’t be sure.”

“So we stay quiet, hope Merrit draws their attention, and—”

Sudden scuffling, a round of automatic gunfire, a dark shape hurtling toward them.

Now they weren’t the only ones inside the chamber.

Merrit rolled back to his knees and held his Glock on his hostages.

“Put your guns on the floor—very slowly—then slide them away.”

“If we had them, you’d be dead.” That was MacClary. Weir didn’t speak.

Merrit wondered if J.R.’s silence down the passageway meant he’d caught a bullet. Could be good news all around.

He got up, gun held steady. “Okay,” he said. “New orders. You’re going to charge across that passage when I say. I’ll cover you.”

“I can’t outrun a bullet.”

“Theirs or mine. Your choice.”

Merrit allowed himself a smile. His plan could work. Since the gunmen didn’t know about the entrance to the cave, they couldn’t know these two were in here. They’d be expecting J.R. or him. So when Weir stepped into the corridor . . . Merrit smiled again. The other shooters would do his work for him, and when they came in to check the body, that’s when he’d have them.

“Get ready to run.” Merrit stepped back so he could see directly out the doorway. Weir was standing, his back to the wall. The girl was still hunched over on the floor beside him.

Merrit saw movement, shifted his gaze. The girl had reached up to hold Weir’s hand.

“Now!”

Weir turned his head suddenly and ducked down to cover Jessica MacClary with his body. In the seconds it took Merrit to wonder why, the grenade landed in the corridor outside the entrance and—

Seconds after he heard the rustle of the thrown grenade, the thunderclap of its explosion deadened David’s hearing to a high-pitched whine. Simultaneously, he saw Merrit thrown back as if a wave of light had crashed over him.

Merrit hit the stone table, and his limp body sprawled across it, unmoving.

The sudden wall of heat was startling, sucking the air from David’s lungs. He could feel Jess clawing at his chest to pull out the lightstick he had hidden in his coveralls.

She scrabbled to her feet and held the lightstick up, lips moving. David couldn’t hear a word. Only the whine.

Jess pointed to the entranceway. Carved stone blocks. Loose shale.

It was collapsing.

David reached for her hand, and together they ran through the doorway. No flash of gunshots met them.

Left or right? Or straight ahead?

David squinted down the corridor to the right. Thick billows of dust were lit by wild flashlight beams that swung back and forth like swords of light through a waterfall of falling rock. Whoever was responsible for the explosions, they’d blasted through from the other side, not come in from the shore. There was no escape in that direction, and the T-intersection ahead was a complete unknown.