The Templar Salvation (2010) (45 page)

ZAHED BOUNCED OFF THE STONE OILLAR and went down like a rag doll. His extended arm had hit it first, which gave him a split second to tilt away and avoid a full-frontal hit.

Still, it hurt like hell. His chest, his shoulder, his hip, his knee, and his cheek—they’d all slammed into the solid rock under full acceleration. He felt a metallic taste in his mouth and wiped it clean with the back of his hand. It was wet with blood.

His mind quickly assessed the damage. Nothing seemed broken, but the heavy bruising would definitely slow him down and limit his agility for a while. He bunkered the pain and focused on the more immediate concern. The gun. He’d dropped it in the collision.

He stayed down and ran quick concentric sweeps of the ground around him. It didn’t take long for him to find it. Cursing himself for his mistake, he pushed himself back to his feet, his ears scanning for target acquisition.

He spat some more blood out and screamed her name in rage, and was back after her within seconds.

“TESS! WHERE ARE YOU, BITCH!”

The yell reverberated around her, propelling her forward like wind to a sail. She heard him entering the narrow passage just as she was reaching the chamber at its other end.

This time would be harder. She couldn’t use her flashlight, and she couldn’t use the cables either. She didn’t know what the room looked like—how big it was, its layout, what obstacles or pitfalls it presented. She was as vulnerable in it as he was. Worse, she was the quarry. She had to be quiet, she had to explore it without making a sound. All he had to do was follow the noise, and in the deathly quiet of the subterranean citadel, even the tiniest noise she made was getting amplified way out of proportion. She sounded as discreet as the percussion section of a marching band.

She pushed away from the wall and its cabling and prowled through the darkness blindly, her arms extended defensively like an insect’s antennae, groping the air, wary of any obstruction. She found the opposite wall, making the room out to be around fifteen feet wide or so. She ran her fingers up and down its smooth surface as she advanced farther, and then they found something else. A low-level niche in the wall, about four feet wide, starting just above ground level and going up to her waist.

She knew there were all kinds of rooms down there: wineries, kitchens, food storage chambers, all of which had cavities of various sizes cut into their walls and floors. Before she could think of what this one was, she heard him getting nearer and froze.

She couldn’t risk moving ahead, not with him that close. She didn’t have much of a choice. She bent down and climbed into the niche, pushing herself into it as far as she could. It was only about a foot and a half deep.

Then she waited.

She’d barely made it in when she heard the soft padding of his feet grow sharper. He’d just entered the room. Spiders scurried wildly through her belly as she shriveled up and pressed back against the wall.

She heard him scuttle along the opposite wall.

So far, so good. Keep going
.

He stopped.

She stopped breathing.

He didn’t make a sound for what felt like forever. She imagined him there, a few feet away from her, listening intently, like a panther in the dark. She felt every pore on her body pucker up as she made herself as small as she could, her body rigid with tension, her lungs desperate to breathe freely, her mind taut in anticipation of some other jolt—a shout, a bullet, something designed to make her jump.

It didn’t take long to come.

“I know you’re here, Tess. I can hear you breathing.”

She felt her heart contract and freeze as she braced herself for his next move, repeating to herself over and over that she couldn’t afford to react. She concentrated intently on her hearing, using her ears as sonar.

She heard a faint scuff.

Then another.

He was moving.

Slowly.

Heading straight for her.

Chapter 45

T
ess felt all the blood in her body rush up to her temples. He was only a few feet away. And closing.

She went completely rigid. Every muscle of her body was locked down tight. Forget moving a finger. She wasn’t even blinking. It was all channeled into her jaw, which she was biting down, hard. She was expecting him to try to spook her. It was coming, she knew it. And she couldn’t allow herself to get caught by it again.

She waited, each second stretching to hours. He was getting closer—so close that she could now hear his breathing. It was subdued, dampened, he knew what he was doing. He had to be breathing through his mouth, she imagined, as she was. It was quieter that way. But it was still there, at the edge of her perception. A bit blocked, wet, gargly. A bit labored. Maybe from slamming into that column, she hoped.

It did little to alleviate her terror.

She could also feel him now. Somehow, even though they weren’t touching, she could feel his presence. It was as if she actually did have a sonar within her that had detected him. She heard his fingers land on the wall above the cavity in which she was crouched, the tiniest scrape of nails against porous rock. He was standing right in front of her, feeling the wall, mere inches away now, his waist more or less level with her head.

Her heart was rocketing away, about to burst out of its cage. The pounding in her ears was deafening, and she was amazed he couldn’t hear it himself. She knew that if his hand moved downward, even slightly, he’d find the cavity and he’d find her.

She wasn’t about to wait for that.

No choice but to act first.

She sprang out from her coiled position, slamming into him at thigh-level, thrusting out with as much power as she could muster, her fists clutched tight against the butt end of her flashlight, using it like a mini- battering ram and hoping it caused him some damage. She heard him grunt heavily as she slammed into him and thought she must have hit him where it counted. He lost his balance under the unexpected tackle and fell back, with Tess tumbling over him but managing to stay on her feet. His arms lashed out at her furiously, and one of them struck her across the cheek, but she had the advantage of being on top and pulled back quickly.

She disentangled herself from him and bolted out of the room before he was back on his feet. She had to move as fast as she could, but couldn’t risk crashing into anything. She had to use the flashlight, just quick on-off flicks to guide her as she blew through the subterranean maze, keeping an eye on the cabling and following its trail, flying from one chamber to another, hunched through the narrow tunnels, her chest heaving with panic. She was making too much noise to be able to hear him coming up behind her, but she didn’t care. All she was focused on was covering as much ground as fast as possible and putting as much distance as possible between him and her.

She was charging out of a stepped passageway when two arms grabbed her and pulled her in. She let off the beginning of a shriek before one of the hands pressed hard against her mouth and muffled her scream.

“Shh, pipe down,” he hissed, low and urgent. “It’s me.”

Her heart soared.

Reilly
.

REILLY OULLED HER TIGHTLY AGAINST HIM, away from the opening she’d just burst through.

He kept one hand clasped against her mouth and trained his hearing in the direction she’d come from. He heard nothing, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before the Iranian caught up with them.

“How’d you find me?” she whispered.

“My BlackBerry’s screen and those cables,” he told her. “I followed them down and saw the light flickering. You have a flashlight?”

“Yes,” she mouthed. “He’s right behind me. And he’s pissed off.”

Reilly thought hard and fast. “Okay. Keep going. I’ll stay here. He can’t be far behind. Draw him out. Let him follow you. I’ll get him when he comes through here.”

“Are you su—”

“Just go, do it,” he insisted, herding her away.

She darted back in and her hand found his face. She planted a quick kiss on his lips before setting off.

He tucked his handgun into the small of his back and sank back against the wall by the opening, feeling the coolness of the perspiration along his spine as it came into contact with the volcanic rock. There was no point wasting ammo in the dark, and besides, he would prefer to get the Iranian alive. He thought he’d be more nimble with two free hands; he’d be able to inflict more damage. Which right now was a very appealing prospect.

He saw the flickering of Tess’s flashlight, getting dimmer as she disappeared farther into the bowels of the citadel.

Then he heard him.

Frantic movement, closing in.

Reilly tensed up.

The scrapes grew louder, the breathing more intense. The Iranian was plowing ahead now, like a steamroller. Reilly could almost smell his fury.

He waited, his body stiffening up for the brawl, his hands tightening into fists, his mind’s eye converting every sound into a visual and projecting it into the impenetrable darkness around him—then he heard him emerge from the passageway and pounced.

He hit him full-on and rammed him, slamming him against the wall. He knew the Iranian had a gun, and his hands dove straight for where he guessed the bomber’s gun hand would be. He quickly found his opponent’s right wrist just as the Iranian squeezed off a thunderous round that lit up the chamber in a cold white flash. Reilly kept his left grip clamped around the bomber’s gun hand, pinning it back against the wall and pounding it repeatedly against the tufa while his other fist flicked fierce jabs at the Iranian’s head. He connected hard, once, twice, hearing the cartilage snap and the blood gurgle, waiting to feel the man’s gun tumble out of his hand, but the Iranian was hanging on to it stubbornly. Reilly was looking to land a third punch when he got something he hadn’t counted on: a knee to the kidneys, quickly followed by a battering ram of an uppercut straight to his chin. The first impact winded him, and the second rattled his brain and caused him to lose his grip for a moment—which was just enough for the Iranian to shove him off with a scream of rage.

The gun was still in the man’s hand.

Reilly dove and rolled over himself just as the bullets drilled into the ground around him. Shards of tufa splintered off and cut into him as he yanked out his own gun and loosed off several rounds of his own, but none of them seemed to connect. His ears ringing from the deafening gunfire, he thought he heard his opponent scampering out of the chamber and he chased him out with a couple of rounds, but he didn’t hear the telltale sound of a round punching through human skin and bone and the accompanying outburst of pain.

Worse, the Iranian was now heading toward Tess.

Reilly found the cabling and felt his way forward, moving frantically now, one hand on the wiring, the other clutching the gun tightly, his ears attuned to make sure the Iranian hadn’t stopped and wasn’t about to ambush him.