Authors: Boyd Morrison
F
or a few moments, Tyler couldn’t figure out what had happened. His ears were assaulted by a roar that seemed to come from everywhere.
When he could remember his name, he pushed himself up. Two of the lanterns were still working. He looked around and saw Stacy lying facedown. She wasn’t moving.
She had saved him. If he’d been standing when the explosive detonated, he would have been pulverized against the far wall.
He gently turned her over. Blood spilled from her side. A shrapnel wound. He lifted her shirt and saw a gash three inches long. He ripped his shirt tail off and pressed it against the wound. He couldn’t tell how deep it was.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“My side hurts,” she said, her voice more annoyed than anything else.
“I know. But you’ll be all right.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re a tough woman. Now be quiet and hold this down. I’m going to see if Grant is okay.”
He got one of the lanterns and went to the edge. He shined it down and saw Grant laid out behind the pedestal on the side away from the explosion.
“Grant! Get up!”
He heard a moan in response. “Can’t a guy rest for a minute?”
Tyler’s hearing was coming back. He thought the rushing sound in his ears was the residual effects of the explosion, but it was getting louder. He looked down and saw a crack in the wall, and water gushing through it. The pool started to overflow, and the boiling water streamed across the floor, right at Grant.
“Grant!” Tyler yelled. “Get your ass onto the pedestal right now!”
The crack blew open, and water poured into the pit.
Grant had gotten to his feet and saw the water rushing toward him. He scrambled up onto the pedestal and didn’t stop until he was sitting atop the statue. The water splashed against the side, but he was far enough above it to escape injury. However, it would be only a matter of time before he was swamped, and he would suffer the same agonizing death as Sal.
For that matter, they all would.
A shout from across the chamber got his attention. “Tyler! I thought you’d be dead.”
It was Orr. He had returned, and he’d been able to remove the shoelaces binding his wrists. Tyler didn’t know whether he’d come back to make sure they’d all been killed or to gloat.
“This isn’t over, Orr,” Tyler said.
“Looks like it is to me. Then again, you could try to swim across, but that might be a little painful.” The water was already three feet deep and rising fast.
“Before I leave you to your doom and lock you in here for another two thousand years,” Orr continued, “I thought you might like to know that your father’s dead. So is Carol Benedict.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Yeah, they’ve been dead since I first saw you this evening, and now you get to think about that for the rest of your short, miserable life while I’m off to enjoy my spoils.” He pointed at his eye. “And this? It’s nothing that a little plastic surgery won’t fix. Ciao!”
He smiled a shit-eating grin, waved a salute, and was gone, sure that Tyler would soon be a distant memory.
T
yler wasn’t going to give up that easily. Orr should have known that by now.
Wading or swimming through boiling acidic water was a death sentence, but Tyler wasn’t going to swim. He had a boat.
He ran over to the gilded wooden sarcophagus and tipped it over to lighten the load.
“Sorry, Your Majesty,” he said as Midas’s corpse tumbled out over the edge of the terrace and into the water. He flipped it back over and heaved the lid onto it.
He had to push the sarcophagus down the stairs, but Cavano’s body was in the way. Tyler grasped her jacket, careful not to touch the flaming-red skin that now covered her entire body like a rash, and pulled her until she was clear. He put her back down, and her eyes popped open, the bloodshot orbs nearly bursting from the sockets. Her face was contorted in agony.
“Wa … water,” she wheezed.
Tyler hesitated, but he couldn’t refuse the dying woman’s last request. He retrieved the canteen and tipped it so that water dribbled into her mouth. She swallowed, then gagged, and some of it streamed down her cheek.
“Is Orr … dead?” she croaked.
“No,” Tyler said. “But I’ll catch him.”
She coughed, barely able to force the words out. “You won’t. You won’t find Jordan Orr.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s named for his grandfather.” Her breath caught. “His real name … is Giordano … Orsini.”
Her eyes widened as the pain overwhelmed her. She shrieked, but no sound came out. Her head lolled to the side, and her final breath rushed out. She was dead.
But she got her wish to be the golden girl. The rivulet of water on her cheek left a streak of gold. She would be immortalized in the metal when the chamber was submerged.
“Uh, Tyler?” Grant said. “You might want to hurry before I turn into a three-minute egg.”
So would the rest of them if he didn’t act fast. The water was already four feet deep.
Tyler pushed the coffin toward the stairs, his rib protesting the entire way. When the coffin was at the bottom step, he left it there and went back for Stacy.
“Can you walk?” he said.
Stacy nodded as tears streamed down her face. She had heard Orr’s news about her sister.
He helped her to her feet, and she went ashen from the headrush. He threw her arm over his shoulder and carried her to the sarcophagus.
They got on top of its lid, and it sank until the top bobbed only six inches above the surface of the water.
Tyler took off his T-shirt, wrapped it around Cavano’s contaminated gun, and used the stock as a paddle, rowing as fast as he could.
When he got to the pedestal, there was only a foot of clearance left.
“We’ll sink to the bottom if my fat ass gets on there with you,” Grant said.
He was right. Tyler kept padding. “I’ll push it back to you.”
Tyler rowed as fast as he could until he was at the steps leading up to the exit. He helped Stacy off. She was barely able to move on her own. When she was safely out of harm’s way, Tyler laid the gun on top and used his foot to shove the coffin back to Grant.
He dragged Stacy up to the top of the stairs and laid her down.
“A little help!” Grant shouted.
Tyler went back to the railing and saw that Grant was foundering. The coffin was sinking. Cavano must have put a bullet hole in it. Grant wasn’t going to make it to the stairs.
Tyler searched around him and saw Stacy’s explosive belt. He picked it up by the end and lowered it over the railing.
“Come this way!” he yelled. “Hurry!”
Grant rowed like an Olympic sculling champion. When the coffin was near the wall, he stood and reached for the belt. He supported himself with it using his feet to scrabble up the wall.
Tyler strained to hold on to the belt under the weight of Grant’s 260 pounds. With one last heave he jerked backward, and Grant caught the top of the railing with his hand just as the top of the sarcophagus went under.
A searing pain stabbed Tyler’s side as the rib finally snapped. He ground his molars trying not to cry out. Grant heaved himself over the railing.
“Thanks,” Grant said. “You okay, man?”
Tyler talked through gritted teeth. “Just get Stacy.” He took a breath and stood, taking one last look at the smashed geolabe lying forgotten on the stairs, being covered by the rising water.
He staggered behind Grant as they saw the pumice barrier rising. Orr thought he had penned them in, but it had risen too slowly. There were still two feet of space left.
Grant went over, and Tyler struggled to pass Stacy through. Once she was safe, he used the last of his strength to tumble over the barrier into the cool air of the exterior tunnel.
Tyler staggered to his knees and lay down on his side, not sure if he’d ever get up again.
B
ecause Tyler was sucking wind and Grant had to support Stacy as they walked, there was no chance for either of them to catch up with Orr, but at least they could find their way out using his markings.
The tunnel maze seemed to go on forever, but Tyler knew they were getting close to the entry well when they passed three bodies that were burned and mangled by the phosphorus grenades. Tyler, still shirtless, considered taking one of the men’s jackets, but he thought that wearing a burned piece of clothing from a dead man would be even worse than being naked.
Orr had been so sure he’d killed Tyler that he hadn’t bothered to cut the rope that still dangled at the bottom of the cistern. Grant went up first, while Tyler put Stacy in a harness. Grant pulled her up and then helped Tyler get to the top. By the time they reached the surface, it was midnight.
None of them had a phone, except for Orr’s, and because of the password protection Tyler couldn’t use it to call out.
While Grant went to find a working phone, Tyler held Stacy in his lap. She was barely conscious. Her face was pale, and she’d lost a lot of blood. They’d bandaged her up as best they could, but the walk had been hard on her. Tyler stroked her hair.
Her eyes fluttered open. For a second, she couldn’t focus, then she recognized Tyler’s face.
“Hey, I thought I was dead for a minute there,” she said weakly. “Is that the moon?”
Tyler looked up and saw a full moon shining brightly through the clear sky. He instinctively inhaled a deep breath of warm night air, but he stopped when pain convulsed his chest.
“That’s the moon,” he said. “We made it out.”
“Good. I hated that place.”
Tyler smiled.
A look of alarm suddenly bloomed on her face. “Where’s Orr?”
Fresh anger welled up, but Tyler tamped it down. “Don’t worry. We’ll track him down.”
Stacy closed her eyes and sobbed. “Carol. Carol’s gone.”
“Shh. Don’t talk. Save your strength.” Tyler was still in a state of disbelief. The first of the five stages of grief. A part of Tyler hated himself for being so analytical, even now.
Not that he lacked emotion. Every time he pictured Orr’s face, pure hatred flowed through him. He didn’t hate many people. Sometimes he hated himself, like now, when he’d failed so totally. But Orr had earned it, and Tyler swore he would track Orr down if it took him the rest of his life.
He completely understood the powerful need for vengeance. It was appropriate that he’d found it in Italy, so famous for its blood-soaked vendettas.
Grant came trotting back toward them with a cell phone triumphantly held in his hand.
“I got emergency services,” he said. “An ambulance is on the way. I told them it was a heart attack so the police wouldn’t come right away.”
“Where’d you get the phone?”
“Some kid on the street. I saw him talking on it. He told me to buzz off until I offered to trade my Rolex for it. He spoke English, so he helped me with the operator.”
He handed the phone to Tyler, who dialed Miles Benson’s number, one of the few he had memorized. He prayed that Miles would answer the unfamiliar number.
He did, on the second ring.
“Miles Benson,” he said in his curt tone.
“Miles, it’s Tyler.” He could hear the exhaustion in his own voice.
“Tyler? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours! Where the hell are you?”
“I’m in Naples with Grant. Stacy’s badly injured, but we’ve got an ambulance coming. Miles, I think my father is dead.”
“Dead? Jesus. Last time I heard, the general was just coming out of surgery at George Washington University Hospital. Doctors said he’d be in critical condition for a while, but they expected him to make a full recovery.”
For the first time in hours, Tyler felt a surge of energy. “He’s not dead? You’re sure?”
“I know what I heard.”
“What about Carol Benedict?”
“Scared, but she didn’t have a scratch on her.”
“Thank God!” Tyler said. He lowered the phone. “Stacy, it’s all right. Carol’s safe.”
“Carol?” she said, her eyes flashing open. “She’s okay?”
Tyler nodded, and this time Stacy wept tears of joy before her eyes closed again. He put the phone back to his ear.
“Miles, Orr is still alive. Did you find the nuclear material?”
“No,” Miles said, “but the FBI confirmed that the site where we found your dad had unusual levels of radioactivity.”
Damn.
Sometimes he hated being right. But not often.
“Have you found anything else?”
“No, the investigation is just getting under way.”
“Tell them to keep an eye out for a Giordano Orsini.”
“Orsini? Who the hell is that?”
“I think it’s Jordan Orr’s birth name. Have the FBI flag him in case he tries to get back into the US. And he has an injured right eye.”
“Will do, but they’re pretty fixated on some Muslims for the explosion.”
“What explosion?” Tyler heard sirens wailing, getting closer. “Never mind. You can tell me on the plane. Can you have the pilots fly the Gordian jet down here from Rome? We’ll meet them at the Naples airport.” Tyler and Grant had made the right decision leaving their passports in the plane. The last thing they needed was a hassle getting back into the US.
“Sure. I’ll get on it.” Miles hung up.
The sirens got the attention of the resident priest, who brought Tyler a shirt from the church’s donation pile. A minute later, two EMTs carrying a stretcher came into the cloisters. Grant handled the priest, while Tyler dealt with the EMTs. They didn’t speak much English, but they made it clear that they’d been expecting a heart-attack victim, not somebody with a bleeding wound.
He eased Stacy onto the stretcher with the EMTs’ help. She looked in bad shape, but still beautiful.
As they strapped Stacy down and rebandaged her, the motion woke her.
“What’s happening?” she said.
“You’re going to the hospital.” He held her hand. “We can’t come with you.”
The police might get involved, and then there would be questions and delays. Tyler and Grant needed to get back to the US and help stop whatever Orr had in mind.
“I wish I could go with you,” Stacy said, her voice a thin reed. “You get him for me.”
“We will.”
“Tell my sister I love her.”
“You’ll tell her yourself.”
“Kiss for luck?”
Tyler smiled. He leaned down and kissed her softly. Her lips burned with heat, but they welcomed his touch.
He pulled away and said, “You won’t need luck. You’ll be fine.” Given her condition, he wasn’t sure about that, but what else could he say?
“The luck isn’t for me,” she said. “It’s for you.”
She slipped into unconsciousness. Tyler and Grant followed her to the ambulance and stayed there until she was safely on her way.
Then, before the
polizia
arrived, they walked to the nearest busy street and hailed a cab. Within two hours, they were winging their way toward Washington, hoping they could find Orr before he detonated his nuclear weapon.