Eden raised an arm to try to shield the blow.
The statue broke apart.
Broke his arm.
The bust shattered into a hundred marble shards, and Eden Santiago's world turned to darkness.
Dominic Dixon giggled, almost like a girl, at the destruction he had caused. He crossed the chamber to Jacques, who was now unconscious, and took the stone tablets lying beside him.
The water level was up to his ankles when he walked up to the battle-ax and, with all his might, yanked it clean out of the wall.
It was like pulling the cork out of a bottle; water began to flood into the chamber with unstoppable force.
Just for the hell of it, Dominic Dixon raised the ax and thrust it into the wall again, forming a second splice in the stone. He laughed again, and then headed out of the chamber, out through the furnace doors.
That's when he heard two sets of footsteps rushing down the narrow corridor toward him.
Quickly, the one-armed man stepped into the darkness behind one of the furnace doors.
Will and Jake followed Perron's instructions to the letter: downstairs; through the courtyard; across the vast antechamber; down the marble staircase where, only two minutes earlier, Eric Landon had knocked Shane unconscious and carried him away; through the narrow corridor and into the antique weapons room where they would find a furnace that would open up to reveal the vault.
Only the furnace doors were already open.
And inside, Eden lay motionless, Jacques was bleeding and unconscious, and the chamber was flooding fast.
"Holy shit!" Will exclaimed before leaping through the furnace doors, down the steps and crashing into the water.
Jake wanted to stop him, but he knew this was no time for caution and bolted after him.
They reached Eden first, the water level already covering his face completely.
Will held his head up and rested it in his lap.
Jake felt for a pulse.
"He's not breathing!"
He looked around quickly, part of him scanning for trouble, part of him looking for somewhere drier to lay Eden. He saw an old stone altar. "We gotta lift him."
Will took Eden's shoulders, Jake took his feet, and together they hoisted him swiftly up onto the altar. Jake immediately tilted Eden's head back, pinched his nose and clasped his lips firmly over Eden's. He began pushing air into him, breathing hard into his mouth, filling his lungs.
He stopped and gripped his hands Eden's ribcage and began to pump, counting under his breath.
He gave him the kiss of life once more.
Breathing into him.
Holding his face in his hands.
Tasting his lips.
Feeling nothing back, until—
—Eden suddenly gasped and splashed up a lungful of water.
His eyes shot open, and the first thing he saw were Jake's piercing green eyes, staring down at him. Smiling down at him.
"Welcome back," Jake whispered to him, an unexpected tear of relief gathering in his eye.
Eden sucked in the air. "Jake," he breathed, startled and happy, and then alarmed. "Jacques!"
"I got him," Will shouted, dropping to Jacques' side.
The Frenchman was still propped up against the wall, unconscious, the water rising quickly up his chest.
Jake went back into control mode. "Get him up," he told Will.
"He's been shot," Will shouted, lifting the soaked shirt off Jacques' stomach and sizing up the wound.
"I don't care," Jake replied. "We gotta get everyone outta here now before the water gets any higher."
"Where the hell's it coming from?" Will asked.
"My guess is the canal." Jake turned to Eden. "Can you walk?"
Eden nodded. "I think my arm is broken, but I'm okay. It's him I'm worried about." He was gesturing toward Jacques. "We've got to get him to a hospital now."
"We will," Jake said, easing Eden off the altar at the same time that Will put Jacques' arm around his shoulder and lifted him up.
That's when they all heard it—
Clang!
Jake, Eden and Will looked up at the same moment to see the cast-iron furnace doors slam shut. The next sound they heard was the latch on the outside locking.
Then, from the other side of the furnace doors came the distinct sound of Dominic Dixon's insidious laugh.
Luca was beginning to get anxious, very anxious, when he saw Shane's white horse mask bobbing through the crowd. He started to make his way hurriedly toward him when he realized that Shane was not walking on his own two feet: he had one arm around the shoulders of a man in a centurion's mask and was being carried along.
That could only mean one thing—trouble.
He snapped off his red sun mask, when suddenly, he heard a gruff voice behind him.
"You're da one he wants."
Luca spun and saw a grinning goat's head facing him, but it was a sight he saw for only a second.
Before Luca could so much as move, Dominic Dixon shoved a Cupid's mask in his face. The inside of the mask had been heavily doused in chloroform.
Luca went down like a stone wall collapsing.
Dominic caught him.
He found the keys to the Riviera in one of Luca's jacket pockets—and the code book in the other. With one hand, Dominic managed to keep Luca propped up against him and slot the book into his own pocket, alongside the two stone tablets.
"Have you got everything?" Eric asked, coming up alongside Dominic with Shane in tow.
"We got it all!" the one-armed man nodded, and then asked, "What are you doing wif him?"
"Treating myself to a little amusement," Eric smiled.
The Riviera was still docked at the pontoon. Dominic and Eric slumped Luca and Shane next to each other in the back seat, and then Dominic untied the ropes, and Eric started the engine, steering the boat swiftly down the Grand Canal and into a dark side canal where they vanished from sight.
Will heard a heavy splash. He turned and saw a chunk of rock the size of a football tumble from the crumbling hole that the ax had made in the wall. The water began to gush like a fire hydrant now. "Ah, guys! Whatever we're plannin' on doing to get outta here, can we plan it faster?"
Will was standing with Jacques' arm hooked over his shoulders, holding the Frenchman up on his feet and pressing hard against his stomach wound to try to stop the bleeding.
Jake spun around from the furnace doors where he and Eden where trying to figure out a way to unhook the latch from the inside, but there were no latches or locks at this end. "We're workin' on it," he boomed over the increasing volume of the water rushing in.
At his feet, he watched the water level reach the first of the five steps, and then quickly rise over it and reach the second step.
Within seconds, it splashed over the third step.
Jake said, "Eden, swap with Will. I need his shoulder to help me break down this door."
"You need all three of us for that," Eden argued.
"You've got a broken arm. You could have a concussion. I'm no doctor, but right now you're more valuable to me conscious than unconscious."
Eden nodded, and then took Jacques in his arms while Will and Jake rammed their shoulders into the furnace doors.
With each blow, a heavy clang echoed through the flooding chamber—but the doors themselves wouldn't budge.
"It's no use," Will said, rubbing his pounded shoulder. "It's cast iron. There's no way we can break it down."
Jake looked around desperately for another way out.
The water level had reached the furnace doors some moments ago, and while a small amount trickled through the slit between the two doors, the majority of the flow was still contained within the chamber—which was filling up fast.
The water was already up to their knees.
Some of the light-weight treasures in the room began to bob and float and swim about, while the majority—made from iron and silver and gold and marble—took quietly to their watery new grave.
Jake knew if they didn't find a way out soon, it would become their grave as well.
"We gotta find something that can pry this door open."
"What about the ax?" Will said.
Jake shook his head. "We take that out, we'll only increase the flooding."
"A scepter!" Eden suddenly recalled. "I had a scepter. I dropped it, over here somewhere."
The water was up to their thighs now. Jake said, "Eden, stay with Jacques. Keep him up. Will, you search left. I'll go right."
Jake and Will both vanished beneath the surface of the water.
Sifting along the chamber floor, Will's hands came across the severed head of the Grecian bust, and then the centuries-old tapestry that had unraveled completely now and was hovering along the chamber floor like a stingray, and then—
Will broke the surface with the scepter in his fist. "I got it!"
Jake, on the other hand, was still under the water—and had found something else altogether.
Through his blurred vision beneath the water, Jake saw the shimmer and glitter of the diamond Devil of Kahna Toga. It was wedged between a Roman statue and an Egyptian pot, and as the water levels rose, the thin sheeting in which it had been wrapped unfurled and floated away, revealing the mythical idol in all its glory.
Slowly, Jake began to reach for it, when suddenly, a hand grabbed his shoulder and hauled him to the surface.
"What!" he roared.
"You okay?" Will asked, worried. "You were down there a long time. I found the scepter."
Jake saw the scepter in Will's hand, and then saw the water was above their waists now. He knew the Devil of Kahna Toga was useless to a dead man.
Hurriedly, he and Will waded toward the furnace doors and tried to dig the narrow end of the scepter into the slit between the doors. But it was too big for the crevice. It slipped and slid out of the groove between the doors, unable to hook into anything, unable to give them any sort of leverage whatsoever.
Jake threw the scepter into the water, frustrated and angry.
"Guys!" Eden called.
Jake and Will looked up quickly and saw that Jacques was fading fast. "He's freezing," said Eden. "I don't know how much longer—"
"We'll get him out of here," Jake shouted determinedly. Then, under his breath, "I'll get us all out. You just might not like how I do it."
Jake pushed his way across the flooded floor, the water now at mid-chest, and with all his strength he hauled the battle-ax out of the wall. Nobody questioned him; they knew the consequences, but they also knew they had no choice.
He pulled the ax free in a cascade of rock and stone.
The water flooded into the chamber even faster.
Jake returned to the furnace doors, raised the gigantic ax over his shoulder and with all his strength plunged the head of the ax into one of the cast-iron doors.
The metal bent and a small crack formed.
Jake swung the ax into the door again, and the crack gave way a little more. He continued to hack away at it until he had made a hole big enough for his arm to reach through. Blindly he felt his way along the other side of the door to the latch.
But something sharp sliced his fingers. He winced and yanked his hand away, and then warily, his bloody fingers felt their way back to the latch.
They tapped against a metal object jammed in the latch.
The doors had been booby-trapped on the outside, wedged shut with what felt like a razor-sharp sword, its edges serrated with dozens of jagged spines.
The water splashed against the walls of the chamber, soaking around their chests now. Carefully Jake grasped the sword outside, tried to force it from its lodged state, but the hot trickle of blood filled his palm and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get a grip on the sword.
Soon he pulled his arm back, letting water flow out through the hole he'd made in the cast-iron door. But the water filled the chamber faster than it could drain.
Jake nursed his lacerated hand, looking desperately for another way out.
The water was up to their necks now. Jake's eyes scanned the room. Treasures bobbed and rocked on the surface of the water. He sized up each floating treasure and assessed its value to them in a situation like this—a Renaissance canvas with its colors running into the water; the wooden mask of a Mayan priest; a drum dating back to Neolithic times—all priceless, yet to the four of them trapped in the chamber now, all completely worthless.
He looked at the walls.
The ceiling.
The walls!
For the first time since racing into the chamber, he noticed there was a gas lantern on each wall.
At that moment, several more chunks of stone tumbled from the hole in the wall and the deluge that followed thundered into the chamber. Then, the thunder stopped—but the water didn't.
The level of the water had risen above the crumbling hole.
Eden struggled to hold the unconscious Jacques above the waterline.
"We gotta do something," Will said to Jake desperately.
"I got an idea," Jake said to both Will and Eden. "You just gotta do what I say, when I tell you."
Will and Eden both nodded, pushing their chins upward to stay above the rising water.
Jake disappeared under the water and emerged seconds later with the scepter. He swam quickly over to the first lantern and used the scepter to smash the glass and expose the pipe blasting out gas into the remaining air trapped near the ceiling of the chamber.
Jake cut through the swirling water to the second lantern and hammered it off the wall. By the time he sledged away the third and fourth lanterns, they were all starting to cough and choke on the gas.
The water was brimming over their chins.
Eden held Jacques' face higher than his own and held his breath as the water rose above his own nose and mouth.
Will swam over to Jake.
"I'm not gonna ask you if you know what you're doing," he said, "but I think I like your style." Will smiled.
Jake nodded. "Thanks. I'll see you on the other side of that door."
Jake let go of the scepter, letting it drop to the chamber floor, and then reached into his pocket and pulled out Perron's silver lighter, the one he had thrown to him to light his cigar.