Crucible

by James Rollins

  Too focused in that direction, the stallion stumbled.

  Rider and steed fell momentarily out of sync.

  Eve’s shout filled his skull.

  MOVE!

  He heard the crack of the pistol, the doppler shift of the round as it flew at his back. Despite all the expansion of his senses, he still did not have eyes in the back of his skull.

  He tried to tur—

  The round exploded his shoulder. In slow motion, blood arced forward, following the bullet’s path as it pinged off the steel door seven yards ahead of him. His body was thrown forward, twisting the rest of the way around, the pistol flying from his fingertips.

  He fell toward a tripwire directly in his path.

  8:18 P.M.

  The pistol blast had deafened Gray.

  He turned to the crowd of people gathered at the mouth of the tunnel. After the two snipers had been eliminated, those nearest had shifted into the open to watch Monk’s progress. At first there had been murmurs of disbelief at Monk’s first steps, then gasps of amazement as he continued, finally a low cheer built as he neared the end.

  Until a gunshot shattered everything.

  Fixed on Monk’s run of the gauntlet, Gray had not noted someone lift a weapon higher. On the other side of the tunnel opening, Agent Zabala cradled his pistol in both hands, arms extended, muzzle smoking.

  Gray lunged, but he already saw the bastard’s finger twitch on the trigger.

  Never make it.

  As the man fired, something dark struck the underside of his wrist, hard enough to knock his gun high. The round sparked brightly off the roof of the tunnel and ricocheted harmlessly away.

  A flash of silver swung wide through the air. It struck Zabala square in the nose, cracking bone; blood spurted as his head snapped back.

  Gray finally reached the shooter’s side and tackled him the rest of the way down, but the man was already out cold by the time he hit the floor, knocked out by the blow.

  From the floor, Gray looked up as Sister Beatrice lowered her ebony cane to the floor and returned to leaning on its silver handle. Her expression had not changed.

  Kowalski skidded up behind him. “Phew. I thought nuns were only wicked with their rulers.”

  Bailey shifted behind Beatrice. Clearly the two had been sticking close to Agent Zabala, wary all along, knowing someone had tipped off the Crucible in San Sebastián.

  Gray twisted on his hip to check on Monk.

  His friend was propped awkwardly off the floor, balanced on his toes, braced atop his good arm.

  What is he doing?

  8:19 P.M.

  Only at the last moment did Monk stop himself from landing on the tripwire. He had jacked out an arm and caught himself. Agony shot through his body with the impact, flaring brightly, blackening his vision for a breath.

  Instinct kept him frozen in place until his sight returned.

  He took quick account of his situation. The thin nylon line had been strung twenty-two inches above the floor. A look behind revealed his left foot resting at the edge of a tile hiding a land mine.

  If he moved his foot, he would lose his balance and fall on the tripwire. If he tried to push away from the tripwire, his weight would shift onto the mine’s sensitive plate.

  It didn’t take Eve’s massive intelligence to reach a conclusion. Still, she offered her counsel.

  HOLD PAT, she warned.

  Easy for her to say.

  Blood poured from Monk’s shoulder, pooling under the nylon line and spreading. His arm had already begun to tremble, from exertion, from pain, from loss of blood.

  His vision narrowed.

  Not going to make it.

  The trembling of his limb became quaking. His body weaved drunkenly above the tripwire. His knees shook. As his sight darkened, he sank helplessly—then fell.

  Arms caught him.

  As he was lifted, he imagined some archangel had come to carry him to heaven.

  “Monk . . . I got you.”

  He blinked several times as he was rolled in strong arms and put back on his feet. One arm continued to hug under his shoulders, carrying most of his weight.

  His vision cleared enough to recognize Gray.

  “How . . . ?” he croaked out.

  Gray shifted him to stare back down the corridor. The answer was written across the tiles. The earlier blast that killed two soldiers had also powdered the tiles with a fine coating of rock dust, enough for Gray to follow in Monk’s footsteps.

  “But we’re not to the finish line,” Gray reminded him.

  Faced forward again, he saw there was still another seven yards to reach the steel door.

  “Can you do it?” Gray asked.

  Maybe with a little help from a friend—and a superintelligent AI.

  Guided by Eve, propped by Gray, Monk crossed the final yards. He directed Gray to carry him to the electronic keypad next to the steel door.

  “Lower . . .” Monk said.

  Gray shifted his face closer to the pad. They were lucky the Crucible hadn’t employed a retinal, palm, or some other biometric lock. But considering the countermeasures already in place in the corridor, it was likely deemed unnecessary.

  Monk stared hard, cocking his head one way, then the other.

  . . . oil of a fingertip on one number.

  . . . thinner film here.

  . . . thicker there.

  . . . two prints on #5.

  Eve expertly interpreted the proper order of digits.

  Monk relayed them to Gray, who punched them in.

  With the last button pressed, a hydraulic system engaged. Locking bars retracted and the door swung into the next space, like a giant steel hand welcoming them into the Crucible’s stronghold.

  Gray followed the swing of the vault. He hauled Monk under one arm and had his SIG raised in the other. The space was a steel-walled vestibule. Ahead, a hall carved out of raw granite extended away.

  “Not that way yet,” Monk said, sharing what Eve told him. “To the right of the door.”

  Gray turned to where a huge red lever protruded from a steel plate in the wall. It was stuck in an up position with a red light shining above it.

  Monk rolled his head at the lever. “Eve says to pull it—”

  “Got it.”

  Gray lowered him to the floor; it would take two hands to move the lever. Monk was happy to slump to his butt, his back propped up against the cool metal wall.

  Gray grabbed the bar and hauled it down with a grunt.

  The light turned green.

  Monk nodded.

  Done.

  Gray shifted to the doorway and waved an arm, motioning the others that it was safe to come forward. The heavy tread of boots rushed toward them. Gray crouched next to him, guarding him with a pistol.

  There continued to be no welcoming committee.

  Which was ominous enough.

  But Eve’s warning was more so.

  He reminded Gray. “Nine minutes to go.”

  Gray nodded as soldiers and the others piled into the vestibule. A medic dropped next to Monk, shrugging off a pack with a red cross stenciled on it. Even Mara joined them, hauling her sealed case.

  “I’ll stay with him,” Mara said.

  Monk waved Gray toward the rock tunnel. “You got this from here, right?” He leaned his head against the wall. “Cuz this horse is beat.”

  35

  December 26, 8:24 P.M. CET

  Pyrenees Mountains, Spain

  Eight minutes to go.

  Gray ran with the strike team down the rock tunnel. A vast space opened at its end. He smelled incense. He flashed back to his childhood, sitting in a pew as a priest walked past, swinging a smoking censer. The cast of the light ahead flickered with what could only be candlelight.

  He paused several yards from the tunnel’s end and turned to the team. “We have no time. We go in, guns blazing. No stopping. We keep searching until we find that damned device and destroy it.”

&nb
sp; He pictured Eve’s line of tethered horses burning.

  He got nods all around.

  Kowalski hefted his bullpup and kissed its stock.

  Gray turned, bringing a borrowed assault rifle to his shoulder, and led the charge. The team burst out of the tunnel into the back of a vast church, nearly a football field long. He remembered the giant cavern under the estate, picked up by ground-penetrating radar. The Crucible had carved and extended it over the centuries into this huge cathedral.

  He barely had time to register the golden chandeliers extending down the nave, dripping with candle wax, the glowing stained-glass windows above.

  From chapels all around, gunfire chattered at the strike team as they raced low and spread out. The soldiers returned fire; grenades were shot into those small spaces, clearing them with thunderous blasts. Smoke and tear gas soon choked through the nave and rolled toward the altar.

  Gray ran low down the center aisle, aiming for that altar.

  Candle wax stung his face, his neck, his hands.

  Kowalski swore brightly as a flaming candle struck him in the head, jarred from its perch atop a chandelier by the concussion of a grenade blast. Brilliant shards also rained around them as stray gunfire shattered one of the stained-glass windows.

  Still, the cathedral’s defense was not as fierce as Gray had feared. Apparently, the majority of the Crucible’s soldiers had fallen in the outer castle, buying Guerra and her inner circle the time to retreat down here. Only a skeletal force must have accompanied her. Considering what Monk had faced getting to the door, the enemy must have believed those numbers were sufficient, especially with Zabala as their ace in the hole.

  Through the smoke, movement drew Gray’s eye beyond the altar, to the chancel of this cathedral. A group of men guarded a chamber ahead. Weapons bristled as they protected the space. As Gray and Kowalski were spotted, muzzles flashed. Rounds pelted and ricocheted from the rock.

  The two of them dashed and hid behind the stone altar. A gilded cross hung above it, with Christ twisted in agony. Rounds struck the cross, setting it to swinging. Overhead, bands of frescoes circled the dome, showing all manner of pain and suffering. Black smoke swirled across the ceiling. The dance of candle flames up there cast all of the art into some torturous view of hell.

  Gray heard a shout from the room ahead.

  “Free God’s dark army! Burn it all down! Cleanse the world for His glory!”

  Guerra.

  He pictured Paris burning, the Eiffel Tower rising from a sea of flames.

  The bitch intended to unleash as much hellfire as possible.

  Only one hope to stop it.

  He shared a glance with Kowalski. They both burst up, rifles blazing. Gray circled to the right, Kowalski the left. At some point, the big man had the time to light a cigar. The tip glowed in the gloom.

  They strafed the far side of the chancel.

  Men dropped, nearly cut in half.

  Gray ran forward as Kowalski pegged the last two men guarding the door. Gray rushed into the small chapel. Standing before a tiny altar, a lanky man fired at him. Expecting such a final defense, Gray easily dodged the rounds, pointed his rifle, and squeezed a three-round burst into the man’s chest.

  The defender stumbled back, then fell to his side.

  Atop an altar behind the dead man, a sphere shone brilliantly in a cradle. On the chapel’s back wall, a monitor glowed with a dark Eden. Its fiery denizen gone, off to do the bidding of the lone occupant still standing to one side of the altar.

  Eliza Guerra had no weapon, but her face shone with exultant victory.

  Not that Gray could see her eyes.

  She had a crimson sash tied across her cheeks, her body robed in pure white.

  The Inquisitor General in all her glory.

  “Get back,” Gray growled to her.

  With one arm in a sling, she half-lifted her other hand, but not in a show of defenselessness. She raised her palm upward, as if thanking God, her face lifted high.

  She stepped around the altar.

  “You are too late, Commander Pierce. Power plants are already burning, missiles in silos exploding, plants melting down. Can you picture it? All around the globe. You cannot stop what has been started.”

  Gray tightened his finger on the trigger, a familiar black anger burning. He wanted to blast that smirk from her face. He pictured all the death in Paris, ran the grainy footage from the library in his head, imagined the greater world burning.

  His finger squeezed, reaching the point of tension in the trigger.

  He pictured Kat sprawled on his kitchen floor.

  Guerra was to blame for her death, too.

  He gritted his teeth—then relaxed his hold. As much as it agonized him, he waved the muzzle. “Move.”

  Knowing she had won, Guerra shuffled out of the chapel. “God’s will can never be thwarted,” she said as she passed.

  Gray followed her out, looking back at the glowing sphere.

  Kowalski took his place in the doorway. He had a fresh fifty-round magazine fitted into his rifle.

  “Light it up,” Gray growled.

  Kowalski puffed a knot of smoke. “About fuckin’ time.”

  His bullpup roared, shattering the sphere, pieces of titanium and glass flying high and ricocheting throughout the chapel. The monitor shattered. The sphere sparked brighter—then finally went dark.

  At last . . .

  Gray turned away. He didn’t know what damage had already been wrought in the world above, but he had stopped what he could. More important, he had kept that dark angel from escaping.

  He glanced at the glow of his watch.

  With only two minutes to spare.

  He kept his rifle pointed at Guerra, who stood with her back to the main altar, her face turned jubilantly to the roof. Behind her, the cathedral had gone quiet, filled with smoke, the air stinging with tear gas. He heard a few distant pops of gunfire, echoing from neighboring rooms as the strike team cleaned up.

  He faced Guerra, his finger still on the trigger.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why did you do this?”

  The answer was a gunshot.

  Guerra stumbled a step toward Gray. A bright red stain blossomed in the center of her chest. Another blast, another crimson stain.

  Gray shifted farther out of the line of fire.

  Guerra fell to her knees, revealing Mara standing behind her, a smoking pistol cradled in both hands. It was Monk’s SIG, the one he dropped in the booby-trapped tunnel when he was shot.

  Guerra turned, the sash falling from her eyes as she twisted to face her former student.

  Mara glared through tears. “Those were for Professor Sato and Dr. Ruiz.”

  Guerra’s face twisted in agony. She lifted an arm in supplication, appealing to the young woman’s better graces.

  She didn’t find it.

  Mara shifted her weapon. “And this is for Charlotte Carson.”

  The last round tapped Guerra in the forehead, blowing out the back of her skull. Mara’s arm dropped as her mentor’s body slumped to the floor. The pistol clattered to the stone.

  Gray hurried to her side, ready to comfort her. “Mara . . .”

  She held him back with an arm. “No.” She shook her head and pointed to the blasted chapel and the shattered ruin of the Xénese device. “Fake . . . it’s a fake.”

  Gray swung to the chapel.

  A fake?

  Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew this had been too easy. Guerra had lured him here, delayed him, sacrificing herself.

  Gray swung around. “Where?”

  Mara pointed to the right of the altar, toward the north end of the cathedral’s transept. “Eve told us . . . told Monk.”

  Gray pictured his friend slumped against the wall.

  “He went after the other device,” Mara said. “He took Eve with him.”

  Gray headed in that direction, only now realizing one conspicuous participant in all of this bloodshed was sti
ll unaccounted, his large form not among the dead outside the chapel door.

  The giant . . .

  Mara ran with him.

  “Does Monk have a weapon?” he asked, remembering who had come wielding his sidearm.

  “No. He said he had what he needed in hand. I don’t know what he meant.”

  Gray did. Monk’s prosthesis was capable of packing an explosive punch, fueled by a wad of C4 hidden under his palm. He sprinted faster, leaving Mara behind.

  She called after him. “He told me . . . he told me to tell you . . . take care of the girls!”

  Gray ran faster.

  8:31:02 P.M.

  Less than a minute left.

  Monk stumbled down the steps of a long spiraling staircase, doing his best to hurry. To stay upright, he leaned his good shoulder against the stone wall as it wound around and around. The titanium case with Mara’s Xénese device bounced against the wall.

  Blood soaked through the bandage wrapping his other shoulder.

  His vision blurred at the edges.

  Each step jolted his shattered shoulder.

  Sorry, Eve, but your horse has come up lame at the finish line.

  The ghost in his head had gone silent, but he felt the pressure inside his brain, a throbbing migraine that matched his pulse. Each heartbeat marked the time, counting down the moment until that dark angel was loosed upon the world.

  He stumbled onward, refusing to give up but knowing the truth.

  Not going to make it.

  Eve finally returned, her voice no longer booming, but softer.

  YOUR SACRIFICE WILL BE HONORED.

  For some reason, the image of a beagle bounded through his head.

  Weird.

  With no other recourse, he continued down the steps.

  8:31:34 P.M.

  With tears in his eyes, Todor unlocked the steel door at the bottom of the long stairs. He cradled the infernal Xénese device under one arm. It still glowed, but only faintly. Unhooked from an external power source, it smoldered in his embrace.

  Still, he sensed the malevolence inside. It remained as malignant as ever. He wanted to cast it aside. But earlier, when the entrance to the High Holy Office had been breached, the Inquisitor had given him this task, to get the device away, to carry it free. She had also given him a list of other Crucible strongholds.