Chapter 58
The lift's electronic motor whined as it sank into the Pit. Streeter stood in one corner, gun in hand, forcing Rankin and Bonterre close to the opposite edge.
"Lyle, you must listen," Bonterre pleaded. "Roger says there is a huge void underneath us. He saw everything on the sonar screen. The Pit and the treasure chamber are built on top of—"
"You can tell your friend Hatch about it," said Streeter. "If he's still alive."
"What have you done with him?"
Streeter raised the barrel. "I know what you were planning."
"Mon dieu, you are just as paranoid—"
"Shut up. I knew Hatch couldn't be trusted, I knew from the moment I set eyes on him. Sometimes the Captains a little naive that way. He's a good man, and he trusts people. That's why he's always needed me. I bided my time. And time proved me right. As for you, bitch, you chose the wrong side. And so did you." Streeter waved the gun in Rankin's direction.
The geologist was standing at the edge of the lift, good hand holding the railing, wounded hand held tight beneath the armpit. "You're insane," he said.
Bonterre looked at him. The great bear of a man, normally affable and easygoing, was filled with a rage she had never seen in him before.
"Don't you get it?" Rankin snapped. "That treasure's been soaking up radiation for hundreds of years. It's no good to anyone."
"Keep running your mouth and I'll put my boot in it," Streeter said.
"I don't give a damn what you do," Rankin said. "The sword's gonna kill us all, anyway."
"Bullshit."
"It's not bullshit. I saw the readings. The levels of radiation coming from that casket are unbelievable. When he takes that sword out, we're all dead."
They passed the fifty-foot platform, the dull metal of the titanium spars bathed in the glow of emergency lights.
"You think I'm some kind of idiot," Streeter said. "Or maybe you're so desperate you'd say anything to save your ass. That sword's five hundred years old, at least. Nothing on earth is that naturally radioactive."
"Nothing on earth. Exactly." Rankin leaned forward, his shaggy beard dripping. "That sword was made from a fucking meteorite."
"What?" Bonterre breathed.
Streeter barked a laugh, shaking his head.
"The Radmeter picked up the emission signature of iridium-80. That's a heavy isotope of iridium. Radioactive as shit." He spat over the side of the lift. "Iridium is rare on earth but common in nickel-iron meteorites." He rocked forward, wincing with pain as his shattered hand grazed the platform.
"Streeter, you must let us speak to the Captain," Bonterre said.
"That's not going to happen. The Captain's spent a lifetime working for this treasure. He talks about it, even in his sleep. That treasure belongs to him, not some hairy-assed geologist who joined the team three months ago. Or a French whore. It's his, all of it."
Raw anger flared in Rankin's eyes. "You pathetic bastard."
Streeter's lips compressed to a thin white line but he said nothing.
"You know what?" Rankin said. "The Captain doesn't give a shit about you. You're even more dispensable now than you were back in 'Nam. Think he'd save your life now? Forget it. All he cares about is his goddamn treasure. You're history."
Streeter whipped the gun to Rankin's face, jamming it between his eyes.
"Go ahead," Rankin said. "Either do me and get it over with, or drop the gun and fight. I'll kick your puny ass with only one hand."
Streeter swiveled the gun toward the lift railing and fired. Gore flew against the scribbled walls of the Pit as Rankin jerked his ruined left hand away. The geologist dropped to his knees, crying in pain and outrage, the index and middle fingers hanging by torn strips of flesh. Streeter began aiming calculated, vicious kicks at Rankin's face. With a cry, Bonterre threw herself at the team leader.
Suddenly, a throaty rumble roared up from the depths. It was followed a split-second later by a jarring blow that threw them all down onto the platform. Rankin reared back, unable to gain a purchase with his shattered hands, and Bonterre grabbed his shirt collar to keep him from tumbling over the edge. Streeter recovered first, and by the time Bonterre rose he was already gripping the rail, aiming his gun at them. The entire structure was shaking violently, titanium struts screeching in protest. Beneath it all was the demonic roar of rushing water.
The lift lurched to a shrieking halt.
"Don't move!" Streeter warned.
Another jarring shudder, and the emergency lights flickered. A bolt fell past, glanced off the platform with a clang, and went spinning down into darkness.
"It's begun," Rankin cried hoarsely, huddled on the floor of the lift, hugging his bleeding hands to his chest.
"What has begun?" Bonterre shouted.
"The Pit's collapsing into the piercement dome. Great fucking timing."
"Shut up and jump down." Streeter waved his gun at the gray shape of the hundred-foot platform, silhouetted a few feet below the lift.
Another jolt shook the lift, canting it crazily. A rush of chill air gusted up from the depths.
"Timing?" Bonterre shouted. "This is no coincidence. This is Macallan's secret trap."
"I said, shut up." Streeter shoved her off the lift and she tumbled several feet, landing hard on the hundred-foot platform. She looked up, shaken but unhurt, to see Streeter kicking Rankin in the abdomen. Three kicks and he was over the edge, landing heavily beside her. Bonterre moved to help but Streeter was already clambering catlike down the array to the platform.
"Don't touch him," he said, twitching the pistol warningly. "We're going in there."
Bonterre looked over. The bridge from the ladder array to the Wopner tunnel was trembling. As she stared, there came another violent shudder. The emergency lighting went out and the web of struts plunged into darkness.
"Move it," Streeter hissed in her ear.
Then he stopped. Even in the darkness, Bonterre could feel him tense.
Then she saw it, too: a faint light below them, rising quickly up the ladder.
"Captain Neidelman?" Streeter called down. There was no answer.
"Is that you, Captain?" he called again, louder, trying to make his voice heard over the thundering roar welling up from below.
The light kept coming. Now Bonterre could see it was pointed downward, its brightness obscuring the climbing figure.
"You down there!" Streeter called. "Show your face or I'll shoot!"
A muffled voice came up, faint and unintelligible.
"Captain?"
The light came closer, perhaps twenty feet below now. Then it snapped off.
"Christ," Streeter said again, bracing himself against the shaking platform, planting his legs apart and aiming downward, both hands on the gun. "Whoever it is," he roared, "I'm going to—" But even as he spoke there was a sudden rush from the other side of the platform. Taken by surprise, Streeter spun around and fired, and in the flare of the muzzle Bonterre could see Hatch, slamming his fist into Streeter's gut.
Hatch followed the blow to Streeter's abdomen with a straight-arm to the jaw. Streeter staggered backward on the metal platform and Hatch came quickly after, catching a handful of Streeter's shirt and spinning him around. Streeter began to twist from Hatch's grip and Hatch pulled him forward, punching him twice, hard, in the face. On the second blow, there was a low crunching noise as Streeter's sinuses gave way with a splatter of mucus and hot, thick blood.
Streeter moaned and went limp, and Hatch relaxed his grip. Suddenly, Streeter's knee came up. Grunting in surprise and pain, Hatch fell backward. Streeter went for his gun. There was nothing he could do but shove the man, hard, toward the floor.
Streeter lifted his gun as Hatch dove for the far side of the array. There was a roar and a burst of light, and a bullet sparked off a titanium member to his left. Hatch ducked to one side, swinging around as another bullet whined between the braces. Then Hatch heard a gasp and a low grunt: Bonterre was grappling Street
er from behind. He lunged forward just as Streeter gave her a brutal backhand that sent her spinning toward the mouth of the tunnel. Quick as a cat, Streeter brought the gun forward again. Hatch froze, his fist hanging in midair, staring at the dim line of the gunbarrel. Streeter looked into his eyes and smiled, blood from his nose staining his teeth a dull crimson.
Then he lurched to one side: Rankin, unable to use his hands, had risen up and was butting Streeter toward the edge of the metal bridge with his body. For a moment, Streeter seemed on the verge of toppling. But he regained his balance and, as Hatch brought his arm back for a blow, turned the gun on Rankin and fired point-blank.
The geologist's head jerked back, a dark spray rising behind in the gloom of the tunnel. Then he slumped to the metal flooring.
But Hatch's fist was already in motion, connecting heavily with Streeter's jaw even as he wheeled backward. Streeter staggered heavily against the railing and there was a protest of metal. Instantly, Hatch stepped forward, shoving hard with both hands. The railing gave as Streeter sagged back. He toppled into space, scrabbling frantically for a purchase. There was a gasp of surprise or pain; the crack of a pistol shot; the sickening sound of meat smacking metal. Then, more distantly, a splash that merged with the general rush of water far below.
The entire fight had lasted less than a minute.
Hatch rose to his feet, gasping from the exertion. He walked over to the inert form of Rankin, Bonterre already at the geologist's side. A single flash of livid lightning, reflected down through the tracery of struts, made it all too clear there was nothing he could do.
There was a grunt; the flashlight beam flared wildly; then Woody Clay heaved himself up onto the hundred-foot platform, sweat and dried blood mixing on his face. He had come up from below slowly, as a decoy, while Hatch had clambered quickly up the back side of the array to surprise Streeter.
Hatch was crushing Bonterre to him, his hands in the tangle of her dark hair. "Thank God," he breathed. "Thank God. I thought you were dead."
Clay watched them for a moment. "I saw something fall past me," he said. "Were those gunshots?"
Hatch's answer was interrupted by a sudden crash. Moments later, a large titanium spar came hurtling past them, raising fierce clangs as it bounced downward. The entire array quivered along its 150-foot length. Hatch pushed Bonterre and Clay across the shaking metal bridge into the nearby tunnel.
"What the hell's going on?" he panted.
"Gerard has opened the casket," Bonterre said. "He's set off the final trap."
Chapter 59
Neidelman watched, paralyzed with shock, as a series of violent tremors shook the treasure chamber. Another sickening lurch, and the floor canted farther to the right. Magnusen, who had been thrown against the far wall by the first jolt, now lay partly buried in a great mass of coins, thrashing and clawing, crying out in an otherworldly voice. The chamber lurched again and a row of casks toppled over, bursting in a rotten spray of wood, filling the air with gold and jewels.
The shifting of the casket beneath him shook Neidelman from his paralysis. He shoved the sword into his harness and looked about for his dangling lifeline. There it was, just above him, rising through the hole in the top of the treasure chamber. Far above, he could make out the thin glow of emergency lights at the base of the ladder array. As he watched, they winked out briefly, then flickered into life once again. He reached for the lifeline just as another terrible lurch came.
Suddenly there was a screech of tearing iron as the seam along the far edge of the floor split open. Neidelman watched in horror as the masses of loose gold slid toward the open seam, piling up against it, whirlpooling like water in a bathtub drain, pouring through the widening crack into a stormy black gulf below.
"No, no!" Magnusen cried, scrabbling through the hemorrhaging flow of treasure, even at this desperate extreme hugging and grasping the gold to her, caught between saving the coins and saving herself. A shudder that seemed to come from the center of the earth twisted the chamber, and a hailstorm of golden ingots buried themselves in the masses of coin around her. As the weight of the gold became greater and the whirlpool faster, Magnusen was sucked into the flow and pulled along toward the widening crack, her cries of no, no, no almost drowned by the roar of metal. She wordlessly stretched her arms toward Neidelman, eyes popping as her body was compressed by the weight of the gold. The vault echoed with the groan of buckling iron and the snapping of bolts.
And then Magnusen disappeared, sucked into the shimmering golden stream and down into the void.
Abandoning the lifeline, Neidelman scrambled up the shifting pile of gold and managed to grasp the swinging metal bucket. Reaching inside, he punched a button in the electrical box. The winch whined and the bucket began to ascend, Neidelman hanging beneath as the bucket scraped along the crazily angled roof of the iron vault before sliding up through the narrow cut.
As he slowly ascended the excavation toward the base of the ladder array, Neidelman hoisted himself into the bucket and glanced over its lip. He caught the last glimpse of a vast quantity of treasure—tusks, bolts of rotten silk, kegs, bags, gold, gems— vanishing in a great rattling rush through the crack in the treasure chamber below. Then the light, swinging wildly on its cord, smashed against the iron wall and was extinguished. The entire shaft went dark, lit only by the emergency lights from the array above his head. In the gloom, he saw—or thought he saw—the mangled treasure vault break free of the walls of the Pit and drop downward into a swirling chaos of water, sucked under with a final groan of iron.
A great tremor shook the shaft. Dirt and sand rained down, and the titanium bracings above gave a howl of protest. There was another flicker, and the emergency lights failed. The bucket came to a wrenching stop just below the ladder array, banging both sides of the narrow shaft.
Making sure the sword was secure, Neidelman reached up toward the winch rope, groping in the darkness. His fingers brushed against the lowest pilings of the array. Another terrible shudder twisted the Pit and he lunged upward with desperate strength, hoisting himself to the first rung, then the second, his feet dangling over the ruinous chasm. The entire support structure of the Pit was trembling under the strain, bucking like a live thing under his hands. There was a snapping sound in the darkness as one of the lower struts popped free. In the glow of a remote flash of lightning, he could see a broken body, bobbing in the watery ruin far beneath his feet.
As he hung from the array, gasping for air, the enormity of the disaster began to sink in. He dangled motionless for a second as his mind sought answers.
Then a vast black rage crept over his features and his mouth opened, wailing even over the roar of the void beneath him.
"Haaaaatch!"
Chapter 60
"What are you talking about?" Hatch asked, leaning against the wet tunnel wall, fighting for breath. "What final trap?"
"According to Roger, the Water Pit was built above a formation called a piercement dome," Bonterre shouted. "A natural void that goes deep into the earth. Macallan planned to snare Ockham with it."
"And we thought bracing the Pit would take care of everything." Hatch shook his head. "Macallan. He always was one step ahead of us."
"These struts of titanium are holding the Pit together—temporarily. Otherwise, the whole thing would have collapsed by now."
"And Neidelman?"
"Sais pas. He probably fell into the void with the treasure."
"In that case, let's get the hell out of here."
He turned toward the mouth of the tunnel just as another violent tremor shook the array. In the moment of silence that followed, a low beeping sounded from beneath Bonterre's sweater. She reached in, drew out the Radmeter, and handed it to Hatch.
"I got this from your office," she said. "I had to break a few things to find it."
The display was dim—the battery was obviously low—but the message displayed across the top of the screen was all too clear:
244.13 Rads/ho
ur
Fast neutron flux detected
General radiation contamination probable
Recommendation: Immediate evacuation
"Maybe it's picking up residual radiation?" Bonterre suggested, peering at the screen.
"The hell it is. Two hundred forty-four rads? Let me see if I can bring the locator up."
He glanced at Clay, who obliged by turning the flashlight beam toward the machine. Hatch began stabbing at the miniature keyboard. The warning message disappeared, and the three-dimensional coordinate grid once again filled the screen. Standing, Hatch began to move the detector around. A blazing, rainbow-colored spot blossomed in the center of the screen, colors shifting as he turned.
"Oh, my God." He looked up from the screen. "Neidelman's not dead. He's on the ladder now, below us. And he's got the sword."
"What?" Bonterre breathed.
"Look at these readings." Hatch turned the Radmeter toward her. A ragged patch of white showed on its display, oscillating wildly. "Christ, he must be getting a massive dose from the sword."
"How much of a dose?" Clay asked, his voice strained.
"What I want to know is, how much of a dose are we getting?" Bonterre asked.
"We're not in immediate danger. Yet. There's a lot of intervening ground. But radiation poisoning is cumulative. The longer we stay, the bigger the dose."
Suddenly, the earth shook like a possessed thing. A few feet down the tunnel, a massive beam gave way with a loud crack. Dirt and pebbles rained around them.
"What are we waiting for?" Bonterre hissed, turning toward the depths of the tunnel. "Let's go!"
"Wait!" Hatch cried, the Radmeter buzzing in his hands.
"We cannot wait!" Bonterre said. "Can this tunnel lead us out?"
"No. The base of the well was sealed off when the reverend reset the trap."
Riptide Page 37
