by David Wood
The man he’d sent up the stairs—his demolitions man, callsign: Paycheck—made it only halfway up the flight before a loud snap heralded a cacophony of metallic twangs and a veritable hailstorm of projectiles. Paycheck, howling in pain and surprise, tumbled back down the steps, surrounded by the broken shafts of a dozen crossbow bolts. Miraculously, only two of the arrows had found their target; one shaft protruded from Paycheck’s right thigh, while another had grazed the side of his head, opening a superficial but bloody gash above his left ear.
“Freeze!” Ray shouted, only now grasping that the Templar’s security measures had put the rest of his team in danger. His warning came too late.
Viper, who was scouting the right hand passage, heard both the tumult of the first trap springing and his employer’s warning, but before he could reverse direction, he felt the floor shift ever so slightly under foot, and then something struck the top of his head, not a crossbow bolt but a jet of liquid.
He staggered back, wiping away the oily substance that dripped down from his hair and stung his eyes. His first thought was that he had been poisoned, and the strange chemical taste and smell of the liquid seemed to confirm that. But then an oddly familiar rasping sound from behind the walls reminded him that oily chemicals had other hazardous properties.
Hidden from Viper’s view, a counterweight powered mechanism, similar in design to a trebuchet, had just struck a piece of flint against a long steel blade, producing a shower of bright sparks. Some of the sparks hit the gutter which had channeled the oil when the trap was triggered, igniting the vapors there in a whoosh, transforming the dripping murder holes into fountains of fire.
Viper was already backpedaling away from the trap, but the slippery floor and his blindness conspired against him. His feet flew out from under him and he landed on his back, surrounded by a pool of oil as spurts of flame erupted all around.
The mercenary didn’t bother trying to get up. He twisted away from the oil slick, rolling along the floor, over and over again to extinguish the fires that kept flashing up on his clothes. His hair—which he kept shorn nearly to his scalp—was scorched away in a flash, but he beat his arms against his cranium to prevent the fire from doing any more damage. He didn’t stop rolling until he was almost back at the entrance chamber.
On the descending staircase, a burly Texan who went by the name Cowboy, didn’t hear the sound of traps springing or Ray’s shouted warning. He moved confidently down the steps—seventy-two of them, though he didn’t keep count—until he reached a dead end. The passage just stopped, the last stair tread butting up against a wall. There was a square of stone protruding about an inch from the wall, and reasoning that it might activate another secret passage, Cowboy pushed on it experimentally.
The square slid into the wall and Cowboy heard a loud snap.
The stair tread he was standing on abruptly dropped six inches. The step right behind it dropped too, a full twelve inches, so that it was flush with the first.
Cowboy instantly understood what was happening. Every single step of the staircase was settling, sliding down into increasingly deep recesses that would ultimately leave him at the bottom of a thirty-foot deep shaft. The higher steps were settling more slowly, but there was already a visible gap at the top.
He ran, vaulting onto the steps and bounding up them like his life depended on it, which it probably did. Each time his foot landed on a step, his weight hastened the settling process, and the shifting surface caused him to stumble repeatedly, until he was not so much running up the stairs as crawling. By the time he had clawed his way to the top, at least six feet separated the last step from the opening to the central chamber. Cowboy threw himself at the opening, knowing that if he didn’t catch it on the first try, he wouldn’t get another chance.
His forearms hit the stone threshold, his hands caught the edge, and then his full weight came down on his fingertips as the stair tread beneath his feet dropped away.
An ordinary man might have been able to hold himself there for a few seconds before his strength failed, but Cowboy was no ordinary man. A veteran soldier, he was like all John Lee Ray’s men, in exceptional physical condition. The muscles in his arms and across his back flexed and bulged until they strained the fabric of his shirt. The seams at the shoulder tore open with an audible rasp. Fighting both gravity and the friction of his torso against the sheer stone wall, he slowly hauled himself up until his chin was level with the opening.
“Help!” he gasped, not realizing that he was not the only one in a dire situation. No help came.
He swung his right elbow forward, then his left, so that both arms were entirely on the smooth floor of the chamber. He felt himself slipping, and tried to dig his fingers into the stone like claws. Fingernails bent and ripped free of their cuticles.
“No, damn it!”
His slide stopped as if his hissed denial had somehow altered the laws of nature. He strained again, and this time got his upper torso onto the stone floor. Another heave and he was free of the trap. Panting from the exertion and seething with anger.
It would be a few minutes before Cowboy would realize that he had fared better than any of the others.
Down the left-hand passage, Rooster had also heard the shouted warning a moment too late. He had, as he was wont to do, strode quickly and boldly to the far end of the chamber. There he had discovered a T-junction, though to access either of the intersecting passages he would have to crawl through a low opening and drop down a few feet.
He was just about to kneel down to shine his light into one of these passages when the floor dropped beneath him.
It took him a second to realize that the passage had tilted, angling down to where he now found himself on hands and knees. He was just starting to rise to his feet when he heard the deep-bass thunder of a huge stone block dropping out of the ceiling near the mouth of the passage to slam down on the sloping floor. It immediately began sliding toward him.
Rooster scrambled back, aware that if he didn’t get out of the way, the block would smash him against the back wall, and the only way to get out of the way was to dive into one of the adjoining passages.
Which one?
The stone ground ominously along the sloping passage. There was no time to think about it; he had to move. He turned to the right because that seemed the more natural way to go and dove out of the way of the sliding block. One corner of it struck a glancing blow, just enough to make him stumble but not enough to hurt, and then the massive rock settled into place, completely covering the mouth of the side passage.
Rooster recovered from his near-fall and stood upright directing his light forward to see where the passage went.
The beam showed a blank wall, about eight feet in front of him.
Dead end.
Rooster felt dread creep over him. He was completely sealed in.
He turned back to the block that had imprisoned him and started pounding on it, hoping to somehow signal to the others. The stone absorbed his blows without the slightest noise. He did however hear another sound, the same grinding that had accompanied the sliding block, but this time the noise was all around him.
He turned the light every direction looking for the source, realizing only when he felt it pressing against the top of his head that it was the ceiling that was moving… lowering. Desperately, he tried to brace it up with his body, but the massive weight bore him down to his knees, and kept coming.
In the last few seconds of his life, Rooster wondered what would have happened if he had chosen the other passage.
“Maddock!”
Bones and Alex both cried out together, but the ominous noise of the massive stone block sliding down the passageway drowned out their voices. The tunnel was filled with a cloud of dust, blocking their view of what happened next, but they didn’t need to see to know. There was a loud crunch as the block reached the end of the passage and settled into place. From somewhere deep inside the mountain, they could hear more stone blocks moving.
Alex started down the passage, but Bones held her back. “No way are you going down there.”
“I sent him down there.” Guilt twisted her face. “You tried to tell me. It’s my fault.”
Bones shook his head, but had no words to ease her grief.
“Yes, it is,” announced another voice. “And I will never let you live it down, Catholic girl.”
The words were broken up by a fit of coughing, but there was no mistaking the voice. As a dust-streaked figure emerged from the passage, Alex wrestled out of Bones’ slackening grip and rushed forward to intercept Maddock with an embrace that sent him into another coughing fit.
Bones overcame his stunned paralysis and started forward as well, throwing his arms wide as if to sweep them both into a bear hug. Maddock held up a hand to ward him off. “Slow down there, sailor. What do you say we just shake hands?”
“Maddock, you are the luckiest man I’ve ever met,” Bones said, still wagging his head in disbelief. “So are you walking through walls now?”
Maddock grinned. “Nope. Easier to go over them. I realized there was a big gap at the top of that block, so I climbed up onto it before it smacked the wall.”
Alex squeezed again. “I am so, so sorry.”
“Forget it. It was coin-flip really and I made the choice that seemed right.” He glanced down the opposing passage. “You know, just before I was almost squished like a bug, it occurred to me that the Templars were influenced by the architecture of the Byzantine Empire. That’s what the books say, anyway. So maybe the Templars picked up some other influences of the Eastern Church.”
“You’re saying we should go right?”
“I think it’s worth a shot.”
Bones cleared his throat. “All right, Houdini. You’ve hogged enough glory for one day. I’ll take it from here.”
Dane had to resist the urge to argue. He was the team leader; it was his job to lead—from the front. But leading wasn’t the same as walking point. He was part of a team, and that meant letting other people shoulder some of the responsibility.
He disengaged from Alex’s embrace, though when she held onto his hand, he didn’t shake loose, and nodded. “Right behind you.”
Bones approached the tunnel cautiously. “Smooth floor. I don’t see any holes for traps.”
“It’s your call,” said Dane. “I probably used up all my luck anyway.”
“All right. Stand back in case I come running out like my hair’s on fire.” Bones edged forward into the tunnel, sweeping high and low with the light before each step forward. Soon, only the glow of his light was visible, and then even that disappeared briefly, before shining back down the tunnel.
“That’s the all clear.” Hand in hand, Dane and Alex went down the tunnel to join him. At about the one hundred meter mark, the tunnel swung sharply to the left and a few steps later, ended in another circular room with three more arched openings.
“This time, left,” declared Alex, with some of her earlier confidence.
Bones answered with a mock salute and promptly headed down that tunnel. Dane and Alex didn’t wait for the all clear. They were closing in; Dane felt it in his gut. The secret doors, the traps, this entire elaborate cross-shaped labyrinth—it was all proof that the Templar treasure vault was real, and they were about to open it.
Perhaps because it corresponded to the long lateral motion that completed the Sign of the Cross, the length of this passage was at least twice as long as the previous one, and when it finally ended, they found themselves in yet another circular chamber, but this time there was only other way out, at the top of a staircase that spiraled around the circumference of the room.
Bones paused there shining his light up to illuminate a high domed ceiling and another door at the top of the stairs, perhaps forty vertical feet above. “Well, I don’t see any murder holes.”
“Either we’re done with traps,” said Dane, “or they’ve saved the best for last. I say we go find out.”
Dane felt his blood go ice cold when a languorous voice spoke from the tunnel behind him. “Why I think that’s a fantastic idea, Mr. Maddock. I would very much like to see what’s up there.”
CHAPTER 22
Dane raised his hands—one of them still entwined with Alex’s—and backed away from the mouth of the passage as John Lee Ray, with Scalpel and three other men in tow, filed into the chamber.
“You fellows look like hell. Take a wrong turn back there?” There was an edge to Bones’ voice, and Dane could hear the barely restrained rage behind the sarcasm.
Bones wasn’t wrong. Ray’s handsome face was merely streaked with sweat and grime, but the others appeared to have gone through the wringer. One man appeared to have escaped from a fire; his clothes were scorched and there were angry red burns on his hands and bald head. Another had a makeshift bandage around his head. His thigh was also bound tightly, and whatever injury he had suffered had evidently left him barely ambulatory. Scalpel was there as well, bent over as if every step was agony, the relative higher altitude of the Alps doubtless exacerbating the lingering symptoms of his decompression sickness. The sufferings of the rest of Ray’s men were almost certainly, as Bones had intimated, the result of Templar traps, but their wounds in no way lessened the lethality of the pistols they brandished.
Scalpel twisted around in Bones direction and took aim. Dane tensed, certain that the man was about to pull the trigger, and he sensed that Bones knew it too. They were both ready to move, ready to take whatever punishment Ray and his men could throw at them, and fight through it if meant a chance for payback.
“Put it away,” said Ray, sharply. “We are not uncivilized. Whatever misfortunes have befallen us, we cannot attribute them to Mr. Maddock.”
He turned to face Dane. “I am actually quite impressed, Mr. Maddock. How ever did you deduce the correct path through the maze?”
“It was a group effort.”
“Well, remarkable. I myself did not immediately recognize the nature of the test, and you can see the result.” He gestured to his men, none of whom looked terribly pleased by their employer’s behavior. “But then I saw this place for what it was; a spiritual test. Walk the true path of God, and the way will open. Now only one test remains, and I think you have earned the right to lead the way.”
Dane wasn’t fooled for a second. “Drop the act. You just want us to go first to clear any traps.”
“You seem to have a knack for avoiding them. I would be a fool to dispose of someone with your talents. My offer to you stands. We need not be foes.”
“We’ve heard this crap from you before,” Bones spoke up, his tone still as sharp as a knife edge. “You kind of ruined any chances of that happening when you killed Gabby.”
Ray waved dismissively. “She betrayed you. You should thank us for repaying her treachery in kind.”
Bones was about to say something more, but Dane held up his hand. “Bones, let’s do what the man asks. I’m kind of curious to see what’s up there, and it’s not like things will get any worse for us if we do.”
Dane hoped that Bones would hear the unspoken message: Wait for it. We’ll get our chance. Bones didn’t say anything more, and Dane decided to take that as an indication that the message had been received.
He turned and moved without hesitation to stand beside Bones. “Just in case, remember the count. Every third step.” He shone his light up the steps meaningfully, and in a low voice added, “Quick time.”
There weren’t any visible murder holes and Dane was fairly certain that, at this stage in the game, the Templars would have assumed that any unwelcome intruder would have figured out how to avoid triggering such a trap. But if Ray and his men were focused on watching their steps as they brought up the rear, it might provide the distraction needed for Dane and Bones to turn the tables.
Bones nodded and managed to mostly hide a grin, then took an easy stride to the third step. Instead of bringing his feet together there, he brought his trailing foot up to t
he sixth step, and continued in this manner, setting a quick pace that was more than Ray’s injured men could match. In a matter of seconds, Scalpel and the man with the thigh injury had fallen behind by half a turn of the spiral.
“Slow down,” growled Ray.
Dane looked over his shoulder. Ray had the barrel of his gun just inches away from the small of Alex’s back, but Dane sensed that this might be the chance they had been waiting for. As he turned back around, he made eye contact with Alex. “Watch your step. Whatever you do…” He nodded his head three times, hoping that that she would catch his rhythm. “Don’t…trip.”
There seemed to be a look of comprehension in her eyes, so he nodded out the rhythm again. One…two….
And on three, he threw himself forward, onto the stairs. Alex matched his movements, and for the briefest of moments, Ray had no target.
Dane kicked back, driving his feet into Ray’s chest. His pistol discharged, the report ear-shattering in the confines of the underground chamber, but the bullet struck only the curving wall and ricocheted harmlessly away. Ray flailed his arms uselessly, trying to keep his balance while avoiding a potential trigger step, and started to go over backward. Dane didn’t wait to see how that would play out, but sprang to his feet, pulling Alex up, and bounded forward. Bones, was already racing ahead, still taking three steps at a time, though probably not because he was afraid of setting off a trap.
They completed a full circuit of the spiral before Ray could muster pursuit, but because the mercenaries were so spread out, there was no place on the spiral where they were not at least partially exposed. More shots sounded, some of the rounds striking close enough to pepper the fleeing trio with tiny stone projectiles.
Bones reached the top and slid to a halt, confounded by one last obstacle. Dane and Alex reached his side a moment later and saw another arched doorway, blocked by a wall of blank stone. The arch appeared to be constructed of stone blocks, rather than carved from bedrock, and each one was decorated with a different symbol. There were the usual Templar marks—the distinctive cross, the Dome of the Rock, the fleur-de-lis, two knights riding one horse—as well as others that appeared to be heraldic seals—a lion, a gryphon, a two-headed eagle. There were astronomical signs and there geometric shapes.
