Less than a minute later, a tremendous detonation tore through the tunnel. The shock wave nearly knocked them off their feet. Then came a cloud of dust that swirled around and past them, followed by the deep rumble of tons of rock falling from the roof of the tunnel.
The rumble was still ringing in their ears, the echoes reverberating in the old mine, when Marquez shouted to Eagan, "That should stifle any doubts."
"In your haste to prove your point, you overlooked something," Eagan said loudly, his tone dry and provocative.
Pitt looked at him. "Which is?"
"Dr. Ambrose. He could still be alive somewhere beyond the cave-in. And even if he's dead, there will be no way of retrieving his body."
"It'll be a wasted effort," Pitt said briefly.
"You only gave us one possibility," said Eagan. "Does this have something to do with the second?"
Pitt gave a slight nod. "Dr. Ambrose," he said patiently, "is not dead."
"Are you saying the third assassin didn't kill him?" asked Marquez.
"He'd hardly murder his own boss."
"Boss?"
Pitt smiled and said firmly, "Dr. Tom Ambrose was one of the killers."
7
"Forgive me for arriving late for dinner," said Pat as she stepped through the Marquezes' front door. "But I desperately needed a hot bath, and I fear I soaked too long."
Lisa Marquez hugged Pat joyously. "You don't know how happy I am to see you again." She stepped back, and her face lit up like an angelic cherub as she saw Pitt following Pat into the house. She kissed him on both cheeks. "How can I ever thank you for bringing my husband home alive and well?"
"I cheated," Pitt said, with his trademark grin. "To save Luis I had to save myself."
"You're just being modest."
Pat was surprised to see Pitt show a hint of genuine embarrassment as he stared down at the carpet. She added, "Your husband wasn't the only life Dirk saved."
"Luis has been very closemouthed about your ordeal. You must fill me in on the details over dinner." Lisa looked elegant in a designer slacks outfit. "Here, let me take your coats."
"Do I smell elk sizzling on the barbecue?" said Pitt, extricating himself from an awkward situation.
"Luis is in the garage playing with his smoker," said Lisa. "It's too cold to eat outside, so I've set the table inside our glass-enclosed solarium on the rear porch deck. Luis installed heaters, so it's cozy warm. Help yourself to a beer as you pass through the kitchen."
Pitt retrieved a bottle of Pacifico beer from the refrigerator and joined Marquez in the garage. Marquez was hunched over a fifty-gallon drum that he had converted into a smoker. "Smells good," said Pitt. "You're not using a charcoal grill?"
"You get far better flavor from meat, chicken, or fish from a smoker," said Luis. "I shot the elk last season. Had it butchered in Montrose and frozen. Wait till you taste it with Lisa's special Mornay sauce."
A short time later, they were all seated at a pine log table Marquez had built inside the glassed-in porch, enjoying the elk steaks coated with Lisa's delicious sauce. Creamed spinach, baked potatoes, and a big bowl of salad enhanced the elk. Marquez had asked Pat and Dirk not to say too much about their harrowing experience. He didn't want to upset his wife any more than he had to. She had suffered enough during her agonizing wait until the word had come that he had exited the mine and was safe and sound. They had treated the ordeal lightly, omitting any reference to the killers and telling her that Ambrose was meeting friends and couldn't make it for dinner.
Despite the fact that they acted as if they had returned from a walk in the park, Lisa knew better, but she said nothing. After dinner, Pat helped her clear the table and returned, while Lisa busily fed her young daughters and made coffee before bringing out a carrot cake.
"Excuse me for a moment," said Pitt. He walked into the house and said a few words to Lisa before rejoining Pat and Marquez at the table.
Satisfied that his wife was out of earshot, Marquez stared directly at Pitt and said, "I can't accept your theory about Dr. Ambrose. I feel certain that he was murdered soon after we left him."
"I agree with Luis," said Pat. "To suggest that Tom was anything but a respected scientist is ridiculous."
"Had you ever met Ambrose before today?" asked Pitt.
She shook her head. "No, but I know him by reputation."
"But you've never seen him."
"No."
"Then how do you know whether the man we knew as Tom Ambrose wasn't an impostor?"
"All right," said Marquez. "Suppose he was a fake and working with those crazy bikers. How do you explain that fact that he would have surely drowned if you hadn't showed up?"
"That's right," Pat interjected quietly. "There's no way he'd be tied to a criminal conspiracy if the killers tried to murder him, too."
"His fellow assassins screwed up." There was a cold certainty in Pitt's voice. "They may have been demolitions experts, but not being professional hardrock miners like Luis, they set off an explosive charge too powerful for the job. Instead of merely causing a cave-in and blocking off the tunnel, they collapsed the rock holding back an underground river, diverting it into the lower levels of the mine. A miscalculation that fouled up their plans. The shaft and the chamber with the skull flooded before they could detour around the cave-in on their bikes to rescue their chief."
Marquez stared up at the mountain peaks surrounding Telluride that were outlined by the light of the evening stars. "Why cause the tunnel roof to collapse? What did they gain from that?"
"The perfect murder," answered Pitt. "They meant to kill the two of you by beating your brains in with rocks. Then they would have buried your bodies in the debris from the cave-in. When and if your remains were ever found, your deaths would be written off as a mining accident."
"Why kill us?" Pat asked incredulously. "For what purpose?"
"Because you posed a threat."
"Luis and I a threat?" She looked confused. "To whom?"
"To a well-financed, well-organized secret interest who didn't want the discovery of the chamber with the black skull to become public knowledge."
"Why would anyone want to cover up a major archaeological discovery?" said Pat, completely off balance.
Pitt turned up the Palms of his hands in a helpless gesture. "That's where conjecture stops. But I'm willing to bet the farm that this is not an isolated incident. That a trail of bodies leads to other fords of this magnitude."
"The only other archaeological project I can think of that is surrounded in this kind of mystery was an expedition led by Dr. Jeffrey Taffet from Arizona State University. He and several students died while exploring a cave on the northern slope of Mount Lascar in Chile."
"What was the cause of their deaths?" asked Marquez.
"They were found frozen to death," answered Pat. "Which was very peculiar, according to the rescue team who found the bodies. The weather had been perfect, without storms, and temperatures were barely below freezing. An investigation turned up no reason for Taffet and his students to have succumbed to hypothermia."
"What was of archaeological interest in the cave?" Pitt prompted.
"No one knows for sure. A pair of amateur mountain climbers from New York, both successful tax attorneys, discovered and explored the cave while descending from the summit of the mountain. They described ancient artifacts neatly placed about inside, shortly before they were killed."
Pitt stared at her. "They died, too?"
"Their private plane crashed on takeoff from the airport at Santiago for the flight home."
"The mystery deepens."
"Subsequent expeditions to the cave found nothing inside," Pat continued. "Either the attorneys exaggerated what they saw-"
"Or someone cleaned out the artifacts," Pitt finished.
"I wonder if the attorneys found a black skull," mused Marquez.
Pat shrugged. "No one will ever know."
"Did you manage to salvage your notes from the c
hamber?" Marquez asked Pat.
"The pages were soaked during our swim through the mine, but once I dried them with my hair dryer, they became quite readable. And if you have any questions about the meaning of the inscriptions, you can forget them. The symbols are from no known form of writing I've ever seen."
"I would think that written symbols cross over cultures, ancient and modern- that they would have similar markings," said Pitt thoughtfully.
"Not necessarily. There are many ancient inscriptions that stand alone without parallel symbols. Believe me when I say the signs on the walls in the chamber of the black skull are unique."
"Any chance they might be a deception?"
"I won't know until I have a chance to study them in depth."
"Take it from me," Marquez stated emphatically, "no one had entered that chamber before me in a long time. The surrounding rock showed no signs of recent digging."
Pat brushed her long red hair from her eyes. "The puzzle is who built it and why."
"And when," Pitt threw in. "Somehow the chamber and the killers are tied together."
A sudden breeze whistled up the canyon, rattling the windows of the solarium. Pat shivered. "The evening is getting cool. I think I'll get my coat."
Marquez turned toward the kitchen. "I wonder where Lisa is with the coffee and cake-"
His voice broke off as Pitt suddenly leaped to his feet. In one convulsive movement, he shoved the miner under the log table, then seized Pat and threw her to the wooden floor, covering her body with his own. Some alien wisp of movement in the shadows beside the house had tweaked the acute sense of menace that had been honed in him over the years. In the next instant, two explosions of gunfire burst from the shadows outside, coming so close together, they sounded as one.
Pitt lay there on Pat, hearing her gasp for the breath he had knocked from her chest. He rolled off her and came to his feet as he heard a familiar voice shout from the evening shadows, a voice distinct with an assured confidence.
"Got him!"
Pitt slowly helped Pat to a chair and pulled Marquez to his feet. "Those were gunshots… that voice?" murmured a dazed Marquez.
"Not to worry," Pitt said reassuringly. "The posse is on our side."
"Lisa, my kids," Marquez blurted, turning and starting to run into the house.
"Safe in the bathtub," said Pitt, grabbing an arm.
"How-?"
"Because that's where I told them to hide."
A stocky bull of a man materialized from the mountain undergrowth surrounding the house, wearing an Arctic white jumpsuit with a hood. He was dragging a body through the snow, dressed in a black ninja suit, its face covered by a ski mask. There was still enough light left in the sky to see the white-clad man's shag of black curly hair, dark Etruscan eyes, and lips spread in a white-toothed grin. He pulled the body along by one foot as effortlessly as if he were hauling a ten-pound bag of potatoes.
"Any problems?" asked Pitt quietly, stepping outside into the snow-covered yard.
"None," answered the stranger. "Like mugging a blind man. Despite a masterful attempt at a sneaky intrusion, the last thing he expected was an ambush."
"Underrating his intended prey is the worst miscalculation a professional killer can make."
Pat gazed at Pitt, ashen-faced. "You planned this?" she uttered mechanically.
"Of course," Pitt admitted, almost fiendishly. "The killers are…" He paused to look down at the man lying at his feet. "Or, rather, were fanatics. I can't begin to guess what lies behind their motive to kill anyone who entered that mysterious chamber. In my case, I moved to the head of their kill list when I showed up out of the blue and put a wrench in their well-oiled plan. They were also afraid I might return to the chamber and retrieve the black skull. Their fear of Pat was that she might decipher the inscriptions.
"After we escaped the tunnel and were released by Sheriff Eagan, this one stood back and watched us, waiting for the right opportunity. Because they had already made such a prolonged effort to hide the chamber discovery by eliminating all witnesses, it didn't take a class in village idiocy to figure they were not about to leave the job undone and allow any of us to leave Telluride alive. So I threw out the bait and reeled them in."
"You set us up as decoys," muttered Marquez. "We might have been killed."
"Better to take that risk now while the cards are on our side of the table than to wait until we're vulnerable."
"Shouldn't Sheriff Eagan be in on this?"
"As we speak, he should be apprehending the other killer at Pat's bed-and-breakfast."
"A gunman in my room?" Pat uttered in a shocked whisper. "While I was taking a bath?"
"No," Pitt said patiently. "He entered only after you left for the Marquez house with me."
"But he could have walked right in and murdered me."
"Not hardly" Pitt squeezed her hand. "Trust me when I say there was little danger. Didn't you notice the place was a little crowded? The sheriff arranged for a small throng of locals to roam the halls and dining rooms of the bed-and-breakfast, acting like conventioneers. It would have been awkward for a stalking killer to take his victim in a crowd. When it was advertised that you and I both were coming to the Marquezes' for dinner, the killers split the operation. One volunteered to send us all to the cemetery during dinner, while the other tossed your room for your notebook and camera."
"He doesn't look like anyone I know with the sheriff's department," said Marquez, pointing to the muscular intruder.
Pitt turned and placed his arm around the shoulders of the stranger who had just subdued the assassin. "May I present my oldest and dearest friend, Albert Giordino. Al is my assistant projects director with NUMA."
Marquez and Pat stood silently, uncertain of how to act. They studied Al with the intent of a bacterial researcher peering through a microscope at a specimen. Giordino simply released his grip on the intruder's foot, stepped forward, and shook their hands. "A pleasure to meet you both. I'm happy to have been of service."
"Who got shot?" Pitt queried.
"This guy had reactions you can't believe," said Giordino.
"Oh, yes, I can."
"He must have been psychic. He snapped off a shot in my direction the same instant I squeezed my own trigger." Giordino pointed to a slight tear along the hip of his jumpsuit. "His bullet barely bruised my skin. Mine took him in the right lung."
"You were lucky."
"Oh, I don't know," Giordino said loftily. "I aimed, he didn't."
"Is he still alive?"
"I should think so. But he won't be entering a marathon anytime soon."
Pitt leaned down and pulled the ski mask from the killer's head.
Pat gasped in horror- understandable, considering the circumstance, Pitt thought wryly. She still found it impossible to accept everything that had happened to her since stepping off the plane at the Telluride airport.
"Oh, dear God!" Her voice held a mixture of shock and distress. "It's Dr. Ambrose!"
"No, dear lady" Pitt said softly. "That is not Dr. Thomas Ambrose. As I told you before, the real Ambrose is probably dead. This lowlife probably took on the job of murdering you and me and Luis because only he could identify us with any certainty."
The truth of Pitt's words struck her with numbing cruelty. She knelt down and looked into the open eyes of the killer and demanded, "Why did you have to murder Dr. Ambrose?"
There was no flicker of emotion in the killer's eyes. The only indication of injury was the blood trickling from his mouth, a sure sign of a lung wound. "Not murdered, executed," he whispered. "He was a threat and had to die, just as you must all die."
"You have the guts to justify your actions," Pitt said, with an icy edge to his voice.
"I justify nothing. Duty to the New Destiny demands no justification."
"Who and what is the New Destiny?"
"The Fourth Empire, but you'll be dead before you see it" There was no hate, no arrogance in the killer's tone, just a simple
statement of supposed fact. The killer spoke with a trace of a European accent.
"The chamber, the black skull, what is their significance?"
"A message from the past." For the first time, there was a hint of a smile. "The world's greatest secret. Which is all you'll ever know."
"You may become more cooperative after you've spent hard time in prison for murder."
There was a slight shake of the head. "I'll never stand trial."
"You'll recover."
"No, you're mistaken. There will be no opportunity to question me further. I die having the satisfaction of knowing you will soon follow, Mr. Pitt."
Before Pitt could stop him, the killer raised one hand to his mouth and inserted a capsule between his teeth. "Cyanide, Mr. Pitt. As functional and effective as it was when Hermann Goring took it sixty years ago." Then he bit down on the capsule.
Pitt quickly put his mouth to the killer's ear. He had to get in the last word before Tom Ambrose's slayer drifted into the great beyond. "I pity you, you pathetic slime. We already know about your moronic Fourth Empire." It was a nasty lie, but it gave Pitt wicked satisfaction.
The dark eyes widened, then slowly glazed and stared sightlessly as the killer died.
"Is he dead?" Pat whispered.
"As an Egyptian mummy," Pitt said coldly.
"Good riddance." Giordino shrugged indifferently. "A shame we can't donate his organs to the vultures."
Pat stared at Pitt. "You knew," she said quietly. "No one else noticed, but I saw you remove the ammo from his gun."
"He would have killed all three of us," Marquez muttered. "What put you onto him?"
"An educated guess," answered Pitt. "Nothing more. He struck me as too calculating, too cold. The bogus Dr. Ambrose didn't act like a man whose life was at risk."
The phone in the kitchen rang, and Marquez answered it, listened for a minute, spoke a few words, and hung up. "Sheriff Eagan," he reported. "Two of his deputies were seriously wounded in a gun battle at Pat's bed-and-breakfast. The unidentified armed suspect was mortally wounded and died before he could talk."
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