by Cherry Adair
Most of the team would remain aboveground, while Hunt, Taylor, Fisk, Viljoen, Coetzee, Tate, and Bishop went through the levels inside. “Keep alert for anything,” he told the first away team led by Daklin. “If a snake of any sort so much as yawns—shoot it.”
He was talking to thin air.
He looked up as four shadows blended from the pitch-black interior to the deep black of the shadows outside. “Fisk. What have we got?”
He was looking at Fisk, but preternaturally aware of the woman beside him. Hunt kept Taylor in his peripheral vision at all times, as though she might suddenly disappear.
Jesus bloody Christ, he did not want to take her in there. All right, God. Here’s the deal. Make this simple and quick. Make Taylor completely redundant on this op, so I can have her taken the fuck out of here, and I’ll swear to kill Morales more quickly and humanely than he could ever deserve. Out. I mean . . . Amen.”
“Any chance you can open whatever it is on your own?” Hunt asked Fisk.
“He just tried,” Savage told him. “He’s never seen such a complex—”
“I can represent myself, thank you,” Frank Fisk told her, then turned to Hunt. “We need Taylor.”
“Savage?” Navarro called so softly, his words seemed like part of the barely there breeze.
The man was a woman whisperer, Hunt thought as Savage reluctantly turned. “Let Bishop—”
“You’re my sharpshooter,” Hunt told her. “I want you with them. Go.”
She opened her mouth. Hunt waited. Her shoulders straightened and she raised her voice slightly so it would carry to her team. “On my way.”
“Step lively then, beautiful,” Daklin told her, melting into the shrubbery with the others.
Were you listening, God?
“Ready to rock?” Bishop pulled his hood over his hair and neck, leaving only his features visible, more for warmth than as a disguise.
“Let’s do it,” Hunt said grimly, taking Taylor’s hand in his and walking with purpose.
He wasn’t capricious, never had been. He didn’t have premonitions, or psychic dreams, or extrasensory perception, but he trusted his gut instincts implicitly. They’d never failed him.
In all his years as a T-FLAC operative, Hunt had experienced everything from motivational hatred for the scum he dealt with to anticipation and interest when he was on an op. But now, as he walked toward the rickety-looking entrance to the Blikiesfontein mine, Taylor at his side, he felt intense fear. In his thoughts, in his gut, in his impervious heart.
Suddenly, he wished he’d never met Taylor.
He cursed himself for his dogged persistence in tracking her down.
And he felt profound guilt that he’d caved and permitted her to accompany T-FLAC, him, to Africa.
Because his gut was telling him what he knew in his bones.
Quite simply, Hunt knew, he was going to be the death of her.
Forty-two
The passageway sloped gradually, and the deeper they walked, the narrower it became. Surprisingly, there was no musty smell inside the mine. In fact it smelled of dirt, and was not unpleasant. The area immediately surrounding them was illuminated by the powerful flashlights each of the men carried. They were also all armed to the teeth.
It was pitch-dark. Fortunately, she had no fear of either darkness or confined spaces. But she was having a hard time adjusting to the outfit she wore. It was so insubstantial that she felt naked, and had to run her hand down her hip or touch her sleeve to be sure she was wearing anything at all.
She and Frank Fisk walked side by side as they followed Bishop and Viljoen. Hunt, Coetzee, and Tate brought up the rear. The situation was a little surreal. Her heartbeat was delightfully fast, as it always was preceding a job. Clearing her mind so she could focus was de rigueur at this point, as well.
Focus.
“Here’s what we’ve got,” Fisk told her as they walked briskly through the tunnel. “No safe, per se, simply the door and the mechanism embedded in solid rock. No markings to ID it, but it’s an Allied 763.”
“The big guns right off the bat,” Taylor said, her pulse racing pleasurably at the anticipation of the challenge. She all but rubbed her hands together in expectation. “1998 DV model, do you think?” The year that particular model had been perfected. “When did you say Morales bought this place, Daan?”
“ ’Ninety-eight,” Viljoen said over his shoulder. “Watch your step. There’s a big dip right here, you know?”
“It’s possible he had the latest, greatest installed right away,” Taylor said, “but not probable.” She turned to Fisk. “What month was the new DV763 model released? June of that year, right?”
“Yeah,” Fisk agreed. “So it’s likely the ’96 model. Ever cracked one of those?”
“Actually, I managed to get into the ’98 model last year.” She smiled when Fisk gave her a goggle-eyed stare of admiration. “Morales had it installed in one of his Spanish warehouses. It was a bitch. And worth every penny of its hefty asking price.”
“Impressive,” Fisk murmured.
“Fortunately for me, because of its remote location I had an entire weekend to fool with it. And trust me, it took that long.”
Too bad Morales had moved the Blue Star diamonds somewhere else that very week—a little detail that had stolen some of the thrill when she opened the safe, only to find the treasure gone. But she’d at least had the professional thrill of having defeated a safe that “couldn’t be cracked.” Anything could be cracked if one had the time and patience.
“Did you do an ultraviolet scan, or dust it for prints?” Taylor asked as they walked. Sometimes it was almost too easy if there was a keypad. The owner’s fingerprints gave away the combination. After that, figuring out the order was pretty much child’s play.
“Clean.” Fisk grabbed her elbow as she took a misstep. “The ’96?”
“Thanks.” The tunnel curved slightly and dropped at least another six or seven feet in a sharp declining slope. She was grateful for his quick save. “Twice,” she told him, mentally bringing up the schematics for Allied. “The first time I did a ’96 it took me about four hours. I sweated bullets for every one of those 240 minutes.”
The Petersons had been asleep upstairs. She’d been accompanied in the study by the family’s two Doberman pinschers, who’d watched her every second and then followed her to the French doors, stubby tails wagging, as she walked out with the Fabergé eggs that had been stolen from a British royal three weeks before.
Dogs always liked her.
“The next time it took a smidgen under three.” Not great, but not bad either. The Burmese sapphires.
“Kurt Peterson then Lorenzo Jordan,” Hunt said grimly behind her. “Two more of the terrorists you’re so fond of pissing off. You certainly like to live dangerously. Know what either of those two would have had done to you if they’d even suspected you’d robbed them?”
“Well, they didn’t know it was me,” she told him cheerfully. “And even if they did, who could they tell? They’d both acquired their treasures illegally in the first place.”
“Here we are,” Viljoen said, stepping aside for Fisk and Taylor, but keeping the high beam of his flashlight on the seven-foot-high titanium door embedded in the solid-rock walls. Fisk’s small computer sat on the floor at the base of the door.
“It is a ’98 DV763,” Taylor confirmed the second she saw the handle on the locking mechanism. She indicated the computer. “That didn’t work, did it?”
She assumed Fisk had used software to run a sequence of numbers until it hit the right combination. Unfortunately, on this particular model they’d taken high-tech theft into account and programmed in a firewall to block access.
“I do love a challenge.” Grinning at the big silver beauty, Taylor reached for her tools. “Okay, people, back up and give me some room.”
Hunt knew that every safe had a fundamental weakness. It had to be accessible to a locksmith or to those authorized to open i
t. In this case, Morales had been his normal paranoid, wily self. He’d chosen the best safe on the market, then efficiently dispatched everyone who had anything to do with its invention, sale, and installation.
“Drill through the face?” Fisk asked Taylor as they both stood there looking at the door.
“Nope. I brought my diamond-bit punch rod—but it’s not going to fly. They’ve got a heavy-duty cobalt plate back there. Doing it that way would take forever and a day, and more drill bits than we have access to.”
“There’s no side access, so no drilling that way either,” Fisk told her, covetously eyeing the tools she was laying out on the ground. “How about the plasma cutters—or that thermic lance over there?”
“No, no, and nope.” A wide smile lit her face. “We’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Walk me through what you’ll be doing,” he instructed calmly.
“First we determine the contact points,” she told him, oblivious to everything else as she gently ran her fingers over and around the dial face in a loverlike caress. “The drive cam has a notch in it like the wheels in the wheel pack.” She crouched down to look at it from a different angle, talking almost to herself.
“Notch is sloped down to allow the lever and fence to pass through . . . Want this, Francis?” she asked, handing Fisk her own earpiece so he could listen with her.
“When the nose of the level makes contact with the slope—left and right—we’ll hear a small click.”
She kept quiet as Fisk listened, face set, eyes closed. “Seven left.”
Taylor wrote it down.
“Two right.”
“Each of the numbers has a corresponding wheel,” Taylor whispered. “When Francis is done, we’ll figure out how many wheels are in the wheel pack. Then— Sorry. Was I talking too loudly?”
“No,” Fisk muttered impatiently. “But I can’t hear a fu—damn thing.” He rose and handed her the stethoscope. “You try.”
Hunt and the rest of his team stood back. There was nothing they could do to help. Fisk and Taylor were on their own. Right now, the only job the five men could perform was keeping the lights focused and handing the two safecrackers what they asked for as they guarded their backs.
Hunt felt like an E.R. nurse.
Taylor and Fisk worked hard for the better part of five hours. If they hadn’t all been wearing the LockOut suits, they’d be sweating profusely. It was hard work. Yet Taylor showed no indication of exhaustion or impatience at the tedium of what she was doing. Instead, her lovely features were lit with an inner light and her eyes sparkled like brilliant blue-white diamonds.
She might not feel the urgency, Hunt thought—he and his people made sure she didn’t—but he sure as bloody hell did. Even the most sophisticated and complex locking mechanisms had six or less numbers in a wheel pack. They’d penetrated seven of them already.
Taylor told them she suspected there might be as many as eleven. “Eight,” she whispered triumphantly as she penetrated another. Fisk sat on the floor beside her, graphing each new discovery on a special wristwatch computer. They’d taken turns, but it was clear Taylor had more experience, and considerably more manual dexterity, so Fisk had volunteered to graph and learn.
After this many hours at close quarters, Hunt knew every inch of the surrounding area. The banded ironstone of the walls overlaid dolomites and limestone with weathered yellow kimberlite streaked with unweathered blue, indicating what had previously been a classic diamondiferous kimberlite pipe.
A track inlaid in the center of the hard-packed floor indicated a mechanized vehicle of some sort used to bring the diamonds to the surface in the heyday of the mine.
“Nine,” Taylor said triumphantly, her voice less than a whisper.
“Water. Drink.” Hunt handed her a canteen. As she took it from him without looking up, he noticed the fine tremor in her hands. Not exhaustion, although God only knew she must be. No, there was a feverish energy that pulsed around her as she slugged the water, then absently set the container down beside her as she went back to work.
She had a remarkable ear and infinite patience. It was a pleasure watching her work. No wonder she’d been so successful at what she did. Fisk, now standing beside her, was spellbound by her expertise.
“Ten.” Her shoulders slumped and she rested her head against the metal door. “We have the contact area.” She glanced up at Fisk, her partner in crime.
“That’s it?” Viljoen asked.
Fisk snorted. “Hardly. Now she dials the number on the lock that’s in an opposite position from the numbers on the contact area.”
“Want to park the wheels?” Taylor asked Fisk.
“Nah. You earned it. Nobody move until she gets it,” Fisk warned.
“No. Give me a sec. I need a break. I want to walk around a bit.” Taylor straightened and rotated her head on her neck. A faint dew of perspiration gleamed on her skin, making it look like alabaster.
“Want to get some fresh air?” Hunt asked, moving behind her to rest his hands on her narrow shoulders. He started to knead the tense muscles in her neck.
“No. I want to— God that feels good. Thank you. I want to get this sucker open before I’m too old to care. I’ll take another slug of water—thanks, Daan . . .” She gulped from the container, then handed it back, “. . . then get back to it.”
“What does ’parking the wheel’ mean?” Bishop demanded. Hunt knew the other man meant, What did it mean in time?
“Reader’s Digest version? This is a three-hundred-number dial. Big by any standards. The contact area is forty, so I’ll park the dial at . . . What do you think, Francis? Ninety?” He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I thought too. When I turn the dial to the right, the drive cam will reengage to begin spinning the wheels from that position. So every time the dial passes ninety, the drive pin will click as each wheel in the wheel pack— Your eyes are glazing. Never mind. I have to count clicks now, so no noise.”
Another hour and seventeen minutes passed before Taylor straightened and stepped away from the door. “We’re in.”
“Good job,” Hunt told her.
“Good job?” She raised her eyebrows. “That wasn’t a good job. That was a masterful job. It was brilliant job.” She grinned, pleased with herself. As well she should be.
“Am I the best, or am I the best? I’m taking a well-deserved rest. You guys pull this puppy open, I’m too weak and feeble.”
There was nothing weak or feeble about her, he thought. Jesus. She was magnificent. “You are, without a shadow of a doubt, the best,” Hunt assured her as Tate and Bishop pulled the heavy door open.
The second the thirty-six-inch-thick titanium door broke away from the seal of the doorframe, a deafening, thunderous roar filled the tunnel. The force of the noise yanked the five-ton door out of their hands. It slammed open against the rock hard enough to dislodge enormous chunks of limestone from the walls and ceiling.
Hunt threw himself at Taylor, taking her down to the ground. The safe door trembled like tinfoil as the noise blasted through the opening. He covered Taylor’s head with his arms, and buried his face in her hair, as the sturm und drang continued unabated.
Level Two.
Dante’s Unforgiving Winds.
Forty-three
DANTE’S INFERNO
LEVEL TWO
Hunt quickly gave Taylor a set of earplugs from his belt pack, installed his own earplugs, then shone his Maglite into the cavern through the open door. Even with the heavy-density earplugs, the sound of the four-turbo diesel engine in the floor was still unbearably loud. He glanced at Tate for a reading of the noise level. The other man held up his wrist PDA for Hunt and the others to see: 162dBA.
Logarithmic scales. The dBA of a jet taking off was 140. Bloody hell.
Hunt shone his light around the walls. There were no acoustic materials in the approximately 300-by-300-foot cavern. Morales had indeed produced his own infernal hurricane.
Taylor
stepped back behind them so that he and his team would have room to ascertain what they were dealing with. Fortunately, T-FLAC had a simple and expedient nonverbal form of communication. With hand gestures, the conversation was fast and furious.
The only way to go was across.
But across to what?
Six flashlights strobed the circumference of the cavern. Small apertures in the walls appeared black. Some looked to be as small as a foot in circumference, others some six or eight feet in diameter. One of them would lead to where they wanted to go. The others . . .
Hunt picked up an oil-stained chammy from Taylor’s bag of tricks, still spread at his feet, and tossed it through the doorway into the vertical air tunnel as a wind-drift indicator.
Sucked in, it swirled upward in a dizzying spiral of blurred motion, then flattened against the ceiling some hundred feet above their heads. And stayed there.
Jesus bloody Christ.
He did a quick calculation on his own PDA, gave a low, soundless whistle, then turned it to the others. The propeller was spinning at a hair over 250 mph.
They’d all had flight training, all done thousands of hours of parachuting and freestyle and 3-D dives, so they knew the correct body positions to navigate. But those drops had been done at a minimum height of four thousand feet, giving them time to control the fall rate; 7,200 was safer. This was only three hundred feet. Far too low to maneuver. Safely or otherwise.
And those jumps had been with proper equipment. All right, with damn improper equipment, depending where they were—but this—fuck it to hell—this was suicide. Terminal velocity alone would kill them before they had a chance to go belly-down. Hunt felt a clutch of sheer undulated fear as he watched the speed and ferocity of those five spinning blades.
First they had to establish which of the openings they wanted. With sign language, they eliminated a dozen. Fisk did a quick, rough schematic on his wrist PDA as they worked, eliminating then adding back in when Hunt thought a particular hole large enough for a man to get through.
