Hot Ice

by Cherry Adair

  She’d bet that without turning, he knew to the inch precisely where she was crouched and what she was thinking. It was as disconcerting as it was fascinating.

  “Unless there’s a shortcut or another route somewhere,” Fisk suggested.

  She ran her finger over the small ridge of stones. There was a slight oily film, which a raw diamond should have—maybe. As interesting as her discovery was, there were far more important things happening up ahead. She hurried to catch up.

  “There’s a shortcut for sure,” Viljoen was saying. Taylor listened carefully. He was their mine expert, after all. “It would run above and parallel to Level Three. Like a catwalk, you know?”

  They got a hint of the stench of Level Three before they saw it. “Just the smell would prevent gluttony.” Taylor’s voice was muffled by the hand she’d slapped over her nose and face. It didn’t help one bit. She needed a hazmat suit. Lord. What could possibly smell that gross? And did she really want to know? Not really.

  “This is only the teaser,” Tate warned.

  “Jesus. It gets worse than this?” Hunt asked Viljoen.

  “Ja. According to the disk, ’fraid so.”

  Here we go again. Taylor waited a beat for Hunt to start turning in her direction, then said a firm, if muffled, “Forget it. I am not standing here in this cold, drafty, stinky place waiting for you guys to trot off and find a shorter shortcut.”

  “Are you done?” He paused. “I was about to suggest you forge ahead with Fisk and take a look at the next ‘door.’ ”

  Her heart did a ridiculous hop, skip, and jump as he looked at her with those deep, smoky eyes that even in the dust-moted golden gleam of the flashlight, saw exactly who she was. “Liar,” she said softly over the lump of emotion in her throat.

  He stepped back against the wall, flattening his body so she could pass him in the narrow space. “Go with him anyway.” He pointed the flashlight after the guys.

  “Okay.” She started to squeeze past him, doing a slow, full-body glide against his. Cruel, but it felt so good she wanted to do it again.

  She pushed his hair off his face, then cupped his cheek in her palm as a hot wash of lust suffused her body. “Does this adrenaline rush make you horny too?” She’d only noticed how hot it made her since she’d met him.

  Hunt briefly shut his eyes. “Jesus, Taylor . . .” The flashlight in his hand pointed to the floor as he drew her against him. “St. John?” One of the men’s voices echoed from farther down the tunnel.

  Hunt’s mouth broke from hers. “Got to go.”

  “Hmm.” She stood up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth, then moved away. “That didn’t help me much.”

  He took her hand and started after his men. “Help you with what?”

  Taylor reminded herself why they were both here in the first place. Saving the world, check. “My adrenaline lust,” she told him, covering her nose as the smell once again intruded. “Hey. Do you realize that when you were kissing me, I totally couldn’t smell this?”

  “Funny you should mention that, neither did I. However, now I do. Let’s speed this up. I think that’s our three-headed dog barking up ahead.”

  DANTE’S INFERNO

  LEVEL THREE

  Level Three was incredibly creative. Hunt gave Morales credit as he looked down at the canine monster wallowing in black odoriferous mud. Morales was taking Dante not only seriously, but quite literally. Cerebus was a twenty-foot-high robotic masterpiece, and clearly manufactured by special-effects people. Either theme park or film company expertise. It was an incredible feat of engineering, and a realistic-looking three-headed dog. Hair and all. Six red laser beams arced and slashed the air in constant motion.

  Its growls and snarls sounded like the genuine article—times three. A foamy-mouthed, rabid guard dog protecting the next level.

  From their vantage point on the catwalk twenty-five feet above, they could observe a narrow tunnel leading, presumably, to Level Four. If they’d been down there in the putrid muck, it might well have taken them hours to figure out which mouth to enter. If they hadn’t been ripped to pieces first by the beast’s “teeth” or drowned in the five-foot-deep foul-smelling mud.

  The catwalk had a five-foot cantilevered wall constructed to look identical to the surrounding rock. From below, the walk would have been all but undetectable. Did Morales stand up here and imagine his enemies drowning in that pool of bubbling, disgusting-smelling slop? Hunt figured he must have. He could see no other reason for all these theatrics.

  Theatrical they might be, but it was only with the help of disk three that Fisk had been able to open the safe door leading him to the mud cavern earlier.

  And it was only because Tate had backtracked after recon that he’d discovered a narrow opening in a side wall, visible only when traveling north. The narrow tunnel had switched back on itself several times, but eventually led Tate and Fisk back to the wind tunnel. Every instinct in Hunt’s body warned that Morales did nothing without good reason. While it might amuse him to use the elaborate deterrents, there was usually method—twisted to hell and gone—in the tango’s madness.

  He’d killed a thousand people on a cruise ship, by remote detonation of a small bomb, because it was a cheese- and wine-tasting trip. Gluttony. Hunt had long since given up trying to figure out the twisted patterns of a tango’s logic.

  “This place sure is noisy!” Taylor shouted as they rounded a corner and backtracked before turning south again. The sound of rocks striking each other, hard, was intermittent, violent, and loud.

  “What do we get in the fourth level of hell?” Taylor turned in front of him to yell. Her hand covered her nose and mouth, but her eyes were crinkled pools of light, dappled blue.

  “Avarice,” he told her. Bloody hell. He wished he felt half that sanguine. But the reality was, he’d had a spider of fear crawling up his ass for days. Something was going to go bad. As sure as he was smelling shit and decay, something was going to go very, very bad.

  At any other time that would not be a problem. He and his men were well trained and could handle anything anyone sent their way. But the more the itch intensified, the more concerned he became.

  They were trapped down here. Had been beneath the earth for—he checked the lighted dial on his watch—over seven hours, and they were only on Level Four out of seven. And that was with exact and explicit instructions on how to enter Level Three. They also, thank God, had the codes to Level Five. But there were still three levels they had no way of entering without spending a considerable amount of time. And somewhere deep in the earth right beneath them, a missile waited for the launch signal.

  Forty-five

  11:30 A.M.

  DANTE’S INFERNO

  LEVEL FOUR

  Just before the River Styx is the Fourth Level of Hell. Here, the prodigal and the avaricious suffer their punishment, as they roll weights back and forth against one another. You will share eternal damnation with others who either wasted and lived greedily and insatiably, or who stockpiled their fortunes, hoarding everything and sharing nothing. Plutus, the wolflike demon of wealth, dwells here.

  The crashing, thumping racket they’d heard when they started south on the catwalk became fainter instead of louder. Either the noise had echoed from Level Four back into Three or they were now going in the completely wrong direction. And since, apparently, they had only two choices, forward or back the way they’d come, that was problematic.

  The catwalk sloped down, then melted into a tunnel again. Not a good sign, Taylor figured. And of course it wasn’t. But thank God the smell also got fainter the farther away they walked from Level Three.

  Despite carefully searching the walls for one of those secret backward entrances to a side branch as they walked, Hunt and his guys hadn’t found one, and once again they ended up at a dead end.

  When Taylor saw yet another titanium door, she thought Hunt and the others would curse. They didn’t, even though it must have been incredibly f
rustrating for them.

  The floor flattened out, and there was enough room for all six of them to gather around the door. This time there was a keypad. It was a pain in the butt that all her tools had to be left behind in the wind tunnel. Especially since she’d made most of them herself. Well, she’d made them once, she could make them again. Or pick them up on the way out.

  “This won’t take long,” she assured Hunt. The 1991 Hamilton 200CF had been one of the best in its day, but great strides had been made in the industry since then. “Morales was pretty complacent by the time he outfitted this level.”

  Dante’s Level Four, Hunt had told them, was for the avaricious. They should expect some sort of weights swinging or something heavy rolling back and forth. Which fit with the rocks-rolling-around sounds they’d heard earlier.

  They should also expect another demon. This time a wolf named Plutus.

  Morales could make a fortune opening up this place to suicidal tourists, Taylor decided. She knelt down in front of the door and gave the keypad a little pat.

  “How long?” Hunt asked.

  “Sixteen minutes tops.” She flexed her fingers like a piano player. Tate, standing beside her, smiled.

  “Tate. Bishop. Backtrack,” Hunt instructed. “We missed one of those reverse tunnels. Find it. Viljoen, go with them. Come and fetch us when you find it.”

  Taylor waited until the sound of the men’s footfalls faded, then rested her cheek on the cool metal door and placed her fingers lightly on the keypad. She closed her eyes and imagined herself inside the electronics as her fingers danced across the keys.

  After the final, satisfying click, she rose and glanced at Hunt. “How’d I do?”

  “Fourteen minutes eighteen,” he said dryly. “Not bad.”

  “Not bad!” Fisk said, outraged. He gave Taylor a slap on the back that made her stagger. “That was fu-shitting amazing. Take me on as your fu-damn apprentice. Honest to fucking—sorry, ma’am—God. I’ll pay you.”

  Taylor grinned, feeling like one of the boys.

  “Earplugs, then open the door, Fisk,” Hunt told him, lips quirking.

  “T-FLAC should hire her on the fu—friggin’ spot,” Fisk told Hunt seriously, inserting his earplugs as he spoke. “Do you have any idea what we could do with skills like this? I mean seriously, we should call—”

  “Mmmm . . .” Taylor mused aloud, glancing from Fisk to Hunt and back again.

  “Thank you for the infomercial, Mr. Fisk.” Hunt glanced over to make sure Taylor was set. She gave him a thumbs-up, and he turned back to Fisk. “Now open the bloody door.”

  Morales liked noise and big . . . gestures, Taylor thought in awe, standing in the open doorway with the others. This cavern was about sixty feet across, the floor curved like the inside of a bowl. Fisk and Hunt shone their flashlights ahead, and they all took an instinctive step back. Hunt with his arm protectively across Taylor’s midriff.

  It took her a few moments to process exactly what she was seeing, as a blur of motion only two feet in front of her made it hard to focus. The obstruction moved to the left. Rapidly. Rolling. Thunderous. Behind it, another appeared, rolling in the opposite direction. Wow!

  Five or six, it was hard to tell from here, enormous round stones rolled in a seemingly random sequence. The boulders were perfect spheres, about fifteen feet in diameter, and looked heavy enough to flatten a car, let alone a puny human.

  And all Taylor could think was, How the hell had Morales gotten them in there?

  They rolled up the wall on the left, down and up the wall on the right. When two were in different positions up on the left, another was rolling across the floor in the middle and the others were in various stages of climbing the right wall.

  It was an amazingly well-choreographed ballet, Taylor thought, boggled by the ingenuity of the precision timing. The balls were in constant motion, leaving little or no space between them as they rolled past one another.

  Hunt turned his light to the wall beside the inside of the door, reaching out to run his hand across the surface. Looking for some sort of off switch. His shoulders were too broad. Every time the stone rolled past him, his hair blew in the wake, giving Taylor cold chills.

  Since he wouldn’t hear her, even if she’d bothered to speak, she kicked his thigh to get his attention. Which it did. He spun around so fast, he was a blur of motion, dropping into an instinctive crouch, immediately relaxing when he realized it was only her.

  She motioned for him to hand her the flashlight. She’d slide into the two-foot space between the wall and the closest moving ball.

  Without expression, Hunt pulled her farther out of the doorway, back into the tunnel. With swift economical movements, he pulled up the hood of the LockOut suit, tucking her hair carefully inside.

  He cupped her face in both hands. “Be careful,” he mouthed. Taylor waited for him to kiss her, but he didn’t, and it was too dark to read his expression. It was enough for the moment that he trusted her to let her do this. He unclamped the heavy flashlight and handed it to her.

  Flashlight in hand, she turned back to the doorway and waited for the closest sphere to roll aside. As soon as it rolled up to the right, she stepped into the chamber, immediately flattening herself against the wall. She’d have to run her hand up and down the wall to find some sort of control, and knowing Morales, it would be hidden or disguised. And she had only a minute, maybe less, at a time before the ball rolled back down, giving her perhaps eighteen inches of space.

  When that rock came rolling past her, she’d better not have any body parts in its way or she’d be flatter than a fritter.

  God, she thought, running her fingers over the rough wall. This was as exciting as retrieving a ten-million-dollar diamond necklace from a terrorist’s personal safe.

  DANTE’S INFERNO

  LEVEL FIVE

  Jesus bloody Christ. Where was she? Hunt checked his watch, although he sure as hell didn’t need to. He’d counted off the 302 seconds. Over five bloody minutes. If she hadn’t found some sort of control near the door, it either wasn’t there or was on the side Fisk had tried to search.

  He couldn’t even see the glow of the flashlight anymore. Worse, there was no way he could follow her. She’d been like an eel, sliding between the rock wall and the pendulum of the boulder with only inches to spare. Fisk had offered to try, but he was too big as well.

  Hunt wondered absently if God was puzzled by his frequent requests of late. They hadn’t exactly had a close relationship over the years. He shot off another prayer at the same time he and Fisk tried to make sense of the boulder’s movements, timing one and then the next in the hope of finding a pattern, as Taylor had done for the wind tunnel. And while he did this, he kept his peripheral vision attuned to any break in the darkness on his left, indicating Taylor’s return.

  Where in the bloody hell was she? He had to constantly remind himself that she was smart and resourceful. Not to mention double jointed. She’d eluded the authorities on seven continents. She could get into and out of the smallest, most impossible spaces—she was fine. Just fine. Please, God . . .

  The three men he’d sent off to look for a side tunnel hadn’t returned yet either. Another cause for concern. One way or another, he and Fisk had to go forward. As soon as they figured out how in the hell to cross between, under, or over these bloody boulders to the other side—

  Wait a second—The noise changed, the balls started slowing down. Slower. And slower. And slower. Having lost their momentum, they eventually all came to rest in the center of the floor, rocking slowly in their tracks as gravity pulled them down to teeter back and forth in ever-decreasing rolls.

  Fisk shone his light down the length of the tunnel, where, now that the balls were at rest, they could see the deep channels, like ribs, up the curve of the walls.

  A beam of light strobed high above their heads. “Hey! Romeo! Up here!”

  His relief at hearing Taylor’s voice was profound. A sensation Hunt had neve
r felt before filled him. He was confused as hell by it, but this wasn’t the time for self-analysis. “How did you get up there?” he yelled. He still couldn’t see her.

  “Go the way I did. Follow the wall. There are steps—”

  “Stay right where you are.” He’d already motioned to Fisk, and they jogged down a narrow strip of rock floor between the wall and the first track for a hundred yards before they found the stairs. The others, when they came to look for them, would have to follow.

  The steps, carved out of the solid rock, zigged and zagged steeply. The low ceiling made it hard for them to move quickly, since they couldn’t quite walk upright. If one were expecting an enemy to follow, the design was ingenious.

  Taylor waited in the tunnel at the top, her flashlight pointing to the floor. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Amazing,” Hunt agreed, suddenly angry. Angry with that madman Morales for concocting this ridiculous spectacle. Angry at his men for not finding the catwalk in the first place, and angry as hell at Taylor for scaring the crap out of him, disappearing like that without a word.

  “I haven’t seen the others,” she told him soberly. “Should we wait?”

  “No. They’ll catch up. Or they won’t. Here, give me that.” He took the flashlight from her. “You did good. Now, walk between us.”

  Without waiting, he strode off, his light leading the way.

  He’d been worried about her, Taylor decided. That’s why he was cranky. Knowing that made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

  Level Five was a breeze since they had the code, although she wouldn’t have needed it to open the door anyway. The locking mechanism was an XLR92, a safe she was familiar with. Still, without those codes, it would have taken her at least three to four hours to get through.

  Hunt had told them that Level Five was supposed to be the River Styx. Punishment for the wrathful. She wondered if she should sweetly suggest he stick his wrathful head in the fast-flowing, black, muddy river down below and get over his snit. It had been sweet and touching an hour ago. Now it was getting on her last nerve.