Sam grinned. “Yeah, but I’m pretty certain the FBI Agent… what was her name again?”
“I can’t remember. I just know she was played by Jodie Foster.”
“All right. Either way, I don’t recall Jodie Foster getting to carry submachine guns and a backpack full of C-4 explosives.”
Tom cradled his Heckler and Koch MP5. “Right you are.”
It took nearly ten minutes to reach the bottom, where it placed them inside a large tunnel made of granite. Without their flashlights the tunnel was pitch dark. They switched their lights back and searched the area within the immediate vicinity of the winch cable. Billie and Genevieve were the next two to come down, followed by Anotoly and Demyan. All in total, it took close an hour to shift the six of them and Sam hoped to hell they didn’t need to get out in a hurry.
Sam opened the digital version of the blueprints based on the charts Demyan had given him. It depicted the lowest level, where the ancient catacombs ran like a labyrinth, constantly turning inward until it reached a large room in the middle. It was in that room, Demyan told him, that he had once seen an Egyptian sarcophagus. He said he would never forget it because it seemed so strange given their location in Siberia.
It took another hour of winding through the granite maze to reach the center. The bright lights swept from the room into the dark tunnels. Sam quickly switched off his own flashlight and the rest of the team followed suit. The echo of broken voices leaked from inside the room.
Sam, Tom and Genevieve approached, while Billie, Demyan and Anotoly guarded the exits. Sam entered the room first. There were three men working on breaking the code to the metallic vacuum casing that housed the fourth sacred stone. Two had laptop computers open and appeared to be running a program to crack it, while the third one paced back and forth.
Sam raked the entire room with his eyes. Confident there were no other occupants and with the knowledge that the only entrance was being guarded by the rest of the group, Sam aimed his Heckler and Koch at the only one who was standing.
He switched the lever to fully automatic and yelled, “Hands in the air!”
The two computer guys turned to face him and swore. The one who was standing turned and said, “What the fuck?”
Sam met the man’s eye. They were the same bluish-gray as the man who’d tried to kill him inside the Great Blue Grotto. “It’s you!”
“Sam Reilly?” the man studied him, his mind struggling to make sense of what just happened.
Sam nodded. “Yes, and who might you be?”
The stranger shook his head. “My name’s not important. Don’t you get it? Nothing’s important now. The darkness has taken its grip over the planet. We’re already entering a new ice age.”
Sam shrugged. “Suit yourself. Billie, come grab our suitcase, please.”
Sam, Tom and Genevieve moved closer to their hostages, so they could be sure of the shot if they had to take one.
Billie moved quickly and retrieved the metallic case. Toward the side of the room, Billie typed in the encrypted code and pressed enter. The case flipped open.
“The sacred stone’s here,” she said to Sam.
“Great. Make sure you seal it up again before the damned rock starts to take on mass and we lose our ability to move it.”
Demyan and Anotoly entered the room.
“Did you find what you needed?” Demyan asked.
“We got it,” Sam replied. “We’re good to go.”
“What about them?” Anotoly asked. “You can’t leave them here. They’ll alert the rest of the colonists.”
He had a good point, but Sam wasn’t about to go killing three people in cold blood, either. “Maybe we could guard them until the last pair are ready to make their ascent? Once on the winch, you said yourself, no one from the colony could reach us before we’re back on board the helicopter and heading for home.”
Anotoly swore and his eyes went wild. “Are you crazy?”
Before Sam could calm him, Anotoly grabbed Billie’s gun. She tried to stop it, but he overpowered her. Before anyone could stop him, Anotoly fired a burst toward the three prisoners. The nine-millimeter rounds ripped through their bodies with ease.
Only the man Sam had recognized managed to get a shot off. The bullet missed Anotoly, but struck Demyan in his chest.
Sam, Tom and Genevieve moved quickly to secure the three prisoners. Two were dead, and the one who’d shot Demyan had multiple wounds to his chest that would prove fatal.
Genevieve aimed her submachine gun toward the only surviving prisoner.
Sam went to Demyan, who was clutching the side of his chest. A relatively small wound had blood pouring out of it. Sam tried to block it with part of his vest and direct pressure, but he had no misgivings about the outcome. The bullet must have ripped through a large blood vessel. Without already being in surgery, he would bleed to death within minutes.
Anotoly looked at his son. He grabbed his knife and ran toward the only surviving prisoner. “What have you done!”
Sam turned and watched Anotoly drive the knife into the prisoner’s gut.
There was a small moan, as the knife went in. The prisoner was in agony. He sat rigid on the cold granite floor with his back hard upright against the sarcophagus. Tears of pain squeezed from his eyes and rolled down his once malevolent face.
“Father!” the prisoner said in a voice barely a whisper. “At last I’ve come to visit you in hell.”
“Ilya?” Anotoly asked. “Is that really you?”
There was recognition in Ilya’s eyes. “Father?”
“Ilya! I thought you’d drowned!” Anotoly hugged his son. “You killed your brother! What have I done!”
“Demyan was alive?” Ilya glanced toward Demyan, whose body was now still on the floor, with his unseeing eyes wide open.
“This is all my fault!” Anotoly said. “And it is all because of Leo Botkin!”
The name somehow aroused something inside Ilya. Sam watched him reach into his jacket pocket. Sam moved the barrel of the submachine gun closer as a warning.
“It’s okay,” Ilya said, removing his cell phone.
Sam glanced at the ceiling, where a series of wireless communication hubs were mounted on the ceiling.
Ilya quickly texted a few words and pressed send.
When Ilya dropped the cell phone, Sam picked it up and read the message out loud, “Botkin. We broken the casing. The stone is gaining weight and we don’t know where it needs to be placed.”
Anotoly looked at Sam. “Go! Get to the surface and do what you must with the sacred stone.”
“What about you?”
“My life will be complete when Leo Botkin dies.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
Anotoly dragged both of his now dead sons together and cuddled them as he waited. There he lied still as the dead, waiting for their retribution. It wasn’t long – ten minutes at most – before Leo Botkin walked into the room. He hoped Sam and the rest of his team were able to reach the winch okay and were already on their way to the surface.
Botkin glanced at the pile of wrecked and mangled bodies. He approached Ilya, quickly searching for the sacred stone. He stopped at Ilya and swore. “I should have let you drown you useless piece of shit!”
Anotoly stared at Botkin’s brown eyes and lunged for his throat, digging his thumbs hard into the man’s windpipe. Botkin reacted quickly, pulling his handgun and shooting him in the gut.
Anotoly heard the shots and felt the pain of three razorblades slicing through the soft tissues of his abdomen. He started to laugh. It was short, and intermingled with a blood-stained cough, but it was deep and profoundly satisfying none the less.
“What’s so funny, old man?” Botkin asked.
Anotoly held the grenade hard against Botkin’s chest. “This!”
Botkin tried to move, but Anotoly gripped him with the ferocity of a man who’d borne a hatred for nearly twenty years and was willing to undergo any amount of pain and sufferin
g just to finally have revenge.
The grenade exploded.
Both men were torn to pieces as the grenade’s fragments shredded them. Anotoly hit the ground, his face fixed in a permanent and sardonic grin. Botkin’s face was ripped apart. One of his eyeballs, dislodged from its socket, rolled along the floor, losing its brown contact lens.
The purple eyeball finally came to rest, looking back upon what remained of its owner’s lifetime worth of preparation.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
The fourth sacred stone was placed inside the tomb beneath Sigiriya.
Over the course of the next two weeks, the magnetic poles returned to their normal position. The thermohaline circulation returned to its normal direction and the darkness dissipated from the clouds that had enshroud the earth. Some of the wealthiest men and women, once leaders of the world’s largest multinational corporations, emerged from their place of hiding. Their fortunes having been decimated by an unusual sell-off of their property, cash and assets only a few weeks earlier, the natural distribution of wealth around the globe had never been so equal.
Sam Reilly watched as the darkness above finally gave way to crepuscular rays of sun. He picked up his cell phone and called the Secretary of Defense.
She answered on the first ring, without preamble. “What’s the outcome?”
“It’s finally over.”
The Secretary said, “Not completely. I’m afraid some things have only just begun.”
“Really?” Sam held a tight-lipped smile. “The asteroid’s passed Earth and the ocean’s thermohaline currents are flowing in the right direction again – as far as I see it, everything’s just fine.”
“I read your report on the mission to the temple in Tepui Mountains.”
“And?”
“A Master Builder was found strung up on a stalagmite. Evidently killed by one of his own people.”
“You think there’s going to be a war between the remaining Master Builders?”
“Yes,” she said. “The question is, who’s side are we going to take?”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
The Sikorsky Blackhawk VH-60N VIP designated helicopter landed in the clearing, where more than a hundred marines had secured the forest. The surrounding land dipped into a shallow crater.
As the rotor blades began to wind down, the Secretary of Defense stepped out of the helicopter. A five-star General stepped up to greet her.
“Well.” She said. “Did you find it?”
He grinned. “Yeah, we found it all right.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “So, Leo Botkin was right all along. The meteorite did break in two, sending the second fragment of blackbody into a completely different part of the world.”
She ran her eyes across a large, dark stone. Light appeared to be distorting near it. The stone was being lifted by a twin-engine tandem rotor Chinook helicopter.
Her eyes turned and fixed to the man in a white coat next to the General. “The trillion dollar question is, will there be enough of the usable material left?”
The scientist nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her tightlipped smile relaxed. “Good. Can you control the material?”
“It will take time. But I believe we can make it work for us.”
“Good. No more setbacks. I want to see the Omega Project up and running within the year. Can you achieve that?”
The scientist smiled decisively. “Yes, ma’am.”
The End
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The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 76
