It couldn’t have been more than fifty yards, but it felt like a thousand. I had lost sight of Meryem. I had no idea where she was, and beyond that, I wished I was still in the water. A bullet rapidly loses its energy traveling through water, but out in the air, I was exposed. One…two…three. I counted the seconds off in my head as I ran, bullets flying on either side of me. They were still missing. Why were they missing? Four…five…six… I’d never been shot, but I was pretty sure it was coming. It had to be. It would feel like a stinging burn, like something had clamped on to me. Seven…eight…nine… I leapt off the sunken wall as it joined with a marble floor. Ten…eleven…twelve… Chips of stone flew as I sprinted the final twenty feet and rolled under the vehicle.
“Michael!”
I heard the driver’s door open above. It was some kind of military vehicle and it was definitely Meryem's voice. Somehow she had gotten there ahead of me.
“Get in!”
She shut off the lights and I continued my roll under the vehicle to the passenger door. Enough light leaked from the cab through what looked like a hole in the floor that I could just make out where I had to go. I did one more complete roll and hopped up to the passenger door that swung open above me. Meryem backed up in a tight quarter turn as I swung my body into the cab.
“How did you get here?”
“I saw the truck. I swam.”
“Why did you leave the lights on?”
“So you could see!”
I glanced around the cab. The truck was an old army-green Mercedes Benz Unimog. Early fifties vintage if I had to guess. It was a high-clearance, stalwart old four-wheel-drive, and by the way Meryem was working the gears, I imagined it was about to get a hell of a workout. She shifted on the lights again, just in time to avoid a fallen marble column. Bullets flew, strafing the hood. She shut off the lights and continued on, leaping out of first gear and into second.
“There was a crank,” Meryem said. “On the engine. But no key, only a switch.”
The words had barely left her mouth before I was heaved suddenly forward. I managed to put my hand out to avoid hitting the windshield with my head, but my shoulder impacted anyhow. The whole vehicle lurched up before our momentum carried us up and over whatever we had hit. Meryem must have braked, because the taillights went on and I could see behind us. We had driven over some kind of fallen sculpture, a forlorn marble head staring right back at me in the mirror.
Several more bullets flew, but there were too many obstructions in the way for Meryem to turn the lights off.
“Where do I go?” Meryem asked.
“That way,” I pointed.
There really was only one place to go — the tunnel that was now visible at the end of the huge cistern. We raced along the uneven marble floor which bordered the deep watery pool. The place was huge, at least two football fields long.
“Do you know what this place is?” I asked.
“For water, I think,” Meryem said. “I think it was used by the Romans to store water.”
She turned the wheel hard, narrowly avoiding another fallen marble sculpture. The old truck heaved onto two wheels, letting out a rubbery yelp before settling back down. Meryem turned the wheel again, and brought the truck back up to speed. The bullets were still flying, but they were getting scarcer. We were a long way away from the opening in the ceiling now. The cistern was absolutely enormous. It may have begun its life as an underground Roman reservoir, but it had been expanded since then. It had to have been. It was simply too big.
“It doesn’t look like anybody’s been down here for ages,” I said.
She braked as I said it. We had reached the far wall, the tunnel to the left of us. But there was something else there. Wooden crates. Lots of them. More gunfire erupted from behind us. I was hoping that we would be hard to hit in the dark, but I wasn’t counting on it.
“What do you think?” Meryem asked.
“I think if this thing is anywhere, it’s here.”
I jumped out of the truck. Meryem shut off the headlights, but left the engine running. My wet clothing clung to my skin, but I wasn’t cold; the temperature was surprisingly moderate underground. I risked shining my light into the Unimog’s shallow truck bed and found a tire iron next to a collapsible shovel and some kind of portable firefighting kit. But almost as soon as I turned the light on, gunfire erupted from the ceiling. I was drawing their fire again. I was going to have to be more careful.
I used the faint glow of my watch’s nightlight to guide me as I took cover in front of the Unimog. The crates were unpainted pine. I jimmied the tire iron into the top of one, nails creaking out of place to reveal a bed of wood shavings. I pawed the shavings aside to find something a little less esoteric than the triggers for Tesla’s Device. World War II-era grenades. A whole case of them.
“What is it?” Meryem said.
“Things that go boom.”
I pried open the next crate. I was expecting the same thing, but I didn’t get it. Instead, I pulled a factory-new AK-47 from the box. It was an antique now, but it didn’t look like it had ever been fired. I searched for ammunition, but only found more guns. More gunfire erupted from behind us. I didn’t know whether Kate’s people were still firing the H&Ks, but at two hundred yards they were still within their effective range. Eventually, they would get lucky.
I pried open a third box, pulling aside the layer of wood shavings. Bingo. There were bandoliers and full clips of ammunition. Whoever had put the stuff there had been planning a little more than target practice — they were stockpiling for a war. I shoved a clip into the nearest AK. They were old guns. They hadn’t been oiled recently, but it didn’t change what I needed to do. I switched the selector switch to multiple shots.
“What are you doing?” Meryem asked.
“Give me your flashlight,” I whispered.
Meryem handed me her light stick. I fumbled my way to the left of the crates. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. My foot hit something big, but I kept going until I judged I was about eighty feet away from the crates. Then I held the gun above my head and fired a burst toward our assailants. The cistern lit up with muzzle flashes, the shots echoing off the high ceiling like a brutal drum. Then I switched on Meryem's light stick and tossed it to the side of me. After that, I scrabbled out of there about as fast as I could. It took less than a second before I drew their fire, but I was already fifteen feet from where I had been. The light stick would give them an alternate target, but the ruse wouldn’t last for long.
I crawled the rest of the way back. There was more gunfire, but it was aimed higher, at where I had held the gun.
“Michael, over here,” Meryem whispered.
I moved toward her voice, back to the cover of the front of the vehicle, risking a brief glow of light from my watch. Once I saw the lay of the land, I ignored the low-lying crates and fumbled up the stack to the rear of the pile, making a mental note to requisition night-vision gear the next time around. Then I tapped the light on my watch again and that’s when I saw it. There was a trailer hidden among the crates. It was army green, like the Unimog. I saw only the green tongue and part of a wheel, but I felt my heart race all the same. The crates so far had been small and what we were looking for was, if I were to guess, quite large. Large enough that it couldn’t have been carried in. But it could have been towed.