But the gunfire came from outside the foyer. Bashful and Happy had engaged.
Mercer didn’t waste a second. If not for the debris of the collapsed staircase he could have let go, but the pile of shattered wood was unstable and even a drop from a few feet invited a broken leg. The dowel projecting from the wall was easily two feet long. He shifted his grip and began to pendulum his body, arcing across the void to reach the next peg in line, about three feet in front of him and two feet farther down the curved wall. He snagged it with his left hand and let momentum swing him down to the third. Like a child on the monkey bars, he looped his way down the wall as bullets sliced crisscrossing tracks through the smoke.
At the bottom he found cover amid the demolished staircase, but he did not shoot at the robed gunmen across the foyer. Sykes was barely halfway down and Mercer couldn’t risk drawing fire until the commando was safe. The instant Sykes dropped next to him, Mercer sighted in on one of the gunmen and put a bullet into his chest. His partner fumbled with another RPG-7. Mercer fired again, catching him in the hip as he pulled the rocket launcher’s trigger. The missile went errant, climbing straight up on a column of flame until it impacted on the burning ceiling three floors above. The explosion seemed to shake the monastery to its foundation. More of the roof came down. One chunk landed on the gunman, crushing him flat.
The shooting suddenly ceased as Bashful and Happy dispatched the last of the killer monks. “I think we’re clear, Doc.”
“Roger.” Sykes stood.
Mercer and he teamed up with the other two and together they ran to the main mezzanine, where Grumpy, Sleepy and Dopey waited to continue the search. The first floor was ablaze now. The floor was littered with smashed tiles and soot lay thick on every surface. If not for the wind howling through the building, the monastery’s interior would have been hotter than a furnace.
“Where’d they go?” Sykes panted. He wiped grime from his face.
Grumpy nodded down a hallway. “There’s a door down there. I saw them as they went through. On the other side it looks like a cave or something.”
Mercer nodded. “This place was built on top of a geologic hot spot, like Yellowstone Park. That must be one of the old lava tubes they went down. I was afraid of this.”
“Why?”
“A typical building only has four sides and so many exits. You can’t get too lost. But down there you take one wrong turn and we could end up miles from where they’ve got Tisa.”
A tremendous crash on the far side of the monastery ended the rest of the discussion. The building was coming down. Either they had to get out now or follow Tisa’s captors into the subterranean labyrinth.
Sykes gestured Grumpy to take point. They ran to the doorway, fanning out as Dopey, their demolitions expert, checked it for booby traps. Finding nothing around the jamb, he stood aside to use the butt of his M-4 to ease the door slightly. It creaked on its hinges, swung open a foot and exploded in a blinding flash.
Dopey remained silhouetted against the blast for a fraction of a second before his body was blown ten feet down the hallway. He tumbled against a column. Much of his uniform had been stripped from his body, as well as most of his skin.
The blast wave rolled over the rest of the men, covering them in powdered stone and wood shavings. Behind them a stone column collapsed and a section of the second floor smashed into the foyer. Flames rose from the debris.
“Goddamn it,” someone screamed as they raced from their cover positions. Sykes was the first one at Dopey’s side. Grumpy and Mercer stayed back, covering the tunnel entrance with the M-4s in case the explosion brought an ambush. The rest of the men clustered around their fallen comrade. Their movements were purely reflex. There was nothing any of them could do. Dopey had been killed instantly.
“That’s two the fuckers got,” Sykes hissed. “I want them. So help me God I want them.”
They approached the still-smoking cave entrance. The men carried their rifles high, shoulders hunched, fingers curled around triggers. The barrels were in constant motion, sweeping corners and shadows.
Beyond the ruined doorway, the tunnel was a circular fissure that ran down into the earth. A few lamps bolted to the ceiling provided dingy light. It was deserted. The men stayed in a tight group as they inched into the shaft. In the tight confines, staying together reduced the risk of friendly fire and allowed them a denser barrage of counterfire if they were attacked.
The passage corkscrewed and twisted as they went, providing blind corners that needed to be scouted and slowed their progress. Mercer could feel Tisa slipping further and further away. How long ago had she come this way? How far ahead was she?
Sykes was leading the party and dropped down on his haunches, holding up a gloved fist. The men stopped and lowered themselves. From around the next bend a bright glow crept up the tunnel. Sykes moved forward cautiously, his boots making a bare whisper on the stone floor.
He paused at the corner. “Jesus. Come on.”
The men ran up. The chamber had once been richly appointed with antiques, desks, lamps, and tall bureaus. Two walls were dominated by bookshelves. Mercer recognized the texts from the single journal Tisa had stolen from Rinpoche-La. These were the watchers’ archives, the books on which scribes had written the oracle’s predictions that people had gone out to verify.
Everything was burning. The shelves, the furniture, and the books. There wasn’t enough air in the room for the flames to grow high, but enough remained for the priceless artifacts to smolder and blacken before their eyes. Mercer was certain that Donny Randall had set the fire to delay them.
As Sykes and his team searched through the growing smoke for an exit, Mercer tried to approach one of the shelves. The heat was intense, as if the room was an oven. He made a grab for one of the books, only to have it disintegrate in a burst of flame and ash. He tried for two more with the same results. At his fingertips was the knowledge to save millions of people and yet it was out of reach.
He unbuckled his combat harness and let it drop to the floor, then stripped off his battle jacket.
“Mercer, what are you doing? We gotta go!” Sykes had found the door out of the chamber.
“I have to save them!” Mercer shouted over the crackle of burning wood and parchment. He scanned the rows, hoping to find how the chronicles were arranged, but couldn’t make out the titles through the smoke. He made a guess that the last books were the most recent. Using his jacket, he swept the last three books from the shelf and bundled them as quickly as he could.
They were as hot as bricks from a kiln and his hands blistered. He ignored the pain, clamping the jacket tightly around the books, trying to smother the embers. He was too slow. Curls of smoke grew from the fabric and it began to blacken. He tried to beat at those spots with his hands, but it did no good. The entire bundle caught fire. Mercer jumped back, momentarily blinded by the flash. The precious collection burned like a torch — lost for all time.
“Mercer, let’s go!”
He turned reluctantly from the chronicles. The remainder of the shelves were sheeted in flames. Centuries of painstaking work was gone. He snatched up his harness and rifle and followed Sykes deeper into the ground.
For ten minutes the men wended their way along the tunnel until they came to another open chamber. This one was much larger than the archive, with towering ceilings adorned with chandeliers and ornately carved furniture. It resembled something out of the palace at Versailles.
Grumpy and Sykes entered first, staying tight to the wall as they made a circuit of the room. The rest of the men covered them from the tunnel’s mouth. A dozen paces in, Bashful barked a warning. Sykes and Grumpy dropped behind a massive urn. Bashful fired to his left, his rounds chewing the frame off a doorway. From across the room a monk stepped from behind a screen and fired back. Grumpy opened up from a prone position, stitching the monk from groin to shoulder.