In seconds other armed monks appeared all over the room. The level of fire grew to a roar that rattled the chandeliers. One of the monks tried to fire a rocket-propelled grenade but was cut down a moment before he got it to bear. Mercer loosed a long fusillade and ran for cover behind a desk. Another monk dashed out to recover the fallen weapon and managed a snap shot that cratered the rock face above the tunnel.
The men tumbled from the opening as stones and rubble began to fall around them. Sykes and Grumpy poured out rounds to cover them and as soon as Mercer changed out his magazine, he fired over the top of the desk, taking two monks and forcing several others to retreat.
No one needed to order an advance. The men knew they had only seconds before the enemy regrouped. In leapfrog dashes they charged across the room, holding their fire as they ran but opening up again when they had cover.
Mercer was halfway across when a grenade was tossed in his path. He jumped through a doorway to his right and backed himself against the wall. The detonation blew the door from its hinge but left him unhurt. He took a moment to look around as the commandos flushed the defenders from the outer chamber.
The room he’d landed in was dominated by a large bed. Tapestries covered the walls. He thought the room was unoccupied until he spied a naked skeletal man propped against the bed headboard. Through mindless eyes he watched Mercer watching him. The pitiable creature began to giggle.
“What the—?”
The giggle turned into a shriek and the madman started to claw at his skin. His long fingernails tore bloody trenches from his arms and legs. He threw the ribbons of flesh at the heavy cerulean drapes hanging across the far wall of the bedroom. The clots of skin and tissue clung to the hangings while droplets of blood trickled down the rich blue fabric. Horrified by what he was seeing, Mercer couldn’t help but notice that the curtain seemed to billow slightly at the spot where the man was throwing bits of his body.
He stayed low and circled around the bed. As soon as the crazed figure saw Mercer was moving to the drapes, he stopped tearing at himself and made a cooing noise. Mercer reached the spot and used his rifle barrel to probe the cloth. There was an opening behind the drape.
“Is that what you were trying to tell me?” he asked the old man.
The man’s expression remained vacant. His toothless mouth hung slack.
Mercer lifted the drape. Behind it was a door that had been left ajar. A warm breeze blew from deeper inside the complex of tunnels. It had a sharp scent, like machine oil.
“Sykes!” Mercer called on his throat mike. “Sykes, can you hear me?” He heard nothing but static. The team had fought their way out of the first room and was doubtlessly chasing the monks farther into the mountain. The intervening rock was blocking the radio signals. “Bashful? Happy? Anyone read?”
He turned to check the bedroom entrance, hoping that at least one of the Delta operators had stayed behind to find him. He’d barely taken a step toward the exit when the old man screamed again and ripped a strip of skin off his hip.
Mercer froze. “Easy, now. I just need to check something.”
He took another step. The lunatic heaved the piece of meat at the secret door and reached across himself to tear another chunk from his shoulder.
“Okay, okay. I get the point. I’ll go through the door.” As soon as he turned back to the portal, the old man settled on his bed, his thin chest rising and falling as fast as a hummingbird’s.
The tunnel beyond the bedroom was much smaller than the lava tube the men had used to get this far, forcing Mercer to crouch. There were no lights, and the lamp attached to his M-4 had been damaged during the fighting. Its beam was an anemic glow that barely cut the gloom.
Every twenty paces or so, Mercer paused, cocking his head to listen for any movement. He sensed more than heard the rhythm of heavy machinery farther down the shaft. The impression coincided with the oil smell that was growing stronger. The warm air felt charged with electricity.
He silently prayed that the old man hadn’t led him down a dead end.
Three hundred yards into the tunnel, the path branched. Mercer paused at the fork, holding his breath, trying to determine where the oily breeze was coming from. He shut off his flashlight.
There! To the left was the faintest trace of light. He stealthily padded down the tunnel. The light grew stronger and the machinery noises seemed to be growing louder too. He could see the shaft was ending in what could be another chamber. He dropped low, crawling on the smooth rock floor, making his movements as slow and silent as he could. His M-4 was at the ready.
Rounding a slight bend, Mercer froze.
Indeed it was a chamber, a cavern that towered more than a hundred feet. The space was longer than a football field, wider too. It was like being at the entrance to an enclosed sports arena. But it was what sat in the center of the cave that stilled his heart and choked his breath in this throat.
He’d never seen anything like it — couldn’t imagine something like it could even be built.
Mercer had found the oracle.
THE ORACLE CHAMBER MONASTERY OF RINPOCHE-LA
The attack came from Mercer’s right, a slashing blow moving so fast it seemed to crack the air. He brought up his rifle in a purely reflexive block. The head of the twelve-pound sledgehammer hit the weapon’s receiver, crushing the mechanism, and the force of the impact knocked Mercer off his feet. He landed on his back five feet down the tunnel. He used the momentum to shoulder roll to his feet, disoriented but charged with adrenaline.
Donny Randall stood in front of him at the tunnel’s mouth, the long-handled hammer held at port arms. Mercer didn’t bother to aim. With the M-4 held at his hip, he pulled the trigger.
The weapon remained silent.
Randall charged.
Mercer raised the gun to ward off the next powerful swing of the hammer. The strike sent shivers up his arms and drove him back several paces. He retreated farther, dropping the M-4 and reaching for the Beretta hanging from his belt. Behind Randall the oracle glowed.
The pistol had just cleared the holster when Donny reacted. Mercer was out of range for another swipe with the hammer so he threw the tool like a javelin. The steel head smashed Mercer’s right hand, deadening his fingers and pitching the pistol into the dark recesses of the access tunnel.
Randall retreated back into the oracle chamber. Mercer searched for the fallen pistol but couldn’t find it. The hammer had landed nearby and he snatched that up at least to have a weapon. Facing Randall the Handle unarmed wasn’t an option. He dropped onto all fours, sweeping his hands blindly along the stone at the same time he watched for Randall’s return.
He caught a glimpse of something metallic just as Donny’s shadow loomed over him. He spun flat as Randall swung down at him with another sledgehammer. He twisted just enough for the head to miss him, but the side of his face was peppered with stone chips gouged from the tunnel floor by the blow. Mercer used the butt end of his own sledge to crack Donny on the shin, unbalancing him and allowing Mercer to scramble to his feet.
No one knew the origin of hammer dancing. It was almost as if it had cropped up spontaneously wherever men, hardened by labor and charged with savage competitiveness, gathered. It was a way of settling feuds in the slag heaps of Pennsylvania mill towns, and among black workers in the tail piles of Johannesburg’s gold mines. Mercer had seen it once on an oil platform in the swamps of the Niger River delta. The workers wagering on the outcome claimed they had invented the sport, but Mercer suspected men were betting on hammer fights in the pharaoh’s quarries when they were building the pyramids.