With no steps to count, he instead counted the number of paces, measuring the length of the passage by the length of his stride. When he’d gone about twenty meters, he saw a blank wall directly ahead and shadows to either side; a T-intersection.
He stopped. Something about that choice didn’t feel right. Before, there had been a circular room, like a Templar chapel, but not this time. Was this a warning that he’d gone the wrong way, or simply an indication that the number of choices was shrinking?
He started forward again, slowly, not counting his steps until he was almost at the junction. He saw that these new passages were considerably smaller than the ones they had traveled through to get here, barely knee-high from the floor.
He stopped again, shining his light into the one on the right, and saw that this first impression was wrong; the passages weren’t smaller, but rather were just lower. If he crawled through the opening, he would drop down three or four feet to the floor where he would be able to stand erect.
“This is wrong,” he muttered.
He recalled Bones advice to trust his gut. SEALs were trained to always put the mission first, but they were also taught to listen to their instincts. It was an unwritten rule that any member of a team could call off a mission if they had a really bad feeling about it; they might have to answer some hard questions later, but in the moment, those feelings were to be heeded.
“That’s it. Calling it.” He turned around and started back to where Bones and Alex were waiting.
That was when the floor dropped out from beneath him.
The unexpected movement caused him to fall flat — or rather almost flat. The entire length of the passage was now slanted down at about a thirty degree angle, away from the entrance and toward the T-intersection.
Suddenly a tremendous boom seemed to resonate through the entire mountain. He caught a glimpse of motion and heard a grinding sound growing louder; something was moving down the slope toward him. He raised his flashlight and saw a block of stone, easily the size of a mini-van and almost completely filling the passage, sliding his way.
He scrambled to his feet and instinctively drew back from the relentless rock. If he didn’t get out of its way, it would pulverize him against the end of the passage. But which passage should he take?
In his peripheral vision he saw that both of the intersecting passages were now more or less level with where he was standing. He wouldn’t even need to crawl to get through the openings and escape being crushed, but he would have to make a decision.
Quickly.
Left or right? Either outcome was uncertain, but certainly better than staying where he was.
Don’t think, just go.
Trust your gut!
He did.
John Lee Ray, flanked by Scalpel and the rest of his inner circle, disembarked the funicular at Schwandegg Station and made their way down the stairs to the base of the elevated structure. Rooster’s last call had placed him at the northernmost corner of the building, where he claimed Maddock had found an entrance to a secret passage.
Ray had initiated movement even before Rooster had finished his first report. He had immediately recalled his men to their hotel, and within ten minutes, they were racing down the motorway in two rented cars. In the time it took for them to make the short road trip to Mulenen and the lower terminus of the Niesenbahn, Maddock and his crew had moved halfway up the mountain and found the entrance to the Templar vault.
Scalpel had been livid at the news of Maddock’s survival. “I should have put a bullet in his skull.”
“I’d say it’s a good thing you didn’t. He’s shown us the way.”
“But he’s going to beat us to the treasure.”
Ray smiled patiently. “In this race, the prize doesn’t go to the man who crosses the finish line first, but to the man who’s still breathing at the end of the day.”
“Maddock won’t be. I promise you that.”
But as Scalpel grunted a little with each painful step down the stairs, Ray wondered if maybe he should have left the man behind. His thirst for vengeance had certainly imbued him with the will to overcome his disability, but was it enough? Would Scalpel’s handicap betray him at a critical moment, putting the entire endeavor in jeopardy?
If he was a dog, thought Ray, I probably would have put him down by now.
They found Rooster sitting casually with his back to what looked at first glance like a structural cornerstone. The mercenary got to his feet and eased open the false rock face like a doorman admitting them to a secure building.
“How long have they been in there?”
“About half an hour,” said Rooster. “I thought about going in after them, but they’re pussyfooting all the way. I couldn’t risk them doubling back and discovering me. Also, no cell reception down there.”
Ray nodded. “Good work. This almost atones for your increasingly impertinent demeanor.”
Rooster laughed, evidently misinterpreting the comment as a joke.
“Are they armed?”
“Not that I could tell.”
“Good.” Ray took a pistol from the concealed holster under his left arm. “Then let’s keep it simple. Find them, kill them. We’ll worry about cleaning up the mess later.”
They descended the stairs single file, all armed with pistols and flashlights, and carrying enough high explosives to blast through any obstacles that came along. Ray took the lead and Scalpel was right behind him, gritting his teeth with each step, but nevertheless keeping pace with his employer.
Ray circled the entrance chamber, shining his light down each of the four passages. “Which way did Maddock go?”
Rooster shook his head. “I couldn’t tell.”
“Six of us and four ways to go. We’ll reconnoiter these tunnels for — say one hundred meters — and then report back here.” He randomly assigned a direction for each of the able-bodied men, leaving himself and Scalpel behind, ostensibly to coordinate.
Things went bad very quickly.
The man he’d sent up the stairs — his demolitions man, callsign: Paycheck — made it only halfway up the flight before a loud snap heralded a cacophony of metallic twangs and a veritable hailstorm of projectiles. Paycheck, howling in pain and surprise, tumbled back down the steps, surrounded by the broken shafts of a dozen crossbow bolts. Miraculously, only two of the arrows had found their target; one shaft protruded from Paycheck’s right thigh, while another had grazed the side of his head, opening a superficial but bloody gash above his left ear.
“Freeze!” Ray shouted, only now grasping that the Templar’s security measures had put the rest of his team in danger. His warning came too late.
Viper, who was scouting the right hand passage, heard both the tumult of the first trap springing and his employer’s warning, but before he could reverse direction, he felt the floor shift ever so slightly under foot, and then something struck the top of his head, not a crossbow bolt but a jet of liquid.
He staggered back, wiping away the oily substance that dripped down from his hair and stung his eyes. His first thought was that he had been poisoned, and the strange chemical taste and smell of the liquid seemed to confirm that. But then an oddly familiar rasping sound from behind the walls reminded him that oily chemicals had other hazardous properties.
Hidden from Viper’s view, a counterweight powered mechanism, similar in design to a trebuchet, had just struck a piece of flint against a long steel blade, producing a shower of bright sparks. Some of the sparks hit the gutter which had channeled the oil when the trap was triggered, igniting the vapors there in a whoosh, transforming the dripping murder holes into fountains of fire.