Viper was already backpedaling away from the trap, but the slippery floor and his blindness conspired against him. His feet flew out from under him and he landed on his back, surrounded by a pool of oil as spurts of flame erupted all around.
The mercenary didn’t bother trying to get up. He twisted away from the oil slick, rolling along the floor, over and over again to extinguish the fires that kept flashing up on his clothes. His hair — which he kept shorn nearly to his scalp — was scorched away in a flash, but he beat his arms against his cranium to prevent the fire from doing any more damage. He didn’t stop rolling until he was almost back at the entrance chamber.
On the descending staircase, a burly Texan who went by the name Cowboy, didn’t hear the sound of traps springing or Ray’s shouted warning. He moved confidently down the steps — seventy-two of them, though he didn’t keep count — until he reached a dead end. The passage just stopped, the last stair tread butting up against a wall. There was a square of stone protruding about an inch from the wall, and reasoning that it might activate another secret passage, Cowboy pushed on it experimentally.
The square slid into the wall and Cowboy heard a loud snap.
The stair tread he was standing on abruptly dropped six inches. The step right behind it dropped too, a full twelve inches, so that it was flush with the first.
Cowboy instantly understood what was happening. Every single step of the staircase was settling, sliding down into increasingly deep recesses that would ultimately leave him at the bottom of a thirty-foot deep shaft. The higher steps were settling more slowly, but there was already a visible gap at the top.
He ran, vaulting onto the steps and bounding up them like his life depended on it, which it probably did. Each time his foot landed on a step, his weight hastened the settling process, and the shifting surface caused him to stumble repeatedly, until he was not so much running up the stairs as crawling. By the time he had clawed his way to the top, at least six feet separated the last step from the opening to the central chamber. Cowboy threw himself at the opening, knowing that if he didn’t catch it on the first try, he wouldn’t get another chance.
His forearms hit the stone threshold, his hands caught the edge, and then his full weight came down on his fingertips as the stair tread beneath his feet dropped away.
An ordinary man might have been able to hold himself there for a few seconds before his strength failed, but Cowboy was no ordinary man. A veteran soldier, he was like all John Lee Ray’s men, in exceptional physical condition. The muscles in his arms and across his back flexed and bulged until they strained the fabric of his shirt. The seams at the shoulder tore open with an audible rasp. Fighting both gravity and the friction of his torso against the sheer stone wall, he slowly hauled himself up until his chin was level with the opening.
“Help!” he gasped, not realizing that he was not the only one in a dire situation. No help came.
He swung his right elbow forward, then his left, so that both arms were entirely on the smooth floor of the chamber. He felt himself slipping, and tried to dig his fingers into the stone like claws. Fingernails bent and ripped free of their cuticles.
“No, damn it!”
His slide stopped as if his hissed denial had somehow altered the laws of nature. He strained again, and this time got his upper torso onto the stone floor. Another heave and he was free of the trap. Panting from the exertion and seething with anger.
It would be a few minutes before Cowboy would realize that he had fared better than any of the others.
Down the left-hand passage, Rooster had also heard the shouted warning a moment too late. He had, as he was wont to do, strode quickly and boldly to the far end of the chamber. There he had discovered a T-junction, though to access either of the intersecting passages he would have to crawl through a low opening and drop down a few feet.
He was just about to kneel down to shine his light into one of these passages when the floor dropped beneath him.
It took him a second to realize that the passage had tilted, angling down to where he now found himself on hands and knees. He was just starting to rise to his feet when he heard the deep-bass thunder of a huge stone block dropping out of the ceiling near the mouth of the passage to slam down on the sloping floor. It immediately began sliding toward him.
Rooster scrambled back, aware that if he didn’t get out of the way, the block would smash him against the back wall, and the only way to get out of the way was to dive into one of the adjoining passages.
Which one?
The stone ground ominously along the sloping passage. There was no time to think about it; he had to move. He turned to the right because that seemed the more natural way to go and dove out of the way of the sliding block. One corner of it struck a glancing blow, just enough to make him stumble but not enough to hurt, and then the massive rock settled into place, completely covering the mouth of the side passage.
Rooster recovered from his near-fall and stood upright directing his light forward to see where the passage went.
The beam showed a blank wall, about eight feet in front of him.
Dead end.
Rooster felt dread creep over him. He was completely sealed in.
He turned back to the block that had imprisoned him and started pounding on it, hoping to somehow signal to the others. The stone absorbed his blows without the slightest noise. He did however hear another sound, the same grinding that had accompanied the sliding block, but this time the noise was all around him.
He turned the light every direction looking for the source, realizing only when he felt it pressing against the top of his head that it was the ceiling that was moving… lowering. Desperately, he tried to brace it up with his body, but the massive weight bore him down to his knees, and kept coming.
In the last few seconds of his life, Rooster wondered what would have happened if he had chosen the other passage.
“Maddock!”
Bones and Alex both cried out together, but the ominous noise of the massive stone block sliding down the passageway drowned out their voices. The tunnel was filled with a cloud of dust, blocking their view of what happened next, but they didn’t need to see to know. There was a loud crunch as the block reached the end of the passage and settled into place. From somewhere deep inside the mountain, they could hear more stone blocks moving.
Alex started down the passage, but Bones held her back. “No way are you going down there.”
“I sent him down there.” Guilt twisted her face. “You tried to tell me. It’s my fault.”
Bones shook his head, but had no words to ease her grief.
“Yes, it is,” announced another voice. “And I will never let you live it down, Catholic girl.”
The words were broken up by a fit of coughing, but there was no mistaking the voice. As a dust-streaked figure emerged from the passage, Alex wrestled out of Bones’ slackening grip and rushed forward to intercept Maddock with an embrace that sent him into another coughing fit.
Bones overcame his stunned paralysis and started forward as well, throwing his arms wide as if to sweep them both into a bear hug. Maddock held up a hand to ward him off. “Slow down there, sailor. What do you say we just shake hands?”
“Maddock, you are the luckiest man I’ve ever met,” Bones said, still wagging his head in disbelief. “So are you walking through walls now?”
Maddock grinned. “Nope. Easier to go over them. I realized there was a big gap at the top of that block, so I climbed up onto it before it smacked the wall.”
Alex squeezed again. “I am so, so sorry.”