“And that helps us…how? Are you suggesting we should build an ark?”
“Of course not. That’s ridiculous.” Pierce grinned. “I was thinking more along the lines of a raft.”
42
Pierce had expected to spend hours hacking away at trees in the canal with Lazarus’s Pathfinder knife. The big man was still in no shape for physical labor, and Pierce was definitely not going to put a blade in Kenner’s hands. Despite the man’s assurances that he would cause no trouble, Pierce had tied him up. Since he was too hardwired for chivalry to ask any of the women to take a turn, Pierce had resigned himself to the prospect of doing all the work himself.
Lazarus, however, had a better idea. He took a spool of what looked like yellow and black rope from his pack and wrapped a length of it around the base of a tree. The trunk was twelve-inches in diameter at the base and about forty-feet tall, a baby compared to those growing outside the city.
“Primacord,” Lazarus explained in response to Pierce’s questioning look. “Basically a rope made out of high explosives. Perfect for small breaching charges.”
“You’re going to blow the trees up? I’ve heard of fishing with dynamite, but never lumberjacking with it.”
Lazarus tucked a slim silver blasting cap into the Primacord knot. “You should probably find cover.”
The detonation was not as spectacular as Pierce had expected, but it was loud and released a shock wave that scattered the Stymphalian birds from their rooftop perch. The strand of explosives did not blow the cypress apart in a shower of splinters, but rather burned through it like an acetylene torch. The tree toppled over onto the terrace with a crash of branches, then slid into the canal.
Using det cord like a laser saw, it took less than an hour to produce the logs necessary to form the raft’s deck, and slightly longer to drag them to the mouth of the tunnel leading out of the city where they began assembling the makeshift vessel. While Pierce and Lazarus lashed the logs together with parachute cord, Gallo, Dourado and Carter wove long strips of bark together to form a shield against another attack by the Stymphalian birds. Once these tasks were complete, they climbed aboard, and Pierce shoved off, using a pole cut from the top of one of the trees to punt the craft toward the daylight at the far end of the tunnel.
As they emerged, Lazarus scanned the sky above for any sign of another attack while the others huddled beneath the bark screen, but the birds didn’t show. Evidently the repeated explosions had driven the creatures off.
Pierce kept his eyes on the water. Gallo had told him about the salamander attack. But his curiosity about the creature was short-lived. All he cared about now was getting out of the sinkhole and finding Fiona.
As Gallo had predicted, the ancient Amazons had erected stone pillars to mark a channel leading south through the swamp. Long before they reached the base of the wall, Pierce could see a gaping hole in the cliff face directly ahead.
Carter stared at it and shook her head. “Great. I hate caves.”
Despite Carter’s apprehension, the passage out of the sinkhole was uneventful. There were no monsters lurking in the Stygian darkness, no treacherous waterfalls or cataracts, and best of all, no Cerberus gunmen waiting to ambush them. After everything they had endured, it was almost anticlimactic, but Pierce knew their exit was just a brief respite from the ongoing struggle. Cerberus still had Fiona, and he would not rest until she was safe.
The river channel might once have connected with one of the many Amazon tributaries, but time and neglect had altered the landscape. Not long after they emerged from beneath the tepui, the stream became a shallow marsh and the raft bottomed out. They were able to acquire a signal for both GPS and the satellite phone, and made contact with the Aegis office in Rio de Janeiro. Pierce arranged for an extraction. The remoteness of their location meant a wait of nearly a full day, but that would give them time to figure out what to do with Kenner.
“Kill him,” Lazarus said.
Pierce knew, or rather hoped, that Lazarus was bluffing. Shooting the Cerberus men to save Gallo had been one thing, but cold-blooded murder was another. Still, it was a tempting fantasy. “You’re probably right. Leave the body out here. No one will ever find it.”
“No!” Kenner protested. “I can help you. The girl—”
“The girl has a name,” Lazarus said.
“You already said you don’t know where she is,” Pierce said. “You’re of no use to us.”
Kenner’s eyes darted back and forth. “I can tell you what I do know. It might help you find Tyndareus.”
“The plane!” Dourado exclaimed from behind them. She stepped forward and pointed a finger at Kenner. “You were on the Cerberus Learjet.”
Kenner stared back uncertainly, as if trying to gauge how his reaction would be interpreted. “Yes. But I don’t know where I boarded. I was blindfolded from the time I left Tyndareus until the plane was in the air.” He pointed to Gallo. “Ask her. She’ll confirm what I’m saying.”
“It does not matter. I have a record of the plane’s flight plans for the last month. I just need you to tell me how many times you landed before you got to Belem.”
Kenner blinked, but before he could answer, Gallo joined the conversation. “We stopped once. The blinds were lowered so I couldn’t tell where. We were on the ground for maybe an hour.”
“You were in the Azores. That means you left from Rome. Cerberus is in Rome!”
“It’s a big city,” Pierce said.
Dourado shook her head. “Now that I know where to look, I can follow the money moving into Rome from the Cerberus shell corporations. I’ll find it. Just get me to a computer.”
Lazarus stared at Kenner. “I guess we don’t need you anymore.”
“No, wait. I can still help. I know things.”
Pierce glanced at Lazarus, but the big man’s face was unreadable. If eliciting Kenner’s complete cooperation, whatever that was worth, had been Lazarus’s intent, then he had succeeded. That did not solve the problem of what to do with Kenner, but it was a start. “The helicopter will be here in ten hours. That’s how long you’ve got to convince my friend that you’re worth saving. Start talking.”
Source
43
“Are you sure this is the place?” Pierce asked.
“Pretty sure,” was the reply, Dourado’s voice in his Bluetooth earpiece. She, along with Gallo, Carter and Kenner, who was zip-tied to his seat, were sitting in a rented van a block away. If Pierce and Lazarus did not make it out, they would call in the Carabinieri.
Dourado didn’t elaborate on the reasons for her certainty, and she didn’t have to. She’d already shown him the financial records tracing the flow of money from a number of Cerberus shell organizations to the Fondazione Dioscuri, a nebulous historical preservation society based in Rome. Construction records from the late 1980s confirmed major renovations to the famed Castel Sant’Angelo, underwritten by the same group. And blueprints revealed the extensive work done to parts of the building that were not on the tour route.
Even without the exhaustive compilation, Pierce would have believed her. Dioscuri was the Latin name for Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins, also known as the Tyndarids — sons of Tyndareus. Their enemy seemed to have a fondness for that particular theme.
Pierce crossed the footbridge over the Fiume Tevere, moving against the current of visitors departing the imposing circular edifice. The structure had served as a mausoleum to Roman emperors, a military fortress, a prison where enemies of the Vatican were held and executed and presently as a national museum. Everything felt so normal that Pierce wondered if they had gotten something wrong.