With each movement of millimeters, the block loosened a little more. The men began to tug on it. It didn’t want to budge, and for the longest time it didn’t—but then gradually it began to come free. The men hauled it out slowly and, straining under the weight, set it carefully on the floor.
“The walls of these temples and palaces often have double layers,” Cierra said, “with hollow spaces in between. That gives mechanisms like this one room to work.”
Gabriel peered into the black opening where the stone block had been. His Zippo was still in one of the buttoned-up pockets of his shirt. He fished it out, hoping that it would work after its immersion in the Black River.
The lighter only sparked the first couple of times he spun the wheel, but then the flame caught. He held it inside the hole in the wall and studied what he could see of the mechanism from this side. He couldn’t see where the lever attached to it.
“I’m going to have to crawl into this thing,” he said.
Boone held the lighter while Gabriel wedged his head and shoulders into the opening. They barely fit. His shoulders scraped against the rough stone on either side as he edged forward. He reached one hand back between his legs and felt the Zippo deposited in it. He brought the lighter forward, saw the play of the orange flame on the stone all around him.
Now he could see into the space where the apparatus was located. The lever on the outside of the chamber raised a stone rod that set off the movement of counterweights attached to either side of a delicate metal chain. Gabriel studied it until he had the whole set up committed to memory, then wriggled back out of the hole.
“We can do it,” he reported to the others.
General Fargo jerked his head in a curt nod. His spine was straight, and there was an air of command about him that hadn’t been there earlier. “Very well,” he said. He turned to Boone. “Sergeant, get the women and children back in the far corner of the chamber.”
“Not me,” Mariella said. “I’m staying with you, Granville.”
“I’m not going in any corner, either,” Cierra added.
“You can argue with them if you want to, General,” Gabriel said, “but you’d be wasting your time.”
“Very well,” Fargo said. “You two stay up here, but if there’s any shooting I expect you to get down and stay down.”
They didn’t agree to that, but they didn’t argue the point, either.
“When the door opens, the rest of you back off as well,” Gabriel said. “We want to get at least two of the guards in here.”
Fargo nodded. “Are you ready to proceed, Mr. Hunt?”
Gabriel looked around the room and saw that the shadows had thickened considerably. Not much light was left outside. The timing was good.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
Chapter 23
Now that he had familiarized himself with the mechanism, Gabriel didn’t have to climb all the way back into the hole. He lit the Zippo again and set it down on the stone surface, then reached in with one arm extended. He was able to reach the end of the stone rod with his fingertips. He felt his fingers brush against the links of the metal chain, saw the shadows shift as the counterweights swung. With a glance first at Cierra, then Mariella, and then General Fargo, he gave a nod, then gently lifted the rod.
He felt the counterweights activate.
A rumbling sound came from within the wall as the mechanism began rotating the heavy door on its axis.
Gabriel heard the guards shouting as they noticed what was happening. “Stand back!” one of them yelled. “What are you doing in there?”
“We’re not doing anything!” Fargo called back. “It just started opening on its own!”
The door was no longer flush with the wall on the inside of the chamber. Gabriel leaped up, caught hold of the upper edge of the door, and hung there as it continued its ponderous movement. When there was room, he pulled himself up, hooked a leg over the top of the door, and rolled onto it. The door was two feet thick and a good ten feet tall. If they had looked up, the guards might have been able to see Gabriel stretched out on top of it, but all their attention was focused on the other prisoners as they advanced into the chamber, brandishing their guns.
Of course, only two of the guards came in; the third stayed outside. It would have been best if all three had come in, but Gabriel hadn’t expected that—professionals knew better.
The man still outside the door said, “I’m going to call Podnem’vitch on the radio and tell him something funny’s going on here!”
Gabriel knew they couldn’t let that happen. He pushed up onto his hands and knees and then dived off the door, landing on the two guards inside the chamber.
His arms went around their necks and slammed their heads together as the impact of his weight drove them forward. The satisfying crack of bone against bone told him that they wouldn’t be waking up for a while.
But the third guard was still out there and had to be dealt with quickly. Before Gabriel could move, though, a big figure leaped over him and the two men he had knocked out. Boone crashed into the remaining guard just as the man jerked the trigger on his gun.
Boone’s body muffled the automatic weapon’s chatter. The sergeant’s momentum bore the guard over backward. The man’s head hit the edge of one of the stone steps with a crack, and the gun fell silent.
Boone rolled off the man. The burst of gunfire had ripped his midsection to pieces. His shirt was soaked with blood. He pressed his hands to his belly to hold in his ruined guts as one of the female prisoners rushed forward and threw herself on him, sobbing. That would be Virginia, Gabriel thought as he stood up.
Fargo moved to comfort the woman, Mariella coming after him. Boone’s eyes flickered open. “Did I…get him, Gen’ral?”
“You certainly did, Sergeant,” Fargo told him. “That was exemplary behavior. Exemplary, Seth.”
“Thanks…Gen’ral.” He glanced down at himself. “I reckon I could…drink up the whole well…and it wouldn’t help me none…even if the water still worked…oh, Virginia…”
His wife threw her arms around him again as his final breath drained from his body.
Gabriel picked up the weapons Esparza’s men had dropped. He handed one of them to Fargo, saying, “You know how to use one of these, General?”
“Looks to have a trigger,” Fargo said. “I think I can figure it out.”
Cierra stepped forward and held out her hand. “Give me one, Gabriel. I certainly know how to use it.”
She certainly did. Gabriel handed over the weapon.
“Your men must have had some firearms—your old pistols or rifles, if nothing else,” he said to Fargo. “Do you know what Esparza’s men did with them after he forced you to surrender?”
One of Fargo’s crew spoke up. “I saw them takin’ the guns into the infirmary, General.”
“They probably won’t waste much effort guarding old weapons like that,” Gabriel said. “Especially with the lot of you all safely locked up. But I’ll bet you could do some damage with them if you got your hands on them again.”
“Damned right we could,” another man said. “That old muzzle-loader of mine is the sweetest rifle I ever held.”
“Well, they make ‘em sweeter today,” Gabriel said, “but it’ll have to do.”
One of the women stepped forward. “I’ll go with Matthew. The two of us, we’ll get the guns.”