But Hatch's fist was already in motion, connecting heavily with Streeter's jaw even as he wheeled backward. Streeter staggered heavily against the railing and there was a protest of metal. Instantly, Hatch stepped forward, shoving hard with both hands. The railing gave as Streeter sagged back. He toppled into space, scrabbling frantically for a purchase. There was a gasp of surprise or pain; the crack of a pistol shot; the sickening sound of meat smacking metal. Then, more distantly, a splash that merged with the general rush of water far below.
The entire fight had lasted less than a minute.
Hatch rose to his feet, gasping from the exertion. He walked over to the inert form of Rankin, Bonterre already at the geologist's side. A single flash of livid lightning, reflected down through the tracery of struts, made it all too clear there was nothing he could do.
There was a grunt; the flashlight beam flared wildly; then Woody Clay heaved himself up onto the hundred-foot platform, sweat and dried blood mixing on his face. He had come up from below slowly, as a decoy, while Hatch had clambered quickly up the back side of the array to surprise Streeter.
Hatch was crushing Bonterre to him, his hands in the tangle of her dark hair. "Thank God," he breathed. "Thank God. I thought you were dead."
Clay watched them for a moment. "I saw something fall past me," he said. "Were those gunshots?"
Hatch's answer was interrupted by a sudden crash. Moments later, a large titanium spar came hurtling past them, raising fierce clangs as it bounced downward. The entire array quivered along its 150-foot length. Hatch pushed Bonterre and Clay across the shaking metal bridge into the nearby tunnel.
"What the hell's going on?" he panted.
"Gerard has opened the casket," Bonterre said. "He's set off the final trap."
Chapter 59
Neidelman watched, paralyzed with shock, as a series of violent tremors shook the treasure chamber. Another sickening lurch, and the floor canted farther to the right. Magnusen, who had been thrown against the far wall by the first jolt, now lay partly buried in a great mass of coins, thrashing and clawing, crying out in an otherworldly voice. The chamber lurched again and a row of casks toppled over, bursting in a rotten spray of wood, filling the air with gold and jewels.
The shifting of the casket beneath him shook Neidelman from his paralysis. He shoved the sword into his harness and looked about for his dangling lifeline. There it was, just above him, rising through the hole in the top of the treasure chamber. Far above, he could make out the thin glow of emergency lights at the base of the ladder array. As he watched, they winked out briefly, then flickered into life once again. He reached for the lifeline just as another terrible lurch came.
Suddenly there was a screech of tearing iron as the seam along the far edge of the floor split open. Neidelman watched in horror as the masses of loose gold slid toward the open seam, piling up against it, whirlpooling like water in a bathtub drain, pouring through the widening crack into a stormy black gulf below.
"No, no!" Magnusen cried, scrabbling through the hemorrhaging flow of treasure, even at this desperate extreme hugging and grasping the gold to her, caught between saving the coins and saving herself. A shudder that seemed to come from the center of the earth twisted the chamber, and a hailstorm of golden ingots buried themselves in the masses of coin around her. As the weight of the gold became greater and the whirlpool faster, Magnusen was sucked into the flow and pulled along toward the widening crack, her cries of no, no, no almost drowned by the roar of metal. She wordlessly stretched her arms toward Neidelman, eyes popping as her body was compressed by the weight of the gold. The vault echoed with the groan of buckling iron and the snapping of bolts.
And then Magnusen disappeared, sucked into the shimmering golden stream and down into the void.
Abandoning the lifeline, Neidelman scrambled up the shifting pile of gold and managed to grasp the swinging metal bucket. Reaching inside, he punched a button in the electrical box. The winch whined and the bucket began to ascend, Neidelman hanging beneath as the bucket scraped along the crazily angled roof of the iron vault before sliding up through the narrow cut.
As he slowly ascended the excavation toward the base of the ladder array, Neidelman hoisted himself into the bucket and glanced over its lip. He caught the last glimpse of a vast quantity of treasure—tusks, bolts of rotten silk, kegs, bags, gold, gems— vanishing in a great rattling rush through the crack in the treasure chamber below. Then the light, swinging wildly on its cord, smashed against the iron wall and was extinguished. The entire shaft went dark, lit only by the emergency lights from the array above his head. In the gloom, he saw—or thought he saw—the mangled treasure vault break free of the walls of the Pit and drop downward into a swirling chaos of water, sucked under with a final groan of iron.
A great tremor shook the shaft. Dirt and sand rained down, and the titanium bracings above gave a howl of protest. There was another flicker, and the emergency lights failed. The bucket came to a wrenching stop just below the ladder array, banging both sides of the narrow shaft.
Making sure the sword was secure, Neidelman reached up toward the winch rope, groping in the darkness. His fingers brushed against the lowest pilings of the array. Another terrible shudder twisted the Pit and he lunged upward with desperate strength, hoisting himself to the first rung, then the second, his feet dangling over the ruinous chasm. The entire support structure of the Pit was trembling under the strain, bucking like a live thing under his hands. There was a snapping sound in the darkness as one of the lower struts popped free. In the glow of a remote flash of lightning, he could see a broken body, bobbing in the watery ruin far beneath his feet.
As he hung from the array, gasping for air, the enormity of the disaster began to sink in. He dangled motionless for a second as his mind sought answers.
Then a vast black rage crept over his features and his mouth opened, wailing even over the roar of the void beneath him.
"Haaaaatch!"
Chapter 60
"What are you talking about?" Hatch asked, leaning against the wet tunnel wall, fighting for breath. "What final trap?"
"According to Roger, the Water Pit was built above a formation called a piercement dome," Bonterre shouted. "A natural void that goes deep into the earth. Macallan planned to snare Ockham with it."
"And we thought bracing the Pit would take care of everything." Hatch shook his head. "Macallan. He always was one step ahead of us."
"These struts of titanium are holding the Pit together—temporarily. Otherwise, the whole thing would have collapsed by now."
"And Neidelman?"
"Sais pas. He probably fell into the void with the treasure."
"In that case, let's get the hell out of here."
He turned toward the mouth of the tunnel just as another violent tremor shook the array. In the moment of silence that followed, a low beeping sounded from beneath Bonterre's sweater. She reached in, drew out the Radmeter, and handed it to Hatch.
"I got this from your office," she said. "I had to break a few things to find it."
The display was dim—the battery was obviously low—but the message displayed across the top of the screen was all too clear:
244.13 Rads/hour
Fast neutron flux detected
General radiation contamination probable
Recommendation: Immediate evacuation
"Maybe it's picking up residual radiation?" Bonterre suggested, peering at the screen.
"The hell it is. Two hundred forty-four rads? Let me see if I can bring the locator up."