“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Michael asked. “For Them—nothing. Their religion, their lifestyle, their ritual—all of it tied to receiving the human sacrifices. And they won’t have that anymore. We could try to teach them other ways— but they wouldn’t let us.” He had locked the vault door and taken Michael’s revolver and from a safe distance shot off the combination dial. It could never be opened without torches or explosives. “We have to get all the useful stuff from here that we can carry, then make it away from here.”
“Madison told me there were rumored to be other exits from here.” “I could look for them—if we could find another way out, we could avoid another battle with the people outside. I don’t—“
Rourke looked at Natalia. “Agreed—there’s been enough death. Meet us back at the arsenal room—and be careful.”
Natalia started to turn off and Rourke reached out to her. She looked back at him. “One hour or less,” and she glanced to the gold ladies’ Rolex on her left wrist, her left hand held in his right.
“Agreed—one hour.”
Rourke watched after her a moment and then tapped his son on the shoulder.
“You’re a strong young man—that means you can carry a lot of stuff to the bikes.
Come on.”
Rourke started toward the arsenal room, his son beside him.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
She felt bone weary—the travel and the exertion through the thinner air had sapped her strength, she knew. But she forced herself into the gentle run as she moved along the corridor toward the conference room, one of the M-16s held at high port in her balled fists.
She stopped, before the conference room doors.
She started through, inside, past the conference table and the still-open safe, slowing now, stop-ping before the rear wail of the conference room. She had seen executive quarters in all parts of the world—the Kremlin, Washington, the corpora-don boardrooms of New York, Zurich. There was always a secret way in and out.
“Always,” she whispered.
As she began examining the wall surfaces, she thought of John Rourke—of his sadness. He had wanted for the world to be changed, for the evil to be gone from it. He had always, she knew, considered her naive. She smiled at the thought— for once she was the realist.
Evil was as intrinsic to life as good.
Her left hand stopped—she found a seam. Her right hand had the Bali-Song, the knife flicking open in her hand, the tip of the Wee-Hawk blade following the seam now, scratching the paint ever so slightly, but giving the seam in the wall greater definition.
She dropped to a crouch, wiping the blade clean on the carpet, flicking the handle half to close the knife, thumbing closed the lock as she squeezed the handles tight together. She pocketed the Bali-Song, feeling down the length of the wall to the floor, a smile something she could feel on her lips as she found the floor seam, following this as well—she had found the door. She followed the seam out to where it stopped.
Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna had one task remaining as she glanced at her ladies’ Rolex—
more than a half hour remained before the rendezvous with John and Michael. She only had to find a way to open the secret door.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
With Michael, Rourke had emptied the arsenal room of all that the bikes could conceivably carry. He had taken no more M-16s—there was an abundance of the rifles and the ammo for them already stored at the Retreat, nor had he taken .45s, and for the same reason. The six Steyr-Mannlicher SSGs were the only long guns he considered potentially useful from the arsenal, spare maga-zines for these as well and several canisters of .308 to feed the sniper rifles.
.44 Magnum ammo for Michael and 9mm Parabellum for Paul Ruben-stein and for the Walther P-38 pistol Natalia had selected. A half dozen boxes of .880 ACP for Natalia’s stainless PPK/S
American, the silenced pistol she had carried in the final assault against the Womb. A stainless steel six-inch Python from the pistol cabinet, then considering, a second one, as well. Perhaps for Annie, perhaps just to hold in reserve.
He had sent Michael on alone with the last batch of weapons and ammo for them, working fever-ishly to deactivate the weapons Natalia and Paul had not had the time to take care of earlier. To reactivate them, a machinist with gunsmithing abilities would be needed—he doubted any of the cannibals would qualify. He replaced the last of the revolvers—the firing pin removed—in the cabinet, dropping the firing pin with the others in the musette bag at his left side. He turned when he heard the sound of fingers rapping against a door frame, one of the Detonics Scoremasters coming from his trouser band into his right fist. But it was Natalia.
She was smiling. “I found our door. Another air lock. It looks as though it was never used. I opened it. It leads out on the far side of the mountain— there’s a valley beyond, I climbed up some distance. I got our bearings. We can ride through the valley and then go directly south for perhaps a day and then turn east and intersect our original trail here. It should even save us a day’s travel time and the path down from the doorway isn’t so steep that we can’t walk the bikes.”
“What can I say?” Rourke smiled.
“I know what you’ll say. Go get Michael and Paul and Madison and meet you by the doorway.”
“Where is it?”
“In the back wall of the conference room.”
Rourke started toward the doorway. “We’ll get the others together—come on,” and he took her hand in his and started into the corridor.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
“Madison showed me the hydroelectric power plant for this place—it was only a matter of time. No one had repaired or serviced the generators for so long some of the parts were starting to seize with rust. They would have lost their electrical power here in another year at the most. And the backup generator was so heavily greased it wouldn’t have functioned,” Michael announced, walking beside his father.
Rourke only nodded, turning into the corridor which led toward the conference room. He glanced back once—Michael was wheeling one of the Harleys, Paul another and Natalia a third. Madison—like Rourke—was festooned with ar-mament, bringing up the rear.
“When we reach those doors, Natalia, you go first to lead the way—I’ll leave last in case anything goes wrong inside here,” Rourke or-dered. They were at the conference room doors now and Rourke stopped, letting Michael roll the Low Rider past him, then letting Natalia and Paul do the same with the other two bikes. As Madison passed through, looking nervously behind her, Rourke fell into step with her. “Relax,” he told her. “The worst is over—you and Michael will be happy together.”
“But this place—the Place—I—“
“It’s all right now—don’t worry, you’re safe,” and he stopped near the head of the conference table, Natalia pulling open the inside air lock door, Paul Rubenstein helping her.