She noticed the men had gathered around her and were waiting to see what she would do. “We keep moving,” she said, coldly. The others nodded. She clipped a small light to the bottom of her gun barrel and switched it on then spun around and led the way into the cave, shining her light around on the smooth rock walls as she moved ahead.
The cave was actually a passageway, carved out of the rock underneath the river. It was no natural occurrence by any stretch of the imagination. Human hands had created it a very long time ago. The corridor ran straight back for about thirty feet or so before opening up into a fairly large room with three doors that proceeded further underground.
Angela stepped over to the door on the right and examined the symbol at the top. Then, quickly, she did the same with the other two. She turned to her team leader. “This must be a test of some kind. Which way do you think they went?”
He moved to the door on the right and examined the floor and hard edges to the doorway. Then he repeated the process with the middle door and then the one on the left. He reached down and picked something up off the floor near the last door with a Greek symbol over it. “A quarter,” he said. “Looks like they went this way,” he stood up and tossed the coin over to her.
Weaver wasn’t convinced but it was their only lead. She couldn’t interpret the meanings of the symbols so she had to take the chance. However, she could minimize her personal risk.
“You two,” she pointed at two of her remaining six men. “Lead the way.”
The two mercenaries looked at each other skeptically but obeyed. They’d already seen what she was capable of in the church. Slowly, they stepped across the threshold of the doorway and into the passage. Angela and the others followed closely behind. The air in the corridor was cold, noticeably more so than the room they’d just left. A draft brushed passed their faces as they continued to move along. Just like the room before, the walls were smoothly carved from the rock beneath the river. There were no signs or pictures, only perfectly smooth stone walls and floors. The two men in the lead came to a point where the direction of the passageway came to a halt and made a sharp right. Cautiously, they leaned around the corner and shone their beams into the empty, stone hall. Simultaneously, they moved ahead around the corner, one on each side of the path. Suddenly, the floor shifted and tilted down where they stood. They lost their balance as the contraption lowered like an ancient teeter-totter. Both men yelled for a moment before dropping out of sight.
Angela and the team leader had jumped back at the sight but they moved forward again and risked a look down into the space where the men had fallen. On their side, the floor had raised and they could see down into a chamber. Their flashlights revealed a pit of what looked like hundreds of stone spikes protruding up from the floor. A few skeletons with very old looking armor were scattered among the stone spears. Like the decayed bodies of the skeletons, the two men who fell had been impaled.
One of them was already dead, a particularly large spike jutting through his chest in a bloody, mangled mess. His eyes stared up to the ceiling, lifeless. The other man was writhing in agony, a stone barb piercing through his abdomen and right leg. “Help…me,” he managed to gasp.
“Leave him,” Angela ordered. “We go back and take a different passage.”
The man below reached up his right hand, begging for help when a deep rumble resonated through the cave. The floor began lowering back down again and the dying mercenary disappeared in the darkness below.
“Turn around,” She ordered. “Let’s move.”
Tommy was amazed at how deep the passage went into the earth. It seemed like they’d been walking for thirty minutes. Maybe it had only been ten, but, either way, the task of carving out that much stone seemed an incredible one. Finally, he could see an opening up ahead. “Looks like something at the end of this corridor,” he said to Carlson.
A few moments later the hallway opened up into an enormous room. The ceilings rose like the inside of a pyramid, coming to one point in the top where a small hole appeared to be bored into the stone. The smooth walls were about eight feet high, meeting the ceiling and amplifying the effect of the sloping angles. On the opposing three walls were three symbols, a leaf carved into the middle of each.
Tommy recognized them immediately. In the center of the room, a cube shaped pedestal rose up from the ground about four feet. The scene reminded him of the chamber he’d found in Georgia. With that one, they’d needed to place the stone on the little altar to gain access to the golden room. This pedestal, however, was different. Engraved on the side of it was a picture of a tree whose branches wrapped around, spiraling upward until they reached the top. On the surface were three imprints of leaves matching the ones on the walls. Within each imprint were dozens of little stone pegs.
“What is this?” Carlson asked as he whirled around in confusion. “Where is all the gold?”
“You know,” Tommy answered in a snobby tone, “that is exactly what the last guy wondered when I found one of these things.”
Carlson’s anger spiked; he smacked Tommy across the face with the back of his hand.
Tommy fell backwards a few steps but stood tall once he regained his balance. “Yeah, about that. We probably need the three golden leaves to get into the real chamber,” he said defiantly.
“What are you talking about,” Hunter raised his gun and pointed it at Tommy’s face. “What golden leaves?”
“You mean these,” a new voice came from behind Carlson in the direction of the doorway.
Carlson turned around to see Wyatt open his backpack and reveal a shimmering, yellow object; he also noticed that Will and Adriana had guns trained on him.
Hunter cursed himself. Had he kept his gun on Tommy, he could have at least retained his hostage. Now he was in a tight spot. However, he still had the weapon aimed in Adriana’s direction.
“Drop those guns or I kill her right now,” Carlson made sure his barrel was pointing straight at her heart.
Tommy started to move towards him from behind, but Hunter saw the movement and halted him. “You move another inch and she dies! Understood?”
Schultz froze in his steps.
“Squeeze that trigger and you die next,” Sean said in a steel voice.
Chapter 66
Angela stood between the two remaining doorways, trying to decide what to do. Telling any other men on her team to lead the way down a dark passage would be futile after seeing what happened to the last two. She would have to take a risk.
“You two,” she pointed at a red-haired man with a matching beard who was standing next to another mercenary with a shaved head and a goatee. “Take the middle passage. We’ll go down the right. If you get into trouble, radio for help. And if you find anything, let me know.”
They knew she had no intention of helping them, as just evidenced with the men who she’d left to die but by offering to take the same chance they were taking, their minds seemed to be a little more at ease. They nodded, full of new courage and watched as she led the way into the far right corridor. The team leader and another, younger mercenary followed her in. Convinced they had as good a chance to survive as the others, they moved ahead and disappeared into the center portal.
Angela moved carefully along the passage, staying close to the wall. Her light shone into the long hallway ahead. It seemed so far, she couldn’t see the end of it. Suddenly, she heard two screams in her radio. They’d only been in the tunnel a minute.