The helicopter steadied into position above them.
Ropes dropped on all sides.
3:27 P.M.
"Don't shoot!" Krista screamed as one of the men aimed at the four below. "I want that group alive."
At least for now.
The soldiers' bloodlust was up. One of them had taken a stray round to the face and lay dead on the cabin floor. Whoever was firing on them knew how to handle a rifle. She'd give him that much.
She pointed to the far side of the cloister, to where the sniper had taken roost. She clapped a gunman with a grenade launcher.
"Take him out."
There was nowhere the bastard could hide.
Especially from a thermobaric grenade.
Kowalski sprinted.
He knew from the sudden cessation of gunfire that something much worse was about to drop on his head. At least the old lady and the guard had already fled the cloister when the firefight first started. They'd wanted no part of this fight.
Typical French...
The only warning Kowalski got was a sharp whistling that cut through everything else. He glanced back-so he didn't see the hole.
One second he had stones under his feet, then nothing but open air.
He fell headlong down a narrow set of steps.
A fiery explosion ripped past his heels. A blast wave kicked him in the rear and catapulted him down the rest of the steps.
He landed in a crumpled, dazed pile at the mouth of a dark tunnel.
Deafened, with his nose bleeding and his backside smoking, Kowalski realized two things. The steps hadn't been here a moment ago. And worse, he knew where he must be.
3:28 P.M.
Even with his ears ringing from the grenade blast, Gray heard his name bellowed, followed by a blistering string of curses.
"Run!" Gray yelled to the others.
He grabbed Rachel; Seichan snagged Wallace. They all fled from under the helicopter, dancing through the whipping ropes. The blast wave from the grenade had burst outward with a fiery slap. Even the helicopter had bobbled, which bought them just enough time to sprint for the walkway.
A large chunk of the cloister was now a blackened, smoky ruin.
Seconds before, Gray had watched Kowalski barreling away from the blast zone. Then the big man had suddenly fallen straight out of view, as if he'd tumbled down a well-no, not a well.
"Get your ass over here!"
Only one thing made Kowalski sound that scared.
The four of them ducked into the walkway. Gray spotted it immediately. A narrow staircase had opened in the floor. So he'd been right. Spinning the compass had unlocked the hidden passageway.
"Hurry," he said.
Behind them, the helicopter had stabilized and men in combat gear zipped down the lines. He heard the boots hitting the ground as he reached the stairs.
"Down, down, down," he urged.
The others piled through the opening. Gray went last. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a soldier leveling a rifle. He ducked. A spray of bullets passed over his head and rebounded off the wall. Ricochets pelted like bee stings. He took one to the skull that felt like it cracked bone.
It could have been worse.
Only rubber bullets, he realized as he hurried below. Nonlethal. Someone wanted them captured alive.
He tumbled into a lower passage.
Kowalski yelled back to him. "There's a lever over here! Should I pull it?"
"Yes," they all shouted in unison.
Gray heard a scrape of metal. The stairs began rising behind them. Each step was really a slab of rock, staggered to make a staircase. Each slab rose vertically to reseal the opening above.
Darkness fell over them completely.
A scratch of flint sounded, and a small flame flickered to life. It illuminated Seichan's face as she held up her lighter.
"Now what?" she asked.
Gray knew they only had one chance. Rachel's life-all their lives-hung on one hope. "We must find that key."
Chapter 30
October 14, 3:33 P.M.
Clairvaux, France
Krista stalked across the cloister's garden. The day had turned to twilight as smoke choked the sky, occasionally stirred by a passing helicopter.
Throughout the prison grounds, hundreds of fires burned. Sirens continued to blare, punctuated by gunshots and men's screams. The prison guards had enough to manage with loose prisoners, raging fires, and utter chaos. They wouldn't bother with the ruins for the moment. But to ensure their continuing privacy, she had the second assault team set up a perimeter, guarding all access points to the area. Overhead, the helicopters with their gun mounts added air support.
An especially loud explosion drew Krista's gaze to the west. A fresh curl of flame shot into the sky. An exploded fuel tank off by the small heliport, she guessed. The area had been one of their first targets.
Krista had wanted the prison as isolated as possible, for as long as possible. Before the strike, she had the major phone and communication trunks severed. She had the one road out to the prison planted with mines. Eventually a response would reach here, but she planned on being gone before that happened.
Or so she hoped.
Her second-in-command met her in the walkway. He was a hulking black Algerian named Khattab. He scowled and shook his head. "Still no contact with the targets."
She had a team scouring beyond the ruins of the cloister. A soldier had shot at one from the group; from the description, it had been Grayson Pierce. But where did they all go? The shooter's report made no sense. He had shown her where the others had vanished. But Krista found no window or door. The walls were solid. Had they slipped through the shadows and escaped?
So far they had not been spotted again.
All they'd found were a scared guard and an old woman out in the ruins. She had questioned them, but they didn't know anything.
She stood in the walkway with Khattab and stared at the brass compass in the middle of the garden. They'd been doing something over there when her team flew in.
She pointed. "Get two men on that compass. See if there is anything unusual."
"And what about the targets? Do our orders remain the same?"
"I have new orders." She had hoped to secure the Doomsday key, but she recognized that was one brass ring beyond her reach. "Shoot to kill."
As she stepped away, her boot heel skidded on some sand. It drew her eye to the stones underfoot. She knelt down. She had missed it before in the shadows, but a sandy line of grated limestone delineated a rectangle on the floor. Half-hidden behind a pillar, the location was where the shooter had seen their escaping targets vanish.
Krista pinched some of the crushed stone. She rubbed it between her fingers. Her eyes narrowed.
"Khattab, scrub those orders. I want men over here. Someone with demolition experience."
Maybe that brass ring wasn't quite so far out of reach.
3:34 P.M.
With his flashlight in hand, Gray led the others down a brick tunnel. It descended steeply in a straight course. As well as Gray could get his bearings down here, it seemed to be leading them beneath where the old abbey had once stood. By now, they had to be four stories underground.
No one spoke.
They all knew everything depended on finding that key.
Gray followed the beam of his flashlight. The sides of the tunnel vanished up ahead. Despite the urgency, he slowed everyone down. He remembered the booby trap he had inadvertently activated. Now was not the time for a careless mistake.
Holding his breath, he edged down the last of the tunnel. His flashlight's beam diffused into a much wider space. He stepped to the opening and gazed out at the chamber beyond.
His first impression was of a subterranean cathedral. Brick walls lined by four giant pillars supported a massive circular dome. The structure was similar to the vaults along the edges of the cloister. But here the dome was really one massive vault. Arched ribs rose from each of the four pillars and crossed at the top. Viewed from below, Gray knew what the pattern must look like: a circular dome quartered by crossed ribs.