Turcotte stopped where he thought the hidden keyhole should be. “Pace check,” he announced over the radio. The report from the rest of the team indicated they all agreed plus or minus about three meters, which wasn’t bad. Turcotte placed the ring against the left wall at shoulder level. Nothing. He shifted left several feet, then back to the right when the outline of a door appeared. The door shifted, then slid up.
Turcotte stepped through, weapon leading. He took a quick shift glance in both directions. He turned left. “Let’s go.”
Like a bear trapped with its paw in the honey pot, Lisa Duncan remained on her knees, frozen. The pain was centered in her hand, but now Duncan couldn’t move any part of her body as it radiated through her nervous system, crawling up her arm like an inevitable tide of agony. Every nerve ending vibrated with the feeling of a red hot needle knifing through it from the inside going outward, as if the source were her bone marrow itself. She didn’t even blink as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aspasia’s Shadow walk forward, past the bodies of the two soldiers that had been killed earlier.
“One hundred and eighty-seven meters,” Turcotte said. “Check,” Graves replied.
Turcotte put his hand on the wall and began searching for the next door. The last door between them and the tunnel leading to the Hall of Records chamber.
Beyond the pain resonating from her hand, up her arm, and exploding in her brain, Duncan barely felt it as two soldiers grabbed her and began carrying her out of the chamber, the arm with the Grail dangling. Four others picked up the Ark, carrying it by the poles out of the chamber behind her.
Aspasia’s Shadow knelt next to Duncan. His long fingers closed around the narrow center of the Grail and squeezed at a certain spot. He carefully removed the Grail from her hand. Then he turned it upside down and a glowing stone dropped out. That end of the Grail closed. He pocketed the stone and then placed the Grail inside the Ark. He threw a white sheet over the Ark, covering it.
Still Duncan didn’t move.
A burst of automatic weapons fire echoed into the chamber.
Aspasia’s Shadow stood. “It is time to leave.” He still had the black sphere in one hand. The surface was divided into small hexagonal areas. His fingers tapped several of the hexes.
The first burst hit the ceiling above Turcotte’s helmet, sending chips of stone flying. There was no chance for the soldier to get off a second burst, as Turcotte had centered the reticules on the man’s chest even while he was firing. Turcotte’s trigger finger twitched and a dart ripped through the man’s chest, sending him tumbling back down the tunnel into the darkness from which he appeared.
“We’re in the right place,” Turcotte yelled, hearing the echo through his own receiver.
“Right behind you, sir!” Graves replied.
Turcotte ran toward the darkness. He paused just before entering and fired the rest of the magazine into the blackness as quickly as the cylinder rotated. He grabbed another cylinder off the bandoleer on his chest and reloaded.
Then he went in.
A soldier staggered onto the landing leading to the tunnel, blood spurting from the stump of his right arm, neatly severed by a dart. The man tumbled over the edge and fell to the ground with a solid thud. The blood stopped spurting.
Aspasia’s Shadow yelled commands in Arabic, sending the soldiers he had in the chamber running up the stairs toward the ledge.
Just as the darkness enveloped him, Turcotte heard the beginning of a startled yell over the team radio net. Then it was cut off as if a switch had been flipped. He waded forward through the darkness and stepped into the brilliant light of the Hall of Records chamber. Behind him, the tunnel was as dark, the strange doorway closed behind him.
“IR off, normal light,” Turcotte ordered as his screen was overloaded and blanked out for a second.
That’s all it took for a three-round burst from an AK-47 to hit Turcotte in the chest, staggering him back a step. The special ceramic/alloy armor absorbed most of the impact, chips flying.
The screen came alive with normal light. The reticules were high. Turcotte drew them down to the lead man coming up the stairs and fired. The steel dart tore through his chest and kept going, taking out the two men directly behind him before hitting the spine of the third man changing direction slightly, flying down into the chamber.
Turcotte took a second to scan the chamber. The Black Sphinx dominated the view, but he was more concerned about finding people. He saw Duncan! She lay unconscious on a tarp, being carried by two men. Behind her was a tall figure in a black robe, and behind him something draped in white also being carried.
“Spread out on the ledge,” Turcotte ordered over the team net. There was no answer.
Turcotte fired another dart down the stairs. “Rear view.”
There was no one behind him. The tunnel went ten meters, then faded into the strange black darkness.
“Front view.”
Turcotte fired the MK 98 again, spearing the closest man. He could see the flashes as others fired. Rounds from men on the floor of the chamber chipped stone all about him. Hard thuds on the suit indicated some of the bullets were hitting.
Turcotte took a step back into the tunnel, getting out of the angle of fire of those on the floor. A head appeared coining up the stairs and Turcotte fired, taking it clean off. That bought him some time. Still, no one came out of the darkness.
Silence on the team net.
“Can you hear me?” a voice yelled from below.
“External speaker on,” Turcotte instructed the computer. “I hear you.”
“You will let me out or your friend will be dead.”
“Who are you?” Turcotte needed to buy time for the team to reinforce him. He had no idea why they hadn’t come through yet.
“Aspasia’s Shadow. You will let me out or your friend will be dead and then we will kill you,” Aspasia’s Shadow continued. “Be glad I give you his offer.”
Turcotte tried to think, to assess the situation. “I’ll let you pass only if you give me her in exchange.”
“I cannot give you the woman. She has partaken of the Grail. She must go with me to finish the process. If you take her, she will die.”
Turcotte had no idea what he was talking about. Where the hell was the rest of the A-Team?
Another head appeared, peering cautiously. Turcotte aimed. A black object flew through the air. Turcotte shifted the reticules, tracking, fired, and the dart hit the grenade in midair.
At the same moment, a terrorist leapt up onto the ledge, firing on full automatic. The rounds impacted on the left side of Turcotte’s suit, staggering him sideways. The screen inside the helmet flickered, then adjusted as the left-side helmet mini-cam was destroyed. Turcotte dropped to his knees and fired, killing the man. Warning lights were flickering on the bottom of the screen, informing him that the left front mini-cam was out. Some of his lithium batteries had been destroyed, reducing available power by twenty percent and various other problems that he didn’t have time to read or know how to deal with.
“We will kill you,” Aspasia’s Shadow yelled. “And I will kill Doctor Duncan unless you immediately allow us to pass.”
Turcotte kept his aim on the top of the stairs. He switched to FM. “Report? Anybody?”
Silence.
“We are coming up and Doctor Duncan is in front,” Aspasia’s Shadow’s voice echoed in Turcotte’s helmet.
Turcotte stood. He could see two men coming up the stairs supporting Duncan, who appeared to be unconscious, between them. Turcotte knew he could take both men down easily, but they might take Duncan over the edge with them. Behind them loomed Aspasia’s Shadow.