Текст книги "The Judas Strain"

Автор книги: James Rollins

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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

All human.

The lake was a massive boneyard.

Stunned to silence, they continued onward.

As they hiked along the stone bank, the glow slowly grew in the lake. The burn to the nostrils that Lisa had noted before grew more intense. She remembered Christmas Island, the tidal dead pool on the windward side.

Biotoxins.

Kowalski wrinkled his whole face.

And like smelling salts, the sting also stirred Susan. Her eyes fluttered open, glowing in the dark, a match to the shine in the lake. She remained dazed, but she recognized Lisa.

Susan tried to sit up.

Gray and Kowalski lowered her to the floor, needing to rest anyway, stretching their shoulders and kneading their hands.

Lisa sank beside Susan, modestly draping the tarp over her shoulders as she helped the woman sit up.

Susan shied back as Kowalski stepped near.

“It’s all right,” Lisa assured her. “They’re all friends.”

Lisa introduced the others to help reassure Susan. Slowly the panicky daze cleared. She seemed to collect herself – until she stared past Lisa’s shoulders and spotted the glowing lake.

Susan surged away, hitting the wall with her back and propelling herself up into a teetering crouch.

“You must not be here,” she keened, voice rising.

“No fucking kidding,” Kowalski griped.

Susan ignored him, her eyes on the lake. Her voice lowered. “It will be like Christmas Island. Only a hundredfold worse…trapped inside the cavern. And you’ll all be exposed.”

Lisa did not doubt it. Already her skin itched.

“You must go.” Susan steadied enough to gain her feet, leaning a hand on the wall. “Only I can be here. I must be here.”

Lisa saw the fear shining in her eyes, but also the dead certainty.

“For the cure?” Lisa said.

Susan nodded. “I must be exposed one more time, by the source here. I can’t say how I know, but I do.” She lifted a palm to the side of her head. “It’s…it’s like I’m living one foot in the past, one foot here. It’s hard to stay here. Everything is filling me up, every thought, sensation. I can’t turn it off. And I…I feel it expanding.”

Again the fear shone brighter in her eyes.

Susan’s description reminded Lisa of autism, a neurological inability to shut off the flow of sensory input. But a few autistic patients were also idiot savants, geniuses in narrow fields, their brilliance born out of their rewiring. Lisa tried to imagine the pathophysiology that must be occurring inside Susan’s brain, awash in strange biotoxins, energized by the bacteria that produced the toxins. Humans only used a small fraction of their brain’s neural capacity. Lisa could almost picture Susan’s EEG of her brain, afire, energized.

Susan stumbled to the water’s edge. “We only have this one chance.”

“Why?” Gray asked, stepping alongside her.

“After the lake reaches critical mass and erupts with its full toxic load, it will exhaust itself. It will take three years before the lake will be ready again.”

“How do you know that?” Gray asked.

Susan glanced to Lisa for help.

“She just knows,” Lisa answered. “She’s somehow connected to this place. Susan, is that why you were so urgent about getting here?”

Susan nodded. “Once opened to sunlight, the lake will build to a blow. If I missed it…”

“Then the world would be defenseless for three years. No cure. The pandemic would spread around the world.” Lisa imagined the microcosm aboard the cruise ship expanded across the globe.

The horror was interrupted by Seichan’s return, pounding up to them, breathless, her face shining damply. “I found a door.”

“Then go,” Susan urged. “Now.”

Seichan shook her head. “Couldn’t open it.”

Kowalski pantomimed. “Did you try giving it a hard shove?”

Seichan rolled her eyes, but she did nod her head. “Yes, I tried shoving it.”

Kowalski threw his hands high, surrendering. “Well, that’s all I got.”

“But there was a cross carved above the stone archway,” Seichan continued. “And an inscription, but it’s too dark to read. The words might offer some clue.”

Gray turned to the monsignor.

“I still have my flashlight,” Vigor said. “I’ll go with her.”

“Hurry,” Gray urged.

Already the air was getting difficult to breathe. The glow in the lake had spread far, sliding along the length of the spar toward shore.

Susan pointed to it. “I must be out on the lake.”

They headed toward the peninsula of rock.

Gray paced Lisa. “You mentioned a trespassed biosystem earlier. Mind telling me what the hell you think is really going on here?” He waved to the glowing lake, to Susan.

“I don’t know everything, but I’m pretty sure I know who all the key players are.”

Gray nodded for her to continue.

Lisa pointed to the glow. “It all started here, the oldest organism in the story. Cyanobacteria. Precursors to modern plants. They’ve penetrated every environmental niche: rock, sand, water, even other organisms.” She nodded to Susan. “But that’s getting ahead of the story. Let’s start here.”

“This cavern.”

She nodded. “The cyanobacteria invaded this sinkhole, but remember they needed sunlight, and the cavern is mostly dark. The hole above was probably even smaller originally. To thrive here, they needed another source of energy, a food source. And cyanobacteria are innovative little adapters. They had a ready source of food above in the jungle…they just needed a way to get to it. And nature is anything if not ingenious at building strange interrelationships.”

Lisa related the story she had once told Dr. Devesh Patanjali, about the Lancet liver fluke, how its life cycle utilized threehosts: cattle, snail, and ant.

“At one point, the liver fluke even hijacks its ant host. It compels the ant to climb a blade of grass, lock its mandible, and wait to be eaten by a grazing cow. That’s how strange nature is. And what happened here is no less strange.”

As Lisa continued, she appreciated being able to talk through her theories. She took a moment to explain Henri Barnhardt’s assessment of the Judas Strain, how he classified the virus into a member of the Bunyavirusfamily. She remembered Henri’s diagram, describing a linear relationship from human to arthropod to human.

“But we were wrong,” Lisa said. “The virus took a page out of the fluke’s handbook. Threehosts come into play here.”

“If cyanobacteria are the first hosts,” Gray asked, “what’s the second host in this life cycle?”

Lisa stared toward the plugged opening in the roof and kicked some of the dried bat guano. “The cyanobacteria needed a way to fly the coop. And since they were already sharing this cavern with some bats, they took advantage of those wings.”

“Wait. How do you know they used the bats?”

“The Bunyavirus. It loves arthropods, which include insects and crustaceans. But strains of Bunyaviruscan also be found in mice and bats.”

“So you think the Judas Strain is a mutated bat virus?”

“Yes. Mutated by the cyanobacteria’s neurotoxins.”

“But why?”

“To drive the bats crazy, to scatter them out into the world, carrying a virus that invades the local biosphere through its bacteria. Basically turning each bat into a little biological bomb. Laying waste wherever it lands. If Susan is correct, the pool would send out these bio-bombs every threeyears, allowing the environment to replenish itself in between.”

“But how does that serve the cyanobacteria if the disease kills birds and animals outsidethe cavern?”

“Ah, because it utilizes a third host, another accomplice. Arthropods. Remember, arthropods are already the preferred host for Bunyaviruses. Insects and crustaceans. They also happen to be nature’s best scavengers. Cleaning up the dead. Which is what the virus compelled them to do. By first making them ravenously hungry…”

Lisa’s words stumbled as she remembered the cannibalism aboard the ship. She fought to stay clinical, to be understood. “After stimulating this hunger, ensuring a thorough cleanup, the virus rewired the host to return here, to this cavern, to haul their catch and bring it to the pit, to feed the bacterial pool. They had no choice. Similar to the fluke and the ant. A neurological compulsion, a migratory urge.”

“Like Susan,” Gray said.

Lisa grew grim at the comparison. She pictured in her head the life cycle she had just described. Triangular rather than linear: cyanobacteria, bats, and arthropods. All joined together by the Judas Strain.

“Susan is different,” Lisa said. “Man was never supposed to be part of this life cycle. But being mammalian, like the bat, we’re susceptible to the toxins, to the virus. So when the Khmer discovered this cavern, we inadvertently became a part of that life cycle, taking the place of the bats. Spreading via our two legs instead of wings. Sickening the population every three years, triggering epidemics of varying severity.”

Gray stared toward Susan. “But what about her? Why did she survive?”

“Like I said, I don’t have all the answers.” She remembered her earlier discussions about Black Plague survivors, about viral code in human DNA. “Our neurological systems are a thousandfold more complex than any bat or crab. And like the cyanobacteria, humans also have a great capacity to adapt. Throw these toxins into our more advanced neurological system, and who knows what miracle might churn out?”

Lisa sighed as they reached the spit of land.

As she turned, she noted a strange sight above. Puffs of smoke streamed out of the pair of the idol’s eyeholes, brightly lit by the sun’s fire.

“The neutralizing powder,” Gray said, spotting the same and hurrying them along. “Nasser must be finalizing the upper vault’s decontamination. We have no more time.”

11:39 A.M.

At the top of the stairs Vigor knelt beside the low stone door. Seichan held the flashlight behind him. An archway of limestone framed a slab of hewn sandstone, a mix of natural and man-made.

Above the door, set into the limestone’s arched lintel, was a bronze medallion, impressed into it was a perfect crucifix. Vigor had examined it, sensing Friar Agreer’s hand here.

And it was confirmed below.

Vigor ran his fingers over the stone door. The solid slab had been inscribed with writing. Not angelic. Italian. It was the last testament of Friar Agreer.

In the year of the incarnation of the Son of God 1296, I set to stone this final prayer. The curse was set upon me when I first arrived and caused me great suffering, but I arose like Lazarus from a deadly slumber. I do not understand what bedevilment has befallen me, but I was preserved, marked in some strange manner, feverish bright of skin. For such succor, I ministered to those few who survived the great pestilence. But now a strange compunction has come over me. The waters below already begin to boil with the fires from Hell. I know it is to my death that I am driven. With great effort I did convince and oversee the construction of this seal. And I go with only one prayer on my lips. More than my own soul’s salvation, I pray this door to be forever sealed with the Lord’s Cross. Let only one strong in the spirit of the Lord dare open it.

Vigor touched the carved signature at the bottom.

Friar Antonio Agreer.

Seichan spoke behind him. “So after Marco left, they exposed the friar to the disease, but rather than dying, he survived. Like the woman below.”

“Maybe the other glowing pagans who offered the cure to Marco’s party could tell Friar Agreer would survive. That is why they picked him. But the date, 1296. He lived here for three years. The same time span Susan described between eruptions.” Vigor glanced behind him. “She was right.”

Seichan waved to the door. “There’s more writing under the name.”

Vigor nodded. “A quote from the Bible, book of Matthew, chapter twenty-eight, concerning the resurrection of Jesus from his tomb.” Vigor read the quote aloud. “‘Behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from the sky, and came and rolled away the stone from the door, and sat on it.’”

“That’s a lot of help.”

It was.

Vigor stared up at the crucifix carved into a bronze medallion above the door. He said a silent prayer and made the sign of the cross.

Before he could finish, he felt the ground shake under his knees. A great crash of rock echoed behind him, sounding as if the cavern had collapsed.

Seichan retreated, taking the light, off to investigate. “Stay here!”

Darkness descended, chilling him. Though he could no longer read the words, they blazed in his mind.

Behold, there was a great earthquake…

11:52 P.M.

Gray knelt over Lisa as the resounding shock rattled through the cavern. Kowalski sheltered her other side. One of the stalactites broke away from the roof and plunged into the pool’s depth. From where it had broken off, a scatter of deep cracks radiated outward, spanning the limestone roof.

Susan crouched halfway down the spar of rock as it thrust out into the glowing lake. All around the waters trembled with vibrations, sloshing back and forth. The stirring churned up more acidic wash, choking the air.

Rich with the Judas Strain.

Smaller concussions struck above, pounding like cannonballs against the roof of the cavern.

“What’s happening?” Lisa yelled.

“Nasser’s bomb,” he gasped out, ears ringing.

Earlier, Gray had examined the foundation pillars of the Bayon. He had found the columns riddled with fissures and cracks, pressure fractures from old age and from periodic shifts in the earth. Gray imagined that the concussion of the double-strength bomb had widened the fissures even more. And then the wash of acid – splashing outward and flowing into all those cracks – had dissolved the hearts out of the pylons.

“One of the foundation pillars must have collapsed,” he said. “Taking down a section of the temple with it.”

Gray stared up.

The tumbling of stone blocks had stopped – but for how long? He swung around to Susan. She stood up, slowly, warily. She glanced back, plainly wanting to return to shore. But instead, she turned and continued onward.

Past her shoulders the twin beams of sunlight glowed even brighter as the noon hour struck, the full face of the sun baking down atop the ruins.

“Will it hold long enough?” Lisa asked, staring out at Susan.

“It’ll have to.”

Gray had no doubt that if another foundation pillar collapsed, the temple’s weight would flatten this limestone bubble like a pancake. He pulled Lisa to her feet. They couldn’t stay. Even if the pillars held, the lake was near to erupting.

The entire pool now glowed, from shore to shore. Where the twin beams of sunlight struck, the waters had begun to bubble, gasping out more toxin into the air, more of the Judas Strain.

They had to leave.

Down the spur of rock, Susan reached its end and sat down, hugging one knee. She kept her back to them, perhaps fearful if she saw them she would lose her nerve and come running back. She looked so alone, so frightened.

A racking cough shook through Gray. His lungs burned. He could taste the caustic toxin on his tongue. They could wait no longer.

Lisa knew it, too. Her eyes were bloodshot, weeping heavily from both the sting of the air and from the fear for her friend.

Susan had no choice. Neither did they.

They headed toward the distant archway. A flickering light halfway ahead revealed Seichan running back. Alone. Where was Vigor?

Another crack of rock blasted above.

Gray cringed, fearing another avalanche.

The reality was worse.

The stone plug shattered out of the rooftop, raining down chunks of the block. Sunlight blazed down. A large slab bearing a corner of an upturned lip splashed leadenly into the water, swamping Susan. More pieces struck like depth charges.

Triumphant voices echoed from above.

Gray heard Nasser’s voice call out. “They have to be down there!”

But Nasser wasn’t the worst danger at the moment.

The full face of the sun blazed unfiltered upon the lake, combusting the pool. Already primed, close to critical mass, the bubbling became an instant boil, erupting in vast expulsions, coughing up gouts of gas and water.

The pool was blowing.

They’d never make it to the stairs.

Gray backpedaled, dragging Kowalski and Lisa with him a few steps. He yelled at Seichan. “Drop flat! Now!”

He obeyed his own advice, waving Lisa and Kowalski down. Gray grabbed the abandoned tarp they’d used to transport Susan. He dragged it over all three of them, trying to trap as much air as possible.

“Pin your edges close to the stone!” he ordered the others.

Beyond the tarp he heard the crackles of boiling water, furious, hissing angry – then a deep sonorous whoop, as if the entire lake had jumped a foot then dropped. Water washed his ankles, then swept away.

The air under the tarp turned to liquid fire.

The three of them huddled, gasping, coughing, choking.

“Susan,” Lisa finally croaked out.

12:00 P.M.

Susan screamed.

She didn’t cry with mere lungs, or the flutter of vocal cords. She howled out of the core of her being.

She could not escape the agony. Her mind, still attuned by sunlight, continued its detailed recording of every sensation. Forbidden from oblivion, her being scribed every detail: the sear of her lungs, the fire in her eyes, the flaying of her skin. She burned from the inside out, propelling her cry to the heavens.

But was there anyone to hear?

As she expelled all of herself upward, she finally found her release.

She fell back to the stone.

Her heart clenched one last time, squeezing out the last of her.

Then nothing.

12:01 P.M.

“What about Susan?” Lisa gasped.

Gray risked a peek from under a flap of tarp, craning back toward the rocky spar. The lake still boiled, burning under the fiery sun. The air above the lake shimmered with an oily miasma.

But the worst flow of gasses spiraled upward, through the opening, drafting up the flue of the Bayon’s central spire, turning tower into chimney.

Gray knew it was the only reason they lived.

If the cavern had still been sealed…

Out on the spar another of their party had not fared as well. Susan lay sprawled on her back, as still as a statue. Gray could not tell if she was breathing. In fact, it was hard to see her shape against the glare of the sunlight.

And that’s when he realized it.

The rocky spar did not extend fully into the stream of sunlight.

Susan still lay in shadow – but she no longer glowed. The brightness in her had blown out like a candle.

What did that mean?

Overhead, screams echoed down from the temple, now awash with the pool’s toxic expulsion. Gray also heard more stones striking the roof of the cavern. The caustic gas had further weakened the precarious balance of stone above their heads.

“We have to get out of the cavern,” Gray said.

“What about Susan?” Lisa asked.

“We’ll have to trust she had enough exposure. Whatever she needed to happen, hopefully happened.” Gray rolled to his knees, coughing hard. They all needed the cure now. He stared over to Kowalski. “Get Lisa to the stairs.”

Kowalski pushed up. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

Lisa clutched Gray’s wrist as he stood, keeping the tarp over their heads. “What are you going to do?”

“I have to get Susan.”

Lisa pinched around to see – then covered her mouth. The lake still roiled heavily, popping with gas. “Gray, you’ll never make it.”

“I’ll have to.”

“But I don’t see her moving. I think the sudden explosion was too much.”

Gray remembered Marco’s story, of his forced cannibalism, drinking the blood and eating the flesh of another man to live. “I don’t think it matters if she’s alive or dead. We just need her body.”

Lisa flinched at the callousness of his words, but she did not object.

“I’m going to need the tarp,” Gray said.

Kowalski nodded, clutching Lisa by the arm. “Fine by me. I’m taking the girl.”

Gray whisked away from them, cocooning himself in the tarp. He wrapped his head, leaving only a slit to peer out. He heard Kowalski and Lisa running down the strand.

Another boulder crashed onto the cavern roof from the temple above.

As good as a starter’s pistol.

Keeping his head low, Gray sprinted down the causeway.

Thirty yards.

That’s all.

There and back.

Steps from the shore, Gray bulled into the rising miasma of toxin. He held his breath. Still, it was like hitting a wall of fire. His eyes immediately burned, squeezing his vision to a pinpoint, while tears turned the rest of his sight into a watery blur. Barely able to see, he closed his lids, pulled the slit shut, and ran blind, counting his steps.

At thirty he risked a fast peek. An inferno greeted him.

But through the pain he spied an outflung arm. A step away. He took that step, bent down, and grabbed the arm. Luckily she no longer glowed, no longer burned. Still, he could not pick her up. He retreated, dragging her. The tarp tangled his feet, slowing him down. He finally tossed it aside, taking one breath before he did so.

It dropped him to a knee.

His chest clenched, his throat closed in protest.

Swallowing flames.

He pushed up, dragging blind, stumbling, hurrying.

His skin ran with fire, as if lashed with steel-studded whips.

Not going to make it.

Fire.

Flame.

Burn.

He tripped, went down to a knee.

No.

Then he was rising again – but not on his own.

“I’ve got you,” she said in his ear.

Seichan.

She had an arm under him, dragging him bodily. His toes scraped the stones as he struggled to gain his footing.

He croaked at her, coughing.

She understood.

“Kowalski’s got her.”

“Right here, boss,” the man said behind him. “That was some run. Made it to three steps shy of the goal line. Not a touchdown, but that’s why you have a goddamn team.”

As they fled around the lake, away from the central tempest, Gray’s vision cleared. He finally found his feet.

Seichan still supported half his weight.

“Thank you,” he whispered coarsely in her ear.

Her cheek was badly blistered, one eye swollen shut.

“Let’s just get the hell out of here,” Seichan said, sounding more irritated than relieved.

“Amen, sister,” Kowalski said.

Gray glanced back to the pool. He watched something drop through the hole in the roof, dangling from a line like a baited hook. It swung back and forth a bit.

A thick, heavy satchel.

“Bomb…” Gray whispered.

“What?” Kowalski asked, incredulous.

“Bomb,” he said louder.

Nasser was not done with them yet.

“Aw, hell, no…” Kowalski scrambled closer with Susan over one shoulder, plainly trying to outrun them. “Why do people keep trying to blow me up?”

12:10 P.M.

Shouting erupted below, flowing up the stairs from the cavern.

Lisa wanted to go down. She had hated abandoning the others, but Vigor needed her help, too.

“Keep turning!” Vigor said, sweat pouring down the sides of his face. He glanced to the stairs – then back to Lisa. “From their shouting, I think we’d better hurry.”

Between their palms, they had been unscrewing a large bronze bolt. Its platter-size head bore a crucifix, presently twirling as they spun the screw. By now, the greased bore protruded a full two feet from the arched top of the door.

How much more did they have to go?

They turned faster.

Vigor quoted the bottom inscription on the door, huffing as he labored.

“‘An angel of the Lord descended from the sky, and came and rolled away the stone from the door.’ At first, I tried rolling the door itself, and gave that up pretty quickly. Then I remembered the last line. ‘Let only one strong in the spirit of the Lord dare open it.’ Plainly a nod toward the crucifix. I should’ve picked up on that from the outset.”

Feet pounded on the lower stairs, coming up.

Kowalski yelled to them. “Bomb…door…hurry!”

“A man of few words, our Mr. Kowalski.”

With a final twist, the bronze screw fell free of its socket. The weight caught them both by surprise, and the screw tumbled to the steps with a ringing clatter.

Kowalski came barreling up from below, carrying Susan. She hung limp. Kowalski’s face sank when he saw the door still closed. “What have you been doing?”

“Waiting for you,” Vigor said, and shoved the slab.

No longer screwed tight, the door toppled outward, crashing to the stone. Sunlight burst forth, reflecting off the stone all around. Lisa could barely see as she stumbled out with Vigor, making room for Kowalski and Susan.

Kowalski groused as he ducked through. “I thought Seichan said she tried pushing. Damn those scrawny arms of hers.”

Straightening, Lisa blinked away the glare, realizing that they were at the bottom of a deep stone well, ten feet wide. The sheer walls stretched two stories high. No way up.

Kowalski lowered Susan to one side of the door. “Doc, I don’t think she’s breathing.”

Reminded of her duty, Lisa rushed to his side. She’d had her fill of death for one day. She dropped beside Susan and checked for a pulse. She didn’t find one. Still, Lisa refused to give up.

“Someone help me,” she called.

Gray and Seichan fell through the door next, hobbling together. Gray noted her examination. “Lisa…she’s dead.”

“No. Not without a fight first.”

“I’ll help you,” Seichan mumbled.

As she hobbled over, Lisa noticed blood seeping through the woman’s blouse, through her pants, fresh and wet.

Seichan noted her attention. “I’m fine.”

Gray warned them to keep as quiet as possible – in case any of Nasser’s men were nearby. He also waved everyone away from the doorway. His face and arms were blistered and raw. The whites of his eyes were a solid blood red.

On the other side of the doorway, Lisa began cardiac compressions while Seichan performed mouth-to-mouth. Vigor stood nearby, crossing a blessing over Susan.

“Those better not be last rites,” Lisa whispered, keeping her elbows locked as she compressed.

Vigor shook his head. “Just a prayer for—”

The bomb blasted with a clap of thunder, shuddering the ground underfoot. A wash of foul air shot out from below, a poisonous exhalation still ripe with caustic fumes and a blast of heat.

Lisa leaned over Susan.

The worst of it all plumed up the shaft and away.

“That wasn’t too bad,” Kowalski said.

Gray continued staring high. “Everybody hold tight.”

Lisa glanced up as she pumped her arms on Susan’s chest.

To the left, the top half of the Bayon’s center spire could be seen. Stone faces gazed back down at them. All of them were shaking.

“It’s coming down!” Gray said.

12:16 P.M.

Nasser fled with six of his men, racing across the second tier’s courtyard. Every step was agony. His entire body continued to burn, as if the hellish woman were still clutched to him. But he had a more immediate concern.

He glanced back as he ducked behind a gallery wall.

The Bayon tower trembled – then in an oddly slow fashion, it collapsed in on itself, imploding and dropping a quarter of its height with a rumble of stone. The death rattle of a hundred bodhisattvas. Stone dust flumed around the collapsed pile, shooting high. More rocks continued to bounce and roll, chattering down the mountainside.

His demolition expert had warned against the size of the charge, warned this might happen. But Nasser could not risk Commander Pierce escaping with the prize.

As he turned away he noted a second plume of smoky dust, rising off to the side. It twisted up like a gray smoke signal.

Nasser’s eyes narrowed.

Did it mark another exit to the cavern?

12:17 P.M.

Gray choked on the dust, barely able to see anyone else in the confined space of the well. The tower had crashed, collapsing into its foundations and crushing the cavern below. An acidic wash of smoke and dust jetted outward, spiraling up the well’s throat.

Gray wiped his eyes and twisted around. He searched back through the doorway. Boulders filled the steep stairway, its ceiling collapsed.

Gray leaned his shoulder against the wall and stared up. The north wall of the well leaned precariously outward. They’d been lucky it hadn’t collapsed and crushed them all. A few of the blocks stuck out like buckteeth.

More coughing echoed around the well.

The dust cleared enough to reveal one of the sufferers.

Lisa helped Susan sit up. The woman covered her mouth with a fist and continued a racking jag.

Welcome back to the world.

Maybe their luck was turning.

A voice, calling down from above, dismissed that possibility.

“Who do we have here?” Nasser yelled down. “To use a quaint American colloquialism, I’d say we’ve found a bunch of fish in a barrel.”

Rifles circled the well on all sides, pointing down at them.

Gray slid along the wall, bumping into Kowalski.

“What now, boss?” he asked.

Before Gray could answer, a cell phone rang out sharply. It came from above, but the ring tone was familiar. Nasser reached to a pocket and removed Vigor’s phone. He had confiscated it from the monsignor after they had been captured at the hotel. They’d all been thoroughly searched before their sit-down at the Elephant Bar.

Nasser checked the caller ID. “Rachel Verona.” He held the phone over the pit, leaning out. “Your niece, Monsignor. Would you care to say good-bye?”

The phone rang a third time, then went silent.

“I guess not,” Nasser said. “A shame.”

Gray closed his eyes and held his breath.

Nasser continued. “Or maybe, Commander Pierce, you’d like to call my partner, Annishen. I did promise you’d hear your parents’ screams before you died.”

Gray ignored him. His hand slipped behind Kowalski’s back and under the man’s long duster jacket. The interrupted call from Vigor’s niece was a prearranged signal, from Painter, to let Gray know when his mother and father were safe.

Or dead.

Either way…beyond Nasser’s control.

Gray’s fingers wrapped around the butt of the pistol lodged at the base of Kowalski’s back. The large man had almost yanked the gun out earlier, startled by a monkey. Luckily Gray had stopped him.

Gray pulled the pistol free and lowered it to his side.

Nasser continued. “Or maybe I’ll just leave your parents’ fate a mystery…leave you forever wondering, something to take to your grave.”

“Why don’t you go first…” Gray stepped forward, snapped his weapon up, and fired twice.

He clipped the man in the shoulder and the chest. The impacts spun Nasser sideways. He fell into the well, arms flailing, spraying blood against the stone walls.

Gray twisted on a heel, strafing along the well’s rim. He struck three more men while the others fled back. Behind him, Nasser crashed to the stone floor, with a snap of bones and a cry.

Gray scanned above, his weapon ready. The 9mm Metal Storm pistol was an Australian design, the ultimate in power, firing off multiple rounds in fractions of a second. Propellant-driven, no moving parts, all electronic.