Locke paused. The loss of contact was troubling, but the mercenaries should have radioed if they were under attack. Either way, he didn’t want to stay any longer than they had to.
“I’ll stay here with her,” Grant said. “If she doesn’t leave when you say the word, I’ll carry her out.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Just a few minutes, and I’ll be done.”
“Okay,” Locke said. “You’ve got five minutes. I’ll go back and contact our guys to call for the helicopter. If I still can’t reach them, we’ll have to assume something happened outside the cave, and I’ll want you there on the double.”
Dilara was already snapping away with the camera, ignoring Locke.
He wound back out of the treasure room and walked toward their packs, trying to raise the mercenaries as he went. If anything, the static seemed to get stronger the closer he got to the cave entrance.
Locke reached the spot twenty feet from the crevice through which they’d entered the cave. It was where they had left their packs, but all he saw was empty floor. He knew that was the spot. The only explanation was that somebody took their packs.
The static wasn’t interference. The radios had been jammed deliberately. Someone was in here with them.
“Hello, Tyler,” said a smooth voice from behind him. “Hands on your head, please. Slowly.”
Locke complied.
“Now turn around.”
As Locke turned, his miner’s light fell on the image of Sebastian Garrett walking toward him, aiming a pistol at Locke. Garrett pushed a pair of night vision goggles onto his forehead. He stopped walking when he was twenty feet away, and his face broke into a satisfied smile.
“Thanks for showing us the way in.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
“That helmet light is in my eyes,” Garrett said. “Turn it off. And no sudden movements. I’m not the only one here.”
Someone clicked a flashlight on behind Locke. One of Garrett’s guards by the crevice. Locke flipped the switch on the helmet light. The guard’s light focused on Locke was now the only illumination. Any other lights still on in the massive Ark were too dim and too far away to be useful.
“Our men outside?” Locke said, already knowing the answer.
“They were good. Not great, but good. They even got one of my men before Cutter was able to take them out. Now drop your weapons. Slowly. The radio, too.”
Locke put the submachine gun, pistol, and radio with its earpiece on the ground.
“Turn and kick them to Brett.”
Locke turned and saw a lean man armed with an automatic weapon and grenades strapped to his chest and a set of night vision goggles perched on his forehead. Locke wished they’d had a chance to acquire some grenades in Van, but all he could get were some mining explosives that were in his bag of tricks, which the guard now carried. The other packs were somewhere in the dark.
“Yes,” Garrett said. “I know your penchant for explosives, so I made sure to secure your bag.”
“Where are your other bootlickers? Waiting outside?” Locke needed to goad Garrett into giving him some info.
“No, they’re in here with us. Dan Cutter and Svetlana Petrova are similarly equipped with night vision goggles and are searching for Dilara Kenner and Grant Westfield right now.”
“Garrett’s here!” Locke shouted into the darkness.
“Crude, but effective. It won’t matter. You don’t have starlight scopes like we do. Otherwise, you would have seen me when you came back here. Besides, I have an offer to make.”
“I’m not going to tell you where the amulet is.”
“I already know where it is. I can see it’s in your pocket. What I can’t have is Kenner and Westfield roaming about like this, maybe finding yet another way out after I’ve gone. That wouldn’t do. Ergo, my offer.”
Just like Garrett. Pretentious enough to use the word
“You’re just going to kill us anyway,” Locke said.
“Yes, you’re smart enough to know I can’t let any of you live. And I will find all three of you eventually. I just don’t want to wait.” He gestured at Brett. “The radio.”
Brett tossed Locke’s radio to Garrett, who caught it easily. He keyed the mike.
“Dilara Kenner and Grant Westfield. I know that you can hear this. If you come forward in the next two minutes, I will promise each of you a quick and painless death. If you don’t, I will begin shooting Tyler Locke. First the feet. Then the hands. Knees. And so on. Nothing vital. Nothing that would kill him. But it will be an agonizing way to die. You have two minutes starting now.”
“They won’t do it,” Locke said.
“You better hope they do.”
“You were waiting for us all along, weren’t you?”
“You’re a resourceful man. As soon as I saw that you had made it to Khor Virap, I knew you’d be able to find the Ark and show me the way in.”
“And you’re always good at thinking about all the angles, Sebastian. That’s why you got away with cutting all those corners building your lab and firing me.”
Garrett smirked. “I win yet again. By invading Oasis, you may have changed my plans, but the outcome will be the same.” He spoke into the radio. “You now have 60 seconds left.”
Grant had made a mistake not to keep Dilara with him.
He had been looking at an intricately-carved ivory figurine and Dilara had still been photographing the treasures when he had heard Tyler yell, and then seconds later the radio call had come in from Sebastian Garrett telling them they had two minutes to reveal themselves or Tyler would be tortured to death.
If he was going to save Tyler, he had to move fast, and Dilara would slow him down. He told her to go back to the third level and hide. She’d argued that she could take care of herself, so Grant used that, telling her to keep herself safe and out of sight. She should use only her 3-D mapping system to guide herself since it didn’t depend on an external light source. She shouldn’t use her flashlight or helmet light.
They’d separated, and Grant doused his own flashlight. He flicked the infrared scope on. The scope picked up temperature differences, not visible light, so any heat source — particularly a human body — in his field of view would flare like a campfire on a moonless night. He knew Cutter was around somewhere, and he wouldn’t be content to wait for the full two minutes. He’d come find Grant.
Grant ran low and fast toward the crevice, but when he got to a ramp, he decided height would be an advantage, so he ran up to the second floor, trying to keep his footsteps as light as possible.
That’s when he realized leaving Dilara had been a mistake.
As he was running, he peered back and up to the third level promenade to see where Dilara had gone to hide so he could find her later. With the infrared, he saw her go into a room. To his surprise, he saw another figure on the third level carrying a weapon. Then a second unfamiliar person caught his eye on the first level. Neither of the hostiles seemed to be looking in his direction, so he ducked into one of the rooms. They both seemed to be quietly and methodically searching each room. He flipped up his eyepiece and crept out to look up to the third level promenade and down to the first level cavern floor. No lights, which meant they had night scopes.
He flipped the infrared eyepiece back down. The images weren’t distinctive enough to let him identify the hostiles, but the one above him looked smaller. A woman. Svetlana Petrova, Garrett’s girlfriend. He was sure the other one was Cutter.
He had three options, all of which churned through his mind in as many seconds. First, he could keep going and take out the people holding Tyler, ignoring Dilara’s situation. Not a good option. Tyler wouldn’t forgive Grant if he sacrificed Dilara for him. Second, he could start firing at the hostiles, but with these civilian infrared goggles, the
