the attempted firebombing. But this was no surveillance, not two men in this weather, converging at once on a sidewalk glazed with ice. She recognized the classic maneuver intended to surround an enemy before he was aware of what was happening.
For an instant, she considered brandishing the Glock. Perhaps seeing that she was armed would make whoever these men were back off. Unlikely. More probable they were armed, too. A sudden display of a weapon could precipitate gunplay with the chance of a stray shot hitting Manfred.
No, surprise was her only logical weapon, to continue as though she suspected nothing, turning on the false tramp at the last moment. Nonchalantly, she shifted Manfred to her other side, the one away from the approaching stranger.
Usually, in dangerous situations, her mind seemed to slow down as it worked out points of attack, favorable angles and the like. As she closed with the homeless look-alike, she thought about a quick shot through her coat, another at the man behind before he could react. No, foolish. What if, as improbable as it sounded, they were exactly what they appeared to be: a hobo and a guy just coincidentally walking down a quiet residential street?
Mostly, though, she was considering Manfred’s safety.
And where the hell were Miles’s people?
Cemetery of Terra Santa
If there had been any doubt as to their peril, it was dispelled by the sound of rushing water. The flooding of the corridor outside had apparently defeated the braces against the water pressure on its walls. Water was up to Lang’s waist and he was taking two or three deep breaths at a time just to keep a minimum of air in his lungs. He was experiencing a mild dizziness, the first signs of oxygen starvation. He could hear the crew panting in the dark like a pack of exhausted dogs as the lights on their miner’s helmets moved, fruitlessly seeking an escape route.
“I don’t think we can wait for your people,” he gulped to Rossi.
“You have a plan?” Rossi croaked back.
“Maybe.”
Lang played his light around the chamber until it centered on the place the stone slab had become invisible underwater. Moving slowly to conserve breath, he sloshed through the water until his foot touched something solid. With the next step, he climbed on top.
“That will help little,” Rossi gasped. “The water will continue to rise. You will drown on that piece of rock.”
Lang shook his head. “Not if I’m not on it.”
“But, how…?”
Rossi’s gaze followed Lang’s flashlight to the roots hanging from the ceiling. “You cannot reach them. Even if you could-”
“I appreciate your eternal optimism,” Lang snapped a little harsher than he had intended. “How about a little help instead?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m guessing if there was a hole in the ceiling of this sepulcrum, it would be right over where the sarcophagus was.”
“So? It is nearly ten meters high. You cannot reach it.”
Rather than expend breath uselessly, Lang swung his light among the now-silent crew. Picking the smallest man he could see, he beckoned. “You, come here.”
“Dante,” Rossi said. “His name is Dante, like the poet.”
Rossi translated and the man cautiously joined Lang on the stone slab. Lang handed him a hand pick one of the crew had dropped and said haltingly, waiting for Rossi to translate each phrase while pointing to the roots overhead, “Dante, here is what we’re going to do: you climb onto my shoulders and see if you can snare one of those roots with the pick. Do you think you can climb it?”
Dante, short, squat and muscular, listened to Rossi and nodded enthusiastically, beginning to see hope where there had been none before.
Lang continued, using his hands to illustrate. “When you get close enough, I want you to use that pick to dig just above us, capisce? ”
He waited for Rossi’s translation, just to make sure.
Dante nodded understanding again, this time smiling.
On the first attempt, the poet’s namesake leaped from Lang’s shoulders, pick extended, missed a large cluster of roots and splashed into the rapidly accumulating water. Though the effort would have produced howls of laughter under normal circumstances, no one even chuckled.
Dante climbed onto Lang’s shoulders again, this time directing the light on his miner’s helmet from one clump of roots to another before making a decision. Lang let go of the man’s ankles as Dante leaped again. This time he succeeded in grasping a tangle of roots, climbing upward with the agility of a monkey. Had the task not been far from complete, Lang would have congratulated himself on his choice of men.
There was still a long way to go, and the humid air was getting thinner as the water rose.
Almost without thought, Lang transferred his BlackBerry and wallet from his pants pocket to the one in his shirt.
His one arm and his legs wrapped around the root cluster to hold him in place, Dante took a one-handed swing at the roof of dirt, roots and remnants of stone ceiling. He was rewarded by being pelted with a curtain of loose dirt. Undeterred, he took another swing with the same result. Below, the crew, the lamps on their helmets trained upward, watched in silence. The only sounds were the bite of Dante’s pick accompanied by the splash of detritus freed from the earthy roof, and the collective gasps for breath.
Even if Dante succeeded in opening a hole to the ground above, only one of their problems would be solved, the almost-depleted supply of oxygen. The water would rise to wherever the normal table was and no farther, leaving them still below the surface. Anyone who couldn’t swim, or at least tread water, until help arrived would be in serious danger of drowning.
Help.
Once again, Lang thought of the members of the crew Rossi had left aboveground. He had heard no shots since the explosion that had blocked the exit from this chamber, but the fact no one had come to their assistance was ominous.
Lang temporarily forgot the question of those above-ground as a crack of light appeared above his head. With Dante’s next swing of the pick, chunks of dirt and stone crashed into the water below, scattering several crew members who, like Lang, had been watching the little Italian’s progress.
Almost immediately, there was a grumble of crumbling earth and a shriek. Lang would have rejoiced at the speck of daylight that appeared had it not been for a falling object plummeting from the surface above. Like a bird shot in flight, a white-clad form tumbled through the hole, smashing into the water below. It took Lang a full second to recognize the object as human, someone who seemed to be wrapped in sheets. He joined the group gathered around. A man, either dead or stunned, lay in the still-rising water. He wore what Lang guessed was Bedouin robes but there was nothing Semitic about his facial features: they were decidedly Asian. The gun that had fallen with him was unmistakable. The bullpup configuration, action and trigger in front of the magazine identified it as a QBZ type 95/97, a relatively new Chinese assault weapon that was replacing the Kalashnikov knock-off that had been the primary small arm of the People’s Liberation Army.
Lang snatched it from the water just as a burst of gunfire from above churned the water not five feet away, sending the gathered crew frantically splashing toward the far edges of the chamber.
Lang lunged to his left, grasping the unfamiliar QBZ in one hand. The gun had made its first public appearance when the PLA marched in to reoccupy Hong Kong, long after Lang had left the Agency and its recurring training in contemporary firearms. Happily, he still browsed the gun publications frequently enough to know what he held, if not exactly how it worked. Muzzle velocity, clip capacity and caliber were a number of details Lang would have liked to know, but now was hardly time for a familiarization lecture. The one thing he did know was that this automatic rifle would provide firepower vastly superior to the Browning in its holster at his back.
If only he could figure out what was the safety and what was the fire selector.
Another fusillade ripped the water, this time close enough to shower him.
