By now, with more than a dozen caverns and tunnels behind her, her sense of direction was completely overwhelmed. She had no idea where she was. The “underground city” may not have been a city exactly, but it was still—literally—mind-boggling: a seemingly endless warren of chambers of all shapes and sizes connected to one another by low-ceilinged tunnels and narrow steps. There wasn’t a right angle or a sharp corner to be found. Instead, every edge was rounded, every wall and ceiling curved, and it all had the same numbing color, a chalky off-white tinged with the dirty brown wash of time.
And it was tight. Maddeningly, suffocatingly tight. Even the larger chambers that were used as communal spaces felt unnervingly claustrophobic. The tunnels and stairs were the worst. They were little wider than her shoulders, and she had to stay hunched to get through them. They were that way by design. Invading warriors, if they managed to get past the handful of strategically placed millstones that could be rolled out with the flick of a small stone to block access to the entire underground maze, would have to advance single-file after leaving their bulky shields behind. That made them easier to repel. In fact, the entire honeycomb was brilliantly designed as a refuge: There were huge storage spaces for food and animal feed, wineries, wells for water and air shafts for ventilation. Everything was planned defensively; even the chimneys of their fire pits branched out into many small outlets before they emerged aboveground, to spread out the smoke and help avoid detection.
As she advanced farther into the hollowed-out ground, Tess did her best to try to not think about the fact that the entire canyon above her had been condemned because of unstable ground and rock slides. Instead, she tried to remember that there was a saving grace to her being there: The bomb she was carrying around her waist was probably not a threat right now. Still, it wasn’t enough to calm her nerves, as her earlier fear was now being replaced by one that was even more terrifying: whether she’d ever find her way back out of that rocky labyrinth and see daylight again.
After going down some steps and banking right through a particularly narrow passage, she found herself in a larger, airier room that had three rough-hewn columns down its center. A stable, perhaps, or an underground church. It didn’t really matter. She paused to catch her breath and think. She guessed she was now on either the second or third level, and knew that there could be many more below her. She didn’t want to venture too far down—the place was a maze and she ran a real risk of not finding her way back. She couldn’t go back out yet, though. Not until she knew the Iranian and his cell phone were no longer a threat.
“Tess!”
The Iranian’s yell shook her to her roots as it echoed through the hollow caverns.
“I just want those books,” he bellowed. “Give them to me and I’ll leave you alone.”
She knew what he was doing. Goading her, prodding her to make a move, make a noise, answer back— anything that would reveal her position. Still, he felt dangerously close. So close, in fact, that she now heard scraping along the wall, coming her way.
ZAHED CREOT FORWARD, following the cabling, his trained senses alert for the smallest sign of life.
He figured Tess had to be following the cabling too. Her survival instinct would have told her to do so. Follow it down, and you can follow it back up. She had an advantage, though. The flashlight. He’d seen a faint glimmer of it, flicking on and off for the briefest moments, but it had been enough to draw him in like a homing beacon.
He thought of using his phone to light the way and tried it out. The screen didn’t give off much light, and in his situation, it was more of a hindrance than an advantage. It didn’t really show him much, but it would announce his presence to Tess. He decided not to use it for the time being. That would also save batteries, and he needed to be able to contact Steyl and other support when he needed it.
He felt himself emerging from a narrower passage into a larger space, and stopped and listened. He couldn’t see anything around him, but he sensed her close. He held his breath and froze, concentrating on locking in on her likely position.
A lopsided smile spread across his face as he tightened his grip on the handgun and angled it ahead of him.
Then he fired a single round.
THE DETONATION BOOMED THROUGH THE CAVERN as the round whizzed past Tess and crunched into the wall somewhere beyond her. It took her by complete surprise and she couldn’t help but shriek—and in that instant, she heard footsteps charging toward her.
Clutching the rucksack tight, she lunged away from the wall toward the center of the room, cursing at having given herself away like that, summoning her recall of the layout of the chamber and hoping she wasn’t about to slam into one of its columns. She felt the Iranian veering toward her, and her whole body tightened in anticipation of his tackle or, worse, another gunshot. Then a different outcome played itself out at hyper-fast forward in her mind’s eye, and she instantly adjusted her trajectory accordingly and sped up, hoping she’d gotten it right.
Her splayed fingers found one of the three square columns, and she rounded it and turned slightly, putting it between her and the rapidly approaching stalker—and just as she rounded it, she heard it, skin and bone slamming against stone along with an angry yell of pain.
She’d suckered him right into one of the columns, but there was no time to stick around and gloat. She had to get out of there. She veered back toward an opening she’d spotted in the opposite wall and spread her arms out protectively, looking for the edge of the wall. They found the corner of the rocky surface and she slowed right down and slunk into the passage, moving carefully while running her hand up the wall until it found the cabling. There was no question of using her flashlight anymore. She scuttled ahead, her feet feeling the ground ahead, wary of an unseen step—and then she heard it again.
Movement, more rash, more intense this time.
Angrier.
Chasing after her.
Only this time, it was accompanied by the angry, throaty roar of someone who’d been winded.
ZAHED BOUNCED OFF THE STONE OILLAR and went down like a rag doll. His extended arm had hit it first, which gave him a split second to tilt away and avoid a full-frontal hit.
Still, it hurt like hell. His chest, his shoulder, his hip, his knee, and his cheek—they’d all slammed into the solid rock under full acceleration. He felt a metallic taste in his mouth and wiped it clean with the back of his hand. It was wet with blood.
His mind quickly assessed the damage. Nothing seemed broken, but the heavy bruising would definitely slow him down and limit his agility for a while. He bunkered the pain and focused on the more immediate concern. The gun. He’d dropped it in the collision.
He stayed down and ran quick concentric sweeps of the ground around him. It didn’t take long for him to find it. Cursing himself for his mistake, he pushed himself back to his feet, his ears scanning for target acquisition.
He spat some more blood out and screamed her name in rage, and was back after her within seconds.
“TESS! WHERE ARE YOU, BITCH!”
The yell reverberated around her, propelling her forward like wind to a sail. She heard him entering the narrow passage just as she was reaching the chamber at its other end.
This time would be harder. She couldn’t use her flashlight, and she couldn’t use the cables either. She didn’t know what the room looked like—how big it was, its layout, what obstacles or pitfalls it presented. She was as vulnerable in it as he was. Worse, she was the quarry. She had to be quiet, she had to explore it without making a sound. All he had to do was follow the noise, and in the deathly quiet of the subterranean citadel, even the tiniest noise she made was getting amplified way out of proportion. She sounded as discreet as the percussion section of a marching band.
She pushed away from the wall and its cabling and prowled through the darkness blindly, her arms extended defensively like an insect’s antennae, groping the air, wary of any obstruction. She found the opposite wall, making the room out to be around fifteen feet wide or so. She ran her fingers up and down its smooth surface as she advanced farther, and then they found something else. A low-level niche in the wall, about four feet wide, starting just above ground level and going up to her waist.
She knew there were all kinds of rooms down there: wineries, kitchens, food storage chambers, all of which
