She hurried with the others up the tunnel. Khattab kept to her side with the stone jar cradled under one arm. Sunlight flowed ahead and drew them forward. A rubble pile led to freedom through the blasted door.
She wanted to be out of there as soon as they were aboveground. The prison was growing too hot. Gunfire echoed down to them.
She followed the soldiers topside. They scrambled as a group out of darkness and into sunlight. It took her an extra moment to realize how loud the gunfire was. It wasn't until Khattab fell to one knee, then down to his side, that she recognized the danger.
Half his face was gone. The stone jar rolled from his dead arms out into the sunlit garden.
More men fell around her as she spun and dove behind a pillar.
The war had reached them.
Overhead, a loud eruption of flames drew her eye. She watched one of their helicopters explode in a fireball of smoke and flaming debris. It spun and slammed to the ground.
Her heart pounded.
What was going on?
Then across the garden, she spotted who was firing, who had ambushed her team. Men in French military uniforms. But more than that, she recognized the man in the lead.
Impossible.
It was that damned Indian.
Painter Crowe.
Her heart pounded-not with fear, but with a rage that burned away all reason. She reached into a pocket and pressed the transmitter. The ground bumped under her, and the explosion blasted. Smoke rolled up out of the hole in the ground.
There would be no rescue for his teammates.
Using the distraction and smoke, Krista fell back into the shadows. She didn't fool herself. Trapped in the prison with her team overwhelmed, all was lost. She had only one objective left. She had made a promise to herself before she left Norway, a promise she intended to keep.
4:20 P.M.
The firefight ended as suddenly as it started.
Painter's group had been caught off guard by the sudden appearance of a contingent of hostiles pouring out of a hole in the ground. His team had failed to spot the tunnel opening buried in the shadows of a blasted section of the cloisters.
But the last of the enemy had fallen.
The French soldiers spread out and through the garden. They kept rifles on their shoulders, moving swiftly and purposely.
Painter dropped back. He let out a shuddering breath. He searched the grounds. Where were Gray and the others?
Monk crossed toward him down the walkway. His rifle still smoked. His expression remained grim, worried for his friends.
The only warning was a shift of shadows. A woman rolled into view at a narrow doorway to Painter's right. From a foot away, she had a pistol pointed at Painter's chest.
She fired four times.
The blasts cracked like thunderclaps.
Only one shot grazed Painter's shoulder. At the same time she fired, he was tackled to the side.
He landed hard on a knee and twisted around.
He watched the impact of the bullets pound John Creed out into the garden. The man toppled onto his back.
The woman screamed and came at Painter, bringing her gun to his face. He lunged up at her. He'd freed the blade from his boot and stabbed it deep into her belly.
Well trained, she ignored the pain and got the gun under his chin. Her eyes said it all. The blade could not stop her before she killed him.
'Think this is yours,' Painter said savagely and pressed the button on the WASP dagger's hilt.
The explosion of compressed gas ripped into her belly. It pulverized and flash-froze her internal organs. Shock and pain burst through her, paralyzing her.
He shoved her away with both arms. She flew and crashed onto her back. Her mouth stretched into a silent scream of agony-then her body went limp. Dead.
Monk rushed past Painter into the garden. 'Creed!'
Painter leaped to his feet and followed.
Creed lay on his back. Blood flowed from his lips, bubbled from the three shots to the chest. His eyes were huge, knowing what was coming.
Monk fell to his knees next to him. He tore off his jacket and bunched it up, readying a compression. 'Hang on!'
All of them knew there was nothing to be done. Blood had pooled and spread over the hard-packed ground. The rounds must have been hollow-points, shredding on impact.
Creed fumbled blindly for Monk's hand and gripped it tight. Monk covered it with his other palm.
'John...'
One last breath escaped. Creed's hand slipped away. Monk tried to grab it back, as if that might help, but the man's eyes went glassy.
'No,' Monk moaned.
Painter leaned down to offer what could only be cold comfort-but a new noise intruded. He swung around, dropping low. It came from the smoky hole.
He watched a group crawl into sight, climbing out of the hole, coughing and staggering.
One figure searched around, then stumbled out into the garden. 'Gray...'
4:22 P.M.
They'd only had seconds.
Gray had known the woman would blow the incendiary charge as soon as she was outside. So as the last soldier vanished up the tunnel, he had sprinted over to the Celtic cross and spun its wheel. The monks would have engineered some mechanism for sending the tombs back into hiding.
It was a natural enough guess.
Spin the wheel, spin the floors.
He had been right.
Turning the wheel flipped the tombs back below and rolled the spiral designs up.
As the floors rotated, Gray yelled for Kowalski to toss the suitcase bomb down into the cavity below. He wasn't sure if it would be enough protection, but they had no other option. Afterward, they fled to the walls and dropped to their stomachs.
When the explosion blew, the circular plates of the floor jumped up, dancing on flames-then crashed back down. The heat seared like a blast furnace. Smoke choked, but most of it got sucked up the tunnel as up a chimney flue.
It was the conflagration below that remained the danger.
The fires baked the stones under them. Off to the side, the bronze spiral began to glow through the smoky pall.
Gray called for them to retreat to the tunnel.
Crouched there, Gray heard a firefight echoing down from above-then the gunfire suddenly ended.
He didn't know what was happening. He heard a few more shots and then someone yelled. He knew that voice. He almost shook with relief.
Monk.
As the heat grew worse, Gray had led the others up the tunnel and back out into the open. Bodies lay everywhere. French soldiers surrounded them. He stumbled into the garden.
'They're with us!' Painter shouted, pushing forward.
Gray struggled to understand what his boss was doing here, how he could be here. But explanations would
