Chapter 39 – Exit Strategy
Stunned and trembling, Cassie struggled to sit up. Her flashlight had rolled to the side of the chamber, the beam pointing toward the wall. She crawled on all fours to retrieve it. Swinging the light around in a wide arc, she asked, “Erik? Griffin? Are you guys all right?”
Erik sat up, coughing from the dust blown into the chamber by fallen rock. “I’m OK,” he confirmed succinctly. “Griffin?”
From another part of the tomb, the scrivener answered. “Miraculously, we all still seem to be alive.” He wiped a thick coating of dust from his face, retrieved his flashlight, and stood up. Shining his beam toward the stomion, he revealed that it was now completely filled with rock. “Alive for the moment anyway. It would appear we’re sealed in.”
Erik walked over to the doorway and tried pushing against the newly fallen boulders at the top. They rolled inward as a pile on the other side of the door rushed to take their place.
Cassie fumbled in her jacket pocket for her phone, thinking she might be able to reach Xenia. “No good,” she said. “There’s no signal down here.” She looked around the stone chamber nervously. “How long before we run out of air?”
Griffin’s eyes traveled around their enclosure, judging its size and calculating air volume. “Several hours, I’d say.”
“OK, everybody stop breathing.” The pythia laughed weakly. “Let’s try to conserve oxygen.”
“If you stopped chattering, that would be a good start,” Erik snapped. He wandered around the center of the chamber, training his flashlight on the domed ceiling of the vault as he studied it closely.
Stung by the rebuke, Cassie rounded on him. “By the way, weren’t you supposed to provide security for this field mission? Great job of letting the crazy cowboy sneak up on us. Really fine work!”
Even in the dim light, she could see Erik’s face redden. Apparently, the pythia had struck a nerve. “I might have heard him coming if you two weren’t yakking all the time!”
“So, it’s all our fault?” She leaped to her feet, ready to go toe-to-toe, but Griffin interposed himself between the combatants.
“This isn’t helping the situation,” he objected. “We need to cooperate if we’re going to get out of this dilemma.”
“Aren’t you the optimist,” Cassie muttered angrily as she retreated to the opposite wall of the chamber.
Griffin sat down beside her. “We just need to calm ourselves and assess the problem rationally.”
The two watched Erik as he stuffed his lit flashlight into his jacket pocket and raised his arms above his head. Then he began walking around the perimeter of the room, waving his hands gently from side to side.
“How very extraordinary,” Griffin remarked.
“Do you think he’s finally lost it?” the pythia whispered doubtfully. “Or maybe he just wants us to join him in a chorus of Kumbaya.”
“I can hear you,” Erik stated flatly. “You’re both using up my air.” He stopped pacing and stood before a section of wall. Standing on his toes, he reached his arms higher and waved them side to side. “Yup, that’s it,” he commented half to himself.
“What are you doing?” Griffin asked.
“Checking for air flow. You think you could give me a hand here, stretch?”
Griffin was several inches taller than Erik. He hastened to the other side of the room and mimicked the security coordinator’s movements. He waved his arms overhead and then stopped at a particular spot on the wall. “Yes, I believe you’re right. I feel it.”
Cassie stood up impatiently and walked over to join the other two. “What is it?” she demanded.
Griffin smiled at her. “A draft.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
‘It means a way out,” Erik explained laconically.
“How do you figure?” The pythia wasn’t convinced that a slight breeze was anything to cheer about.
Griffin explained. “This dromos is approximately twenty feet in diameter and about twenty feet high at the apex of the dome. Judging from what we observed on the outside, the top half of the dome has been exposed to the elements for quite some time. For centuries, possibly a millennium, moisture has worked its way into the mortar. The action of repeated freezing and melting has separated the clay from the surrounding stones.”
“Plus, we just had that nice little earthquake,” Erik added. “Look at these cracks.” He trained his flashlight at a spot above his head. Cassie could see a thin fracture running up toward the ceiling.
“Precisely,” Griffin confirmed. “The dome is weakened. No doubt the mortar between the stones has eroded completely at the spot where we felt that draft. We should be able to remove enough of the rock for us to squeeze out.”
“Without bringing the whole roof down on top of us?” Cassie shuddered at the thought.
“It’s fairly unlikely since this is a corbelled vault,” the scrivener commented. “The stones overlap one another to add structural stability.”
Erik shrugged nonchalantly. “Even if they all fell, at least it would be a quicker death than suffocating.”
“You can’t be serious!” she exclaimed.
He smiled sardonically. “Do you have a better idea?”
“No,” she admitted weakly.
“Then why don’t you stop complaining and make yourself useful? Over there.” He pointed at the small boulders blocking the stomion entrance. “We need to pile up enough of those against the wall so we can climb to the ceiling and loosen some rocks where it’s weakest.”
“Yes,” Griffin joined in. “The part of the dome that protrudes from the surface is at least ten feet above the floor. It would be no help to loosen stones at eye level. We’d still remain buried.”
“We’ll have to work fast,” Erik advised. “I don’t know how long the batteries in these flashlights will hold out.”
The thought of being trapped underground in complete darkness motivated Cassie. She sped to the task.
After countless trips to the stomion rock pile, the trio managed to build a sturdy enough platform to reach the spot on the wall where a draft seemed to be flowing into the chamber.
“You’d
