Gaul dropped the belt on top of her and backed away to join Orr at the opposite end of the room as they watched the barrier slowly drop.
“Put it on her,” Gaul said, with the Taser leveled at them. “I want to hear it click shut.” Tyler complied and looped it around her waist, snapping it closed.
A wave of heat washed over them, as if someone had opened the door on a broiling oven.
They all moved to the other side of the room as the cool air from the tunnels rushed in to replace the stifling damp air coming from beyond the descending barrier.
In five minutes the wall had sunk all the way to the bottom, and the air temperature had dropped enough for them to venture in.
They walked across the threshold, through a small antechamber, and emerged at a balcony overlooking a cavern far bigger than any they’d come through in their journey.
Stacy gasped. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight in front of her. This had to be the tomb of Midas, because from floor to ceiling every surface was made of gold.
FIFTY-NINE
T he lustrous golden finish reflected the lanterns so that the luminous power was amplified far beyond their meager outputs. The room stretched out before Tyler as if he were standing on the doorstep of El Dorado. The floors, walls, and ceiling were all made of gold, which ended in tendrils reaching for the chamber’s entryway like a creeping mold.
The entry platform to the one-hundred-foot-long by fifty-foot-wide room was a balcony with a solid railing along its length. The chamber seemed to have been excavated from a contiguous mass of volcanic tuff, and the balcony overlooked a massive ten-foot-deep pit that took up more than half the room’s length. Stairs to Tyler’s left led down to the pit, and in the middle of the pit was the statue of a girl lying on a cubical pedestal of gold, just as Orr had described, her left hand missing. The golden pedestal, six feet on each side, had lines of Greek lettering chiseled into it.
A spout of water poured from an opening in the wall into a bubbling pool that ran along the far end of the pit behind the pedestal. The water must have been supplied by a hot spring deep under the crust, superheated by the immense magma chamber that fed Mount Vesuvius. Clouds of steam rose from the pool. The room would have been unbearably hot with the barrier closed.
Another set of stairs led to a ten-foot-high terrace at the opposite end of the chamber, but those stairs were on the right side of the chamber, just past where the pool of water ended. The terrace didn’t have a golden railing as the entrance balcony did, so Tyler could clearly see a gold sarcophagus placed on it in a regal center position atop a platform overlooking the rest of the chamber.
There were no other golden objects in the chamber, so Midas must have been confident that the golden room itself was impressive enough to secure him a heavenly afterlife with the gods.
Tyler observed all of this in just a few seconds. He’d been preparing for the last hour, thinking about how to disable Orr and Gaul without getting tasered or blown up. Now that they had reached their objective, he and Stacy had exhausted their usefulness to Orr. If Tyler didn’t act soon, the two of them would be killed for sure. It was incredibly risky, but he could either try something now and go down fighting or die with a push of Orr’s detonator button.
Gaul and Orr had been so careful to keep an eye on both him and Stacy during the entire journey that he’d had no clear opportunity to strike. Either he would have been killed in the attempt or he would have been defeated and tipped his hand. Tyler knew that he would have only one chance, and he counted on this being the time when Orr and Gaul would be the most distracted, the moment they laid eyes on all that gold.
When they had walked through the entrance, Tyler had angled to position himself so that the two men were on either side of him, with Stacy behind them. As they stood at the balcony of the golden cavern, Orr and Gaul were clearly mesmerized by the bounty the chamber offered.
Tyler took his chance.
Without warning, he pushed Stacy backward out of his way. He used the geolabe to smack the Taser out of Gaul’s hand, and it went flying into the pit below, where it skidded into the pool. With a kick, he sent Gaul crashing down the stairs.
Tyler whirled around, trying to smash Orr’s head with the device, but it only hit him in the back. Orr bent over, his right hand caught between his body and the stone railing. Tyler grabbed his left wrist and tried to wrench the detonators off by undoing the two Velcro clasps.
He got one open, but it slipped out of his hand and fell over the side of the railing. It was the red one that matched the red belt he wore. The detonator for Stacy’s blue belt remained securely fastened. Orr yanked his wrist away and swung the bag on his shoulder around. It slammed into Tyler, knocking him backward.
Before he could catch himself, Tyler tipped over the railing and tumbled through the air.
*
When Tyler had disabled Gaul with lightning speed and launched himself at Orr, Stacy had understood what he was going for. He needed to get those detonators. One of them had gone flying, but the one linked to her belt was still on Orr’s wrist.
It had looked as if Tyler was going to win in one shot, but Orr had been too quick. She ran toward him to try and stop him, but she got there too late, and Tyler flipped over the railing and out of sight.
Orr reached for the detonator button, so Stacy did the only sensible thing. She jumped on his back and latched on to him, wrapping her legs around his midsection, the explosive charge jammed into the small of his back.
“You touch that button and we both die,” she said into Orr’s ear.
He tried to pummel her with his elbows, but the angle didn’t allow him much leverage. Then he landed one that sent a jolt of agony through her torso so painful that she almost released him, which would have meant instant death.
With one arm laced around his neck, she reached with her other hand and raked his face with her fingernails. Orr screamed as she gouged his right eyeball.
“You bitch!”
Orr propelled himself backward until her back connected with the wall, driving the breath from her. She struggled for air but didn’t ease up. She grabbed her own wrist and pulled as hard as she could, tightening the hold on Orr’s neck.
The strangled wheeze escaping from his mouth told her that it was working. It was only a matter of who would give out first.
Tyler landed with a thud on the hard pit floor, and he felt something pop near his ribs. Pain shot through his chest, but at least his arm had kept his head from slamming into the stone floor. He rolled over and spied the detonator button lying next to the golden pedestal.
Gaul, who was shaking off the fall down the stairs and holding his head, saw the button at the same time and realized what it was. He lunged toward it.
Tyler tackled him, and Gaul pitched onto his face. He continued scrambling for the detonator, but Tyler pulled the cuffs of his jeans, dragging him backward.
Tyler leaped on top of him and punched Gaul in the kidney. Gaul coughed in pain, and Tyler took advantage of the pause to jab his hand into Gaul’s pocket. Gaul recovered, rolled over, and slammed his foot into Tyler’s side.
If the kick had hit his cracked rib, Tyler would have doubled over in too much pain to move. But the kick was to his other side, and though it sent him reeling, he kept hold of the key he’d snatched from Gaul’s pocket.
Released from Tyler’s grip, Gaul scrabbled toward the detonator. Tyler knew that he had only seconds before Gaul had the detonator in his hands.
Tyler frantically stabbed the key into the lock mechanism on his belt and twisted it.
Gaul seized the detonator.
Tyler ripped open the belt and threw it.
