late.
Austin hit the man like a bowling ball. The guard crashed backward, and his head snapped against the castle’s wall. He slumped unconscious to the ground.
Austin opened the heavy door and stepped into the coldness of the castle. With his Bowen extended in both hands, he quickly searched the first level and found the room with the big fireplace. The door at the back of the fireplace had been left open slightly, allowing a sliver of torchlight to escape.
Tossing his night vision goggles aside, Austin kicked the door open and ran down the stairs. He stepped through an arched portal and took in the scene. The circular room with its grotesque statuary. The heavy smell of oil. Carina on the upraised arms. And Baltazar, who stood calmly beside the statue as if he had been expecting Austin.
“Austin!” he said, his face contorted into a mask of fury. “Somehow, I knew it was you.”
As a start, Austin wanted Baltazar away from Carina. He aimed the Bowen. “Fun’s over, Baltazar. Come down from there.”
Baltazar ducked behind the statue and spoke into the voice tube. The hollow voice seemed to issue from the open mouth of the statue.
“Too late, Austin. Sheba rests in the arms of Ba’al.”
Austin heard a grinding noise underfoot and stepped back as the trapdoors slid open to reveal the oil pit.
Clenching his teeth in concentration, he stood with his feet wide apart, aimed the Bowen at the statue’s face, and squeezed the trigger. Chunks of metal went flying. The statue’s nose disintegrated, to expose its hollowed interior. Austin let off another round. The heavy bullet took off a cheek. Then he methodically shot out the rest of the statue’s evil face.
There was a shriek of pain, and Baltazar stepped out from behind the statue. His face was bloodied from flying metal. He reached out and grabbed a torch from the wall. Austin snapped off a wild shot. It missed, but in his haste to seek cover, Baltazar dropped the torch on the stairs.
Baltazar descended the stairway to retrieve the flaming torch. Austin’s gun was empty. He tucked it into the holster and sprinted up the stairs.
Baltazar snatched up the burning brand and stuck it in Austin’s face. Austin ducked and threw his shoulder into Baltazar’s midsection. Baltazar dropped the torch but he was a physical match for Austin, and his rage gave him added strength. They struggled for a moment, lost their footing, and rolled down the staircase to the edge of the pool.
Baltazar head-butted Austin, got to his feet, and kicked Austin in the ribs. He aimed another kick at Austin’s face. Austin ignored the searing pain, grabbed Baltazar’s boot, and twisted. Baltazar stood on one foot, trying vainly to maintain his balance, and then fell head-first into the pool.
Austin scrambled to his feet and saw Baltazar trying to swim in the thick liquid. His head and face gleamed with the black oil.
“Get back, Kurt!”
The bandages that held Carina had stretched during her travels. She had freed herself and climbed off the statue’s arms. Now she stood on the stairs, holding the torch in her hand. With her white dress, and lovely features contorted in anger, she looked like an avenging angel.
Carina hesitated. She started to lower the torch. Then she saw that Baltazar was trying to climb out of the pool, a task made difficult by the oil on his hands. He struggled at the edge like a reptilian monster emerging from the deep. Carina raised her arm back and threw the torch. It arced through the air ahead of a trail of embers and landed in the middle of the oil pit.
There was a loud
Austin raced up the stairs and grabbed Carina around the waist. He pushed her into the space behind the statue and threw his body on top of hers.
Although the statue shielded them from the searing heat, they were in danger of choking from the cloud of greasy black smoke that billowed up to the ceiling. Even with smoke escaping through the vent in the ceiling, the chamber was filled with toxic fumes within seconds.
Austin was wrapping his arm tighter around Carina’s slim body when he felt a handle on the wall. He pulled the handle and a section of wall slid back. Cold air flowed from the rectangular opening. Austin was barely able to get the words out but he shouted at Carina to crawl through the opening. Then he followed her and slid the wall section shut.
Austin dug a penlight out of his jacket and flashed it around. They were in a room barely bigger than a closet. The air was musty but free of smoke. He guessed that it had been built to protect Baltazar’s ancestors when they were making sacrifices to Ba’al.
They stayed behind the statue until the oil burned itself out. Austin slid the door open a crack. The air was foul but mostly free of smoke. They used some of Carina’s gauze bandages to fashion makeshift smoke masks. Then they crawled out from behind the statue and made their way down the stairs to the door.
As they passed the smoking fire pit, Carina averted her eyes. Austin glanced into the pool as if he expected Baltazar to crawl from the depths. But all he saw was the noxious blackness of the abyss.
Chapter 54
AFTER HIS QUICK PHONE CALL to Baltazar, Adriano had driven to New Jersey to work on his plans for NUMA.
He stayed in a cheap motel, where he devised an intricate plan for NUMA that involved multiple assassins, car bombs, biological agents, and old standbys, such as high-powered rifles. He methodically plowed through staff listings and gave priority to targets that would gut the agency. He moved on the next day and stayed in another motel. By the third day, he had put the finishing touches on his scheme for mass death and destruction. Then he waited for word from Baltazar.
After two days, Adriano tried to call Baltazar but got no answer. He hung up on the busy signal and punched in another number that connected him with the recording device he had planted in Austin’s tree.
“Hello, Joe,” Austin’s voice said. “How’s your research going?’
“We’ve got the mine pinned down,” Zavala said. “The papyrus told us exactly where to find it.”
Adriano raised an eyebrow and listened intently.
“Terrific! Feed me the details.”
Zavala told him about the hotel submerged under the lake in St. Anthony’s Wilderness, and went into great detail about the shaft leading from the kitchen into the mine. He gave Austin the GPS coordinates.
“How soon can we make an exploratory dive?” Austin said.
“I’m pulling together a dive team now. We can be on site in forty-eight hours.”
“Good work. We’ll go over the details tomorrow.”
The two men hung up after some unrelated chitchat.
The call had been made earlier that day. Adriano read the notes he’d written down. He checked out of his motel room and drove to a storage unit, one of several he maintained near Washington. The unit contained weapons and ammunition, money, changes of clothing and identity, and, for his immediate purposes, a complete set of scuba gear, which he loaded into the trunk of his car.
The next morning his car was bumping along the dirt road into St. Anthony’s Wilderness. He parked at the edge of the lake, got into a wet suit, and slipped into his buoyancy compensator and tank. Adriano was an accomplished diver, having learned his skills from the SEALs who’d been on Baltazar’s payroll.
He swam to a buoy floating in the lake, glanced at the reading on his portable GPS, and dove down to the hotel with powerful flutter kicks. He made his way to the kitchen and found the shaft. He dove into the opening without hesitating. Even if he hadn’t been anxious to get to the mine, it was doubtful he would have noticed the block-shaped plastic objects buried in the rubble within a few feet of the shaft opening.
When Adriano got to the bottom of the shaft, he was surprised to see a waterproof slate with an arrow drawn on it and the words: THIS WAY.
He followed the direction the arrow was pointing and came to another slate indicating a tunnel off the main
