River of Ruin

The kid was counting on the gun paralyzing his victim, but Mercer had faced armed men before. His reactions were instantaneous and focused. He had one leg in a cocked position that the mugger neither saw nor expected. Mercer kicked out, pinning the thief’s arm against the open door frame. The blow lacked the power to break bone and the punk managed to keep his grip on the black pistol as he pulled free. A crowd of pedestrians who had witnessed the accident began to gather. The heroin-thinned thief took off with the sample case under the forest of umbrellas they held aloft.

Mercer launched himself out of the taxi even as the rational side of his mind questioned his actions. His feet moved as if of their own volition, finding grip on the wet sidewalk even though his loafers should have slid out from under him. The kid didn’t look back as they raced down rue Denfort under a canopy of trees that lined the road and reflected the glow from the streetlamps. He had no reason to expect his victim would pursue him.

The gap between the two shrunk with each pace, Mercer driven by an enraged desire to retrieve his case and the Lepinay journal. Fifty feet short of the next crosswalk, Mercer was just five yards back and gaining. A four-door Mercedes screeched to a halt at the intersection, and the rear door was thrown open. The kid’s getaway car? A Mercedes?

Horns sounded.

The thief put on a burst of speed, adrenaline giving him that last bit of energy to reach his target. Mercer was certain that if he could trip the kid, the idling car would take off. The race would end long before they reached the corner. Mercer was just a few yards back, his attention focused first on his case and then on a spot between the punk’s shoulder blades.

The thief broke stride suddenly, his body torquing before he fell flat onto the sidewalk without trying to check his fall. He skidded for a yard or two, Mercer’s attache slipping from his limp hand, the pistol sliding next to it. Mercer pulled himself to a stop, hunching over the still form. His breath exploded in the moist air and his heart thumped hard enough to pound in his ears. He could see one side of the teenager’s face had been scraped raw by the rough cement sidewalk. Rain sluiced stringy trails of blood toward the gutter from under the body.

Then Mercer saw a slick black exit wound from a bullet that had punched a hole through the side of the kid’s chest. Although he hadn’t heard it, he realized the shot had come from their right.

Mercer looked up from the body, all his senses now keyed to his surroundings. Hard-won experience gave his eyes that extra bit of acuity, his body that extra bit of strength, his mind that extra bit of clarity. The front door of the waiting Mercedes sedan swung open. From the dim interior came flashes from silenced weapons. Bullets split the air over Mercer’s head. Screams rose over the din of congested traffic and the distant honking of an approaching siren. He scrambled to grab his case and the pistol and ran for the entrance to the nearest building.

Out of the corner of his eye Mercer spotted three armed men jump from the Mercedes. Unlike the kid who’d swiped the case, these gunmen moved with a well-trained grace and all were Asian. A worker stood at the building’s steel-and-glass door, locking up for the night. Without looking at where he was, Mercer shoved the man aside and dodged into the dim interior.

Even as he sought defensive cover, the connection came clear. Far from a random mugging, this was an elaborate robbery attempt to get the Lepinay journal and hide evidence of who really wanted it. But who had killed the thief? It made no sense that the Asians in the sedan had gunned down their own man. The bullet had come from a yet-unseen assassin.

There was no time to consider the implications that Jean-Paul Derosier or Gary Barber might have set him up. With only seconds before the attackers burst through the door behind him, the memories of previous combat served to push Mercer on.

A set of circular stairs were sunk into the floor on one side of the room, backed by a stone wall that looked like it had stood there for centuries. Light spilling in from the street made the round opening look like the entrance to Hell itself. That sudden image sent a chill along Mercer’s spine. He’d just figured out where he was.

In the late eighteenth century, Paris was being overwhelmed by the stench of its overflowing cemeteries, and outbreaks of disease from decomposition were rampant. In an effort to clean up the city, officials decided to dig up and then re-inter millions of the dead in the old limestone quarries that had been excavated during Roman times. They ended up filling a hundred miles of tunnels with the skeletal remains of six million people in what became the largest repository of bones in the world. Part of this extensive catacomb was open to the public as a mile-long walking tour, and Mercer found himself trapped at its entrance. His only way out led through the twisting maze of what Parisians called l’empire de la mort. The empire of the dead.

He had no time to find light switches, so he rummaged behind a counter and grabbed two large flashlights. He stuffed one into his coat pocket and held the other in the same hand as his briefcase to keep the gun free. He dodged to the circular stairs and descended into the abyss. At the bottom of the corkscrew stairs, the flashlight revealed a long tunnel lined with rough stone. He turned off the light again when he heard a door open above him. He ran with his knees bent, his shoes making no more than a whisper against the gravel floor. With his fingers brushing the wall, he came to a left bend in the passageway and checked his surroundings again with a quick burst from the flashlight. Another straight tunnel led farther into the subterranean realm, and again he ran on.

Three more times he came to sharp corners before breaking out into an underground chamber. For as far as the flashlight cut the gloom he saw neat stacks of skeletal remains piled like cordwood. Age had yellowed the bones and some were cemented together by minerals in the water that dripped from the limestone ceiling. Countless thousands of empty skulls watched him as he crossed the gallery. He hoped the painted markings in the roof led to this horror show’s exit.

Halfway to the next section of the catacomb the lights suddenly snapped on. They were artfully placed spots that highlighted the chamber’s more grisly aspects-walls of femurs, crosses made of tibias, abstract sculptures of skulls and pelvises. Mercer noted all this in a frantic glance. His pursuers would be coming and his lead was maybe a minute.

He was certain that the gunmen had seen him pick up the gun, so he doubted he’d shoot more than one in an ambush. And once contact was made, they’d be able to outflank him. But he decided that two against one was still better than facing three. From behind a wall of bones he was able to see the tunnel leading back to the surface. A constant patter of water seepage dripped from the low roof.

The countless firefights he’d been in gave him if not confidence, at least self-control. He managed to slow his breathing and cut short the raging questions. He concentrated solely on survival. He took a moment to check the automatic pistol he’d recovered, a small Beretta 9mm. The action was stiff, as if it hadn’t been oiled in years, and the brass shells were pitted and tarnished.

Just my luck to be mugged by a discount goon, Mercer thought bitterly. The click of a misfire would betray his position as surely as an accurately placed shot.

A crunch of gravel sounded over the drips and a shadow passed just beyond the entrance tunnel. Mercer raised his pistol in a two-handed grip, waiting, his eyes staring into the murky light. In a burst, the three assassins rushed into the chamber, their silenced weapons shooting tongues of flame as they laid down covering fire. The wild shots turned bone to powder with each impact. Mercer couldn’t face the onslaught and stayed behind his barrier, waiting for them to pause. A row of skulls above him looked down as if laughing.

The muted echoes of that first barrage died away and Mercer heard voices. He had no way to be sure, but it sounded like Chinese to him. It wasn’t much of a stretch to realize they were employees of bidder 127. They were trying to steal the one item that he hadn’t been able to buy at the auction. How they knew Mercer had it laid the blame firmly at Derosier’s feet.

Mercer ducked his head around the jagged stack of femurs. The gunmen were hidden. An explosion of bone dust erupted next to his shoulder and he could feel the passage of a ricochet. He’d been spotted. More rounds poured in, high-velocity bullets that tore into the wall of human remains. Mercer shuffled back around the far side of the island of bones. Chips of yellowed skeleton were blown from the stack. A figure stepped out of the shadows, creeping steadily forward on soft-soled shoes. Mercer took aim before he was spotted and eased the trigger.

The gun bucked and the unsilenced blast sounded like a cannon in the nightmarish confines. The bullet took the assassin center-mass and dropped him instantly. Keeping low, Mercer moved down another alley where the neatly stacked bony fragments were separated by body part, not individual. Tibias in one section, scapulas in another, a ten-foot stretch of nothing but ribs.

He found an arched doorway and dashed through. No shots chased in his wake as he passed some sort of altar and into another ossuary chamber decorated with obelisks from Napoleonic times. A square stack of bones that reached to the ceiling was dated 1804 and looked like a mausoleum.