“Clear,” he shouted back at Sykes and continued on, looking for a stairwell to get him to the ground floor.
Two stories above them, the fire had weakened a secondary support column for the building’s pagoda roof. The massive timber failed under the load of the baked tiles. The result was as if that part of the monastery had been dynamited. Tons of wood and barrel tiles fell inward in an implosion that pulled more material into the crater. The sloping roof lost the counterweight of its own construction and the entire eastern side of the temple sagged. A flood of loosened barrel tiles went crashing into the courtyard in an avalanche that quickly formed twenty-foot mounds of rubble.
The other three sides of the roof swayed, shedding tiles like a fish being scaled as wind tore through the burning structure. Lances of flame climbed seventy feet into the air, fueled by the ancient wood and bellowslike gusts funneling down the valley. As the building shifted, windows exploded from their frames in staccato pulses, first north, then south, until the glass from two thousand panes littered the ground.
Inside, Mercer was thrown against a wall as the floors above began to pancake. One wing of the monastery collapsed entirely, dragging more sections with it. Dust billowed from the heap of wreckage in waves of ash and debris that engulfed the length of the valley. It was so heavy that even the ferocious Alpine winds couldn’t clear it. Mercer ran blindly, feeling the building tearing itself apart.
“Sit rep,” he heard Sykes shouting over the radio.
“Doc, it’s Grumpy. The target’s past me. I couldn’t risk a shot. They went through a door about fifty feet off the main foyer. It’s not an exterior door so I think they went underground.”
“Shit,” Mercer cursed as the others reported their position and progress. Tracking her in the enormous monastery was hard enough. Trying to find her in the warren of tunnels he was sure was under the building would be next to impossible.
As more of the building came down, he expected the defenders to give up the fight and try to save themselves, but as he came to a staircase, someone down on the second floor fired up at him.
Mercer pulled the pins from a pair of flash/bangs and let them roll down the steps. The explosion blew apart the bottom of the stairs and the whole structure nearly collapsed. He loosed a short burst from the M-4, tentatively stepped on the top stair and leapt back as the staircase caved in.
He and Sykes abandoned the ruined stairs in search of another.
“This is Bash, me and Happy are on the first floor. Grump, give me your position.”
Mercer tuned out the radio chatter. The third floor was burning freely now. The air was full of smoke and sparks that singed his skin and burned away tufts of hair. After what seemed like an endless search, the confining hallways opened up to a long balcony overlooking a mezzanine. This wasn’t the main foyer where the team was assembling, but a secondary space that was still larger than the lobby of most hotels. A set of stairs spiraled down along three walls, descending past the second floor and ending at the first. Standing at the railing, Mercer and Sykes swept the area through their rifle sights. It appeared deserted. They were about to descend when the wall behind them disintegrated and a torrent of flame exploded across the landing. They were both lifted from their feet and launched down the stairs.
Mercer tucked himself into a ball as the scalding pressure wave blew him over the steps. Rolling as he fell, he was hit repeatedly by Sykes tumbling right behind him. He caught a boot to the mouth that split his lip and another to the lower back that felt like it had gouged out a kidney. He smashed into a wall hard enough to arrest his headlong plunge and managed to get a hand on Sykes to stop him too. They climbed to their feet.
Mercer cleared his mouth of blood. “You all right?”
Sykes grabbed his trigger finger and winced as he straightened the misshapen digit. It had broken when it got caught in the trigger guard of his assault rifle. “Fine.”
A startled shout from below gave them a second’s warning to fall flat before auto-fire raked the staircase. Tufts of carpet and wood splinters filled the air as rounds tore through the steps. They were pinned. Above them the balcony was an inferno; the newel posts burned like roman candles, and banks of smoke poured over the landing. Below, the unseen gunmen were getting more accurate. Bullet holes appeared in the wall a foot from where Mercer lay.
“Bash — Snow and I are pinned,” Sykes radioed. “I don’t know where the hell we are, but we need help.” He fired over the railing, drawing redoubled counterfire.
“I hear you,” Happy replied. “Hold one.”
“We don’t have one, Hap.”
Down below, one of the fanatical Order members cocked an RPG-7 under his arm and fired the rocket- propelled grenade at the stairs. The explosive-tipped shell impacted well above Mercer and Sykes, but the charge blew the cantilevered stairs from the wall. The entire structure began to tilt, wood pulling from the wall with a sound like an agonized moan. The staircase had been pegged to the wall with two-inch-thick dowels that remained in place as the steps collapsed. Mercer reached across the widening gap between the stairs and the wall and took hold of one of these pegs just as the section he was lying on fell free.
Sykes just managed to grab his own dowel.
The staircase crashed to the first floor, leaving both men hanging on the wall twenty feet above the ground, exposed and unable to defend themselves. The killing shots were a moment away.
But the gunfire came from outside the foyer. Bashful and Happy had engaged.
Mercer didn’t waste a second. If not for the debris of the collapsed staircase he could have let go, but the pile of shattered wood was unstable and even a drop from a few feet invited a broken leg. The dowel projecting from the wall was easily two feet long. He shifted his grip and began to pendulum his body, arcing across the void to reach the next peg in line, about three feet in front of him and two feet farther down the curved wall. He snagged it with his left hand and let momentum swing him down to the third. Like a child on the monkey bars, he looped his way down the wall as bullets sliced crisscrossing tracks through the smoke.
At the bottom he found cover amid the demolished staircase, but he did not shoot at the robed gunmen across the foyer. Sykes was barely halfway down and Mercer couldn’t risk drawing fire until the commando was safe. The instant Sykes dropped next to him, Mercer sighted in on one of the gunmen and put a bullet into his chest. His partner fumbled with another RPG-7. Mercer fired again, catching him in the hip as he pulled the rocket launcher’s trigger. The missile went errant, climbing straight up on a column of flame until it impacted on the burning ceiling three floors above. The explosion seemed to shake the monastery to its foundation. More of the roof came down. One chunk landed on the gunman, crushing him flat.
The shooting suddenly ceased as Bashful and Happy dispatched the last of the killer monks. “I think we’re clear, Doc.”
“Roger.” Sykes stood.
Mercer and he teamed up with the other two and together they ran to the main mezzanine, where Grumpy, Sleepy and Dopey waited to continue the search. The first floor was ablaze now. The floor was littered with smashed tiles and soot lay thick on every surface. If not for the wind howling through the building, the monastery’s interior would have been hotter than a furnace.
“Where’d they go?” Sykes panted. He wiped grime from his face.
Grumpy nodded down a hallway. “There’s a door down there. I saw them as they went through. On the other side it looks like a cave or something.”
Mercer nodded. “This place was built on top of a geologic hot spot, like Yellowstone Park. That must be one of the old lava tubes they went down. I was afraid of this.”
“Why?”
“A typical building only has four sides and so many exits. You can’t get too lost. But down there you take one wrong turn and we could end up miles from where they’ve got Tisa.”
A tremendous crash on the far side of the monastery ended the rest of the discussion. The building was coming down. Either they had to get out now or follow Tisa’s captors into the subterranean labyrinth.
Sykes gestured Grumpy to take point. They ran to the doorway, fanning out as Dopey, their demolitions expert, checked it for booby traps. Finding nothing around the jamb, he stood aside to use the butt of his M-4 to ease the door slightly. It creaked on its hinges, swung open a foot and exploded in a blinding flash.
Dopey remained silhouetted against the blast for a fraction of a second before his body was blown ten feet down the hallway. He tumbled against a column. Much of his uniform had been stripped from his body, as well as most of his skin.
