The blast wave rolled over the rest of the men, covering them in powdered stone and wood shavings. Behind them a stone column collapsed and a section of the second floor smashed into the foyer. Flames rose from the debris.
“Goddamn it,” someone screamed as they raced from their cover positions. Sykes was the first one at Dopey’s side. Grumpy and Mercer stayed back, covering the tunnel entrance with the M-4s in case the explosion brought an ambush. The rest of the men clustered around their fallen comrade. Their movements were purely reflex. There was nothing any of them could do. Dopey had been killed instantly.
“That’s two the fuckers got,” Sykes hissed. “I want them. So help me God I want them.”
They approached the still-smoking cave entrance. The men carried their rifles high, shoulders hunched, fingers curled around triggers. The barrels were in constant motion, sweeping corners and shadows.
Beyond the ruined doorway, the tunnel was a circular fissure that ran down into the earth. A few lamps bolted to the ceiling provided dingy light. It was deserted. The men stayed in a tight group as they inched into the shaft. In the tight confines, staying together reduced the risk of friendly fire and allowed them a denser barrage of counterfire if they were attacked.
The passage corkscrewed and twisted as they went, providing blind corners that needed to be scouted and slowed their progress. Mercer could feel Tisa slipping further and further away. How long ago had she come this way? How far ahead was she?
Sykes was leading the party and dropped down on his haunches, holding up a gloved fist. The men stopped and lowered themselves. From around the next bend a bright glow crept up the tunnel. Sykes moved forward cautiously, his boots making a bare whisper on the stone floor.
He paused at the corner. “Jesus. Come on.”
The men ran up. The chamber had once been richly appointed with antiques, desks, lamps, and tall bureaus. Two walls were dominated by bookshelves. Mercer recognized the texts from the single journal Tisa had stolen from Rinpoche-La. These were the watchers’ archives, the books on which scribes had written the oracle’s predictions that people had gone out to verify.
Everything was burning. The shelves, the furniture, and the books. There wasn’t enough air in the room for the flames to grow high, but enough remained for the priceless artifacts to smolder and blacken before their eyes. Mercer was certain that Donny Randall had set the fire to delay them.
As Sykes and his team searched through the growing smoke for an exit, Mercer tried to approach one of the shelves. The heat was intense, as if the room was an oven. He made a grab for one of the books, only to have it disintegrate in a burst of flame and ash. He tried for two more with the same results. At his fingertips was the knowledge to save millions of people and yet it was out of reach.
He unbuckled his combat harness and let it drop to the floor, then stripped off his battle jacket.
“Mercer, what are you doing? We gotta go!” Sykes had found the door out of the chamber.
“I have to save them!” Mercer shouted over the crackle of burning wood and parchment. He scanned the rows, hoping to find how the chronicles were arranged, but couldn’t make out the titles through the smoke. He made a guess that the last books were the most recent. Using his jacket, he swept the last three books from the shelf and bundled them as quickly as he could.
They were as hot as bricks from a kiln and his hands blistered. He ignored the pain, clamping the jacket tightly around the books, trying to smother the embers. He was too slow. Curls of smoke grew from the fabric and it began to blacken. He tried to beat at those spots with his hands, but it did no good. The entire bundle caught fire. Mercer jumped back, momentarily blinded by the flash. The precious collection burned like a torch — lost for all time.
“Mercer, let’s go!”
He turned reluctantly from the chronicles. The remainder of the shelves were sheeted in flames. Centuries of painstaking work was gone. He snatched up his harness and rifle and followed Sykes deeper into the ground.
For ten minutes the men wended their way along the tunnel until they came to another open chamber. This one was much larger than the archive, with towering ceilings adorned with chandeliers and ornately carved furniture. It resembled something out of the palace at Versailles.
Grumpy and Sykes entered first, staying tight to the wall as they made a circuit of the room. The rest of the men covered them from the tunnel’s mouth. A dozen paces in, Bashful barked a warning. Sykes and Grumpy dropped behind a massive urn. Bashful fired to his left, his rounds chewing the frame off a doorway. From across the room a monk stepped from behind a screen and fired back. Grumpy opened up from a prone position, stitching the monk from groin to shoulder.
In seconds other armed monks appeared all over the room. The level of fire grew to a roar that rattled the chandeliers. One of the monks tried to fire a rocket-propelled grenade but was cut down a moment before he got it to bear. Mercer loosed a long fusillade and ran for cover behind a desk. Another monk dashed out to recover the fallen weapon and managed a snap shot that cratered the rock face above the tunnel.
The men tumbled from the opening as stones and rubble began to fall around them. Sykes and Grumpy poured out rounds to cover them and as soon as Mercer changed out his magazine, he fired over the top of the desk, taking two monks and forcing several others to retreat.
No one needed to order an advance. The men knew they had only seconds before the enemy regrouped. In leapfrog dashes they charged across the room, holding their fire as they ran but opening up again when they had cover.
Mercer was halfway across when a grenade was tossed in his path. He jumped through a doorway to his right and backed himself against the wall. The detonation blew the door from its hinge but left him unhurt. He took a moment to look around as the commandos flushed the defenders from the outer chamber.
The room he’d landed in was dominated by a large bed. Tapestries covered the walls. He thought the room was unoccupied until he spied a naked skeletal man propped against the bed headboard. Through mindless eyes he watched Mercer watching him. The pitiable creature began to giggle.
“What the-?”
The giggle turned into a shriek and the madman started to claw at his skin. His long fingernails tore bloody trenches from his arms and legs. He threw the ribbons of flesh at the heavy cerulean drapes hanging across the far wall of the bedroom. The clots of skin and tissue clung to the hangings while droplets of blood trickled down the rich blue fabric. Horrified by what he was seeing, Mercer couldn’t help but notice that the curtain seemed to billow slightly at the spot where the man was throwing bits of his body.
He stayed low and circled around the bed. As soon as the crazed figure saw Mercer was moving to the drapes, he stopped tearing at himself and made a cooing noise. Mercer reached the spot and used his rifle barrel to probe the cloth. There was an opening behind the drape.
“Is that what you were trying to tell me?” he asked the old man.
The man’s expression remained vacant. His toothless mouth hung slack.
Mercer lifted the drape. Behind it was a door that had been left ajar. A warm breeze blew from deeper inside the complex of tunnels. It had a sharp scent, like machine oil.
“Sykes!” Mercer called on his throat mike. “Sykes, can you hear me?” He heard nothing but static. The team had fought their way out of the first room and was doubtlessly chasing the monks farther into the mountain. The intervening rock was blocking the radio signals. “Bashful? Happy? Anyone read?”
He turned to check the bedroom entrance, hoping that at least one of the Delta operators had stayed behind to find him. He’d barely taken a step toward the exit when the old man screamed again and ripped a strip of skin off his hip.
Mercer froze. “Easy, now. I just need to check something.”
He took another step. The lunatic heaved the piece of meat at the secret door and reached across himself to tear another chunk from his shoulder.
“Okay, okay. I get the point. I’ll go through the door.” As soon as he turned back to the portal, the old man settled on his bed, his thin chest rising and falling as fast as a hummingbird’s.
The tunnel beyond the bedroom was much smaller than the lava tube the men had used to get this far, forcing Mercer to crouch. There were no lights, and the lamp attached to his M-4 had been damaged during the fighting. Its beam was an anemic glow that barely cut the gloom.
Every twenty paces or so, Mercer paused, cocking his head to listen for any movement. He sensed more than heard the rhythm of heavy machinery farther down the shaft. The impression coincided with the oil smell that was
