growing stronger. The warm air felt charged with electricity.
He silently prayed that the old man hadn’t led him down a dead end.
Three hundred yards into the tunnel, the path branched. Mercer paused at the fork, holding his breath, trying to determine where the oily breeze was coming from. He shut off his flashlight.
There! To the left was the faintest trace of light. He stealthily padded down the tunnel. The light grew stronger and the machinery noises seemed to be growing louder too. He could see the shaft was ending in what could be another chamber. He dropped low, crawling on the smooth rock floor, making his movements as slow and silent as he could. His M-4 was at the ready.
Rounding a slight bend, Mercer froze.
Indeed it was a chamber, a cavern that towered more than a hundred feet. The space was longer than a football field, wider too. It was like being at the entrance to an enclosed sports arena. But it was what sat in the center of the cave that stilled his heart and choked his breath in this throat.
He’d never seen anything like it — couldn’t imagine something like it could even be built.
Mercer had found the oracle.
THE ORACLE CHAMBER MONASTERY OF RINPOCHE-LA
The attack came from Mercer’s right, a slashing blow moving so fast it seemed to crack the air. He brought up his rifle in a purely reflexive block. The head of the twelve-pound sledgehammer hit the weapon’s receiver, crushing the mechanism, and the force of the impact knocked Mercer off his feet. He landed on his back five feet down the tunnel. He used the momentum to shoulder roll to his feet, disoriented but charged with adrenaline.
Donny Randall stood in front of him at the tunnel’s mouth, the long-handled hammer held at port arms. Mercer didn’t bother to aim. With the M-4 held at his hip, he pulled the trigger.
The weapon remained silent.
Randall charged.
Mercer raised the gun to ward off the next powerful swing of the hammer. The strike sent shivers up his arms and drove him back several paces. He retreated farther, dropping the M-4 and reaching for the Beretta hanging from his belt. Behind Randall the oracle glowed.
The pistol had just cleared the holster when Donny reacted. Mercer was out of range for another swipe with the hammer so he threw the tool like a javelin. The steel head smashed Mercer’s right hand, deadening his fingers and pitching the pistol into the dark recesses of the access tunnel.
Randall retreated back into the oracle chamber. Mercer searched for the fallen pistol but couldn’t find it. The hammer had landed nearby and he snatched that up at least to have a weapon. Facing Randall the Handle unarmed wasn’t an option. He dropped onto all fours, sweeping his hands blindly along the stone at the same time he watched for Randall’s return.
He caught a glimpse of something metallic just as Donny’s shadow loomed over him. He spun flat as Randall swung down at him with another sledgehammer. He twisted just enough for the head to miss him, but the side of his face was peppered with stone chips gouged from the tunnel floor by the blow. Mercer used the butt end of his own sledge to crack Donny on the shin, unbalancing him and allowing Mercer to scramble to his feet.
No one knew the origin of hammer dancing. It was almost as if it had cropped up spontaneously wherever men, hardened by labor and charged with savage competitiveness, gathered. It was a way of settling feuds in the slag heaps of Pennsylvania mill towns, and among black workers in the tail piles of Johannesburg’s gold mines. Mercer had seen it once on an oil platform in the swamps of the Niger River delta. The workers wagering on the outcome claimed they had invented the sport, but Mercer suspected men were betting on hammer fights in the pharaoh’s quarries when they were building the pyramids.
There were no rules to hammer dancing. And the outcome could not be questioned. One man was standing and one man was dead. The victor was usually crippled for life.
“I’ve wanted to dance with you since Vegas,” Donny sneered as he backed out of the tunnel to give himself room. “And I’m gonna lead.”
Mercer tightened his grip on his hammer, testing the tool’s balance and trying not to show the fear coursing through his veins. He knew he’d never find his pistol so he followed Donny into the oracle chamber. Stepping into the cavern, Mercer felt like a gladiator entering the Colosseum.
The oracle sat in the middle of the cavern, an enormous sphere reaching for the chamber’s rocky ceiling. Mercer estimated it was at least four stories tall. Below the sphere was a partitioned area furnished with antique desks and divans. The floor under the furniture was layered in carpets.
Randall’s dyed hair gleamed under the lights atop the wood scaffold ringing the top of the oracle. His grin remained fixed, his feral eyes on Mercer, watchful and expectant. He was eager for the fight, confident that his superior size and strength gave him the advantage. He’d probably done this a few times before.
He wore a pair of loose workman’s coveralls and steel-toed boots. With his sleeves rolled up, Mercer could see his forearms were as thick as footballs. The four-foot length of the sledgehammer looked puny in his huge hands. He was back far enough from Mercer to hold the hammer out straight in one hand, and he slowly brought it to the vertical using nothing but the power of his wrist. It was a staggering demonstration of his strength, leaving Mercer to hope that his eyes hadn’t bulged.
“Mercer!”
The cry came from near the towering sphere. The way the light played against the oracle’s glittering surface, Mercer could barely see the diminutive figure at its base, but he knew the voice. Tisa. She appeared unhurt but was tied to a chair. That must be where the archivists interpreted the oracle’s predictions, he thought, although he had no idea how the device worked.
The instant his eyes shifted to see her, Donny lunged forward, swinging his hammer in a wide, powerful arc. Mercer stepped back a pace but was unprepared for how effortlessly Randall could reverse the stroke and move in on him. The hammerhead came an inch from his chest and would have shattered his ribs had he not fallen back another step. He had his hammer up when Donny cut the strike at him again, carving a wicked S in the air. The handles met with a dull knock. Donny shoved and Mercer went sprawling.
The big man stood firm, not pressing the advantage. He wanted to draw this out and toy with Mercer before beating him to death. His grin widened, showing a gap where two of his side teeth had been.
“All that money you make in an office someplace made you soft. You ain’t as tough as people say.”
Mercer remained on the ground for a moment longer, taking his time getting to his feet so that when he launched himself at Randall, Donny wouldn’t expect it to come. He swung in an uppercut, judging the distance so all Donny had to do was sway back on his heels to avoid the blow.
Donny remained rooted, tipping back so the hammer swung past his head. Mercer let the momentum carry him forward and around so as he pivoted he could chop down at Randall’s hip. Donny parried and the steel hammerheads crashed together with a ring like a cracked bell.
Mercer dodged away, unable to meet Randall’s brute strength when fighting on the inside. Randall came at him, swinging wildly. Some swipes Mercer ducked, others he parried. Each time Donny’s hammer struck Mercer’s, Mercer was forced to give ground. Even these deflected blows were taking a toll. His arms ached and his palms were losing feeling. His grip on the hammer was becoming lax. Donny Randall didn’t seem the least affected. He swung and chopped as though his hammer were a toy sword. While Mercer panted, Donny’s breathing was even and steady.
They had moved to within fifty yards of the oracle. Mercer saw for the first time that its surface wasn’t smooth as he’d assumed. It was rippled and made of either the most lustrous brass he’d ever seen or pure gold. It was also far larger than he’d estimated. He added another twenty feet to its height and diameter.
The two circled each other, making halfhearted feints. Donny lifted his sledge over his head, coming down on Mercer like a pile driver. Mercer caught the strike on the haft of his hammer and was nearly driven to his knees. The two hammerheads locked.
Donny heaved on his sledge, trying to pull Mercer’s hammer from his hands. Mercer managed to hold on but was bodily thrown ten feet when the heads separated. This time Randall gave no quarter. He stalked across the
