The Seventh Plague Page 22

  As an additional precaution, she grabbed a fistful of Rory’s collar and positioned him between her and the far corner.

  Rory noted blood trail on the floor. “Anton . . .”

  Kat motioned Safia to get behind her. Using Rory as a human shield, she retreated. She had the schematic of the station fixed in her head. There was an underground garage two flights above their heads.

  When she was halfway down the hall, a low roaring sounded through the wall. She pictured jets of fire sweeping the lab and shied away from that side.

  Time to go.

  She rushed them toward an elevator bay at the end of the hallway, punched the button, then piled into the cage as it opened. A quick ascent and the doors opened into a cavernous garage space. She hurried toward a row of parked Sno-Cats. Their square cabins sat atop treaded tracks, looked like miniature tanks.

  She picked one and ordered Rory, “Get in back.”

  Cowed by her weapon, he obeyed.

  Kat passed her gun to Safia. “Climb in front but watch him. If he even breathes suspiciously, shoot him.”

  Though still plainly in shock, she nodded.

  Kat hurried to the other side and found keys already hanging from the ignition. She was not surprised. Who would be foolish enough to steal a vehicle up here?

  That would be me.

  Kat got behind the wheel, started the engine, and jerked the vehicle into gear. The treads ground along the concrete floor. She turned toward a ramp leading to a sealed garage door. A pole with a keypad stood at the foot of the ramp. Once she reached there, she willed Anton’s keycard to still work and waved it over the reader.

  A welcome grinding of a motor followed.

  She sighed with relief—but they weren’t out of danger yet.

  As the door opened, winds whipped into the garage. A steady howling pierced the sealed cabin of the Sno-Cat. The storm had finally swallowed the island. Dark clouds roiled overhead, low enough that she swore the roof of the vehicle brushed through them as she trundled out into the storm.

  She set a course to the northeast, aiming for the ice-capped mountains of neighboring Quttinirpaaq National Park. In less than a hundred yards, the isolated station vanished into the darkness behind her.

  Still, she searched in the rearview mirror, watching for pursuers who she knew would come. But for the moment, a larger fear weighed upon her.

  What would happen to Painter?

  17

  June 3, 9:18 A.M. EAT

  Sudan Desert

  My god . . .

  Stunned, Gray stepped into the stone thorax of the sleeping god. The others followed, casting beams of light from their helmets across the cavernous space. Surprised gasps rose behind him, but he could not rip his gaze from the sights ahead.

  The chamber could easily hold a small baseball stadium. Giant stone ribs had been carved along the walls. They curved upward to connect to a row of thoracic vertebrae along the roof. The arch of the spine ran from one end of the cavity to the other and vanished into the far wall, which was bowed in the shape of a human diaphragm.

  “The details are stunning,” Jane murmured. “Look at the striations between the ribs.”

  “Intercostal muscles,” Gray commented, as if giving an anatomy lesson.

  Derek shone his light along a shoulder-high wall that divided the room in half. “That must represent the chest’s mediastinum.” He lifted his beam higher, illuminating a cloudlike formation topping one section. “They even included a thymus gland.”

  But none of these anatomical details were the main attraction.

  As they continued deeper into the room, they were all drawn to the most singular sight in the entire chamber. In the center, a massive stone heart looked as if it hung from the roof by a tangle of muscular blood vessels, including a massive aortic arch. Each of its four chambers was meticulously carved, covered with branching carotid arteries.

  Though the entire sculpture appeared weightless, the bottom of the heart rested atop a section of floor fashioned to resemble a sternum.

  “There’s a door into the left ventricle,” Jane noted as she drew nearer.

  Gray spotted ancient bricks stacked to the side. They must have been used to seal that doorway long ago. But what was hidden inside?

  This question drew them all forward.

  Derek shone his light through the small doorway. “It’s empty.”

  Gray was disappointed but not surprised. Despite the wonders found here, the place had clearly been ransacked. From the condition of the debris left behind, the theft had been recent. Across the floor were tables and benches. A row of bunk beds lined the ribbed wall.

  Someone had been camping inside here—and likely for a long time.

  The wonder dimmed in Jane’s eyes, replaced with a haunted look. “This must be where my father was held.” She turned in a slow circle, as if searching for him. “But why?”

  Gray studied what was left, trying to fill in the blanks. Tall pole lamps dotted the floor, while elsewhere strings of electrical lights ran up the wall. He followed the wires to where a row of generators must have once stood. One table held the smashed remains of a desktop computer. He absently wondered if its hard drive was still recoverable, but he doubted whoever had cleared out of here would have been so lax.

  Nearby, a row of bookshelves had been emptied, with the last case toppled over on its back. He imagined ghostly researchers moving throughout here, working on the chamber’s mysteries.

  Now they were all gone after scrubbing the place.

  Farther along the chamber, Kowalski crouched by the wall. “Guys, look at this.”

  They converged on his location.

  Kowalski probed his beam into a hole at the base of two ribs. Gray had noted similar openings on both sides of the chamber. Again small stone bricks were scattered at the threshold.

  As they joined him, Kowalski shifted his light to a niche above the hole. Inside stood a small wooden elephant with a curled trunk and a pair of yellowed slivers for tusks. It was beautifully wrought with some of the original bark left in place to look like the pachyderm’s rough skin.

  “What is it?” Gray asked.

  Jane leaned closer. “It looks to be a small pot. You can see the line along the beast’s back that must form the top.”

  “Can we take it?” Kowalski asked, looking avidly at it. Gray knew the big man had a fascination with elephants.

  Jane reached for it, but Derek held her back. “It might not be safe.”

  She scowled at him. “My father would surely have examined it. If it was dangerous, I think he would have sealed it in plastic, like we saw with the skull.” She waved to similar niches above the other low holes. “Plus this isn’t the only one.”

  “Still, it could be contaminated.”

  She sighed and straightened, heeding his warning, and left it alone.

  Kowalski looked no happier.

  “What about the hole below it?” Gray asked, redirecting everyone’s attention.

  Derek crouched, shining his light inside. “I think it’s an old tomb.”

  Gray peered inside. The chamber was narrow but deep. Definitely could hold a body. Only the walls of the tomb were blackened and covered in ash. He also spotted shards of burnt bone.

  This desecration looked recent.

  A red gasoline jug lay nearby, supporting this assessment.

  Derek came to the same conclusion and cast his gaze to the other open tombs. “They incinerated all the bodies. Destroying everything.”

  Not everything.

  Gray pictured the scroll of tattooed skin in the test tube. Had the professor cut it off one of the entombed mummies in order to preserve it?

  Derek stood up. “But why did they cremate all of the bodies? Because of a fear of contagion? Or were they just burning bridges before they left?”

  Jane glanced over to the center of the room. “I also saw some charcoal around the base of the heart, but it looked from a much older fire.”

/>   Curious, Gray headed back over.

  The heart must be important.

  Once there, he ducked through the low doorway and crouched inside. Its inner surfaces were pristine, decorated with a flock of butterflies etched into the stone. The work looked delicate, almost feminine.

  Something strange caught his eye.

  “Jane, what do you make of this?” he called out.

  She crowded in with him, followed by Derek. As she looked at the walls, she accidentally stepped on a potsherd. She winced and tenderly collected it from the floor, shining her light on its dusty blue surface.

  Derek looked over her shoulder. “It’s a shard of lapis lazuli.”

  “Maybe from a bowl.” She glanced around the chamber. “Lapis lazuli was a stone revered by the Egyptians for its magical properties.”

  Her gaze again was captured by the decoration on the walls. She swept her light all around.

  “It’s beautiful . . .” she murmured. “I’ve always loved butterflies. To the Egyptians, the image symbolized transformation. The caterpillar becoming the butterfly.”

  Gray studied the space, wondering about the chamber’s purpose, noting the clues left here.

  Magic and transformation.

  He sensed he was close to something important, but maybe it wasn’t for him to solve. He centered his light on the one last strange detail here. It was the reason he had called Jane inside.

  She looked to where he pointed and gasped, falling back a step.

  One of the butterflies had been circled—with Jane’s name written there.

  “My father must have done this,” she murmured. Her fingers lifted to touch the mark, to make this connection to the past, but she hesitated. “Why would he do it?”

  Derek tried to answer. “The nomads who found Harold mentioned he kept whispering your name over and over.” He touched her shoulder. “Maybe he hoped you would find this.”

  Jane stepped back, looking to Derek, then Gray. “I don’t understand.”

  “Perhaps your father thought you could solve this,” Gray offered. “At least, with enough time.”

  He wondered if this was the same reason the enemy had been hounding Jane, trying to grab her. If the professor had left this clue behind, they might believe she knew something about it, a way to unravel this mystery.

  Instead, Jane only looked more scared and confused.

  “Perhaps we should keep searching,” Gray said. “There may be other clues.”

  They all exited, but Gray did not hold out much hope. He sensed anything truly important would have been hidden here, in the literal heart of this stone god.

  He was also keenly aware of the passage of time, like a pressure building around him.

  We’ve already been down here too long.

  9:38 A.M.

  The only warning was a trickle of pebbles.

  The thin flow dribbled down the cliff on her left side. Seichan ignored it and continued riding the Suzuki down the throat of the cleft. She was headed back to the bowl that hid the entrance to the caverns under the surrounding hills. Forty-five minutes ago, she had borrowed Ahmad’s bike and began a canvass of the immediate area, sweeping back and forth along the fissure that led into the valley.

  She had left the boy and his dog inside the parked Unimog with orders to hit the horn at the first sign of any trouble. She also left him with a radio and additional instructions.

  She could not be certain her group had been followed, so she simply assumed it was true and planned accordingly. She had made herself the obvious target, drawing the attention of any hidden eyes. She let them see it was only the boy in the truck. She wanted them to lower their guard while they assessed the situation, to recognize the others had gone below.

  Especially Jane McCabe.

  Seichan imagined the young woman remained the primary target, and the enemy would waste minutes strategizing.

  In turn, she used the passing time to acquaint herself with Ahmad’s bike, testing the traction of the rear tire’s paddled tread, discovering it was perfect for sand, less so for rock. Her only accommodation to the fall of pebbles was to shift closer to the same cliff, making an overhead shot more difficult.

  She showed no other reaction. Even her heartbeat didn’t change. If anything, she was relieved to see rock-hard evidence of the ghosts haunting these hills. Knowing they were truly here, she settled in, savoring the trickle of adrenaline.

  Her vision sharpened.

  She could guess the enemy’s plan easily enough. In this situation, the only smart play would be to wait for their targets to show themselves and ambush them in the open, especially if they wanted to take Jane McCabe alive.

  Seichan could not allow that.

  With her face wrapped in a scarf, she whispered to activate the radio hidden at her lips. “Ahmad, be ready.”

  She kept the same pace as she neared the valley again.

  She heard the truck engine engage, its growl echoing off the bowl’s walls. Earlier, she had asked Ahmad if he knew how to drive. He had scoffed as if the question insulted his manhood. She had him prove it nonetheless, circling the bowl twice.

  She trusted the enemy would believe the boy had grown bored and was preparing to take the Unimog for another joyride.

  But not this time. This time it was serious.

  When she entered the valley, he already had the truck trundling toward her. She lifted an arm as if greeting him—then cut her arm down.

  He gunned the engine and shot toward her.

  She dropped low in her seat and throttled the bike into a scream. Her rear tire spun, kicking sand, then the paddles caught traction. She leaped forward, aiming for the truck’s bumper.

  She spotted Ahmad’s face behind the windshield. He looked scared but he didn’t slow. At the last moment, she let him win this game of chicken and angled the bike sharply away. The Unimog’s bulk shot past her and continued for the narrow fissure. She wanted the boy and the truck out of here—both to keep him from harm and to protect their only vehicle.

  Once clear of the truck, she canted the bike sharply, shifting all of her weight to one peg. As the cycle spun around, she whipped her pistol from a holster strapped to her thigh. She aimed for the side of the cleft where the pebbles had fallen. She trusted that whoever had given themselves away had followed her the rest of the way here.

  The sudden commotion on the valley floor succeeded in getting the man to show himself—if only a shift of shadows.

  She fired wildly in that direction. She did not expect to hit her target, only buy an extra moment for Ahmad to reach the cover of the cliffs, which he did. The truck vanished into the shadows. She trusted the enemy wouldn’t abandon the valley to go after the boy—at least not right away. The enemy would want to secure their primary target first.

  Or let’s hope so.

  To further encourage their attention, Seichan raced into the shadows, trimming along the edge of the valley. She shot blindly at the same spot on the cliff. Finally, puffs of sand peppered the floor around her, accompanied by the faint cracks of a rifle.

  Good.

  She slalomed expertly across the shadows, staying on the gas, bouncing on the pegs to juke the bike into sudden turns. She returned fire as she ascertained the relative position of the sniper. As she performed her acrobatics for another minute, her heart raced in tune with the engine. A smile formed under her scarf as the ends whipped around her face.

  Once satisfied she had bought Ahmad the additional time necessary to clear the cleft and reach the open terrain beyond, she swung the bike in a full one-eighty and sped for the entrance to the caverns below.

  As she neared the cliff, she did not slow. She thumbed on the bike’s headlamp, ducked low to the handlebars, and shot straight through the doorway.

  Time to take this fight underground.

  9:53 A.M.

  Jane gathered with the others before the only opening that led out of the thoracic cavity and deeper into the slumbering stone god. She g
lanced back to the heart, now sunk into darkness behind her, still picturing the scrawled message left by her father. With no clue to its meaning, she turned toward the next step of their journey.

  An archway cut through the two-foot-thick stone diaphragm at the base of chest. Their combined lights revealed masses of sandstone overhanging the far side. Ancient hands and tools had polished the surfaces almost to a glassy sheen.

  “Must be the lobes of the liver,” Derek said, his right hand rubbing under his own ribs as if probing for the same.

  Darker shadows beckoned them deeper into what must be the abdominal cavity.

  Jane felt a queasiness at venturing in there—not from any anatomical disgust about what might await her ahead, but from her fear that she might let her father down. He had left her a message, possibly dying to deliver it.

  And I have no clue what it means.

  Derek kept to her side, as if sensing her distress. “Maybe we should take a break and—”

  Gray jerked around. “Quiet.”

  Then Jane heard it, too. The whine of an engine. It grew steadily louder. They all turned around. A dim light glowed from the throat of the giant, then suddenly brightened as something shot out of the airway and into the thorax. Tires skidded across the floor, slowing the object’s trajectory into the chamber.

  It was Ahmad’s bike.

  Its rider straightened from a low crouch in the seat.

  “Seichan!” Gray called over to her.

  But she had already spotted their illuminated group and throttled the engine back up. The roaring reverberated across the enclosed space as she raced over to them. She drew to a full stop but remained seated.

  She wore no helmet, but she had strapped on her protective mask. Her gaze took in the room, but her words were for them all. “Company’s coming.”

  “Where’s Ahmad?” Gray asked.

  Seichan twisted in her seat and unstrapped a pack from the back of her bike. “He’s safe. For now. Sent him off with the truck.” She tossed the pack toward Gray, who caught it. “Grabbed our gear. Extra magazines, flash-bangs, smoke bombs. Kowalski’s Piezer is folded in there, too. It won’t be long before they come down here and try to flush us out.”