“Marking time, as all hourglasses should do, back to the founding of the French papacy.”
Gray felt a thrill chase through him. Now they knew where they needed to go next. With the gold key. To Avignon, to the French Vatican. He sensed a similar excitement in Rachel and her uncle.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gray said, and led them quickly down the tunnel to the entry pool.
“What about the tomb?” Vigor said.
“The announcement of the discovery will have to wait for another day. If the Dragon Court comes calling, they’ll find out they’re too late.”
Gray hurried into the far chamber. He knelt, slid his mask over his features, and ducked his head underwater, preparing to let the others know the good news.
As soon as his head hit the water, his radio buzzed, irritating and loud. “Kat…Monk…can anyone hear me?”
There was no answer. Gray recalled Kat mentioning some glitch with the Buddy Phones. He listened for a moment longer. His heartbeat thudded more loudly in his chest.
Shit.
He shoved out of the water.
That white noise wasn’t static. They were being jammed. “What?” Rachel asked. “The Dragon Court. They’re already here.”
13
BLOOD IN THE WATER
JULY 26, 1:45 P.M.
ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT
KAT BOBBED in the gentle waves.
Her radio had completely died ten seconds ago. She had popped up to check with Monk. She found him with binoculars fixed to his face.
“The radio—” she started.
“Something’s fucked,” he said, cutting her off. “Get the others.”
She reacted instantly, flipping down, kicking her legs high. The weight shoved her in a vertical dive. She emergency-flushed the air from her BC vest and plummeted straight down.
Diving for the tunnel, she reached her other hand to free the buckle straps that held her vest and tank. Movement at the entrance stayed her fingers.
The sleek form of a diver jettisoned out of the tunnel. A streak of blue across the black suit identified the swimmer as Commander Pierce. A perpetual whine filled her ears. No way to communicate the urgency.
But there proved to be no need.
On the commander’s heels, two other forms fled the tunnel.
Vigor and Rachel.
Kat twisted back upright. Clicking off her Buddy Phone to end the whine, she kicked toward Gray. He must have realized the radio fritz meant trouble. He simply stared hard at her through his face mask and pointed an arm up questioningly.
Was it clear above?
She gave him an okay signal. No hostiles above. At least not yet.
Gray did not bother with securing their abandoned tanks. He waved the others up. They kicked off the rocks and aimed for the keel of the boat.
To the side, Kat noted the anchor being raised.
Monk was readying for an immediate departure.
Kat filled the buoyancy vest and kicked upward, fighting the drag of her tank and weight belt. Above, the others were already breaching the surface.
A new humming whine filled her hearing.
It wasn’t the radio this time.
She searched the waters for the source, but the visibility in the polluted harbor was poor. Something was coming…coming fast.
As a Navy intelligence officer, she had spent plenty of time aboard all manner of watercraft, including submarines. She recognized the steady hum.
Torpedo.
Locked on the speedboat.
She thrashed upward, but knew she’d never reach them in time.
1:46 P.M.
MONK ENGAGED the boat’s engine while maintaining a watch for the hydrofoil through his binoculars. It had just vanished behind the tip of the peninsula. But he had watched it slow suspiciously a few seconds ago, two hundred yards out. There had been no telltale activity on the stern deck, but he had noted a rippling line of bubbles in the craft’s wake as it glided slowly away.
Then he’d heard the whine over the radio.
Kat appeared a few seconds after that.
They needed to get out of here. He knew it in his gut.
“Monk!” a voice called. It was Gray, surfacing to the port side.
Thank God.
He began to lower his binoculars when he spotted a streaking object racing through the water. A fin cleaved through the waves. A metal fin.
“Fuck…”
Dropping the binoculars, Monk shoved the throttle to full. The boat bucked forward with a scream of the engine. He twisted the wheel to starboard. Away from Gray.
“Everybody down!” he screamed, and shoved his mask over his face. He had no time to zip his suit.
With the boat canting away under him, he ran for the stern, stepped on the back seat, and catapulted into the water.
The torpedo struck behind him. The force of the explosion flipped him feet over head. Something punched him in the hip, rattling all the way to his teeth. He struck the water, rolling across the surface, chased by a wash of flames.
Before it could reach him, he sank into the cool embrace of the sea.
RACHEL HAD SURFACED just as Monk yelled. She watched him run for the stern of the boat. Reacting to his panic, she shoved back down and twisted to dive.
Then the explosion hit.
The concussion through the water stabbed her ears, even through her thick neoprene hood. All the air slammed out of her. Her mask’s seals broke. Seawater rushed in.
She scrambled back to the surface, blind, eyes stinging.
With her head out of water, she emptied her mask, coughing and gagging. Debris continued to rain down into the water. Smoking flotsam steamed and rocked. Flaming rivers of gasoline skimmed the waves.
She searched the waters.
No one.
Then to her left, a flailing shape burst out of the water. It was Monk, dazed and choking.
She paddled over to him and grabbed an arm. His face mask had been turned half around his head. She steadied him as he gagged.
“Goddamn,” he wheezed out, and tugged his mask around.
A new noise traveled over the water. Both turned.
Rachel watched a large hydrofoil swing around the fort, tilted up on skids. It circled out toward them.
“Down!” Monk urged.
They fled together under the water. The explosion had stirred the sand, closing visibility down to a few feet.
Rachel pointed in the general direction of the tunnel entrance, lost in the murk. They needed to reach the abandoned scuba tanks, a source of much-needed air.
Reaching the pile of rocks, she searched around her for the tunnel entrance, for the others. Where was everyone else?
She scrambled along the tumble of boulders. Monk kept with her, but he struggled with his suit. He had only been half zipped up. The upper section flapped and tangled.
Where were the tanks? Had she gotten turned around?
A dark shape passed overhead, further away from shore. The hydrofoil. From Monk’s reaction, it was the source of their trouble.
A burning pressure built in Rachel’s lungs.
Illumination bloomed in the gloom ahead. She moved instinctually toward it, hoping to find her uncle or Gray. Out of the murk, a pair of divers swept into view, leaning on motorized sleds. Silt spiraled behind them.
The divers swung out to trap them against the shore.
Lit by their lamps, steel arrowheads glinted. Spearguns.
To emphasize the threat, a popping zip sounded. A lance of steel streaked at Monk. He jerked aside. The spear pierced the loose half of his suit, shredding through.
Rachel held her palms up, toward the divers.
One of them pointed a thumb, ordering them to the surface.
Caught.
GRAY HELPED Vigor.
The monsignor had knocked into him when the boat had exploded. He had taken a chunk of fiberglass to the side of his head, slicing through his neoprene suit. Blood flowed from the cut.
Gray had no way of judging the damage, but the older man was dazed.
Gray had managed to reach the air tanks and now helped hook the monsignor up. Vigor waved him off as the air flowed. Gray swung to a second tank and rapidly reconnected his regulator.
He took several deep breaths.
He eyed the tunnel opening. There was no refuge to be found in there. The Dragon Court would certainly come here. Gray would not be trapped in another tomb.
Grabbing up his tank, Gray pointed away.
Vigor nodded, but his face searched the clouded waters.
Gray read his fear.
Rachel.
They had to survive to be of any help. Gray headed out, leading Vigor. They would find a niche among the fall of boulders and debris to hide in. Earlier, he had noted a sunken rusted skiff about ten yards off, overturned and tilted against the rocks.
He guided Vigor along the cliff. The scuttled boat appeared. He settled the monsignor in its shadow. He motioned for Vigor to stay, then slipped on his tank, freeing his arms.
Gray pointed outward and made a circling motion.
I’m going to search for the others.
Vigor nodded, trying, it seemed, to look hopeful.
Gray headed back toward the tunnel, but he kept close to the seabed. The others, if able, would make for the air tanks. He glided from shadow to shadow, keeping to the boulders.
As he neared the tunnel entrance, a glow grew. He slowed. Individual lights differentiated, splashing over the rocks and pointed outward.
He moved into the darkness behind a chunk of stone and spied.
Black-suited divers clustered around the tunnel opening. They wore mini-tanks, containing less than twenty minutes of air, made for short dives.
Gray watched one diver duck through the opening and vanish.
After a few seconds, some confirmation must have been passed along. Another five divers swept one after the other into the tunnel. Gray recognized the last sleek shape to disappear into the tomb shaft.
Seichan.
Gray swung away. None of his teammates would come here now.
As he moved out of hiding, a shape welled up in front of him, appearing from nowhere. Large. The razored tip of a speargun pressed into the flesh of his belly.
Lights flared around him.
Behind the mask, Gray recognized the heavy countenance of Raoul.
RACHEL HELPED free Monk. The spear shaft had pinned a flap of his suit to the seabed. She tugged him loose.
Two yards away, the two divers hovered on their sleds, like surfers on broken surfboards. One motioned them to the surface. Now.
Rachel didn’t need the urging.
As she obeyed, a dark shadow swept up and behind the pair of divers.
What…?
Two flashes of silver flickered.
One diver clutched his air hose. Too late. Through the man’s mask, Rachel saw his gasped breath draw in a wash of seawater. The second was even less lucky. He was ripped clean off his sled, torn away by a knife lodged in his throat.
Blood spread in a cloud.
The attacker wrenched the blade free and the cloud thickened.
Rachel spotted the pink stripe against the attacker’s black suit.
Kat.
The first diver choked and writhed, drowning in his mask. He attempted to flee to the surface, but Kat was there. Knives in both hands dispatched him with brutal efficiency.
Kat kicked his form away. Weighted down by tank and belt, his body drifted into the depths.
Finished, Kat dragged his sled to Rachel and Monk. She pointed up to the surface and motioned to the sled.
To make a fast getaway.
Rachel had no idea how to operate the vehicle—but Monk did. He mounted the half-board and grabbed the handlebar-like controls. He waved for Rachel to climb atop him and ride piggyback.
She did so, throwing her arms around his shoulders. Lights now danced across the edges of her vision.
Kat swam for the other sled, a speargun in hand.
Monk twisted the throttle, and the sled dragged them away, upward, toward safety, toward fresh air.
They burst from the surf like a breaching whale, then slammed back down. Rachel was jarred, but she kept her grip tight. Monk raced them across the smooth waters, zigzagging through the flaming debris field. Oil lay thick over the water.
Rachel risked freeing a hand to rip up her mask, sucking in air.
She tugged Monk’s mask up, too.
“Ow,” he said. “Watch the nose.”
They passed the overturned bulk of their speedboat—only to find the long form of the hydrofoil waiting for them on the left.
“Maybe they haven’t seen us,” Monk whispered.
Gunfire chattered, strafing across the water, aiming right for them.
“Hang on!” Monk yelled.
THE POINT of Raoul’s spear dug Gray out of his hiding place. Another diver raised a second spear to the side of Gray’s throat.
As Gray moved, a knife slashed at him, wielded by Raoul.
He flinched, but the blade only cut the straps to his tank. The heavy cylinder dropped toward the bottom. Raoul waved for him to unhook the regulator. Did they mean to drown him?
Raoul pointed to the nearby tunnel entrance.
Apparently they meant to interrogate him first.
He had no choice.
Gray swam to the entrance, flanked by guards. He dove through, trying to think of some plan. He sailed up to the entry pool and found the chamber ringed with other men in wet suits. Their mini-tanks were small enough to allow them to traverse the tunnel. Some were shedding out of their vests and tanks. Others pointed spearguns, alerted by Raoul.
Gray climbed out of the pool and removed his mask. Every move was tracked by the point of a spear.
He noted Seichan leaning against one wall, seeming oddly relaxed. Her only acknowledgment was the raise of a single finger.
Hello.
At Gray’s other side, a shape plowed upward into the entry pool. Raoul. In a single movement, the large man one-armed his way out of the pool and to his feet, a gymnastic demonstration of power. His frame must have barely fit through the tunnel. He had abandoned his minitanks outside.
Dragging off his mask and peeling back his hood, he strode to Gray.
It was the first time Gray had a good look at the man. His features were craggy, nose long and thin, aquiline. His coal black hair hung to his shoulders. His arms were massed with muscle, as thick around as Gray’s thigh, plainly grown from steroids and too much time spent in the gym, not from real-world labor.
Eurotrash, Gray thought.
Raoul towered over him, trying to intimidate.
Gray just lifted an eyebrow quizzically. “What?”
“You’re going to tell us everything you know,” Raoul said. His English was fluent, but it was heavily accented with disdain and something Germanic.
“And if I don’t?”
Raoul waved an arm as another form splashed up into the entry pool. Gray immediately recognized Vigor. The monsignor had been found.
“There’s not much a side-scanning radar can’t detect,” Raoul said.
Vigor was dragged bodily from the pool, not gently. Blood from his scalp wound dribbled down one side of his face. He was shoved toward them, but he tripped from exhaustion and fell hard to his knees.
Gray bent down to go to his aid, but a spearhead drove him back.
Another diver surfaced in the pool. He was clearly weighted down. Raoul stepped over and unburdened the man. It was another of those barbell-shaped charges. An incendiary grenade.
Raoul slung the device over a shoulder and stepped back to them. He raised his own speargun and pointed it at Vigor’s crotch. “As the monsignor has sworn off using this part of his anatomy anyway, we’ll start here. Any missteps and the monsignor will be able to join the castrato choir of his church.”
Gray straightened. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything??
?but first, show us what you found.”
Gray lifted an arm toward the tunnel to Alexander’s tomb, then swung it around to the other tunnel, the shorter of the two, the one that required one to hunch over to traverse it. “It’s that way,” he said.
Vigor’s eyes widened.
Raoul grinned and lifted his speargun. He waved a group of men into the tunnel. “Check it out.”
Five darted away, leaving three men with Raoul.
Seichan, leaning near the tunnel entrance, watched the group disappear. She stepped to follow.
“Not you,” Raoul said.
Seichan glanced over a shoulder. “Do you and your men want to leave this harbor?”
Raoul’s face reddened.
“The escape boat is ours,” she reminded him, and ducked away.
Raoul clenched a fist but stayed silent.
Trouble in paradise…
Gray turned. Vigor’s gaze was hard upon him. Gray motioned with his eyes. Dive away at the first opportunity.
He faced the tunnel again. He prayed he was correct about the Sphinx’s riddle. It was death to solve it wrongly. And that certainly was about to be proven here, one way or the other.
That left only one mystery to be answered.
Who would die?
MONK RACED the bullets. His jet sled skidded across the water. Rachel clung to him from behind, half choking his airway.
The harbor was in chaos. Other watercraft fled from the fighting, scattering like a school of fish. Monk hit the wake of a crabbing boat and sailed high into the air.
Gunfire chewed into the wave below.
“Grab tight!” he cried.
He flipped the sled on its side just as they hit the water. Under they went. He straightened their course and dove deeper, speeding through the water at a depth of three feet.
At least that’s what he hoped.
Monk had squeezed his eyes closed. Without his mask, he couldn’t have seen much anyway. But before diving under, he caught a glimpse of an anchored sailboat directly ahead.
If he could get under it…put it between him and the hydrofoil…
He counted in his head, estimating, praying.
The world went momentarily darker through his eyelids. They were under the shadow of the sailboat. He did an additional four-count and canted back upward toward the surface.