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All eyes, including Dragomirov’s, shifted back to the mouth of the hypocaust passage where a man—a firefighter, judging by his attire—was rising to his feet. The man’s face was familiar, but it wasn’t until a smiling Dragomirov spoke his name that Maddock recognized him.
“Krasimir. Perfect timing. How did you find us?”
The phony fireman grinned and then held up his hand, displaying a fan of burner phones, identical to the one Bones was holding. “I followed a trail of bread crumbs.”
Dragomirov laughed and then returned both his attention and the aimpoint of his weapon to Maddock. “So much for your precautions.”
Maddock managed, with an effort, to maintain his confidently neutral expression, but his heart was a trip hammer in his chest. “Corey still knows we’re down here.”
“It will be my word against his.” The mobster shifted into a shooting stance, a sure sign that there would be no further negotiations.
“Wait!” Maddock threw up his arms in what must have looked like an attempt to plead, but then glanced over at Bones and nodded his head toward the arched opening behind them. “Fall back,” he whispered from the corner of his mouth.
Bones didn’t question the directive, but raised his hands in imitation of Maddock’s stance, and slid back a step. “Max,” he murmured. “Stay with me.”
Dragomirov, perhaps misinterpreting the exchange, frowned. “You didn’t strike me as someone who would beg at the end. I’m almost disappointed. Maybe we do this old-fashioned way. Kneel and put your hands behind your head.”
Maddock slid back a step. Bones and Riddle were right behind him, almost inside the arched passage leading nowhere. “I’m not going to do that,” he said, striving for a tone of calm assuredness. “And if I were you, I’d be very careful about where you point that gun right now. If you shoot and miss me, there’s a good chance your bullet will smash through the flowstone behind us... Flood this whole place with boiling water. Good luck getting your treasure after that.”
Dragomirov, clearly unimpressed with the warning, took a step forward. “Then I had better not miss.”
Maddock moved as well. “Fall back, fall back,” he muttered, keeping his eyes on the pistol as he retreated through the opening.
Bones and Riddle had gotten the message, scrambling back into the narrow dead-end corridor. Maddock could hear the crunch of their feet on the thin layer of travertine covering the floor.
Dragomirov kept advancing. Maddock took a little comfort in the fact that the mobster hadn’t fired yet, but he knew the standoff wouldn’t last.
Krasimir came alongside his brother, whirling his butterfly knife back and forth in what was surely meant to be an intimidating display of expertise. “No need to take chances, brother. Let me handle it.”
Dragomirov appeared to be considering the request, so Maddock took advantage of the moment to draw the only thing he had that might work as a weapon—his pry bar. Krasimir hesitated, evidently unprepared for any show of resistance, but Maddock had no intention of getting into a knife fight with the young mutri, not while Dragomirov still held a gun on them. He had other plans for the pry bar.
He continued backing up until he both felt and heard the flowstone beneath his boots. Gripping the length of metal in both hands, he raised the pry bar across his body and drove the chisel tip into the white flowstone.
The effect on the two mobsters was everything Maddock could have hoped for. Both men backpedaled away from the opening as if they thought Maddock was trying to open a doorway to Hell itself. But aside from sending a jarring impact up his forearms and knocking loose a scattering of crystal fragments, the blow seemed to have little real effect.
So he tried again.
The second blow dislodged a piece of travertine the size of a dinner plate, exposing wet brick underneath.
“Fool,” Dragomirov snarled. “What will that accomplish? You’ll kill us all.”
“I can live with that,” Maddock said, and drove the pry bar into a wet mortar joint.
Dark cracks spread out from the point of impact, tracing around the individual bricks. Fat beads of moisture oozed from the fissures, and began dribbling down the wall.
Krasimir said something urgent in Bulgarian—probably “shoot him”—but Dragomirov only nodded his head, and continued retreating until he was barely visible through the archway. “You’ll never make it out of here,” he shouted, and then he was swallowed up completely by the darkness.
Maddock sagged in relief at the apparent reprieve.
“Damn,” Bones said slowly. “I’ll deny saying it, but I’m a little turned on right now.”
Riddle made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. “Deny it all you want, but the cameras are still rolling. They are still rolling, aren’t they? Because that was some frigging amazing television. I thought he was gonna call your bluff.”
“What bluff?” Maddock said, his voice almost deserting him. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“You know they’re going to be waiting for us.”
“Maybe. Corey knows we’re down here and he knows what to do if we don’t come out. We’ve got time on our side.”
Suddenly, a hissing jet of water and steam erupted from the wall, right at the point where Maddock had struck it. He jumped back as the mini-geyser shot completely across the narrow passage to splash against the opposite wall.
“You were saying?” Bones had to shout to be heard over the rushing sound.
The sustained outpouring of water caused more pieces of mortar to crumble away, increasing the flow, and further hastening the wall’s destruction. Meanwhile, the torrent was spreading across the floor, rolling out in an ever-expanding puddle. One leading edge had crawled onto the thin layer of flowstone on which Maddock stood, to lap at his boot soles. Close to the source, it was already an inch deep.
“Blow through,” Bones urged, coming alongside Maddock.
But Maddock threw out a hand to block him. “No.”
“If we don’t get moving, our only way out is going to be flooded.”
As if to punctuate the warning, an entire brick tore loose from the wall. The breach intensified the volume of discharge, taking it from a mere jet of water to something like the blast from a firehose. The brick was hurled across the passage, striking the opposite wall as if it had been shot from a cannon. The other kind of volume—the kind measured in decibels—increased as well. The close quarters amplified the noise to near-deafening levels.
Bones put his mouth close to Maddock’s ear. “Our coveralls will give us some protection, but if we don’t go now—"
Maddock shook his head. “No! Push back!”
He used his outstretched arm to shepherd Bones back a step. The big man’s incredulity was palpable, but he did not resist. Their retreat brought them to an anxious Riddle, who unlike Bones, did not seem especially eager to run the gauntlet.
The water was now ankle deep and rising fast. Maddock could feel the heat seeping through the leather. It was hot, but definitely nowhere near boiling. More like stepping into a Jacuzzi than a simmering stewpot. Part of this, he guessed, was due to the fact that immediately upon contact with the air, the water began giving up some of its stored heat, but Maddock suspected—or more accurately, prayed—that was only a partial explanation. If he was wrong....
“Please tell me you’ve got some kind of crazy plan to get us out of this,” Riddle shouted.
“A sane plan would be preferable,” Bones put in, “but I know you better than that.”
Before Maddock could even attempt to articulate what he had in mind, a huge section of the wall—about four feet square—broke loose, vomiting out an equally huge cascade. The initial splash showered the three men with hot droplets, and sent out waves that reached mid-thigh on Maddock. The sudden immersion triggered a sympathetic reaction throughout his body. His pulse skyrocketed, as his autonomic nervous system sought to cool itself by rapid circulation of blood. He clenched his teeth but could not entirely suppress a low wail of pain.
And yet, through it all, the rational part of his brain was offering quiet reassurance.
This isn’t so bad. I’ve taken hotter showers. It’s just the suddenness of it.
After only a few seconds of exposure, the initial discomfort passed, but his heart continued to pound away in a futile effort to dissipate the heat. While they wouldn’t boil to death, prolonged exposure would eventually have harmful and possibly fatal consequences.
“I hope that... plan of yours... didn’t involve...going out the...way we came in,” said Bones. The words came out in hitching gasps as he fought to catch his breath. “Because... it’s underwater now.”
Maddock shook his head and pointed to the hole through which hot water now poured like a waterfall. “That’s... our way... out.”
Bones stared at him as if he had just suggested asking Scotty to beam them back to the Starship Enterprise. Maddock didn’t have the words, much less the breath, to explain. It really was a crazy plan, and it hinged upon a lot of half-baked—or was it soft-boiled?—assumptions. If even one of those was wrong, their collective goose would literally be cooked.
His first assumption was that whomever had walled off the passage to seal in the treasure had also diverted a hot spring to create an additional barrier to entry. The volume of water rushing out of the breach in the wall seemed to confirm that this was true. The second assumption, which followed naturally, was that breaking through the wall—just as Riddle had earlier suggested—would lead to an exit.
As his earlier reasons for dismissing the idea were no longer relevant, he hoped to hell that there really was a way out on the other side of the wall.
The third assumption, and perhaps the most critical, was that they could endure the hot tub from hell long enough to reach that mythical exit.
The rush of water continued to erode the hole, but as the water came level with the breach, the fury of the outpouring was muted considerably. Maddock and the others could only stand by and let the waters rise. Waist high... Chest high... And then, just at it seemed they would have to begin swimming in the hot bath, the top of the hole was covered completely.
An eerie stillness filled what little air remained.
Maddock pushed against the current to approach the opening. Below the surface, he could feel the water rushing out of the hole, and knew it would continue to do so for a while longer, at least until the water table equalized on both sides, but with the hole completely covered, the fury of the outflow was greatly reduced. He was able to find the opening with an outstretched hand, gripping the exposed brick.
“Swim through,” he said, and then closed his eyes tight and plunged his head into the water.
Because his body had sufficiently acclimated to the heat, full submersion brought little additional discomfort. With his heart rate still elevated however, he knew his lung capacity would be severely diminished. If he didn’t find the surface in about thirty seconds, he probably wouldn’t find it at all.
As soon as he was through and on the other side, he began feeling his way up the wall. The brick was rough against his gloved fingertips. After a few seconds, he could feel the wall curving into a round, vaulted ceiling, just like the passage behind.
If his heart had not already been pounding, it might have skipped a beat. He had bet everything on the hope that the passage on the other side of the wall would have drained enough to create a pocket of breathable air.
Bet everything, and lost....