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As Kismet and Hauser melted into the shadows, Maddock shook off the paralysis of defeat and moved to the bier. He knew, even without checking for a pulse, that Aliyah was dead, but he checked anyway and then raised his eyes to the others and shook his head.
Bones nostrils flared in a feral snarl. “And I was actually starting to like that guy.”
“Who?” Rose asked.
“Kismet. I didn’t think he’d cut and run at the first sign of trouble.”
“He didn’t exactly have much of a choice,” Jade said, defensively.
“Please.” Bones waved a dismissive hand. “He could have used the relics, put the whammy on ‘em. He didn’t.”
“Because he knew Hauser would probably kill us all before he could. He did the only thing he could. He bought us time. And a chance.” She turned to Maddock. “We are going after them, right?”
Maddock just blinked.
“Dane?”
He finally allowed his eyes to focus. “And do what, Jade?”
Jade’s eyebrows creased in a frown. “Stop Hauser,” she said, as if the answer was obvious. “Get those relics back.”
“How? The relics were the only thing that gave us an edge. Without them...” He shrugged. “Like he said, we’re bugs on the sidewalk.”
Jade had no answer to that, but Rose did. “Then we make our own luck, just like my great-grandad did when he first went to the Outpost.”
Maddock managed a tight smile. “I guess I’ll have to read those Dodge Dalton books when we get out of here.”
“Getting out of here might be a good place to start,” Bones remarked.
Maddock gazed out into the darkness. There was no sign of Hauser or his gunmen, no way of knowing if they were still there or already long gone. Hauser’s final warning still echoed in his ears, but they couldn’t remain where they were indefinitely. “All right. But let’s take it slow. I don’t want to give Hauser any reason to change his mind.”
One day, you will understand....
Twenty-six years later, the words still haunted Nick Kismet. The words, and the horror that had preceded them.
One day, you will understand what we have done, and why it had to be done.
Nearly three decades of searching, had brought him no closer to understanding.
Despite the appearance of filial familiarity, Kismet and Hauser had only crossed paths on two previous occasions. That first meeting was the one that stuck in his memory.
In the early hours of what history now called the first Gulf War—a U.S. led coalition to turn back Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait—Kismet, at the time, an Army Intelligence officer, had been sent behind enemy lines, accompanied by a squad of Ghurkas, purportedly to rescue a highly-placed Iraqi defector—a defector who had managed to steal one of the most famous artifacts in history from the secret vaults of the Iraqi national museum. And that was when Ulrich Hauser and Prometheus had stepped into his life, and everything had changed.
Yet, while he had spent the subsequent years trying to learn the truth about Prometheus, it was the memory of what Hauser had done in the moments before making that promise—
One day....
—that filled Kismet with dread.
Hauser had brutally, cold-bloodedly, murdered the Iraqi defector and his entire family.
One day, you will understand what we have done, and why it had to be done.
Kismet didn’t understand, and didn’t think he ever really would, but he did know what Hauser was capable of. Dane Maddock probably had no idea how narrowly he and the others had avoided the same fate.
As he trudged up the stairs behind Hauser, the way ahead dimly illuminated by the pale green glow of the chem-lights that dangled from tactical vests worn by Hauser and his men his only goal was to put some distance between Hauser and his new friends. He didn’t dare lift a finger against his brother until he knew that Maddock and the others were safe.
Shortly after leaving the stairwell and re-entering the maze of passages outside the pyramid, Kismet heard a dull rumbling sound coming from behind them. He turned around, glimpsed something moving, but only for a moment. Then all was still. He squinted into the darkness but all he could see was a featureless stone wall.
The entrance to the passage had just closed.
He whirled around and shouted into the gloom. “Sealing them in wasn’t part of the deal. If you want my help, you better leave the door open.”
Hauser’s reply drifted back to him from further up the tunnel. “It was nothing I did, brother. If I had to guess, I’d say the passage reacts when one of the anomalies is brought into close proximity. Or when they’re removed. I can’t very well leave any of them here and time is fleeting. But don’t worry. Your new friends will be safe down there for at least a day or two. Long enough for us to finish our business.”
Kismet knew any further pleas would be futile. And there was a silver lining; although they had only met a few days previously, Dane Maddock didn’t seem like the sort of person to just give up and go home. Given the chance, he would come after Hauser.
And probably get himself killed.
He stalked ahead, catching up to Hauser just as the latter ascended the last set of steps back to the surface. “And what exactly is your plan?”
Without breaking stride, Hauser pulled off his night vision goggles and stashed them in the backpack with the elemental relics. The Apex had been added to the collection, along with Kismet’s kukri. Hauser’s men hastened ahead, presumably to make sure the way was clear. “Oh, it’s quite simple. We’re going to storm heaven and cast the gods down from their thrones.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
Hauser chuckled. “I forget sometimes how little they’ve allowed you to know. The vault where the collection is kept is code-named Olympus. Where the gods reside.” He resumed walking, following the path through the ruins toward the entrance gate. “Once we’re in control of Olympus, nobody will be able to oppose us.”
“Where is it?”
Hauser chuckled. “It’s embarrassing but, TBH, I don’t actually know. That’s something I was hoping you could help me with.”
“Me?” Kismet couldn’t help but shake his head. “You’re the insider.”
“Alas, the location of the vault was the one secret I was never made privy to. I think they were afraid of what I might do if I had direct access to it. Which, I suppose, was wisdom on their part.”
“Well they sure as hell didn’t tell me.”
Hauser said nothing until they reached the open gate. Through it, Kismet saw a line of waiting luxury full-sized sport utility vehicles, surrounded by even more armed commandos deployed in a strategic perimeter.
“While you and Maddock were spinning your wheels in Turkey,” Hauser said, “I was busy finding the one person who can tell us where to find the vault. She hasn’t told me where it is yet, but eventually she will.” He strode to the closest vehicle and gripped the door handle. “I can afford to be patient, but your friends in Alexander’s tomb won’t have that luxury. I seem to recall that you were an interrogator, once upon a time. Maybe you can get her to talk.”
He opened the door, revealing the lone passenger in the spacious interior of the SUV. A woman, late-middle-aged, long straight black hair shot through with gray, framing an olive complexion that, despite a tracery of wrinkles, remained beautiful by almost any standard. Kismet had never seen the woman before, but knew her instantly.
His mother.
“Crap,” Bones snarled, kicking the wall that now blocked the stairwell. “Dead end.”
Maddock moved closer and shone the light from his phone onto the wall which slanted toward his head, another interior wall of the hollow pyramid. There was no sign of the passage through which they had entered; it seemed to have been erased from the very fabric of reality. “I was afraid something like this might happen,” he admitted.
Bones cast an irritated frown at him. “‘Let’s take it slow,’” he said in a mocking falsetto which Maddock could only assume was meant to be an attempt at mimicking his own voice.
A poor attempt.
“Sorry,” Maddock said, disingenuously. “I thought dealing with a potential closed door would be easier than surviving a hail of bullets. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Whoa.” Bones threw up his hands in an overly-dramatic defensive gesture. “Be careful where you point that sarcasm. You haven’t been properly schooled in its use.”
Jade laughed, probably enjoying the rare moment of discord between the two friends, but Rose was quick to intervene. “Can we save the recriminations for later? Like when we’re out of here?”
“Why wait?” Bones countered. “We’re probably gonna be here a while.”
“There’s got to be a way through,” Maddock said, trying to take Rose’s admonition to heart as he continued searching. “If there’s a way to move this wall, I don’t know what it is. But it looks like it’s made of stacked stone blocks. If we can knock one loose, we should be able to break through. We just need something to use as a battering ram.”
“We could use Bones’ head,” Jade suggested. “It’s hard enough to smash stone.”
“If you think my head is hard—”
“Bones!” Rose said, almost shrieking. “Enough.” She stepped closer to Maddock and held something out to him. “Will this help?”
Maddock looked down at the wedge-shaped object she was holding and felt a glimmer of hope. It was the adamantine-infused hatchet head they had recovered from the plane wreck off the South Africa coast. “How did you manage to hang onto that?”
She grinned and shrugged a little. “When Aliyah mentioned that the relics might be causing an interference pattern, I took it out to see if it was still affected. Then I shoved it in my back pocket.”
“Has it got any magic power left?” Bones asked, looking over Maddock’s shoulder.
Rose waved the axe head back and forth in front of the wall, then brought it forward until metal and stone were in contact. Nothing happened.
“It was worth a shot,” Bones muttered. “Now what?”
“Magic or not, it’s still a metal tool,” Maddock said, reaching out for the tomahawk. He took it from Rose and started tracing the seams with the spike on the back end.
“You actually think you can dig us out with that?” Jade asked, skeptically.
“If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”
“Hey, if guys can tunnel out of Alcatraz using a spoon,” Bones said, “I think we can manage this.”
“I feel like you just made that up,” Jade retorted, then added a little wistfully, “I wish Professor was here. He’d know.”
Maddock exerted a little more pressure on the blade as he dragged it along the seam, and the resulting noise silenced further debate. He was surprised and heartened to see a long groove trailing out behind the point. The metal had scored the old stone as if it were as soft as chalk. Encouraged by this result, he shifted his grip on the tomahawk, holding it like an icepick, and drove the point forward in a hammer blow.
It was a mistake, or at least it seemed that way to him for a few seconds.
There was a bright flash on impact—friction sparks, he guessed—and a throb of pain that shot up his arm all the way to the shoulder. He felt as if he had just touched a live wire. The sensation quickly dulled to a tingle of pins and needles as his overloaded nerves went into shut down mode. The axe head fell from his numb fingers and clattered on the floor, lost from his view in the subsequent eruption of fine rock dust the strike had caused. It was only when the dust began to settle that he saw the need to revise his opinion of the experiment.
A large pockmark—deep enough for Maddock to put both his fists in—marred the stone wall where he had struck it. There were a few large pieces of rock on the floor below but not nearly enough to fill the divot. The rest of it had been pulverized.
“Holy crap,” Bones said. “Do that again.”
Maddock coughed and tried to blink away some of the grit that now stung his eyes. “I’m not sure I can,” he said. “That nearly took my hand off.”
“Don’t be such a wuss.” Bones knelt to retrieve the hatchet. “Here, let the expert take over.”
With his free hand, he tugged his T-shirt up and over his head, baring his upper torso. As he wrapped the fabric around the blade he looked over at Rose, and with a mischievous grin, began flexing his pectoral muscles. “Hey, my eyes are up here.”
Jade gave a snort of derision.
“I’m not sure that’s going to be enough insulation,” Maddock warned.
Bones shook his head disparagingly and muttered, “Wuss.” Then with the wrapped blade gripped in both hands, he faced the wall. “Better stand back.”
“Bones, seriously, maybe you should—”
Bones raised the tomahawk over his head, and then with an impressive rendition of a Cherokee war whoop, brought it down.
Maddock grimaced and looked away, bracing himself in anticipation of another eruption, but even so, the blast caught him flatfooted. There was another flash, as bright as a camera strobe, and then he was engulfed by a cloud of dust and grit, driven by an expanding bubble of uncomfortably warm air—the shockwave of a small detonation.
As some of the dust settled, Maddock spotted Bones, silhouetted in front of the wall. The big man was protectively hugging both of his hands close to his body, even as he let fly an almost incoherent torrent of invective.
Maddock only caught a few words. “Mother... God... Son of a ... Mother.” The rest was lost in the din—a grinding sound, like boulders being crushed together, that seemed to be getting louder with each passing second.
“Bones,” Jade shouted. “What the hell did you just do?”
Bones fell silent for a moment, then he uncurled one of his arms to point at the wall behind him.
“I did that,” Bones said, with more than a trace of pride. “You’re welcome.”
Through the haze, Maddock could just make out an area that was darker than the surrounding stone. It took him a moment to realize that he was actually looking at nothing—a rectangular void where one of the stone blocks forming the wall had been a moment before. The hole was big enough for even Bones to crawl through.
But the grinding sound was getting louder.
“I think we should—”
Before Maddock could complete his thought, the shape of the neatly defined rectangle of emptiness began to change. The top edge of the hole bowed down, sagging in the middle. Jagged fracture lines began radiating out from the opening like black spiderwebs, and then the entire wall crumbled, unleashing a cascade of rubble that poured down onto the steps and swept toward them like an avalanche.