Seichan imagined she was seeing the truest representation of the Phaeacians. Sadly, the mechanisms driving these finer constructs must have been more delicate than the larger forms outside. They had not survived the ravages of time as well. Several walked with stilted steps, with limps, or with broken arms swinging uselessly at their sides.
But these men and women weren’t the saddest of the lot.
Scattered among them were bronze children, some equally broken, hobbling about like toys long forgotten and rusted. In fact, she imagined these constructions might have once been the royal offspring’s playmates. Including blackly tarnished babies—little bronze cherubs, with ruddy hot cheeks and fat limbs—that toddled or crawled across the stone floor of the hall.
Still, despite the assembly’s innocuous appearance, the danger was clear. Many remained intact, moving with a determined sharpness. Fires burned brightly throughout the group, heating their bronze surfaces to a smoldering threat. And like all the city’s guardians, the assembly here was drawn to the noisy clatter at the palace door. They headed obdurately in that direction, ready to defend the kingdom, likely activated when Kowalski first breached the palace gates.
Gray waited until there were only a handful, mostly broken, left in the hall. Then he waved everyone to follow him. He ran low toward the far stone passageway, ducked into the shadows, and windmilled an arm to urge them to rush over and into the tunnel.
They all followed, moving as quietly as possible.
Once gathered, Gray led them along an arched passageway excavated through the limestone. The tunnel, dotted by a long line of torches, seemed to go on forever. No one spoke until the only sounds were their own footfalls.
“This definitely seems to be leading somewhere,” Mac finally whispered.
Father Bailey agreed. “I’d call this heading beyond the palace, as Hunayn described.”
Seichan felt safe enough to loosen Aggie’s chokehold. The monkey protested with sharp eeks. But she shushed him and massaged his back, something that always comforted little Jack when distressed. It seemed to work here, too.
Maria noted her attempt to calm Aggie and held out her arms. “Do you want me to take him?”
Seichan shifted away. “I got him.”
Maria nodded, showing no offense.
Gray, though, looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
Seichan ignored him, feeling no need to explain herself. Maybe her desire to keep Aggie with her was born out of some maternal instinct, some hormone-driven mechanism that had control of her actions, as if she were as much an automaton as those figures back there. But Seichan knew it wasn’t that. If Aggie hadn’t come in time, if Charlie hadn’t sent him, they might all be dead. To honor that, she intended to protect the macaque, to return Aggie to his foster mother—that is, if the captain was still alive.
Which was a big if.
42
June 26, 7:30 P.M. WEST
High Atlas Mountains, Morocco
Charlie crouched at the edge of the forest. She clutched her pistol between both palms, as if in prayer. She certainly needed God’s protection. But as the old adage goes, God helps those who help themselves. And that was the plan.
Charlie hoped to help herself.
“Be careful,” Elena whispered next to her.
Charlie nodded. That’s also the plan. She stared across the open meadow to the helicopter resting in the green grass and scrub bushes. She had no idea how to fly such an aircraft, but that was not why she had come here. For the past twenty minutes, she had led Elena north through the dense forest. If nothing else, they had shaken the armed giant, Kadir, from their trail.
At least for now.
But Charlie could not count on that luck lasting forever, especially if the armed force should return from their cave exploration and scour these woods. With only two rounds left in her pistol, her plan was to arm up, then continue north into the mountains. She would’ve preferred to head south toward the distant Sous, but that path was trickier, the way blocked by the stream where she had beached her boat.
The better route was north anyway. The forest grew thicker in the higher mountains, offering more places to hide. Plus she knew one of the two helicopters had landed up here.
She stared over at the aircraft abandoned in the meadow. She needed to reach it, check it for weapons, maybe a radio, then continue onward. Still, she waited a full three minutes, watching for any sign of movement. A dry north wind waved the grass, adding to her anxiety. Finally, she knew enough was enough.
Gotta take the chance.
“Stay hidden,” Charlie warned Elena.
Elena nodded and shifted deeper into the shadows.
Charlie straightened from her crouch and ran low across the meadow, skirting rocks and bushes. Her eyes strained for any threat. But there were no signs of motion near the helicopter. Focused over there, she missed it.
Elena did not and shouted from her hiding place. “On your left!”
Charlie trusted her enough to leap headlong and roll through the tall grass. Gunfire blasted from the direction of the river; rounds shredded the grass above her. She caught a glimpse of a giant figure rising from behind a mossy boulder on the riverbank. Kadir must have gone straight up the channel, anticipating her actions. Charlie’s more cautious approach had given the bastard plenty of time to set up this ambush.
Reaching an outcropping of rock, she hid behind it.
What now?
She had one moment to think as the giant fired toward where Elena had shouted, likely knowing Charlie offered no threat. Even with a fully loaded pistol, what could she do?
And I only have the two rounds.
She stared over to the helicopter, to the extra tanks of fuel on its undercarriage. She again raised the pistol between her palms.
Just have my back, dear Lord.
Popping out of hiding, she aimed for those tanks and fired. If nothing else, her aim proved true. She noted the spark by the fuel intake cap, heard the ping above the pistol crack. Then she turned and ran like hell for the forest. Unlike Hollywood movies, there was no fiery explosion behind her. She knew there wouldn’t be. She had been around enough engines and motors her whole life.
But as she had hoped, someone else had been watching too many movies. From the corner of her eye, she saw Kadir duck behind his boulder after her showy demonstration of her marksmanship. He even cast a protective arm over his face as he dove away.
Her ruse gave her the time to cross halfway back to the forest. Then she spotted Kadir peeking out again, glancing from the helicopter to her. He raised his rifle, but her pistol was already up. She fired at his position, driving him back down for another breath.
It allowed her to reach the forest’s edge and dash into the dark woods. She didn’t slow, noting Elena crashing alongside her a couple of yards away.
Then the world exploded behind them with a thunderous blast and a heated whoosh of flames.
What the hell? Had the helicopter actually blown?
Then another fiery explosion burst to her right. Another to the left.
Charlie understood as she fled, her body whipped by branches. Kadir was shooting grenades after them again—only these ones were packed with incendiary charges.
She risked a glance back.
A wall of flames grew and spread behind her, quickly becoming a hellish forest fire. The stiff north wind blew the smoke through the forest, enveloping her, heating the air, making it hard to breathe. Elena coughed harshly on her right.
Charlie understood Kadir’s intent.
He’s herding us back the way we came.
43
June 26, 7:38 P.M. WEST
High Atlas Mountains, Morocco
At the end of the tunnel, Gray stood before a set of unadorned bronze doors. Even from a foot away, he felt the heat radiating off them. He reached a palm and tested one of the handles. Hot but manageable.
He remembered Hunayn’s cryptic warning.
Beyond the
palace, where the fires of Hades burn . . .
“Everyone, get back,” he warned.
Let’s see if this is the right place.
He gripped the handle with both hands and tugged hard. It did not give, perhaps locked like the other gates. But then the door budged. He let out a breath of relief. He braced his legs and hauled on the door, which was solid bronze, half a foot thick, a veritable vault door.
He gasped as he worked it open—not from the effort, but from the intense heat, from the sulfurous stink of rotten eggs that swelled out into the dark tunnel. Still, he heaved the door the rest of the way open.
“Oh god,” Kowalski groaned, waving a hand before his face. “This is definitely Hell.”
Gray straightened and stared into the cavern beyond. The space was herculean in size, stretching endlessly upward and spreading hundreds of yards to the right and left. Massive stalactites hung from a roof that could barely be seen.
This was not the polished, refined cavern of the Phaeacians, but instead, the home of Hephaestus, a true Vulcan’s forge, a vast and steaming industrial workshop.
Gray led the others into the hot cavern.
To either side, a massive mining operation had carved out the walls long ago, leaving behind rough-cut terraces, climbing high, with hills of broken scrap below. Gray imagined that vast operation, pulling much-needed ore, metals, and most important, deposits of phosphate rock.
Gray continued through this area, drawn by a ruddy glow deeper in the cavern. With each yard gained, the temperature rose. The source of the hellish heat became clear.
A fissure split the cavern into two halves. A gargantuan stone slab had been dropped across it long ago, creating a wide bridge.
Gray drew near the fissure’s edge and peered down. The drop was endless, as if to the core of the earth. Molten fires glowed far below. The heat became too intense after only a few breaths. He had to back away.
Bailey had looked, too. “Magma,” he concluded.
Gray nodded, picturing the Da Vinci map. “This could be a section of the convergent boundary between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates.”
“A veritable crack in the world,” Bailey said.
Gray headed to the stone bridge, risking the heat, the poisonous air. He climbed to the top of the bridge to get a better look at the cavern beyond the fissure.
The others gathered behind him.
“It’s amazing,” Maria said in a hushed, reverential tone, as if standing at the threshold to a vast cathedral.
“And terrifying,” Mac added.
They were both right.
Ahead, and covering twenty acres, was something out of a Brobdingnagian nightmare, the foundry of some twisted god. The bones of this sleeping factory were a byzantine network of bronze pipes, scaffolded in layers, rising toward the distant roof and diving down into the magma fissure. Across the floor were rows of cold forges. Elsewhere, kilns and ovens towered.
Yet, even here this ancient forge showed signs of waking.
Within the depths of the factory, a scatter of furnaces blazed with golden fire. Several engines rumbled, casting out periodic whistles with blasts of steam. Glowing green oil pumped and bubbled behind clear crystal in tall bronze tanks. Giant valves slowly turned on their own, powered by steam or Promethean fire. Off to the right, a pipe screamed and burst into flames. Several other industrial torches blazed, cloaked in smoke.
“Look,” Mac said.
He pointed to the far right, to large open vats, full of shimmering black oil. Pipes ran from those tanks to a mud lake, which bubbled and burped with sulfurous gases. Upon the sludge’s hot surface shone pools of the same unrefined oil, apparently the source of fire-defying Promethean Blood.
One mystery among many solved.
Gray got them all moving again, especially considering what they still needed to do: find another way out of here. Or at least some way to put this city back to sleep.
Still, Hunayn’s warning played in his head.
If you wake Tartarus, know it will be for the last and final time.
With that ominous warning in mind, Gray headed through the massive foundry. He and the others had seen the handiwork produced by this factory out in the city. But in here, the Phaeacians had hidden their greatest endeavor, their masterworks.
The group treaded lightly across the foundry, as if fearful of waking the bronze colossi to either side. The figures stood ten stories tall, six to a side, encased in scaffolding, bridged by ladders. Though still works in progress, their shapes and countenances were evident enough. Six men and six women. A couple were horrendous in shape, multi-limbed and misshapen. Like some Lovecraftian beasts come to life, true Chthonian monsters.
“The Elder Gods,” Bailey murmured. “The Titans of Greek mythology. The twelve firstborn of Uranus and Gaia. Imprisoned by the gods who came later.”
“And still trapped here, by the look of it,” Maria said. “In a prison made of bronze pipes.”
Gray studied one, whose chest lay open. Within that cavity, green blood bubbled throughout a labyrinth of crystal pipes, setting the interior aglow. In the center was a gold and bronze spherical device, not unlike the astrolabe that led them here, but threatening in appearance, especially as it turned with a flash of flame, as if ticking downward.
He pictured this war machine—which he somehow knew it was—marching across a battlefield, its blood surging with radioactive fire, like some walking atomic bomb.
“We can never let this fall into the wrong hands,” Gray said. “Into any hands.”
Gray knew Hunayn must have felt the same a millennium ago.
But what did the captain do?
Gray hurried the group past the foundry, passing under the Titanic gazes of the Elder Gods, to where the cave ended at a small antechamber.
Two fountains of black oil—Promethean Blood—filled stone containers on either side, the excess spilling into catch basins on the floor and draining away. One vat was huge, a veritable Roman bath. The other was small, more like a washbasin.
Between them stood another bronze door, identical to the one behind them, but this one had a small window in it, set with a translucent stone, maybe polished crystal or a crude form of glass.
The view through it was cloudy, but details were clear enough, especially considering what lit the space. Beyond a small bronze landing in the next room stretched an Olympic-sized pool. It was flush to both sides of the chamber. Only this pool was full of Medea’s Oil. It glowed a toxic emerald, its surface vaguely stirring, as if hiding some new horror. While its depth was unknowable, considering the scale of everything he’d just seen, Gray sensed the pool was as deep as the Titans were tall.
Mac studied the space with a critical eye. “I wonder if this is the source for all of the oil plumbed throughout the city.”
“The true heart of Tartarus,” Bailey said.
Mac pointed across the pool to an apron on the far side, to a large bronze wheel set into the wall back there. “That could be the main cutoff valve for the city.”
Gray leaned closer, cupping his eyes against the glass. “Hunayn mentioned this was where he discovered a way to force Tartarus back to sleep. If that valve did shut off the city’s oil supply, the constructs would eventually consume whatever fuel had been pumped into them.”
“And then they’d shut down,” Mac said.
“Going back to sleep,” Maria added.
Mac nodded. “I saw something like that happen to the bronze crabs in Greenland. But not to the bronze bull. Though its bulk surely held a larger supply of fuel.”
“But how can we be sure closing that valve will do anything?” Maria asked.
Gray pointed under the valve wheel, to where a pile of bones rested against the back wall, amid scraps of cloth. “I’m guessing those are the remains of Abd Al-Qadir, the one who Hunayn said gave his life to save them all. The captain likely left the body as a warning to whoever dared follow.”
Seichan had her turn at th
e window. “But look to the left. Something looks welded to the wall. Near the valve.”
Gray turned his attention to where she indicated. The device shone brighter, not only newer, but made of gold. Even from here, Gray identified a two-foot circular disk, inscribed and decorated in a similar fashion to the astrolabe. The handiwork was easy enough to recognize, its purpose even easier to guess.
“Hunayn’s fail-safe,” Gray said. He turned to the group, surmising the Arab captain’s intent. “I imagine if we shut down that valve to send Tartarus back to sleep, it’ll activate the captain’s doomsday device.”
“In other words,” Kowalski said with a scowl, “we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”
Gray turned to the vastness of the steaming cavern, burning with sulfurous brimstone and glowing with Promethean fire. He stared up at the towering Titans and pictured what lay waiting for his group out in the city. He considered all who had died to keep this secret, the many more who had suffered.
Hunayn had been right.
This must end here.
He turned back to the sealed door.
“No matter the risk,” he said, “we need to get over there.”
7:44 P.M.
With her arms crossed tightly, Maria stood well back as Joe dragged the thick bronze door open. He grunted with the effort but got it open a few inches.
Mac rushed forward and stuck the nose of his Geiger counter through the gap. The device erupted with fierce and rapid clicking. From steps away, she saw the counter’s meter flip all the way into the red zone. Illuminated numbers climbed in a blur, finally fluctuating between ninety and a hundred.
Mac yanked his arm back. “Close it! Close it now!”
Joe put his shoulder into the door and slammed it. “So how bad is it?” he asked.
Mac had paled. “Like I feared. The volume of oil, the concentration . . .”
Gray grabbed his arm. “Tell us.”
“I’m registering nearly one hundred sieverts.” When no one seemed to understand, Mac continued. “In the control room at Chernobyl, the staff was exposed to three hundred. They took in a lethal dose in under two minutes.”
The Last Odyssey: A Thriller Page 35