“Seen action?”
Jess nodded, caught something from the corner of her eye, looked up, and saw another transport plane, other jumpers. So did Lomas. Without further talk, they broke out their knives, quickly slicing at the pallet’s wrapping.
Less than ten minutes later, they were armed and equipped just as Corporal Rothstein—communication and positioning—confirmed they’d landed dead on their coordinates: a flat outcropping on a nameless mountain. However, while they were only eight hundred meters downslope from their planned point of entry, the roundabout path required to ferry their equipment up the rough and rocky incline was almost three klicks long.
Lomas tasked four of his men to take the fastest route, a direct uphill hike, to find and secure the crevasse flagged by the SARGE display. The captain estimated thirty minutes for the advance team’s climb to the crevasse and almost an hour for the second group to reach the POE with the equipment. By then, it would be full-on night. Once all were in place, the demo specialists would plant the charges that should open up a shaft down to the structure. Then it was Mr. Ironwood’s show until the helicopters from the USS Roosevelt arrived in two days’ time.
Jess only had one problem with that plan. “Anyone see if the other jumpers had an equipment pallet? I didn’t. They could have landed right on the POE.”
“Then we’ll know where to find them,” Lomas said. He gave the order to move out, and they did.
The commandos carried fifty-pound packs in addition to their basic weapons and survival gear. The agents and civilians had been given smaller thirty-pound packs, and in the -25°F air, that exertion was taking a toll. They’d stopped to rest.
The three-klick path to the point of entry didn’t match Rothstein’s topo maps or satellite photos. The tallest peaks were still useful as landmarks, but the exposed ground between them was all new.
“The maps are eight years old,” the corporal explained to Jess. “The satellite photos are from last year. Terrain’s changed already. There’s barely half the snow that was here last year.”
Ironwood looked at the maps and photos they were comparing. “We know where we have to end up.” He tapped a gloved finger at the POE marked on the topo map. “And we know we’re here.” He tapped again. “So let’s take a shortcut along that new ridge.” He pointed ahead. “Should save a klick or so.”
Corporal Rothstein used binoculars to check the end of the ridge and decided it was passable. Just as they all began to haul on their packs again to continue the trek, Jess heard the hollow pops of distant gunfire.
In seconds, the commandos had slipped out of their supply and survival packs and moved out on the run, ordering the civilians—her and David, and Ironwood, Lyle, and Marano—to stay put until someone came for them.
Five minutes later, before the second group of commandos could have reached the site, a cloud of black smoke rose up past a dark ridge, followed a moment later by an echoing rumble.
“I thought they were going to bomb it,” David said.
Jess realized what was happening. Her stomach tightened. “They’re blasting in.” She felt powerless.
“They’ll loot it first.” Ironwood turned away, arms open in despair and frustration. “All this way, and for what?”
More distant gunfire. Another cloud of smoke and a long rumble.
“Our guys aren’t stopping them, Jack.” Marano turned to Lyle. “We gotta help.”
Jess saw the senior agent struggle with the decision: Follow orders or his gut? She’d faced that, too. She turned to David, but he’d grabbed Ironwood.
“How old is the data in the SARGE database?”
“My version? From 2005. Oh . . . I get it . . .”
So did Jess. Of all of them, David had seen what no one else had. Years ago, when the SARGE database had been created, the ice and snowpack here were thicker by dozens of meters. So SARGE had identified an entry point high on the mountainside as the quickest way into the hidden structure, but with so much impassable ice removed, had another entry point been exposed?
“Right!” Ironwood awkwardly unfolded the printout. Jess had the others kneel to hold the three sheets of plasticized paper on the frozen ground for David to assess. He looked from map to photo to SARGE printout and back again, several times, as if aligning the three different views of the same terrain in his mind, until they came together.
“Here.” David’s finger stabbed the satellite image at a spot less than fifty meters down the steep slope of the ridge they’d been about to cross when the gunfire sounded. “There’s something there. A side tunnel. A shaft. Only a few feet down.”
“A few feet?” Jess said. “Does anyone know how to handle the demo charges?”
Jack Lyle stood up carefully, favoring one knee.
Roz Marano had already shed her mittens. Digging barehanded through the packs, she started pulling out the detonators.
Over the next twenty minutes, they heard gunfire and two more large explosions. Then nothing. No one came back for them. By then, Jess and Lyle had become a team working to keep their reduced unit moving and safe.
As Marano placed the charges at the point David identified, Jess, Lyle, and Ironwood hauled the supply packs down the ridge and hid them beneath a hasty cairn of rocks. If whoever had taken on Captain Lomas and his men came looking for stragglers, there’d be nothing here to see.
Less than half an hour after the final blast, the long dusk of the Antarctic night had begun. At this time of year, darkness would last only a few hours. But they were ready.
Jess moved over as Marano ran to join them behind a rock wall. Then, with hands white with cold, the agent plugged the last of the wires into the handheld firing control.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Go,” Ironwood said.
Marano flipped the cover off the firing switch, toggled it. The rock wall appeared to bounce with the sharp crack of the explosion. Seconds later, a brief shower of gravel and dust rained down on them.
“They’ll have heard that,” Lyle warned. “Let’s go!”
Jess was first to the blast site, where fine debris still cascaded into a dust-filled hole. “Yes! We’ve opened into something.”
Then she was first again because she was the only one who’d know the story of the rock layers. Wrapping a rope around her waist and shoulder, she slid down the blast hole as the others kept her anchored. The tip of her boot touched bottom, detecting a small fissure. She kicked at it once, twice—
The ground gave way beneath her and she dropped, gasping as the rope around her suddenly tightened—
Swinging free, she looked down . . .
Black rock from the explosion . . . piled on honed square slabs of stone . . . a floor.
“This is it!”
She descended into history.
FIFTY-THREE
Nathaniel Merrit was a killer, and, falling from the sky, he saw his next victims arranged like pawns on a chessboard, waiting to be sacrificed.
Merrit counted seventeen of the enemy below, one in particular whose size and silhouette were unmistakable. Ironwood. Unexpected, but not unwanted.
Accompanying Merrit were twenty mercenaries he’d tasked with finding and documenting the underground structure before the bombing runs began tomorrow. First light would be in less than six hours.
Until yesterday, his team had been special forces operators in the Argentine air force’s Grupo de Operaciones Especiales. If their mission achieved its goal, then they’d be reinstated, and this would be an official operation, but until mission success, they fought in white polar camouflage without identification or insignia. Failure, therefore, could not haunt the generals who’d obeyed the request of the MacCleirigh Foundation instead of the orders of their government.
At one thousand feet, Merrit pulled his ripcord, joining the rest of his team directly on the target site, a half mile from the other jumpers. There was more than enough time for his forces to prepare defensive positions and plant the first explos
ive charges for blasting their way into the structure before nightfall.
He was pleased the opposing force was Ironwood’s. He knew he’d have to kill the MacClary girl eventually, if only because he’d killed her aunt and, as J.R. had correctly reasoned, she’d come after him. Still, he intended to kill his former employer here. Ideally, he’d do it with a knife up close and not a bullet at a distance. He wanted the man to know who was taking his life. Face-to-face. That had meaning . . . and what was life—or death—without that?
Twenty minutes later, the first of the other side’s forces arrived on-site and started the attack. They took out one of Merrit’s mercenaries posted in a sniper’s position, but Merrit witnessed two other snipers he’d positioned catch the enemy in their crossfire, successfully dropping three: one killed outright with a head shot; two seriously wounded, writhing on the ground.
Issuing commands over the compact radio headset under his helmet and balaclava, Merrit instructed his snipers to hold position. He wanted to see how the other side would respond. He himself stayed back and out of the action. Not to avoid combat, but because his injured ankle would put him and any of the men with him at a disadvantage. He’d removed the bandages and given himself shots of Novocain before the jump. Tomorrow morning would be time enough to deal with any additional damage he incurred.
Five minutes passed, and when the enemy did nothing, he gave the signal to detonate the first charges.
The other side used the black cloud rising from the mountainside as cover to attack his snipers, costing Merrit two more men. Their polar camouflage, however, was ineffective crossing dark rock. Two more enemy were felled.
At this rate, Merrit knew he could win by attrition, but not quickly enough. He radioed his unit to prepare for another wave, then gave the order to detonate the second set of charges.
This time when the black cloud billowed up, the enemy attacked from two sides, even as Merrit’s explosives specialist, Teniente Alvarez, reported good news—debris was falling in through an opening at the bottom of the blast crater.
The fighting was extended, and Merrit didn’t like what he was hearing over his headset. He crawled from his position overlooking the entry point to see the enemy moving down from a higher position.
They were good—American military, he guessed—and there were at least two groups of them.
Then Alvarez radioed bad news: He and his team were being overwhelmed.
Merrit stayed low, moving quickly behind a stretch of jagged boulders to look down at the protected niche where he’d had the mercenaries unload their explosives. He could see that about half the charges had been used for the first two blasts. He also saw Alvarez and four more mercenaries cowering, on their knees, hands high, as six enemy commandos held weapons on them, searched them, and disarmed them.
Merrit considered his options—it was time. The teniente had reported debris falling in. That meant the first two blasts had succeeded in punching an opening into the structure.
Merrit tugged off one of his mitts, reached to his side, and unclipped the HK69 grenade launcher he carried. He extended the stock and flipped up the short sight for a range of less than fifty meters, an HE-FRAG round already in the breech. Alvarez and his team had completed their mission. They and their remaining explosives were expendable.
He checked the niche again and ducked back behind a boulder, with the image in his mind. He pictured the clear shot he had, then swung up and fired just as the enemy soldiers looked up and—
The high-explosive fragmentation grenade hit the stacked demolition charges as Merrit dropped back behind the boulder.
Small red flecks fell with the rocks from the enormous blast.
There was no more gunfire.
Merrit listened to the chatter on his radio. Of his twenty men, six survivors were unhurt. Three or four more—judging from the weak cries and pleas they were transmitting—were badly wounded. More significantly, there was no sign of enemy action, even though by his count when he’d parachuted in, of the seventeen he’d seen, not all enemy had been killed.
Ordering the six survivors to take up positions around the entry point, Merrit didn’t wait for them before using a rope to drop into the opening SARGE had pinpointed, not stopping till he reached a mounded pile of rocks. Favoring his ankle, he let go of the rope and slid down the debris until he was on the floor of a corridor paved with squares of stone.
He paused to let his eyes adjust.
In the dim gloom, he judged that, while the passageway was not identical to the ones in Cornwall and the South Pacific, it was similar enough.
He pulled off his hood and his helmet, removed his ski mask, then opened his parka. Out of the wind, the air was warmer, and he had considerable ground to cover. If there was a treasure room here, the Rodrigues woman had promised $1 million for every artifact he recovered from the central table. Combine that payout with the look on Ironwood’s face as he felt Merrit’s knife slide into his chest, and this was going to be a good day.
As he took his first step forward, from somewhere ahead he heard the unmistakable whump of an explosion.
Whatever else was down here waiting to be found, he wasn’t the only one looking for it.
Still, he intended to be the only one who claimed it.
Jessica Bronwyn Ruth Tamar Elizabeth Miriam Ann, child of MacCleirigh, Defender of Boston and the Line MacClary, stood where no member of her family had ever been before.
She felt the weight of centuries and of responsibility. Reflexively, she put her gloved hand to her chest, then remembered she’d given her cross to David when she’d thought he was a long-lost cousin.
Beside her, he exhaled noisily, his warm breath touching her cheek as he shook off the loop of rope he’d descended on. She was surprised by how tired he looked. “Do you think this is it?” he asked. He unzipped his parka, pulled off his hood and helmet. It was marginally warmer here.
The commandos’ supply packs, survival gear, and radio hit the floor just behind them, dropped by the two AFOSI agents. Ironwood followed, slowly being lowered.
“I don’t know,” Jess answered honestly. She held up the SARGE printout and shone her flashlight on it. “That round room looks like a Chamber of Heaven. It’s larger, but it’s the only circular area on this level.”
“So we’ll start there?”
“We’ll start there!” Ironwood’s voice boomed in the constricted space. Lyle and Marano climbed down ropes behind him. “How long do you think it’s been since voices echoed off these walls?”
“Human voices?” Marano asked. She and Lyle worked together to cover the packs with black gravel and stones. The blast was going to attract attention, and it was wise to conceal their trail. “Or any kind?”
Ironwood cocked a finger at her, pulling an imaginary trigger. “We’ll see what we see, young lady.”
Lyle squinted at his watch. “They’re going to start bombing in four and a half hours. We need to be a couple of miles away by then.”
Jess checked the printout again. “It’s not enough time. Not to see it all.”
“Then there’s no time to waste standing here,” Ironwood said. “Let’s move.”
They started down the corridor, carefully skirting fallen stones and raw rock that had dropped from above. In a few places, floor stones were also missing, and they used their flashlights to see that there was another corridor running beneath theirs on a lower level. Not knowing what kind of supports were holding up the floor they were on, they began to place their feet more cautiously, first testing suspicious stones to ensure that they were solid.
Then they came to the first mural.
Ironwood clapped his hands as they all held their flashlights on it, the vapor of their breathing forming a cloud through which they looked into an unknown time, at an unknown people.
Parts of the plaster had fallen away, but the damage wasn’t enough to erase the incredible scene that stretched for twenty feet. It showed a harbor, dark green sea below
, and on the horizon, dark peaks crowned with snow. Between the sky and sea, there were piers and buildings, some of two and three stories. Banners waved from tall poles, most of them purple, some white. The most prominent element in the scene before them was the ships. They were angular, with a high prow and aft section, and each had two rows of oars, at least forty on each level.
“Look at them,” Ironwood marveled. “They’re not coast huggers. They’re oceangoing.”
“How can you tell?” David asked.
“Shape of their hulls,” Ironwood answered. “Just trying to cross the Drake Passage between here and South America, a big ship can snap in two on the kind of waves she can face. So the hulls have to be engineered like span bridges—able to support their weight if there’s suddenly no water under one end or the other.” He nodded in admiration. “These folks were smart.”
Jess didn’t care about the ships’ construction. She was transfixed by their large bright yellow mainsails; painted on each in cobalt blue was a simple, unornamented version of her family’s cross.
“Tuareg,” Ironwood said. He looked at her. “That’s MacCleirigh, right?”
Jess didn’t have to answer because, beside her, David had pulled aside his layers of insulating clothes, taken out her cross, and handed it back to her, before kneeling to take a camera from his bag. Her fingers tightened on its remembered weight.
“I knew it!” Ironwood said, triumphant. “Everything’s coming together.” He swept an arm toward the symbol on the mural, didn’t touch it. “No one,” he said, “no one knew how far back that symbol goes. Here’s the proof it started here! Spread up to the Mediterranean, probably with a Phoenician connection—no one knows where they started out from. Then down into North Africa, kept alive by the Tuareg people. Those desert nomads are probably some offshoot of your people, Jessica. Matrilineal. The men wear the veils and the women are bare-faced! And they’re right next door to the Dogon tribe. And the big library in Timbuktu. It all fits!”
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