That was why she’d been so terrified. She was deathly afraid that her hand would slip and make contact with the Midas Touch.
Cavano had been unable to detect the subterfuge, and had assumed the gloves were safe because Stacy had been wearing them. Now Stacy could see the mixture of fear and pain on her face as she endured the toxic side effect of the Midas Touch.
Cavano dropped the container and inadvertently kicked it behind her past the pedestal in her desperation to tear off the gloves. She held up her hands, and Stacy could already see the blisters forming on her fingers.
“What’s the matter?” Sal said.
“Kill them!” Cavano screamed as she dove for her gun. “Kill them all!”
* * *
Cavano’s cry was Grant’s cue. He’d been patiently waiting for something like it ever since Cavano took him captive.
Sal raised his gun to fire at Tyler, but Grant charged him. Sal got off a wild volley of shots, and Grant couldn’t tell if they’d hit anything. Sal brought the gun down to smash Grant, but not fast enough. Grant aimed his head at Sal’s midsection like a battering ram and knocked him backward.
Sal’s mammoth frame absorbed the blow without falling. He continued to fire shots, and Grant could feel the hot barrel against his shirt. He grabbed for the gun. They wrestled for it face-to-face, each determined to shoot the other.
* * *
Tyler hit the deck when Sal’s gun blazed at him. Stacy raced up the stairs to get out of the line of fire, but Cavano already had the submachine gun in her hands. Tyler covered Stacy’s retreat by snapping off three quick shots with the pistol. He had only one magazine, so rounds would soon become a precious commodity.
Although Tyler missed Cavano, his shots made her duck for cover behind the pedestal in the pit. She fired off random bursts that hit nothing but wall.
Stacy ran along the terrace, but she didn’t dive behind the sarcophagus as Tyler had expected. Instead she lunged for Orr’s legs, missing them by inches.
While Tyler had been engaged in the firefight with Cavano, Orr had taken the opportunity to grab his pack from behind Tyler and was running for the opposite end of the terrace, trying to make an escape. Stacy popped back up and gave chase.
Tyler took aim at Orr, but he didn’t shoot. He couldn’t risk killing Orr until he knew where his father and Stacy’s sister were.
More shots came from Cavano, and Tyler could do nothing more than turn to lay down covering fire for Stacy.
* * *
When the shooting started, Orr’s first thought was that this was even better than he had been expecting. They were all fighting one another, and he saw his chance to slip out.
While Tyler returned fire, Orr scrambled over and grabbed his bag, which held the golden hand, the Archimedes Codex, and the video camera. His hands were still bound, but he was mobile. He planned to get off the terrace by jumping over the pool.
Then Stacy had seen what he was doing. She knocked him down, but he kicked her in the stomach. His depth perception was gone, or he would have hit her with a more crushing blow. Still, it was enough, and she went down clutching her belly.
Orr got back up and took a running leap from the terrace. The pool was narrowest in this part of the pit, maybe only ten feet across. He soared into space and landed just inches beyond the edge of the steaming water.
He rolled and saw his target: the container with Midas’s hand. Its exterior was uncontaminated. He scooped it up and stuffed it into his pack.
Orr used the chaos of the gunfight to dig into Gaul’s duffel, still lying against the wall near the water spout. A few button pushes, and he ran for the stairs to the exit tunnel.
He thought ten seconds should be plenty of time.
* * *
Cavano knew she didn’t have long for this world, and she wasn’t going out cowering behind some monument to death. Her right hand burned so much from the Midas Touch that she could do no more than prop the gun up with her wrist, shooting left-handed.
She felt as if her veins had been injected with molten lava. If she was going to die, she would take Stacy Benedict and Tyler Locke with her.
After awkwardly slamming another magazine into the gun and racking the bolt, she stood and fired at Tyler’s position. As she stumbled for the stairs, nearly blind from the pain, she kept firing bursts, hoping to hit someone, anyone.
She took the steps two at a time, but her stomach suddenly spasmed, and her head pounded in agony, as if an animal were tearing it apart from the inside. She collapsed at the top step, her finger clenching the trigger back until the gun was empty.
* * *
Grant was pinned against the pedestal holding the statue, Sal’s submachine gun choking the life out of him.
Sal was one of the few men Grant had ever met who actually had a weight advantage, and the Italian used it. He leaned his bulk into the gun, and Grant’s vision began to tunnel.
They were near the corner of the pedestal. If Grant could just work his way a few more inches to his left, he could use Sal’s weight against him.
He edged over with a few solid lunges. One more should do it. Grant could see almost nothing at this point, but he felt the open space to his side.
With his last bit of strength, he jostled left and fell backward. Sal couldn’t keep from falling forward.
Grant thrust his legs upward and tossed Sal’s body over his head. With a howl, Sal went sliding and rolling along the floor. The slick surface gave him no purchase, and before he could stop himself he splashed into the boiling water.
Despite the heat, Grant’s blood chilled as Sal’s primal scream echoed through the chamber before gurgling to silence.
* * *
Stacy scrambled to her feet after she saw Orr leap over the pool. She rushed to the edge of the terrace, but the lanterns had all gone askew by this point. The odd shadows cast made it difficult to see what he was doing, but she did see him grab the container with Midas’s hand.
Then for a few seconds Orr knelt by the wall, where he rummaged through Gaul’s duffel, his hands still tied together. When he was finished, he picked up his backpack and ran as fast as he could for the stairs exiting the chamber.
A horrible scream registered in Stacy’s ears, but it was in the background with the last of the gunfire. She was too focused on the bag where Orr had knelt before escaping into the tunnel.
Then she realized what Orr had been doing. Gaul’s duffel. The explosives. The timed detonators she and Tyler had found.
Oh, no.
In the center of the pit, Grant was about to emerge from behind the pedestal.
“Get back!” she yelled. “There’s a bomb!”
She turned, but Tyler was right behind her. With all her strength, she shoved him down, and the world exploded.
SIXTY-THREE
For a few moments, Tyler couldn’t figure out what had happened. His ears were assaulted by a roar that seemed to come from everywhere.
When he could remember his name, he pushed himself up. Two of the lanterns were still working. He looked around and saw Stacy lying facedown. She wasn’t moving.
She had saved him. If he’d been standing when the explosive detonated, he would have been pulverized against the far wall.
He gently turned her over. Blood spilled from her side. A shrapnel wound. He lifted her shirt and saw a gash three inches long. He ripped his shirt tail off and pressed it against the wound. He couldn’t tell how deep it was.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“My side hurts,” she said, her voice more annoyed than anything else.
“I know. But you’ll be all right.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re a tough woman. Now be quiet and hold this down. I’m going to see if Grant is okay.”
He got one of the lanterns and went to the edge. He shined it down and saw Grant laid out behind the pedestal on the side away from the explosion.
“Grant! Get up!”
; He heard a moan in response. “Can’t a guy rest for a minute?”
Tyler’s hearing was coming back. He thought the rushing sound in his ears was the residual effects of the explosion, but it was getting louder. He looked down and saw a crack in the wall, and water gushing through it. The pool started to overflow, and the boiling water streamed across the floor, right at Grant.
“Grant!” Tyler yelled. “Get your ass onto the pedestal right now!”
The crack blew open, and water poured into the pit.
Grant had gotten to his feet and saw the water rushing toward him. He scrambled up onto the pedestal and didn’t stop until he was sitting atop the statue. The water splashed against the side, but he was far enough above it to escape injury. However, it would be only a matter of time before he was swamped, and he would suffer the same agonizing death as Sal.
For that matter, they all would.
A shout from across the chamber got his attention. “Tyler! I thought you’d be dead.”
It was Orr. He had returned, and he’d been able to remove the shoelaces binding his wrists. Tyler didn’t know whether he’d come back to make sure they’d all been killed or to gloat.
“This isn’t over, Orr,” Tyler said.
“Looks like it is to me. Then again, you could try to swim across, but that might be a little painful.” The water was already three feet deep and rising fast.
“Before I leave you to your doom and lock you in here for another two thousand years,” Orr continued, “I thought you might like to know that your father’s dead. So is Carol Benedict.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Yeah, they’ve been dead since I first saw you this evening, and now you get to think about that for the rest of your short, miserable life while I’m off to enjoy my spoils.” He pointed at his eye. “And this? It’s nothing that a little plastic surgery won’t fix. Ciao!”
He smiled a shit-eating grin, waved a salute, and was gone, sure that Tyler would soon be a distant memory.
SIXTY-FOUR
Tyler wasn’t going to give up that easily. Orr should have known that by now.
Wading or swimming through boiling acidic water was a death sentence, but Tyler wasn’t going to swim. He had a boat.
He ran over to the gilded wooden sarcophagus and tipped it over to lighten the load.
“Sorry, Your Majesty,” he said as Midas’s corpse tumbled out over the edge of the terrace and into the water. He flipped it back over and heaved the lid onto it.
He had to push the sarcophagus down the stairs, but Cavano’s body was in the way. Tyler grasped her jacket, careful not to touch the flaming-red skin that now covered her entire body like a rash, and pulled her until she was clear. He put her back down, and her eyes popped open, the bloodshot orbs nearly bursting from the sockets. Her face was contorted in agony.
“Wa … water,” she wheezed.
Tyler hesitated, but he couldn’t refuse the dying woman’s last request. He retrieved the canteen and tipped it so that water dribbled into her mouth. She swallowed, then gagged, and some of it streamed down her cheek.
“Is Orr … dead?” she croaked.
“No,” Tyler said. “But I’ll catch him.”
She coughed, barely able to force the words out. “You won’t. You won’t find Jordan Orr.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s named for his grandfather.” Her breath caught. “His real name … is Giordano … Orsini.”
Her eyes widened as the pain overwhelmed her. She shrieked, but no sound came out. Her head lolled to the side, and her final breath rushed out. She was dead.
But she got her wish to be the golden girl. The rivulet of water on her cheek left a streak of gold. She would be immortalized in the metal when the chamber was submerged.
“Uh, Tyler?” Grant said. “You might want to hurry before I turn into a three-minute egg.”
So would the rest of them if he didn’t act fast. The water was already four feet deep.
Tyler pushed the coffin toward the stairs, his rib protesting the entire way. When the coffin was at the bottom step, he left it there and went back for Stacy.
“Can you walk?” he said.
Stacy nodded as tears streamed down her face. She had heard Orr’s news about her sister.
He helped her to her feet, and she went ashen from the headrush. He threw her arm over his shoulder and carried her to the sarcophagus.
They got on top of its lid, and it sank until the top bobbed only six inches above the surface of the water.
Tyler took off his T-shirt, wrapped it around Cavano’s contaminated gun, and used the stock as a paddle, rowing as fast as he could.
When he got to the pedestal, there was only a foot of clearance left.
“We’ll sink to the bottom if my fat ass gets on there with you,” Grant said.
He was right. Tyler kept padding. “I’ll push it back to you.”
Tyler rowed as fast as he could until he was at the steps leading up to the exit. He helped Stacy off. She was barely able to move on her own. When she was safely out of harm’s way, Tyler laid the gun on top and used his foot to shove the coffin back to Grant.
He dragged Stacy up to the top of the stairs and laid her down.
“A little help!” Grant shouted.
Tyler went back to the railing and saw that Grant was foundering. The coffin was sinking. Cavano must have put a bullet hole in it. Grant wasn’t going to make it to the stairs.
Tyler searched around him and saw Stacy’s explosive belt. He picked it up by the end and lowered it over the railing.
“Come this way!” he yelled. “Hurry!”
Grant rowed like an Olympic sculling champion. When the coffin was near the wall, he stood and reached for the belt. He supported himself with it using his feet to scrabble up the wall.
Tyler strained to hold on to the belt under the weight of Grant’s 260 pounds. With one last heave he jerked backward, and Grant caught the top of the railing with his hand just as the top of the sarcophagus went under.
A searing pain stabbed Tyler’s side as the rib finally snapped. He ground his molars trying not to cry out. Grant heaved himself over the railing.
“Thanks,” Grant said. “You okay, man?”
Tyler talked through gritted teeth. “Just get Stacy.” He took a breath and stood, taking one last look at the smashed geolabe lying forgotten on the stairs, being covered by the rising water.
He staggered behind Grant as they saw the pumice barrier rising. Orr thought he had penned them in, but it had risen too slowly. There were still two feet of space left.
Grant went over, and Tyler struggled to pass Stacy through. Once she was safe, he used the last of his strength to tumble over the barrier into the cool air of the exterior tunnel.
Tyler staggered to his knees and lay down on his side, not sure if he’d ever get up again.
SIXTY-FIVE
Because Tyler was sucking wind and Grant had to support Stacy as they walked, there was no chance for either of them to catch up with Orr, but at least they could find their way out using his markings.
The tunnel maze seemed to go on forever, but Tyler knew they were getting close to the entry well when they passed three bodies that were burned and mangled by the phosphorus grenades. Tyler, still shirtless, considered taking one of the men’s jackets, but he thought that wearing a burned piece of clothing from a dead man would be even worse than being naked.
Orr had been so sure he’d killed Tyler that he hadn’t bothered to cut the rope that still dangled at the bottom of the cistern. Grant went up first, while Tyler put Stacy in a harness. Grant pulled her up and then helped Tyler get to the top. By the time they reached the surface, it was midnight.
None of them had a phone, except for Orr’s, and because of the password protection Tyler couldn’t use it to call out.
While Grant went to find a working phone, Tyler held Stacy in his lap. She was barely conscious. Her face was pale, and she
’d lost a lot of blood. They’d bandaged her up as best they could, but the walk had been hard on her. Tyler stroked her hair.
Her eyes fluttered open. For a second, she couldn’t focus, then she recognized Tyler’s face.
“Hey, I thought I was dead for a minute there,” she said weakly. “Is that the moon?”
Tyler looked up and saw a full moon shining brightly through the clear sky. He instinctively inhaled a deep breath of warm night air, but he stopped when pain convulsed his chest.
“That’s the moon,” he said. “We made it out.”
“Good. I hated that place.”
Tyler smiled.
A look of alarm suddenly bloomed on her face. “Where’s Orr?”
Fresh anger welled up, but Tyler tamped it down. “Don’t worry. We’ll track him down.”
Stacy closed her eyes and sobbed. “Carol. Carol’s gone.”
“Shh. Don’t talk. Save your strength.” Tyler was still in a state of disbelief. The first of the five stages of grief. A part of Tyler hated himself for being so analytical, even now.
Not that he lacked emotion. Every time he pictured Orr’s face, pure hatred flowed through him. He didn’t hate many people. Sometimes he hated himself, like now, when he’d failed so totally. But Orr had earned it, and Tyler swore he would track Orr down if it took him the rest of his life.
He completely understood the powerful need for vengeance. It was appropriate that he’d found it in Italy, so famous for its blood-soaked vendettas.
Grant came trotting back toward them with a cell phone triumphantly held in his hand.
“I got emergency services,” he said. “An ambulance is on the way. I told them it was a heart attack so the police wouldn’t come right away.”
The Midas Code tl-2 Page 30