by Lee Burvine
Morgan raised the gun to fire again. She turned around to check with Rees first, and he waved her off. They might not have to risk the ricochet.
The length of pipe lay between Rees and the access plate now. He picked it up on his way over, then stooped down to look more closely at the plate. One of the cracks there looked like it might be wide enough to...
Yes. He was just able to jam the end of the pipe into the crack. He wedged it into place and stood back up. Then he stomped down on the pipe as hard as he could.
The effort threw him off balance. He fell onto his back. When he lifted his head and looked forward through his knees, he saw three of the four bolts had snapped right off.
Brittle fracture again.
Morgan re-holstered the gun. She rotated one remaining piece of metal plate out of the way.
Their escape route was open.
Rees stood back up, and felt his legs shaking underneath him. Was he losing control of them? Now that they finally had a way out, would he be unable to walk through it?
He looked at Danni and Morgan. Both of them were wobbling too.
It wasn't Rees's legs. It was the floor, vibrating wildly.
The cooling system. It had begun to rupture.
CHAPTER 34
MORGAN HAD JUST felt warmer air rushing up through the crawlspace hatchway. And then the floor started to shake.
She glanced at Rees and Danni. Danni was still out of it, but the fear on Rees's face told her what she needed to know. He was feeling these vibrations too, and he'd come to the same conclusion.
This whole place was about to blow.
Together Morgan and Rees managed to lower Danni into the access space. They followed her down as quickly as their numbed limbs would allow.
The crawlspace only travelled in one direction from where they'd entered. Deciding which way to go wasn't an issue, at least.
Thick, multi-colored power cables snaked horizontally along the gray cement walls. The fat pipes that carried the liquid helium hung from the roof. They were banging against the braces that anchored them, like a wild animal caught in a trap.
Not quite room to stand up, but not literally a crawlspace either. They could sort of duck walk, humped over. Just wide enough for them to move three abreast.
A string of red work lights in wire cages ran along the roof of the tunnel, alongside the pipes. These tracked straight ahead twenty yards or so, then either stopped at a dead end or made a sharp turn. She couldn't tell from where they were standing.
Morgan and Rees positioned themselves on opposite sides of Danni and each took an arm. She was conscious, but Morgan couldn't tell how lucid she was.
The liquid helium pipes continued to clatter above them, shaking bits of dust and cement down as they shuffled forward.
Soon they were at the end of the chain of red lights. Morgan saw that where they'd appeared before to stop was in reality a T-intersection.
Morgan took Danni's face into her hands. "W-which way out, Danni? Which way?"
Danni didn't seem able to speak quite yet. She looked off in both directions. Closed her eyes. Then opened them and nodded to her left.
"Th-this way?" Morgan said, pointing.
Danni nodded again.
Together they all turned to the left and began to scuttle forward. They hadn't gone very far when Danni started shaking her head. They all stopped.
"What is it?" Morgan asked. "You want to g-go back? Is it that way? Is the exit back that way?"
Danni nodded once.
Morgan checked in visually with Rees. He shook his head. Leaving it up to her. She knew Danni much better than he did. And Danni wasn't the kind to second guess herself. If she wanted to change directions, she must have seen or remembered something.
Morgan and Rees got Danni turned around. They all headed back through the T-intersection and continued on their new course.
Danni's right. Morgan thought. She's right. Please, let her be right.
The liquid helium pipes rattled more violently with every passing moment. The creaks and groans of metal warping under pressure grew louder. They might be instants away from the whole tunnel flooding with liquid helium.
The three of them plodded on. Nothing else to do. They were racing against an unseen clock.
As they continued down the tunnel, the red work lights overhead began to curve gently out of sight. Morgan saw Rees looking up too. Probably asking himself the same question. Were they under the new accelerator construction yet? Was that the curve of the giant, circular machine they were seeing now?
She hoped to God it was. Because that meant they were going the right way.
The moments crept past like an ultra-slow motion film. They should have been sprinting for their lives. But they could only manage this half-stooped shuffle. It was pure torture. But it was also the best they could do without abandoning Danni. And that had never for one second been an option.
From somewhere behind them the crippled cooling system started to emit popping sounds. Were those rivets tearing loose?
"Door." Danni lifted her chin. She was looking ahead and a little to the right.
Morgan followed her gaze and spotted it. There was a door up there.
Rees seemed to see it too. He tried to pull them ahead faster, but Danni was already topped out.
The seconds dragged by.
They were only a few feet from the exit when a deep boom rumbled down the tunnel. A breeze followed right after. The explosive rush of liquid helium expanding, displacing the air ahead of it.
"That's a b-breach," Rees said.
Goddamnit. We're so close. Morgan guessed they had only seconds before the super-cooled helium caught up to them and froze them solid where they stood.
In two more steps they had reached the exit-a massive, metal door on giant hinges.
The door had a wheel-type latch that wouldn't have looked out of place on a submarine. Morgan tried to spin it, but her hands slid around the smooth wheel.
Rees reached over to help.
It sounded like a freight train was bearing down on them in the crawlspace now. Morgan remembered hearing that a tornado passing close by was supposed to sound just like this.
The breeze had ramped up to a howling wind. The killing helium was filling the tunnel. Rushing toward them.
Rees grabbed the wheel mechanism with one hand, and with the other he drew a circle in the air. Counter-clockwise.
Yes, good, they ought to be trying the same direction. And intuitively that way seemed right. She nodded at him.
Rees grabbed ahold with both hands. Together they cranked on the wheel. For a terrifying moment nothing happened. Then it came loose and started spinning.
They both lost their balance and fell over.
The wheel stopped.
Morgan scrambled to her knees and gave the door a push. It didn't budge an inch. She tried pulling. No good either.
Rees reached up and torqued the wheel again. Morgan heard a chunk.
She pulled again, and this time the door slowly swung open.
Rees rushed through, dragging Danni behind him by her hands. Morgan took her feet, but she tripped and fell halfway through the doorway.
"Close it! Close it!" Rees yelled.
She could barely hear him over the roar of the approaching blast. She crawled the rest of the way through the doorway, turned back and grabbed the inside handle, then began pulling the heavy door toward her.
Before it had come halfway a giant hand swatted it from the other side. The pressure of the exploding gas.
The metal door clobbered Morgan as it slammed shut.
She felt herself falling.
Silence.
Then blackness.":[
CHAPTER 35
Two weeks earlier-Jerusalem
HIS FRIENDS CONSIDERED Mazhar Mashhad trustworthy and loyal. A hardworking day laborer and a devoutly religious Muslim, who occasionally took work
out of town for weeks or months at a time.
All in all, a man well-liked by people who-if they knew his true purpose-would most certainly want him dead.
Mashhad set down his shovel and left the archaeological dig around sunset with the other workers. A cool, moist breeze picked up. Rainclouds, dark and succulent, crowded in from the east. It had been a dry winter and a good rainstorm would be welcomed gladly.
Taking his habitual route toward home, he cut through the Suq al-Qattanin, the Cotton Merchant's Market. Here incense perfumed the evening air, as tourists haggled for Holy Land souvenirs, a fair number of which had been manufactured in China or India.
Mashhad nodded and smiled at the familiar merchants he passed. Many residents of the Muslim Quarter had known him since his arrival here five years ago.
Mashhad had recently presented himself for work at the new archaeological dig, despite a local call to boycott the project. He had two good reasons for ignoring that plea.
The first he offered publicly. "If I don't take the job," he told people, "some foreign worker will. This way at least the money stays here."
The second he kept to himself.
He was not there for the job.
Mashhad succeeded in getting himself hired. He spent the first week observing and querying his fellow laborers.
"So, what wonderful history are we digging up here, that's worth tossing whole families into the street over?" he asked of them.
And he received various answers.
"An extension of Zedekiah's Cave," one man offered.
"Looking for more of the little Kotel and I hope we don't find it. Just more Yahood coming into the neighborhood to pray," another told him.
"I have not the slightest idea and I care even less," said a third.
There had been an official application for permits, of course, with details about the dig's archaeological aims. Mashhad had seen it.
All that was a lie.
He had sneaked into all the trailers on site, to examine plans for the operation. What he found there was incoherent. A puzzle with key pieces quite obviously missing.
One set of records, though, he felt confident would provide the answers. The lead archaeologist, Joshua Amsel, carried it with him nearly everywhere. A weathered notebook bound in black leather.
The old man left the site with it in his possession again today, and returned to the Arthur Hotel still carrying it. He and the other members of his team were staying there along with their security detail.
Mashhad veered away from his regular route home to head for the hotel. There he waited outside for several hours, until he saw Amsel leave for dinner with a visiting researcher.
He slipped inside the hotel and made his way upstairs.
The cardkey he inserted into the door lock connected it via thin black wires to a small box of electronics in his pocket. It broke the lock's code in a matter of seconds.
Mashhad entered Amsel's room.
Working by flashlight he made a fast survey of the place. First checking common concealment areas.
Under drawers, mattress, inside the toilet tank, behind paintings, etc.
No notebook.
Amsel was not carrying it when he left for dinner, which strongly suggested it was still here. Probably in the room safe.
The safe itself was not concealed. It sat visible in the closet, as in most hotel rooms.
Mashhad recognized the model.
As with virtually all multi-user safes of this type the combination reset button was located inside. A new combination could only be entered with the safe unlocked and wide open.
Mashhad removed a thin, flat piece of metal from his kit, much like a slim jim for breaking into cars. He bent it into a Z shape. Then he slid it through the tiny gap between the top of the door and the body of the safe.
He angled the metal strip so the inside end pressed against the inner wall of the safe door.
Right where the safe's designers had placed the reset button.
It took perhaps a minute to find and depress the button. That allowed him to enter a new combination, which in turn opened the safe.
Inside, along with a UK passport and a large amount of cash, he found the leather bound notebook.
A quick skim confirmed what Mashhad had hoped. The story of the dig's hidden purpose seemed to lay there inside.
Also there was a list of storage lockers, some in Israel, others not. These might be for hiding smuggled, black market artifacts. This was information that would no doubt be useful to his employer.
Amsel would know his safe had been breached when it failed to open with his passcode-which Mashhad had never known and could not re-enter. There was, therefore, no reason not just to take the notebook. Which presently he did, along with the money and rest of the safe's contents. It would look like an ordinary hotel robbery.
He left, letting the hotel room door snick closed and started down the hall. He heard a shout behind him. He turned toward it slowly.
An Israeli soldier assigned to Amsel's security team drew his handgun and took aim. Even if Mashhad had been armed, he'd be dead before he could bring his weapon to bear.
Very slowly, he raised his hands. Then he sank to his knees.
IT TOOK ALMOST twenty minutes before he was again on his way, refusing the apology that had been offered by the soldier and his commander.
It wasn't necessary. How could the man have known?
Mashhad's very life depended on his great skill at projecting a false identity. On his being perceived wrongly, and not as the Israeli spy he truly was.
He had already notified his employer that he would have something for him tonight. They'd agreed to rendezvous where they had once before. The garden at the Ticho House, not very far from the Arthur Hotel.
He made his way there without further incident.
This job lay outside Mashhad's professional purview and amounted, more or less, to a favor for an old friend. One who had saved his ass some years before. For that reason, their meetings had all been clandestine.
The grounds at the historic Ticho House were lovely even in winter, with terraced shrubs alongside olive and cypress trees. Up above, the dark and starless skies held the promise of long overdue rains.
And in fact, generous drops began to fall just as Mashhad and his employer spotted each other, across the garden.
Mashhad couldn't tell if it was the arrival of the blessed rains-as they called the season's first real downpour-or the present that he carried under his arm that brought the smile to the lips of the director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority.
In any case, Benjamin Zaken looked very pleased indeed.
CHAPTER 36
MORGAN HAD BEEN unconscious for over eight hours now. Rees counted each additional minute she didn't wake up as bad news. It increased the likelihood they were looking at severe brain trauma here. He was already worried and steadily growing more so.
No, not worried. More like scared to death.
And all over a woman he hardly knew. That was something he really needed to revisit at a later time. If he lived that long.
After the helium explosion, Rees scouted the empty accelerator building, and looked for someplace they could hunker down a while.
Eventually he chose a kind of electronics utility closet. It was located close to where Morgan had collapsed. They'd be hidden away if anyone actually did come by. And their body heat should warm the small space up a bit.
He carried Morgan in and laid her down on top of his parka. He and Danni huddled up against her. Even unconscious, Morgan shivered badly. So did Rees and Danni. At one point he could hear the clickety-click of three sets of chattering teeth.
The minutes dragged by. Morgan still didn't wake. At some point Rees and Danni resolved to take turns sleeping.
When the end of Rees's watch rolled around, he decided to wake up Danni. They had a momentous choice to wrestle with. "Danni. Danni."
She lifted her head and looked up at him through bleary eyes. Then she craned her neck to check out Morgan. "Is she awake?"
"Still unconscious."
"How long have I been asleep?"
"Around two hours. Basically no change. I'm worried about brain swelling, or even a hemorrhage. We may have to chance it and turn ourselves in. So we can get Kerry to a hospital."
Danni nodded. "If she doesn't wake up in another ... like, fifteen minutes, I say we go for it. Surrender to whoever's out there."
"Agreed. And what do we do if she does wake up?" Rees had been trying to think of a logical next step, and he'd come up with exactly squat.
Danni grimaced and shook her head. "I dunno. We still have one gun. From the guy who got shot back there, outside the Core. The other one Kerry gave me is back in the control room."
"Yeah, I don't think a weapon does us much good, really."
Danni's eyes played back and forth as she appeared to consider something silently. When they settled on Rees again, there was new life in them. "Maybe we don't have to turn ourselves in. We could force someone to drive us to a hospital. You know, at gunpoint."
Rees felt the urge to laugh and squelched it. "Ahhh, yeah. I suppose we could. But assuming that worked, what then? There's still the little problem of someone out there trying to kill us all."
Danni slid over closer to Morgan, and looked down at her tenderly. "You still have no idea who sent you that note? The Herodotus guy?"
"No. Just that he or she wants to meet down at JPL ... well, it would be today now. This afternoon. At this point, we couldn't even make it there in time."
"So we'll just have to figure out the next step when we get to it."
Rees wasn't thrilled with the idea of improvising, but he thought she was probably right about that. "Let's say we do make it to a hospital. We could leave Kerry to get the medical attention she needs, then run for it. Head for Mexico. Go off the grid."
Danni shook her head. "I don't think I could do that. Just leave her there on her own."
"Leave me where?"
Rees and Danni turned together. Morgan lay on her back, staring up at them.