Hell Ship

by David Wood

  Almost trembling with anticipation, Dane pressed one of the facsimiles into the depression. There was a distinctive click from within the block, and then it opened.

  Despite the appearance of solidity, the cornerstone was hollow. The face with the triangle symbol was in fact a two-inch thick slab, beveled at the edges so there was no visible seam when it was closed. The heavy slab moved smoothly despite the fact that the hinges were also of carved stone.

  “Was there ever any doubt?” Bones pointed a finger at Maddock. “You, me, lottery ticket.”

  “If there’s really a Templar treasure here,” said Alex. “You won’t need to win the lotto.”

  “One thing at a time.” Dane took a flashlight from his backpack and probed the interior of the block. The cornerstone was the threshold of a carved stairway that descended steeply, into the mountain itself. “Well, this is what we came for.”

  He started to take a step inside, but felt Bones’ hand on his shoulder. “Watch your step. I’ll bet these Templar guys liked to build booby-traps. Like in that Indiana Jones movie.”

  Alex wrinkled her nose. “The one with all the bugs?”

  Bones shook his head. “No, that was Temple of Doom. In India. I’m talking about Last Crusade. The one with the rats and the hot German chick. I suppose there could be bugs here, too.”

  “Thanks for the cheerful thought.” Alex shuddered.

  Dane continued forward, but Bones’ warning was not lost on him. He didn’t think they would find bugs, rats, snakes or any other living creatures five thousand feet above sea level, but the Templars might very well have employed defensive measures to guard their secret vault. He checked the surrounding walls of the passage for slits or holes that might conceal traps, and checked each stair tread before putting his full weight down. It was slow going, but a few minutes later, he reached the bottom of the stairs about a dozen feet below the entrance, and found himself in the center of a conspicuously circular room.

  There were arched openings equally spaced around the circle, and a quick check showed passages leading away to the left and right, while the one directly in front of him led to an ascending staircase. The opening behind the entrance stairs also led to a stairwell, but this one went down.

  “Better get down here,” he called. “We’ve got a multiple choice problem.”

  When they were all together again, Dane pointed out the openings. “Any thoughts?”

  Alex walked the circumference of the room, playing the beam of her light on the arches and into the depths of the passages. “No markings, but there’s something familiar about this place.”

  “It’s a standard Templar design. Most of their chapels and churches were round, like the Church of Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.”

  “And Hancock’s chapel. But it’s not that.” Alex studied the layout again. “It’s laid out like a cross, no surprise there. One way goes up, one down, the others left and right…oh, duh.”

  She wheeled to face them, grinning. “Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch.”

  Dane and Bones exchanged a glance, and then Bones cleared his throat. “Ummm, I should point out that you…like…aren’t wearing spectacles.”

  “It’s mnemonic for remembering how to make Sign of the Cross.” She touched a finger to her forehead. “Spectacles…”

  Dane quickly forestalled her. “Okay. No need to continue with the demonstration. This room is our Templar Cross laid out in three dimensions.” He held up the copper medallion. “Right now, we’re standing in the hole in the middle, and we have the four cross arms leading away. But which way do we go?”

  “Up,” said Alex, confidently. “Start with ‘spectacles.’”

  Bones rolled his eyes. “I’m not looking forward to what comes next.”

  “We go up the stairs. Maybe there’s another seal we need to activate. Then we go down, and repeat the process, completing the cross in the correct order.”

  “It beats anything I’ve got,” said Dane.

  Bones however raised a hand. “I don’t like this. You were right to call it ‘multiple choice.’ This is a test, and I have a feeling that a wrong answer will mean something a lot worse than a bad grade.”

  “You think it’s a trick question?” Dane moved toward the ascending staircase and scanned it with his light. The beam showed the steps and a confined arched tunnel, both evidently carved of out of the solid bedrock of the mountain, but then he noticed a scattering of dark spots on the walls and ceiling further up the passage. A check of the other passages showed similar deformations.

  “Bones, I think this is where your knowledge of fictional swashbuckling archaeologists just might come in handy. Those holes and slits in the walls are murder holes, a common feature of medieval architecture. The gateway to a city would have little windows, just big enough to shoot an arrow through or pour boiling oil on an invader. If I had to guess, I’d say that if we step in the wrong place, something nasty will pop out.” He paused. “Any idea how we can get past them?”

  “Trial and error?” suggested Bones. “Tap on the steps, try to avoid getting skewered.”

  “Might work.” Dane rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Okay, let’s think like the guys who built this place. They wanted to keep it secret and safe, but they also knew that someday, the guy with the key would come. All the information that we’ve used to get here came from the key—the medallion. It showed us where to look and it opened the front door. There must be something about the key that will help us out here.”

  “Too bad we don’t have the original,” said Alex. “You got the best look at it. Was there anything else? Writing or other symbols?”

  Dane shook his head. “No. Just a triangle, a cross, and if you want to get technical about it, a circle in the center of the cross.”

  “Three sides to the triangle. Maybe every third step is safe?”

  “I like it. Three was a very important number to the Templars. There were three classes: Knights, sergeants and chaplains. Their coffers were secured with a three different locks, and the keys given to three different knights. They would fast three times a year, and were only permitted to eat meat three times a week.”

  “How do you know all this crap, Maddock?”

  “I’ve done a lot of reading about them over the years. And, of course, all the research we did before coming here. Anyway, the number three…”

  “There were three tests in Last Crusade!” Bones exclaimed.

  “Right. And before going into battle, a Templar would make the Sign of the Cross three times! That’s something every Templar would know.” Dane took a deep breath. “Well, I guess there’s only one way to know for sure.”

  He extended his left foot up to the third tread on the ascending stairwell and slowly, gingerly, transferred his weight to it. Nothing happened. He stepped up three more. Still nothing.

  “Look at him stretch,” Bones said. “Sucks to be short, doesn’t it?”

  Dane grimaced. At a shade under six feet tall, he was hardly short, but compared to Bones… He gave his head a shake and refocused on the task at hand.

  The murder holes were all around him, but whatever deadly potential they held remained unrealized. He went up to step number nine, then twelve, his pace quickening both with urgency to be done with the deathtrap and confidence that they had unlocked yet another Templar secret. Then, on what would have been the seventy-second step—a number that corresponded to the number of clauses in the original Templar code of behavior, and was the product of eight and nine, which were also important numbers to the Templars—he reached another landing.

  And another circular room with four passages.

  CHAPTER 21

  The choices in the second room were slightly different. Left and right were again options, but there was no option to go up again. They could go forward and down a new descending passage, or backtrack.

  “This place is a maze,” observed Bones when he and Alex completed their ascent.

  Dane nodded his
agreement. “Another layer of security. Make a wrong turn and you’ll either get completely lost or more probably hit a literal dead end. So which way now?”

  Alex reiterated her belief that the Sign of the Cross held the solution to the maze. “Forward and down I think. If it is a maze, then going back isn’t a correct solution.”

  “Rule of three still applies?”

  She shrugged.

  “Thanks for those words of inspiration.” He counted down three treads and took a step.

  This passage was exactly twice as long as the first and Dane could almost feel the weight of the mountain bearing down as he went deeper. Three steps. Three more steps.

  The descent was, as before, uneventful. At the bottom, he flashed his light up the long straight shaft, signaling that he was done, and then inspected the chamber in which he now found himself.

  Not counting the stairs he had just descended, there were only two ways out of this room: left or right.

  Just like the Sign of the Cross.

  “Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch,” he murmured, moving his hand through what he thought was the correct sequence. The mnemonic was a relic of a time when men wore pocket watches in their waistcoats and carried their wallets in the breast pocket of their jackets: watch on the right, wallet on the left.

  He gravitated toward the left passage, but something was nagging at the back of his mind.

  When Alex and Bones arrived, she confirmed that the next turn should be to the left, which prompted Dane to reveal his misgivings. “Are you sure? I keep thinking that going left first is wrong.”

  Professor would have been able to shed light on the subject, but Dane had picked up a few bits of trivia regarding the negative associations with left handedness.

  In the military, a left-handed salute was considered an insult. In the Bible, the right hand was always linked with divine favor, while the left sometimes indicated rejection by God. The Latin word for “left” was the root of the word “sinister.” In the Muslim world, the left hand was considered unclean. The term “left-hand path” was synonymous with black magic. So pervasive was the bias against lefties that in many places, children who were naturally left-handed were forcibly taught to use their right hand for most activities.

  However, Dane had also heard that you could find your way through a maze by always turning left. And there was no denying that south-paws were some of the best baseball pitchers on earth.

  “It’s left,” Alex persisted. “Trust me. I’m a good Catholic girl…well, a Catholic girl, anyway.”

  “I dated a Russian chick once,” interjected Bones. “We were watching this horror movie where somebody crossed himself, and she said that Catholics do it wrong. In the Orthodox Church, they go right-to-left.”

  “And you’re just remembering this now?”

  Bones spread his hands guiltily.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Alex irritably. “The Templars were part of the Roman church. So regardless of who’s right, the Templars would have crossed themselves Catholic-style.”

  Her insistence did not assuage his anxiety; rather, he was even more certain that he was forgetting something very important. Nevertheless, Alex was correct about the Templars and Catholicism. He moved to the left passage and shone his light down its length.

  The entire passage appeared to be completely smooth. There were no murder holes pock-marking the walls and ceiling and nothing at all to break up the plane of the floor. If there was a trigger or a trap here, Dane could not see it.

  “Just so you know,” he began, “I’m about to stake my life on you being right about going left, Catholic girl.”

  Suddenly, Alex didn’t look quite so confident about her decision, which didn’t make him feel any better, but there was only one way to know for sure. He ventured into the passage, taking one careful step after another, poised to duck or throw himself to the side or beat a hasty retreat at the first click, crunch, bump or thump.

  With no steps to count, he instead counted the number of paces, measuring the length of the passage by the length of his stride. When he’d gone about twenty meters, he saw a blank wall directly ahead and shadows to either side; a T-intersection.

  He stopped. Something about that choice didn’t feel right. Before, there had been a circular room, like a Templar chapel, but not this time. Was this a warning that he’d gone the wrong way, or simply an indication that the number of choices was shrinking?

  He started forward again, slowly, not counting his steps until he was almost at the junction. He saw that these new passages were considerably smaller than the ones they had traveled through to get here, barely knee-high from the floor.

  He stopped again, shining his light into the one on the right, and saw that this first impression was wrong; the passages weren’t smaller, but rather were just lower. If he crawled through the opening, he would drop down three or four feet to the floor where he would be able to stand erect.

  “This is wrong,” he muttered.

  He recalled Bones advice to trust his gut. SEALs were trained to always put the mission first, but they were also taught to listen to their instincts. It was an unwritten rule that any member of a team could call off a mission if they had a really bad feeling about it; they might have to answer some hard questions later, but in the moment, those feelings were to be heeded.

  “That’s it. Calling it.” He turned around and started back to where Bones and Alex were waiting.

  That was when the floor dropped out from beneath him.

  The unexpected movement caused him to fall flat—or rather almost flat. The entire length of the passage was now slanted down at about a thirty degree angle, away from the entrance and toward the T-intersection.

  Suddenly a tremendous boom seemed to resonate through the entire mountain. He caught a glimpse of motion and heard a grinding sound growing louder; something was moving down the slope toward him. He raised his flashlight and saw a block of stone, easily the size of a mini-van and almost completely filling the passage, sliding his way.

  He scrambled to his feet and instinctively drew back from the relentless rock. If he didn’t get out of its way, it would pulverize him against the end of the passage. But which passage should he take?

  In his peripheral vision he saw that both of the intersecting passages were now more or less level with where he was standing. He wouldn’t even need to crawl to get through the openings and escape being crushed, but he would have to make a decision.

  Quickly.

  Left or right? Either outcome was uncertain, but certainly better than staying where he was.

  Don’t think, just go.

  Trust your gut!

  He did.

  John Lee Ray, flanked by Scalpel and the rest of his inner circle, disembarked the funicular at Schwandegg Station and made their way down the stairs to the base of the elevated structure. Rooster’s last call had placed him at the northernmost corner of the building, where he claimed Maddock had found an entrance to a secret passage.

  Ray had initiated movement even before Rooster had finished his first report. He had immediately recalled his men to their hotel, and within ten minutes, they were racing down the motorway in two rented cars. In the time it took for them to make the short road trip to Mulenen and the lower terminus of the Niesenbahn, Maddock and his crew had moved halfway up the mountain and found the entrance to the Templar vault.

  Scalpel had been livid at the news of Maddock’s survival. “I should have put a bullet in his skull.”

  “I’d say it’s a good thing you didn’t. He’s shown us the way.”

  “But he’s going to beat us to the treasure.”

  Ray smiled patiently. “In this race, the prize doesn’t go to the man who crosses the finish line first, but to the man who’s still breathing at the end of the day.”

  “Maddock won’t be. I promise you that.”

  But as Scalpel grunted a little with each painful step down the stairs, Ray wondered if maybe he sh
ould have left the man behind. His thirst for vengeance had certainly imbued him with the will to overcome his disability, but was it enough? Would Scalpel’s handicap betray him at a critical moment, putting the entire endeavor in jeopardy?

  If he was a dog, thought Ray, I probably would have put him down by now.

  They found Rooster sitting casually with his back to what looked at first glance like a structural cornerstone. The mercenary got to his feet and eased open the false rock face like a doorman admitting them to a secure building.

  “How long have they been in there?”

  “About half an hour,” said Rooster. “I thought about going in after them, but they’re pussyfooting all the way. I couldn’t risk them doubling back and discovering me. Also, no cell reception down there.”

  Ray nodded. “Good work. This almost atones for your increasingly impertinent demeanor.”

  Rooster laughed, evidently misinterpreting the comment as a joke.

  “Are they armed?”

  “Not that I could tell.”

  “Good.” Ray took a pistol from the concealed holster under his left arm. “Then let’s keep it simple. Find them, kill them. We’ll worry about cleaning up the mess later.”

  They descended the stairs single file, all armed with pistols and flashlights, and carrying enough high explosives to blast through any obstacles that came along. Ray took the lead and Scalpel was right behind him, gritting his teeth with each step, but nevertheless keeping pace with his employer.

  Ray circled the entrance chamber, shining his light down each of the four passages. “Which way did Maddock go?”

  Rooster shook his head. “I couldn’t tell.”

  “Six of us and four ways to go. We’ll reconnoiter these tunnels for—say one hundred meters—and then report back here.” He randomly assigned a direction for each of the able-bodied men, leaving himself and Scalpel behind, ostensibly to coordinate.

  Things went bad very quickly.