The Vault of Hercules (Order of the Black Sun Book 16)

by P. W. Child

  Nina and Sam had gathered all the girls and managed to revive most of them. The youngest, a seven-year-old, could not wake. Sam swooped her up in his arms. Nina grabbed Sam's camera and her own gear, looking back once more to pay her respects to Purdue, lamenting the fact that his body would forever lie under the magnificent mountains of Greece. “Come, we have to go,” Sam said.

  “The Cosa Nostra is outside, Sam. I don’t think he was bluffing,” she urged.

  Before they could discuss the matter they heard Guido let out an unearthly scream. On turning, Sam and Nina saw that John Armstrong had lifted one of the sacrificial slabs and dropped it on Guido's legs to nail him down. The water was rising rapidly, and the duct with Ambrosia had been immersed in the lake. The glory of the relic was finally impotent and worthless. Nina sobbed for the fate of her acquaintance as she watched John Arthur Armstrong stake his place by the pillars, like a Biblical Samson. He looked up at her and winked, “Give my best to the lads at Masterton's, alright?”

  “I shall,” she choked.

  With that, John started pushing at the ancient columns that held up the Vault of Hercules. Guido went mad with terror as the roof began to crack and stalactites plunged into the water as they broke off from above. Guido Bruno tried to reason for his life, but he was imploring deaf ears and a solid will. As he screamed the ascending tide marred his pleas, until he had exhausted his lungs, unable to fend off the hungry waters. He watched his former henchman lean into the pillars with red-faced effort, his lean muscles shivering at the exertion as one of the supportive columns exploded into flying shards of rock, marble, and calcite.

  “We have to go, Nina!” Sam shouted while he shoved the children gently in the opposite direction.

  The cavern started to crack in a din of ungodly thunder so loud it would have been the pride of Zeus himself. When the second pillar snapped in half, the roof of the cave collapsed, bringing the entire layer of rock above it down on Guido's dire screams. Strong as the demigod Hercules himself, the venerable John Arthur Armstrong could not withstand the weight of a thousand boulders, and with eyes closed and a smile on his face he received his redemption. His labors were concluded as the mountain crushed his body in the divine chamber of a god.

  As the entire cave system collapsed under the unnamed mountain, Nina and Sam were trying to console the terrified children they were trying to evacuate from the crumbling tunnel. It was pitch dark. They’d lost their flashlights inside the cavern when the roof caved.

  “Sam! Look!” Nina exclaimed.

  Ahead of them the faint flashing of multi-colored lights danced in the darkness, marking their way to salvation. Roaring all around them, the tremors of the geographical collapse deafened them, but the lights soon led them to the entrance of the natural structure that resembled the Temple of Hercules.

  “Sam, the mob is going to drop us like flies,” Nina warned as she clutched two little ones under her left arm, holding Amber Smith's hand to her right. Sam seemed very sure of himself as he stopped to let all the girls pass him. When Nina got to him, just short of the entrance, he kissed her quickly and peered into her eyes with his own. “Remember, Purdue is dead. Left at the bottom of the lake. Right?”

  “Aye,” she frowned, “and you put him there...”

  “Nina,” he insisted. “Just...just go with it.”

  The tunnel crumbled behind them and the journalist and the historian lunged forward to avert being crushed by the rocks. Outside, Nina's sensitive eyes could barely distinguish the figures all about them, but soon she heard Patrick Smith's voice, crying his daughter's name as they were reunited. Holding her hand over her narrowed eyes, she asked Paddy, “Is everyone alright?”

  “Aye, Nina,” Paddy said. “Well done. I owe you a great debt of gratitude; you and Sam.”

  “The true hero is buried in that mountain,” Nina said. “Hercules put to flesh, he was.”

  “We just apprehended thirteen Mafia members in wait out here, so there’s a bonus. All these bastards who’ve been trafficking people are going to rot in the cages they belong in,” Paddy reported. “Oh, Sam, where is Dave Purdue? That was part of our deal.”

  Sam looked at Nina. Her eyes were still red mourning Purdue and the way she looked at him was one of disappointment and scorn. “I shot him. He is dead. You will see that on the footage. Cleaned the slate.”

  “You killed him?” Paddy asked. “Christ, Sam. You could have just delivered him to us.”

  “I know. But things got heated in there and...things happened. I will be available for questioning, if you want to arrest me for his murder,” Sam offered.

  Nina could not believe it. “You really are Prometheus. Giving up your freedom to atone.”

  “It’s a pity you decided to go that far, Sam,” Paddy said, shaking his head. “But the live stream’s been sent to my office and recorded on our servers. I’ll make sure that justice is done. Go get some rest.”

  Chapter 34

  Three days later a still devastated Nina arrived at her house in Oban. She’d received the details of Prof. Medley's funeral the day before. It was drizzling lightly over Oban, draping the small town in a gray blanket of cold, wet fog. She wondered what would become of Sam. And she still could not believe that Purdue was dead. It was so surreal to imagine her life without his flamboyant personality and his passion.

  Even more shocking was that Sam had become so unhinged. She still loved him, somewhere deep inside, but could not bear to see him like that anymore.

  With a weekend's worth of sherry and popcorn, Nina decided to just do nothing for a while. Her hoodie was swept back by the strong wind, exposing her hair to the frigid air of Scotland. “God, I love the cold,” she muttered, as she closed the car's passenger door, lugging her groceries up the walkway. Fumbling for her house keys she caught sight of something eerie that briefly appeared in her peripheral vision, an orange blur that shot in under her porch.

  Nina put her stuff down and knelt to duck her head under the porch. “Bruich?”

  The cat sat there, grooming himself in his usual, indifferent way. Nina smiled. She came back up and turned to unlock her door.

  “Oh my God!” she shouted in elation. “Purdue!”

  She ran into his embrace. “Easy, my tits are killing me,” he joked. Next to him stood Sam, having a good chuckle as his cat leapt into his arms. Nina held Purdue tightly, looking at Sam over his shoulder. The dark handsomeness of the journalist was a far cry from the brute she’d seen fighting Valdi, but he proved that he could go the distance.

  “What?” he shrugged. “You didn’t really think I would shoot the old cock, did you?”

  “After this week, there is very little I wouldn’t believe,” she sighed happily, still thinking about John Arthur Armstrong and his nameless grave.

  Nina was relieved to hear that Paddy had only presented the parts of the footage that implicated Guido Bruno, Giuseppe Valdi, and Igor Heller as the architects of the recent human trafficking crimes. Nothing else came to light, not even the fact that Sam had arranged with Purdue to stage his death so that he could escape apprehension.

  Purdue's butler, Charles, had contacted friends of his brother's from different covert government departments and arranged for Adjo and Donkor Kira to be liberated from Guido Bruno's holding cells in Fagal, Djibouti. Still, he too, had to be kept in the dark about Purdue's status.

  Special Agent Patrick Smith did not know that Purdue was alive and that was good enough for now, because above all, Nina and Purdue had irrefutable proof that Sam was a loyal friend who did the right thing, even in the throes of hell, even under deadly threat in the Vault of Hercules.

  END

 

 

 
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