“Like the pharaohs.”
“Wait a minute,” Orr said. “When Gia and I found the chamber twenty years ago, there wasn’t any door.”
“This pool is probably fed by a spring so that it can be refilled. If there was a drought the year you visited, the level in the pool could have lowered enough to drop the barrier.”
Orr got a faraway look in his eye. “Now I remember. We came down an incline and then crossed a bridge over water. I’d forgotten that detail. This has to be it.”
“Can we swim under it?” Gaul asked.
“I doubt it,” Tyler said. “That would make the floating wall superfluous.”
“Then how do we open it?”
“There must be a lever of some kind to release the water,” Tyler said. “When it flows out, the barrier will lower and let us through.”
Tyler walked around the room and saw no sign of any kind of button, switch, or handle.
Then he realized where it must be.
“It’s in the water. Something like the stopper in a bathtub. Take it out, and the water will drain. Take the belt off me and I’ll open it.” If he dove in with the belt on, the electronics might short-circuit, setting off the bomb.
“No,” Orr said. “I don’t trust you. What if there’s an escape route?”
“It’s the only way to get through,” Tyler said, looking at Orr and Gaul, “so I guess one of you has to do it, then.”
“No,” Orr said again. “Gaul, undo Stacy’s belt and give her a flashlight.”
Stacy fixed him with a hateful stare when she realized that she was the one who would dive into the liquid gloom.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Gaul unlocked the explosive belt from Stacy’s waist and gave her one of the small metal flashlights. She turned to face Tyler. Several times during the walk through the tunnels, she had thought to protest Orr’s accusation of treachery, but she had no explanation for how he had known their movements, and she worried that her denials would ring hollow. But before she dove into the pool, she had to say something.
“Tyler,” she said, “I want you to know that I’ve never deceived you. Carol’s safety is my only priority.”
Tyler didn’t say anything, but his lip curled upward ever so slightly and he winked at her.
Stacy felt a rush of relief. Somehow he knew she hadn’t betrayed him. Suddenly she had a glimmer of hope that they’d get out of this mess. She had an almost overwhelming urge to embrace Tyler, but if she did, she knew that she’d lose control and cry like a girl.
Orr missed the wink. “Go,” he commanded. “That flashlight isn’t waterproof, so it may not last long. We’ll shine our lights into the pool from up here.”
“When you get down there,” Tyler said, “look around but don’t touch anything. Come back up and tell me what you see.”
“What am I looking for?” she asked.
“Some kind of plug or lever.”
She sat and put down the flashlight to take off her shoes and socks. She swung her legs around and dipped her toes in the water. A chill shot up her spine, and she shivered.
“Quit stalling,” Orr said, and shoved her in.
Stacy tumbled forward, and the sudden dunking nearly made her inhale in shock. She kicked to the surface and fought the impulse to climb back out of the frigid pool.
“Bastard!”
“They say it’s better to go in all at once,” Orr said.
“Just give me the damn flashlight so I can get this over with.”
Gaul handed it to her. He, Tyler, and Orr leaned over the pool and held the lanterns above it. The illumination penetrated to the bottom, but she couldn’t tell how far down that was. It was well over five feet, because her feet couldn’t touch.
Stacy wasn’t an Olympic swimmer, but she had spent many days swimming in the lake near her parents’ farm. She wasn’t worried about a little pool.
She took a deep breath, dove under, and kicked down. She played the flashlight around the walls, but the surface looked identical to the walls of the room above.
When she reached ten feet down, she saw the bottom of the barrier suspended above the floor of the pool. Just as Tyler said, the ends were inserted into grooves at each end to guide it up and down. Six feet below the bottom of the barrier were stops where the barrier would come to a rest.
Nothing looked like a lever or a plug, so she turned around. There was a dark spot on the wall directly under where Tyler had been. She swam over to it.
It was a square cavity six feet on each side and three feet deep. She shined the flashlight inside and got a glimpse of a stone lever jutting from the wall. Next to the lever was a flat round disk the diameter of a beach ball.
A small black notch was cut into the rock above the top disk. Stacy put her hand over it and felt her palm sucked onto it. Water was flowing through. This was the control valve.
She was out of breath, so she pulled her hand away and made for the surface.
“Did you find it?” Orr said.
Stacy sputtered water. “I think so.”
“What does it look like?” Tyler said.
She explained the mechanism to him.
“It seems simple enough,” he said. “You’ll need to pull the lever. That should swing the disk aside to allow the water to flow through the drain.”
“Got it.”
“Just be careful. The suction could be strong. You don’t want to get stuck.”
“I can handle it.”
She dove back down. When she reached the cavity, she shined the light on the lever again to get her bearings, but it flickered out five seconds later, succumbing to the water leaking in. Still, it was enough time for her to put her hand on the top handle and brace herself with her back against the side wall of the cavity.
She pushed, and the lever moved an inch. The rush of water increased. She pushed again, and it moved a little farther. Now the outflow was a torrent. She heaved, swinging the disk to the side. Almost out of breath, she kicked against the bottom of the pool, but her foot was swept into the hole.
Her foot plunged in, and the water rushing past threatened to pin her there indefinitely. Terrified at the thought of drowning that way, she gathered her strength, turned over, and pushed her free foot against the wall with every bit of power she had. She extracted her trapped foot and swam out of the way of the flow.
By this time her lungs were screaming for air. In a panic, she flailed her arms to reach the surface. As she broke through, she cried out for help.
A pair of powerful hands grabbed her shoulders and lifted her out of the pool. Tyler laid her down gently, but she didn’t let go. He responded by pulling her toward him in a tight embrace. The warmth of his body felt wonderful, and she buried her face in his chest so they wouldn’t see her sobbing.
“You’re all right now,” Tyler said. “You did it. The water’s draining.” Then he whispered into her ear. “It’s time. Be ready.”
Gaul dropped the belt on top of her and backed away to join Orr at the opposite end of the room as they watched the barrier slowly drop.
“Put it on her,” Gaul said, with the Taser leveled at them. “I want to hear it click shut.” Tyler complied and looped it around her waist, snapping it closed.
A wave of heat washed over them, as if someone had opened the door on a broiling oven.
They all moved to the other side of the room as the cool air from the tunnels rushed in to replace the stifling damp air coming from beyond the descending barrier.
In five minutes the wall had sunk all the way to the bottom, and the air temperature had dropped enough for them to venture in.
They walked across the threshold, through a small antechamber, and emerged at a balcony overlooking a cavern far bigger than any they’d come through in their journey.
Stacy gasped. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight in front of her. This had to be the tomb of Midas, because from floor to ceiling every surface was made of gold.
FIFTY-NINE
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The lustrous golden finish reflected the lanterns so that the luminous power was amplified far beyond their meager outputs. The room stretched out before Tyler as if he were standing on the doorstep of El Dorado. The floors, walls, and ceiling were all made of gold, which ended in tendrils reaching for the chamber’s entryway like a creeping mold.
The entry platform to the one-hundred-foot-long by fifty-foot-wide room was a balcony with a solid railing along its length. The chamber seemed to have been excavated from a contiguous mass of volcanic tuff, and the balcony overlooked a massive ten-foot-deep pit that took up more than half the room’s length. Stairs to Tyler’s left led down to the pit, and in the middle of the pit was the statue of a girl lying on a cubical pedestal of gold, just as Orr had described, her left hand missing. The golden pedestal, six feet on each side, had lines of Greek lettering chiseled into it.
A spout of water poured from an opening in the wall into a bubbling pool that ran along the far end of the pit behind the pedestal. The water must have been supplied by a hot spring deep under the crust, superheated by the immense magma chamber that fed Mount Vesuvius. Clouds of steam rose from the pool. The room would have been unbearably hot with the barrier closed.
Another set of stairs led to a ten-foot-high terrace at the opposite end of the chamber, but those stairs were on the right side of the chamber, just past where the pool of water ended. The terrace didn’t have a golden railing as the entrance balcony did, so Tyler could clearly see a gold sarcophagus placed on it in a regal center position atop a platform overlooking the rest of the chamber.
There were no other golden objects in the chamber, so Midas must have been confident that the golden room itself was impressive enough to secure him a heavenly afterlife with the gods.
Tyler observed all of this in just a few seconds. He’d been preparing for the last hour, thinking about how to disable Orr and Gaul without getting tasered or blown up. Now that they had reached their objective, he and Stacy had exhausted their usefulness to Orr. If Tyler didn’t act soon, the two of them would be killed for sure. It was incredibly risky, but he could either try something now and go down fighting or die with a push of Orr’s detonator button.
Gaul and Orr had been so careful to keep an eye on both him and Stacy during the entire journey that he’d had no clear opportunity to strike. Either he would have been killed in the attempt or he would have been defeated and tipped his hand. Tyler knew that he would have only one chance, and he counted on this being the time when Orr and Gaul would be the most distracted, the moment they laid eyes on all that gold.
When they had walked through the entrance, Tyler had angled to position himself so that the two men were on either side of him, with Stacy behind them. As they stood at the balcony of the golden cavern, Orr and Gaul were clearly mesmerized by the bounty the chamber offered.
Tyler took his chance.
Without warning, he pushed Stacy backward out of his way. He used the geolabe to smack the Taser out of Gaul’s hand, and it went flying into the pit below, where it skidded into the pool. With a kick, he sent Gaul crashing down the stairs.
Tyler whirled around, trying to smash Orr’s head with the device, but it only hit him in the back. Orr bent over, his right hand caught between his body and the stone railing. Tyler grabbed his left wrist and tried to wrench the detonators off by undoing the two Velcro clasps.
He got one open, but it slipped out of his hand and fell over the side of the railing. It was the red one that matched the red belt he wore. The detonator for Stacy’s blue belt remained securely fastened. Orr yanked his wrist away and swung the bag on his shoulder around. It slammed into Tyler, knocking him backward.
Before he could catch himself, Tyler tipped over the railing and tumbled through the air.
*
When Tyler had disabled Gaul with lightning speed and launched himself at Orr, Stacy had understood what he was going for. He needed to get those detonators. One of them had gone flying, but the one linked to her belt was still on Orr’s wrist.
It had looked as if Tyler was going to win in one shot, but Orr had been too quick. She ran toward him to try and stop him, but she got there too late, and Tyler flipped over the railing and out of sight.
Orr reached for the detonator button, so Stacy did the only sensible thing. She jumped on his back and latched on to him, wrapping her legs around his midsection, the explosive charge jammed into the small of his back.
“You touch that button and we both die,” she said into Orr’s ear.
He tried to pummel her with his elbows, but the angle didn’t allow him much leverage. Then he landed one that sent a jolt of agony through her torso so painful that she almost released him, which would have meant instant death.
With one arm laced around his neck, she reached with her other hand and raked his face with her fingernails. Orr screamed as she gouged his right eyeball.
“You bitch!”
Orr propelled himself backward until her back connected with the wall, driving the breath from her. She struggled for air but didn’t ease up. She grabbed her own wrist and pulled as hard as she could, tightening the hold on Orr’s neck.
The strangled wheeze escaping from his mouth told her that it was working. It was only a matter of who would give out first.
Tyler landed with a thud on the hard pit floor, and he felt something pop near his ribs. Pain shot through his chest, but at least his arm had kept his head from slamming into the stone floor. He rolled over and spied the detonator button lying next to the golden pedestal.
Gaul, who was shaking off the fall down the stairs and holding his head, saw the button at the same time and realized what it was. He lunged toward it.
Tyler tackled him, and Gaul pitched onto his face. He continued scrambling for the detonator, but Tyler pulled the cuffs of his jeans, dragging him backward.
Tyler leaped on top of him and punched Gaul in the kidney. Gaul coughed in pain, and Tyler took advantage of the pause to jab his hand into Gaul’s pocket. Gaul recovered, rolled over, and slammed his foot into Tyler’s side.
If the kick had hit his cracked rib, Tyler would have doubled over in too much pain to move. But the kick was to his other side, and though it sent him reeling, he kept hold of the key he’d snatched from Gaul’s pocket.
Released from Tyler’s grip, Gaul scrabbled toward the detonator. Tyler knew that he had only seconds before Gaul had the detonator in his hands.
Tyler frantically stabbed the key into the lock mechanism on his belt and twisted it.
Gaul seized the detonator.
Tyler ripped open the belt and threw it.
Gaul thumbed the cap open. He sat up and had already jabbed the button down when he realized that Tyler had hurled the belt at him.
For just a fraction of a second, Tyler saw Gaul’s reaction morph from triumph to horror before the belt exploded in his face.
Gaul’s head was torn apart by the blast. Blood and gore splattered the immaculate golden floor behind him. It took his body a second to realize that it was no longer alive. Gaul toppled over, twitched a couple of times, and then lay unmoving.
Tyler had saved himself, but Stacy was still in danger.
With the adrenaline masking his pain, Tyler jumped to his feet and ran up the stairs. He got to the top in time to see Stacy clinging to Orr’s back as he slumped to the floor underneath her. Her arms were choking the life from him.
He ran over and forced her arms open. She resisted letting go.
“Stacy!” Tyler yelled. “We need him alive!”
She looked up at him with a wild flash of her eyes, ready to fight. When she saw who it was, she sagged. Tyler’s chest protested, but he caught her.
He set her down and turned Orr over. He had four diagonal scratches across his face, and his right eye was a ruined mess. Tyler removed the detonator from his wrist and checked his pulse.
“Is he dead?” Stacy asked. “Did I … kill him?” Her voice quavered with hope that she�
��d succeeded and fear of the same.
“No,” Tyler said. “He’s out cold, but he’s breathing.”
He unlocked Stacy’s belt. The adrenaline was wearing off, and Tyler winced as he threw it aside.
“Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine. Just a bruise.”
“Gaul?”
She had to have heard the explosion, but she obviously hadn’t seen it.
“Dead,” Tyler said.
Stacy started to tremble as she recovered from her battle with Orr. Tyler held her hand, and they both caught their breath.
After a minute, Stacy said, “What do we do now?”
Tyler glanced at the bubbling cauldron of boiling water below. “As soon as he’s awake, Orr either tells us where my father and your sister are or he’s going for a swim.”
SIXTY
Tyler dragged Orr’s unconscious form down the stairs, one slow, painful step at a time. His chest injury barked at him, but he ignored the ache as best he could. Every fiber of his being wanted to stomp the life out of Orr for what the man had done to his father, but he had to keep Orr alive if he wanted to find Sherman, Carol, and the nuclear material.
“Get his bag,” Tyler said to Stacy. “We may not have much time.”
Orr’s feet slapped against the steps until Tyler laid him out at the bottom. Stacy dropped his bag next to Gaul’s. She turned and saw the motionless body.
“Oh, my God!” she cried when she saw the remains of Gaul’s shattered skull.
“Just try to ignore it.” Tyler had seen much worse in the Army. That didn’t make the sight any more pleasant, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. If Cavano had survived the explosion, she might arrive at the Midas chamber any minute, or Tyler and Stacy might run into her and her men on their way out. Neither option would end well if they didn’t have anything to negotiate with. They’d be just as dead as if Orr had done it himself.
The Midas Code Page 28