The Pandora Room: A Novel

by Christopher Golden

  ELEVEN

  Kim pushed away from the balcony the moment the shooting started in the atrium, darting past others who were ducking for cover. Her heart raced, and she saw the fear around her as gunshots and shouting echoed off the walls, but she stayed in motion. Walker was down there, in the midst of it, and she wouldn’t run the other way. She nudged people aside as she hurried down stone steps while others were rushing up. One man collided with her and nearly picked her up off her feet with his desire to reverse her direction, warning her to run. Kim knocked his hands aside and slipped past him, then rushed out onto the floor of the atrium as the last reverberations died out.

  People had thrown themselves to the floor or dived for cover in doorways, but now they helped each other stand. Archaeologists and grad students and a handful of hired laborers glanced around in fear, comforted one another, and looked to their leadership for help.

  “It’s over,” Sophie Durand announced, turning in a full circle. “Whatever that was, it’s done.”

  Kim exhaled and began to scan the atrium for Walker, and in that same moment, the whole underground city shook with an explosion overhead, and people screamed and swore and began to chatter while dirt sifted down from the ceiling.

  It’s not over, Kim thought, staring up at the stone dozens of feet overhead.

  Like the buzz of a mosquito, barely heard, she sensed the staccato crack of gunfire from outside, but the sound seemed to come and go as if only the twist and gust of the night wind decided whether or not the noise would reach inside Derveyî.

  Observer, she thought. That’s the job. Just observe.

  Frightened people surrounded her. Her claustrophobia seemed distant and compartmentalized in that moment, but traumatic memories echoed like the gunshots that had rung through the atrium only moments ago. In those memories, in the midst of fear, she had fought to survive—and she’d do so again.

  She spotted Sophie and Beyza calling to those around them to calm down, to back away. Marissa and Cortez, Alton and Rachel, so many people who had been diligent about their work, even to the point of boredom, only yesterday.

  “Give Sergeant Dunlap room, please,” Sophie said.

  Dunlap marched away from the body he’d left on the stone floor of the atrium. The bearded man had a bloodied face and a gunshot wound to the shoulder, and he lay sprawled on his back. Kim watched his chest for a second, wondering if he was alive, but the man did not seem to be breathing.

  She hurried up to Dunlap. “Who are they?”

  The atrium shook with another thump from overhead. More dirt sifted down onto them. Dunlap glanced up, then turned to look up the slope toward the exit. He held his weapon loosely but ready, tensed as if anticipating an incursion at any moment.

  “Sergeant—” she began again.

  “These two were spies, trying to get in to see Sophie. Maybe kill her or take the jar or both,” he said, gesturing to the man he’d just killed. “Considering our friends topside are under attack, I’m assuming a terrorist cell. Jihadists. We were just telling Walker about a group that calls itself New Caliphate, and my money’s on them. No way would any local government sanction something like this.”

  Staff members listened in, breathless and frozen. Someone had crouched by the dead man. Kim called to the woman to step back from the body, and now she turned toward the other part of this gruesome tableau, the corpse of an older man that lay splayed on the floor. Ten feet from that second corpse, Walker loomed in partial shadow, strangely isolated from the rest of them as if he were a ghost none could see but whose presence they all felt and avoided. The gun in his hand had something to do with it, she was sure, although he held it down at his side.

  Walker went to kneel by the old man and check his pulse. “Dunlap,” he called. “Check the backpack on the other guy. He went for it. Maybe more weapons?”

  Dunlap did as Walker had asked, and Kim saw his face go pale as he glanced around at them. “Explosives.”

  “Shit,” Kim muttered. “They were going to blow us up?”

  “Not us,” Walker said. “The jar.”

  Dunlap shook his head. “No, sir. If that was all they wanted, they didn’t need to come in after it. They could have found another way. Maybe the explosives were a backup plan, in case they were able to sneak in but couldn’t get the jar out. But you’ll never convince me these guys didn’t want to leave here with the jar if they could manage it. The prospect of something that might be deadly and contagious would be too tempting.”

  “Either way, they weren’t here for a friendly visit,” Sophie said.

  Dunlap put the rucksack full of explosives over one shoulder. “I’ll take charge of this for now and bring it topside later.”

  He shot Walker an appraising glance, then strode over and relieved the other man of his gun.

  “Hang on, Sergeant,” Kim said.

  “Stay back, Kim,” Sophie warned.

  Kim ignored her. Stay back from what? she wondered. Men with guns? The blood pooling beneath the dead jihadis? She had faced so much worse.

  The lighting inside the atrium flickered, and the yellow hue deepened as if the industrial illumination had begun to blend and blur with the shadows. A sense of unreality came over Kim, and the desire to flee flared at the base of her brain. She pushed the flickers of memory away.

  “Sergeant,” she said, approaching Dunlap. “Did that gun come off the terrorist or one of the coalition soldiers?”

  Dunlap glanced at her. “It belonged to a Kurdish sentry.”

  “When the fighting is over, we’ll ask the Kurds if they object to him keeping it. For now, return it to Dr. Walker, please.”

  “Ms. Kim,” Dunlap said, “I’m not sure what you think you’re doing, but—”

  “If I’m not mistaken,” she interrupted, “Walker shot that man. He’s proven his marksmanship. We don’t know what happens next, but I’m more comfortable with that gun in his hands than as anyone’s backup weapon. If the fighting upstairs spills down here, we will be in serious trouble.”

  “Kim,” Walker began.

  She turned to him. “The sentries outside the entrance. They’ll be fighting now, right? Protecting the camp?”

  “The sentries who were on duty are dead,” Dunlap replied.

  Kim nodded. This was what she had feared. She turned to Sophie. “Dr. Durand, please post two of your people—volunteers, obviously—at the entrance. We need someone up there to monitor the situation and come running if it looks like our defenders are losing. We’re blind down here.”

  Two women had appeared with blankets and were covering the corpses. Sophie had been talking quietly with them but turned now to stare at Kim.

  “Down here, I make the decisions.”

  Kim glanced at her in surprise. “We’re under attack,” she said sharply. “Do you really want to argue about who’s in charge?”

  Sophie glanced around at her people, but everyone had kept a respectful distance.

  “Everyone’s terrified,” she said quietly, shifting her gaze from Walker to Dunlap to Kim. “They need to feel safe. They have to know I’m looking out for them.”

  Barely aware she was doing it, Kim moved nearer to the other woman. Walker and Dunlap closed in as well, tightening the circle, keeping the conversation private.

  “You asked me to secure help from the U.N.,” Kim said. “The techs from the USAMRIID are already down in the Pandora Room. The U.N. is playing the role you want us to play. Peacemaker. The Grown-Up in the Room. But U.N. peacekeepers won’t be here until at least sunrise, and that’s many hours from now.”

  The atrium trembled again, but whatever had exploded this time felt farther away. It gave Kim some hope.

  “Sophie,” Walker said, “it’s still your project and your team. But Kim is right, and she’s good in a crisis.”

  The argument could have gone further. Kim saw it glinting in Sophie’s eyes. But then the other woman gave a quick nod and turned to call for volunteers. At first there was
an air of reluctance, but as soon as one woman stepped forward, a pair of men raised their hands high, perhaps abashed that they had hesitated. Sophie had gone pale and her forehead had a sheen of sweat, and it occurred to Kim that she looked more than tired and scared; she looked ill.

  She moved off to the side of the atrium to talk quietly with her three volunteer lookouts.

  “Just one thing,” Walker said, coming up beside Kim. “We have to get the dead guys out of here.”

  Kim nodded, but the way her heart thundered, her temples pulsing, she could not focus. The artillery shelling had ceased for the moment, but the draft, or the ventilation system, still brought the muffled staccato of gunfire. The battle went on up there, and she thought it would continue for a while.

  Members of the dig team milled about in frightened clusters, talking nervously among themselves, waiting for someone to tell them who their attackers were and what to do next. There were forty or so people in the atrium, most of whom seemed on the verge of bolting. Kim did not blame them. They would all be thinking now about where they might hide if the jihadis made it into Derveyî. All of them would know a niche or two where they might go undiscovered for a time in the sprawling warren, but the only exit from this place led right into the midst of the gunfire, and so for the moment they had no way out.

  Kim saw Lamar emerge from a tunnel at the back of the atrium, a worried look in his eyes. He spotted them all and started moving, though several people delayed him, engaging him in anxious conversation.

  Walker caught her attention. He guided her a few steps away into the shadows between two lighting rigs.

  “Okay, boss,” he said quietly. “We need a plan. If they get down here, what do we do about the jar?”

  Kim shuddered. She studied his eyes, wishing she could read his mind. What were his plans for the jar? If they ever got out of here, she supposed she would find out.

  “For now, we should probably hide it. We’ll talk to Sophie, figure out the best place.”

  “Nobody can know but the three of us,” Walker said. “The fewer people who can answer their questions under duress, the better chance of the jar staying safe until help arrives.”

  Kim felt nausea roiling in her gut. “Do you think it will come to that? How many soldiers do you think they have? Enough to take the camp? Enough to kill everyone topside?”

  Walker brushed a hand against her arm, a small gesture of comfort. “I wish I knew.”

  He slid his newly acquired gun into the rear waistband of his pants and untucked his shirt, letting it hang down to hide the gun. People wouldn’t forget he had it, but Kim knew this strategy. Most would stop being nervous about the weapon if they couldn’t see it.

  Kim turned to scan the atrium again. Some of the staff had dispersed, off to gather weapons or lie low. Beyza stood with a handful of others, men and women who had never imagined themselves in the path of jihadi killers, never imagined waiting in breathless terror in a cave underground, wondering if they would ever get home again. Kim had never imagined it, either, even after all she had been through.

  She realized she had made an error in trying to wrest control from Sophie. Her people needed her, needed a chain of command. They trusted Sophie, and they didn’t know Kim at all.

  Sophie was still talking to the volunteer lookouts, and Walker and Dunlap seemed to be discussing what to do with the dead men, so Kim started toward Beyza and Lamar and the cluster around them. Lamar took a step away from that group, and for the first time, she noticed the fat camera bag slung across his chest. With the techs working downstairs, he’d apparently been unwilling to leave his camera equipment with them, perhaps worried they would damage it.

  As Kim approached the group, Lamar laughed at something Beyza had said and then turned to walk up toward the exit. He glanced at Kim as he passed, and from his sour expression, it seemed he disliked her taking charge as much as Sophie did. Also like Sophie, Lamar had a sheen that made him look ill, and Kim realized the toll this was taking on the entire team.

  “Sophie,” Walker said, interrupting her conversation with Beyza. “Can we have a moment?”

  Kim found herself distracted by the sound of someone stumbling into the atrium, far at the back, where the corridor led to the stairs that descended to the worship chamber and down into the Pandora Room.

  It was Dr. Tang. She looked frantic and bedraggled. Even at thirty yards, Kim could see there was blood on her face and her filtration mask. She swore in Korean as she started walking toward Dr. Tang, mind awhirl with confusion. What the hell had happened to her? The jihadis hadn’t gotten that deep into the atrium. There had been two men—she had seen them from the balcony—and Walker and Dunlap had brought them down.

  “Dr. Tang?” she called. “Erika?”

  Walker called after Kim, but she quickened her pace. Dr. Tang stumbled a bit. A couple of graduate students caught her and kept her from falling, and then she lifted her bloody face and looked at Kim.

  No. Not at me, Kim thought. Past me.

  She turned, trying to see where Dr. Tang was looking, just as the woman shouted a name. “Lamar!”

  Kim stared at Lamar’s back. He’d nearly reached the opening to the corridor that would take him outside, but with the acoustics in the atrium and the hushed, somber silence in the aftermath of the attack, there was no way Lamar hadn’t heard her call out to him, and yet he didn’t turn. He kept going, with the camera bag clutched tightly against his hip.

  It made no sense.

  Then it dawned on her what was happening, and it made absolute, total, horrifying sense indeed.

  * * *

  Walker saw it instantly. The epiphany on Kim’s face, the blood on Dr. Tang’s filtration mask, and the way Lamar stiffened without turning and clutched the camera bag too close. The distant sound of gunfire still filtered down from the surface. Nobody in their right mind would go up there right now unless they intended to join the fight, and Walker knew Lamar had no intention of entering combat.

  The gun stayed tucked at the small of his back, but he started toward the exit.

  “What are you doing?” Sophie asked, her voice tight.

  “Lamar?” Walker called, picking up his pace.

  “What’s going on?” Sophie asked, beginning to follow.

  Lamar was only two steps from the exit. He kept going, despite the danger aboveground.

  Walker drew his gun. “Lamar, stop where you are! Do not make me shoot you!”

  Sophie shouted at him, but her voice cut off midsentence when Lamar bolted from the atrium. Running for the exit.

  Walker grimaced as he pursued, cursing Lamar under his breath. His old injuries shot fresh pain up his spine and along his left leg, but he gritted his teeth and kept running. Sophie shouted right behind him, and Walker didn’t want her to catch up, didn’t want to negotiate the gulf between her feelings of friendship and trust for Lamar and the reality unfolding in that moment.

  As he reached the exit, her fingers brushed his jacket, nearly snagged him as she tried to get his attention.

  “Damn it, Walker, stop!”

  He threw himself against the wall, just inside the short corridor, gun at the ready. Walker doubted Lamar had paused to ambush him, but he wouldn’t have guessed the man would betray his team, so he would not underestimate him now.

  The corridor was short and mostly straight and empty.

  “You don’t really think Lamar—” she began.

  Walker shot her a dark look. “I do, and so do you. Keep your people back. Keep them safe.”

  Stricken, she shook her head in frustration, but when Walker rushed along the corridor, Sophie didn’t follow. It relieved him of having to worry about her safety, which quickened his pace. If Lamar had a gun, if Walker had to take a bullet, it wouldn’t matter as long as he didn’t get out of Derveyî with that damned camera bag.

  This guy. I never would’ve called it.

  When he reached the bottom of the curving stairs, he could hear huffing i
n the stairwell overhead, punctuated by the thump of boots. Lamar might have been sauntering before, taking his time, trying to make his escape seem ordinary, but now he was running for his life. A traitor to his country, to his employer, and to the world.

  Walker thundered up the stairs. He didn’t bother trying to stay quiet. Focused as he was on ignoring his pain and how badly he wanted his pills in that moment, silence was the furthest thing on his mind.

  The ground shook again. The sounds of combat grew louder. He heard soldiers shouting to one another, but there would be no sentries at the entrance now. Nobody would notice Lamar making a run for it. Even if he got to a vehicle, he was more likely to be killed by the jihadis or in a cross fire than by anyone trying to stop him.

  A terrible thought occurred to Walker. This timing could not be coincidental. The terrorists trying to infiltrate Derveyî, the attack on the camp, and Lamar betraying his team. Which meant the New Caliphate attacking the camp might have been cover for Lamar, and if he could get out of the camp, they might not shoot him at all. They might welcome him with open arms.

  Above, a turn or two around the curving stairwell, he heard Lamar swear. The gun felt light in his hand, almost weightless, as if it wanted to be used, but Walker wanted answers from Lamar, and answers required that the son of a bitch keep his blood on the inside.

  Two more steps and he saw Lamar’s shadow bouncing off the wall in that garish industrial lighting. An explosion outside made him flinch, raining dust and debris onto him, but he kept moving.

  “I see you, motherfucker, and I will put a bullet in your back!” Walker shouted over the sounds of war from outside. “Stop now and you can tell me the whole story.”

  “I can’t!” Lamar replied, the words an anguished wail.

  Walker heard fear in the man’s voice, human terror and regret, and a part of him just wanted to understand why Lamar had done this. Money or threats or promises—what had been the trigger for his betrayal? But then the staircase ended, and he found himself in the long, ramping entry tunnel that led to the exit. The staccato bursts of gunfire and the scream of rocket launchers seemed impossibly loud there in the gullet of the cave.