From behind came the scuff of a leather boot on stone. Wheeling on instinct, she rolled right, knocking Skarda down with a hard shove. An automatic rifle chattered. Slugs tore up the side of the column where April"s head had been, sending chunks of marble flying. Slivers of rock sliced through her face and shoulders. Blood spurted. Then, with a loud crack, a sharp-edged block of granite broke off and struck her on the side of her head.
She fell, hitting the paving stones with a solid, final sound.
Rolling to his knees, Skarda got to his feet and scrambled toward her, his heart hammering in his throat.
Jaz took quick steps forward. "Hold it right there, handsome."
He whipped his head around, seeing her standing there grinning, pinning him in place with her rifle.
His legs felt like jelly. Blood pounded in his head. Turning back, he stared at the red mess that was April"s face.
Then he slowly brought his gaze up to meet the woman"s cat-like green eyes. The swollen vein on her temple throbbed like something alive trapped under her skin.
"You better hope she"s not dead," he said, struggling to keep the emotion out of his voice. But the intensity of his gaze made her take a step back.
Then she threw her head back and brayed out a laugh. "And what are you going to do about it if she is, handsome? In case you haven"t noticed, I"ve got the gun and you don"t."
Darting towards him, she rammed the b.u.t.t end of the rifle into his stomach. He let loose a sharp cry and sank to his knees.
Her eyes frosted ice cold. "Don"t ever threaten me." She motioned with the barrel. "Hands behind your head."
Gritting his teeth, Skarda lifted his head, stabbing her with his eyes. He was glad to see the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around her left hand.
"Do it," Jaz warned. "Or I"ll put a couple of bullets in her."
He obeyed. But his gaze didn"t falter.
"Gee, you look so tough," she mocked. "I am so totally scared!" With deliberate casualness, she leaned against a column, the rifle not wavering in her hands. "Now," she said. "Where"s your other girlfriend?"
"I don"t know who you"re talking about."
Men with rifles stepped into view, taking up positions around them.
Jaz snorted, shaking her head in mock exasperation. "Why do I even try?" She lifted her chin, calling out to the shadowed ruins. "Okay, honey. Come out, come out, wherever you are. I"m going to count down from five and then I"m going shoot your boyfriend right between the eyes. Five..."
"Wait!" Flinders" voice was faint, m.u.f.fled by sandstone walls. "Don"t shoot! I"m coming!"
Inwardly Skarda winced. But he hoped she at least had enough presence of mind to hide the laptop.
Then his heart sank as she stepped into view, picking her way over fallen rock, computer and camera in hand. She gasped when she saw April. "Oh, no! Is she-"
Jaz cut her off, gesturing with the rifle. "Over there, honey. Next to handsome. On your knees."
Flinders dropped down next to Skarda, setting the laptop and the Nikon on the paving stones.
April groaned. Her right leg shifted, sending loose stones rattling.
Jaz shrugged. "Well, what do you know? She lives."
Waves of relief washed over Skarda. As long as April was alive, they had a chance of survival.
"Now, "Jaz said, singling out Flinders. "Tell me what you found here."
"We came up empty," Skarda said.
Again Jaz shook her head. "You"re not playing nice again." She let out a sigh. "Okay, one more time." Lowering her rifle, she aimed directly at Skarda"s forehead. "Five..."
Flinders" words spilled out in a rush. "There"s an altar back there and an entrance to an underground chamber. We took some photos, that"s all."
"Show me."
Flinders traded glances with Skarda. Reluctantly he nodded.
Another low moan from April.
"Let me help her," he said.
Jaz waved her index finger back and forth. "Uh-uh. Laptop first."
Flinders" hands were shaking as she opened the computer and booted it up. The photos of the pillars popped on the screen.
Jaz made a small sound of surprise. "That looks like gold. And emerald."
Flinders shook her head. "No. It"s asem."
"What the h.e.l.l is that?"
"The ancient Egyptians were expert metallurgists. They mixed tin and copper to make an artificial metal that looked like gold. And the green stone is common crystal."
An inward smile warmed Skarda. Flinders was catching on.
"There"s no green tablet down there?"
"If there were, we"d have it with us," Skarda said.
Jaz grunted, immediately losing interest. Motioning to her men to cover her, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the laptop and retrieved the file of Flinders" recent doc.u.ments, opening the page that contained the translations of the hieroglyphs inscribed on the pillars. Then she ejected the Nikon"s memory card and stuck it in her pocket, tossing the camera at the rocks, where it shattered. "Good. Well...it looks like we got everything we came for. So I guess we won"t be needing any of you anymore."
Flinders glanced at Skarda, her eyes frantic. "What are you going to do to us? We didn"t do anything."
Jaz grinned. "Don"t worry. It will be very painful and it won"t be quick."
Flinders gasped out a scream. Skarda put his arm around her shoulders. "We"ll be okay," he said.
Jaz barked out a caustic laugh and signaled to her men. They dragged April to her feet, dead weight. Skarda watched them with deadly eyes.
With the rifle barrel Jaz motioned for Skarda and Flinders to move into the court. "Let"s go find this altar."
___.
With gunmen covering him on all sides, Skarda jackknifed his body into the mouth of the altar, landing on both feet in a flurry of dust. Rough hands grabbed Flinders by the armpits, all but tossing her down into his waiting arms.
Helping her down, he put a rea.s.suring hand on her shoulder, then moved up the steps. Two men were hefting April like a rolled-up carpet, their eyes darting worried glances at her unconscious body as if they expected her at any moment to explode into action. Stooping under her, Skarda wrapped his arms around her torso, taking her gently and laying her on the stone landing. From the corner of his vision he could see Jaz groping through their backpacks, flinging out the ropes, chisels, and hammers.
He turned to look up at her. She was a black shape outlined by the moonlight as she tossed one pack down to him. "How long do you think it takes a human being to starve to death?" she asked. He caught the current of s.a.d.i.s.tic delight in her voice. "Or maybe you"ll die of thirst first." A tremor of pleasure shook her body.
Skarda studied her silhouette with level eyes. She was going to seal them in and it was giving her a s.e.xual thrill. "You"re a psycho," he said.
Throwing her head back, she laughed out loud. "You better believe it, handsome! Fun, isn"t it?" She pointed at the pack at his feet. "I left you one light. So you can watch each other die." Another tremor of pleasure rippled through her.
Skarda"s eyes narrowed to half their size. He made his words sharp and final. "Those were your men who attacked the cruise ship, weren"t they? Believe me when I tell you this. I"m going to make you pay for what you did to Stephen Cowell."
Snapping out of her reverie, Jaz laughed again, a sound made by a wild animal. "G.o.d, handsome, you crack me up! Revenge...how sweet!"
He gave a grim shake to his head. "Not revenge. Justice."
That made her laugh even harder. Then she motioned to her men to push the lid closed. Beyond his sightlines, Skarda heard the scuffle of footsteps and excited voices yelling in Arabic. But no sound of stone sc.r.a.ping against stone. The lid wasn"t budging.
Jaz disappeared. "Okay," he heard her voice ordering. "We"re going to have to blow it. But place the charges so it looks like a cave-in. And blow this wall, too. They"ll think the whole thing caved in."
Hearing the death sentence, Flinders gasped out a cry. For a brief moment Skarda weighed his chances of a headlong rush up the stairs to catch the woman off-guard, but he knew she was too fast. She"d cut him down before he could clear the lip of the altar. As long as they were alive, they had a chance of finding a way out.
Men appeared at the opening, pressing blocks of C-4 at the junction of the topmost riser and tread. Jaz dropped to her haunches, watching them.
Skarda stood his ground. "At least tell me what this is about," he said.
A smug smile lit up her cat"s eyes. "Money, honey. It"s always about money. Black gold. Texas tea."
"Oil? This is about oil?"
"Whatever." Her shoulders lifted in an indifferent shrug. "I don"t care. I"m in it for the fun."
The men finished, scrambling away to safety. With a broad grin, she held up a remote detonator, showing it to him, then took a step back, waggling her fingers. "And speaking of that, bye-bye now. Have a good time."
Skarda whipped around to Flinders. "Run!" He stooped, slinging April over his shoulder in a fireman"s carry. He pounded down the staircase.
With a sharp, thunderous bang the C-4 detonated, ripping apart the granite walls as if they"d been smashed by a giant hammer. In clouds of choking dust, huge chunks of rock tumbled and crashed, cutting off the faint light of the moon. Then came the roar of a second explosion, m.u.f.fled by tons of shattered stone blocking the stairway. It was the wall outside, tumbling down on the ruined altar.
Plunged into total darkness, Skarda waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. Then he bent to his knees, carefully laying April on the dusty carpet that covered the flagstones.
In the blackness on his left, he heard Flinders start to sob.
They were buried alive.
EIGHTEEN.
Bavarian Alps, Germany JONATHAN BELISARIUS stalked along a marble-floored corridor toward his private elevator. Now in his fifties, age had begun to catch up to him. A growing paunch sagged from his short and stocky frame, and his thinning, gray-streaked hair made him look older than his chronological years. Years of anxiety had etched deep creva.s.ses in his forehead and puffed up dark half-moons under his gunmetal blue eyes. But he was long since past caring about his physical appearance. Years ago frostbite had ruined the skin of his cheeks, forehead, and ears, the skin wrinkled and scarred with a mosaic of purplish-red welts. The tips of his fingers were black, but he hadn"t lost them to gangrene.
Pa.s.sing a tall, rectangular window set deep within the stone wall, he glanced out at a protruding wing of his castle that hugged a steep slope bulwarked by pines and spruce dusted with early snow. The castle itself sat perched on a thickly-forested limestone outcrop in southwest Bavaria, its gleaming white walls a counterpoint for the backdrop of the snow-capped ridges of the Alps. Long an admirer of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer of the Schutzstaffel, the n.a.z.i SS, Belisarius had bought the castle in imitation of his mentor"s Wewelsberg Castle in Westphalia, where he carried out secret occult rites after the rise of Hitler"s n.a.z.i party. Belisarius couldn"t have cared less about the n.a.z.i ideology, or for any other political system for that matter. Instead he admired the man"s brutal efficiency and absolute lack of morality in achieving his goals.
Influenced by the occult beliefs of his personal "Rasputin", the schizophrenic megalomaniac Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler came to believe that Germany had originally been settled by survivors of an Aryan superrace from Atlantis, who had in their possession a mysterious energy source called "Vril".
And it was Vril that really interested Belisarius.
Coming to the elevator, he entered his code on a key pad. The doors valved open. Thirty seconds later he stepped into his private conference room, where two men waited, looking uncomfortable in hand-carved oak chairs. On their right, logs crackled and hissed in a ma.s.sive stone fireplace.
Belisarius strode across the thick pile of a Persian rug and took a calculated moment to seat himself behind an antique German writing desk, staring into the hard faces of the men without speaking.
The man sitting nearest to him twitched uncomfortably in the silence. He was big and blocky, with spider webs of broken blood vessels mapped across his face. His name was Manucharov. "You have completed your task?" he finally asked in a thick Russian accent.
Belisarius" lips curved in an arid smile. "Everything is ready."
The second man, Chekhol, thrust himself forward. His shirt b.u.t.tons strained against his stomach, exposing frog-belly-white skin. "And the timetable?"
"The same."
Their business finished, the men got to their feet. "Good," Manucharov said. "When all is done we will transfer the funds to your Costa Rican account."
___.
Ten minutes later, Belisarius rode another elevator to the castle"s north wing, where he had built his private rooms. Treading down a long hallway floored with granite slabs, he pushed open an ornately-carved oak door set with a black iron latch and medieval-looking iron studs. This was his bedroom, a barrel-ceilinged chamber darkened by red damask curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows and a thick-planked oak floor the color of walnuts.
Stepping into the room, he heard the sc.r.a.pe of a footstep behind him. He whirled around. A figure flew at him like a striking panther and he crashed to the floor on his back, crying out in pain.
"Hi, lover" said a husky female voice.
He looked up into Jaz"s grinning face.
She was straddling him, pinning him in place with her powerful legs and leaning her weight on his shoulders with both hands.
"Jaz," he said, his voice thick with l.u.s.t. "I missed you."
She was wearing skin-tight jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt. On top of her bloated muscles veins twisted like writhing snakes. "I bet you did."
"I want to see the translation."
"Later."
"Does it give the location of the Tablet?"
Jaz shivered with mounting excitement and leaned forward until her mouth was an inch from his. "First things first, lover."
Jackknifing herself up, she shrugged out of the T-shirt, revealing b.r.e.a.s.t.s that had shrunk to the size of apples. A line of dark blonde hairs ran up from her belly b.u.t.ton to the hollow of her throat. Then wrapping her hands around his neck, she ground her crotch into his, pressing her thumbs deeply into his carotid artery. Flashing pinpoints of light exploded behind Belisarius" vision.