“Look out!” Phoebe yelled, pulling Orlando back as Caleb leapt out of the way, amazed. The door suddenly burst apart in a blur as something immense dropped into the chasm. And kept dropping. The noise was deafening. Some of the soldiers turned and fled, believing at last the curse of Genghis Khan had caught up with them.
“What the hell?” Renee yelled, her voice barely audible over the cacophonic sound. She splashed backwards through water that was swiftly rising.
“Oh no!” Caleb shouted. “The cylinder. It’s displacing the water from the tunnel.”
Phoebe fought a wave that had risen almost to her shoulders.” Displacing it onto us!”
Orlando reached out and caught her hand, just as Caleb grabbed his collar. They stood fast against the swirling waters rising up to their chins, and Caleb immediately had a flashback to the room under the Pharos.
Stop!
As if on cue, the corridor rocked and jarred with a thud as the cylinder seemed to have hit bottom. Pebbles and dirt dropped from the edges on the ceiling, and the rounded portion of the block in front of them trembled. And as the lights above the water aimed at it, something appeared. An outline.
“A door!” Renee said, pointing.
It shook, trembled again, and then the rectangular section opened, sliding upward and letting in the water.
“It’s draining,” Caleb said, dropping after trying to stand on his toes. He directed his light into the opening. There was a ladder of sorts, but the rest of the wide cylinder looked like the interior of a hollow tunnel, sucking in the water down into its base.
Renee splashed forward first and shone a light inside and then up. “Stairs rising in a spiral. Only one direction, so at least we don’t have to make any more choices.”
“What’s up there?” Chang asked, getting closer, shaking the water out of his gun.
“Would you believe,” said Renee, “another door?”
Alexander climbed up after Montross and he stood in the only spot left, right between the body’s feet. “What are you doing?” he whispered, shining his light up to where Montross was fumbling with something around the corpse’s head.
The corpse…
Alexander shuddered, squeezing his legs together and trying not to touch anything, not even to brush against any part of the body.
“Just wait,” Montross said. Then as Alexander’s light reached him he snapped, “And shut that off!”
Alexander flicked off the light. But not before it had flashed onto the face under the helmet. Alexander had seen mummy movies before and read his share of archeological articles with photos showing unearthed Incan kings and Egyptian burials, where they’d peeled off the funeral masks and revealed the leathery, grizzled faces, the sunken eye-sockets, the browning flesh, the long teeth and hair that had continued to grow. This face was similar, and yet more regal, more peaceful. He’s held up pretty good down here, Alexander thought as he shut off the light.
And then the eye sockets began to glow with a green aura. Temujin’s entire face seemed to pulse with light flickering from within the eyes and seeping out from between his mummified lips, from the cracked teeth still set in the dried gums retreating in a wide smile.
“Damn,” said Montross, whose necklace with its pyramidal stone glowed and pulsed to an unheard heartbeat. “Looks like the keys are in his head.”
Alexander bent forward and tried to look into the mouth, but couldn’t see anything down in the throat. It seemed more like the light pulsed from higher, behind the eyes. “They may have drilled into the back of his skull. Saw that in a National Geographic special once.”
Montross held the tablet in his left hand, then set it on Genghis Khan’s chest, over the folded arms. “Here, hold this a sec, Genghis. Sorry, but I’ve got to lift you up.”
“Wait,” said Alexander. “I think there might be another trap.”
Montross pulled up the body by its shoulders. “I know,” he said as a lever, previously kept down by the weight of the Khan’s body, now rose, making a grinding sound as if gears somewhere were turning, spinning.
Opening a door beneath them.
“Nina!” Montross yelled to her out in the darkness, beyond the emerald glow. “It’s time.”
“Go!”
Caleb heard Renee shout, and then the men were rushing up the spiral steps and bursting out of the newly opened doorway. The interior section had suddenly shaken and made a shrill scraping sound before it separated and descended, hauled below by inner gear works triggered by something above.
All the soldiers ran through, their flashlights secured to their weapons, their heads down. Then Renee went up-after first hesitating. Probably waiting for the screams, Caleb thought. He couldn’t believe she had them just rush in. Getting desperate?
Only Chang had stayed behind, and he promptly jabbed Caleb in the back. “Move. You three. Now-”
But that’s when the automatic gunfire started, and the echoes of screaming men tore through the entrance and into the empty tower.
Alexander cringed and tucked himself into a ball, right on the edge of the funeral platform next to the great Khan’s legs, and right in front of those glowing eyes. Eyes in a head lolling forward with Montross’s less-than-ceremonial treatment. A head shaking side to side in violent denial as Montross rooted around within the hollowed-out hole in the back of the corpse’s skull and dug out his prizes.
Gunshots. Men crying out. Swift, precise death zipped across at the soldiers. Nine men stumbled about with crisscrossing flashlight beams and automatic gunfire erupting chaotically. Everyone trying to find out who was shooting at them. Alexander ducked lower and toppled sideways as a shot zipped past and took out a chunk out of the Khan’s shoulder, exploding powdery flesh into his eyes. He crunched into an embrace with the body, screamed and then felt Montross’s arm around his back, his body in front of him protectively.
He shouted something lost in the gun blasts.
Alexander glanced over the side and saw another flashlight beam spin around, then crash onto the floor as its wielder fell. Another scream and a soldier was thrown back against the stairs Alexander had just climbed, blood spraying from a punctured skull. Alexander had a sudden moment’s fear that all Genghis needed to be reawakened was human blood.
But nothing moved, no life stirred in his bones, no heartbeat throbbed in the chest pressed against Alexander’s ear.
Another scream, then more gunshots, this time concentrated toward one section. “There!” Someone yelled. A woman’s voice. Followed by a single-fire weapon, blasting off round after round.
Another scream. Alexander cringed. That sounded like Nina.
She’s been hit!
“Stay low,” Montross said as he pulled free, stood and withdrew the Ruger from his waist. He aimed and fired at the one soldier in view, taking him down. Then he turned and froze in the beams of light immediately brought to his location.
“Drop it!” someone yelled with a thick Chinese accent.
And Alexander could see the lights blasting into Montross’s eyes, blinding him. He lifted his gun and his other hand to ward off the light.
And then someone was climbing, rustling up the steps behind him, standing over him and snatching the gun from Montross in one quick movement. Then Montross was grabbed and hurled to the mausoleum floor.
A woman wearing a thick black vest and a shiny gold badge turned to Alexander, where he was still locked in a death-embrace with the great Mongolian conqueror.
“Oh, Caleb!” she called over her shoulder. “We’ve found your boy.”
Caleb ran out into the mausoleum, stepping around the soldiers lying in bloody piles, their skulls expertly perforated. He turned to the sound of Renee’s voice and ran to Alexander, scooping him up before the boy even took the last step down from the crypt.
“Dad!” Alexander leapt into his father’s embrace and clutched him tight.
Caleb hugged him tighter and made room for Phoebe, who had run behind him and added her arms to their reunion hug.
“And this,” said Renee, standing over a kneeling man, “must be Xavier Montross.” She pointed the. 45 at the center of his forehead. “Now, give me what you took from him.”
Montross ignored her, instead smiling over to Caleb. His white teeth glittered in the light from Chang’s flashlight. His red hair had fallen, sweaty, over his left eye.
“Hello, brother.”
Nina heard them talking, barely, over the pulse thundering in her ears. She lay perfectly still, her limbs splayed, her neck and shoulders supported by the wall. She had done her part the best she could. Leaving a lone flashlight against the wall ten feet away, then firing from a distance using the night-vision scope, she had taken out seven of them. All but two, and the woman who had emerged last. The FBI agent had seen the light finally, after all the chaos, and fired at it repeatedly. Nina let out a shrill scream, and let herself tumble that way. Hoping it would fool them.
She was aware of two lights falling on her, dancing across her face, her body. If they don’t see enough blood, I may draw some more fire. But then Montross, God bless him, had drawn their attention away, shooting one of them. Nina hoped it was that bitch, but soon enough she heard the woman’s voice.
They had captured Montross and Alexander.
But in another moment, still playing dead, she had to stifle a smile when she heard another voice. Caleb Crowe. Still alive.
Good, she thought. We still have a score to settle.
Brother? Caleb gaped at him. Then turned to Alexander, pulled away and looked at him, then Phoebe.
“It’s true,” Alexander said. “I saw it. Grandpa and another woman. Before grandma.”
“One big happy reunion,” Montross said, grinning. “I told you, didn’t I? That we’d see each other again, at the Mausoleum?”
Phoebe choked on a breath. “Then you’re also my-”
Montross nodded. “Hi, sis.”
Caleb turned to him. “A brother you might be,”-he clenched his fists, approaching-“but you’re still a killer.”
“Back off,” said Renee. “As interesting as all this is, let’s first relieve Mr. Montross of this.” She snatched the necklace from his neck, then struck him across the face with the butt of her gun. He moaned and opened his right hand.
“And these,” Renee continued, grabbing the two glowing triangular pieces from his palm. Chang emerged behind her, stepping down from the crypt. He held the Emerald Tablet in his hands like it was a piece of expensive glass.
“Put it in its case,” she whispered, hungrily eying the artifact.
Chang nodded and opened the pack over his shoulder, retrieving a stainless steel briefcase. He popped open the lid, revealing a black foam interior with one large rectangular indentation and custom slots for three smaller objects.
“So that’s it?” Orlando asked. “We come all this way. You cause all these deaths. We find him, and that’s it? You take the keys?” He looked over his shoulder, shining the light on the armor-clad, silk-covered Mongol corpse. “What now?”
Chang offered Renee the open case, where the Emerald Tablet pulsed intently as if aware of its impending confinement and uncertain use. Keeping the gun pointed at Montross, Renee set the stones inside the case and then had him close it and set it by her side.
“What now?” she said, repeating Orlando’s question. “What now, is