Midas Code (30 page)

“The only deal I’m going to make with you is that I will guarantee you a short, miserable life if anything happens to Sherman or Carol.”

“That’s too bad, because now you’re too late.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

Orr smiled and nodded behind Tyler.

He turned to see Gia Cavano silently entering the cavern. Behind her was a man with a submachine gun pointed at Grant’s head.

SIXTY-ONE

C
avano didn’t care if Tyler and Stacy were helping Orr by choice or against their will. She knew Orr well enough to believe that he had taken Tyler’s and Stacy’s relatives hostage, but that didn’t make her inclined to share the treasure with anyone. If she let them go, the Italian authorities would be on her before she could get a tenth of the gold out.

With her submachine gun, she opened fire, but Tyler and Stacy dove behind the golden coffin, bullets pinging off the wall behind them. None of the shots were aimed at Orr, who flattened himself on the floor. She wanted him alive. A bullet to the head was too good for him.

Tyler didn’t return fire with the pistol Cavano had seen him holding. He obviously wouldn’t want to hurt his friend. Sal stood behind Grant, using him as a shield.

The astounding golden chamber was just as she remembered it, except for the dead body in the pit below, its head a mess of gore. Cavano was already drenched from the humidity that condensed on her skin.

She noticed Orr’s bloody face and called across the long chamber. “I see you’ve done all of the hard work for me, Dr. Locke.”

“You okay, Tyler?” Grant said.

“Not bad,” Tyler yelled from behind the coffin. “How about you?”

“Your warning worked for me, but three of Cavano’s men used up their nine lives.”

“And for killing my men,” she said, “Jordan has earned the most painful death I can possibly imagine.”

“Listen, Gia,” Tyler said. “I think the one thing we can agree on is that we all want Orr dead. But right now I need him alive.”

“Yes, Grant told us why you have been such a thorn in my side for the last few days. Good to see you again, Jordan. I hope you’re in pain.”

“You can’t kill me, Gia,” Orr said. “The gold isn’t worth what you think it is.”

“If it’s only a few billion dollars, I think I’ll be fine.”

“It’s not. It’s a few million.”

“Shut up, Orr!” Tyler yelled.

In the face of so much gold, Cavano laughed, and Sal joined in.

“I’m serious,” Orr said. “Scratch the wall next to you. You’ll see that the gold is only a few millimeters thick.”

Cavano looked at Sal, who shrugged.
Was her whole assessment of the treasure that far off?
She dragged the nose of her gun across the wall. She stared in horror when it left a gouge of gray tuff behind.

“The statue is solid gold,” she said. “I know it is.”

“The statue is, but the pedestal isn’t,” Orr said. “The girl might weigh a few hundred pounds. You’d clear twenty million euros at best. I know your business is in much deeper debt than that.”

He was right. The purchase of the Ministry of Health building had exhausted her organization’s funds. Without a major influx of cash, she would be at the mercy of the other Camorra clans, who would sweep in and gobble up her budding empire.

“How about I share a billion dollars with you?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I have an auction planned for the Midas Touch.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I can find my own buyer.”

“Not the group I have assembled. I’m the only one they’ll trust.”

Cavano paused. “And why should
I
trust you?”

“You don’t have to. You can come with me to the auction. We’ll split the payment into two accounts. If I’m lying about the deal, you can kill me then. But if I’m not, you go your way and I go my way. Forget about this whole vendetta thing and we’ll both be super-rich.”

Cavano walked back and whispered to Sal in Italian. “What do you think?”

“It looks like he’s right about the wall,” Sal whispered back.

She nodded. Later she would figure out how to get her vengeance, but for now she couldn’t afford to risk killing Orr. She was about to agree to his terms when Tyler called out.

“One problem with your plan, Gia! I’m right behind the coffin. I can dump Midas’s body into that pool in three seconds, and then you’ll have nothing. Once it’s in the water, the body will turn to gold in a matter of hours, and the microbes that are responsible for the Midas Touch will disappear forever.”

“You do that and Grant is dead.”

“We’re dead anyway, so you better cut me in on Orr’s deal, too.”

Cavano thought about it. She had no desire to cut anybody else in on the deal, but she couldn’t lose the Midas Touch, either.

“All right,” she said. “But I want to see a working sample first.”

“Do we have a deal?”

“I swear on my husband’s grave.”

After about thirty seconds of silence, Tyler said, “All right. You come down to the pit. I’ll keep an eye on Orr, and Stacy will bring the sample down to you. You try anything and I’ll kill Orr and dump Midas into the water. Then nobody gets anything. Sound good?”

Perfect,
Cavano thought. “Sounds good. We’re coming down. If Stacy tries anything, she dies first. Then Grant. Then you.”

She whispered into Sal’s ear again. “When I’m sure we’ve got it, kill Grant, then Tyler. I’ll take care of Stacy.”

Sal nodded.

Cavano had lied when she swore on her husband’s grave, but she was a good Catholic. To her way of thinking, it was nothing that a few minutes in the confessional wouldn’t take care of.

SIXTY-TWO

S
tacy tried not to shake as she walked down the steps carrying the container with Midas’s hand inside. She was more afraid of the Midas Touch than she was of Cavano.

When Stacy got to the bottom of the stairs, Cavano was waiting for her, a black automatic rifle aimed at her. Sal was behind his boss on the other side of the pedestal, with his own gun leveled at Grant.

“Put it down,” Cavano said.

Stacy stopped and put the container on the floor. She turned to go back up the steps.

“Wait!” Cavano yelled. “Leave the gloves.”

Stacy gulped. She carefully removed the gloves by the fingers and laid them down next to the container.

“Now back away, but don’t go up the stairs.”

Stacy did as she was told, her heart pounding. She didn’t know what the next few seconds were going to bring, so she had to be ready for anything.

Cavano put her hand in her pocket and took out a twenty-euro note. Smart, Stacy thought. Easy to rub the microbe onto and dip into the pool to test it.

Cavano put the gun down and donned the left glove first and then the right one. She picked up the container and was about to open it when she got a puzzled look on her face. She peered at her hands with dismay. Too late, Cavano realized that it was she who’d been tricked.

Tyler had seen the opportunity when Cavano insisted on testing the Midas Touch herself. He whispered his plan to Stacy as they were shielded from Cavano by the coffin. With Stacy’s uncontaminated right-hand glove turned inside out, Tyler quickly rubbed Midas’s hand on the fingertips of the glove. He then gently pulled the glove right side out using his Leatherman pliers, careful not to touch the inside lining. Stacy had put the glove on delicately, making sure to ball up her fist so that her fingers wouldn’t touch the microbes.

That was why she’d been so terrified. She was deathly afraid that her hand would slip and make contact with the Midas Touch.

Cavano had been unable to detect the subterfuge, and had assumed the gloves were safe because Stacy had been wearing them. Now Stacy could see the mixture of fear and pain on her face as she endured the toxic side effect of the Midas Touch.

Cavano dropped the container and inadvertently kicked it behind her past the pedestal in her desperation to tear off the gloves. She held up her hands, and Stacy could already see the blisters forming on her fingers.

“What’s the matter?” Sal said.

“Kill them!” Cavano screamed as she dove for her gun. “Kill them all!”

Cavano’s cry was Grant’s cue. He’d been patiently waiting for something like it ever since Cavano took him captive.

Sal raised his gun to fire at Tyler, but Grant charged him. Sal got off a wild volley of shots, and Grant couldn’t tell if they’d hit anything. Sal brought the gun down to smash Grant, but not fast enough. Grant aimed his head at Sal’s midsection like a battering ram and knocked him backward.

Sal’s mammoth frame absorbed the blow without falling. He continued to fire shots, and Grant could feel the hot barrel against his shirt. He grabbed for the gun. They wrestled for it face-to-face, each determined to shoot the other.

Tyler hit the deck when Sal’s gun blazed at him. Stacy raced up the stairs to get out of the line of fire, but Cavano already had the submachine gun in her hands. Tyler covered Stacy’s retreat by snapping off three quick shots with the pistol. He had only one magazine, so rounds would soon become a precious commodity.

Although Tyler missed Cavano, his shots made her duck for cover behind the pedestal in the pit. She fired off random bursts that hit nothing but wall.

Stacy ran along the terrace, but she didn’t dive behind the sarcophagus as Tyler had expected. Instead she lunged for Orr’s legs, missing them by inches.

While Tyler had been engaged in the firefight with Cavano, Orr had taken the opportunity to grab his pack from behind Tyler and was running for the opposite end of the terrace, trying to make an escape. Stacy popped back up and gave chase.

Tyler took aim at Orr, but he didn’t shoot. He couldn’t risk killing Orr until he knew where his father and Stacy’s sister were.

More shots came from Cavano, and Tyler could do nothing more than turn to lay down covering fire for Stacy.

When the shooting started, Orr’s first thought was that this was even better than he had been expecting. They were all fighting one another, and he saw his chance to slip out.

While Tyler returned fire, Orr scrambled over and grabbed his bag, which held the golden hand, the Archimedes Codex, and the video camera. His hands were still bound, but he was mobile. He planned to get off the terrace by jumping over the pool.

Then Stacy had seen what he was doing. She knocked him down, but he kicked her in the stomach. His depth perception was gone, or he would have hit her with a more crushing blow. Still, it was enough, and she went down clutching her belly.

Orr got back up and took a running leap from the terrace. The pool was narrowest in this part of the pit, maybe only ten feet across. He soared into space and landed just inches beyond the edge of the steaming water.

He rolled and saw his target: the container with Midas’s hand. Its exterior was uncontaminated. He scooped it up and stuffed it into his pack.

Orr used the chaos of the gunfight to dig into Gaul’s duffel, still lying against the wall near the water spout. A few button pushes, and he ran for the stairs to the exit tunnel.

He thought ten seconds should be plenty of time.

Cavano knew she didn’t have long for this world, and she wasn’t going out cowering behind some monument to death. Her right hand burned so much from the Midas Touch that she could do no more than prop the gun up with her wrist, shooting left-handed.

She felt as if her veins had been injected with molten lava. If she was going to die, she would take Stacy Benedict and Tyler Locke with her.

After awkwardly slamming another magazine into the gun and racking the bolt, she stood and fired at Tyler’s position. As she stumbled for the stairs, nearly blind from the pain, she kept firing bursts, hoping to hit someone, anyone.

She took the steps two at a time, but her stomach suddenly spasmed, and her head pounded in agony, as if an animal were tearing it apart from the inside. She collapsed at the top step, her finger clenching the trigger back until the gun was empty.

Grant was pinned against the pedestal holding the statue, Sal’s submachine gun choking the life out of him.

Sal was one of the few men Grant had ever met who actually had a weight advantage, and the Italian used it. He leaned his bulk into the gun, and Grant’s vision began to tunnel.

They were near the corner of the pedestal. If Grant could just work his way a few more inches to his left, he could use Sal’s weight against him.

He edged over with a few solid lunges. One more should do it. Grant could see almost nothing at this point, but he felt the open space to his side.

With his last bit of strength, he jostled left and fell backward. Sal couldn’t keep from falling forward.

Grant thrust his legs upward and tossed Sal’s body over his head. With a howl, Sal went sliding and rolling along the floor. The slick surface gave him no purchase, and before he could stop himself he splashed into the boiling water.

Despite the heat, Grant’s blood chilled as Sal’s primal scream echoed through the chamber before gurgling to silence.

Stacy scrambled to her feet after she saw Orr leap over the pool. She rushed to the edge of the terrace, but the lanterns had all gone askew by this point. The odd shadows cast made it difficult to see what he was doing, but she did see him grab the container with Midas’s hand.

Then for a few seconds Orr knelt by the wall, where he rummaged through Gaul’s duffel, his hands still tied together. When he was finished, he picked up his backpack and ran as fast as he could for the stairs exiting the chamber.

A horrible scream registered in Stacy’s ears, but it was in the background with the last of the gunfire. She was too focused on the bag where Orr had knelt before escaping into the tunnel.

Then she realized what Orr had been doing. Gaul’s duffel. The explosives. The timed detonators she and Tyler had found.

Oh, no.

In the center of the pit, Grant was about to emerge from behind the pedestal.

“Get back!” she yelled. “There’s a bomb!”

She turned, but Tyler was right behind her. With all her strength, she shoved him down, and the world exploded.