The Devil Colony (42 page)

“At the moment another of my companions is far below. If I don’t return, he is ready to cast the gold bottle into another boiling mud pit, where the sludgy current will carry it away forever.”

The man trembled, frustrated, but his eyes also danced with the challenge. “Fair enough. What are your terms?”

“Your men will pull back from this side of the bridge. I want the boy as a sign of your goodwill. Then I will go below and fetch the jar. After that, we will make our final trade.”

“For what?”

“You know very well what I want.” Painter let some of the fierceness he’d been suppressing leak out. “I want my niece.”

6:28
P.M.

Très intéressant . . .

It seemed these negotiations had suddenly become far more challenging and exciting. Breathless, Rafe stared at the sculpted gold lid. He indeed knew what it represented. Such bottles had the potential to be the Holy Grail of nanotechnology, a key to a lost science of alchemy that promised a vast new field of industry and a source of incalculable wealth. But more than that, it would allow his family to buy their way further up the hierarchy, to rise perhaps as high as the one surviving True Bloodline.

And it would be the brittle-boned son who brought home that glory for the Saint Germaine lineage. Nothing must stop this from happening.

Rafe turned to Bern. “Do as he says. Pull your men back. Free the boy and send him over the bridge.”

His second-in-command looked ready to argue, but knew better. The prisoner’s hands were cut free, the gag ripped away.

“Go,” Bern ordered, giving him a push.

The youth fled across the bridge, skirting around the soldiers who were returning from the other side. Once he reached Painter, the pair bowed their heads for a time, then the young man nodded and headed toward the far tunnel.

That left just one last demand.

Rafe held up his arm. Another soldier hauled Kai Quocheets forward. Gagged, she struggled with her bound wrists. Her eyes grew large when she spotted Painter.

At the same time her uncle rushed forward, ready to help her. He stumbled several steps out onto the bridge, allowing his guard to drop. Half blind with an avuncular need to defend his niece, Painter threw off his backpack, letting it dangle from his wrist . . . and only then did Rafe realize his own mistake.

Oh no . . .

6:30
P.M.

Painter read the understanding in the Frenchman’s eyes. It took all of his strength to pull his attention away from Kai. He had seen the deep bruising on Jordan’s face. It had set his blood to pounding in his ears.

Had they hurt Kai as well?

Such questions would have to wait.

Instead, he stopped on the bridge. He’d taken only a few steps, but that put him out over the chasm, yet still well enough away from the hostile party on the other side. He kept his arm out. The heavy pack dangled from his fingertips over the gorge. The steam burned his exposed skin while bathing his arm in yellowish clouds of toxins. The river below hissed and gurgled.

“You already have the gold jar with you,” Rafael said, his voice a mix of dismay and respect. “You’ve had it all along.”

Painter reached out over the chasm and unzipped the pack’s main compartment. He let the gold shine out. “Shoot me, and it drops into the river below. If you want this treasure, you’ll let my niece go. Send her across the bridge. Once she’s safely in the tunnel behind me, I’ll throw the bag to you.”

“And what guarantee do I have that you’ll do as you say?”

“You have my word.”

Painter refused to break eye contact with Rafael, not to intimidate but to make his intention clear. He was being honest. There was no subterfuge, no clever plan. He had to risk everything to get Kai to safety. Kowalski had a good spot from which to defend them. Rafael would likely flee with his prize, rather than try to dig the others out of that hole. Kai would have a chance to live.

But that didn’t mean Rafael wouldn’t order his men to shoot Painter after he tossed the package. Anticipating this, he would do his best to retreat to the shelter of the boulders and work his way back to the tunnel himself.

It wasn’t a great plan, but it was all he had.

Rafael kept staring back at him, doing his best to read his enemy. Finally, he nodded his head. “I believe you, Monsieur Crowe. You are right. We can end this like civilized men.” He gave Painter a slight bow. “Until we meet again.”

The Frenchman turned and motioned for his men to free Kai. They undid her hands. Painter watched. Still gagged, she had a wild-eyed stare—but she was not looking at him.

She was looking behind him.

Because of the bubbling of the muddy river, he hadn’t heard the approach until it was too late. As he turned, he felt a telltale tremble in the sandstone trusses of the span as someone’s feet pounded onto the bridge. He got a glimpse of a tall dark shape hurtling toward him. A shoulder hit him low in the rib cage, lifted him off his feet, and slammed him to the stone bridge, knocking the wind from his lungs. Strong fingers ripped the backpack from his grasp. Then the figure flew past him.

He twisted around to see a woman sprint to the far side and reach Rafael. As promised, the Frenchman had pulled back his
men
. Painter should have been more specific.

The tall black woman—a veritable Amazon—handed Rafael the bag.

“
Merci,
Ashanda.”

Painter knelt on the stone span, defeated.

Rifles pointed back at him, but instead of ordering him shot, Rafael waved his men to retreat. He matched gazes with Painter. “You’d best be off that bridge,
mon ami
.”

With a nod to the side, one of his soldiers raised a transmitter and twisted a dial on it. A resounding blast sounded from under the span. The far side of the bridge exploded in a blast of sandstone and mortar. Deafened, blinded, Painter fell back and rolled off the bridge’s end and onto solid rock.

He raised himself up on his hands and knees to see Rafael and his group retreating for the surface on the far side. The remaining span of the bridge crumbled apart and crashed with mighty, muddy splashes into the river below, churning up more sulfur and heat.

As Rafael reached the tunnel, he held Kai by the shoulder. He took off her gag and called to him. “So she can say good-bye!”

Kai had to be held up by the tall commando. Her voice was a wail of fear and grief that ripped into his belly. “Uncle Crowe . . . I’m sorry . . .”

Then she was hauled up the tunnel. Still on his knees, he listened to her sobbing cries fade away.

Footfalls sounded behind him. Kowalski came running up with Jordan. “What happened to the bridge?”

“They’d mined it,” Painter said hollowly.

“Kai?” Jordan asked, his face aghast.

Painter shook his head.

“What are we going to do?” Kowalski asked. “We can’t make it across that.”

Painter slowly collected himself, gained his feet, and stepped to the edge of the steaming gorge. They had to get across. It was Kai’s only chance. With no further use for her, Rafael would soon kill her. Painter had to stay alive, so she could live, too. Still, despair washed over him. Even if they made it out, what did he have to bargain with to win her back? Rafael had the gold tablets
and
the canopic jar. He stared down at his empty hands.

Then the ground shook, and an echoing blast reached them. A wash of dust and smoke belched out of the far tunnel, accompanied by the distant grumble of rock.

“Seems the bastards mined more than just the bridge,” Kowalski said.

Painter pictured the chasm cliffs above crashing down, sealing them in. As the dust settled, the air grew strangely still. The sting of sulfur worsened, and the heat rose rapidly. With the opening of the blowhole above now blocked, any circulation of air stopped down here.

Jordan covered his nose and mouth. “What are we going to do?”

As if in answer, a thunderous detonation cracked through the enclosed space. But it was no explosion.

Painter turned as the fissure high up the wall broke wider, splintering outward. The concussion of the charges above must have traveled deep into the earth, to this bubble in the limestone, weakening its already fractured structure.

The flow of boiling mud surged through the widening gap. Boulders began to break off the wall and fall crashing into the pool below. Mud splashed high, raining down.

As Painter and the others retreated from the hail of muddy gobbets, more and more of the wall broke away, falling apart in pieces like a crumbling dam. The sludge fall became a torrent, gushing forth, flooding the river and overflowing the banks of the bubbling pool.

At last, Painter had an answer for Jordan’s question.

What are we going to do?

He pointed to the tunnel as a wall of mud rolled toward them.

“Run!”

Chapter 28

May 31, 9:33
P.M.
Fort Knox, Kentucky

The plan had failed . . .

Gray folded his hands atop his head. Seichan and Monk did the same as rifles pointed at their backs. Soldiers forced them at gunpoint past the bodies of the mint officers, the marble slick with their blood.

Waldorf limped behind them, nursing his wounded leg, leaving bloody footprints. “Take them out the gates,” he instructed the man carrying the plate of gold. “I’m heading to my office. I’ll sound the alarm in five minutes. You want to be out of here by then.”

“Yes, sir.”

As they passed through the security station in the lobby, Gray spotted the Humvee idling outside, its tailpipe smoking as the night grew cooler. They had only one chance.

One of the soldiers dashed ahead to the door, moving sideways, still keeping an eye on them. Now was as good a time as any. Gray glanced to Monk, who already knew what to do. His friend gave the smallest nod, a sign that Gray understood. Atop his head, Monk’s fingers blindly tapped a code onto his wrist cuff, preparing to transmit a wireless signal.

“Eyes closed, hands over ears,” Gray whispered to Seichan.

She looked momentarily confused, then her gaze shifted to the plastic tray holding Monk’s disembodied prosthetic hand.

“Now,” Gray said breathlessly.

Monk tapped the go signal, activating a small flash-bang charge built into his prosthesis, one of its unique new weapons system upgrades. Gray slipped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes closed. It wasn’t much protection. As the hand exploded, the
flash
of the charge outlined his fingers against his eyelids, and the
bang
stabbed into his head.

Men screamed as they went temporarily blind and disoriented.

Rifles fired wildly.

Gray had only seconds before their sight returned. He twisted around and hauled the gold plate out of the arms of the team leader. He continued his turn, dropping and pivoting on his toes, swinging back full around and heaving the heavy plate into the legs of the same soldier. Bones shattered. The man’s scream turned high-pitched.

At the same time Seichan had grabbed a gunman’s rifle out of his dazed grip, expertly flipped it around, and fired point-blank into his chest. His body flew back into another soldier. Seichan continued firing, taking down that other man, too.

Monk had lunged low toward the door, out of firing range. He threw a meaty fist up, square into the guard’s nose, crunching deeply. His target fell limply against the door and slid down. Monk retrieved the man’s weapon.

Seichan continued to fire, strafing deeper into the lobby.

Gray spotted her target.

Waldorf limped and fell through his office door, slamming it shut behind him. Seichan continued to fire, but the rounds pelted into steel. The door must be reinforced like the rest of the fortress.

“Damn,” she said.

Seconds later, an alarm Klaxon rang out, echoing throughout the building. Waldorf must have hit a panic button in his office. Monk stood beside the exit as a blast shield began to trundle down from above, preparing to seal the place up.

“Time to go!” he called out, and held the door open.

Gray and Seichan sprinted toward him. Even with her bad leg, Seichan reached the exit first and dove out. Slower, encumbered by the heavy gold plate, Gray had to duck to get under the lowering blast shield.

Monk followed, gasping. Sirens rang throughout the base, spreading the alarm. “I thought breaking
into
Fort Knox was hard,” he said. “Breaking
out
may be even harder!”

“Into the Humvee!” Gray ordered.

They ran for the idling truck. Gray hopped behind the wheel. Monk took the passenger side. Seichan leaped into the backseat. All three doors slammed at the same time.

Gray shifted into gear and wheeled the Humvee around, gunning the massive engine and barreling up speed along the entry road. In the rearview mirror, he spotted Seichan sidling over to a window and cracking a side panel so she could poke her rifle out.

“We don’t shoot!” Gray said. “These are U.S. soldiers just doing their job.”

“Oh, this just gets easier and easier,” Monk complained.

They had one hope.

Gray had already noted their ride had been outfitted with an “up-armor” kit for combat use, which included reinforced doors, bullet-resistant glass, side and rear plating, and a ballistic windshield capable of withstanding explosive ordnance. It was not an unusual vehicle to find here, since Fort Knox was home to the U.S. Army Center for Armored Warfare. It was a proving ground for tanks, artillery, and all manner of armored beasts.

To avoid killing anyone, they needed to ram their way to freedom. For the moment they had the advantage of surprise—and confusion. It wasn’t like someone broke into or out of Fort Knox on a regular basis.

Gray aimed for the gates, which had already closed. Sentries milled about, plainly unsure if this was a false alarm or merely a training exercise. The Humvee charging at them cleared up that confusion.