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.