Deep Fire Rising

MONASTERY OF RINPOCHE-LA WESTERN TIBET

Sykes took the news of Sneezy’s death by ordering Sleepy to cover Dopey as he worked on each MMU to activate their self-destruct mechanisms. Now that they were on the ground, the mission took precedence. Grieving for the fallen man would come later. He led the team northward toward the monastery’s back wall, about a quarter mile from where the MMUs had dropped in a cluster.

Mercer expected to have trouble breathing at twelve thousand feet and knew his lack of altitude sickness symptoms like headaches, dizziness and pulmonary distress was due to the drug cocktail he’d consumed on the flight. The black fatigues he’d been given also protected him from the near-freezing temperatures and the wind that was beginning to shriek down the valley, corralled by the mountains and vectored like a jet into his face. Because of the constant streamers of steam that blew from the geothermal vents ringing the valley, his night-vision goggles could not gather enough ambient light. He left them dangling around his neck as he ran, exposing the area around his eyes to the biting cold. Soon his skin was numb.

The wall at the rear of the monastery was made of smooth river rocks mortared together with primitive cement. Through the streaming haze of steam high above them, they could see a portion of the building’s pagoda-style roof. With curt hand gestures, Sykes fanned out his men to cover the climbers as they unlimbered their rope and equipment. Mercer took a position on the far left flank, tight against where the stone wall met the cliff. He donned his night-vision goggles and scanned the top of the wall and the surrounding rocks, which had hundreds of crags that could easily hide observers. The barrel of his M-4 followed the smooth motion of his eyes.

In the center of the towering wall Bashful and Happy, whose real names were Bobby Johnson and Bruce Morrelli, were ready to start their ascent. They’d studied it for ten minutes, mapping their route with the practiced eye of professional climbers. They would scale the wall independently, carrying coils of rope and the necessary gear to secure the lines once they reached the top. Each also carried a silenced Beretta in case a sentry wandered by. Every member of the team was competitive to a fault, driven to surpass their comrades at all costs. But when it came to a mission, they knew this wasn’t a game and the two men began the climb with caution and little thought to the progress of the other.

As if gravity didn’t apply, Bashful and Happy seemed to float up the wall, their arms and legs in constant motion as they exploited the tiniest flaws in the mortar for finger- and toeholds. Mercer, who had done some climbing out of necessity rather than recreation, had never seen anything like it. In minutes they had traversed half the distance to the top and he had to force himself not to be distracted by the display. He turned away and checked his surroundings again. His weapon’s safety was off, though he kept his finger clear of the trigger guard.

“Doc, this is Dopey.” Mercer heard the voice over the hearing-aid-sized speaker in his ear. “MMUs are rigged. Three hours and fifty minutes to bingo. Sleep and I are on our way in.”

“Roger, Dope,” Sykes replied.

Bashful reached the top of the foundation wall a moment ahead of Happy. There was a squawking flurry as he rolled over the cornice. The men on the ground tensed as several owls exploded into the night. Bashful remained out of view and Happy froze a foot below the ledge. The seconds dragged.

“All clear,” Bashful finally called over the tactical radio.

Happy finished his climb. They scouted the area immediately around them for five minutes to satisfy themselves that the birds hadn’t alerted anyone before using a muffled nail gun to drive spikes into the stone. They secured pairs of carabiners for the ropes and a moment later the thick lines tumbled to where Sykes waited.

“Grumpy on line one, Snow on two,” Sykes ordered. “Dope, what’s your ETA?”

“I’m fifty yards behind you, Doc.”

“You’re on rope one when Grumpy hits the top. Sleep, you take two when Snow’s secure.” As he spoke, Sykes clipped Bashful’s and Happy’s combat equipment to the ropes so they could be hauled up.

Mercer had been issued special clamps that would allow him to climb the rope as easily as ascending a ladder. He clipped them to the line, took a moment to stare up the rock face and marvel at the skill of the two commandos. To him the wall was as smooth as glass and angled near ninety degrees.

“Move it, Snow,” Grumpy prodded.

Mercer looped the clamp’s strap under his foot, lifted his leg and applied slight downward pressure for the clamp to bite. He stepped up, repeated with his other foot and was instantly two feet off the ground. He slid the clamps strapped to his wrists upward, took another step with his right foot and quickly found his rhythm. The thirty pounds on his back would have become an issue had the climb been higher, but he could take the added strain for a hundred-foot climb.

To his left, Sergeant Lopez, a.k.a. Grumpy, was twenty feet higher on the rope and climbing like a machine, his legs pistoning in perfect synchronization. Mercer didn’t even try to keep up.

At the top of the rope Bashful took a handful of Mercer’s uniform to haul him over the cornice. They were in a wide unsheltered terrace covered in square flagstones. Twenty yards away the monastery loomed above them, supported by a colonnade stretching the length of the building. The structure itself rose in tiers that vanished into the clouds. A soft glow filtered from the single arched doorway. Several upper rooms were also illuminated. To the left and right were small round structures he guessed were chapels. Other than the prayer flags ripping and snapping from atop dozens of poles, nothing moved on the courtyard.

In the minutes it took for the rest of the team to make the climb and haul up the equipment, Mercer kept his back pressed to the low wall surrounding the terrace and watched for movement. Once assembled, the team moved to the lee of one of the small chapel buildings for Sykes’s final orders.

“All right, my little dwarfs, from here on we run out of plan. We’ll go through that door over there and search floor by floor in teams of two. Snow, you’re with me. Grump’s the lone gun on the ground floor. The longer we avoid detection the more we can cover, but by the looks of this place there are probably two hundred rooms in there and Snow thinks there’s a lot of underground stuff too. At some point we’re gonna be spotted. Be ready.”

“Hoo-yah,” the men whispered in unison.

Sweeping around the chapel, the men jogged to the rear of the monastery, rifles at their shoulders, eyes peering into the shadows around the ranks of columns. The double doors stood fifteen feet tall, made of some exotic wood bound with ornate iron straps. There were no locks. With six guns covering him, Grumpy pulled on one of the five-foot-long handles. No matter how well balanced, the door was massive and he had to change his grip to ease it open. The tongue of light that seeped under the door grew. Mercer saw he wasn’t the only soldier sweating despite the chill.

When the door was open wide enough, Sykes tapped Dopey on the head. The commando dropped to his belly and ducked his head for a second-long peek into the building. He looked again, more slowly this time, his head swiveling as he searched the interior.

“Clear,” he said as he crawled forward.

The men followed him in, with Grumpy taking the drag slot. The room was twenty feet square, lit by oil lamps, and had no discernible purpose. The walls were paneled in dark wood while the floor was dressed stone. Other than the lamps, the space was empty. A door on the far side was the only way out.

This time Sykes made the first visual reconnaissance. “This is it,” he whispered. “The next area is open, lots of doors and hallways and a big staircase.”

He shouldered his assault rifle and pulled a silenced pistol. “Mercer, keep on the M-4. You’re my cover. Let’s go.”

Pouring out of the antechamber, the men rushed into the monastery’s central mezzanine, the sound of their advance deadened by the rich carpets on the floor. Grumpy peeled off to the right to begin searching independently while the rest moved to the stairs, climbing hard because of their exposure. Sykes motioned Bashful and Happy to check the second floor as he raced past the landing and continued upward. They skipped the third floor and Dopey and Sleepy were ordered to investigate the fourth. Mercer and Sykes reached the top landing. Halls ran off in three directions. Sykes arbitrarily went left with Mercer at his heels. The hallway was lined with small empty rooms and twisted crazily. Narrow staircases ran down to the floor below, creating a dark three-dimensional maze.

“This is going to take forever,” Sykes said after five minutes of opening doors on empty rooms. He opened yet another. The room was bare but inexplicably had its own set of steps leading down to the fourth floor. “And with all these staircases, someone can easily outflank us once we make contact.”

“Let’s hope there aren’t that many of them.”

Sykes looked at him hard. “Do you believe that?”

“Not for a second.”

Backing out of the room, Mercer bumped into someone. He whirled, bringing the rifle around in a blur. The stock caught the figure on the side of the jaw and dropped him to the floor. Sykes pushed past, his pistol held an inch from the unconscious man’s head as he patted him down with his free hand. His search turned up nothing.

The man was in his sixties, painfully thin and deeply wrinkled. He wore the robes of a monk. His breathing was even, though blood dribbled from a gash on his cheek.

“Jesus!” Sykes hissed. “You didn’t say anything about noncombatants here.”

“I didn’t know.” Mercer’s heart still hammered from the shock of the unexpected confrontation.

Sykes keyed his throat mike. “Dwarfs, this is Doc. We just ran into an unarmed monk. This place may be crawling with civilians. Be on the lookout.” He gestured to Mercer. “Let’s go.”

He hadn’t taken more than three steps when another monk rounded a corner. Sykes raised his Beretta. The monk, who was younger than the first, froze, his dark eyes widening at the sight of two black-clad soldiers inside the monastery, one of them holding a pistol on him, the other an automatic rifle. He dropped to his knees and cried out in Tibetan.

Sykes put his finger over his lips to silence the frightened man, but the gesture did no good. His cries grew louder and sharper. Sykes glanced back to mutter a disgusted oath at Mercer. The monk dropped his hands toward his waist. Mercer saw the movement. He held his fire for an instant, hoping Sykes would turn to see what was happening. There was no time for a warning.

As soon as he saw the gun coming from under the monk’s robe, Mercer fired a single shot. The rifle’s crack echoed down the hall as the man was blown back, scarlet drops spraying from the bullet hole in his forehead.

Sykes turned to see the gunman fall flat. His pistol lay on the floor next to him. “Contact,” he said coolly into the radio on the off chance his men hadn’t heard the M-4’s sharp bark in the otherwise silent monastery. “Shot fired. If they didn’t know we’re here before, they sure know now.” He unscrewed the long silencer from his pistol and tossed it aside before holstering the weapon and reaching for his M-4. “Nice shot,” he said to Mercer. “Thanks. I screwed up.”

He looked down the long corridor, trying to hear if anyone was coming for them. “This is going to get real ugly, real fast. There are seven of us on unfamiliar ground facing an unknown number of enemies. Situations don’t get much worse.”

“Look on the bright side,” Mercer said softly.

“What bright side?”

“I was hoping you’d think of one.”

Sykes took point again as they continued their search for Tisa. Every minute or so one of the other teams would report their progress. So far Grumpy was the only other person to make contact. He’d left an elderly woman bound and gagged in a temple room.

They’d covered no more than a quarter of the top floor in fifteen minutes. Sykes was becoming agitated. Someone must have heard the shot and yet no one was coming to investigate. It meant either no one else was here or they were laying an ambush.

A long burst of automatic fire from downstairs tore the silence. It was countered by the familiar crackle from a pair of M-4s.

“Sit rep?” Sykes shouted into the radio.

There was no immediate reply, and with his concentration split between his men and his own surroundings, he didn’t hear the whispers from around a corner. Mercer did and dove flat, knocking Sykes to the floor as three men charged around the hallway firing Chinese knockoffs of AK-47s. The jagged fire spitting from the barrels gave the dim corridor a hellish cast.

The barrage flew over their heads as Mercer and Sykes lay prone. Mercer fired off a quick burst that raked one attacker across the torso and punched through the shoulder of another. Sykes added his own shots, dropping the uninjured man with a head shot and finishing off the wounded one with a double tap to the chest. The hall vanished behind a swirling veil of smoke as an oil lamp’s contents dribbled like a flaming waterfall onto the carpet. Sykes stayed low as he moved ahead to check around the corner. “Clear.”

Mercer followed, taking the opportunity to change out his magazine for a fresh one even though he’d only fired a half dozen rounds. Before the next bend in the corridor they came across an open door. The room beyond was simply furnished, a bed, a small table and a bureau. A smoky lamp gave the spartan room a funereal cast. A window shutter rattled in its frame. Below the stench of cordite and the growing smell of burning wood from the hallway, Mercer detected a familiar scent. Not a perfume, but something more subtle. He moved to the bed. The blankets were still warm. He drew them to his nose and inhaled. The familiar scent drove a current through his heart.

“Tisa was just here,” he said. “Those men must have been a rear guard to delay us.” He realized bitterly that had he not fired that first unsilenced shot, they might have taken her guards unaware.

“Dwarfs, this is Doc. We just missed the target. We’re still on the fifth floor, west side. Grumpy, cover the main staircase on one — everyone else move west and keep sharp.”

The fire from the spilled lamp was growing as the ancient carpets on the floors began to burn. Flame licked at the walls, burning through the dried timber as if they’d been doused with gasoline. The pitch that had been used to caulk the joints in the wooden ceiling ignited like fuses when the flame touched it. In a few minutes the fire would eat its way into the roof, and once it opened a hole to feed its growing appetite for oxygen, it would burst into a raging inferno. The air was already becoming unbreathable.

Sykes and Mercer slipped on the gas masks they carried. Mercer had to use the flashlight attached to his rifle to cut through the thickening smoke.

More gunfire erupted downstairs.

“Doc, this is Sleep. We just tagged three of them on the fourth, but I think the target has already slipped down to three.”

“Roger that. Bashful, you copy?”

“Affirmative. Hap and I are on our way.”

“Keep them from reaching the ground floor,” Mercer said. “If they escape underground there could be a thousand ways out of the tunnels and we’ll lose them.”

Behind them the fire finished off the ceiling and began attacking the roof supports. The tiles above were extremely heavy and it didn’t take much for the section of roof to start sagging. More wood splintered and a twenty-foot chunk of timber and ceramic tiles crashed to the floor, sending up a shower of sparks and dancing flames. The sudden rush of frigid air tore down the hallways like a hurricane, pushing a wall of fire ahead of it.

Mercer sensed the danger as soon as he heard the roof collapse. He pushed Sykes hard and began to run. The hallway grew painfully bright as the flames raced after them. The heat became unbearable.

Each twist and turn in the corridor slowed the men but not the fire. The walls and carpet were hundreds of years old, tinder dry, and seemed to explode at the slightest brush of flame. They’d be engulfed in seconds.

The stairwell was hidden in a small alcove and Mercer almost missed it as he ran. The sound of the raging fire made it impossible to speak so he tapped Sykes and stopped. He pointed back to the alcove. Sykes didn’t understand, and rather than try to gesture an explanation, Mercer dodged into the fire, ducking low and keeping his weapon ready. He felt along the wall and located the alcove. Sykes bumped into his back. Mercer found the stairs and was about to drop flat to see under the curtain of smoke when the floor lurched. Farther down the corridor a section let go, dropping down to the fourth floor and spreading the fire. Like tipping dominos, more of the floor collapsed, cascading into a growing chasm of flaming debris.

Without knowing what was below the violent swirl of smoke, Mercer threw himself down the stairs, twisting so he used his heavy pack to cushion the blow. The wood steps disintegrated when he impacted and a burst of machine-gun fire raked the spot he’d hit. He fell through the staircase, landing hard but managing to turn onto his belly. A pair of men wearing Western clothes stood a dozen paces away, momentarily confused by what had happened.

Sykes sent a barrage from above, missing completely but drawing their attention. Mercer cleared his weapon of splintered wood and fired. The first gunman dropped, the second remaining on his feet as Mercer pumped more rounds into him. He finally fell.

“Clear,” he shouted and slowly got to his feet.

Sykes had to jump from what little remained of the fifth-floor landing. He hit the ground and rolled. The air here was clearer and both men stripped off the restrictive gas masks.

“Which way?” Sykes asked.

“Looks like they were protecting the hall to the right.”

“Let’s go.”

“Dopey, it’s Doc. We’re on four now. Watch yourself. The fifth is burning and looks like the fire’s spreading.”

“Roger, Doc. It’s already eaten through a few spots.”

“Grumpy, what’s happening on one?”

“Quiet, sir. A couple of old monks came down the main stairs five minutes ago. They didn’t see me and I let them leave the monastery through a side door.”

“Stay there. We’re working our way down. Bash, you seen anything on the second floor?”

“Negative, Doc, but that don’t mean much. There must be fifty staircases here. The target group could have gone through when Hap and I were checking another area.”

“I know,” Doc acknowledged. “Do your best.”

He and Mercer exchanged a worried look and took off at a dead sprint, smoke pouring off their uniforms like vaporous cloaks. Above them the fire raged unchecked.

This floor was much more ornate than the one above. The carpets were thicker, the gilt more plentiful, the rooms better furnished. In one Mercer spied a collection of delicate vases near an open window. They were so thin that he could see the weak orange glow from the upstairs fire through them. He could only guess at their value. Another room was papered in incredible examples of calligraphy and ink and brush paintings.

Tisa’s Order sat on a priceless horde of Chinese art, perhaps the greatest outside government control. The entire structure was a living museum and in an hour or two the centuries-old building, filled with untold treasures, would be nothing but a smoking ruin.

“Doc?” It was Grumpy, whispering so softly that Mercer had to press the speaker deeper into his ear.

“Go, Grump.”

“I’ve got the target. They’re about fifty yards away, crossing the main foyer.”

“How many with her?”

“Twelve to fifteen. Tell Snow his Elvis look-alike has her in a hammerlock.”

Mercer picked up his pace, shedding his heavy pack as he ran. He had enough ammo in the pouches attached to his harness to see this through. Sykes struggled to keep up. He ran blindly down the first staircase he came across. At the landing, a group of monks clustered fearfully near a full-sized statue of Buddha. The reclining figure was covered in gold, and the Enlightened One’s half-closed eyes were fathomless blue cabochon sapphires. It appeared the monks were trying to find a way to save the statue. Mercer was sure they’d debate the rescue until the fire killed them where they stood. He fired a burst from his M-4 into the ceiling above the men and they scattered like pigeons.

Unbelievably, the third floor was more opulent than the fourth. What Mercer didn’t know was that the monastery was laid out so novitiates lived in splendor when they joined the Order, and only as they learned the mysteries and mastered their own desires would they move up the building, shedding luxuries and amenities as they progressed. Only after decades of service would they be allowed to occupy the stark topmost floor. It was the reverse of how the rest of the world worked, where those gaining success could accumulate and enjoy tangible fruits of their labor.

A door just off the landing opened and someone tossed an object into the hallway. Mercer threw himself back, dropping and rolling behind the golden statue an instant before the grenade detonated. The concussion was a hammer slap to his ears. Part of the statue’s gold veneer melted, and drops were blown across the foyer to splattered against the wall like gilded Rorschach blotches. The statue itself, made from the aromatic wood of myrrh trees, had been shredded by the blast. One of Buddha’s jewel eyes was missing; the other had been turned to powder.

The door opened again and a figure ducked his head out before retreating an instant later. Mercer searched for his rifle and saw it lying three yards beyond his reach. A young monk stepped through the door to check his work, a pistol in one hand, a second grenade in the other. He searched the area with his eyes, seemingly unconcerned with the destruction of the priceless statue. He spotted Mercer cowering behind the figure’s pedestal. His gun came up and he fired a snap shot that blew off the remainder of Buddha’s head.

Before he could take better aim, Sykes dropped the monk with a shot from up the stairs. He joined Mercer on the third floor. “Are you okay?”

Mercer barely heard Sykes’s voice over the ringing in his ears. He nodded anyway. With Tisa only two floors below, nothing else mattered. He gathered up his fallen rifle as two more robed men fired at them from down the hall. They were well protected behind a massive cabinet covered in ornate scrollwork. Mercer unclipped one of the concussion grenades he’d been issued. He pulled the pin and held it for a moment before lobbing it down the hall. He and Sykes covered their ears and screwed their eyes closed. In the confined space, the flash/bang had nearly the same effect as a fragmentation grenade.

One of the men staggered from around the tall bureau and collapsed. Mercer charged forward, firing three-round bursts to keep the other pinned. He stopped just short of the cabinet, held his gun around the corner and fired blind. When he looked, the second monk lay in a pool of blood, his woolen robe holed a dozen times.

“Clear,” he shouted back at Sykes and continued on, looking for a stairwell to get him to the ground floor.

Two stories above them, the fire had weakened a secondary support column for the building’s pagoda roof. The massive timber failed under the load of the baked tiles. The result was as if that part of the monastery had been dynamited. Tons of wood and barrel tiles fell inward in an implosion that pulled more material into the crater. The sloping roof lost the counterweight of its own construction and the entire eastern side of the temple sagged. A flood of loosened barrel tiles went crashing into the courtyard in an avalanche that quickly formed twenty-foot mounds of rubble.

The other three sides of the roof swayed, shedding tiles like a fish being scaled as wind tore through the burning structure. Lances of flame climbed seventy feet into the air, fueled by the ancient wood and bellowslike gusts funneling down the valley. As the building shifted, windows exploded from their frames in staccato pulses, first north, then south, until the glass from two thousand panes littered the ground.

Inside, Mercer was thrown against a wall as the floors above began to pancake. One wing of the monastery collapsed entirely, dragging more sections with it. Dust billowed from the heap of wreckage in waves of ash and debris that engulfed the length of the valley. It was so heavy that even the ferocious Alpine winds couldn’t clear it. Mercer ran blindly, feeling the building tearing itself apart.

“Sit rep,” he heard Sykes shouting over the radio.

“Doc, it’s Grumpy. The target’s past me. I couldn’t risk a shot. They went through a door about fifty feet off the main foyer. It’s not an exterior door so I think they went underground.”

“Shit,” Mercer cursed as the others reported their position and progress. Tracking her in the enormous monastery was hard enough. Trying to find her in the warren of tunnels he was sure was under the building would be next to impossible.

As more of the building came down, he expected the defenders to give up the fight and try to save themselves, but as he came to a staircase, someone down on the second floor fired up at him.

Mercer pulled the pins from a pair of flash/bangs and let them roll down the steps. The explosion blew apart the bottom of the stairs and the whole structure nearly collapsed. He loosed a short burst from the M-4, tentatively stepped on the top stair and leapt back as the staircase caved in.

He and Sykes abandoned the ruined stairs in search of another.

“This is Bash, me and Happy are on the first floor. Grump, give me your position.”

Mercer tuned out the radio chatter. The third floor was burning freely now. The air was full of smoke and sparks that singed his skin and burned away tufts of hair. After what seemed like an endless search, the confining hallways opened up to a long balcony overlooking a mezzanine. This wasn’t the main foyer where the team was assembling, but a secondary space that was still larger than the lobby of most hotels. A set of stairs spiraled down along three walls, descending past the second floor and ending at the first. Standing at the railing, Mercer and Sykes swept the area through their rifle sights. It appeared deserted. They were about to descend when the wall behind them disintegrated and a torrent of flame exploded across the landing. They were both lifted from their feet and launched down the stairs.

Mercer tucked himself into a ball as the scalding pressure wave blew him over the steps. Rolling as he fell, he was hit repeatedly by Sykes tumbling right behind him. He caught a boot to the mouth that split his lip and another to the lower back that felt like it had gouged out a kidney. He smashed into a wall hard enough to arrest his headlong plunge and managed to get a hand on Sykes to stop him too. They climbed to their feet.

Mercer cleared his mouth of blood. “You all right?”

Sykes grabbed his trigger finger and winced as he straightened the misshapen digit. It had broken when it got caught in the trigger guard of his assault rifle. “Fine.”

A startled shout from below gave them a second’s warning to fall flat before auto-fire raked the staircase. Tufts of carpet and wood splinters filled the air as rounds tore through the steps. They were pinned. Above them the balcony was an inferno; the newel posts burned like roman candles, and banks of smoke poured over the landing. Below, the unseen gunmen were getting more accurate. Bullet holes appeared in the wall a foot from where Mercer lay.

“Bash — Snow and I are pinned,” Sykes radioed. “I don’t know where the hell we are, but we need help.” He fired over the railing, drawing redoubled counterfire.

“I hear you,” Happy replied. “Hold one.”

“We don’t have one, Hap.”

Down below, one of the fanatical Order members cocked an RPG-7 under his arm and fired the rocket-propelled grenade at the stairs. The explosive-tipped shell impacted well above Mercer and Sykes, but the charge blew the cantilevered stairs from the wall. The entire structure began to tilt, wood pulling from the wall with a sound like an agonized moan. The staircase had been pegged to the wall with two-inch-thick dowels that remained in place as the steps collapsed. Mercer reached across the widening gap between the stairs and the wall and took hold of one of these pegs just as the section he was lying on fell free.

Sykes just managed to grab his own dowel.

The staircase crashed to the first floor, leaving both men hanging on the wall twenty feet above the ground, exposed and unable to defend themselves. The killing shots were a moment away.

But the gunfire came from outside the foyer. Bashful and Happy had engaged.

Mercer didn’t waste a second. If not for the debris of the collapsed staircase he could have let go, but the pile of shattered wood was unstable and even a drop from a few feet invited a broken leg. The dowel projecting from the wall was easily two feet long. He shifted his grip and began to pendulum his body, arcing across the void to reach the next peg in line, about three feet in front of him and two feet farther down the curved wall. He snagged it with his left hand and let momentum swing him down to the third. Like a child on the monkey bars, he looped his way down the wall as bullets sliced crisscrossing tracks through the smoke.

At the bottom he found cover amid the demolished staircase, but he did not shoot at the robed gunmen across the foyer. Sykes was barely halfway down and Mercer couldn’t risk drawing fire until the commando was safe. The instant Sykes dropped next to him, Mercer sighted in on one of the gunmen and put a bullet into his chest. His partner fumbled with another RPG-7. Mercer fired again, catching him in the hip as he pulled the rocket launcher’s trigger. The missile went errant, climbing straight up on a column of flame until it impacted on the burning ceiling three floors above. The explosion seemed to shake the monastery to its foundation. More of the roof came down. One chunk landed on the gunman, crushing him flat.

The shooting suddenly ceased as Bashful and Happy dispatched the last of the killer monks. “I think we’re clear, Doc.”

“Roger.” Sykes stood.

Mercer and he teamed up with the other two and together they ran to the main mezzanine, where Grumpy, Sleepy and Dopey waited to continue the search. The first floor was ablaze now. The floor was littered with smashed tiles and soot lay thick on every surface. If not for the wind howling through the building, the monastery’s interior would have been hotter than a furnace.

“Where’d they go?” Sykes panted. He wiped grime from his face.

Grumpy nodded down a hallway. “There’s a door down there. I saw them as they went through. On the other side it looks like a cave or something.”

Mercer nodded. “This place was built on top of a geologic hot spot, like Yellowstone Park. That must be one of the old lava tubes they went down. I was afraid of this.”

“Why?”

“A typical building only has four sides and so many exits. You can’t get too lost. But down there you take one wrong turn and we could end up miles from where they’ve got Tisa.”

A tremendous crash on the far side of the monastery ended the rest of the discussion. The building was coming down. Either they had to get out now or follow Tisa’s captors into the subterranean labyrinth.

Sykes gestured Grumpy to take point. They ran to the doorway, fanning out as Dopey, their demolitions expert, checked it for booby traps. Finding nothing around the jamb, he stood aside to use the butt of his M-4 to ease the door slightly. It creaked on its hinges, swung open a foot and exploded in a blinding flash.

Dopey remained silhouetted against the blast for a fraction of a second before his body was blown ten feet down the hallway. He tumbled against a column. Much of his uniform had been stripped from his body, as well as most of his skin.

The blast wave rolled over the rest of the men, covering them in powdered stone and wood shavings. Behind them a stone column collapsed and a section of the second floor smashed into the foyer. Flames rose from the debris.

“Goddamn it,” someone screamed as they raced from their cover positions. Sykes was the first one at Dopey’s side. Grumpy and Mercer stayed back, covering the tunnel entrance with the M-4s in case the explosion brought an ambush. The rest of the men clustered around their fallen comrade. Their movements were purely reflex. There was nothing any of them could do. Dopey had been killed instantly.

“That’s two the fuckers got,” Sykes hissed. “I want them. So help me God I want them.”

They approached the still-smoking cave entrance. The men carried their rifles high, shoulders hunched, fingers curled around triggers. The barrels were in constant motion, sweeping corners and shadows.

Beyond the ruined doorway, the tunnel was a circular fissure that ran down into the earth. A few lamps bolted to the ceiling provided dingy light. It was deserted. The men stayed in a tight group as they inched into the shaft. In the tight confines, staying together reduced the risk of friendly fire and allowed them a denser barrage of counterfire if they were attacked.

The passage corkscrewed and twisted as they went, providing blind corners that needed to be scouted and slowed their progress. Mercer could feel Tisa slipping further and further away. How long ago had she come this way? How far ahead was she?

Sykes was leading the party and dropped down on his haunches, holding up a gloved fist. The men stopped and lowered themselves. From around the next bend a bright glow crept up the tunnel. Sykes moved forward cautiously, his boots making a bare whisper on the stone floor.

He paused at the corner. “Jesus. Come on.”

The men ran up. The chamber had once been richly appointed with antiques, desks, lamps, and tall bureaus. Two walls were dominated by bookshelves. Mercer recognized the texts from the single journal Tisa had stolen from Rinpoche-La. These were the watchers’ archives, the books on which scribes had written the oracle’s predictions that people had gone out to verify.

Everything was burning. The shelves, the furniture, and the books. There wasn’t enough air in the room for the flames to grow high, but enough remained for the priceless artifacts to smolder and blacken before their eyes. Mercer was certain that Donny Randall had set the fire to delay them.

As Sykes and his team searched through the growing smoke for an exit, Mercer tried to approach one of the shelves. The heat was intense, as if the room was an oven. He made a grab for one of the books, only to have it disintegrate in a burst of flame and ash. He tried for two more with the same results. At his fingertips was the knowledge to save millions of people and yet it was out of reach.

He unbuckled his combat harness and let it drop to the floor, then stripped off his battle jacket.

“Mercer, what are you doing? We gotta go!” Sykes had found the door out of the chamber.

“I have to save them!” Mercer shouted over the crackle of burning wood and parchment. He scanned the rows, hoping to find how the chronicles were arranged, but couldn’t make out the titles through the smoke. He made a guess that the last books were the most recent. Using his jacket, he swept the last three books from the shelf and bundled them as quickly as he could.

They were as hot as bricks from a kiln and his hands blistered. He ignored the pain, clamping the jacket tightly around the books, trying to smother the embers. He was too slow. Curls of smoke grew from the fabric and it began to blacken. He tried to beat at those spots with his hands, but it did no good. The entire bundle caught fire. Mercer jumped back, momentarily blinded by the flash. The precious collection burned like a torch — lost for all time.

“Mercer, let’s go!”

He turned reluctantly from the chronicles. The remainder of the shelves were sheeted in flames. Centuries of painstaking work was gone. He snatched up his harness and rifle and followed Sykes deeper into the ground.

For ten minutes the men wended their way along the tunnel until they came to another open chamber. This one was much larger than the archive, with towering ceilings adorned with chandeliers and ornately carved furniture. It resembled something out of the palace at Versailles.

Grumpy and Sykes entered first, staying tight to the wall as they made a circuit of the room. The rest of the men covered them from the tunnel’s mouth. A dozen paces in, Bashful barked a warning. Sykes and Grumpy dropped behind a massive urn. Bashful fired to his left, his rounds chewing the frame off a doorway. From across the room a monk stepped from behind a screen and fired back. Grumpy opened up from a prone position, stitching the monk from groin to shoulder.

In seconds other armed monks appeared all over the room. The level of fire grew to a roar that rattled the chandeliers. One of the monks tried to fire a rocket-propelled grenade but was cut down a moment before he got it to bear. Mercer loosed a long fusillade and ran for cover behind a desk. Another monk dashed out to recover the fallen weapon and managed a snap shot that cratered the rock face above the tunnel.

The men tumbled from the opening as stones and rubble began to fall around them. Sykes and Grumpy poured out rounds to cover them and as soon as Mercer changed out his magazine, he fired over the top of the desk, taking two monks and forcing several others to retreat.

No one needed to order an advance. The men knew they had only seconds before the enemy regrouped. In leapfrog dashes they charged across the room, holding their fire as they ran but opening up again when they had cover.

Mercer was halfway across when a grenade was tossed in his path. He jumped through a doorway to his right and backed himself against the wall. The detonation blew the door from its hinge but left him unhurt. He took a moment to look around as the commandos flushed the defenders from the outer chamber.

The room he’d landed in was dominated by a large bed. Tapestries covered the walls. He thought the room was unoccupied until he spied a naked skeletal man propped against the bed headboard. Through mindless eyes he watched Mercer watching him. The pitiable creature began to giggle.

“What the—?”

The giggle turned into a shriek and the madman started to claw at his skin. His long fingernails tore bloody trenches from his arms and legs. He threw the ribbons of flesh at the heavy cerulean drapes hanging across the far wall of the bedroom. The clots of skin and tissue clung to the hangings while droplets of blood trickled down the rich blue fabric. Horrified by what he was seeing, Mercer couldn’t help but notice that the curtain seemed to billow slightly at the spot where the man was throwing bits of his body.

He stayed low and circled around the bed. As soon as the crazed figure saw Mercer was moving to the drapes, he stopped tearing at himself and made a cooing noise. Mercer reached the spot and used his rifle barrel to probe the cloth. There was an opening behind the drape.

“Is that what you were trying to tell me?” he asked the old man.

The man’s expression remained vacant. His toothless mouth hung slack.

Mercer lifted the drape. Behind it was a door that had been left ajar. A warm breeze blew from deeper inside the complex of tunnels. It had a sharp scent, like machine oil.

“Sykes!” Mercer called on his throat mike. “Sykes, can you hear me?” He heard nothing but static. The team had fought their way out of the first room and was doubtlessly chasing the monks farther into the mountain. The intervening rock was blocking the radio signals. “Bashful? Happy? Anyone read?”

He turned to check the bedroom entrance, hoping that at least one of the Delta operators had stayed behind to find him. He’d barely taken a step toward the exit when the old man screamed again and ripped a strip of skin off his hip.

Mercer froze. “Easy, now. I just need to check something.”

He took another step. The lunatic heaved the piece of meat at the secret door and reached across himself to tear another chunk from his shoulder.

“Okay, okay. I get the point. I’ll go through the door.” As soon as he turned back to the portal, the old man settled on his bed, his thin chest rising and falling as fast as a hummingbird’s.

The tunnel beyond the bedroom was much smaller than the lava tube the men had used to get this far, forcing Mercer to crouch. There were no lights, and the lamp attached to his M-4 had been damaged during the fighting. Its beam was an anemic glow that barely cut the gloom.

Every twenty paces or so, Mercer paused, cocking his head to listen for any movement. He sensed more than heard the rhythm of heavy machinery farther down the shaft. The impression coincided with the oil smell that was growing stronger. The warm air felt charged with electricity.

He silently prayed that the old man hadn’t led him down a dead end.

Three hundred yards into the tunnel, the path branched. Mercer paused at the fork, holding his breath, trying to determine where the oily breeze was coming from. He shut off his flashlight.

There! To the left was the faintest trace of light. He stealthily padded down the tunnel. The light grew stronger and the machinery noises seemed to be growing louder too. He could see the shaft was ending in what could be another chamber. He dropped low, crawling on the smooth rock floor, making his movements as slow and silent as he could. His M-4 was at the ready.

Rounding a slight bend, Mercer froze.

Indeed it was a chamber, a cavern that towered more than a hundred feet. The space was longer than a football field, wider too. It was like being at the entrance to an enclosed sports arena. But it was what sat in the center of the cave that stilled his heart and choked his breath in this throat.

He’d never seen anything like it — couldn’t imagine something like it could even be built.

Mercer had found the oracle.