Dourado

CHAPTER 26

Coming back out of the tunnel, Dane led the group to the left, moving back toward the main room.

“So, we’re headed east?” Bones asked.

Dane nodded and guided them down the hall. When they reached the end, where the passage terminated at the spiral staircase, they looked down the hall to the right. Meriwether lay where they had left him, obviously dead. Nearby, another body lay on the ground.

“He got him one,” Bones said. “Good for him.”

They walked over to where their friend lay. Dane knelt and checked Meriwether’s pulse, confirming that their comrade was, indeed, deceased. A lump in his throat, he opened the top button of the Admiral’s shirt, and removed his dog tags. “I’ll take care of these,” he whispered, tucking them into his pocket. Then, he reached down and picked up the SIG P-210, and handed it to Kaylin.

The blonde looked down sadly at their fallen friend. She brushed at her eyes with the back of a sleeve, and turned away from Dane and Bones. Regaining her composure, she cleared her throat and turned back to face them. “You were right, Bones,” she said. “We’ve just looped around.”

“That means the only way is up,” Bones said. “Where the bad guys are.”

“What about the bad guy over here?” Dane asked. He walked a few steps to inspect the man whom Meriwether had shot. He was surprised to see that this man was not clad in black, like the others. Instead, he was garbed in bulky, loose-fitting brown pants, and a pullover, white cotton shirt. The shirt was of an odd cut, with no collar and blousy sleeves. The man’s features were obviously middle-eastern, but Dane could tell no more.

“The guys who were shooting from upstairs, I presume,” Bones said. “We’ve got to get up there and somehow get past them.”

“Can’t we get across the water?” Kaylin asked.

“Too wide,” Dane said, shaking his head, “and the current’s too strong for us to swim across. We’ll have to chance it upstairs.” He led them back up the hall to the stairwell. “Let’s re-orient ourselves,” he said, turning back to face them. “We’re on the northwest corner of the main room. Got it?” Both nodded, and he turned and led them upward.

Silently, they crept up the stairs, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps. The turn was so tight that they would be right on top of anyone coming in their direction before seeing them. The narrow staircase, hewn out of the rock, curled up and to the left. The walls were smooth, like those of the lower halls, broken up only by the occasional glowing stone high on the outside wall. Dane winced as he took each step. The climb made him feel every pain in his feet, knees, and back, in a way that level ground did not. He gritted his teeth and focused on his anger, allowing his bitterness at the loss of Meriwether to overcome his pain. Slowly, he continued the seemingly interminable upward trek.

When they reached the top of the stairs, Dane peered out cautiously. They were at a corner of the upper hallway. He looked to his left. The hall ran the approximate length of the main chamber, turning left at the end. Halfway down the hall, an arched window was cut in the inside wall at chest level. This must have been one of the windows from which the snipers had fired down upon their pursuers. Directly across from the window was a high, arching door set in the outside wall. Dane could not see into the darkness beyond. Looking around the other corner, he could see that this upper hall definitely formed a hollow, walled balcony that wrapped around the big chamber below. This hallway also had a window at the center of the inside wall, and a doorway on the outside. He turned and motioned for Bones and Kaylin to follow him.

Stepping out of the stairwell, Bones surveyed the area, just as Dane had. “Another square,” he whispered. “But where are the bad guys?”

Dane shrugged, and led them down the hallway to the left, moving south. Reaching the window at the hall’s midpoint, he glanced through, surveying the courtyard below. The black-clad bodies of their pursuers still lay at the top of the steps on the far side of the room. Nothing moved, save the water flowing through the canal in the center. He turned to see Bones peering into the dimly-lit room on the opposite side of the hall. Bones nodded and tilted his head toward the doorway. Rifle at the ready, Dane hurried inside, with Bones behind him.

The crystals in this room emitted only the faintest light, but it was enough to see that they were standing in what looked like a quarter of a sphere hewn into the rock with laser-like precision. Carved into the rounded ceiling above, he thought he could just make out familiar constellations.

A whisper of warning from Bones brought Dane’s head down in time to see that he was staring down into a well like the ones in front of and behind the Goliath carving outside. Outside. The place in which he and his friends now found themselves was so surreal as to make it strange to think that somewhere up above, the world was going about its business. Kaylin hurried up, and shone her flashlight down into the well. Unlike the other wells they had seen, this one was only a few feet deep.

“What’s back there?” Bones asked, pointing into the gloom. Kaylin redirected the light to reveal a lidded, stone coffin. It was every bit as large as those of Goliath and his brothers. They moved forward to examine it. Kaylin shone her light across the lid. Something was carved in the surface, the deep shadows cast by the flashlight’s beam distorting the image. As the beam fell directly onto the image, Kaylin gasped.

The being carved into the coffin lid was like no other Dane had seen. It was tall, much like Goliath, but impossibly slender. Its arms were disproportionately long for its body, and ended in large hands with long, wormlike fingers. The odd appearance did not end there. Its head was too big by a third. Garbed in a simple robe, the odd being had large, round eyes and a serene face. Just looking at it gave Dane a strange sense of inner calm, as if this were the gentlest of beings.

“Little green men,” Bones whispered. “Well, big green men in this case.”

He placed a tanned hand on the lid and pushed. With a soft, scraping sound, it gave way, exposing a sliver of darkness where the lid shifted from the lip of the coffin. “It’s not beveled,” Bones whispered in surprise. He pulled his own small flashlight from his pocket and shone it down into the coffin. Dane and Kaylin hurried over to look inside, but Bones turned the light out before they could reach his side. He looked up, the disappointment evident on his face even in the semi-darkness. “Empty,” he said.

The crystals on the wall had absorbed enough stray light to cast a dusk-like glow around the room. Aside from the well and coffin, the room was obviously empty. Nonetheless, they made a quick search, looking for any sort of hidden egress, but they found nothing.

Leaving the room, Dane led them to the right. They moved counterclockwise around the second story hall, turning left at each corner. They found that each hallway was exactly like the one before: courtyard window at the center of the inside wall, doorway to an empty burial chamber on the outside wall. At each inside corner, a spiral staircase wound down to the first floor.

The differences between the crypts, as Kaylin called them, were few. The rooms on the north and south sides of the main chamber lay directly above the underground river. The wells in these rooms emptied down into the water. The biggest differences lay in the images carved on lids of each empty sarcophagus. In the second room, they found the image of a squat, simian-looking hominid with a prominent brow and short, thickly-muscled legs. Its face was angry, and exuded violence. In the third room, they found a representation of a small creature, no more than four feet tall. In terms of proportion, the body was very much like that of a human child. The features of its narrow face were those of an adult, though its eyes were vaguely impish.

They stood now in the room that lay upstream of the main chamber. The carving on this sarcophagus was that of an angel, but unlike any angel Dane had ever seen. No trumpet-bearing herald or Valentine cherub, this creature was fully ten feet tall, with broad, powerful shoulders, a narrow waist, and muscular legs. It wide forehead shaded narrow, slightly upturned eyes. Wrapped around its shoulders and cloaking its body were huge wings, rendered in such fine detail that Kaylin reached out and stroked the feathers.

“They’re all empty,” Bones said. “I don’t get this place. All of these halls are just alike. I guarantee you that downstairs on the other side of the river is nothing but a mirror image of the side we were on. Just an empty, square tunnel.”

Something clicked in Dane’s mind. “It’s a deathtrap,” he said, suddenly quite certain of himself. Anyone who finds this place just runs around in circles while whoever is defending the place picks you off one-by-one.”

“Why haven’t they gotten us yet?” Bones asked. He paced to the open doorway as he spoke, looking into the hallway.

“Maybe they’re so busy slugging it out with the other guys that they haven’t really paid us much attention,” Dane said, shrugging. The answer was not satisfactory, but he had no other at the moment. “That, and we’ve been lucky.”

“Why did they ever build this place?” Bones said, turning back to face Dane. “If it’s a killing ground, then it has to exist to protect something else.” A faint tremor shook the room.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Kaylin interrupted, putting a slender hand on the sarcophagus as if to balance herself. “I’m sure I’ll wonder about it later, but all I want right now is to get out of here.” As if to punctuate the point, a quick burst of gunfire, the first they had heard since reaching the second level, echoed down the corridor.

“Where do we go?” Bones asked. “The tunnel’s blocked.”

Something in what Bones had said earlier gnawed at Dane’s consciousness. The thought broke through with a sudden and surprising clarity. “I’ve got it!” he said. “If the two halves of the first level are mirror images of one another, then there should be…”

“A tunnel leading back to the well!” Kaylin said, completing his thought. “There was more than one tunnel leading off of the well. The guys who shot at us in the main room must have come in that way.”

“But won’t they be guarding the exit?” Bones asked.

“They weren’t guarding the other one,” Dane said. If the battle between the two yet-unidentified groups continued, perhaps the three of them could slip through the net. “You take the lead. I’ll bring up the rear. With my legs the way they are right now, I can’t keep up with you anyway.”

“We’re not going to leave you,” Bones said.

“No matter what happens, you are to get Kaylin out of here. I’ll take care of myself,” he gave Bones what he hoped was his most commanding stare.

Bones stared back for a moment before shrugging. “Let’s try it,” Bones said. He led the way out of the room. Turning left, they ran to the end of the hall, where it turned to the right. Like the other three corners, a stone staircase spiraled down from the inside corner. They mounted the steps, moving with care and listening for any sounds of approaching enemies. They were on the northeast corner of the big room, Dane thought, thus putting them as close as possible to where the exit tunnel should be. As they wound their way down to the bottom, he thought he heard distant shouts coming up from below. He bit his lower lip and steeled himself for another firefight.

They hit the bottom of the stairs at a trot. Bones looked around quickly and shouted, “Run!” He sprinted out the door, spraying bullets down the hall to the right.

“I’ll cover you!” Dane called to Kaylin. Taking his Walther in his left hand, he reached around the doorway and blindly fired three shots down the hall. Then, giving Kaylin a push, he leapt out in front of her, opening up with his weapon.

Bones had taken out one man. He lay limp on the ground, his rifle near him. Two others, wearing the same style white shirt and brown pants as the man Meriwether had killed, charged down the hall, firing erratically. Dane fired another burst, then turned and ran around the corner. Ahead of him, Kaylin reached the end of the hall and disappeared to the left. He had been right. There was a tunnel there!

Behind him, another shot rang out, and a voice shouted in English for him to stop. Is this guy kidding me? Dane thought. He dodged right, then left, thankful that the pursuers did not have automatic weapons. He was within twenty feet of the tunnel when another tremor shook the ground. This one was the strongest yet. He fell hard, his Walther clattering from his grip. He still held on to the rifle, and turned and fired another burst at his pursuers, who had fallen to the ground. Both had lost their weapons, and Dane, still oozing with cold anger over Meriwether’s death, took them out without compunction. He hopped to his feet and turned around. What he saw made him curse. The mouth of the tunnel had collapsed.