Spartan Gold

CHAPTER 57

They donned their headlamps and climbing harnesses, then Sam boosted himself up the slab and shined his lamp into the entrance.

“It’s straight and level for ten feet then widens out,” he said. “Can’t see any ledges.”

He wriggled feet first into the tunnel, then leaned over and helped Remi up. Once she was perched atop the slab he continued backing inside, Remi crawling after him until they reached the wide part, where he turned around. The ceiling was three feet tall and covered in “popcorn,” tiny clusters of calcite.

Ahead a funnel-shaped hole in the floor was partially plugged by a stalactite. They saw no other openings. They crawled ahead and Sam peeked down the hole. “There’s a platform about six feet below.”

He rolled onto his back and kicked the stalactite until it broke loose from the ceiling. He shoved it away from the hole. “I’ll go,” Remi said, then scooted forward and slipped her legs through. Sam grabbed her hands and lowered her down until her feet found the platform. “Okay, feels solid.” He let go, then a moment later dropped down beside her, reaching up and manhandling the stalactite into the hole after himself. With a grating sound it fell into place. He took a rock screw from his belt and wedged it between the stalactite and the edge of the hole.

“Early warning system,” he explained.

Slightly canted, the platform was ten by six feet and ended at a ledge; over this they saw a thirty-degree diagonal chute. Under the glow of their headlamps it curved down and to the right.

Sam pulled a coil of nine-millimeter climbing rope from his pack, clipped a carabiner on the end, then dropped it over the ledge, letting it clink down the chute. After he’d let out twenty feet of rope the carabiner came to a stop.

“Another level spot,” Sam said. “What we don’t know is how wide.”

“Lower me,” Remi said.

He reeled in the carabiner and secured the rope to her harness. Feet braced against the wall, Sam lowered her down into the chute, letting out slack at her command until she called a halt. “Another platform,” she called up, her voice echoing. “Walls to the left and directly ahead, and a ledge to the right.” Sam heard her boots scuffing over loose rock. “And another diagonal chute.”

“How wide is the platform?”

“About the same as the one you’re on.”

“Move against the wall. I’m coming down.”

He dropped the coil over the edge, then lowered himself down until his feet touched the chute, at which point he dropped onto his butt and slid down to the platform. Remi helped him to his feet. The ceiling was taller, two feet above Sam’s head, and dotted with inch-long “soda straw” stalactites.

Sam walked to the ledge and shined his headlamp down into the next chute. “I’m sensing a trend,” he told Remi.

For the next fifteen minutes they descended, following a series of winding platforms and chute formations until finally they found themselves in a barn-sized cavern with a stalactite-spiked ceiling and walls covered in mottled brown-and-cream-colored flowstone. Barrel stalagmites jutted from the floor like gnarled fire hydrants.

Sam pulled a chem-light tube from his pack, cracked it, and shook it until it glowed neon green. He dropped it behind a nearby barrel so it couldn’t be seen from the platform above.

Directly ahead lay a dead-end wall; to their right were three tunnels, each a vertical fissure in the wall. To their left a curtain of dragon’s-teeth stalactites dropped to within a foot of the floor.

“We’re at least a hundred feet underground,” Remi said. “Sam, there’s no way anyone could have gotten the Karyatids down this way.”

“I know. There must be another entrance. Farther down the pass, I’m betting. Do you hear that?”

Somewhere to their left beyond the dragon’s teeth came the sound of rushing water. “Waterfall.”

They walked down the curtain, stopping to peek beneath it every few feet. At the midpoint they found a section of dragon’s teeth had broken off, creating a waist-high gap. On the other side lay a four-foot-wide rock bridge spanning a crevasse; halfway across a thin curtain of water tumbled into the chasm, sending up a cloud of mist that sparkled in the beams of their headlamps. Barely visible through the waterfall they could see the dark outline of another tunnel.

“It’s incredible!” Remi called over the rush. “Is it from the lake?”

Sam put his mouth beside her ear. “Probably snowmelt runoff. It probably won’t be here in another couple months.”

They walked back the way they’d come.

Somewhere in the distance came a metallic ping, followed by silence, then a series of pings as Sam’s rock screw bounced down the chutes above.

“It may have just slipped,” Remi said.

They crept back to the platform and stood still, listening. A minute passed. Two minutes, then an echoing voice: “Lower me down.”

“Damn,” Sam muttered.

The voice was unmistakable: Hadeon Bondaruk.

“How long do we have?” Remi asked.

“He’ll have more people. Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

“He must think we’re on the right track,” Remi said. “He’s come to claim his prize.”

At that moment there was only a handful of people who knew this cave was the likely hiding place for the columns: Sam and Remi, and Bondaruk and whoever was with him. Bondaruk couldn’t allow them to get out alive.

Sam said, “Then he’s going to be disappointed. Come on.”

They zigzagged their way through the stalagmites to the opposite wall and checked each tunnel in turn. Down the first tunnel and the middle tunnel they could see nothing but darkness. The third one jogged left after six feet. Sam looked at Remi and shrugged. She shrugged back and said, “Coin toss.”

They slipped through the fissure and followed the bend. Remi tripped and fell; she rolled onto her butt, rubbing her knee. Sam helped her up. “I’m okay,” she said. “What was that?”

An object on the floor glittered in her headlamp. Sam walked past her and picked it up. It was a straight, narrow sword about two feet long. Though heavily tarnished, spots of bright steel showed along the blade.

“This is a Xiphos, Remi. It was carried by Spartan infantrymen. My God, they were here.” He shook himself from his reverie and they continued on.

The tunnel continued on for another fifty feet, turning this way and that until merging with a three-way intersection. “Left is the middle tunnel, I think. Leads back to the cavern,” Sam said.

“No, thanks.”

After twenty feet the tunnel began sloping downward, first gently, then more dramatically until they were sidestepping and groping the walls for handholds. The minutes ticked by. They turned a corner and Sam skidded to a stop, sliding a few feet before bumping into a wall.

“Dead end,” Remi said.

“Not quite.”

Where the wall met the floor there was a horizontal split. Sam crouched down and shined his headlamp inside. It was barely eighteen inches high. Cool air gushed from the opening.

“That might be the other entrance,” Remi said. “I’ll check it out.”

“Too risky.”

Behind them a voice echoed down the tunnel: “Anything?” It was K holkov. In turn, two voices called back, “Nothing!”

“Bondaruk, Kholkov, and two others,” Sam said.

“I’m going,” Remi said.

“Remi—”

“There’s less chance of me getting stuck. If I do we’ll need your strength to get me back out. Don’t worry, I’ll just go in a few feet and see what there is to see.”

Sam frowned, but nodded.

She took off her pack and harness. Sam knotted one end of the rope to her ankle and she dropped to her belly and crawled into the split. When she was up to her ankles Sam put his mouth near the opening and rasped, “That’s far enough.”

“Hold on, there’s something just ahead.”

Her feet disappeared and Sam could hear her scrabbling over loose rock. After thirty seconds the sound stopped. Sam held his breath. Finally he heard Remi’s whispered voice: “There’s another cavern, Sam.”

He took off his own pack and belt, stacked them atop Remi’s, then jammed the Xiphos between the packs. He clipped on the rope and gave it a tug. The bundle disappeared through the slit.

“Okay, now you,” Remi called.

Sam lay flat and wriggled into the opening. The sides and ceiling closed around him, brushing his elbows and the top of his head.

Then, behind him, a noise.

He stopped.

Footsteps pounded down the tunnel, followed by the sound of boots skidding on gravel. A flashlight beam danced off the rock walls.

“There he is!” a voice said. “I’ve got them!”

Sam scrambled forward, hands clawing at the floor, boots pushing off the sides.

“You! Stop!”

Sam kept going. Ten feet away was another slit; silhouetted by her headlamp, Remi’s head appeared. Her hands came into view, then a carabiner, at the end of her rope, clattered across the floor toward him. He grabbed, kept crawling. Remi began hauling the rope hand over hand.

“Shoot him!” Kholkov shouted.

There was a roar. The tunnel filled with orange light. Sam felt a sting on his left calf. He grabbed Remi’s outstretched hand, coiled his legs, and shoved hard. He tumbled out headfirst, did a clumsy somersault, and landed in a heap. The gun roared twice more, the bullets ricocheting harmlessly through the slit just above their heads.

Sam rolled over and sat up. Remi crouched beside him and lifted his pant leg. “Just a crease,” she said. “An inch to the right and you wouldn’t have a heel.”

“Small miracles.”

She pulled the first-aid kit from her pack and quickly wrapped the wound with an elastic bandage. Sam stood up, tested the leg, and nodded his approval.

From inside the slit came sounds of crawling.

“We need to block it,” Sam said.

He and Remi looked around the cavern. None of the stalactites was narrow enough to break loose. Something near the right-hand wall caught Sam’s eye. He jogged over. He picked up what looked like a pole, but quickly recognized it for what it was: a spear. The hardwood shaft was amazingly well preserved, coated in a lacquer of some kind.

“Spartan?” Sam asked.

“No, the head is shaped wrong. Persian, I think.”

Sam hefted the spear, sprinted back, and pressed himself against the rock beneath the split. “Turn around and go back,” he shouted.

No response.

“Last chance!”

“Go to hell!”

The gun boomed again. The bullet thunked into the opposite wall.

“Suit yourself,” Sam muttered. He popped up, cocked his arm, and jammed the spear into the opening. It struck something soft and they heard a gasp. Sam jerked the spear back out, then ducked down. They waited, expecting to hear their pursuer calling to his comrade, but there was only silence.

Sam peeked his head up. A man lay motionless a few feet inside the slit. Sam reached in and grabbed his gun, a .357 Magnum revolver.

“I’ll take it,” Remi said. “You’ve got your hands full. Unless you want to part with your poker.” Sam handed her the revolver and she said, “It’ll take them a while to get him out.”

“Bondaruk won’t bother unless he has no other choice,” Sam predicted. “They’re trying to find another entrance.”

They looked around to get their bearings. This cavern was kidney shaped and smaller than the main one, with a twelve-foot ceiling and an exit in the right-hand wall.

Sam and Remi searched among the stalactites but found no other man-made objects.

“How many Persians and Spartans did Bucklin say survived?” Sam asked.

“Twenty or so Spartans and thirty Persians.”

“Remi, look at this.”

She walked over to where Sam was standing beside what looked like a pair of stalactites. They were hollow, their sides reaching up like flowstone flower petals. The spaces inside were perfectly cylindrical.

“Nothing in nature is that uniform,” Remi said. “They were here, Sam.”

“And there’s only one place they could have gone.”

They walked to the wall and ducked into the tunnel, which meandered for twenty feet before opening onto a ledge. Another rock bridge, this one only two feet wide, stretched across a chasm and into another tunnel. Sam leaned right, then left, checking the bridge’s thickness.

“Seems solid enough, but . . .” He looked around. There were no stalactites to rope onto. “My turn.”

Before Remi could protest, Sam stepped onto the bridge. He stopped, stood still for a few seconds, then made his way across. Remi joined him. They wound their way through a tightly packed forest of stalactites, then stepped into an open space.

They stopped short.

Remi murmured, “Sam . . .”

“I see them.”

Caught in their headlamps, the Karyatids lay side by side on the floor, their golden faces staring at the ceiling. Sam and Remi walked forward and knelt down.

Cast with immaculate care, the women’s golden torsos were draped in robes so finely detailed Sam and Remi could see tiny creases and stitching. On each woman’s head rested a laurel wreath; each stem and leaf and bud was a work of art unto itself.

“Who moved them?” Remi said. “Laurent? How could he have done it by himself?”

“That,” Sam replied, then pointed.

Lying beside the wall was a makeshift sled constructed of a half dozen overlapping shields. Made of lacquered wicker and leather, each shield was a five-foot-tall hourglass. They were bound together with what looked like catgut to form a shallow canoe shape.

“We saw one of these at Bondaruk’s estate,” Sam said. “It’s a Persian gerron. Imagine it: Laurent, in here working alone for days, building his sled, then dragging each Karyatid across that bridge. . . . Amazing.”

“But why leave them here?”

“I don’t know. We know there’s a gap in his biography a few years before he hired Arienne and the Faucon. Maybe Napoleon ordered him to try to get the columns out. Maybe Laurent realized he couldn’t do it without help, so he left them behind assuming he’d return.”

“Sam, daylight.”

He looked up. Remi had moved farther down the wall and was kneeling beside a shoulder-wide crack in the wall. The interior had collapsed and was choked with rock. A pencil-sized shaft of sunlight showed at the far end.

“Napoleon and Laurent might have come in this way,” Remi said, “but we won’t be using it to get out.”

“Time to go,” Sam said. “Let’s go get reinforcements.”

They found another opening, this one barely larger than the slit they’d come through earlier. At the other end was an alcove and another side tunnel, this one leading back in the general direction of the main cavern. For twenty minutes they picked their way along until finally they reached an intersection. To the left they heard the sound of rushing water.

“The waterfall,” Remi said.

They crept down the tunnel to the mouth, stopping a few feet short. Directly across from them lay the dragon’s-teeth curtain; to the left, the platform. They could just make out the glow of Sam’s chem light on the wall behind the barrel stalactite.

“I don’t see anyone,” Sam said.

“Me neither.”

They started across the cavern, angling toward the platform.

Sam saw the movement in the corner of his eye a split second before the gun roared. The bullet struck the stalactite beside Sam’s hip. He ducked. Beside him, Remi spun, took aim on the charging figure, and snapped off a shot. The figure spun and fell, but almost rolled onto his side and started to rise.

“Run!” Sam barked. “That way!”

With Remi in the lead they sprinted for the dragon’s teeth, through the gap, and onto the water-slick bridge. Never slowing, Remi crashed through the waterfall, followed by Sam. When they reached the far ledge Remi kept going, ducking into the tunnel, but Sam skidded to a stop and turned back.

“Sam!”

Through the waterfall he could see a figure running across the bridge. Sam dropped the Xiphos and the spear, scooped up a double handful of gravel, and tossed it across the bridge. A second later the figure crashed through the waterfall, his gun extended before him. His lead foot skidded over the gravel and shot out from under him. Eyes wide, his arms windmilling, he stumbled backward, his face upturned into the waterfall. He slammed back first onto the bridge. His leg slipped over the edge and he scrambled with his opposite leg, trying to find purchase. Then he was gone, screaming as he tumbled into the crevasse.

Remi appeared at Sam’s shoulder. He picked up the spear, then stood up and turned toward her. “Two down, two to—”

“Too late for that,” a voice said. “Don’t move a muscle.”

Sam pivoted his head. Surrounded by billowing mist, Kholkov stood on the bridge in front of the waterfall. His nine-millimeter Glock was pointed at them.

Remi whispered, “I’ve got one more bullet. They’re going to kill us anyway.”

“True,” Sam murmured.

Kholkov barked, “Stop talking. Fargo, step away from your wife.”

Sam turned his body slightly, still covering Remi’s gun hand as he very slowly extended the spear toward Kholkov. Instinctively the Russian’s eyes flicked toward the spearhead. Remi didn’t miss the moment. Instead of raising the .357 to shoulder height, she simply lifted it to waist level and pulled the trigger.

A neat hole appeared in Kholkov’s sternum; a red stain spread across the front of his sweater. He collapsed to his knees and gaped at Sam and Remi. Sam saw Kholkov’s gun hand twitch, saw the Glock start to rise. Spear held before him, Sam charged onto the bridge. Kholkov’s fading reflexes were no match for the spear’s seven-foot reach. The steel head plunged into Kholkov’s chest, then out his back. Sam leaned forward, wrenched the Glock from Kholkov’s hand, then planted his feet and gave the spear a twist. Kholkov tumbled over the side. Sam stepped to the edge and watched him spin out of sight.

Remi walked up. “Couldn’t have happened to a nastier person.”

Back in the cavern, they picked their way through the stalactites, frequently checking behind and to the sides on their way back to the platform. Bondaruk was nowhere to be seen. They half expected him to step from the darkness of one of the tunnels, but nothing moved. Aside from the distant rush of the waterfall, all was quiet.

They stopped at the platform. “I’ll play ladder this time,” Sam said, then knelt down and formed a stirrup with his hands. Remi didn’t move.

“Sam, where’s the chem light?”

He turned. “It’s right over—”

Behind the barrel, the green glow of the chem light shifted.

Sam whispered out of the side of his mouth, “Run, Remi.”

She didn’t argue, but turned and started sprinting back across the cavern toward the tunnels across from the dragon’s teeth.

Ten feet in front of Sam, Bondaruk rose up. Like a cougar attracted by a fleeing hare, he spun, raised his gun, took aim on her.

“No!” Sam shouted. He jerked up the Glock and fired. The bullet missed Bondaruk’s head, grazing past his cheek and slicing through his ear. He screamed, turned, fired. Sam felt a hammer blow in his left side. A wave of white-hot pain rushed through his torso and exploded behind his eyes. He stumbled backward and fell. The Glock clattered across the floor.

“Sam!” Remi shouted.

“Stop right there, Mrs. Fargo!” Bondaruk barked. He came out from behind the barrel stalactite and stalked over and leveled his gun with Sam’s head. “Come back here!” Bondaruk commanded.

Remi didn’t move.

“I said, come back here!”

Remi put her hands on her hips. “No. You’re going to kill us anyway.”

Sam lay still, trying to catch his breath. Through the rush of blood in his ears, he tried to focus on Remi’s voice.

“Not true. You tell me where the columns are and I will—”

“You’re a liar and a murderer, and you can go to hell. You may find the columns without us, but you’re going to have to do it the hard way.”

With that, Remi turned on her heel and began walking. Her unexpected defiance had the desired effect.

“Damn you, come back here!”

Bondaruk turned, bringing the gun to bear on her. Sam took a deep breath, set his jaw, then sat up. He raised the Xiphos above his head and chopped downward. The blade caught Bondaruk at the wrist. Despite having gone unused for two-and-a-half millennia, the Spartan sword still bore enough of an edge to sever bone and flesh.

Bondaruk’s hand came off and dropped to the ground. He screamed and clutched the stump with his opposite hand. He collapsed to his knees.

Remi was there seconds later, kneeling beside Sam. “Help me up,” he said.

“You need to stay still.”

He rolled over, got to his knees. “Help me up,” he repeated.

She did so. Grimacing against the pain, Sam straightened up. He pressed his palm into the bullet wound. “Is my back bloody?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s good. Through and through wound.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call that good.”

“Everything’s relative.”

Sam walked over to Bondaruk, kicked the gun away, then grabbed him by his jacket collar. “Stand up.”

“I can’t!” he gasped. “My hand!”

Sam heaved Bondaruk to his feet. “Mr. Bondaruk, how do you feel about heights?”

“What does that mean?”

Sam looked questioningly at Remi. She thought for a moment, then nodded grimly.

Sam began half dragging, half walking him across the cavern toward the dragon’s teeth.

“Let me go!” Bondaruk shouted. “What are you doing?”

Sam kept walking.

“Stop, stop, where are we going?”

“We?” Sam replied. “We’re not going anywhere. You, on the other hand . . . you’re taking the express elevator to hell.”