The Hypnotist

FORTY-NINE

The stone tunnel had an unpaved dirt floor littered with hundreds of rodent skeletons.

“How much of the movie did they shoot down here?” Richmond asked Lucian as they steadily moved forward.

“It wasn’t that good a movie. I don’t remember the details, Matt. It’s amazing the way your mind works.”

“My mind? Amazing isn’t exactly what I was thinking.”

“I’m going to have to rent this flick when we get out of here,” O’Hara said, his voice echoing in the narrow passageway. “Isn’t this place too small to get all that equipment in?”

“They probably shot this part with a handheld,” Jeffries said.

“Well, listen to you! When was the last time you shot a movie?” Richmond asked.

“My brother-in-law is a cameraman.”

“Here we are,” Lucian called out as he reached the end of an S curve and shone his light up to the ceiling, revealing a second iron staircase exactly like the one they’d just used, but this one offered a dozen steps leading up to a hatch. “I’d better change places with one of you. If that’s stuck I won’t be able to put much strength against it.”

Richmond climbed up the stairs and pushed. Nothing budged. He tried again. Wood creaked. “One of you want to get up here and help me? I know there’s not much room, but I’m not going to be able to move it on my own.”

O’Hara climbed up, and together he and Richmond shoved the hatch open. It fell out with a loud crash. So did the radio that O’Hara had been carrying. Lucian tried to catch it as it whizzed by him, but it was beyond his reach.

They entered. The shack was six feet wide and unfurnished. Just a room with a hole in the floor and a door cut into one wall.

“Okay. Looks like we’re almost out of here,” Lucian said. “God knows what’s on the other side of this door so everybody needs to be on alert.” His shoulder and his head were both throbbing, and he knew his voice was sharper than it needed to be. In the flashlight’s gleam he could see they had their guns drawn.

Richmond opened the door and Lucian stepped out first, relishing the cool evening air on his face. Twenty feet away was a thicket of trees that would offer camouflage. He pointed to it, dropped to his knees and, gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, crept forward. Was this the same grove they’d seen when they’d scrutinized the area upon arriving almost an hour before? There was no way to tell.

Continuing, careful not to come down hard on anything that might make a crack or rustle, the team members skulked ahead, all of them reaching the edge of the tree line in less than a minute.

“What the hell is that?” Richmond whispered, pointing at the fence in front of them.

“I should have realized…from the movie…everything is the same. That’s an aluminum blockade that went up around the building as soon the explosion hit.”

“Electrified?” Richmond asked.

“Not in the movie.”

“And the building-where Shabaz and the sculpture are-is that on this side or that side? Are we locked in? Are they?”

“If I remember it right, we should be on the outside now, Shabaz and the sculpture on the inside.”

O’Hara rounded the curve ahead of everyone else and almost immediately there was a burst of shouts. But Lucian couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. The sudden pulse of a helicopter drowned out all the words.

When he rounded the same curve he saw Gary Fulton and the rest of the agents running toward them.

“Good to see you’re safe,” Fulton screamed over the chopper. “What the hell happened in there?”

Once the agents had been airlifted back over the fence and made their way to the building where their investigation had started they found the FedEx truck still parked in front. According to St. Christopher, the sculpture was also still inside. So were five people.

Richmond and Lucian stood in the doorway for the second time that night, but now they knew who they were looking for. Using a bullhorn he’d grabbed from one of the guys on the chopper, Lucian shouted, “Give it up, Shabaz. We’ve got a dozen agents outside. A helicopter overhead. Let’s cut the games short.”

There was no sound and no movement. Lucian repeated his message. When there was still no response, they proceeded inside cautiously, hugging the wall, working their way to the atrium where they found the two guards, still cuffed and secured.

Gun drawn, Lucian flung open the door to the screening room. “FBI. Drop your weapons, Shabaz!”

The guards and the fake FedEx truckers were all there, right where the FBI had left them.

The crate was there, in the same state-partially unpacked-with the sculpture’s swaddled head exposed.

And there was a fifth man, his back to the door, who was in the process of turning around. But it wasn’t Shabaz. It was a stranger, wearing a baseball cap with an emerald lightning bolt zigzagging across the front.