The Last Templar

Chapter 36

Tess heard a loud gunshot, which was followed by what sounded like an angry cry.

Someone was hurt. Then footsteps were rushing back toward the trapdoor. She wasn't sure if it was Vance or someone else, but she wasn't about to just stand there and wait to find out.

She dived across the chamber, grabbed her bag off the table, and pulled out her cell phone. In the faint glimmer of the candles, the LED screen lit up like a flashlight, only to inform her there was no signal in the cellar. It didn't really matter; she didn't know the FBI's number by heart and, while dialing 911 was an option, she knew it would take too long to explain what was happening. Besides, she didn't have a clue where she was.

Help, Pm in a, cellar somewhere in the city.

I think.

Perfect.

Still dazed, and with her heart thumping loudly in her ears, she darted nervous glances around the chamber, then remembered the shuttered opening she'd spotted by the table. On impulse, she cleared some of the clutter off its surface, scrambled up onto the table, and pulled wearily at the planks of wood covering the cavity, trying to loosen them. They wouldn't give. She pounded at

them helplessly, but they held tight. Then she heard a sound as the cellar door opened. Turning, she saw legs beginning to descend. She recognized the shoes. It was Vance.

Her eyes quickly scanned the room and settled on the Taser Vance had discarded. It was lying there on the corner of the table nearest to her behind a stack of books. She grabbed it and leveled it at him, her hands shaking as his face emerged from the darkness, his eyes staring calmly into hers.

"Stay away from me!" she yelled at him.

"Tess, please," he shot back with an urgent, calming gesture, "we need to get out of here."

"We? What are you talking about? Just stay away from me."

He was still moving toward her. "Tess, put the gun down."

Panicking now, she pulled the trigger—but nothing happened. He was now less than ten feet away.

She turned the gun, glaring at it, her eyes straining to figure out if she had missed something. He was moving faster now, coming at her. Fiddling desperately with the gun, she finally spotted the small safety and flipped it up. A small red light flashed at the back of the gun. She raised it up again and saw that she had also somehow activated its laser, which was beaming a tiny red mark onto Vance's chest. The dot danced left and right, mirroring her trembling hands. He was very close now.

Pulse racing, she shut her eyes and pulled the trigger, which felt more like a rubber-coated button than what she imagined was the cold steel of a handgun's trigger. The Taser came to life with a loud pop, and Tess shrieked as the two metal probes and their stainless steel barbs came blasting out of its front, trailing thin wires behind them.

The first probe just missed its mark, flying past his chest and disappearing into the darkness, but the second bit into his left thigh. Fifty thousand volts of electricity seared into him for five seconds, overriding his central nervous system and triggering incontrollable contractions in his muscles. He jerked and arched upward as the burning spasms erupted through his body and his legs gave way.

He collapsed on himself, helpless, his face contorted with pain.

Tess was momentarily confused by the cloud of tiny confetti-like ID disks that exploded out of the cartridge as she fired the gun, but the groans of Vance, lying there writhing in pain, soon whipped her back to her immediate predicament. She thought of stepping past him and heading up the stairs, but wasn't too keen on getting any closer to him. She also wasn't sure who Vance had confronted up there and was too scared to find out. She turned again to the shuttered opening and kicked and pulled at the panels until at last one of them loosened. She yanked it off, used it to jimmy the others loose, and looked in through the hole she'd made.

Beyond stretched a dark tunnel.

With nowhere else to go, she started to climb through the opening, then looked back, saw that Vance was still writhing in pain, and saw the encoder and the sheets, the manuscript, lying there, within reach.

They were beckoning her, too enticing to resist.

Surprising herself, she climbed back in and snatched the pile of documents, stuffing them into her bag. Something else caught her attention: her wallet, lying among the pile of clutter she'd rashly thrown off the table. She took a step to retrieve it when, from the corner of her eye, she saw Vance stir. She hesitated for a nanosecond before deciding she had taken enough of a risk as it was and had to get out of there now. She spun on her heels, clambered back into the tunnel, and hurried forward into the darkness.

***

Crouched low, her head brushing the top of the tunnel, she was perhaps thirty yards in when it opened up into a wider and higher shaft. She had a sudden, disconcerting flashback to an old Mexican catacomb she had visited as a student. The air smelled even damper in here, and looking down she saw the reason. A narrow stream of black water flowed down the center. Tess stumbled along its edge, her feet slipping on the damp, worn stonework. The bitingly cold water swirled over the tops of her shoes. Then the stream ended, the water cascading down maybe five or six or more feet into another, still bigger tunnel.

Glancing back, Tess listened. Was that just water she heard, or was it something else? Then a harrowing shout echoed in the darkness.

"Tess!"

Vance's voice bellowed from behind. He was back on his feet and coming after her.

Taking a breath, she lowered herself over the ledge until her arms were at full stretch, water pouring into one sleeve of her coat, soaking her clothing and her body. Now, thankfully, the outstretched toes of her

shoes touched solid floor and she let go. Turning, she saw that this time, the stream of water was deeper and wider. A filthy sludge was being carried along on its surface from which rose a smell so foul that she knew she was in a sewer. After a couple of attempts to walk along the edge, she gave up. The curve was too steep, the surface too slippery. Instead, closing her mind to what she knew the water carried in its oily grasp, she went down the center, the water now almost to her knees.

From the corners of her eyes, she suddenly glimpsed movement and color and turned her head.

Small specks of reddish light gleamed in the darkness, moving, and she heard a chittering noise.

Rats were scurrying along the edges of the stream of sewage.

"Tess!"

Vance's voice thundered along the damp tunnel, bouncing off the walls, seeming to come from all sides at once.

A few more yards, and she realized that ahead of her, the darkness wasn't quite as intense.

Stumbling awkwardly, she kept on moving as fast as she dared. No way could she risk falling facedown into this. When, at last, she reached the source of the light, it was coming in from above.

From a sidewalk grille. She could hear people up above. Edging closer, she could actually see them, walking twenty feet overhead.

She felt a surge of hope and started yelling. "Help! Help me! Down here! Help!" but no one seemed to hear her, and, if they did, they simply ignored her cries. Of course they're ignoring you. What did you expect? This is New York City. Taking deranged cries from the sewers seriously was the last 80

thing anyone from around here would do.

Tess realized that her shouts were echoing down the tunnel ahead of her and behind her. She listened. Some sounds were closing in on her. Sloshing sounds, and heavy splashes. She wasn't about to stand there and wait for him to reach her. She set off again, completely heedless now of the water and the filth, and almost at once reached a fork in the tunnel.

One passageway was wider, but it was darker and looked wetter. Easier to hide in? Maybe. She chose that one. Barely fifty feet in and it looked as though she had made the wrong choice. There, in front of her, was a blank brick wall.

It was a dead end.