Part 9 (1/2)
She let go and laughed. The skin on his face flushed purple, but his scarred lips curved in a carnal smile.
From a case at her side she took out a hypodermic and a vial filled with a pale yellow fluid. She jammed the needle into the vial and extracted it, then jabbed the hypo into a bulging artery in her left arm and pressed the plunger.
”That stuff's going to kill you,” Belisarius muttered.
She shuddered as the steroid solution hit her system. The juice made her feel like a G.o.ddess, invincible. ”We all gotta go sometime.”
Then she shot to her feet, grabbed Belisarius by the s.h.i.+rt, and smashed her mallet-like fist into his face.
___.
Forty minutes later, Belisarius lay on his back in bed, looking like a man who had just had every bone in his body broken by a medieval rack. Blood trickled from the sides of his mouth.
Beside him, propped up by three pillows, Jaz plunged a second needle into her bicep. ”You ready, lover?” she asked.
He nodded. Even though his tortured muscles screamed with pain, his mind was sharp and hungry. With a gasp, he pushed himself to a sitting position.
Flipping open a laptop, she accessed a schematic of the Gakkel Ridge, surrounded by an oval of six blinking lights. She tapped a series of keys, then brought up another file and entered a code.
Immediately a time readout flashed on the screen, counting down the seconds from ten.
When the clock reached one, she glanced over at Belisarius and grinned. ”Bombs away!”
The screen glowed with the billowing graphic of a fiery explosion.
___.
Arctic Ocean Two miles below the ice-packed surface of the Arctic Ocean, inside the t.i.tanium case secured in the icebreaker hulk's cargo hold, the signal from Jaz's laptop triggered the fuse on an embedded detonator. A millisecond later a deep water-engineered thermobaric bomb erupted in a ma.s.sive fireball of white heat, fusing in a t.i.tanic chain reaction with explosions from the other five sunken s.h.i.+ps, instantaneously boiling the sea water to twelve thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
BOOK TWO.
NINETEEN.
Siwa THE shockwave of the twin explosions thundered through the total darkness, battering Skarda's eardrums. An acrid stench made his eyes water. On the stairwell a wall of limestone boulders collapsed under its own weight, sending seething billows of dust boiling toward him.
Coughing, he groped in his pack for the LED and switched it on, playing the beam over April's unconscious face. Her eyes were closed, but her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose and fell in a regular rhythm. Twisting around, he aimed the shaft of light at Flinders, a hazy shape in the dust cloud.
”You okay?” he called out.
Without saying anything, she scuttled toward the source of the light. Her face was streaked with tears and grime. Her shoulders shook, her eyes wide with terror. ”We're sealed in. We're going to die.”
”We're not going to die.” Even though he was fighting down a surge of panic, he kept his voice empty of emotion. Emotions weren't going to help them get out of here. ”I'm going to need you to pull yourself together, okay?”
”You think there's a way out?” A wave of hope washed over her face. Her eyes bored into his.
He showed her a confident smile. ”There's always a way out. The only way to lose is to give up. Our first job is to get April back on her feet.” He handed her the lamp. ”Here. Hold this while I clean her up.”
Flinders took the LED, s.h.i.+ning it on April's head while Skarda checked the pack. The woman had left them the lamp, the tripod, and a first-aid kit. Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he examined the wound. It was a deep gash, running from her temple into the hairline. With a surgical scissors he snipped off clumps of her dark hair, then cleaned the wound with antibacterial solution and taped it with Vet-Wrap.
She let out a low groan. Her eyes opened. A split second later she had rolled up on one knee, her gaze probing the darkness. Her right hand reached up and touched the bandage.
”You got hit by a chunk of rock,” Skarda told her. ”The woman blew the entrance. We're sealed in.”
She accepted the news without emotion.
He helped her to her feet and she glanced over at Flinders. ”Is there another way out of here?”
Flinders was still on her knees, staring at them with an unfocused expression. Her shoulders shook. ”I don't know.”
Bending over, Skarda took her arm while she got her feet under her. He knew he had to keep her moving, to give her a sense of direction. She was close to shock.
April glanced at the rubble-choked staircase. ”Well, we're not getting out that way. Let's head for the back.” Striding ahead, she stopped suddenly and swung around, a thought striking her. ”Wait a minute,” she said to Flinders. ”Didn't you say the sibyl used a speaking tube to give her oracles at the altar?”
Flinders stared at her, not comprehending the implication of her question. ”Yes...”
”Could she have been down here when she gave her prophecies? So the other end of the speaking tube was down here?”
”I guess so...”
”Then how did she get down here? The altar lid would have been a pain to use on a regular basis and she wouldn't want to risk being seen out in the open like that.”
Flinders adjusted her gla.s.ses, her thoughts clearing. ”Maybe...” she started. A sudden flare of realization darted across her face. ”You're right! Sure!” She laughed out loud. ”Did you see all those limestone ridges in the background outside? I'll bet they're just riddled with caves. They could easily have dug a tunnel out to one of them for the sibyls to sneak in from the outside!”
”So what are we looking for?” Skarda asked.
”A doorway, I guess. Some kind of opening to a tunnel.”
”Let's move.”
___.
The palm-log door had rotted to dust millennia ago, but the copper hinges were still attached to the sheath of copper plating that had once covered the wood. While Flinders bent close to examine them, Skarda shone his LED into the mouth of a narrow pa.s.sage whose darkness swallowed up the light.
April had already stepped into the opening, her boots crunching on fallen limestone rubble.
Skarda tugged on Flinders' arm, but she paid no attention. Her fingers caressed the ancient metal. ”I can't tell you how incredible this is,” she said.
”Come on,” Skarda insisted. ”We can come back when this is over.”
Reluctantly, she turned away from the ancient plating.
From the tunnel, April called out. ”Looks clear!”