. . . thicker there.
. . . two prints on #5.
Eve expertly interpreted the proper order of digits.
Monk relayed them to Gray, who punched them in.
With the last button pressed, a hydraulic system engaged. Locking bars retracted and the door swung into the next space, like a giant steel hand welcoming them into the Crucible’s stronghold.
Gray followed the swing of the vault. He hauled Monk under one arm and had his SIG raised in the other. The space was a steel-walled vestibule. Ahead, a hall carved out of raw granite extended away.
“Not that way yet,” Monk said, sharing what Eve told him. “To the right of the door.”
Gray turned to where a huge red lever protruded from a steel plate in the wall. It was stuck in an up position with a red light shining above it.
Monk rolled his head at the lever. “Eve says to pull it—”
“Got it.”
Gray lowered him to the floor; it would take two hands to move the lever. Monk was happy to slump to his butt, his back propped up against the cool metal wall.
Gray grabbed the bar and hauled it down with a grunt.
The light turned green.
Monk nodded.
Done.
Gray shifted to the doorway and waved an arm, motioning the others that it was safe to come forward. The heavy tread of boots rushed toward them. Gray crouched next to him, guarding him with a pistol.
There continued to be no welcoming committee.
Which was ominous enough.
But Eve’s warning was more so.
He reminded Gray. “Nine minutes to go.”
Gray nodded as soldiers and the others piled into the vestibule. A medic dropped next to Monk, shrugging off a pack with a red cross stenciled on it. Even Mara joined them, hauling her sealed case.
“I’ll stay with him,” Mara said.
Monk waved Gray toward the rock tunnel. “You got this from here, right?” He leaned his head against the wall. “Cuz this horse is beat.”
35
December 26, 8:24 P.M. CET
Pyrenees Mountains, Spain
Eight minutes to go.
Gray ran with the strike team down the rock tunnel. A vast space opened at its end. He smelled incense. He flashed back to his childhood, sitting in a pew as a priest walked past, swinging a smoking censer. The cast of the light ahead flickered with what could only be candlelight.
He paused several yards from the tunnel’s end and turned to the team. “We have no time. We go in, guns blazing. No stopping. We keep searching until we find that damned device and destroy it.”
He pictured Eve’s line of tethered horses burning.
He got nods all around.
Kowalski hefted his bullpup and kissed its stock.
Gray turned, bringing a borrowed assault rifle to his shoulder, and led the charge. The team burst out of the tunnel into the back of a vast church, nearly a football field long. He remembered the giant cavern under the estate, picked up by ground-penetrating radar. The Crucible had carved and extended it over the centuries into this huge cathedral.
He barely had time to register the golden chandeliers extending down the nave, dripping with candle wax, the glowing stained-glass windows above.
From chapels all around, gunfire chattered at the strike team as they raced low and spread out. The soldiers returned fire; grenades were shot into those small spaces, clearing them with thunderous blasts. Smoke and tear gas soon choked through the nave and rolled toward the altar.
Gray ran low down the center aisle, aiming for that altar.
Candle wax stung his face, his neck, his hands.
Kowalski swore brightly as a flaming candle struck him in the head, jarred from its perch atop a chandelier by the concussion of a grenade blast. Brilliant shards also rained around them as stray gunfire shattered one of the stained-glass windows.
Still, the cathedral’s defense was not as fierce as Gray had feared. Apparently, the majority of the Crucible’s soldiers had fallen in the outer castle, buying Guerra and her inner circle the time to retreat down here. Only a skeletal force must have accompanied her. Considering what Monk had faced getting to the door, the enemy must have believed those numbers were sufficient, especially with Zabala as their ace in the hole.
Through the smoke, movement drew Gray’s eye beyond the altar, to the chancel of this cathedral. A group of men guarded a chamber ahead. Weapons bristled as they protected the space. As Gray and Kowalski were spotted, muzzles flashed. Rounds pelted and ricocheted from the rock.
The two of them dashed and hid behind the stone altar. A gilded cross hung above it, with Christ twisted in agony. Rounds struck the cross, setting it to swinging. Overhead, bands of frescoes circled the dome, showing all manner of pain and suffering. Black smoke swirled across the ceiling. The dance of candle flames up there cast all of the art into some torturous view of hell.
Gray heard a shout from the room ahead.
“Free God’s dark army! Burn it all down! Cleanse the world for His glory!”
Guerra.
He pictured Paris burning, the Eiffel Tower rising from a sea of flames.
The bitch intended to unleash as much hellfire as possible.
Only one hope to stop it.
He shared a glance with Kowalski. They both burst up, rifles blazing. Gray circled to the right, Kowalski the left. At some point, the big man had the time to light a cigar. The tip glowed in the gloom.
They strafed the far side of the chancel.
Men dropped, nearly cut in half.
Gray ran forward as Kowalski pegged the last two men guarding the door. Gray rushed into the small chapel. Standing before a tiny altar, a lanky man fired at him. Expecting such a final defense, Gray easily dodged the rounds, pointed his rifle, and squeezed a three-round burst into the man’s chest.
The defender stumbled back, then fell to his side.
Atop an altar behind the dead man, a sphere shone brilliantly in a cradle. On the chapel’s back wall, a monitor glowed with a dark Eden. Its fiery denizen gone, off to do the bidding of the lone occupant still standing to one side of the altar.
Eliza Guerra had no weapon, but her face shone with exultant victory.
Not that Gray could see her eyes.
She had a crimson sash tied across her cheeks, her body robed in pure white.
The Inquisitor General in all her glory.
“Get back,” Gray growled to her.
With one arm in a sling, she half-lifted her other hand, but not in a show of defenselessness. She raised her palm upward, as if thanking God, her face lifted high.
She stepped around the altar.
“You are too late, Commander Pierce. Power plants are already burning, missiles in silos exploding, plants melting down. Can you picture it? All around the globe. You cannot stop what has been started.”
Gray tightened his finger on the trigger, a familiar black anger burning. He wanted to blast that smirk from her face. He pictured all the death in Paris, ran the grainy footage from the library in his head, imagined the greater world burning.
His finger squeezed, reaching the point of tension in the trigger.
He pictured Kat sprawled on his kitchen floor.
Guerra was to blame for her death, too.
He gritted his teeth—then relaxed his hold. As much as it agonized him, he waved the muzzle. “Move.”
Knowing she had won, Guerra shuffled out of the chapel. “God’s will can never be thwarted,” she said as she passed.
Gray followed her out, looking back at the glowing sphere.
Kowalski took his place in the doorway. He had a fresh fifty-round magazine fitted into his rifle.
“Light it up,” Gray growled.
Kowalski puffed a knot of smoke. “About fuckin’ time.”
His bullpup roared, shattering the sphere, pieces of titanium and glass flying high and ricocheting throughout the chapel. The monitor shattered. The sphere sparked brighter—then finally went dark.
At last . . .
Gray turned away. He didn’t know what damage had already been wrought in the world above, but he had stopped what he could. More important, he had kept that dark angel from escaping.
He glanced at the glow of his watch.
With only two minutes to spare.
He kept his rifle pointed at Guerra, who stood with her back to the main altar, her face turned jubilantly to the roof. Behind her, the cathedral had gone quiet, filled with smoke, the air stinging with tear gas. He heard a few distant pops of gunfire, echoing from neighboring rooms as the strike team cleaned up.
He faced Guerra, his finger still on the trigger.
“Why?” he asked. “Why did you do this?”
The answer was a gunshot.
Guerra stumbled a step toward Gray. A bright red stain blossomed in the center of her chest. Another blast, another crimson stain.
Gray shifted farther out of the line of fire.
Guerra fell to her knees, revealing Mara standing behind her, a smoking pistol cradled in both hands. It was Monk’s SIG, the one he dropped in the booby-trapped tunnel when he was shot.
Guerra turned, the sash falling from her eyes as she twisted to face her former student.
Mara glared through tears. “Those were for Professor Sato and Dr. Ruiz.”