The Oracle Code

53



The Underworld

Elis

Peloponnese Peninsula

Hellenic Republic (Greece)

February 23, 2013

“Colonel, they’re not in front of us anymore.”

Linko turned to Gedenidze, careful not to blind the man with his flashlight. “Did they get past us?”

“No, sir. They’re above us.”

Frowning, Linko looked ahead again and waved to the man he had running point. “Go ahead. See where the next intersection is.”

“There is no intersection. There is a cave, though.” The man shined his flashlight around. “And there are some steps here on the side.”

Linko glanced back at Gedenidze. “Are they still moving?”

“No. They are holding their positions.”

“Then we are walking into a trap.”

At that moment, a shot echoed in the passageway, and the man walking point fell dead, his flashlight skittering across the stone floor.

***



Kneeling beside the cave opening, Lourds looked down at the man shining the flashlight below. He heard the exchange between the Russians and translated for Captain Fitrat, who wanted confirmation of what they were saying.

“They know they’re walking into a trap.”

Fitrat nodded, took deliberate aim with his pistol, and fired.

The sound blasted Lourds’s ears, and he was shocked that Fitrat had fired. Still astonished, Lourds watched the man below tumble to the ground. The flashlight rolled away and briefly played over the man’s face. The bullet had taken out one of his eyes, and there was no mistaking that he was dead.

“Well.” Corporal Rahimi’s voice was laconic. “He has come to the right place. Welcome to the Underworld.”

***



“Get ready.” Linko reached into his munitions pouch and pulled out a flash-bang grenade. In the darkness of the cave, the light explosions were going to be horrendous and effective. He wished they had nightvision goggles. That would have given them a much better edge.

But he would make do.

He sidled up to the opening into the next cave, pulled the pin, and tossed the grenade inside the cave. He turned to his men. “Close your eyes and do not open them until I say.” Then he closed his own eyes.

***



A metal object bounced off the stone floor in the cave below. Lourds looked for it, but a moment later, he went blind as what seemed to be a miniature sun dawned in the darkness at the bottom of the large cave.

Pain stabbed into his eyes and he swore. He flailed blindly with his arms as he retreated from the opening to the Oracle’s cave. He tripped over someone and fell, barely able to keep his face from smacking into the stone floor.

“I am blind!” One of the soldiers sounded nearby, but the deafness caused by the blast made that hard to be certain of.

“We are all blind.” Despite the situation, Fitrat sounded calm and collected. His voice just penetrated the thick, cottony deafness and ringing that claimed Lourds’s hearing. “Keep your posts by the door. They still have to come up the steps for us. When you hear them, kill them. Just stay out of the opening.”

A moment later, Lourds was still blinking, trying to get the aftereffects out of his vision. Gunshots suddenly filled the cave with a hellish thunder, and more blasts from Fitrat and his soldiers increased the auditory onslaught.

“I am hit.”

Lourds recognized the voice as Marias’s. He pushed himself up and crawled toward the man.

The professor clutched his leg. Lourds stared hard through the muzzle flashes and made out the bloody patch on his thigh. Remembering what Anna had done back in Afghanistan, Lourds ripped off one of his shirt sleeves, folded it into a compress, then pulled off his belt and used it to put pressure on the wound.

Vision partially restored, Lourds looked around the Oracle room. Haros cowered by the dais, looking terribly afraid.

Lourds knew they couldn’t hold that position. All it would take was an anti-personnel grenade lobbed into the Oracle room and they’d all become casualties.

“Professor Lourds.” Fitrat sat at the opening and reloaded his pistol. “Go back into the passageway at the back. See how far it goes. Find out if we can escape that way and if we can somehow close it off after us.”

Lourds nodded. He grabbed his flashlight from where he’d clipped it on to the side of his backpack but didn’t turn it on yet. He started toward the opposite side of the Oracle room.

Once in the other passageway, Lourds switched on the flashlight and followed the straight tunnel a hundred feet. Then he hit a T-intersection. To the right was an opening to a small cave that glowed red when his light touched it. A sweet smell lingered in the air, and he didn’t know what that was.

To the left was another passageway. He shined his flashlight into it and hurried on as the gunfire continued behind him. Fifty yards or so farther on, the tunnel widened into a large cavern. As Lourds turned around to retrace his steps, another tremble—this one larger than the earlier ones—raced through the earth, knocking dust and rock loose. A massive grinding noise sounded from somewhere below.

He ran back to the Oracle room, hating the idea of leaving it unprotected.

“Captain Fitrat!” Lourds’s vision was better now, and he hoped the same was true of everyone. “The tunnel continues into another cave.”

“Rahimi, give Professor Lourds a hand with Professor Marias.”

Rahimi joined Lourds at Marias’s side. Together, they got him to his feet and underway. Lourds grabbed Haros by the arm and gave the boy instructions in Greek. They headed down the passageway, leaving Fitrat and his few remaining men holding off the Russians.

At the T-intersection, Lourds saw that Marias was capable of walking with Rahimi’s help. He gave his flashlight to Haros.

“Stay with them. Guide them.”

The boy nodded and joined the corporal and the professor.

Lourds turned back, every nerve in his body screaming for survival, that he should run. But he couldn’t leave the scrolls behind. He knew that Marias had taken a couple, but Lourds couldn’t stand the idea of leaving them to be destroyed or lost to someone else.

He ran back to the room, sliding past the three soldiers that raced to join Corporal Rahimi.

Fitrat stood at the opening with a pistol in each fist, lit up by the flare someone had tossed onto the steps outside the room. He stared incredulously at Lourds. “What are you doing?”

“Saving as many of these as I can.” Lourds dumped his backpack onto the floor, saved the original scrolls he’d gotten from the tomb in Afghanistan, and scooped a dozen others into his backpack.

He was still putting more inside when Fitrat grabbed him by the arm and yanked him toward the passageway at the back of the Oracle room. He stumbled and nearly went down but managed to stay on his feet.

***



“Colonel, they’re abandoning the cave.” Gedenidze focused on the cave with his thermal imager. “There must be another tunnel.”

Linko didn’t bother replying. He reloaded his rifle and ran up the steps as the flash at the top of the stairs sputtered and died.

A sudden maelstrom of gunfire dawned behind him, and he paused at the opening of the cave to yell at his men to stop shooting before they hit him.

However, below, the men were firing back the way they had come.

“Sir, we’re being attacked from the rear.”

“By who?”

The gunfire below increased in volume, and the passageway became lit up like a full-scale war. For a moment, Linko thought perhaps the Afghan soldiers had somehow come up on them from behind and caught them by surprise. But he knew that wasn’t probable. If those men had a chance to escape, they would take it.

He returned his attention to the doorway and charged through, depending on his armor to keep him safe. Inside the room without incident, he spotted two running figures ahead of him, pinned in the high-intensity beam of the light affixed to his assault rifle.

One of the figures turned and opened fire while still running. The bullets sailed past Linko’s head, then he brought the assault rifle up and fired.

***



Bullets screamed and ricocheted from the tunnel walls as Lourds ran toward the intersection. He was going to turn to the left, but Fitrat suddenly stumbled into him and drove him to the right.

Turning, frightened, knowing what had happened even though he didn’t want to admit it, Lourds caught Fitrat and helped the captain stay in motion. His pistols fell from his hands, and he went weak in Lourds’s grip, no longer able to help himself.

“I am sorry.”

Lourds didn’t know what to say. He felt the man’s blood on his hands and hoped that Fitrat wasn’t dying. He didn’t want this death on his hands too. He kept moving, tugging the captain after him. Whoever was chasing them through the tunnel was still firing, preventing him from crossing into the other tunnel.

Desperate, Lourds pulled Fitrat into the room that had glowed red earlier. He dragged Fitrat around a small corner and hoped they would be out of sight.

Out of breath, he dropped to his knees beside the prone captain and dragged in air. The faint, sweet smell was still there. Lourds felt woozy and light-headed. He couldn’t get enough air no matter how he tried. He bent over Fitrat and felt for a pulse.

He found it.

He sensed someone at the doorway to the small cave. When he looked up, an old, withered man in a black cloak stood holding a long pole. “There you are, Professor Lourds. You have avoided me for far too long.”