Douglas Preston - Riptide

The air was cold, with a suffocating clamminess that cut through his soggy clothes and felt raw and thick in his throat. He remembered that heavier gases, like carbon dioxide, sank. Perhaps the air would be a little better if he stood up.

He forced himself to his feet, hands against the side of the well for balance. Gradually, the buzzing in his head began to fade. He tried to tell himself that nothing was hopeless. He would systematically explore the cavity with his hands, every square inch. Johnny's bones had ended up in this chamber, victim of Macallan's fiendish engine of death. That meant the shore tunnel had to be nearby. If he could figure out how Macallan's trap worked, maybe he could find a way to escape.

Pressing his face against the slimy stone wall, he reached his hands as high above his head as he could. This was where he would start, working his way down the stones systematically, quadrant by quadrant, until he had examined every reachable square inch of the chamber. Lightly, like a blind man's, his fingers explored every crevasse, every protuberance, probing, tapping, listening for a hollow sound.

The first quadrant yielded nothing but smooth stones, well mortised. Lowering his hands, he went on to the next section. Five minutes went by, then ten, and then he was on his hands and knees, feeling around the floor of the chamber.

He had scanned every reachable spot in the well—except the narrow crack along the floor into which his brother's bones had been pressed—and there was nothing, not a thing, that indicated an avenue of escape.

Breathing choppily, snorting the stale air into his nostrils, Hatch reached gingerly beneath the heavy stone. His hands encountered the rotting baseball cap on his brother's skull. He jerked back, heart thudding in his chest.

He stood again, face upward, striving for a breath of sweeter air. Johnny would expect him to do his goddamnedest to survive.

He yelled out for help; first tentatively, then more loudly. He tried to forget how empty the island was; tried to forget Neidelman, preparing to open the casket; tried to forget everything except his cries for help.

As he yelled, pausing now and again for breath, some last hidden chink of armor loosened within him. The bad air, the blackness, the peculiar smell of the Pit, the proximity of Johnny, all conspired to tear away the one remaining veil from that terrible day, thirty-one years before. Suddenly, the buried memories burned their way back, and he was once again on his hands and knees, match sputtering in his hand, as a strange dragging sound took Johnny away from him forever.

And there, in the thick dark, Hatch's yells turned to screams.

Chapter 55

What is it?" Bonterre asked, her hand frozen on the Radmeter.

Rankin held up his hand for silence. "Just a minute. Let me compensate for any trace radiation." His head was mere inches from the screen, bathed in an amber glow.

"Jesus," he said quietly. "There it is, all right. No mistake, not this time. Both systems agree."

"Roger—"

Rankin rolled back from the screen and ran one paw through his hair. "Look at that."

Bonterre stared at the screen, a snarl of jittery lines underlaid by a large black stripe.

Rankin turned to her. "That black is a void underneath the Water Pit."

"Avoid?"

"A huge cavern, probably filled with water. God knows how deep."

"But—"

"I wasn't able to get a clear reading before, because of all the water in the Pit. And then, I couldn't get these sensors to run in series. Until now."

Bonterre frowned.

"Don't you understand? It's a cavern! We never bothered to look deeper than the Water Pit. The treasure chamber, the Pit itself—us, too, for Chrissake—we're all sitting on top of a goddamn piercement dome. This explains the faulting, the displacement, everything."

"Is this something else built by Macallan?"

"No, no, it's natural. Macallan used it. A piercement dome is a geological formation, an upfold in the earth's crust." He placed his hands together as if in prayer, then pushed one of them toward the ceiling. "It splits the rock above it, creating a huge web of fractures and usually a vertical crack—a pipe—that goes deep into the earth, sometimes several thousand feet. Those P-waves, that vibration earlier . . . something was obviously happening in the dome, causing a resonance. It must be part of the same substructure that created the natural tunnels Macallan—"

Bonterre jumped suddenly as the Radmeter in her hands chirped. As she stared, the blue shimmer on the screen turned yellow.

"Let me see that." Rankin punched in a series of commands, his large fingers dwarfing the keypad. The top half of the small screen cleared, then a message appeared, stark black letters against the screen:

Dangerous radiation levels detected

Specify desired measurement

(ionizations / joules / rads)

and rate

(seconds / minutes / hours)

Rankin hit a few more keys.

240.8 Rads/hour

Fast neutron flux detected

General radiation contamination possible

Recommendation: Immediate evacuation

"Merde. It's too late." "Too late for what?" "He's opened the casket."

As they watched, the message changed:

33.144 Rads/hour

Background levels hazardous

Recommendation: Standard containment procedures

"What happened?" Rankin asked.

"I do not know. Maybe he closed it again."

"Let's see if I can get a radiation signature on the source." The geologist began typing again. Then he straightened up, still staring at the little screen.

"Oh, Christ," he muttered. "You won't believe this."

He was interrupted by a thump on the observation deck. The door flew open and Streeter stepped in.

"Hey, Lyle!" Rankin said before seeing the handgun.

Streeter looked from Rankin to Bonterre, then back again. "Come on," he said, motioning the gun toward the door.

"Come on where?" Rankin began. "What's with the gun?"

"We're taking a little trip, just the three of us," Streeter answered. He nodded in the direction of the observation porthole.

Bonterre slipped the Radmeter beneath her sweater.

"You mean, into the Pit?" Rankin asked incredulously. "It's dangerous as hell down there! The whole thing's suspended over—"

Streeter placed the gun against the back of Rankin's right hand and fired.

The sound of the explosion was shockingly loud in the confined space of Orthanc. Instinctively, Bonterre looked away for a moment. Turning back, she saw Rankin on his knees, clutching his right hand. Thin streams of blood trickled between his fingers and pattered to the metal floor.

"That leaves you one hand to hold on with," Streeter says. "If you want to keep it, shut your hairy fucking mouth."

Once again he motioned them toward the door and the observation platform beyond. With a gasp of pain, Rankin hauled himself to his feet, looked from Streeter to the gun, then moved slowly to the door.

"Now you," Streeter said, nodding at Bonterre. Slowly, making sure the Radmeter was secure beneath her sweaters, she stood up and began to follow Rankin.

"Be very careful," Streeter said, cradling the gun. "It's a long way down."

Chapter 56

Hatch leaned against the wall of the chamber, his fear and his hope both spent, his throat raw from shouting. The memory of what had happened in this very tunnel, lost for so long, was now his again, but he was too exhausted even to examine the missing pieces. The air was a suffocating, foul-smelling blanket, and he shook his head, trying to clear the faint but insistent sound of his brother's voice: "Where are you? Where are you?"

He groaned and sank to his knees, dragging his cheek along the rough stone, trying to bring some clarity to his mind. The voice persisted.