James Rollins - Map of Bones

“What is His Holiness still doing here?” Rende asked Vigor, nodding to the pope, who remained ensconced among a clot of black-robed cardinals.

Vigor had no time to explain. He grabbed the general’s elbow. “We have to get below. To the Scavi.”

Rende frowned. “I just heard word from the station…from Rachel…something about a robbery down there. Then this all happened.”

Vigor shook his head. He wanted to scream his panic, but he spoke firmly and steadily. “Gather as many men as you can. We have to get down there. Now!”

To his credit, the general responded immediately, barking crisp commands. Black-uniformed men swiftly ran up, armed with assault weapons.

“This way!” Vigor said, heading to the sacristy door. The entrance to the Scavi was around back, not far. Still, Vigor could not move fast enough.

Rachel…

GRAY KNELT with Monk. He had freed both his teammates’ wrists with a knife hidden on Kat. Monk had borrowed Gray’s night-vision scopes to aid in his study.

“Are you sure you can’t defuse it?” Gray asked.

“If I had more time…better tools…some goddamn decent light…” Monk glanced to him and shook his head.

Gray watched the timer count down in the darkness.

02:22.

02:21.

Gray gained his feet and stepped to Kat and Rachel on the other side. Kat had been studying the ramp mechanism with the eyes of a trained engineer. She noted Gray’s approach without turning.

“The mechanism is a crude pressure plate,” she said. “Sort of like a deadman’s switch. It takes weight to hold the ramp closed. But lift the weight off and the ramp opens by gears and gravity. But it doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“As well as I can tell, the trigger plate lies under the tomb over our heads.”

“Saint Peter’s tomb?”

Kat nodded and directed Gray to the side. “Here is where they pulled the stabilizing pin after weighing down the plate with the tomb. Once set, the only way to open this ramp is to move Saint Peter’s tomb off the plate. But that didn’t happen when the Dragon Court activated their device.”

“Maybe it did….” Gray pictured the cylinder containing the super-conducting amalgam, how it had levitated. “Kat, do you remember your description of the test done in Arizona — the test on these m-state powders? How, when these superconductors were charged, they weighed less than zero?”

She nodded. “Because the powder was actually levitating the pan it held.”

“I think that’s what happened here. I saw the amalgam cylinder levitate when the device was turned on. What if the field around the amalgam affected the tomb, too, like the pan in the experiment. While not actually lifting the massive structure, it simply made the stone structure weigh less.”

Kat’s eyes widened. “Triggering the pressure plate!”

“Exactly. Does that offer any clue on how to reopen the ramp?”

Kat stared a moment at the mechanism. She slowly shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Not unless we can move the tomb.”

Gray glanced to the timer.

01:44.

VIGOR RUSHED down the spiral stairs that led to the Scavi. He saw no evidence of trespassing. The narrow door appeared ahead.

“Wait!” General Rende said behind him. “Let one of my men go in first. If there are hostiles…”

Vigor ignored him and rushed to the door. He hit the latch. Unlocked. Thank God. He didn’t have a spare key.

His weight struck the door. But it held.

He bounced back, shoulder bruised.

Flipping the latch, he shoved again.

The door refused to budge, as if blocked or bolted on the far side.

Vigor stared back at General Rende.

“Something’s wrong.”

RACHEL STARED unblinking as the timer ticked below one minute. “There must be another way out,” she mumbled.

Gray shook his head against such wishful thinking.

Still, Rachel refused to give up. She may not know engineering, nor the art of defusing a bomb. But she did know Rome’s history. “No bones,” she said.

Gray stared at her as if she had slipped a gear.

“Kat,” she said, “you mentioned that someone had to pull the stabilizing pin when the mechanism was first set, locking the ramp. Right?”

Kat nodded.

Rachel glanced at the others. “Then he would’ve been trapped down here. Where are his bones?”

Kat’s eyes widened.

Gray clenched a fist. “Another way out.”

“I think I just said that.” Rachel pulled a book of matches from one of her pockets. She struck a flame. “All we have to do is find an opening. Some secret tunnel.”

Monk joined them. “Pass those around.”

In seconds, each member held a flickering flame. They searched for some sign of a freshening breeze, a telltale sign of a hidden exit.

Rachel spoke out of nervousness. “Vatican Hill was named after the fortune-tellers that used to gather here. Vates is Latin for ‘seer of the future.’ Like many oracles of the time, they hid in caves like this and voiced prophecies.”

She studied her flame as she searched the wall.

No flicker.

Rachel tried not to glance at the timer, but failed.

00:22.

“Maybe it’s sealed too tight,” Monk mumbled.

Rachel lit a fresh match.

“Of course,” she continued nervously, “most of the oracles were chalatans. Like turn-of-the-century séances, the soothsayer usually had an accomplice hidden in a secret niche or tunnel.”

“Or under the table,” Gray said. He had squatted by the slab of hematite. He held his match low to the ground. His flame flickered, dancing shadows on the walls. “Hurry.”

There was no need to goad them.

00:15.

That was incentive enough.

Monk and Gray grabbed the edge of the slab, bending with their knees. They heaved up, legs straining.

Kay had dropped to her hands and held a match out. “There’s a narrow tunnel,” she said with relief.

“Get inside,” Gray ordered.

Kat waved Rachel down.

Rachel slid feetfirst through the hole, discovering a stone well. She squiggled down its throat. It took no effort with the steep incline. She slid on her butt. Kat followed next, then Monk.

Rachel craned around, counting in her head. Four seconds remained.

Monk braced the slab with his back. Gray dove headfirst between the man’s planted legs.

“Now, Monk!”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.”

Dropping, Monk let the slab’s weight push him into the chute.

“Down! Down!” Gray urged. “Get as much—”

The explosion cut out further words.

Rachel, still half turned, saw a wash of orange flames lick around the edges of the slab, searching for them.

Monk cursed.

Rachel ignored caution and slid down the chute. It grew steeper and steeper. Soon she was bobsledding down a dank tunnel on her rear end, uncontrolled.

Distantly a new noise intruded.

A rumbling rush of water.

Oh no…

FIFTEEN MINUTES later, Gray helped Rachel climb out of the Tiber River. They shivered on the bank. Her teeth chattered. He hugged her close and rubbed her shoulders and back, warming her as best he could.

“I…I’m okay,” she said, but she didn’t move away, even leaned a bit further into him.

Monk and Kat slogged out of the river, wet and muddy.

“We’d better keep moving,” Kat said. “It’ll help offset hypothermia until we can get into dry clothes.”

Gray set out, climbing the bank. Where were they? The escape chute had dumped into an underground stream. Blind, they had had no choice but to hold tight to one another’s belts and follow the flow of the channel, hoping it would dump them somewhere safe.