James Rollins - Map of Bones

Hello .

At Gray’s other side, a shape plowed upward into the entry pool. Raoul. In a single movement, the large man one-armed his way out of the pool and to his feet, a gymnastic demonstration of power. His frame must have barely fit through the tunnel. He had abandoned his minitanks outside.

Dragging off his mask and peeling back his hood, he strode to Gray.

It was the first time Gray had a good look at the man. His features were craggy, nose long and thin, aquiline. His coal black hair hung to his shoulders. His arms were massed with muscle, as thick around as Gray’s thigh, plainly grown from steroids and too much time spent in the gym, not from real-world labor.

Eurotrash , Gray thought.

Raoul towered over him, trying to intimidate.

Gray just lifted an eyebrow quizzically. “What?”

“You’re going to tell us everything you know,” Raoul said. His English was fluent, but it was heavily accented with disdain and something Germanic.

“And if I don’t?”

Raoul waved an arm as another form splashed up into the entry pool. Gray immediately recognized Vigor. The monsignor had been found.

“There’s not much a side-scanning radar can’t detect,” Raoul said.

Vigor was dragged bodily from the pool, not gently. Blood from his scalp wound dribbled down one side of his face. He was shoved toward them, but he tripped from exhaustion and fell hard to his knees.

Gray bent down to go to his aid, but a spearhead drove him back.

Another diver surfaced in the pool. He was clearly weighted down. Raoul stepped over and unburdened the man. It was another of those barbell-shaped charges. An incendiary grenade.

Raoul slung the device over a shoulder and stepped back to them. He raised his own speargun and pointed it at Vigor’s crotch. “As the monsignor has sworn off using this part of his anatomy anyway, we’ll start here. Any missteps and the monsignor will be able to join the castrato choir of his church.”

Gray straightened. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything…but first, show us what you found.”

Gray lifted an arm toward the tunnel to Alexander’s tomb, then swung it around to the other tunnel, the shorter of the two, the one that required one to hunch over to traverse it. “It’s that way,” he said.

Vigor’s eyes widened.

Raoul grinned and lifted his speargun. He waved a group of men into the tunnel. “Check it out.”

Five darted away, leaving three men with Raoul.

Seichan, leaning near the tunnel entrance, watched the group disappear. She stepped to follow.

“Not you,” Raoul said.

Seichan glanced over a shoulder. “Do you and your men want to leave this harbor?”

Raoul’s face reddened.

“The escape boat is ours,” she reminded him, and ducked away.

Raoul clenched a fist but stayed silent.

Trouble in paradise…

Gray turned. Vigor’s gaze was hard upon him. Gray motioned with his eyes. Dive away at the first opportunity .

He faced the tunnel again. He prayed he was correct about the Sphinx’s riddle. It was death to solve it wrongly. And that certainly was about to be proven here, one way or the other.

That left only one mystery to be answered.

Who would die?

MONK RACED the bullets. His jet sled skidded across the water. Rachel clung to him from behind, half choking his airway.

The harbor was in chaos. Other watercraft fled from the fighting, scattering like a school of fish. Monk hit the wake of a crabbing boat and sailed high into the air.

Gunfire chewed into the wave below.

“Grab tight!” he cried.

He flipped the sled on its side just as they hit the water. Under they went. He straightened their course and dove deeper, speeding through the water at a depth of three feet.

At least that’s what he hoped.

Monk had squeezed his eyes closed. Without his mask, he couldn’t have seen much anyway. But before diving under, he caught a glimpse of an anchored sailboat directly ahead.

If he could get under it…put it between him and the hydrofoil…

He counted in his head, estimating, praying.

The world went momentarily darker through his eyelids. They were under the shadow of the sailboat. He did an additional four-count and canted back upward toward the surface.

They burst back into sunlight and air.

Monk craned back. They had more than cleared the sailboat. “Fuck, yeah!” The hydrofoil had to swing around the obstacle, losing ground.

“Monk!” Rachel yelled in his ear.

He faced forward to see a boxy wall of boat in front of him, the naked houseboat couple’s. Crap! They were flying right toward its port side. There was no shying from it.

Monk slammed his weight forward and tipped the nose of the sled straight down. They dove in a steep dive…but was it steep enough to duck under the houseboat, like he had the sailboat?

The answer was no.

Monk slammed into the keel with the tip of his sled. The sled flipped ass-end up. Monk clutched an iron grip to the handles. The sled skittered against the wood side, barnacles ripping at his shoulder. He gunned the throttle and shot deeper.

He finally cleared the underside of the boat and sped back into clear water.

He jetted upward, knowing he had little time.

Rachel was gone, knocked off with the first collision.

GRAY HELD his breath.

A commotion immediately sounded from down the low tunnel. The first of the men must have reached the end of the passage. It must have been short.

“ Eine Goldtür !” he heard shouted. A gold door .

Raoul hurried forward, dragging Gray with him. Vigor was kept pinned at the pool’s edge by a diver with a speargun.

The tunnel, lit up by the explorers’ flashlights, extended only some thirty yards and was slightly curved. The end could not be seen, but the last two men in line — and Seichan — were limned against the glow, all focused forward.

Gray had a sudden fear that perhaps they’d been wrong about the gold key they had found. Maybe it was meant for this door.

“ Es wird entriegelt !” a shout called. Unlocked!

From where Gray stood, he heard the click as the door was opened.

It was too loud.

Seichan must have noted it, too. She spun around and leaped back toward them. She was too late.

From all walls, sharpened poles of steel shot out of crevices and shadowed nooks. They skewered across the passage, piercing through flesh and bone, and embedded into holes drilled on the opposite side. The deadly tangle started deep and swept outward in a matter of two seconds.

Lights bobbled. Men screamed, impaled and pinned.

Seichan made it within two steps of the exit, but the tail end of the booby trap caught her. A single sharpened pole lanced out and impaled through her shoulder. She jerked to a stop, legs going out from under her.

A pained gasp was the only sound she made, hung up and skewered on the bar.

Shocked, Raoul weakened his grip on Gray.

Taking advantage, Gray wrested free and flung himself toward the pool. “Go!” he shouted to Vigor.

Before he could take a second step, something struck the back of his head. Hard. He went down on one knee. He was clubbed again, on the side of the head, pistol-whipped with the butt of a speargun.

He had underestimated the speed of the giant.

A mistake.

Raoul kicked Gray onto his face and pressed a boot on his neck, bearing down with full weight.

Gasping, Gray watched Vigor fished back out of the pool. The monsignor had been caught by the ankle and denied escape.

Raoul leaned down, leering into Gray’s view.

“A nasty little trick,” he said.

“I didn’t know—”