Paul Christopher - The Sword of the Templars

“Tools?” Peggy said. “Who needs tools? We’ve got a hammer.”

“Sorry, Peg. Raffi’s right,” said Holliday. “We have no idea what’s in that jar or what condition it’s in. We’ll have to open it in a controlled environment.”

“Specifically my lab at the university,” said Wanounou.

“If you say so.” Peggy shrugged. “So now can we get out of here?”

In the distance, muffled but distinct, they heard the undeniable sound of a human sneeze.

They froze.

“Oh, crap,” whispered Peggy.

“Somebody’s down here with us,” said Holliday.

“Who?” Wanounou asked nervously.

“Nobody knows we’re here,” said Peggy.

“Kellerman’s people; they must have followed us,” grunted Holliday.

There was the sound of a second sneeze. Closer now. Then a rusty grating sound. Someone hauling away on the big iron door.

“Benzona,” muttered Wanounou in Hebrew.

“What do we do now?” Peggy said.

“Scram,” said Holliday.

“Which way?” Wanounou asked. “We can’t go back the way we came. We’ll run right into them.”

“The other tunnel?” Peggy said.

“What if it’s a dead end?” Holliday said. “We’d be trapped with our backs against a stone wall.”

“We’re trapped now,” said Peggy. She hefted the rock hammer. “Maybe we should stay and fight.”

“With a hammer?” Holliday said. “The last time we ran into these people they were carrying machine pistols.” He shook his head. “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”

“Sun Tzu?” Wanounou asked.

Holliday nodded.

“Nice philosophy, guys, but what are we supposed to do?”

Wanounou looked around, then turned to Peggy.

“You said the water tasted salty?”

“That’s right.”

“Look at the edge of the pool-those dark stains on the limestone walls.”

“High tide,” said Holliday, brightening suddenly. “This is a tidal pool.”

“Which means it must have an outflow somewhere; the runoff from that waterfall has to empty somehow,” nodded Wanounou.

“Look,” said Peggy, pointing.

They turned. Behind them, at the mouth of the passageway leading to the pool, they could see the faint, wandering beams of multiple flashlights playing over the rock walls.

“Come on,” whispered Holliday urgently.

They made their way around the narrow shelf between the edge of the water and the wall of the cavern, looking for the pool’s outlet. A third of the way around they found it: a narrow tunnel in the stone only a few feet wide, barely visible in the shadows of the jutting, smooth rock walls. The tide was clearly low, and the flow seemed to be only about knee-high, if the high-water mark on the wall of the cavern was any indication.

“Quick!” Holliday urged, looking over his shoulder. The flashlight beams behind them were getting brighter as their pursuers approached. They had to get into the relative safety of the outlet tunnel before Kellerman’s men reached the cave.

“What if it gets deeper?” Wanounou asked nervously. “I told you, I can’t swim.”

“I’ll protect you.” Peggy grinned. She put her arm around the professor’s waist, and they stepped into the water with Holliday right behind, holding the alabaster jar.

The swift undertow took all three of them by surprise, sweeping them off their feet and tumbling them into the lake’s narrow outlet. Wanounou yelled, but the sound was swallowed up as he drank in a mouthful of the freezing water and gagged. He began flapping his arms and struggling in the water, but Peggy managed to get his head above the surface, her arm now crooked, elbow under his chin, as they hurtled along the underground river.

“You’re okay! You’re okay!”

Peggy turned her head, looking for Doc in the almost absolute darkness, then spotted the sweeping beam of his flashlight a few yards behind, swinging wildly back and forth as the speeding current dragged him along.

Suddenly Peggy felt something hard slam against her back and realized that it was the stone bottom of the stream. It was getting shallower, not deeper. She began to call out a warning to Holliday, but before she could speak the world dropped out from beneath her, and then she and Wanounou were sliding down a long curving tube, the rock slippery with the same sort of microbial muck she’d felt under her feet when she swam out to the island in the pool.

She and Wanounou clutched each other desperately as the tube descended, slamming them back and forth with every twist and turn, the rush of water from the pool following the course it had carved through the rock for a million years. Then, abruptly, there was daylight, and just as abruptly they were thrown out into the air as the tube emptied into another cave, this one with an entrance open to the sea.

They dropped six or seven feet, straight down into the ocean, and once more Wanounou was struggling as he breathed in water, choking and flailing. Again Peggy dragged him to the surface as she oriented herself, then pointed him toward a narrow shelf of beach a few yards away. He slapped the water with both hands, doing a frenzied version of the dog paddle.

After three steps she felt the bottom beneath her feet. Wanounou reached safety first and slumped down onto the sand. There was a loud splash behind her, and Peggy turned as Doc came flying out of the water’s yawning exit point on the sidewall of the cave and plummeted into the water. A few seconds later he surfaced, the alabaster jar still clutched under one arm. Peggy gave him a hand, and they staggered to the shore and dropped down on the little beach.

Finally they had a moment to get their bearings.

“I lost the hammer,” said Peggy, pushing hair out of her eyes and getting to her feet. “Where the hell are we?” Beside her, Wanounou, gasping and retching, was still coughing out the last of the water from his lungs.

Holliday looked around the chamber. It was a typical sea cave, narrow and relatively shallow, perhaps fifty feet across and a hundred feet deep, the far end sloping up into a sandy beach with darker limestone chert pebbles strewn around. The walls arched steeply up to a rotted stone ceiling, and there was sea salt encrusted here and there, left by the rising and falling tides. At the sea end of the cave the Mediterranean glowed like sapphire in the early-afternoon sun.

There was evidence of recent occupation everywhere: rusting fifty-gallon drums lined up at the far end of the cave beyond the high-tide line, a coil of rope, several broken crates, and something that looked like a portable air compressor of some kind.

Tethered to a roughly hewn pier carved out of the ancient rock was what appeared to be a perfectly sea-worthy RIB-a rigid-inflatable boat, military grade, painted in shades of dull gray and brown, with a shield and bat wing emblem on the prow. It was about fourteen feet long with a center-mounted console and some kind of inboard drive.

“Is that our ride?” Peggy asked.

“It is if I can get it started,” answered Holliday. He handed Peggy the alabaster vase, then crossed the little strip of beach and climbed up onto the stone pier. He walked along it to the point where the boat was tethered. The boat was neatly attached to a very old-looking iron ring with a round turn and two half hitches, a sailor’s knot that even a hurricane couldn’t undo.

Holliday dropped down into the boat and made his way to the console. It looked simple enough: five gauges, all in Hebrew, a key-slot ignition, a starter button, a throttle lever, and a padded plastic wheel for steering.

There was a small panel underneath the wheel. Holliday reached down, opened it, and pulled out a handful of wires. There was a green one, a yellow, and a red. Presumably the red was the hot wire, and the green was the crank.