Paul Christopher: The Sword of the Templars

“What about ten paces?” Holliday asked urgently, helping Rodrigues down the tunnel. Their pursuers couldn’t be much more than a minute or two behind them.

“Trip wire. Fishing line,” the ex-priest managed, coughing again and doubling over.

They stepped forward carefully, Peggy shining the light ahead, keeping the beam down, illuminating the base of the tunnel. Holliday, supporting Rodrigues, now came up behind her.

Fifty feet farther on the light caught a length of taut, black fishing line stretched across the tunnel, calf-high, invisible unless you were looking for it.

“Where is it?” Holliday asked.

“Up,” muttered Rodrigues.

Peggy swept the light up toward the ceiling. The trip wire led upward, threaded through blackened eyebolts, to a small hole in the roof about eight inches across. In the hole were two round, olive-green metal objects, each about four inches in diameter. Holliday recognized them instantly: OZM-72 antipersonnel mines, the Russian version of the American M16 “Bouncing Betty” he’d used in Vietnam and the Yugoslavian PROM-1’s he’d seen during the Bosnian War. Triggered on the ground, the device would bound into the air to waist height before exploding. In the case of these two mines they would fire downward into the lava tube. Each of the OZM’s carried a charge of slightly more than a pound of cast high explosive. The slaughter in the lava tube would be horrifying. On ignition anything for a hundred feet in either direction would be shredded into hamburger.

“Help him over the trip wire,” said Holliday.

Together he and Peggy managed to get the failing ex-priest over the deadly thread. They headed on, hurrying now more than ever, trying to put distance between themselves and the hideous booby trap behind them. A dozen yards along the tube, the passage suddenly veered sharply to the right and began heading upward at a steep angle. Holliday could feel a rush of cool air on his face now, and in the distance he thought he heard the sound of thunder. Somewhere above them yesterday’s storm was returning.

Around them the lava tube was changing; as they neared the surface the walls of the tunnel began to close in. The smooth floor felt slick with mud, and the walls were coated with heavy bacterial slime. It was getting harder and harder to get Rodrigues to keep walking, his coughing increasing with each step, his legs dragging, and his body beginning to shake uncontrollably as he went into shock. Holliday knew the signs. He wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Pocket,” moaned the dying man. “Book. Take it.”

“Later,” soothed Holliday. “There’ll be time for that later.”

“Now!” Rodrigues demanded with authority.

Still moving forward Holliday fumbled in Rodrigues’s back pockets and found a small leather-bound notebook at least half an inch thick. It looked very old. Holliday stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket and carried on. The ground began to rise even more steeply, and their knees bent with exertion. Rodrigues was almost deadweight now. Ahead Holliday thought he saw a crack of light.

Without warning all three of them were picked up and thrown to the ground by a massive concussion. A split second later there was a rolling, earsplitting explosion and a second concussive blast as a gusting roar of heat enveloped them and passed on.

Holliday got to his feet, still hanging on to the sword. The glass in the battery-powered lamp was broken, but enough light was coming down from above to light their way. Peggy abandoned the lamp, and clutching the shotgun, she and Holliday managed to get Rodrigues up. They stumbled forward toward the light. Holliday felt a few splashes of rain on his face, and above them thunder roared. A moment later they reached the ragged end of the lava tube exit and stepped out onto the rugged surface of the ancient crater and into the teeth of a biting wind and a growing storm. A bolt of spiked lightning flashed across the gray-black clouds roiling overhead.

“The badger comes out of his lair,” said a voice. “A little the worse for wear, it would seem.”

Axel Kellerman. He was dressed like the quintessential British country squire in a tweed suit with a waistcoat, walking boots, and a rabbit-skin trilby hat. He sat perched on a flat ledge of broken stone a few feet from the entrance to the lava tunnel. In the distance, almost half a mile away between the two volcanic lakes, Holliday could see Rodrigues’s isolated cottage. More rain began to spatter down. Above them the storm was breaking, the winds pulling at their clothes. Thunder rolled.

Seeing Kellerman standing there dressed like that and in those circumstances, Holliday suddenly realized just how insane the SS officer’s son really was, living out some Goethe-like Sturm und Drang aristocratic fantasy. Kellerman wasn’t alone; one of his blond thugs stood close to him, machine pistol held to the neck of Manuel Rivero Tavares, the captain of the San Pedro.

Between Peggy and Holliday, Rodrigues sagged to the ground.

“Put the shotgun down, Miss Blackstock,” said Kellerman, smiling. “You can keep the sword for now, Dr. Holliday. It suits you.”

Peggy carefully did as she was told.

Holliday kept his eyes firmly on Kellerman.

“I’m very sorry, Doutor,” said Tavares, his eyes pleading. “I could not help it.”

“A few simple threats,” said Kellerman. “Apparently the good captain has grandchildren. Little girls.”

He looked past them down the ragged hole in the ground.

“I gather from the noise a few moments ago that some of my employees fell afoul of some sort of IED.” Kellerman grimaced. “That’s more lives you owe me, Dr. Holliday, although they served their purpose. Now at least I know where my legacy is hidden. It only remains for me to retrieve it.”

“The legacy isn’t yours any more than it was your father’s,” said Holliday. He gripped the hilt of the sword tightly in his hand. “It doesn’t belong to any one man.”

“It belongs to anyone who takes it,” spat Kellerman, getting to his feet and stepping closer. “The world has always been that way. Victory to the strong.” He sneered down at the curled still figure of Rodrigues. “Defeat to the weak.”

“We’ve all heard that filth before,” said Holliday. “ ‘Arbeit macht frei,’ ‘Kraft durch Freude,’ ‘Drang nach Osten,’ and in the end none of it came to pass.” He shook his head. “You’re nothing more than a dirty joke gone wrong, Kellerman, just like your father before you.”

Light flashed in the New World Nazi’s eyes. He surged forward, fumbling beneath his tightly buttoned jacket, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. There was a blinding flash of lightning and an enormous thunderclap. The heavens opened.

It happened in the blink of an eye.

“Vai-te foder!” Tavares said furiously. He brought his foot down hard on the blond thug’s instep and threw himself wildly to one side. Reacting instantly, Peggy dropped to the ground, swept up the shotgun, and pulled both triggers. The heavy gun jumped in her hands, the butt thumping back into her shoulder. The thug made a grunting sound and sat down on the ground abruptly, staring down at the plate-sized bleeding hole in his belly as the torrential rainfall began.

Kellerman had his weapon out, a flat little Walther PPK. He kept coming, lifting the pistol in his hand.

Holliday didn’t even think twice. The sword came up, and he took one step forward, setting his leg with the knee slightly bent and his elbow locked. Unable to stop his forward momentum Kellerman ran onto the blade, unblooded for more than seven hundred years. It sliced through the thick tweed of his waistcoat, his shirt and the flesh just beneath the xiphoid process of his diaphragm. Still going forward, the broad wedge of Damascus steel thrust through both the right ventricle and left atrium of his heart before it finally ground against his spine. The furious light went out in the madman’s eyes, and Kellerman died, skewered.