Douglas Preston - Two Graves

He roared out of the mouth of the tunnel and into the open lake just as the entranceway collapsed into rubble behind him. Not stopping, not even slowing to look back, he goosed the throttle wide open and tore across the water in the direction of the town of Nova Godói. Not until he was halfway across the lake did he throttle down and glance back for a view of the castle.

The rumblings had ceased. The fortress remained standing, dark and silent, with only a thin trail of smoke coming from where the tunnel met the shore. He waited, the seconds ticking by, but still nothing happened. The exploding dump had evidently not been powerful enough to fracture the rock, to pierce down to the magma chamber underneath the cinder cone.

Still he waited. And then a shiver passed over the surface of the water. A low rumble reached his ears, almost below the audible range, a vibration he felt more in his bones than his ears. The surface of the lake shivered again, tiny wavelets kicked up, the rumble growing louder. Now the water was dancing crazily and he saw, along the very bottom of the massive wall encircling the fortress, a crack of red. Slowly it enlarged, moving horizontally, with small flares and puffs of steam, like the lid of some gigantic pressure cooker bulging up and about to explode.

A bright flash, and another. This was no man-made blast: it was too vast, too loud, and it came from too deep within the earth. The thunderclap struck him a moment later, almost bowling him over the side of the boat. Several vast and spectacular sprays of lava erupted into the night air, like giant fountains, with a screaming roar of releasing gas and steam. The bellowing explosions of thunder rolled across the lake like a physical force, shivering the surface of the water. As he stared, entire sections of the fortress—towers, ramparts, walls—seemed to come apart at the seams and rise, slowly, amid roiling clouds of fire and smoke separating into mushroom clouds.

He could make out tiny figures—some in uniform, others in lab coats, still others in coveralls—scrambling like ants down to the lake, diving in and piling into boats along the shore. Several other figures, their clothes aflame, like human firebombs, rose out of the eruption of rock, lava, and fire, trailing smoke.

As he watched, unable to tear his eyes from the sight, an additional huge staccato series of explosions shuddered the island with ugly cauliflowers of red and yellow. The fortress was now rent asunder, turning night into ghastly day. The blasts reached Pendergast a moment later, one after another, punches of overpressure pushing him violently back, skidding his boat across the now violently agitated surface of the lake. This led to one monumental explosion whose gout of fire and destruction engulfed the top half of the island, a vast storm of rocks, lava, and smoke that rose as the explosion accelerated, a raging upward column of destruction. And then there was a second, even greater explosion, one so deep and muffled it seemed to stir the mountains themselves. But this one wasn’t an explosion; rather it was an implosion: and Pendergast saw the fractured, broken remains of the castle begin to collapse in on themselves—slowly at first, and then more and more quickly, until the vast ancient façade crumbled in with an unearthly shriek. Pendergast saw tongues of living lava shooting out from the rent maw of the island, streaking upward in fiery tracers before falling back down to the lake, dropping all around him like bombs, sizzling and popping as they hit the water.

He revved up the engine again, heading toward shore.

And then—with a final, convulsive blast that seemed to shake the earth to its very core—the entire island tore itself apart, hurtling house-size chunks of rock and blocks of dressed stone thousands of feet into the air with incredible violence, destroying many of the boats of the would-be evacuees, the detritus arcing through the night sky and falling as far away as the town of Nova Godói, starting fires in the surrounding forest and causing such a devastating rain of ruin that Pendergast found himself dodging a firing gallery of falling rocks as he tore through the water at top speed in an attempt to save his own life.

84

PENDERGAST PULLED THE LAUNCH ALONGSIDE A WHARF, leapt out, and ran along the quay. Several members of the Twins Brigade were there, guarding the docks, staring at the final destruction of the island. The chaos from the final, dreadful explosion was settling down now, and in the lambent light of the erupting island he could see that half a dozen boats of various sizes had escaped the final conflagration and were coming across the lake toward the town. As he watched, one of the boats—a small, sleek craft—approached the quay at high speed. It held what appeared to be scientists or technicians in lab coats. The boat roared up against the quay, slamming into the stone, and the occupants scrambled onto land. They were glassy-eyed and stunned, several with hair and eyebrows scorched, filthy with soot, coughing and choking. They staggered up the quay toward the town, saying nothing. The Twins Brigade watched them pass but did not stop them. Instead they focused their weapons on a second arriving boat, containing half a dozen men in Nazi dress. They had also suffered from the effects of the explosion, their faces blackened, uniforms singed. A few appeared to be injured.

As the boat approached the quay, the brigade took positions and began firing. For a minute, scattered, sporadic fire was returned by the Nazis in the boat; but the firefight was over almost before it had started. The Nazis threw down their weapons, raised their hands in surrender as the boat idled up to the quay. A detachment of twins led them away under guard.

Pendergast looked back over the lake, its black surface now a fiery reflection of the island, a gaping cone of boiling lava, only a few broken ramparts of the fortress remaining at the edges. A small skiff could be seen streaking over the water, approaching the quay at an oblique angle, keeping as much as possible out of the light of the flickering flames. Pendergast looked at it more closely. In it was a single man, seated in the stern, one hand on the tiller of the outboard. He was tall, powerfully built, with a thick shock of white hair that seemed to glow in the burning reflection of the ruined tower.

Fischer.

Pendergast drew his weapon and ran down the quay in the direction of the approaching skiff. But even as he did so, Fischer caught sight of him and gunned the motor, slewing sharply away from the quay, heading past it in the direction of the beach and the forest beyond. Pendergast fired once and missed; Fischer drew his own gun and returned fire, but from the moving boat the shot went wide. Pendergast stopped and took careful aim, this time punching a round into the outboard motor, which began to cough and sputter, billows of ugly black smoke rising into the ash-filled air. Fischer tried to turn the boat back away from shore, toward the center of the lake, but Pendergast fired a third time. Fischer staggered, grabbed his chest, and with a cry went over the gunwale of the boat into the water.

The burning boat drifted on while Pendergast ran past the end of the quay, to the pebbled beach opposite where Fischer’s body had fallen into the water. Reaching the formation of three large, separated rocks rising from the water just beyond the quay, he leapt up on the closest, scanning the dark water for any sign of Fischer.

A shot rang out; Pendergast felt a sharp burning sensation, like a fiery slash of a knife, graze his left arm just below the knife wound in his shoulder. He fell back onto the slippery rock, barely managing to retain hold of his weapon, cursing himself for his lack of caution. When he was able to take cover and reconnoiter, he realized that Fischer must have himself taken cover behind one of the other three rocks: the one farthest into the lake.