Chapter 9 - THE SEALED TOMBThe massive iron portcullis hit the granite floor with a bone-jarring crash, severing the stairwell exit.
Dust and ancient mortar cascaded from the vaulted ceiling.
“What did you do?!” Kane roared, shoving Claire against the steel vault door and pressing the hot barrel of his gun against her temple. “Reverse it! Reverse the lock right now!”
“It can’t be reversed,” Claire whispered, blood trickling from her split lip, a cold smile touching her mouth. “In sixty seconds, the pressurized tanks above this chamber will vent twelve hundred liters of industrial acid through the ceiling sprinklers. Everything in this room will dissolve into sludge.”
The two mercenaries panicked. They abandoned Madeleine, sprinting toward the iron grate, firing their rifles point-blank at the heavy bars in a frantic, useless frenzy. The ricochets whined off the stone, sparking violently in the gloom.
“Shut it down!” Kane screamed, his professional composure shattering into raw, feral terror. “Give me the code, Claire!”
“Let them go!” Claire shouted back, her voice echoing above the rising whine of the mechanical pumps. “Open the drainage sluice on the floor! There’s an emergency escape valve beneath the altar stones that leads to the mountain creek! Gabriel and my mother go first!”
Kane’s eyes darted frantically across the room. He could hear the hiss of pressurized gas beginning to leak from the overhead pipes.
A sharp, acrid chemical odor began to taint the air, burning their throats and eyes.
“Gabriel! The iron ring near the eastern corner!” Claire screamed, coughing as the acidic fumes hit her lungs. “Pull it!”
Gabriel leaped toward the eastern corner of the floor. Beneath decades of filth and damp silt, he found a massive, rusted cast-iron ring bolted into a granite flagstone.
He gripped the ring with both hands, planting his boots, and hauled upward with every ounce of strength in his body.
His muscles tore with agony. The stone resisted for three agonizing seconds before breaking free with a sickening crunch of old mortar, revealing a steep, rushing subterranean aqueduct that plunged downward into the mountain’s drainage network.
“Madeleine, go!” Gabriel shouted, scooping up his mother-in-law and thrusting her toward the opening.
“Gabriel, no! Claire!” the old woman cried.
“Go, Madeleine! I’m getting her!” Gabriel pushed her into the rushing water. Madeleine screamed as the current caught her, carrying her down the smooth stone chute into the blackness below.
One of the mercenaries tried to dive toward the hole. Kane shot him in the back without blinking.
“Nobody leaves before me!” Kane snarled, dragging Claire toward the drainage chute.
Gabriel didn't wait. He tackled Kane around the waist, slamming the detective into the granite flagstones.
The pistol flew from Kane’s grip, skittering across the floor and plunging straight down into the watery abyss.
Above them, the ceiling pipes ruptured.
A shower of hissing, corrosive droplets began to rain down upon the chamber.
A single droplet struck Kane’s shoulder, immediately eating through his tactical vest and hissing violently against his flesh. Kane shrieked in agony, striking Gabriel across the jaw with an iron elbow.
Gabriel rolled off, gasping for air as the toxic fumes seared his throat.
Claire grabbed Gabriel’s arm. “Gabriel! The chute! Now!”
“The ledger!” Kane screamed, writhing on the floor as the acid droplets multiplied. He scrambled on his hands and knees toward the vault door, which had swung open an inch under the fail-safe pressure, revealing a dull brass lockbox inside.
Kane reached out a burning, blistered hand, his fingers clawing for the box of European debt bonds that had consumed his entire life.
Gabriel pulled Claire toward the edge of the rushing drainage chute.
“Jump, Claire!” Gabriel yelled over the deafening hiss of melting stone.
Claire leaped into the rushing torrent.
Gabriel turned back for one fraction of a second.
Through the falling veil of chemical mist, he saw Kane’s fingers wrap around the brass handle of the lockbox.
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And then, with a deafening metallic screech, the main acid reservoir ruptured completely, burying Detective Marcus Kane beneath a cascading waterfall of corrosive fire.
Gabriel threw himself backward into the dark water, letting the subterranean current swallow him whole.
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