The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,124

a scream and took four deep breaths. She then shifted her helmet’s radio closer to her lips. She pictured what she needed, crated in the back of the transport helicopter.

“Send over the rocket launcher.”

38

June 26, 6:33 P.M. WEST

High Atlas Mountains, Morocco

On the dark terrace, Gray gave Seichan a brief relieved hug. “You sure you’re okay?”

She nodded and adjusted the monkey clinging to her shoulder. “We both are.”

The others crowded close around them.

A few minutes ago, they had all heard the gunfire. At the first shot, Gray had ordered everyone to stick to the terrace and arm themselves. Gray had immediately taken off down the tunnel as more gunfire erupted. Then a huge fiery explosion brightened the curve of the tunnel, followed by a superheated blast of air. With his heart pounding in panic, he had continued around the bend in the passageway. In the distance, he had spotted a thin line of flaming brightness marking the closing gates into the city. As he ran toward them, they sealed, and darkness fell.

At that moment, despair had struck him like a hammer to the heart, stumbling him to a stop. Then a flashlight had blinked on, revealing a small figure rising from the floor.

Thank god.

On the terrace, he took Seichan’s hand and faced the group. On the way back to the dark city, she had already explained what had happened, what she’d done.

“What now?” Mac asked, cradling a SIG P320 in both his hands.

The others were similarly armed, except for Kowalski. He had their ammunition duffel over one shoulder, but in his arms he carried an AA-12, an Auto Assault combat shotgun. The weapon’s large drum magazine held thirty-two shells, all British FRAG-12s, highly explosive antipersonnel and armor-piercing slugs.

Kowalski had certainly come to play.

Gray motioned back toward the tunnel. “With the gates closed, Seichan has bought us a little time. But we don’t know how much. We need to use that time to search for another way out of here, some back door.”

Bailey nodded. “The Phaeacians would be too smart to trap themselves inside here if their main gates were compromised. There must be another way out.”

“But where?” Maria asked. She waved an arm to encompass the breadth of the dark city. “Who knows how far this place honeycombs out from here? It could be for miles.”

Gray shook his head. “No. If there’s another way out, it’ll be over there.” He pointed across the cavern to the towering palace. “The royalty here would’ve had their own way out of here, somewhere close to them.”

Mac grimaced but agreed. “Sounds about right. And didn’t Hunayn write that the city’s fail-safe system was over there, too?”

“Beyond the palace, where the fires of Hades burn and Titans loom,” Bailey quoted.

Only Kowalski voiced a dissent. “C’mon, guys. Does that really sound like a place we want to go?”

Gray ignored him and got everyone moving off the terrace and down the ramp to the city’s topmost tier. A sprawl of bronze structures at this height created a maze of crooked alleys and narrow, winding streets. But one of the city’s main stairways cut down through the levels and lay only a short distance from the bottom of the ramp.

Gray rushed the others to it.

He pointed down the limestone steps and over to where the gold doors of the palace lay midway up the other side. “Down and up again,” he said. “Maybe half a mile. But we’ll have to move fast.”

“What if we can’t get into the palace?” Mac asked, noting the tunnel at the back of the stairs, sealed tight with a bronze door. “What if it’s all locked up like this?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Gray said. “Let’s go.”

Flashlight in hand, he led the others down the dark steps. The stairway appeared to be a twenty-yard-wide promenade, similar to the other four that divided the city into larger sections. From the shallow ruts worn into the limestone underfoot, the Phaeacians must have traversed these stairs for centuries, their sandals slowly buffing away the rock.

Gray tried to imagine this city alive and bustling with people. Children running up and down these steps. Shopkeepers hawking their wares. Laughing sailors returning after a long voyage, happy to be home.

But Bailey reminded him of a darker side to the city. “Look at all these statues.”

The priest shone his light along the row of shadowy bronze sculptures lining both sides of the steps. Each was twice Gray’s height or more. Focused on the task of reaching the