of gravel and dust.
I briefly considered shooting into the bell tower. If nothing else, it would bring out whatever response to a threat this place had.
But if there was even the slightest chance Arthur was in here …
D.J.’s explosive defense systems might be wholly devastating. I wasn’t about to risk it.
“Could there be, like … motion detectors or something?” Pilar whispered. “That we might trip?”
Or infrared. There were a thousand ways this could go wrong we wouldn’t see coming.
“Yes,” I said.
We didn’t converse anymore. I led the way swiftly across the open space behind the mission, rifle raised with one eye on the scope. We ducked onto the tile of a roofed outside hallway, Spanish arches framing the night between square pillars. I held up a fist to Pilar as we reached the first open archway leading inside. It had no door within it, only pitch blackness beckoning us.
Fortunately, I had the rifle scope. I’d dialed in on the fly and the flat green-and-black monochrome played across a worn, empty interior. Flaking plaster, cracking walls.
No people. No bombs. No Arthur.
I played the sensor wand across the doorway and our immediate surroundings. No sign of explosives.
Trusting Pilar would follow, I slid into the darkness.
Inside, the only sounds were my own breathing and Pilar’s, and our footsteps against the loose debris of the flooring. I bore in mind my own warning to Pilar about trying not to step where there might be a trigger or tripwire, but it wasn’t always possible. I did keep the wand out and running, but it stayed dark.
The remains of the mission flashed out of the black at me through the scope. Church pews. Crosses. Decorative recesses that had probably once held religious iconography. The night-vision scope gave it all the same eerie greenness.
We paced out the entire ground floor within minutes. Nothing.
The only place left was the tower.
Here, a heavy wooden door blocked our way, but the wand gave no sign of explosives, and it was unbarred. I had Pilar stand back as I pushed it open, just in case.
The bell tower had a square cross section, and a spiral staircase crawled up in short, straight flights against the walls. In the center hung a thick, heavy rope, so long, it coiled on the floor. I scanned the underside of the stairs, but nothing struck me as peculiar or out of place.
I motioned Pilar to stay against the wall, where we’d have a smaller chance of being spotted by anyone peering down through the center of the staircase from above. Letting the sensor wand and my raised rifle lead the way, I put a cautious foot on the first wooden step.
It creaked slightly. Nothing exploded.
By six steps up, I had the additional concern of how much the steps were sagging under us. The mission was closed for restoration, after all—how much did it need? I kept my weight near the wall and tried to keep up approximated force calculations to make sure Pilar would be all right behind me. She was sidling up with her back to the stone, her handgun covering the way we’d come.
We were halfway up the third shallow flight when the top of the staircase erupted into a fireball that seared my retinas.
Debris rained down, black silhouettes of wood and stone backlit momentarily by the brightness. I’d barely started to react when another explosion took out the stairs just below the top. Then another. Then another. A domino of fireworks dissolving the stairway from the top down in a brilliant chain of sound and light.
Distance over rate equaled time before the explosions reached us and the stairs went out from under us. Distance over rate equaled time before we could get down off the stairs, before we could jump without breaking something.
Time-sub-two exceeded time-sub-one by a split second that might as well have been an infinity.
I reached for Pilar, swinging around so I half-tackled her on the way to leaping off the stairs. I threw my whole body weight against the arm I had around her, shouting, “Jump!” in her ear as I took us over the edge.
Fortunately, she reacted fast enough to help push us off. In the brief moment when we left the floor behind, the steps behind us destroyed themselves with a concussion that smacked us across the back with the strength of a two-by-four.
The heavy bell rope hit me in the face, and I latched on to it with the hand that wasn’t clenched up around Pilar. I