and briefly played over the man’s face. The bullet had taken out one of his eyes, and there was no mistaking that he was dead.
“Well.” Corporal Rahimi’s voice was laconic. “He has come to the right place. Welcome to the Underworld.”
***
“Get ready.” Linko reached into his munitions pouch and pulled out a flash-bang grenade. In the darkness of the cave, the light explosions were going to be horrendous and effective. He wished they had nightvision goggles. That would have given them a much better edge.
But he would make do.
He sidled up to the opening into the next cave, pulled the pin, and tossed the grenade inside the cave. He turned to his men. “Close your eyes and do not open them until I say.” Then he closed his own eyes.
***
A metal object bounced off the stone floor in the cave below. Lourds looked for it, but a moment later, he went blind as what seemed to be a miniature sun dawned in the darkness at the bottom of the large cave.
Pain stabbed into his eyes and he swore. He flailed blindly with his arms as he retreated from the opening to the Oracle’s cave. He tripped over someone and fell, barely able to keep his face from smacking into the stone floor.
“I am blind!” One of the soldiers sounded nearby, but the deafness caused by the blast made that hard to be certain of.
“We are all blind.” Despite the situation, Fitrat sounded calm and collected. His voice just penetrated the thick, cottony deafness and ringing that claimed Lourds’s hearing. “Keep your posts by the door. They still have to come up the steps for us. When you hear them, kill them. Just stay out of the opening.”
A moment later, Lourds was still blinking, trying to get the aftereffects out of his vision. Gunshots suddenly filled the cave with a hellish thunder, and more blasts from Fitrat and his soldiers increased the auditory onslaught.
“I am hit.”
Lourds recognized the voice as Marias’s. He pushed himself up and crawled toward the man.
The professor clutched his leg. Lourds stared hard through the muzzle flashes and made out the bloody patch on his thigh. Remembering what Anna had done back in Afghanistan, Lourds ripped off one of his shirt sleeves, folded it into a compress, then pulled off his belt and used it to put pressure on the wound.
Vision partially restored, Lourds looked around the Oracle room. Haros cowered by the dais, looking terribly afraid.
Lourds knew they couldn’t hold that position. All it would take was an anti-personnel grenade lobbed into the Oracle room and they’d all become casualties.
“Professor Lourds.” Fitrat sat at the opening and reloaded his pistol. “Go back into the passageway at the back. See how far it goes. Find out if we can escape that way and if we can somehow close it off after us.”
Lourds nodded. He grabbed his flashlight from where he’d clipped it on to the side of his backpack but didn’t turn it on yet. He started toward the opposite side of the Oracle room.
Once in the other passageway, Lourds switched on the flashlight and followed the straight tunnel a hundred feet. Then he hit a T-intersection. To the right was an opening to a small cave that glowed red when his light touched it. A sweet smell lingered in the air, and he didn’t know what that was.
To the left was another passageway. He shined his flashlight into it and hurried on as the gunfire continued behind him. Fifty yards or so farther on, the tunnel widened into a large cavern. As Lourds turned around to retrace his steps, another tremble—this one larger than the earlier ones—raced through the earth, knocking dust and rock loose. A massive grinding noise sounded from somewhere below.
He ran back to the Oracle room, hating the idea of leaving it unprotected.
“Captain Fitrat!” Lourds’s vision was better now, and he hoped the same was true of everyone. “The tunnel continues into another cave.”
“Rahimi, give Professor Lourds a hand with Professor Marias.”
Rahimi joined Lourds at Marias’s side. Together, they got him to his feet and underway. Lourds grabbed Haros by the arm and gave the boy instructions in Greek. They headed down the passageway, leaving Fitrat and his few remaining men holding off the Russians.
At the T-intersection, Lourds saw that Marias was capable of walking with Rahimi’s help. He gave his flashlight to Haros.
“Stay with them. Guide them.”
The boy nodded and joined the corporal and the professor.