Map of Bones (14 page)

T
HE EXPLOSION
across the church drew all eyes—except Gray’s. There was nothing he could do for the others.

A grim smile creased the tall man’s face. “It seems your friends—”

Rachel moved. With the momentary distraction, her captor must have loosened his grip, perhaps underestimating the slim woman. Rachel dropped her head and snapped it back briskly, smacking the man’s lower jaw hard enough to hear his teeth crack together.

Moving with surprising speed, she struck the encircling arm with the heel of her hand and dropped at the same time. She elbowed her assailant a sharp blow to the midriff, then twisted and punched a fist into the man’s crotch.

Gray swung his pistol toward the Dragon Lady. But the woman was quicker, stepping forward and placing her gun between his eyes, an inch away.

To the side, the tall man crumpled around his waist, falling to a knee. Rachel kicked his gun aside.

“Run!” Gray hissed at her, but he kept his eyes on the Dragon Lady.

The Guild operative met his gaze—then did the oddest thing. She flicked the muzzle of her gun in the direction of the exit and motioned with her head.

She was letting him go.

Gray stepped back. She didn’t fire, but she kept her gun focused on him, ready if he tried to make a move against her.

Rather then ponder the impossibility, Gray swung around and fired at the nearest monks, dropping the two closest. They had been distracted by the grenade blast and missed the lightning-fast change in power here.

Gray grabbed Rachel by the arm and hauled ass toward the exit doors.

A pistol shot sounded directly behind him. He was struck in the upper arm and spun slightly, skipping steps. The Dragon Lady’s pistol smoked. She had shot Gray as she helped the tall man up. Blood dribbled down her face. A self-inflicted wound, covering her subterfuge. She had purposefully missed her shot.

Rachel steadied him and ducked behind the last pillar. The door to the outer vestibule lay directly ahead. No one stood in their way.

Gray risked a glance toward the gunfire at the back of the cathedral. Smoke billowed from the blasted doorway. The handful of gunmen fired a continual barrage through the opening, making sure no one escaped this time. Then one of the men tossed a second grenade—right through the blasted doorway.

The other gunmen ducked as it blew.

Smoke and debris shattered outward.

Gray turned away. Rachel had also witnessed the attack. Tears welled in her eyes. He felt her sag against him, legs weakening. Something deep inside him ached at her grief. He had lost teammates in the past. He was trained to mourn later.

But she had lost family.

“Keep moving,” he said gruffly. It was all he could do. He had to get her to safety.

She glanced to him and seemed to gain strength from his hard countenance. It was what she needed. Not sympathy. Strength. He had seen it in the field before, men under fire. She stood straighter.

He squeezed her arm.

She nodded. Ready.

Together they ran and slammed through the outer doors.

A pair of assassins manned the foyer, posted over the dead bodies of two men in German police uniforms. The guards at the cordon. The pair of monks was not caught by surprise. One of the men fired immediately, driving Rachel and Gray to the side. They would not make it to the outer doors, but another doorway lay to their immediate left.

With no choice, they dodged through it. The second man raised his weapon. A wall of fire cascaded toward them. He had a goddamn flamethrower. Gray slammed the door, but flames licked under the jamb. Gray danced back. There was no lock on the door.

He glanced behind him.

Steps spiraled up.

“The tower stair,” Rachel said.

Gunshots struck the door.

“Go,” he said.

He pushed Rachel ahead of him, and they fled up the stairs, winding around and around. Behind and below, the door crashed open. He heard a familiar voice, yelling in German. “Get the bastards! Burn them alive!”

It was the tall man, the leader of the monks.

Footsteps pounded on the stone steps.

With the twist of the staircase, neither party had a clear shot at the other, but that still put the advantage with their pursuers. As Gray and Rachel ran, a fountain of flames chased them, sputtering up after them, whisking around the bend in the tower stairs.

Around and around they ran. The steps grew more narrow as they climbed the constricting throat of the steepled tower. Tall stained-glass windows dotted the way, but they were too thin to climb through, no more than arrow slits.

At last the steps reached the belfry of the tower. A massive free-swinging bell hung over the tower’s steel-grated well. A deck lay around the bell.

Here at least the windows were wide enough to climb through and held no glass to muffle the mighty bell’s peals—but the way through them was sealed by bars.

“A public observation deck,” Rachel said. She kept a gun, one borrowed from Gray, fixed on the opening to the stairs.

Gray hurried around. There was no other way out. The city views opened around him: the Rhine River sparkled, spanned by the arched Hohenzollern Bridge; the Ludwig Museum was lit up brilliantly, as were the blue sails of the Cologne Musical Dome. But there was no escape to the streets below.

Distantly he heard police sirens, a forlorn and eerily foreign wail.

Gray raised his eyes, calculating.

A shout rose from Rachel. Gray turned as a jet of flames erupted from the stairwell. Rachel fled back, joining him.

They had run out of time.

3:34
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M
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B
ELOW, IN
the cathedral, Yaeger Grell entered the blasted chamber, gun in hand. He had waited until the smoke from the second grenade had cleared out. His two partners had gone to join the others in setting up the final incendiary bombs near the entrance to the church.

He would join them—but first he wanted to see the damage done to those who had killed Renard, his brother-in-arms. He stepped through, readying himself for the stench of bloody flesh and burst bowel.

The remains of the door made the footing treacherous. He led with his gun. As he took a second step, something struck his arm. He backed a step, stunned, not comprehending. He stared down at the severed stump of his wrist as blood spurted. There was no pain.

He glanced up in time to see a sword—a sword!—swinging through the air. It reached his neck before the surprise faded from his features. He felt nothing as his body pitched forward, his head impossibly thrown back.

Then he kept falling, falling, falling…as the world went black.

3:35
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M
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K
AT STEPPED
back and lowered the jeweled sword. She bent, grabbed an arm, and dragged the body out of direct view of the doorway. Her head still rang from the grenade blast.

She whispered to Monk—at least she hoped she whispered. She couldn’t even hear her own words. “Help the monsignor.”

Monk stared from the decapitated body back to the bloody sword in her hand, his eyes wide with a shock, but also grudging respect. He stepped over to one of the treasure cases and manhandled the monsignor free of one of the displays. All three of them had hidden inside a bulletproof case after the first grenade blast, knowing a second grenade would follow.

It had.

But the security cases had done their job, protecting the most valuable treasure of all: their lives. The shrapnel had cut through the room, but shielded behind the bulletproof glass, they had survived.

It had been her idea.

Afterward, with the concussion still echoing in her head, Kat had rolled out of her case and found the jeweled sword on the floor. It proved a more circumspect weapon than her pistol. She had not wanted a blast to alert the other gunmen.

Still, her hand shook. Her body remembered the last knife fight she had been in…and the aftermath. She tightened her grip on the sword’s hilt, drawing strength from the hard steel.

Behind her, Monsignor Verona stumbled to his feet. He glanced to his limbs as if surprised to find them still attached.

Kat returned to the door. Except for their dead comrade, none of the other gunmen seemed to be paying attention. They were massed by the entrance.

“We should move.” Kat motioned them out. Sticking to the wall, she led them away from the front exits, away from the guards. She reached the corner where the nave crossed with the transept. Kat waved them around the corner of the intersection.

Once out of the direct view of the gunmen, the monsignor pointed down the length of the transept. “That way,” he whispered.

There was another set of doors back there. Another exit. Unguarded.

With the fifteenth-century sword clutched in her fist, Kat hurried them forward. They had survived.

But what about the others?

3:38
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M
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R
ACHEL FIRED
her gun down the throat of the spiral staircase, counting down the rounds in the second clip. Nine bullets. They had more ammunition, but no time to load another magazine. Commander Pierce was too busy.

With no other recourse, she shot blindly, sporadically, keeping the attackers at bay. Spouts of flame continued to harass her, licking forth like the tongue of a dragon.

The stalemate could not last much longer.

“Gray!” she yelled, skipping the formalities of rank.

“Another second,” he answered from around the far side of the bell.

As the flames faltered from the stairwell, Rachel aimed and squeezed the trigger. She had to hold them off. The bullet struck the stone wall and ricocheted down the staircase.

Then her pistol’s slide locked open.

Out of bullets.

She backed away and circled the bell to the far side.

Gray had his pack off and had tied a rope around one of the window bars. He had the other end wrapped around his waist and the slack over one arm. He had used a hand jack in a tool kit to pry apart two of the window’s bars, just wide enough to climb through.

“Hold the slack,” he said.

She took the nylon rope, about five meters in length. Behind her, a fresh billow of flame jettisoned from the stairwell. The others were testing again, moving forward.

Gray grabbed his pack and squeezed between the bars. Once out on the stone parapet, he donned the backpack and turned back to her. “The rope.”

She passed it to him. “Be careful.”

“A little late for that.”

He stared down between his toes. Not a wise thing to do, Rachel thought. The hundred-meter drop would weaken anyone’s knees…and strength of leg was most important now.

Gray faced forward from the ledge of the cathedral’s south spire.

Four meters away, over a fatal drop, stood the north spire, a twin to this one. Off limits to the public, there were no bars across the far window. But there was also no hope of jumping from window to window, not from a standing position. Instead, Gray planned to dive straight out and grab whatever handhold he could on the decorated façade of the opposite tower.

The risk was great, but they had no other recourse.

They had to jump ship.

Gray bent his knees. Rachel held her breath, one hand fisted at the hollow of her neck.

Without a second’s hesitation, Gray simply leaned out and leapt, arching the length of his body, flinging away the coil of slack rope. He flew across the gap and struck just below the window ledge. He lunged out with both arms and grabbed ahold of the sill, miraculously catching it. But the impact bounced him back. His arms could not hold him. He began to fall.

“Your left foot!” she yelled to him.

He heard her. His left toe scrambled against the stone surface and found the demon-faced gargoyle on the lower tier. He planted his foot atop its head.

With his plummet stopped, he regained a handful of ledge above and found another toehold for his right leg, clinging like a fly to a wall. He took a deep breath, steadying himself, then climbed and manhandled himself through the window.

Rachel risked a glance behind her, ducking to peer under the bell. The flames had stopped. She knew the others understood the significance of her sudden cease-fire.

Rachel could wait no longer. She shimmied through the bars. The ledge was slick with pigeon guano, the winds gusting and treacherous.

Across the gap, Gray had secured his end of the rope, forming a bridge. “Hurry! I have you.”

She met his eyes across the gap and found firm assurance.

“I have you,” he repeated.

Swallowing, she reached out. Don’t look down, she thought, and grabbed the rope. Hand over hand. That’s all she needed to do.

She leaned out, both fists white-knuckled to the rope, toes still on the ledge. She heard the bell ring behind her. Startled, she glanced over a shoulder and watched a dumbbell-shaped silver cylinder bounce across the stone deck.

She didn’t know what it was—but it certainly wasn’t good.

Needing no other encouragement, Rachel swung out on the rope and quickly scrambled across the bridge, legs kicking, hand over hand. Gray caught her around the midriff.

“Bomb,” she gasped out, tossing her head back to indicate the far tower.

“What—?”

The blast cut off any further words. Buffeted from behind, Rachel was shoved through the casement and into Gray’s chest. They both fell in a tangle to the floor of the bell tower. A wall of blue flame rolled over them through the window, blast-furnace hot.

Gray held her tight, shielding her with his own body.

But the flames quickly dissipated in the gusty winds.

Gray rolled aside as Rachel elbowed up. She stared back toward the south tower. The spire was aflame. Spats of fire licked and roiled from the four windows. The bell clanged within the conflagration.

Gray joined her. He hauled in the rope. The knot on the far side had burned away, severing the bridge. Across the gap, the window bars glowed a fiery red.

“Incendiary device,” he said.