River of Ruin (4 page)

Even as he sought defensive cover, the connection came clear. Far from a random mugging, this was an elaborate robbery attempt to get the Lepinay journal and hide evidence of who really wanted it.
But who had killed the thief?
It made no sense that the Asians in the sedan had gunned down their own man. The bullet had come from a yet-unseen assassin.

There was no time to consider the implications that Jean-Paul Derosier or Gary Barber might have set him up. With only seconds before the attackers burst through the door behind him, the memories of previous combat served to push Mercer on.

A set of circular stairs were sunk into the floor on one side of the room, backed by a stone wall that looked like it had stood there for centuries. Light spilling in from the street made the round opening look like the entrance to Hell itself. That sudden image sent a chill along Mercer’s spine. He’d just figured out where he was.

In the late eighteenth century, Paris was being overwhelmed by the stench of its overflowing cemeteries, and outbreaks of disease from decomposition were rampant. In an effort to clean up the city, officials decided to dig up and then re-inter millions of the dead in the old limestone quarries that had been excavated during Roman times. They ended up filling a hundred miles of tunnels with the skeletal remains of six million people in what became the largest repository of bones in the world. Part of this extensive catacomb was open to the public as a mile-long walking tour, and Mercer found himself trapped at its entrance. His only way out led through the twisting maze of what Parisians called
l’empire de la mort
. The empire of the dead.

He had no time to find light switches, so he rummaged behind a counter and grabbed two large flashlights. He stuffed one into his coat pocket and held the other in the same hand as his briefcase to keep the gun free. He dodged to the circular stairs and descended into the abyss. At the bottom of the corkscrew stairs, the flashlight revealed a long tunnel lined with rough stone. He turned off the light again when he heard a door open above him. He ran with his knees bent, his shoes making no more than a whisper against the gravel floor. With his fingers brushing the wall, he came to a left bend in the passageway and checked his surroundings again with a quick burst from the flashlight. Another straight tunnel led farther into the subterranean realm, and again he ran on.

Three more times he came to sharp corners before breaking out into an underground chamber. For as far as the flashlight cut the gloom he saw neat stacks of skeletal remains piled like cordwood. Age had yellowed the bones and some were cemented together by minerals in the water that dripped from the limestone ceiling. Countless thousands of empty skulls watched him as he crossed the gallery. He hoped the painted markings in the roof led to this horror show’s exit.

Halfway to the next section of the catacomb the lights suddenly snapped on. They were artfully placed spots that highlighted the chamber’s more grisly aspects—walls of femurs, crosses made of tibias, abstract sculptures of skulls and pelvises. Mercer noted all this in a frantic glance. His pursuers would be coming and his lead was maybe a minute.

He was certain that the gunmen had seen him pick up the gun, so he doubted he’d shoot more than one in an ambush. And once contact was made, they’d be able to outflank him. But he decided that two against one was still better than facing three. From behind a wall of bones he was able to see the tunnel leading back to the surface. A constant patter of water seepage dripped from the low roof.

The countless firefights he’d been in gave him if not confidence, at least self-control. He managed to slow his breathing and cut short the raging questions. He concentrated solely on survival. He took a moment to check the automatic pistol he’d recovered, a small Beretta 9mm. The action was stiff, as if it hadn’t been oiled in years, and the brass shells were pitted and tarnished.

Just my luck to be mugged by a discount goon,
Mercer thought bitterly. The click of a misfire would betray his position as surely as an accurately placed shot.

A crunch of gravel sounded over the drips and a shadow passed just beyond the entrance tunnel. Mercer raised his pistol in a two-handed grip, waiting, his eyes staring into the murky light. In a burst, the three assassins rushed into the chamber, their silenced weapons shooting tongues of flame as they laid down covering fire. The wild shots turned bone to powder with each impact. Mercer couldn’t face the onslaught and stayed behind his barrier, waiting for them to pause. A row of skulls above him looked down as if laughing.

The muted echoes of that first barrage died away and Mercer heard voices. He had no way to be sure, but it sounded like Chinese to him. It wasn’t much of a stretch to realize they were employees of bidder 127. They were trying to steal the one item that he hadn’t been able to buy at the auction. How they knew Mercer had it laid the blame firmly at Derosier’s feet.

Mercer ducked his head around the jagged stack of femurs. The gunmen were hidden. An explosion of bone dust erupted next to his shoulder and he could feel the passage of a ricochet. He’d been spotted. More rounds poured in, high-velocity bullets that tore into the wall of human remains. Mercer shuffled back around the far side of the island of bones. Chips of yellowed skeleton were blown from the stack. A figure stepped out of the shadows, creeping steadily forward on soft-soled shoes. Mercer took aim before he was spotted and eased the trigger.

The gun bucked and the unsilenced blast sounded like a cannon in the nightmarish confines. The bullet took the assassin center-mass and dropped him instantly. Keeping low, Mercer moved down another alley where the neatly stacked bony fragments were separated by body part, not individual. Tibias in one section, scapulas in another, a ten-foot stretch of nothing but ribs.

He found an arched doorway and dashed through. No shots chased in his wake as he passed some sort of altar and into another ossuary chamber decorated with obelisks from Napoleonic times. A square stack of bones that reached to the ceiling was dated 1804 and looked like a mausoleum.

There weren’t as many lights on in here, but Mercer kept his flashlight off, moving more with touch than sight. He looked at the gravel floor and cursed. His footprints were visibly the freshest in the room. No matter where he searched for cover, the two remaining gunmen would know where he was hidden. The floor was too rough to discard his shoes, so he had to come up with an alternative. He walked the perimeter of the chamber, keeping his ears attuned to the sound of pursuit. Three-quarters of the way around, he realized that there was only one entrance. He’d staggered into a dead end. And then he spotted what could be his salvation, a wooden door embedded in the limestone wall that kept tourists from exploring deeper into the catacombs. He had no idea what lay on the other side. It could very well be a storage closet, but it was his only alternative.

No amount of pushing would move the locked door, and once Mercer shot the handle off the gunmen would be on him. He held the Beretta at an angle so the bullet would ricochet away, turned his head, and fired. The old iron lock crumbled and the unbalanced door creaked open. Mercer wrenched the door closed after him. There were no lights in this area, so he kept his flashlight on as he raced past more stacks of bodies, running first right then left as the tunnel bored deeper into the earth. His mind began drawing a mental map of his progress, an automatic skill developed through years of mine work. He was confident that if he survived he’d be able to retrace his steps.

The sound of pursuit reached him every time he paused for breath, neither gaining nor losing ground. He came across a narrow passage barely wide enough for him to pass sideways. The tunnel seemed to slope upward at a shallow angle. With the light off, he moved in, sweeping his feet against the dusty floor to obscure his prints. The darkness was absolute. He could taste it in his mouth and feel it clogging his ears.

After fifty yards, his gun hand smashed into a solid wall. Not daring to turn on the light, he felt around, probing the darkness until he found where the tunnel continued to the left. Behind him he thought he saw a ghost’s glow of light from one of the gunmen, but it didn’t appear that they had found where he’d gone yet. They would, he knew. They would.

His knees hit every irregularity in the ancient stonework as he shuffled sideways. Beginning to fear that the tunnel would pinch out, Mercer found that the claustrophobic rock suddenly began to widen. He could walk normally. He felt like he’d moved into another room and chanced flicking on his light. What he saw made him gag.

The room was fifty or sixty feet square and the floor was a sea of carelessly strewn skeletons, like a scene from a Nazi death camp or Cambodia’s killing fields. A hole halfway up the brick wall opposite him was his only way out. To cross, Mercer had to step up onto the remains. Each lurching pace crunched into the pile, snapping the brittle bones. To keep the threads of panic from binding him, he told himself that the obscene sound was just the rustle of autumn leaves in a forest.

His pants were torn by sharp protrusions and soon blood began to seep from shredded skin. Something snagged on his leg and he had to look down to dislodge it. His foot was ensnared in a rib cage. He kicked frantically and the bones flew apart.

The light from his torch suddenly seemed brighter and Mercer whirled to look behind him. He saw two bright spots waving in the tunnel he’d just escaped. The gunmen had made up ground. He began running across the countless dead, desperate not to join them. A yard short of the hole, Mercer dove headlong as the beam from a flashlight swept the charnel room. The rough stone tore across his chest as he tumbled through the opening. He began rolling down a packed dirt slope with his case clutched to his chest. He heard a startled exclamation from one of the gunmen and the spit of a hastily fired shot.

Mercer came to a stop in a shallow pool of foul-smelling water. His flashlight lay a few feet away, its glow focused on a half-submerged skull. This one was connected to the body that once carried it, a body still dressed in the remnants of jeans and a sweatshirt. It was a
catophile,
as illegal explorers of this underground crypt called themselves, who’d become lost and died. Judging by the decomposition, he or she had been down here for years. The empire of the dead continued to claim new members.

He thought briefly of abandoning his sample case here. The gunmen weren’t likely to continue the chase once they had the Lepinay journal. But the idea died as soon as it formed. His anger remained stronger than any instinct of self-preservation.

He jumped to his feet and started running. This passage wasn’t part of the Roman mines. It was a more modern, brick-lined tunnel. It took Mercer a minute to realize that he’d broken through into Paris’s extensive sewer system. Built by Napoleon III’s municipal engineer, Baron Georges Haussmann when he redesigned Paris beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, the sewers were a thousand-mile labyrinth of tunnels that exactly duplicated the streets above. Fortunately the storm runoff from the heavy rains had swept away much of the human waste generated by the millions above. Still, the stench rising from the channel in the center of the tunnel was overwhelming. Mercer’s lungs began to burn after only a few paces.

The bottom of the tunnel had silted up with a clinging morass that sucked at his shoes. He vaulted up to the ledge that ran along the side of the passage. Overhead, he could hear raw sewage coursing through the two-foot-wide pipes that were bolted into the vaulted ceiling. Strings of offal drizzled from poorly fitted seams. At least here there was an occasional lightbulb along the roof of the tunnel.

Had his lead been greater, Mercer would have climbed one of the ladders he came across that presumably led to manhole covers on the street, but he guessed the gunmen were only a minute behind. He continued to run as hard as the fouled air would let him. He paid no attention to the dozens of rats or the jaunty porcelain street signs placed at each intersection. He simply chose a direction and continued on, realizing that the flow of water in the tunnel increased the farther downstream he ran. He rounded a sharp corner and suddenly was knee-deep in water. A snarl of tree limbs had created a dam across the tunnel, and back pressure was quickly filling the gallery.

Mercer clambered over the pile and fell into the water that drained from between the limbs. Clearing sewage from his face, he flicked aside a dead rat that had become entangled. Through a small opening in the mound he saw the gunmen as dim shadows behind their probing lights. He was certain he could take one and hoped that he would get both. If he didn’t, the downstream side of the dam was much shallower and he would be able to gain a few minutes on the survivor. The Beretta came up and he was surprised to see that his aim held steady.

Either alert for an ambush or extremely well trained, the gunmen split up as they approached the dam. One held far back, covering as his partner took up a position behind a huge valve. Realizing he’d never get both, Mercer concentrated on the closer assassin. The range was about twenty feet, an easy shot for him, but the gun was unfamiliar and he suddenly began to shake from the cold water.

No sooner had the gunman started to edge from around the valve than Mercer pulled the trigger. The gun jammed and the unnatural sound carried over the liquid whir of water sieving through the dam. Mercer didn’t have time to clear the pistol’s fouled breach before return fire raked the makeshift obstruction. He wiggled out of his burrow and ran through the ankle-deep water behind the dam, his loafers kicking up small clots of unidentifiable filth.

He reached a four-way intersection and turned the corner as a bullet destroyed a chunk of brick near his head. Dust scoured his already tearing eyes. The water grew deeper. Rather than leap onto the catwalk, Mercer pushed aside his revulsion and dove in. By feel, he cleared his jammed gun and dug his heels into the silt on the bottom of the channel. His case was wedged under his legs. Polluted water surged around him and unspeakable things brushed past him in the current. His lungs began to protest the foul air he’d drawn and he could taste the water on his lips as it tried to invade his body.