Temple of Fire (12 page)

Ops
Center

Aboard the
Alamiranta

 

“Titan Six is in position beneath the
Temple
of
Kalpur-az
,” Touchdown said.  “Telemetry is holding — for now.”

The holographic image behind him reflected the temple, both above and below ground.

“Excellent,” said
Caine
.  “Let’s hope we can get this done quickly and get our team the hell out of there.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said DJ, “but I’m showing a target two hundred miles to our northwest.”

“What is it?” asked
Caine
.

“I can’t get a good read on it,” DJ said. 
“Could be a freighter.”

“Or another sub,” said Touchdown.

“Let’s get a little clarification before we scramble Titan jets out of
Mexico
,”
Caine
said.

“Understood,” said DJ.

 

The
Royal
Palace

The Ruins of
Raj
Kithune

 

Having climbed the stairs to the porch of the
Royal
Palace
, Will Langhorne entered a great hall that led to several spacious rooms.  The paintings on the walls were faded and incomplete, but they portrayed great winged creatures, serpents, and horses.  On every wall were depictions of what appeared to be royal couples dressed in flowing robes and holding long golden staffs.  Their skin tones were slightly brown, their features similar to the Maya or Aztec.  And yet their eyes were lined with dark make-up in the fashion of Egyptian royalty.

The earth rumbled, knocking Langhorne to the cracked tile floor.

The tremor did not quickly abate, however.  The mighty palace
shook,
a rift opening in the floor.

Langhorne staggered to his feet, three backpacks slung over his shoulder.

“That was close,” he said to himself as he backed away from the crack.

The floor beneath his feet suddenly sloped at a forty-degree angle.  Another crack had appeared behind the mercenary.  Will was sliding, feet first, towards the rift.

Tall yellow flames shot up through the floor as the ceiling began to crumble.  Bits of stone pelted the treasure hunter’s head.

The floor tilted more steeply, and Will Langhorne tumbled into the chamber below.

 

Titan Six

Temple of
Kalpur-az

 

Tank and Hawkeye lay on their stomachs, looking at the sub-chamber that Quiz would shortly enter.  Between the men was a titanium firing mechanism that was essentially an electronic crossbow.  Taking great care to keep the line untangled, several Dragons had brought the static line across the upper chamber and handed it to the Titan members.

Hawkeye threaded the end of the line into the crossbow.  The end of the static line was a three-sided chrome arrow point designed to pierce any surface — even metal — and then flange out to grip its target.

“This thing is going to have one hell of a kick,” Tank said.

“Yeah,” said Hawkeye, “and we only get one shot at this.  There’s no reeling it back across fire and lava to try again.”

Tank raised binoculars to his eyes.  “We should aim for a relatively smooth outcropping of limestone ten degrees to the right.”

“Let’s do it, brother,” said Hawkeye.

Tank scoped the rock on the opposite side of the broiling cavern and squeezed the trigger.  The cable flew from the crossbow, the arrow piercing the limestone target.  The recoil snapped his head and shoulder sharply to the right.

“Quiz weighs one hundred and sixty pounds,” Tank said.  “We need to see if the line is secure enough to hold his weight.”

Hawkeye twisted his body and motioned for two Dragons to pull on the sagging steel cable.

“Firmly,” Hawkeye told
Aiko
, “but not hard enough to dislodge it.”

The Dragons did as they were ordered.  The line held.

“Okay,” Hawkeye said, standing.  “We need some tension on the line.”  He walked to the far side of the chamber, where the cable had been threaded through a winch.  “Have your men
tighten
it very slowly,” he told
Aiko
.

A whirring motor sounded as the workers engaged the winch, slowly retracting slack in the line.

“That’s it!” called Tank.  “It’s tight enough!”

“The floor is getting awfully damn hot,”
Madison
said, wiping perspiration from his brow.  “We need to do this immediately.  I think this place is going to erupt in new flames any minute now.”

Quiz approached the narrow opening to the fiery cavern.  He was wearing a leather-and-chain harness.  Tank attached the harness to a motorized pulley wheel slotted firmly on top of the cable.

Carefully, Hawkeye and Gator lowered Quiz over the ledge.  The weight of Quiz’s body pulled the harness down with a hard jolt as he dangled in the air, swinging left to right.  Me-Sung then handed him the cylindrical nuke.

“You’ve got a fifteen yard clearance from the shit beneath you,” Hawkeye told him.  “Okay now.  Steady as she goes.”

Quiz pressed a button, causing the pulley wheel to roll slowly along the static line.  He was directly above a natural cauldron of burning oil.

“He’s on his own now,” said Shooter.

Quiz moved farther into the chamber as the entire cavern began to shake.

 

Titan Six

Temple of
Kalpur-az

 

Quiz advanced farther along the static line.  The tremor abated, but it left his harness swinging in an elliptical arc as wisps of smoke drifted through the cavern.  He looked above him, watching the pulley wheel pivoting left and right.  Too much motion either way might dislodge the wheel from the static line altogether.

Balls of colored gas erupted into flames all around him.  A pool of black oil bubbled like a demonic brew simmering deep in the recesses of hell.  Bright orange lava flows twisted in several different directions, reminding Quiz of malleable taffy that’s pulled in a candy store window.

He clutched the thermonuclear device closer to his chest.

Feeling at home, Dante?

* This is pretty much as I imagined hell when I wrote the Divine Comedy.  That having been said, I’d prefer that the cavern was more like the bottom circle of hell. *

Ice and cold?

* Precisely.  The heat doesn’t agree with me.  Next time, I’d prefer something a bit more tropical. *

I’ll see if it can be arranged. 
And enough with the humor.
  You’re distracting me.

* Just trying to keep your nerves steady.  I’ll help you with the placement of the bomb. *

Thanks.  I’m more worried about the Chinese throwing us all in here once we’ve made the drop.

* Some of them are genuinely concerned about the situation and are sincere in their assistance.  Others, however, would like nothing better than to make your fears come true.  They see no reason to stand on honor once the catastrophe is averted. *

Can we trust
Aiko
to keep them in line?

* Unknown at this point.  She and Me-Sung are both conflicted. Logically,
Aiko’s
will should
carry the day. * 

I’m not sure that logic can be applied to an agenda that seeks global domination.

* A valid point.  Now then — look below you.  I think we’re nearing the drop point. *

Quiz tilted his head to the side.  A yawning black hole was situated in the center of a fiery, almost circular rock ten feet in diameter.  Black smoke drifted up, encircling the harness.  Small explosions sounded every few seconds as new gas pockets were ignited or a new wave of magma appeared.  The structural integrity of the chamber was obviously weakening as rocks tumbled from the cavern walls.

Quiz instinctively lowered the temperature in his helmet.

* That hole is where U.S. Petroleum was drilling.  You need to get the device deep enough to prevent a mushroom cloud from reaching the upper atmosphere.  The detonation must resemble the below-ground nuclear tests of the Cold War.  That will seal the crater and also keep any dust and fallout from spreading beyond a few miles’ radius. *

If I drop the device into that hole, it might fall three miles down.  That’s too deep.  I had intended to drop it in the shaft between the two lava flows up ahead.

* Not a good idea.  The shaft is far too shallow.  It will result in a blast as devastating as the one
Madison
has predicted.  The drilling hole, on the other hand, goes down only one mile since the U.S. Petroleum explosion.  That is where the widest, thickest rock formations are located.  The rocks down there are very diverse in composition, especially when it comes to heavy metals.  Recall that this area was a favorite spot to mine for silver and gold in the nineteenth century.  The rocks — limestone, granite, and feldspars — will fuse nicely with the metals — don’t forget about copper and aluminum, too — creating a barrier that will cauterize this upwelling of geological activity. *

The drilling hole is small and far away.  I’m not sure I could hit the bulls-eye, especially with the harness shaking as it is.  If I miss, the show’s over.

* Set the timer for one hour.  It’s not going to be easy to get out of here, up to the surface, and then out of the crater.  We need some time.  Drop the cylinder vertically five feet to the right.  The gas currents should take it directly into the hole. *

How are you able to know these things with such precision?

* Everyone has latent powers of observation.  I’m simply using your own brain as a sensing mechanism. *

Fascinating.
  We need to talk more about this when my ass isn’t about to get singed.

Quiz punched the numeral 60 into the detonation keypad.  He then pulled back the arming switch.  The crystal started to glow brightly.

Quiz could barely see, but the thermonuclear bomb was now live.

 

The
Royal
Palace

The Ruins of
Raj
Kithune

 

Dazed, Will Langhorne regained consciousness and stood.  He estimated that the temperature in the storage rooms of the
Royal
Palace
was at least one hundred twenty degrees. 
Maybe more.
  Steam was hissing through several cracks in the floor.

A stairway guided him down into the earth.  Langhorne knew it was folly to move deeper into the ruins, but he’d risked his life to come this far, and he intended to expend his remaining energy in an all-out effort to find something of value.

Taking a flashlight from one of his backpacks, he descended the stairway.

At the bottom, he emerged in a smaller chamber.  The beam of his light played across the stone walls, which displayed line after line of unknown writing.

The beam highlighted a crawlway, five feet high, at the rear of the hot, humid chamber.  Getting on all fours, he entered the narrow space, choking back the dangerous fumes that were invading all levels of the palace.  His eyes stung with whatever was wafting through the air, and he wiped away tears with the back of his free hand.

“Well, what’s this?” he said in a low voice.

Several stone jars and wooden chests rested in niches in the wall on the left side of the crawlspace.

He pulled one of the chests out from the wall and opened its rotting lid.

Treasure!  He held the flashlight between his teeth, aiming it at gold, silver, and precious gems.  His greedy hands dug deeply into the chest, sifting through rings, necklaces, and decorative animals made of gold and silver.  He saw topaz, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires, their colors reflecting the flashlight’s beam and casting blue, green, red, and orange rays into the cramped space.

He knew that some of the gems would never be found in the American southwest in modern times, but he also realized that he was looking into a past so distant that it was impossible to imagine what the earth had held in its rock formations at an earlier date.

He began to gasp for breath.  Time was growing short.  He reached into his three backpacks, each of which held yet another backpack, rolled up and waiting to be filled.

He feverishly began to cram the packs with treasure from the jars and chests.  He did so indiscriminately, not attempting to select one gem or object over another.  Much of the gold and silver spilled onto the floor, but it didn’t matter to Langhorne.  He’d be able to fill all six packs, and that would be enough.  Sweat pouring from his
forehead,
he estimated that he would haul away something in the neighborhood of ten to twenty million dollars of gold, silver, and jewels.  His efforts had been rewarded.  Getting demoted by the U.S. Geological Survey was the best thing that had ever happened to him.  He pictured himself in white linen suits, wining and dining women for the rest of his life.

He tied the packs together in pairs and began to crawl backwards since there was no room to turn around.  Two minutes later, he had retraced his path to the chamber.

There was no way he could get to the main floor of the temple.  The collapsed floor is what had thrown him into the chamber in the first place.  He looked about, spying a different stairway, this one in the wall to his right.  Golden light from the desert painted the stone stairs, beckoning him to the surface.

He stood and took a deep breath.  It was the worst thing he could have done.  The chamber was filled with noxious gas.  Langhorne sank to his knees, coughing as he tried to catch his breath.  He was beginning to feel dizzy and lethargic.  He needed to exit the temple as soon as possible.

Langhorne was once again crawling on his knees.  He’d slipped one backpack over his shoulder, a second dangling from the first.  He dragged the other two pairs over the rough stones until he reached the sun-coated stairway.

“I’ve got to . . . make it . . . up,” he croaked. 
“Just got to.
  I’m . . . a . . . rich . . . man.”

Looking like a lizard, he pulled himself up the stairs, his stomach resting against the staggered stones. 
Right arm up, left arm up, pulling and clawing for each inch.
  He pushed with his legs: right leg up, left leg up.  The heavy bags of treasure slowed his progress even further.

His vision grew blurry, and his breath came in short, wheezing gasps.  The air pouring up from the earth behind him was foul and poisonous.  If he could only make it three more feet, he would be free of the palace.

He made one final push to get clear of the chamber’s tainted air.  Almost unconscious, he crawled onto the sand floor of the crater, his treasure packs sprawled about him.

Langhorne was thirsty, and the
Nevada
heat was oppressive.  He reached for his canteen, but he didn’t have the strength to bring it to his lips.  The last thing he saw was a tall baldheaded man looming above him.

It was Lieutenant
Cho
.