The Cleric's Vault (14 page)

“They
should have a snakebite kit in the information center,” one of the other team
members declared.

Carlson
looked down at the man who continued to writhe in agony.
 
Hope welled up in the bitten man’s eyes
for a moment as he realized the tourist center would certainly have a kit.
 
A typical snakebite kit could stabilize
him long enough to get him to a hospital.
 
It would also draw unwanted attention.
 
Hunter raised his weapon and fired a single shot into
Thompson’s head.
 
The body went
limp on the sandy earth.
  
Dead eyes on either side of a dark hole stared up into the desert
sky.
 

The
team leader looked at the remaining two men.
 
“I would do the same to you and would expect both of you to
do the same to me.
 
Understood?”

Both
men nodded immediately.

Following
Hunter’s lead, the other two helped drag the body over behind a large patch of
sage and left it on the ground unceremoniously.
 
He hadn’t wanted to kill one of his assets, but the man had
been careless.
 
The three stepped
towards the entrance to the canyon passage with renewed caution.
 
They could ill afford any more
surprises.

*****

Tommy
stared at the magnificent golden leaf.
 
Its odd shape was like no artifact he’d ever seen before.
 
He’d thrown down several glow sticks
that he’d taken from his pack.
 
The
devices cast an eerie, pale light across the room.
 
He squatted down to get a better view underneath the bottom
of the yellow metal.
 
Reaching up,
he tipped part of the object up just slightly.
 
Just as he suspected, there was a small stone column that
the gold rested upon.
 
“That’s what
I thought,” he stated in frustration.

“What
is it?” Will asked, curiously as he stepped around to the side Schultz was
investigating.

“A
weight spring,” he said plainly.
 
Will raised an eyebrow, obviously not sure what a weight spring
was.
 
Tommy explained, “Since they
didn’t have real springs back then, they had to improvise.
 
So, they came up with a small weight
and balance system, sort of like a teeter-totter.
 
If you take the weight off of one side the other side will
go down.
 
They didn’t use strings
or metal for stuff like this because those materials would deteriorate over
time.”

“There’s
a contraption like that inside that pedestal?”
 
Will looked amazed by the thought.

“Looks
like it.
 
If we take that piece of
gold off I’m not sure what will happen.”

“No
booby traps, huh?”
 
Will’s voice
was every bit as sarcastic as the look on his face.

Tommy
didn’t respond.
 
Instead, he
carefully lowered the edge of the piece back down and stood up scratching his
head.
 
“We need to get this thing
out of here,” he said after a moment of thought.

“Why
don’t you just replace the gold with something else that will keep the weight
down?”
 
Will interrupted his
thoughts.

“That’s
the other problem.
 
It could be
designed for a particular weight. That would mean anything too heavy or too
light would set off the mechanism.
 
There’s no way to know.”

“So,
what do we do?”
 
Will asked.

“I
wouldn’t do anything if I were you.”
 
The new voice startled both men; they quickly turned their heads towards
the dark passageway.

Three
new beams of light entered the dimly lit chamber, each mounted on the top of a
handgun.
 
Will started to make a
move for his own weapon but one of the figures emerging from the corridor
flashed a light in his direction.
 
“I wouldn’t do that either,” the same voice warned.

Tommy
turned to Will but could see the cop wasn’t sure what to do either.
 
They were trapped.

Chapter 29

Salt Lake City, UT

Alexander
Lindsey sat in a high-back leather chair at the end of a long, mahogany
conference table, staring at the seven men occupying the rest of the
seats.
 
His face was stern and his
eyes unfeeling as he peered at each and every one of them.
 
“The answer is no,” he said plainly.

An
older man positioned near the middle of the table, to Lindsey’s right, looked
outraged.
 
“You have some nerve,
you ungrateful swine.
 
After all we
have done for you--”

“All
you have done for me?” Lindsey interrupted.
 
“Tell me, Wallace, what you-- any of you-- have ever done
for me.”

Another
man, probably Alexander’s age, spoke up across the table.
 
His face was thin and his hair had
obviously been receding for years.
 
“We brought you in.
 
Took
you to places you’d never have gotten on your own.
 
Then, you abandoned your faith, your church, and your
honor.”

“Honor?
 
Don’t speak to me about honor,
Nicholas,” he replied with disgust.
 
“I did more for the church and the faith than anyone else.
 
It was my programs, my ideas that
created the vast revenue stream that you so enjoyed for such a long time.
 
“The well has dried up and you have
overextended yourselves.
 
Now you
come to me asking for a handout after turning your back on me sixteen years
ago?”
 
No one else at the table
said a word.
 
They were all
obviously frustrated.
 
He continued,
“All I asked for was to be the next president of the church.
 
I could have taken it to new
heights.
 
You would all be richer
than anyone in the country and all of your precious little mission work would
be better funded than if it had come from the Vatican.
 
“But you wouldn’t have it.”
 
His voice became bitter.

“You
wanted control.
 
Your motivations
were not pure, Alex,” the older man spoke up again.
 
“We offered you a chance to stay with the cabinet, but you
wanted it all.
 
And you wanted it
for your own glory, not the glory of God.”

“How
glorious is your God now that you’re broke?”
 
The dark cynicism of his voice resonated through the room.

“That
is blasphemy, Alex.
 
May God have
mercy on you.”

Lindsey
grinned on one side of his mouth.
 
“Mercy on me?
 
I’m doing
just fine.
 
You’re the ones who
need my money.”

“We
know what you’re up to,” a younger man who’d sat silently at the other end of
the table spoke eagerly, as if he’d been holding it in the whole hour.
 
A hushed silence fell across the
room.
 
The man who looked
mid-thirties appeared uncertain that he should have said anything.

“What,
pray tell, am I up to?”
 
Alexander
narrowed his eyes, curious as to who this buck thought he was.

“My
name is Rick Baker,” he replied, trying to keep his voice steady, “and I know
about the treasure you’re trying to find.”

“Is
that so?”

The
rest of the men at the table looked confused.
 
One leaned in close to Rick and asked him silently, “What
are you talking about?”

Baker
ignored him.
 
“I know what you are
trying to find, and why you’re trying to find it.”

“I
have many hobbies, one of which is archaeology, but that is no concern of yours
or this little ‘committee’.”
 
Lindsey said the last word with deep sarcasm.

“You
won’t find it,” Baker continued with more confidence.
 
“God won’t allow it.
 
He hasn’t for four thousand years.
 
He won’t let it be discovered now, not by you.”

Everyone
at the table was completely lost by the exchange.
 
Apparently, Baker was the only one at the table who knew
anything about what Alexander Lindsey was really up to, which was good.
 
He would only have to eliminate the one
committee member.
 
It might do some good to kill off one of
them anyway to put them in their place and keep them off his back.
 
He stood and brushed down his suit
jacket and tie, clearly getting ready to leave.
 
“I don’t have time for these ridiculous children’s
games.
 
And my answer is still no.
 
If you are short on money ask for more
tithes and offerings from your congregations.
 
It’s what you preachers do best.”

With
that last stab, he stepped over to the door and exited the conference room,
making his way down a long office hallway toward the exit sign.
 
While he walked, his fingers typed a
text message.
 
Rick Baker.
 
Terminate.

Chapter 30

Bandelier National Monument, New
Mexico

With
guns trained, the three men stared at Tommy and Will.
 
They had nowhere to run and essentially no cover in the large
open room.

The pedestal was the only hiding place and wasn’t
going to be much help.
 
Or would
it?
 
Tommy wasn’t sure.

“Step
away from the gold,” the man ordered.
 

“Who
are you?”
 
Tommy asked, trying to
stall them for a moment.
 
His eyes
searched the ceiling for anything.
 
Then he saw it, above the entrance to the passage, a huge rectangular
stone seemed oddly out of place, jutting out of the vaulted ceiling just
slightly.
 
He noticed other similar
pieces above and realized what they were.
 

“You
don’t need to worry about that,” the leader of the group said.
 
“Just put your hands up and get away
from the gold, nice and slow.”

Will
began to back up cautiously, raising his hands while he moved.
 
Tommy moved too, but when he raised his
hands he pushed them out sideways, knocking the gold leaf off the pedestal with
his left hand.
 
The artifact
clanked to the floor, and the three men with guns flinched as the pang echoed
through the room.
 
A deep rumble
began to resonate through the chamber as if the whole mountain was
shaking.
 
The armed men looked
around for a moment as dust began to break loose from the ceiling.
 
The ground beneath their feet vibrated
violently.

Suddenly,
the large stone Tommy had noticed over the doorway fell to the floor, crushing
the man who still stood closest to the corridor.
 
The rock instantly buried him under its weight; he never had
a chance to scream.
 

The
other two men realized what happened and looked up to the ceiling.
 
Another stone, a little farther away
and to their right, dropped and crashed to the floor with a thud.
 
The man to the leader’s right just
barely dove out of the way.

Tommy
watched one of the men flattened by the heavy object.
 
It gave him a brief second and while the other two were
distracted, he took a chance and dove towards the gold leaf.
 
He grabbed it and stood in one motion.

The
remaining two armed men caught the movement near the altar and turned to fire.

Tommy
darted back towards Will.
 
The
young cop reacted quickly and pulled his weapon out of its holster.
 
He fired three quick shots at the
newcomers who went sprawling across the stone floor in opposite directions.

Another
large stone dislodged from the ceiling and landed near Will, missing him by a
mere few feet.

Muffled
shots popped from the other side of the room as the men returned fire from
behind one of the big stones.

Will
and Tommy ducked behind the one that had just fallen nearest them to take
cover.

“Got
any idea how we’re going to get out of here?” Will asked as he peeked around
the corner of the stone and squeezed off a shot.

Schultz
looked around frantically.
 
“Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

The
opening to the passageway was blocked so there was no going back the way they
came.

“Keep
them pinned down over there,” Tommy ordered suddenly.
 
He crouched down and shuffled to the wall nearest to where
they were hiding, looking closely for anything that would help them get
out.
 
Several more shots ricocheted
around him making him flinch and sending sparks flashing off the stone.
 
There
had to be another way out.
 

The
sound of Will’s weapon was deafening in the cavernous room.
 
Each volley was amplified by the
stone.
 
The air began to smell
acrid from the gun smoke.

Tommy
tucked in behind a large piece that had fallen and tried to stay out of
sight.
 
As he did, his flashlight
caught the edge of something peculiar in the wall.
 
A small, circular indention of a familiar size was nestled
in the rock.
 
Tommy leaned in for a
closer look and noticed four notches protruding from the edge of the round
impression towards its center.
 
He
ran his light along the smooth surface until he found an edge, then up until he
found another.
 
An ancient door.
 
Hurriedly, he pulled out the stone from
his backpack and slid it into place in the impression.
 
It was a perfect match, but something
was wrong.
 
He pulled the piece
away from the indention and looked at it closely.
 
Then he looked at the small hole.
 
There were little raised areas inside the hollowed out
circle.
 
A closer look at the stone
revealed something he’d not noticed before.
 
There were little areas of discoloration that appeared to be
the same size as the ridges in the wall’s impression.

More
muffled shots sent rounds off the floor nearby.
 
A ricochet passed so close he could have sworn he felt the
air move from the bullet.
 
Will
continued to hold them off but was being more conservative with his firing due
to the fact that he didn’t have that many bullets left.
 
Tommy had noticed the cop had already
switched to his reserve magazine of rounds.
 
He looked back at Will who fired another shot at the two
attackers.
 

Will
squeezed the trigger.
 
He’d been
counting the rounds fired.
 
Only
four left.
 
He held up four fingers
so Tommy could see.
 
Time was running out.