"What the fuck— " The partner straightened up, staring, reaching for his gun.
Pendergast hauled the dripping officer to his feet, having relieved him of his gun, and aimed it at the marine officer. "Toss your weapons out onto the beach."
"You can't—"
The report of the gun caused the officer to jump.
"All right! Jesus." The man removed his weapons and chucked them out on the shingle. "Is this FBI protocol?"
"Let me worry about protocol," Pendergast said, still gripping the gasping Mulvaney. "What you need to do is get out of the boat. Now."
The partner gingerly lowered himself into the water. In a flash Pendergast had vaulted into the cockpit. Pulling the shift into reverse, he backed the jet boat away from shore.
"So terribly sorry to discommode you gentlemen," he called out, spinning the wheel and slamming the shift into forward. He gunned the engine with a roar and vanished around the curve of shore.
Chapter 70
Summoning allthe presence of mind he could muster, D'Agosta slowed his breathing and focused on his mission. He had to free Nora. Somehow, shifting focus away from being trapped helped calm him down. The problem wasn't so much that he was stuck, but that the walls were so slippery; he simply couldn't get a purchase, especially with only one good arm. He'd ruined his nails in a futile effort, but what he really needed was something sharp and strong that would bite into the walls and help pull him out.
Bite…
There, not six inches from his hand, was a human jawbone, sporting all its teeth. He squirmed desperately, just managing to move his good arm sufficiently to grasp the mandible. Then he twisted his body sideways and jammed the teeth of the jawbone into a crack in the roof of the niche; by simultaneously pulling and wriggling at the same time, he eventually managed to work himself free.
With enormous relief he crawled back out of the niche and stood up in the chamber, breathing heavily. Everything was silent. Apparently, the zombii and the hunting party had both fallen back to deal with the protesters.
He returned to the central passageway and cautiously used his lighter to examine its length. It ended in a cul — de — sac. There were other crude burial chambers to either side, excavated from the same heavy clay and shored up with timbers, but they looked nothing like the mortared stone walls in the video. Nothing he had seen so far, in fact, resembled that kind of construction — the very stone was different. He had to look elsewhere.
Retracing his steps, skirting the well, he found himself back in the area of the vaulted necropolis. Along the walls were many small iron doors that led into what were, apparently, family crypts; he investigated each in turn, but there was no sign of Nora.
With mounting frustration, he painstakingly retraced his steps by trial and error, ultimately returning to the central cryptorium. There he stood, trying to build a map of the cellars in his head, to mentally fill in the sections through which he'd moved half senseless. There were doors in all four directions; one led to the catacombs, another — he realized — to the dead — end passageway from which he'd recently emerged. That left two more to try.
He picked one at random and took it.
Again it opened into a tunnel. Immediately this one appeared to be more promising: the walls were of crude mortared stone. Not precisely like the stone in the video, but closer.
A foul stench wafted down this corridor. D'Agosta paused, flicking his lighter on briefly, trying to conserve its fuel. The passageway was filthy, the stones splattered with mud and oozing with mold and fungus, the floor giving way unpleasantly at his touch.
As he played the light around, from the darkness ahead he heard a faint muffled cry — short, high — pitched, and full of terror…
… Nora?
Holding the lighter before him, he sprinted down the corridor toward the sound.
Chapter 71
Plock led the protesters on a spree, tearing through the church, upending altars and fetish — festooned shrines. When their priest fell, the rest of the robed men fell back in confusion to the shadows, greatly outnumbered and temporarily at a loss. Plock realized that they had the initiative; the key was to seize it and keep it. With the crowd following, he swept toward the central altar. Here, there was a bloody, gore — flecked post where the animal sacrifices obviously took place — and a fresh pool of blood that awaited their outrage.
"Destroy this place of slaughter!" Plock cried as the crowd began swarming onto the elevated platform that held the altar and slaughtering pen, smashing down the post, breaking open boxes, and tossing relics.
" Blasphemers!" boomed the deep voice of Bossong. He was standing above the body of the fallen priest, who was out cold and had been badly trampled by the mob. Bossong was not unscathed, either — as he began walking down the central aisle, a trickle of blood was evident on his forehead.
The Ville leader's voice had a galvanizing effect on the robed crowds. They stopped retreating and paused in a kind of stasis. Knives appeared in some hands.
"Butcher!" screamed a protester at Bossong.
Plock realized that he had to keep the crowd moving, out of the church and into the rest of the Ville. A standoff here could quickly turn violent.
A robed congregant suddenly lunged forward with a shriek, slashing at a protester; there was a brief, violent struggle between the two that abruptly swelled into mob action, people from both groups rushing to the defense of their own. A ragged scream arose; someone had been knifed.
"Murderers!"
"Killers!"
The knot of people struggled and swirled, kicked and punched, all brown robes and khaki and pima cotton. It was an almost surreal sight. Within moments several were lying on the stone floor, bleeding.
"The animals!" cried Plock suddenly. He could hear and smell them, a muffled pandemonium behind a door at the head of the altar. "This way! Find and free the animals!" He dashed toward the door, pounded on it.
The leading edge of the crowd fell against the door, the battering rams once more appearing. It gave with a splintering crash and they poured beneath a stone archway, their way into the next room barred by a massive wrought — iron grate. On the other side was a scene from helclass="underline" dozens of baby animals, lambs, kids, calves — even puppies and kittens — locked in a huge stone chamber, the floor covered by a thin scattering of straw. The animals broke into a pathetic caterwauling, the lambs bleating, the puppies yipping.
For a moment Plock was speechless with horror. This was worse than anything he had imagined.
"Unbar these gates!" he cried. "Set free the animals!"
"No!" cried Bossong, as he struggled to approach, but he was shoved back and flung roughly to the floor.
The battering rams slammed into the iron grate, but it proved much sturdier than the wooden doors. Again and again they pounded the iron, the animals shrinking back and crying in terror.
"A key! Get a key!" cried Plock. " Hemust have one." He pointed at Bossong, who was on his feet again and now struggling with several of the protesters.
The mob rushed Bossong, and he disappeared in the swirl to the sound of tearing cloth. "Here!" A man held up an iron ring with keys. It was quickly passed forward, and Plock inserted the heavy ancient keys into the lock, one after another. One worked. He flung the gate wide.