“She’s not my girl, Cairo, so pack it in. He’s taken her so we can’t attack him on the way to the bloody airfield, or even shoot the bastard down in midair. When he’s used her for that he’ll just hand her over to that freaking maniac Baumann, and God knows what that psycho will do to her.”
He desperately looked on the wall where the C4 was stuck a few inches above the cracked rock.
“When that thing goes off, we’re all dead, right?” Ryan asked.
“No,” said Hawke. “It’s too far away to kill us with the blast.”
“Thank heaven for small mercies,” Ryan said.
“Instead we’ll drown like rats when the Bay of Sami bursts through that wall and fills this tomb with sea water in about three minutes.”
“Great, and we’re trapped in here.”
“Maybe not,” Hawke said. “I’m hoping the force of the water will knock out those boulders they put in the door.”
Ryan looked at Hawke, to the C4 and then back to Hawke. “You know, I’m really beginning to enjoy this.”
And then the C4 exploded with a terrific detonation that was almost deafening in the cavernous tomb. Before the smoke and rubble had cleared they heard the water rushing into the vault.
Seconds later it was deep enough to give them buoyancy, and then they were able to slip out from beneath the ropes but their hands were still tied behind their backs. As Hawke had thought, the pressure of the water building against the boulders was beginning to push them clear of the entrance.
“We have to work fast!” he shouted. “In a few minutes the water will be over our heads and at the roof of this cave.”
He turned and rubbed the cable-ties that bound his hands up against a piece of serrated boulder, and seconds later the plastic split into two and he was free.
Now the water was up to their waists as he struggled to slash the cable-ties from everyone else’s wrists.
When he had done this, they waded through the tunnel as fast as they could go in the darkness until they reached the other cave along. Zaugg’s generator and other pieces of now unnecessary equipment were just left scattered on the floor.
The water began to rush up though the rock pool behind them and suddenly the ground beneath their feet began to tremble and shake. Chunks of rock fell from the ceiling of the cave and landed with a heavy, crunching thud into the stone floor of the underground tunnel system.
“The flood has destabilized the entire complex!” Hart said.
Hawke watched in horror as part of the cave wall beside the rock pool began to sink into the floor, bulging forward and crumbling as it went down.
“The whole place is about to implode!” he shouted.
“This is not good,” Reaper said. “In fact, I wish I was at home right now, maybe with some wine…”
“We have to get out the way we came but we need to run right now or the water will overtake us.”
They all ran back along the tunnels, but their escape was cut short when they realized Zaugg had taken their abseiling lines.
“What now?”
Hawke stared up at the vertical shaft — fifty feet up and impossible to climb before the rushing water reached them.
“We have to let the water take us up,” he said. “We have no other choice.”
‘But the shaft’s not wide enough for all of us. Some will have to stay at the back and swim up afterwards.”
Hawke stepped forward. “No problem for me.”
“Or me,” added Scarlet.
“Pour moi, c’est pas de problem,” said Reaper.
“Ryan and Sophie go first, then the commodore and Reaper,” Hawke said. “Then Cairo and I will swim up.”
“Water’s coming!” Ryan shrieked.
The ice-cold water rushed over them and bubbled up around them as it pushed them into the shaft. Ryan looked terrified but he and Sophie quickly disappeared from view when the water pushed them upwards. Then Hart followed them up, her head a few inches below the water line, Reaper not far behind. Finally, Scarlet and Hawke swam up beneath the others, straining their eyes in the darkness, aware only of the kicking heels of their friends above them.
Moments later the water spat them out into the next level and left them gasping for air as it began to fill up around them yet again. This time it filled at a slower rate because of the bigger size of the recess, but it was still too fast for comfort.
“There won’t be a sodding bay left at this rate,” Ryan said. “It’ll all be down here.”
They repeated the process for the other vertical shafts and then made their way up the stone steps, twisting in a spiral as they climbed, their flashlights bobbing about erratically as they ran to escape the chaos behind them.
They could feel the cave complex collapsing behind them with the power of an earthquake and the terrible noise of the destruction chased them up the circular steps like a monster with a taste for their blood.
Towards the top, they began to slow a little. Hawke and Reaper were now at the front, with Scarlet directly behind them. Ryan and Sophie were in the middle and Hart at the back.
Finally they reached the exit, following the tiny slit of sunlight until it grew large enough to reveal itself as the entrance to the dugout at the bottom of the initial vertical shaft.
Again Zaugg had taken the abseiling lines with him, so they repeated the process once again and allowed the water to push them to the top of the shaft.
When they were all clear, and panting on the side of the hill, the water rose up just high enough in the shaft to spill a little over the edge, and then slide back down again to around halfway up.
“So that’s how wells are made,” Scarlet said, deadpan. A moment later, they all started to laugh.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Their moment of humor was cut short when they heard the sound of diesel engines laboring somewhere in the distance.
“What’s that?” Sophie asked.
“Sounds like trucks to me, darling,” said Scarlet.
Hawke cocked his head. “She’s right — I can hear vehicles to the south.” He scrambled up a low rise and took up a covered position behind the trunk of an umbrella pine. “It must be Zaugg making his escape back to the airfield.”
Hawke watched as three black Jeep Cherokees drove slowly down the hill to the south of Sami. They kicked up a trail of orange dust from the unsealed road. He turned to Hart. “Olivia, listen — Reaper and I will go after them — make sure everyone’s all right here and organize an aircraft. Something tells me we’re going to need a flight back to Switzerland as soon as possible.”
Reaper was still watching Zaugg’s getaway through his monocular.
“He’s getting away!” said Ryan, who looked like a drowned ferret coming in at ninety pounds max.
“This man is a genius,” Reaper added, bringing his heavy hand down on Ryan’s shoulder in a gesture of feigned admiration.
“We need a vehicle,” Hawke said. “Any suggestions?”
“Try that,” Reaper replied. He pointed at the last of Zaugg’s Jeeps, now caught in a rut at the top of the hill and separated from the others.
“Idiots. Must be one of the locals Zaugg hired out of desperation.”
Hawke and Reaper picked up some weapons and split up to approach the stranded Jeep from different directions. An overweight man dressed in brand-new military fatigues and a cowboy hat, obviously bought online for the purpose of the treasure hunt, jumped from the Jeep and aimed his rifle at Hawke.
Hawke raised his hands while Reaper approached stealthily from behind and knocked the rifle from the man’s hands before landing a bear-like punch square on his jaw and sending him flying to the ground.
“Please — please don’t kill me!” The man was in his late sixties, and overweight. He spoke poor English in a heavy Greek accent, and when Reaper kicked his cowboy hat off it revealed a thin gray comb-over now out of place and hanging forlornly to the side of his chubby face.