Let him try, Duncan thought. After learning the truth behind the threats against the country—mythical monsters, gene-splicing madmen, Neanderthal viruses, and stone golems—the man would resign with his tail tucked between his legs.
But right now Marrs had freedom to act. Freedom to say what he wanted to whomever he chose. Freedom to disappear if he chose. And for those reasons, Duncan envied him.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
He heard the door open, but he didn’t turn around. A woman’s voice said, “They’re ready for you, sir.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” he replied.
After the door shut, Duncan looked down at his right hand. He held his M9 Beretta; the same one he had used as an Army Ranger. The weapon had saved his life a few times, but it couldn’t help now. As much as he might like to have Marrs stare down the barrel of this gun, a different solution had to be found; one that would not only put an end to the recent attacks and catch those responsible, but also free the team up so they could really function as a cohesive unit. Only then would the American people be safer.
Duncan opened a drawer on the Resolute Desk, placed the handgun inside, and locked it. Before heading toward the door, he looked around the Oval Office, and for the first time during his presidency, the space felt cramped.
THIRTY
Rome, Italy
THE LAST THING King saw before descending into total darkness was a shrinking crescent of light above him. He realized that they’d fallen through a triggered hatch that was now quickly, and quietly, closing. All thoughts of the hatch left his mind as his body impacted against a cold stone floor. He landed at an odd angle, which compressed his ribs near to breaking and knocked the wind out of him.
Unable to speak, he listened as Pierce whispered his name. “Jack … Jack, where are you?”
A bright light struck his face a moment later as Pierce switched on his flashlight.
Seeing King squint from the light and in pain, Pierce said, “Sorry,” and moved the light away, revealing a nondescript stone tunnel. After King caught his breath and was helped to his feet, he looked at Pierce, who seemed unfazed by the fall.
Pierce noticed King’s attention and questioning gaze. He smiled. “I landed on my feet.”
King shook his head. The bookworm archaeologist was becoming a catlike Tomb Raider while he, an elite soldier, became a potato sack.
When Pierce’s grin turned cocky, King said, “At least I didn’t hit a girl.”
Pierce had opened his mouth to issue a retort, but stopped short and then deflated. “Hey, what happened to ‘you have to be a bad parent to be a good parent’?”
King shrugged. “I was trying to make you feel better.”
Pierce forced an unsure smile as King used his conscience against him. “B.S. You’ve hit girls.”
“Not like that,” King said. “You coldcocked the kid.”
“Kid!” With a laugh and a raised fist, Pierce said, “Better watch it, or you’re next.”
“Don’t make me tell Queen you hit a girl,” King said as he found his flashlight on the floor, picked it up, and switched it on.
The light cast a now serious George Pierce in bright, white light. “That’s not even funny.”
King gave him a firm pat on the back. “C’mon, let’s find out which layer of hell we’ve dropped ourselves into.”
King led the way, flashlight out, gun at the ready. The tunnel, a simple brown tube tall enough to stand in and just wide enough for the pair to stand side by side, led down at a steady angle.
“We must be under the Lacus Juturnae by now,” Pierce whispered.
But King wasn’t interested in what lay above. He wanted to know what waited below. The color of the tunnel ahead shifted from dark brown to a dirty, mottled white with splashes of color. Pierce’s eyes went wide with recognition and he rushed past King.
The walls of the tunnel were covered in mosaic tiles, many chipped or fallen away, but enough remained so that the pictures could be pieced together. Blocky shapes slightly more detailed than a sixteen-bit Nintendo game formed pictograph story lines. King couldn’t make them out, but Pierce deciphered it aloud.
“Look here, at this swamp,” Pierce said. “This must be the land Rome was founded on.” He counted the hills in the image, whispering the numbers to himself. “The seven hills of Rome. The original settlers had villages on each hill, but they eventually drained the swamp and formed the city.”
He moved on, looking at a large image of a woman, whose beauty was impossible to hide, despite the rough condition of the wall.
“Who is she?” King asked.
Only fragments of the name spelled out in ancient Greek above the woman’s head remained, but it was enough. “Acca Larentia. We found her.”
They moved faster, all but ignoring the images of Rome’s early development and battles. The tunnel ended in an arched doorway that led to a T junction. They passed through and found a second arch to the left, leading into a small chamber, and a second hallway to the right. Not wanting to proceed too quickly, King entered the small room and cast his light side to side, stopping at the room’s only feature—a marble tomb. They approached the tomb and found a relief of a woman on its lid. Acca Larentia.
“She’s been here the whole time,” Pierce said, his voice full of the same kind of wonder that Rook displayed when assembling a new weapon. Pierce reached out to touch the woman’s face, but was stopped by a guttural clicking growl. The sound was organic, but inhuman.
King spun and fell to one knee, aiming both flashlight and handgun toward the entrance.
A cloaked figure in the doorway flinched away from the light and blocked its face with the loose fabric of its black sleeve. Clearly uncomfortable in the light, the creature stepped back but made no move to retreat or advance. It simply stood there, crouched and swaying slowly side to side.
Waiting.
King recognized the creature. The cloak and bits of gray face and arm he could see were exactly what Rook and Queen had described. A wraith. One of Hercules’s mysterious gofers. Despite the wraith having an aura of evil, King knew it meant them no harm. He lowered his weapon and aimed his flashlight to the floor.
Free of the intense white beam, the wraith stood taller and lowered its arm. In the dim light reflected off the room’s brown walls, King could make out the lower half of the creature’s face. There was no nose to speak of, simply a horizontal slit in its skin. And its mouth, well, there wasn’t one—just a patch of wrinkled gray flesh.
For a moment, King felt pity for the wraith. It had clearly once been a human being, but now … it was a monster. Then it turned, motioned for them to follow with its hooded head, and hopped up onto the hallway wall. It crawled away like a four-legged spider. Or, King thought, like a gecko.
Keeping his weapon ready, King and Pierce followed the wraith, which paused when they fell behind. It led them through a confusing maze of tunnels through which neither man could retrace his steps. Some tunnels were plain stone bearing no markings of any kind. Others housed portions of ancient columns, ruined busts, and half-buried arches.
“These are the ancient layers of the city,” Pierce said. “We’ve been so afraid to hurt what was on top we never thought to look beneath. But cities this old are always built on layers. This is the stuff of legend.” He looked at King. “This was the Rome that Hercules would have known. Before the Caesars. Before the Coliseum. Before the vast empire.”
King was about to respond when he heard a voice. A woman. He stopped at a crossroad and listened. The sound distinctly came from the right-side tunnel. He cocked his ear toward it, as did Pierce.