Tons of bluestone, bedrock, and soil filled the tunnel and spilled into the burial chamber, stopping at their feet as though held at bay by the ancient powers of Merlin. King scanned the tunnel entrance. It was packed tight. He turned around the room, searching the walls for some sign of an exit. He found none.
They were trapped. Buried alive one hundred feet beneath Stonehenge.
FIFTY-ONE
El Mirador, Guatemala
A CRUSHING WEIGHT fell on top of Queen, knocking her to her knees. But there were no pinpricks of pain that she’d expected to feel from the shower of trap-triggered needles falling from the ceiling. She rolled away and stood. When she turned around she saw Bishop, hunched over in pain. Close to a hundred needles stuck out of his back like porcupine quills.
Bishop grunted and fell to one knee. “Poison,” he said through gritted teeth. With the number they were doing to Bishop’s body, Queen had no doubt she’d already be dead on the floor. He’d saved her life.
Quickly and carefully, Knight and Queen plucked the darts from Bishop’s back. As the last dart came out, Bishop stood tall and shook his head; other than a poncho full of pencil eraser–sized holes, he was no worse for wear.
“I don’t understand why this trap hadn’t been marked,” Knight said, looking over one of the poison-tipped needles that now held a thin coat of Bishop’s blood on its black tip. “Hudson doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to wait on exploring a find like this.”
Queen saw the answer lying on the floor in an alcove obscured by loose stones—a bright orange “danger” sign featuring a decal of a man bending forward, arms up, and a shower of needles falling from above. She pointed to it. “I think someone down here was covering their back.”
She knelt down by the stone that triggered the trap and turned on a small pocket flashlight. A faint yellow residue, invisible to anyone wearing night vision goggles rimmed the stone. “A chalk outline was wiped away. We’re going to have to be more careful.”
“Or I can go first,” Bishop said, stepping over the marked stone.
“Or that,” Queen said, extinguishing her flashlight and following a few steps behind.
They successfully passed another trap without incident, descending the downward spiraling tunnel for another two minutes. Bishop stopped when his view of the tunnel brightened. There was an artificial light source ahead.
After removing their goggles, the team inched forward silently. The tunnel exit ahead was bright with light. They would be exposed if they got too close. Being the stealthiest, Knight went first, sliding forward on his stomach. With his eyes scouring the floor for signs of wiped away chalk it took him a few minutes to cover the distance in silence, but when he reached the tunnel exit his patience and gentle movements were rewarded.
The tunnel exited to a large circular chamber, fifty feet in diameter. The space was lit by a bright electric lantern, which rested atop a flat, stone altar top. Vertical stripes of black char rose up along the walls above a circle of small holes that would have held torches. A stone staircase decorated with the carved faces of the damned descended to a stone platform that encircled a pit at the center of the chamber. Four sections of the light gray stone surrounding the pit were stained dark brown with ancient blood. Funnels carved into the stone would have directed the flow into the pit, which looked like an ancient throat.
Here, like the tunnels above, the walls were covered in carvings, but between several murals was what looked like writing. In some ways it was similar to Sumerian cuneiform, but more stylized.
Seeing nobody present in the chamber, Knight waved the others to join him. When they arrived he pointed to the one thing that revealed where their quarry had gone—a rope. Tied to the five-foot-tall altar that held the lantern, a rope hung over the edge of the pit. Glowing from deep within the pit was a second light source, and a voice.
The words were hard to make out, but the deep, bass-filled voice was unmistakable. Ridley was at the bottom of the pit.
Queen grinned. He was right where they wanted him. Trapped, helpless, and at their mercy. One cut of the rope would leave him stranded for an eternity, like the Hydra from whom he stole his regenerative abilities.
They descended the steps and peeked over the edge. Were it lit solely from above it would have appeared bottomless, but Ridley’s light below revealed the bottom some two hundred feet down. Despite the distance, the sea of bones at the bottom was easy to make out. Ridley stood nearly waist deep in them, searching through them like a kid with an overfull toybox. In one hand he held a small digital recorder.
They watched as he picked up a small chunk of tablet and read off the words, which sounded strangely foreign, but felt familiar. When he was done he smashed the tablet against the stone wall.
Knight remembered that along with human and animal victims sacrificed to the gods, the Mayan also sacrificed their prized possessions including gold, silver, jewels, and codices. He’s collecting the ancient language written on the codices and then destroying them, Knight thought. He drew his knife, held it against the rope, and nodded to the others.
“Ridley!” Queen shouted, standing in clear view.
The man’s head snapped up in surprise. Then a smile crept onto his face. “The Chess Team arrives. I must admit I’m surprised to see you here. How did you find me?”
“You’ve got thirty seconds to tell us where Fiona is before we cut the line and leave you to rot,” Queen said.
“You seem to be missing a member,” Ridley said. “I know King was in Rome, but where is Rook? Did something go wrong?” His smile grew wider.
Queen’s UMP came up fast. She took aim and fired a three-round burst. Two of the rounds missed, shattering ancient bones, but one struck Ridley square in the forehead. He flinched as it struck, turning his head down. When he looked back up there was no injury, just his perpetually smiling face and gleaming bald head. There wasn’t even a splotch of blood.
“Afraid I’m not intimidated,” he said.
“He’s not going to talk,” Bishop whispered.
Queen looked at Knight. “Do it. He might be immortal, but we’ll see how cooperative he is after starving for a few weeks.”
Knight cut through the rope and let it fall.
Expecting some sort of protest or angry retort, the team flinched when Ridley began laughing. They looked down at him.
“All you’ve done is leave me with an army,” Ridley said, and then began speaking in hushed tones. The sea of bones around him began to rattle and shake.
Knight realized what was happening and said, “He’s about to go Ray Harryhausen on our asses.”
“What?” Queen asked.
Knight pointed down at the shifting bones. “Golems are the inanimate made animate. And he’s got a whole lot of inanimate buddies down there. An army of skeletons.”
“But they’re at the bottom of a—” Queen’s words were cut short by a deep rumbling from below. The pit floor was rising as a horde of living Mayan skeletons fused together and turned their empty eye sockets up at the stunned team.
FIFTY-TWO
Wiltshire, England
DUST CHOKED THE air, making it hard to breathe and nearly impossible to see. And with tons of earth between them and the surface, a rescue would not soon be coming.