Hot Ice (42 page)

"Fix on a point until it settles," Hunt told her, knowing the feeling. He rose to his feet, and his head brushed the roof of the tube they were in. "What do we have?" he asked Tate, glancing down to make sure Taylor was coping with the dizziness. She looked okay, and he held out his hand to pull her to her feet.

"The codes to Level Three," Tate reminded him. "And I can't
tell
you how happy that makes us."

Whatever the good news was, Hunt welcomed it. It meant they'd get through faster. "Walk and talk," he told the others. "Distance?"

"Two point six miles," Fisk offered.

" 'Eternal rain and putrid waters,' I believe," Hunt mused. "The gluttons will be punished by Cerebus."

"Who, or what, is Cerebus?" Taylor demanded beside him.

"A canine monster with three heads and red eyes who tears at the damned."

She shuddered, "Geez,
that's
creepy. I'm guessing we're the damned, huh?"

"Not this time," Viljoen told her. "We can circumvent this level. But you can get a look at a damned effective three-pronged laser that could slice right through you in about thirty seconds flat. Brace yourselves for the smell. It's rank. I'm afraid we'll have to endure the 'putrid, stinking mud' for the duration."

"While the entertainment level is high," Taylor said somewhat ironically "there's no way Morales flies up here like a bat. How does
he
get in?"

"I suspect he has some sort of remote-control device to turn off the toys once the codes get him through each level," Hunt said almost absently.

It wasn't just a case of a single man getting past that turbojet prop. How had Morales gotten
things
inside the mine? Hunt wondered. Where was there a tunnel wide enough, high enough, to transport all the things Morales had been stockpiling? He knew Morales hadn't personally
carried
any of the crates down here.

They were missing a detail, because somewhere down here there was a form of transportation. An elevator. A narrow-gauge railway track.
Something
they were missing.

Dante's unforgiving winds weren't high-tech. That wasn't the way Morales thought. He was a literal man. He'd been typically literal when he'd bombed the
Ithembalabantu
AIDS clinic in Durban two years ago, killing 509 men, women, and children. To Morales, AIDS and homosexuality were synonymous. The reality, and the actual facts and details, were irrelevant in the strength of his beliefs.

Hunt kept a sharp eye out for any side caves, anything that might indicate another route. He glanced back to check on Taylor.

She was running her fingers along the rock wall as they walked. "Look how smooth the walls and floor are." She spoke as softly as the men had. "I can't begin to imagine how Morales got people down here to do all this stuff. And how
many
people, I wonder? It must've been an incredible feat of engineering just to dig tunnels this large, let alone hauling all the Dante's Inferno deterrents down to each level."

Taylor was a woman of unpredictable interests, fascinated by everything she encountered. No one else would realize it, but Hunt knew she was scared. Her speech was a little too fast, and she was trying too hard to be cheerful.

Still, he'd bet his last paycheck that coupled with her fear was the exhilaration he knew she enjoyed when she was pulling a heist. The woman loved to live dangerously.

The damn air ride would have scared the piss out of anyone. To Taylor it had been yet another adventure. Another learning curve. Something else to include in her bag of skill acquisitions.

He moved her in front of him to protect her back as the tunnel narrowed and they had to walk single file. "There's something decidedly cocked-up with this place," he said.

Her ponytail was crooked, and the loose shiny strands brushing her shoulders drifted as she walked. Oblivious that she had the disheveled look of a woman fresh out of a man's bed, she turned to frown at him over her shoulder. "What is cocked-up, and how and why does it sound so ominous?"

"Let's say Morales had all five disks. He comes up here, he opens the safe door into Level Two using the correct codes. He wouldn't have had that turbo going full blast. Ergo, there was a way to turn the bloody thing off."

He almost walked into her when she stopped and turned around fully to face him. Her eyes glittered with amusement in the torchlight. "
Ergo
?"

"Therefore."

"I know. I've just never heard anyone say it before."

He made a "turn around" gesture with his fingers. "Walk."

The tunnel widened and the four men paused up ahead. Hunt and Taylor joined them. Viljoen rubbed the side of his nose. "So we missed an off switch somewhere inside the door?"

"I doubt it was anything as simple as a switch," Hunt answered dryly. "The information would have been on the disk with the combination for the lock." He removed the canteen strapped to his thigh, uncapped it, and handed it to Taylor as he talked. "My guess is there's another way in."

"I don't think he could have walked across where that propeller was," Bishop pointed out. "That thing was at least twelve feet below floor level."

"
Ja
, I agree, man. Not walk across those props, and surely not climb up a hundred feet to here?" Viljoen said.

"And how," Taylor said, handing Hunt back the water, "would he bring
things
in and take them out? You're right. It doesn't make sense." Something glittered in the wall, and she crouched down to look at it. "Hand me your flashlight, would you?"

Hunt unsnapped the light from his thigh, handed it to her, then turned back to listen to his men.

Taylor had never seen a diamond in the rough. She ran her fingers over what could be, might be…
Was
it? There were seven, small, shiny, translucent, metallic-looking… She scratched her thumbnail over one of the forty-point stones as the men, oblivious, walked ahead, Hunt bringing up the rear.

She'd bet that without turning, he knew to the
inch
precisely where she was crouched and what she was thinking. It was as disconcerting as it was fascinating.

"Unless there's a shortcut or another route somewhere," Fisk suggested.

She ran her finger over the small ridge of stones. There was a slight oily film, which a raw diamond should have—
maybe
. As interesting as her discovery was, there were far more important things happening up ahead. She hurried to catch up.

"There's a shortcut for sure," Viljoen was saying. Taylor listened carefully. He was their mine expert, after all. "It would run above and parallel to Level Three. Like a catwalk, you know?"

They got a hint of the stench of Level Three before they saw it. "Just the smell would prevent gluttony." Taylor's voice was muffled by the hand she'd slapped over her nose and face. It didn't help one bit. She needed a hazmat suit. Lord. What could
possibly
smell that gross? And did she really want to know? Not really.

"This is only the teaser," Tate warned.

"Jesus. It gets
worse
than this?" Hunt asked Viljoen.

"
Ja
. According to the disk, 'fraid so."

Here we go again
. Taylor waited a beat for Hunt to start turning in her direction, then said a firm, if muffled, "
Forget it
. I am
not
standing here in this cold, drafty,
stinky
place waiting for you guys to trot off and find a shorter shortcut."

"Are you done?" He paused. "I was about to suggest you forge ahead with Fisk and take a look at the next 'door.' "

Her heart did a ridiculous hop, skip, and jump as he looked at her with those deep, smoky eyes that even in the dust-moted golden gleam of the flashlight, saw exactly who she was. "Liar," she said softly over the lump of emotion in her throat.

He stepped back against the wall, flattening his body so she could pass him in the narrow space. "Go with him anyway." He pointed the flashlight after the guys.

"Okay." She started to squeeze past him, doing a slow, full-body glide against his. Cruel, but it felt so good she wanted to do it again.

She pushed his hair off his face, then cupped his cheek in her palm as a hot wash of lust suffused her body. "Does this adrenaline rush make you horny too?" She'd only noticed how hot it made her since she'd met
him
.

Hunt briefly shut his eyes. "Jesus, Taylor…"The flashlight in his hand pointed to the floor as he drew her against him. "St. John?" One of the men's voices echoed from farther down the tunnel.

Hunt's mouth broke from hers. "Got to go."

"Hmm." She stood up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth, then moved away."
That
didn't help me much."

He took her hand and started after his men. "Help you with what?"

Taylor reminded herself why they were both here in the first place.
Saving the world, check
. "My adrenaline lust," she told him, covering her nose as the smell once again intruded. "Hey. Do you realize that when you were kissing me, I totally couldn't
smell
this?"

"Funny you should mention that, neither did I. However,
now
I do. Let's speed this up. I think that's our three-headed dog barking up ahead."

Dante's Inferno

Level three

Level Three was incredibly creative. Hunt gave Morales credit as he looked down at the canine monster wallowing in black odoriferous mud. Morales was taking Dante not only seriously, but quite literally. Cerebus was a twenty-foot-high robotic masterpiece, and clearly manufactured by special-effects people. Either theme park or film company expertise. It was an incredible feat of engineering, and a realistic-looking three-headed dog. Hair and all. Six red laser beams arced and slashed the air in constant motion.

Its growls and snarls sounded like the genuine article—times three. A foamy-mouthed, rabid guard dog protecting the next level.

From their vantage point on the catwalk twenty-five feet above, they could observe a narrow tunnel leading, presumably, to Level Four. If they'd been down there in the putrid muck, it might well have taken them hours to figure out which mouth to enter. If they hadn't been ripped to pieces first by the beast's "teeth" or drowned in the five-foot-deep foul-smelling mud.

The catwalk had a five-foot cantilevered wall constructed to look identical to the surrounding rock. From below, the walk would have been all but undetectable. Did Morales stand up here and imagine his enemies drowning in that pool of bubbling, disgusting-smelling slop? Hunt figured he must have. He could see no other reason for all these theatrics.

Theatrical they might be, but it was only with the help of disk three that Fisk had been able to open the safe door leading him to the mud cavern earlier.

And it was only because Tate had backtracked after recon that
he'd
discovered a narrow opening in a side wall, visible only when traveling north. The narrow tunnel had switched back on itself several times, but eventually led Tate and Fisk back to the wind tunnel. Every instinct in Hunt's body warned that Morales did
nothing
without good reason. While it might amuse him to use the elaborate deterrents, there was usually method—twisted to hell and gone—in the tango's madness.

He'd killed a thousand people on a cruise ship, by remote detonation of a small bomb, because it was a cheese- and wine-tasting trip. Gluttony. Hunt had long since given up trying to figure out the twisted patterns of a tango's logic.

"This place sure is noisy!" Taylor shouted as they rounded a corner and backtracked before turning south again. The sound of rocks striking each other,
hard
, was intermittent, violent, and loud.

"What do we get in the fourth level of hell?" Taylor turned in front of him to yell. Her hand covered her nose and mouth, but her eyes were crinkled pools of light, dappled blue.

"Avarice," he told her. Bloody hell. He wished he felt half that sanguine. But the reality was, he'd had a spider of fear crawling up his ass for days. Something was going to go bad. As sure as he was smelling shit and decay, something was going to go very, very bad.

At any other time that would not be a problem. He and his men were well trained and could handle anything anyone sent their way. But the more the itch intensified, the more concerned he became.

They were trapped down here. Had been beneath the earth for—he checked the lighted dial on his watch—over seven hours, and they were only on Level Four out of seven. And that was with exact and explicit instructions on how to enter Level Three. They also, thank God, had the codes to Level Five. But there were still three levels they had no way of entering without spending a considerable amount of time. And somewhere deep in the earth right beneath them, a missile waited for the launch signal.

Chapter Forty-five