The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3) (40 page)

‘Where is he, Tito?’ McNutt demanded.

‘Who?’

‘The guy I clipped in the shoulder.’

Garcia paused. ‘He’s heading for the stairs. Maybe he’s bugging out.’

McNutt ran for the northwest corner, then veered to the east, spotting the man running for the edge. He fired his pistol on the move, hitting the fleeing man in the back and sending his body crashing to the dirt. McNutt kept running toward him with the barrel of the M-9 leveled, but the fallen man didn’t move.

Still, he shot him again just to be sure.

It was time to go help Cobb.

* * *

Cobb exchanged fire with two men who had chosen the low ground in exchange for the series of terraces that provided cover when facing north. They were peppering the sides of the platform that he was lying on, but he couldn’t see them well enough to aim.

They kept ducking behind the wall.

Even worse, Cobb realized they were near the opening to the cave.

‘Jack,’ Garcia said, ‘one’s moving for the stairs on your right.’

Cobb rolled to his side and saw the man pop up. With spare magazines in his pocket, Cobb didn’t hold back. He fired seven rounds in a rapid grouping down the path, hitting the man in at least three places. Then he rolled back under cover, just as the other man returned fire from the middle of the rock. Cobb ejected his magazine and slapped another home.

Pinned down in his current position, Cobb cursed under his breath. Anytime he tried to move, the gunman fired in his general direction. Even though he kept missing, the edge of the rock platform kept spitting shards of brick and stone at Cobb. So far, he had suffered only a few scratches, but eventually one of the gunman’s shots would do some damage.

‘Are they flanking me?’ Cobb whispered.

Garcia stared at his screen. ‘I don’t see anyone but that one guy. Josh is on his way down. He’s using the east side.’

‘Josh,’ Cobb said. ‘Hold your position.’

McNutt ducked behind a wall. ‘Say again?’

‘I can handle one guy. No need to bail me out. Worry about the rest of the mountain.’

‘Copy that, chief.’

Cobb chanced a quick look. The guy was ducked down behind the terrace wall. He hadn’t fired in several seconds. ‘What’s he doing? Is he reloading?’

Garcia nodded. ‘Sure looks like it from outer space.’

Cobb got to his feet in a crouch. ‘Tell me when he chambers.’

‘Hang on … any second. And … now!’

Before Garcia had finished the vowel sound, Cobb was sprinting as fast as he could. He ran to the edge of his platform and leaped up and out into the air. His body sailed out over the square pond that was nearly thirty feet below him and he began his descent.

The Chinese man popped up and fired at the rock ledge where Cobb had been, but by then Cobb was already plunging through the air, his Beretta up, and sighting on the man. Cobb fired most of the magazine, hitting the man more than missing, before he landed feet-first into the rainwater, sending up a huge splash behind him.

Cobb knew the retention pond was over ten feet deep, so he had plenty of time to slow his acceleration before his boots hit the bottom. A few seconds later, his head broke free from the water and he swam to the edge of the pond just as gunfire broke out to his east. He raised his weapon from the murky water, ready to defend himself, but quickly realized it wasn’t necessary.

McNutt was running forward with his pistol raised. On the turf in front of him was an injured gunman, who tried to get off one last shot. McNutt fired again and ended the threat.

‘You’re clear,’ Garcia said in their ears.

Cobb crawled out of the murky brown water and immediately checked his magazine. He still had a few rounds left in his Beretta. Dripping wet and out of breath, he walked toward McNutt, who had crouched beside one of the dead gunmen.

‘What are you doing?’ Cobb asked.

McNutt rolled the man onto his back. As a former Marine, he was trained to study the faces of his victims, hoping upon hope that they had killed one of their top threats. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, that’s a guy from our briefing. Isn’t he number two?’

Cobb nodded his confirmation. ‘Sure looks like it.’

Garcia chimed in. ‘Number two is Lim Bao. He’s one of the men that we spotted at the airport and the right-hand man of Feng He, the leader of the Brotherhood.’

McNutt glanced at the nearby bodies. ‘None of these are Feng.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Cobb said. ‘If he’s as rich and powerful as Maggie claimed, there’s a very good chance that he’s sitting this one out. Just because he’s in country, doesn’t mean he’s on site. I mean, Papi’s on a yacht right now while we’re getting dirty.’

McNutt grinned. ‘You hear that, Franco? You better lock the door at the hotel. There’s a damn good chance that the main dragon is hanging out near you.’

Garcia swallowed hard, then stood up to lock the door.

Maggie unclipped her rappelling harness and stepped into the narrow corridor. It was exactly as Sarah had described it earlier, so Maggie knew to look for the wooden covering on the floor that protected the lower levels. Fortunately, Cobb had left it open during his exit. She doubted that she could have moved it herself.

‘I’m down the shaft and into the passageway,’ Maggie reported to the others. ‘I see the opening to the second descent.’

‘Great,’ Sarah replied. ‘You’re past the hard part already. You won’t need climbing gear in the next shaft. Just use the ladder built into the wall. If it was strong enough to support Jack, it can definitely hold you.’

A few minutes later, Maggie had made the climb down to the expansive room at the base of the shaft. As she dropped to the solid rock, she marveled at the scope of the chamber. Despite its plain, natural features, the cavern seemed to be imbued with a sense of character. It was as if she could actually
feel
its importance.

‘Fantastic,’ Maggie said. ‘Truly fantastic.’

‘With hopefully a lot more to come,’ Sarah answered from across the space. ‘We just need to figure out how to get through this door.’

‘What door?’ Maggie asked.

Sarah popped another glow stick, further illuminating the massive doorway at the farthest corner of the room. Maggie walked over to find not only a wide wooden door, but also a four-foot-high pedestal that displayed a bound codex.

‘Sarah,’ she exclaimed, ‘why didn’t you mention that you found another book?’

‘You were already headed my way, and anxious people tend to make mistakes. We needed you focused on the task in front of you.’ She pointed at the codex. ‘We still do.’

Maggie inspected the codex on its perch. The pages were bound with string that had almost fully decomposed with age. She wondered if the book could withstand even her most delicate investigation.

For all she knew, the text might disintegrate at the slightest touch.

Still, she had to try.

‘It’s written in Mongolian,’ she said as she carefully examined the first page.

‘Good,’ Sarah said. ‘I think the combination is, too.’

Maggie stopped reading. ‘What combination?’

Sarah pointed to a small brass wheel at the center of the wooden door. It looked like a miniaturized version of a captain’s wheel from an old steamship, with eight spokes passing through a solid ring. At the end of each spoke was a knob, and each knob had been etched with a passage in artful script. Though she was far from an expert in linguistics, Sarah realized the words in the book looked very similar to the symbols on the wheel.

‘I’m betting that the hub spins,’ Sarah explained. ‘I haven’t tried it yet – I didn’t want the wrong movement to trigger defenses that would permanently lock us out – but nothing else fits. I’ve scoured every inch of this place looking for another exit, and this is the only one. I’ve been studying this door for long enough to know that it’s sealed, as in airtight, and the only option I can see to open it is to dial that wheel to the right combination.’

Maggie moved away from the book and glanced at the symbols that had been carved around the wheel. ‘This is known as the Noble Eightfold Path. They’re teachings from the Buddha. A way to achieve a better sense of one’s self. A spiritual awakening, if you will.’

‘Great,’ Sarah blurted as she put her hand on the wheel. ‘Tell me which path comes first, and I’ll spin this sucker open.’

Maggie shook her head. ‘It’s not that easy, Sarah. The achievements of the Noble Eightfold Path are to be reached simultaneously. There’s no specific order to the sequence. Ideally, everything is to be done at the same time.’

Sarah stretched her neck in frustration. She hated feeling useless. And only one of them could read Mongolian. ‘Check the book,’ she insisted. ‘Maybe it will tell us the order of the paths that we’re supposed to walk.’

‘Sarah, you don’t actually walk—’ Maggie stopped. She could see from the look on Sarah’s face that she understood the concept of the Buddhist tenets. She could also tell that Sarah wasn’t in the mood to argue over semantics. ‘Right, the book.’

The codex was by no means thick, and Maggie scanned the pages quickly. Her eyes suddenly grew dark and mysterious as she squinted at the page, confirming her translation.

Sarah could see the resignation on her face. ‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing about the Noble Eightfold Path, but it tells us what we can find behind the door.’

‘It does?’ Sarah blurted.

‘Yes, it does,’ Maggie repeated. ‘And it’s not good.’

‘It’s not? What does it say?’

‘The book says that Yangchen is buried inside.’

Sarah groaned. ‘Polo’s treasure is Yangchen’s body? You’ve got to be shitting me!’

‘No,’ Maggie said sternly, ‘you heard my words but didn’t grasp their meaning. I said nothing about a treasure. This book is the last section of Polo’s diary, and the mention of Yangchen’s grave is meant to be a warning. Earlier entries describe the tough time that Marco and Yangchen had in Lhasa, often expressing that most saw Yangchen as only a “black mark”. I thought it was a euphemism, but it wasn’t. It was a diagnosis.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sarah asked.

‘Yangchen had an actual black mark. It was on her face, and it was growing. She had
Yersinia pestis
. In the West, you know it as the Black Death.’

Sarah thought back to her studies in European history. ‘I thought the plague hit Europe a century later.’

‘It started in Asia, much earlier than that,’ Maggie explained. ‘This describes coming from Lhasa to Sri Lanka with Yangchen, but she didn’t survive the journey. After her death, Polo spent many months at the monastery that sat upon Sigiriya at the time. At some point during his stay the monks offered to store his treasure on the mountain alongside Yangchen’s remains.’

Sarah nodded in understanding. ‘Who better to protect it than a group which had no interest in material wealth?’

‘Agreed,’ Maggie said. ‘But I’m not sure he had protection in mind when he left. From the tone of his writing, I don’t think he cared about riches anymore. The love of his life had been taken away from him, and that’s all that truly mattered.’

Sarah thought things through. ‘Then why withhold the exact location from Rustichello? If he didn’t care about the treasure, why did Polo go to all the effort of describing his journey only to leave out the best part?’

Maggie laughed. ‘The riches weren’t the best part to Polo – the
journey
was. That’s what led him to Yangchen, and she was the only prize he needed. He didn’t keep details from Rustichello out of fear that someone else might find his treasure, he excluded certain elements because he was afraid that the same fate as hers might befall others.’

Sarah stared at the door that concealed a corpse of someone who had died from the Black Death. ‘Thanks to antibiotics, I’ll gladly take my chances. What’s your best guess?’

‘About what?’

‘On how to open the door,’ Sarah said. ‘Buddhism is all about having faith and enlightenment, right? Well, have a little faith, and hopefully the enlightenment will follow.’

‘I’m telling you, it doesn’t work that way.’

Sarah shrugged. ‘Maybe not, but if you don’t figure something out by the time Josh comes down here, he will use an ax to open the door. Or C-4. Or both.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Have you met Josh? I’m
definitely
serious.’

Maggie closed her eyes, trying to recall everything she had ever learned about the religion. One thought stood out among the others. ‘The canon of Chinese Buddhism speaks of the Noble Eightfold Path in turn. It stresses an original effort, with all the other tenets building upon that foundation.’

‘Show me,’ Sarah insisted.

Maggie opened her eyes and stepped to the door. She searched the knobs for a particular symbol then began to spin the wheel. ‘One must first achieve
Right View
, an understanding of the natural world around you.’ As she spoke she turned the wheel a complete revolution, stopping with the corresponding knob pointing directly upright near a notch on the door. She could feel the gears catch ever so slightly at the top of her turn. ‘Sarah, I think I felt something.’

Sarah smiled. She had heard it, too. She was very experienced with locks and knew the oldest one ever found was over four thousand years old. By comparison, this one was fairly new. She pressed her ear to the wood and listened while Maggie continued. ‘Keep going.’

‘Next comes
Right Intention
, the will to change,’ she said as she cranked the wheel in the opposite direction.

Sarah heard a soft ting of metal against metal as the next spoke came into position. ‘It’s working!’

‘Then
Right Speech
, the use of proper words.’ The wheel spun easier, as if centuries of cobwebs had just been cleaned from the mechanism concealed beneath the wood. ‘
Right Action
, ridding one’s self from corruption …
Right Livelihood
, abstaining from doing harm …
Right
Effort
, the banishment of negative thought …
Right Mindfulness
, understand the world’s effect on the body …’

The gears seemed to click louder with each alignment. Both Sarah and Maggie were certain that their effort would soon be rewarded.