Chapter 166 - The Crossfire in the Catacombs
The gunfire from above echoed down the spiral stone stairs leading from the upper chapel. Boots pounded against the steps.
"Lev is down here!" Bartholomew snapped to his two guards, his calm demeanor entirely shattered. "Cover the staircase! Nobody enters!"
In that split second of divided attention, Marcus moved.
He didn't fire at Bartholomew. Instead, he dropped low, sweeping his boot across the bluestone floor to kick the heavy wooden console table into the shins of the nearest mercenary. The man stumbled, his submachine gun discharging a wild burst of rounds into the vaulted ceiling, sending shards of stone raining down like shrapnel.
Marcus lunged forward, closing the distance in the blink of an eye. He grabbed the barrel of the guard's weapon, twisting it outward until the man's wrist snapped with a sickening crack, then drove an elbow into the mercenary's temple, dropping him instantly to the floor.
"Elena! Take Chloe to the altar stairs!" Marcus roared over the noise.
The second guard turned his weapon toward Marcus, but before he could squeeze the trigger, a volley of high-caliber rifle fire ripped through the open doorway of the crypt stairs.
The guard jerked violently, three rounds catching him in the chest, and collapsed backward onto the stone.
Standing in the archway of the stairs was Lev.
His face was streaked with soot from the street explosion, his tactical vest torn, blood dripping from a gash along his hairline. His rifle was smoking.
"Lev," Marcus breathed, raising his weapon, his eyes narrowed in lethal assessment.
"Hold your fire, Boss!" Lev shouted, his breathing heavy as he lowered his rifle slightly, stepping into the crypt. "Hold your fire!"
"You're working for Bartholomew," Marcus growled, his finger tight on the trigger. "Sarah's note—"
"Sarah's note was intercepted by Eleanor three weeks ago!" Lev yelled back, his voice raw with urgency. "They planted the lavender seal paper in the safehouse to turn you against me! If I was working for Bartholomew, would I have just dropped his personal security?"
Bartholomew Vance had backed himself against the steel vault door, his eyes darting frantically between Marcus and Lev.
"He's lying, Marcus!" Bartholomew rasped, clutching his walking cane like a club. "Lev took two million from the Mercer account in Zurich three days ago! Check his phone!"
"I took the money to buy the transit blueprints for Saint Jude's!" Lev barked, pulling a bruised tactical radio from his vest and tossing it at Marcus's feet. "I've been tracking Bartholomew's extraction team for seventy-two hours. He has a helicopter touching down at Pier 40 at 12:15. If Sarah is in that vault, we have thirty-five minutes before the halon vents!"
Marcus stared at Lev. For three long seconds, the silence between the two men was heavier than the stone ceiling above us. Marcus had lived his entire life in a world where betrayal was as common as breathing. But he also knew the look of a man willing to die in the dirt.
Marcus lowered his weapon an inch. "Check the perimeter stairs. If anyone else comes down, drop them."
Lev nodded once, wiping blood from his eye, and spun back toward the archway to hold the rear guard.
I knelt beside Chloe, pulling her tight against my chest. Her small hands were over her ears, her eyes squeezed shut, but she wasn't crying. The resilience in this little girl broke my heart—she had seen too much darkness for five years on this earth.
"Marcus," I called out, pointing at the vault console.
The digital countdown had dropped: *00:31:04*.
Marcus stepped over to Bartholomew, grabbing the old man by his wool lapels and slamming him against the steel bulkhead of the vault.
"The cylinder," Marcus demanded, his voice chillingly cold. "Where is the primary interface?"
Bartholomew coughed, spitting a fleck of blood onto the steel door, but a defiant sneer remained on his thin lips. "The brass keyhole is behind the central emblem. But without the chime sequence, nephew... you'll just be listening to Sarah suffocate through the intercom."
Marcus pulled the miniature brass cylinder from his watch pocket—the key we had extracted from Chloe's locket.
He reached up to the center of the vault door, where a bronze cross was riveted to the steel. With a firm, counter-clockwise twist, the bronze cross swung aside on a hidden pivot, revealing a deep, narrow keyway exactly matching the five grooves of the brass cylinder.
"Elena," Marcus said, looking back at me. "The bells."
"The carillon control isn't down here," I said, remembering the layout. "The chime console is in the bell tower, up behind the choir loft."
"Then we have to split up," Marcus said.
"No," Bartholomew croaked from the floor, his laughter wheezing through his chest. "You don't have time to run up four flights of stairs and back down. Look at the display, you fools!"
We turned to the console.
The digital timer had suddenly accelerated. The red numbers were tumbling downward at twice their normal speed:
*00:15:20... 00:15:19... 00:15:18...*
"A remote override," Marcus said, his eyes widening in horror. "Someone outside just tripped the failsafe."
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We had fifteen minutes.
***
