The Judas Strain (Sigma Force 4)

"Not without you."

He sighed and hooked an arm around her. "Then let's go."

They headed up to the top floor, using one of the narrow back stairs. Below them in the stairwell, a waste-management Dumpster had been shoved down the steps long ago, blocking the way up from lower levels.

It should have been safe.

A low growl dismissed this conceit. A scuffling sounded on the lower landing, from beyond the Dumpster.

They both froze.

"Whatchu smell in there, girl?" a voice barked. Footsteps entered the lower stairwell. A flashlight's glow flowed up to them.

Harriet and Jack edged to the walls.

The snarling grew more intense.

"Get up there now. Go on. Squeeze on through there."

Jack pushed Harriet up the stairs. They moved quietly.

Below, the snarling had softened to a heavy snuffling, along with a frantic scrabbling of claws on tile.

"There you go," the voice said. "Flush 'em out. I'll go on around." The voice headed out of the lower stairwell, plainly seeking another way up. A crackle of radio trailed after him along with some mumbling as he reported in.

They were sending the dogs up to the next level.

As Harriet and Jack fled up toward the door at the next landing, a sharp bark echoed to them, half triumphant, half savage. Something large pounded up the steps.

"Run, Harriet," Jack urged.

She fled ahead and reached the next landing. The door to the top floor lay a yard away, closed. Behind her, Jack missed his footing in the dark and fell. He crashed two steps below. The pistol skated across the landing to Harriet's toes. She quickly gathered it up. As she straightened, lights through the tiny window in the stairwell door caught her eye.

Flashlights bobbled across the dark top floor.

Annishen called out. "We'll search through here and work down. Squeeze them out."

Harriet turned. Jack scrabbled up toward her. Beyond his form, a dark shape rounded the lower stairs and bounded toward her husband. A thick growl flowed.

Harriet lifted her pistol. If she fired, Annishen would hear the shot. Their captors would know where they were hiding and swarm here in seconds.

She hesitated too long.

Snarling savagely, the massive dog leaped at her husband.

7:58 A.M.

Angkor Thom

Seichan stood a step away as Gray circled the central altar.

It had taken them almost twenty minutes of backtracking and searching to discover the route up to the central sanctuary of the Bayon's third level. The ten-acre complex was a veritable maze of dark galleries, sudden sunlit courtyards, stooped passages, and precipitous drops. The low ceilings scraped heads, some walkways had to be traversed in single file, shuffling sideways, and many corridors merely dead-ended.

By the time they reached the small inner sanctuary, they were all dusty, covered in sweat. The morning had rapidly warmed, and humidity weighted the air down. But they had reached their destination.

"Nothing's here," Nasser said sourly.

Seichan recognized his attitude, read the hard stance to his posture. She doubted his patience would last until noon. Unless there was some real progress soon, she expected he would end things in the next hour. Order Gray's parents killed. Execute all of them here. And move on.

Ever practical.

No damn imagination.

It made him a dull lover.

Ahead, Gray circled the altar a third time. He was drawn thin, covered in dust and dirt, black hair plastered to his forehead, sticking out in damp tufts. Dried blood caked at his collar, where he'd been pistol-whipped behind the ear by one of Nasser's men back at the hotel.

He still refused to look at her.

It made her angry, mostly because it hurt, and she hated that even more. She sought that place of cold dispassion where she once easily lived, a dispassion that allowed her to sleep with Nasser to get what she needed, as she'd been trained to do.

Seichan turned her attention to the guards, going practical, strategizing some way out of here. The guards were mostly locals, including many former Khmer Rouge soldiers, long recruited by the Guild, gathered after the fall of the genocidal dictator Pol Pot. They would be fierce fighters. They guarded the four exits to the chamber, heading off in each cardinal direction. More men had taken posts throughout the ruins, discouraging tourists from disturbing them.

"According to what I read about this place, a giant statue of Buddha once rested here," the monsignor announced, pacing Gray around the altar. Vigor waved an arm across the two rectangular slabs, stair-stepped one atop the other. "But when the religion changed to Hinduism, the Buddha was torn down and tossed into that large well we passed coming up here."

The only other bits of decoration in the stone room were four more shadowy faces of the bodhisattva Lokesvara. Only these were all gazing inward, toward the altar and its missing Buddha. Kowalski leaned against one face, staring upward.

The great central tower of the Bayon rose above the altar, climbing forty meters. Cored through its center like a chimney, a square shaft cut straight up to the sky above. It was the only source of light.

"This has to be the place," Gray said, finally stopping. "There has to be a way down from here."

"Down to where?" Nasser asked.

Gray lifted a hand toward the monsignor. "Vigor mentioned how the foundations of this tower were buried underground. Deep. We need to find some access to those lower rooms. And I wager under the altar would be a good place to look."

Vigor stepped next to him. "Why do you think it's important?"

Gray swiped the hair from his brow, plainly weighing how much to say.

Nasser also read the man's hesitation. "We're past another hour mark." He tapped a finger on his wristwatch. "Tick tock, Commander."

Gray sighed. "The bas-relief we saw earlier. Of the Churning of the Milk. Every piece of the story was important. The snake, the frothing seas, the poison, the world threat, the glowing survivor. But one piece stood out as odd and unexplained. It didn't fit with the others."

"What's that?" Nasser asked.

Seichan saw it pained Gray to speak. Each word came out with a wincing reluctance.

"The turtle," Gray finally admitted.

Vigor scratched at his chin. "The turtle in the relief represents the god Vishnu, an incarnation of himself. In his turtle form, he supported Mount Meru as it was churned back and forth, to keep it from sinking."

Gray nodded. "On the bas-relief, the turtle was carved beneath the mountain. Why a turtle?" He leaned and drew in the dust on the altar. He sketched a crude doodle of a mountain with a domed shell beneath it.