The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force 6)

He looked up at the Celtic cross. Only now did he realize something. “The cross,” he said, running his fingers down it. “It’s made out of the same stone as the sarcophagus. It even feels scoured like the crypt.”

Wallace stepped closer. “You’re right.”

Gray turned to him. “This wasn’t put here by Malachy or some other pious Christian to mark the grave.”

“It was already here.”

Gray looked at the cross with new eyes, not seeing it as a Christian symbol but a pagan one. Did it offer some clue to what the key actually was? From the notations on the wall, Father Giovanni had been trying to figure something out.

Needing to know more, Gray pointed his light at the bottom of the cross. “The set of three spirals near the base of the cross. Is there any special significance to them?”

Wallace moved over to join Gray and Rachel. “It’s called a tri-spiral. But it’s actually not three spirals. Only one. See how the three of them join and blend to form one sinuous pattern. This same triple pattern can be found marked on ancient standing stones across Europe. And like many pagan symbols, the Church appropriated this one, too. To the Celtic people, it represented eternal life. But to the Church, it was the perfect representation for the Holy Trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. All entwined together. The three who are one.”

Gray moved his gaze up to the single spiral that sat in the middle of the cross, like the hub of a wheel.

He remembered Painter’s original briefing about the symbol. How the pagan cross and spiral were often found together, one overlapping the other. The cross was a symbol for Earth. And the spiral marked the soul’s journey, rising from this world to the next, like a curl of smoke.

Gray’s attention shifted to Father Giovanni’s markings drawn on the wall. He sensed some meaning behind the notations and lines. He could almost grasp it, but it remained tantalizingly out of reach.

Stepping closer, Gray put down his flashlight and reached to the circular section on the cross. He ran his fingertips across the scored markings.

Like spokes on a wheel.

As the thought popped into his head, he was still staring at the spiral in the center of the cross. He had compared it earlier to a wheel hub. It even looked like it was turning.

Then suddenly he knew.

Maybe he had sensed it from the beginning, but he couldn’t get past the Christian symbolism. Now, considering the cross anew and pushing aside preconceptions, he recognized what was nagging at him.

“It is a wheel,” he realized.

Reaching more firmly, he grasped the stone circle and turned it counter-clockwise, in the direction of the curl of the spiral.

It moved!

As he turned the wheel, his eyes shifted to the calculations drawn on the wall. The cross hid a clue about the key, but to unlock it you had to know the proper code. The wheel must act like a combination lock, protecting some hidden vault where the key was once stored.

From all the calculations on the wall, Marco had been working on that proper sequence, trying to figure out the numbers to the combination.

Unfortunately, Gray realized something too late.

You only got one guess at the combination.

And he got it wrong.

A loud boom shook the ground under his feet. The floor suddenly dropped from under him. He grabbed for the cross and hooked his fingers onto the crossbar. Looking over a shoulder as he hung, he watched the back half of the chamber floor rise up. The entire floor was tilting—tipping away from the only exit.

The others screamed and scrambled to brace themselves.

The stone lid slid off the sarcophagus, skittered across the tilted floor, and toppled into the gaping hole under Gray’s feet. His flashlight had already rolled into the pit. Its shine revealed a bottom covered in vicious bronze spikes, all pointed up.

The stone lid crashed and shattered against them.

Behind Gray, the floor continued to tip, going vertical, trying to dump everyone below.

Wallace and Rachel had managed to get behind the sarcophagus and brace themselves. The coffin remained in place, anchored to the floor. Seichan couldn’t reach the refuge in time. She went sliding toward the pit.

Rachel lunged out with an arm and caught the back of her jacket as she slid past. She pulled Seichan close enough so the woman could grab the edge of the sarcophagus.

Rachel continued to hold her. At the precarious moment, each woman depended on the other for her life.

As the floor tilted to full vertical, Seichan hung like Gray.

But Gray had no one holding him.

His fingers slipped, and he plummeted toward the spikes.

22

October 13, 1:13 P.M.

Svalbard, Norway

The warhead detonated on schedule.

Even hidden behind two steel doors and walls of bedrock, Painter felt the blast as if a giant had his hands over his ears, trying to crush his skull. And yet he still heard the other two seed banks’ air locks blow. From the concussive sound of it, the same giant had stamped his foot and crushed the other chambers flat.

Crouched beside their air lock, Painter heard the outer door give way and slam into the inner one with a resounding clang. But the last door held. The overpressure in the air lock had been enough to hold off the sudden blast wave.

Painter touched the steel door with relief. Its surface was warm, heated by the thermobaric’s secondary flash fire.

The lights had also been snuffed out by the blast. But the group had prepared for that. Flashlights had been passed out, and they flickered on across the chamber like candles in the dark.

“We made it,” Senator Gorman said at his side.

His voice sounded tinny to Painter’s strained ears. The others began picking themselves up off the floor. Cries of relief, even a few nervous laughs, spread through the assembled guests and workers.

Painter hated to be the bearer of the bad news, but they had no time for false hope.

He stood up and lifted his arm. “Quiet!” he called out and gained everyone’s attention. “We’re not out of here yet! We still don’t know if the explosion was enough to break through the wall of ice trapping us down here. If we’re still stuck, rescue could take days.”

Painter motioned to the vault’s maintenance engineer for confirmation. He lived up here. He knew the terrain and the archipelago’s resources.

“It could take well over a week,” he said. “And that’s if the road is still open.”

That was doubtful, considering the missile barrage Painter had heard. But he kept that to himself. The news was bad enough already. And he had more to deliver.