The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force 6)

“They were calculations of longitude and latitude.”

The others gathered around him.

“What are you talking about?” Wallace asked.

Gray pointed to the bronze sculpture in the center of the room. “It’s not a cross,” he repeated. “It’s a navigational tool. One tied to the stars!”

He finished his drawing.

His sketch showed how the cross could be tilted, how its arm could be pointed at a star, how the weighted sinew could act like a plumb line, and the turning wheel of the device could measure degrees.

“It’s an early sextant,” he explained.

“Oh my God.” Wallace fell back in shock. A palm rose to his forehead. “For the longest time, archaeologists have debated how the ancients were so accurate in positioning their stones. How precisely they were able to align them!” He stabbed a finger at the drawing. “Bloody hell! That device could even be a theodolite!”

“A what?” Rachel asked.

Gray answered, recognizing it now, too. “A surveying tool, used to measure horizontal and vertical angles. Used in engineering.”

“The worship of the spiral and the cross,” Wallace said. “The symbols truly do represent the heavens and the earth.”

Gray stared down at his sketch of the earthbound cross pointed at the stars. “It’s more than that. The symbols also represent the worship of secret knowledge, the secrets of navigation and engineering.”

Seichan brought them back down out of the stars with a sobering question. “But what does all this have to do with the Doomsday key?”

They all stared toward the bronze cross.

Gray knew the answer. “In ancient times, only the priest classes had access to such powerful knowledge.” He glanced at Wallace for confirmation.

The professor nodded.

“To unlock the Doomsday key, we have to demonstrate that same knowledge.”

“How?” Rachel asked.

He remembered what Father Giovanni had been calculating at Bardsey. “We have to use the stars above and calculate a navigational coordinate. I’m guessing we have to dial in our location here. An approximate longitude and latitude.” He faced the others. “That’s the combination.”

“Can you calculate it?” Wallace asked.

“I can try.”

Gray returned to the floor. The Celtic cross functioned differently from a sextant, which used mirrors and reflections to discern latitude and longitude. But it wasn’t that dissimilar.

“I need a fixed constant,” he mumbled and stared up at the quartz starscape. It had been put there for a reason.

“The north star,” Seichan said. She crouched and pointed to the chunk of quartz that represented the pole star, used over countless ages for navigation.

That would do.

He worked quickly. He knew the approximate coordinates for Clairvaux from using his GPS during the drive here. He pictured the reading from the unit:

LAT 48°09'00"N

LONG 04°47'00"E

Longitude and latitude measurements were broken down to hours, minutes, and seconds. Just sweeps around a clock. Like the lines scored into the spinning wheel of bronze on the cross. It was all proportional.

In under a minute, he had what he believed were the correct assignments using the ancient tool and their current location.

He memorized them and stood up.

Rachel stared at him, her eyes hopeful.

Gray prayed he was equal to that hope. “In case I’m wrong, you all might want to retreat back to the tunnel.”

He hurried over to the cross. As he reached it, he suddenly grew less sure. He would have only one chance. If he was wrong, if he miscalculated, if he failed to manipulate the ancient sextant correctly, the others were all dead.

He stopped and stared at the device.

“You can do it,” a voice said behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder. Seichan stood there. The others had joined Kowalski in the tunnel. “Get back,” he said harshly.

She ignored him, not even reacting. “It may take two people. One to hold the cross steady at the proper angle, the other to dial the combination with the wheel.”

He wanted to argue, but he recognized she was right. A part of him also had to admit that he didn’t want to be alone.

“Let’s do it then,” he said.

Gray again crouched to peer through the hollow arm of the cross. Like a telescope, he thought, remembering how the words had unlocked the knowledge inside him. They had come from Seichan.

He knew what had to be done. He reached to the cross and pulled the arm down. The entire sculpture tilted, pivoting on the spherical base. As soon as he moved it, a massive clank echoed up from under the floor.

There was no turning back.

Gray swung the arm so it pointed north. Staring through the barrel of the armpiece, he searched the starry dome. Seichan helped by keeping her flashlight pointed at the chunk of quartz that marked the north star.

After a moment of searching, he spotted the star and centered the scope on it. As he did so, a loud gong sounded. It came from overhead and reverberated through the space.

What did that mean?

From the roof, hundreds of stone plugs popped free and rained down. One struck Gray on the shoulder. Startled, he almost dropped the cross. Seichan swore and pressed a hand to her forehead. Blood seeped between her fingers.

She continued to stare up.

Gray followed her line of sight. From the roof, bronze spikes pushed out of a hundred holes. They lowered swiftly on long poles toward the floor. Behind them, a slab of stone dropped over the tunnel exit.

Gray and Seichan would never make it to the door in time.

It was a reverse of the trap at Bardsey. Instead of being dumped atop a sea of spikes, they were to be impaled from above.

Either way, the meaning was the same.

Gray had failed.

31

October 14, 4:04 P.M.

Clairvaux, France

“Are you sure this will blow that secret passage open?” Krista asked.

The demolition was taking longer than expected. After further calculations, the munitions expert had wanted to drill more holes into the crater, to spread the charges out for a more controlled blast.

The man shrugged as he worked. He was using an awl to hand drill the last of his mouse holes. The cubes of C-4 still waited to be molded and packed. He answered in Arabic. Her second-in-command translated.

“He says that it will blow open only if Allah wishes it.”

Krista had her hand clutched on her holstered pistol. Allah had better wish it, or that bastard was going to get a bullet through his skull.