TWENTY-SEVEN

ROOK LOCKED ARMS with Bishop up above and scrambled out of the pit, joining Somi and Knight. While Knight lay with his back against the wall, the others squatted in front of the entrance to the tunnel through which Knight’s captor had exited. They gazed into the dark tunnel. No sign of light. No sounds of movement. The smell of death never left the chamber. They’d almost grown accustomed to it.

Rook looked at his watch, its Day-Glo feature casting his face in a faint green light. 10 P.M. “Maybe they’re sleeping.”

Bishop nodded. “Let’s hope so.”

Looking at his watch, Rook’s eyes moved to the outbreak meter strapped next to it. The small screen displayed three bars, green, yellow . . . and orange. He held it up for the others to see. “We need to get a move on.” He motioned to Somi’s knife wound. “How’s that feeling?”

She sneered. “Like I got stabbed in the chest, you prick.” Then she grinned. Despite the pain in her chest, it was clear to her that she would survive the wound, and she was feeling some of her normal feistiness returning.

“Ahh, quit your whining,” Knight said. “At least you can walk.” Knight spit some more blood. His feistiness was all for show.

Bishop inspected the tunnel. Like the one they’d come through it was marked with an intricate symbol. Yet something was different about the tunnel. Bishop got on his hands and knees and moved forward. As the tunnel closed in around him, he realized the difference. This tunnel was smaller, perhaps three feet tall and nearly as wide. It would be tight, but not too tight. He turned to Somi. “There are symbols marking the entrances to the tunnels. Do you recognize the script?”

He moved aside and directed his flashlight toward the symbol, allowing her to get a clear view. She moved closer and ran her fingers over the symbol’s swooping and crisscrossing lines. “It’s not Vietnamese.”

Of that much she was sure. Before her father’s death, Somi had been in love with the region’s history, and had planned to become a historian. Trung changed all that, but she used her training, both in Asia and the United States, as an excuse to pursue her passion. Knowledge was power. History repeated. Those were the justifications. But she knew she couldn’t always be a spy and hoped to retire to a quiet museum someday. Not only was her knowledge of the region’s history expansive, but as a CIA double agent in Asia, she was expected to speak and read multiple languages, making her knowledge of various scripts above average. But what she saw here defied logic.

“Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese. All were derived from Chinese. The oldest Chinese writing goes back to the Shang Dynasty, 1500 B.C. Archaic Chinese. But this looks . . . older.”

Somi stared at the symbol as though in a trance. “Over the years, ancient bones dated to nearly 5000 B.C. have been found in China featuring a previously unknown script. I haven’t seen the script, but read it was primarily pictorial—representational images. Modern Chinese is only about four percent pictograph. For a long time, experts thought the Chinese language developed on its own, without a precursor language. The bones hinted at something more, but no one has been able to trace the text to an origin.”

Knight leaned in and looked at the symbol. As an Asian man in covert operations, he, like Somi, had been tasked with speaking as many Asian languages as possible. He could speak and read Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Thai. Similarly, Rook was an expert in Germanic languages, Queen in Western European, Bishop in Arabic, and King in South American. Altogether the team could communicate in most parts of the world.

“What’s a precursor language?” Rook asked.

“Japanese is basically Chinese reworked to fit their culture and pronunciations,” Knight said. “Just like English, French, and Spanish are all derived from Latin. Most languages on Earth today evolved from something that came before.”

Somi nodded. “Chinese has always been thought of as an original language. But if these symbols are as old as this place seems to be . . . this may be the precursor language for Chinese. Proto-Chinese. The calligraphy is similar in style to Chinese, but the symbols are totally different, and much more basic.”

Rook raised an eyebrow. He didn’t care about ancient languages. Not right now. He was more interested in getting the hell out of there. “Pretty intelligent for someone in intelligence, but can you read it or not?”

Somi shook her head. “No.”

Rook looked at Knight. “You?”

“Nope.”

“Well, it better say ‘exit,’ because I’m out the door.” Rook knelt down and climbed into the tunnel, holding his small flashlight between his teeth and a Desert Eagle in each hand.

Knight rolled onto his hands and knees, careful not to hit his swollen ankle, and crawled after him.

Bishop gave Somi a lopsided grin. “You next.”

She glanced at the wrapped wound on her chest, then at the tunnel. Crawling would not be easy. “Great.” Using her good arm, Somi limp-crawled into the tunnel behind Knight.

Bishop took one last look at the chamber of bones. They glowed brightly in the flashlight’s beam. He brought the light back to the center of the chamber. A shadow shifted, leaping back out of the light, then up.

Bishop’s eyes went wide. Something was in there. It had been right behind them. And they hadn’t heard a thing. He brought the flashlight up and directed it down the opposite tunnel, the one through which they’d entered the chamber. Deep in the recesses of the tunnel, two eyes reflected the yellow light back at him. Then they blinked, and were gone.

The eyes opened again a moment later. Larger. More menacing.

Closer.

Bishop fired two shots at the opposite tunnel, knowing most of the pellets would hit the wall, but hoped enough would enter the tunnel and strike the creature to make it think twice.

The shadowed creature howled. Hit. But now it was charging.

“What the hell’s going on back there?” Rook’s voice echoed from the tunnel.

Bishop dove into the tunnel, the sound of scattering bones clacking behind him as the creature crossed the chamber. “Rook, move! As fast as you can! They’re right behind me.”

Bishop rolled onto his back and leaned up, pointing the shotgun toward the tunnel’s exit, right between his legs. He nearly dropped the flashlight from his mouth when the ruddy brown creature leaped up and surged toward the tunnel. He caught only a glimpse of it before he pulled the trigger. The shotgun blasted loudly in the enclosed space. Bishop bit down on the flashlight, his shout of pain mixing with the creature’s. He’d hit it, but it still lived. He found it with the flashlight again. The bloodied beast was still advancing.

Ignoring the pain and ringing in his ears, Bishop took aim again. For a moment he wondered if the blasts would ruin his hearing. Then he remembered his ears would heal in seconds. And his mind would drift farther toward madness. But there was little choice. He pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed off the tightly enclosed space, the sound waves striking Bishop’s ears again and again, faster than he could perceive. What his senses could confirm was that his aim had been true. The creature, now faceless, slumped to the cave floor.

Bishop dropped the shotgun, its four shells spent. He glanced back at the opposite tunnel as he began moving. What he saw made him slip back over and crawl like a manic mole.

Glowing eyes, more sets than he cared to count, watched him from the opposite tunnel. As Bishop fled, a loud whooping, more terrifying than his contained shotgun blasts, filled the tunnels.