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Kitsune was so angry she was vibrating, so scared for Grant she wanted to weep. She was panting hard, but she didn’t move. Neither did the two men. Everyone was watching Ajax typing frantically. They knew something was wrong, very wrong.
Ajax hit a final computer key and the screens stopped shifting, the siren cut off midwail.
“Where did the laser hit?” Cassandra asked.
“Five hundred nautical miles northeast, as best I can tell. It went straight down to the seabed.”
Cassandra stood mute, watching her twin move through the screens now, searching the data as it began to scroll onto the center screen. “I don’t know what it will do. Depending on the strength of that blast it could shift the seabed. Someone could have seen it strike the water, alerted the Coast Guard.” He swiped his hand through his head. “We need the storm in position to strike D.C., and now I think it’s back on track, but I can’t be certain.”
“It will be all right, you’ll see. You’ve very good, Ajax, it will hit Washington, D.C., just as we planned.”
“Cassandra, if the algorithms are off a meter, or the strength isn’t properly measured, the lasers aligned just so, it can cause a global catastrophe and not hit Washington, D.C. at all.” He drew in a deep breath. “As close as the hit was to us, a seabed earthquake could send out a tsunami and wipe our island off the face of the earth. Then if the hurricane hits Washington, D.C., we won’t care. It would have all been for nothing.”
Cassandra looked over at Kitsune. “I told you, Ajax, I think the Ark is here, in the vault. Grandfather’s big secret. She will open it for us and then we will have the power to control the Coil again. Trust me, Ajax. We will not only control the Coil, we will control everything.”
Kitsune heard him snort, saw him studying first one computer, then another.
Cassandra had knotted a cloth around her forehead to keep the blood out of her eyes. She looked at Kitsune. “This better not leave a scar or I will take a knife and carve up your face.” She nodded toward the behemoth holding Grant’s left arm. “Now, you will either open the vault for me or I’ll have Bantam Weight break your husband’s neck.”
She was calling that hulk Bantam Weight? What did she call the other one? Feather Weight? Her brain was squirreling around; she had to get it together, figure out what to do. She looked over at an old man, silent, unmoving, his head bleeding on the floor, another dead man beside him. “You killed your own grandfather. And for what? You honestly believe Jason Kohath has been sitting on the Ark of the Covenant this whole time?”
Cassandra laughed. “You’re stupid, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” She turned to the two guards. “Bring the man.”
Ajax stopped typing. He was staring at one of the screens, as if willing what he wanted to happen.
“Straighten up and walk,” Bantam Weight said, and kicked Grant.
It was then Kitsune saw Grant’s eyes. They were clear, focused on her, and she knew he wanted them to stay together. She knew hope.
Kitsune said, “Let’s open the safe.”
Cassandra said to Bantam Weight, “If either of them tries anything, shoot him. Ajax, do you need to stay here or will you come with us?”
“There’s nothing more I can do,” he said, rising.
They walked through byzantine passages, forking left, then right, fanning off intersections. Kitsune realized these passageways had been dug out and reinforced decades earlier—probably by the Russians—they were stark, cold, well-maintained by Kohath’s guards no doubt. And always, they walked deeper into the heart of the volcano itself.
They came into a large space carved into the rock, lights inset, reflecting out a gauzy red glow. The walls weren’t metal, they were smooth rock, like the back of the small room where she and Grant had been locked in.
On the far wall Kitsune saw a commercial-grade vault, one similar to those she’d seen in Swiss banks in Geneva and Zurich, state-of-the-art, virtually impossible to open. She’d need special tools and several hours to have a prayer of getting into this vault.
Cassandra pointed to the round steel door in front of them. “This is one of the most secure vaults in the world. It is made of steel-reinforced concrete. The lock is a dual combination and key. I have the director’s key right here, a gift from my grandfather. You need to figure out the combination.
“It is a class-three lock, and it’s set into an explosive charge. Get it wrong, and you will be vaporized. Once inside, there will be another door, but you won’t have to worry about that one, it’s a special climate-control door.” She twirled the combination lock. “You have twenty-two minutes.”
“Listen to me, Cassandra, you know well enough I can’t have the combination miraculously appear. I need a thermal lance to cut through the rods, even with a class-three, it will take me an hour, if I’m lucky.”
She tossed Kitsune a stereoscope. “You have this. And I’m not kidding about the time, this door is set to self-destruct if the dial is moved and no one puts in the combination. When I spun that lock, the timer started inside. Twenty-one minutes, now. Get going and open that vault, or I will slit your husband’s throat.”
“You want me to use the stethoscope to listen to it open?”
“Bring her man. And a knife.”
“Be reasonable, there’s over a million possible combinations. It would take a computerized crack system three days to run that many.”
“You’re speeding down to twenty minutes.”
Kitsune looked at Grant. And in his eyes she saw certainty. That she could open the vault? Well, yes, okay, she could open the bloody vault, she was the best, after all. Kitsune grabbed the stethoscope, said over her shoulder, “I need complete silence, and your breathing sounds like cannons in my ears. You want it open? Leave me.”
