King shook his head. The bookworm archaeologist was becoming a catlike Tomb Raider while he, an elite soldier, became a potato sack.

When Pierce’s grin turned cocky, King said, “At least I didn’t hit a girl.”

Pierce had opened his mouth to issue a retort, but stopped short and then deflated. “Hey, what happened to ‘you have to be a bad parent to be a good parent’?”

King shrugged. “I was trying to make you feel better.”

Pierce forced an unsure smile as King used his conscience against him. “B.S. You’ve hit girls.”

“Not like that,” King said. “You coldcocked the kid.”

“Kid!” With a laugh and a raised fist, Pierce said, “Better watch it, or you’re next.”

“Don’t make me tell Queen you hit a girl,” King said as he found his flashlight on the floor, picked it up, and switched it on.

The light cast a now serious George Pierce in bright, white light. “That’s not even funny.”

King gave him a firm pat on the back. “C’mon, let’s find out which layer of hell we’ve dropped ourselves into.”

King led the way, flashlight out, gun at the ready. The tunnel, a simple brown tube tall enough to stand in and just wide enough for the pair to stand side by side, led down at a steady angle.

“We must be under the Lacus Juturnae by now,” Pierce whispered.

But King wasn’t interested in what lay above. He wanted to know what waited below. The color of the tunnel ahead shifted from dark brown to a dirty, mottled white with splashes of color. Pierce’s eyes went wide with recognition and he rushed past King.

The walls of the tunnel were covered in mosaic tiles, many chipped or fallen away, but enough remained so that the pictures could be pieced together. Blocky shapes slightly more detailed than a sixteen-bit Nintendo game formed pictograph story lines. King couldn’t make them out, but Pierce deciphered it aloud.

“Look here, at this swamp,” Pierce said. “This must be the land Rome was founded on.” He counted the hills in the image, whispering the numbers to himself. “The seven hills of Rome. The original settlers had villages on each hill, but they eventually drained the swamp and formed the city.”

He moved on, looking at a large image of a woman, whose beauty was impossible to hide, despite the rough condition of the wall.

“Who is she?” King asked.

Only fragments of the name spelled out in ancient Greek above the woman’s head remained, but it was enough. “Acca Larentia. We found her.”