“As evidenced by distracting incidents around the world,” Jemma said. “Increased tensions in Afghanistan. Forest fires and floods. Big events around the globe. It’s a device used by governments the world over; they want people looking that way while they perpetrate a crime over here.”
Bodie held on as the helicopter shuddered. By now, they’d be following the path of the Colorado River, flying high above the canyon and fighting its haphazard thermals. They were closing in on the Illuminati, but the outcome was far from certain.
“How detailed do those photos get?” he asked. “Any idea of their defensive forces? Weapons? Guards?”
“There’s a largely unmoving line of at least fifty figures close to where we think the caves start,” Pang said. “The reality is: They’re well-armed, ready and willing to kill.”
“Not only that,” Cassidy said. “There could be innocent people down there. We know of at least two.”
“How long have they been there?” Yasmine asked.
“Started arriving about four hours ago,” Pang said. “Trickling in, and clearly they’re not at capacity yet.”
Bodie rolled his shoulders as the pilot announced eighteen minutes to landing. They would set down a mile to the east of the Illuminati position, on a flat escarpment from which there was an easy trail—gaining the high ground straight away and approaching the Illuminati from the cover of rock and an elevated position. Out in the Arizona wildlands, it was the best tactic available to them.
The chopper juddered and hopped to the left. Bodie held on. They were a powerful force, heavily armed and equipped with directives to end the Illuminati threat. The CIA hierarchy had been aware of them ever since they rescued Bodie from that Mexican prison. The society wouldn’t be allowed to continue.
Jemma gasped as they descended. It wasn’t a leisurely landing. It was, by necessity, something more akin to a plunge. The pilot pulled up just before the skids struck rock and then touched down.
“Go, go!”
Doors were slid open to both sides. Their force was made up of Army, of CIA and other agents, of two teams of navy SEALS and one of Marine Force RECON. These men and women led the way, leaping into a cold afternoon atop an exposed bluff and falling to their knees.
Bodie followed, Cassidy and Yasmine at his side. They were wearing Kevlar and carrying assault rifles. They had backup weapons in the form of handguns, knives and an assortment of grenades. Bodie crouched in the cold as Pang pushed past him.
“Hit ’em hard,” Pang said. “And hit ’em fast.”
Other choppers were landing to left and right. The cliff top was filled with noise, the air thrumming. Shouts went up; boots struck rock. Men and woman ran left and right. Bodie saw dozens and dozens, all with guns up and ready to fire. It was controlled chaos; a large fighting force moving out.
Pang moved first, leading them down the escarpment at pace.
The views, although incredible, were ignored. Bodie was aware only that he was high above a valley floor and that wide spaces extended to all sides; that the sky was low with cloud, and the wind cold enough to raise goosebumps.
Most of all, he focused on their enemy.
Out of sight for now, the Illuminati were congregated on the valley floor, a hundred feet or so below what appeared to be a new cave-like opening blasted into the cliffs. Figures lined the path upward and the open space below. Every minute, more vehicles streamed toward them, arriving at intervals like guests coming to a party, using barely-there trails and open desert lowland. Judging by the amount of vehicles and people, they had been arriving for hours.
The choppers thundered at their backs. Bodie held his gun pointed at the ground and chased Cassidy down the steep slope. No doubt, the Illuminati would have heard them passing over. It was what happened next that remained uncertain.
The choppers lifted off again. They would provide covering fire if needed, and only if they were certain that they were engaging the enemy.
Bodie followed a winding course downward, careful not to slip on grit or have an ankle grabbed by the thick, overgrowing vegetation that bordered the path and the steep drop to its right. They reached the bottom and still there was no sign of their enemies.
“Look out for traps,” Pang said, using the comms.
Bodie glanced back up the long, sloping pathway. It was an impressive sight. A snaking course of hardened soldiers hurrying toward him, all alert and prepared to act in an instant. Figures spread out along the valley floor.
From here, a wide, curving rock face would lead them to the Illuminati’s position. Vegetation and boulders lined the way ahead, making for a useful screen. Bodie looked up as the roar of the helicopters intensified.
They were right overhead.
“Move!” Pang cried.
As one, they moved out, dozens of soldiers forming lines and staying low. Bodie crouched until he was hidden by a large boulder, then crept forward at speed. It was uncanny. There was no reply from the Illuminati. No...
His senses were assaulted by gunfire as the Illuminati’s soldiers finally engaged. Bullets riddled the skies, fired up at the helicopters in streams. Bodie heard the roar of engines, the rattle of lead on steel, the endless blasting of gunfire. Ahead, the SEAL and RECON teams moved to a forward position and took cover.
“Ready to engage.”
“Do it,” Pang said.
Bodie gritted his teeth, torn with emotion. First, he needed to see Heidi and Lucie, had to be sure they’d survived. Every second that passed meant Bacchus and his cronies could kill them. Second, they had to gain entry to the cave before their enemies earned whatever final and terrible reward they’d been searching for.
Whatever it might be.
Bodie moved to the best vantage point as they joined the battle. Ahead, a large, flat half-circle of land fronted a high rockface. A path led up that rockface to a jagged hole through which people were scurrying. The path was lined with Hoods and mercenaries, all armed, all returning fire. They took cover behind boulders or were laid on their stomachs and sought to make it impossible for the relic hunters to advance.
“All-out attack,” Pang said.
For Heidi. For Lucie. For all those these madmen had already hurt and would hurt in the future, Bodie thought.
He leapt into the attack.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
“Fuck me!” Cassidy cried. “It’s like the wild fucking west!”
Gunfire stormed up and down the mountainside. Helicopters roared overhead. Bullets shattered stone and buried themselves into the dirt for yards around. Hoods and mercenaries fired non-stop from the trail above in a hail of lead. Even more knelt or lay prone at the foot of the mountain, lending more firepower to the onslaught. Bodie sheltered behind his rock, alongside his team.
They stared at each other, all thinking about Lucie, Heidi and the Illuminati inside. But this wasn’t their forte. This was the arena of the experienced, professional soldier. Bodie saw them close by: kneeling, stretched out and crouched. They used hand signals and comms interactions and made ready to act. Bodie counted the seconds, his heart beating fast.
The bombardment didn’t let up. The noise was overwhelming. From defensive positions the soldiers readied what Bodie could only describe as a withering counterattack.
“Surely they’re not all gonna do that at—” Cassidy began.
Even as she spoke, they proved her wrong. First, soldiers and agents fired back blindly, forcing their enemies to rein in their assault a little. Then, as one, eight soldiers rose up with loaded RPGs resting over their soldiers.
Without any hesitation, they all fired.
Eight rockets screamed up the mountainside, aimed just above the shooters’ heads. The impact was colossal—an immeasurable, explosive crack of thunder that drove all the Illuminati forces to the ground. The rockface shook, the sound a reverberating detonation. Rock burst from the mountain in boulders and long, deadly slivers.
Bodie rose along with the entire assault team.
They opened fire, pinning their enemies to the ground even as pieces of the mountain continued to fall among them. Bodie slipped around his rock, ran across a patch of arid ground, and slowed as he came to the next. Ahead, soldiers moved in tight formation, covering each other as they closed the gap between them and their closest enemies.
Sprawled along the path up the side of the mountain, Hoods and mercenaries tried to return fire. Most were too busy making sure a falling rock didn’t crush them, but some ignored the immediate danger for the far more dangerous one below.
Cassidy and Yasmine ran with Bodie; Jemma and Butcher were several steps behind. Pang, Bodie noticed, was way ahead, mingling with the soldiers. The idiot even had a smile on his face. Grim, but content.
Bodie guessed this was his domain, his favorite place to be. It was hard for a man like Bodie to relate to a man like Pang but, for now at least, they both fought for the same side.
The soldiers ahead paused by the last set of rocks before the big clearing.
Bodie slowed. At least half a minute had passed since the RPGs were loosed. More people continued to enter the cave high above. The majority of the enemy combatants were getting back to their feet.
But the soldiers weren’t done. Closer now, they readied RPGs and grenades. They called a five-second warning through the comms. Bodie put his head down as the choppers above backed off.
Another monumental series of blasts shook the area.
Bodie looked up to see explosive clouds billowing toward the blue skies as the wounded screamed.
Without hesitation, the soldiers attacked the flatland. They rushed out, firing careful, precise shots.
Bodie saw mercs twist and fall, Hoods leaping to meager cover. A RECON soldier went down, close to Pang. The CIA wetworker scrambled clear and shot the man who’d killed the soldier. He was then jumped upon by a man who’d lost his own weapon and wanted Pang’s.
“This isn’t our arena,” Cassidy said from the left. “This is pure war.”
Bodie was inclined to agree, but the overarching reasons they were here hadn’t changed. “Every minute we wait,” he said, “means Heidi and Lucie might die, and the Illuminati could reap their reward.”
Bodie joined the fight, realizing his firepower would be better directed toward the path up the mountain. Up there, it was a terrible, bloody turmoil. Men lay dead and broken, killed by grenades, others lay unmoving, crushed by rock. Some were now taking cover behind those same rocks and firing back. Others were moving slowly up or down the path, gravely wounded, or angry enough to want to launch an attack. Bodie sought to pin down those that looked most dangerous.
Pang’s soldiers ran in formation, three men at a time, each group covering the first. They darted from boulder to boulder, always changing position, directing their firepower first into the clearing and then at the rocks. Bodie let them work, glad for their expertise. The Illuminati had gathered a strong and capable defensive force here—but Pang had somehow managed to throw together an even better assault team.
Together, they forged a path toward the base of the mountain.
Once there, they regrouped, reloaded, and started up. Cover was plentiful. Explosions continued to rip the day apart. Bullets glanced all around Bodie and his team as they crept from rock to rock.
An RPG was used on a particularly large boulder halfway up the path, behind which at least eight mercs were hiding. Bodie saw the enormous rock burst apart; the chunks, fragments and tumbling bodies flying off the side of the mountain.
They drove upward. Bodie kept glancing at the cave entrance. It was clear now. Whoever needed to get inside had already succeeded. Beyond, a yawning blackness was the only prospect, a murky invitation to Hades.
“Do we have a plan?” Butcher asked.
“Yeah, kill anything with horns,” Cassidy grumbled.
“No, I meant for the weapon. Whatever it is it could already be in play.”
Bodie didn’t need reminding. “Identify the prisoners,” he said. “And take out the rest. Doesn’t matter if they’re mercs, Hoods or Illuminati. If they’re here voluntarily, they’re fair game.”
Their advance was steady, but still not quick enough. Bodie leant his own firepower to the effort. Cassidy and Yasmine helped pick off those enemies lingering below, of which there remained a small but nonetheless deadly bunch. Butcher and Jemma brought up the rear, armed but mostly preparing for whatever confronted them inside the cave.
The helicopters had backed off, their roar diminishing. Through the comms Bodie had heard Pang requesting more backup. This was more than a fight; it was rural warfare within the United States.
The trail wound up toward the cave. Pang’s men converged on the last hurdle, a group of Hoods sheltering behind a row of six large boulders that all but blocked the way ahead. Grenades were thrown. Hoods scurried to their left and backward, trying to escape the blasts. Some fell off the path a few hundred feet to their deaths. Other ran into explosions and were propelled dozens of feet before crashing raggedly to the ground. Bodie used precise shots to pin down two shooters.
A boulder tore free of its moorings and rocked to and fro. Several Hoods saw their chance. They ran at it from the back, and put their strength into starting it rolling. Bodie saw the activity, saw what was coming and yelled out a warning.
For some of Pang’s men it came too late. For others, it was a rolling obstruction they couldn’t evade.
It came slowly at first. Pang managed to dodge between it and the edge of the path, so close to the drop that the toe end of his boots hung over the abyss. Some men got lucky, managing to wedge themselves into a ditch between the rock and the cliff face.
Bodie saw what was coming. “We have to get the hell off this path!”
Yasmine stared at him. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“I know!”
The boulder gathered momentum. It swayed into the cliff wall, passing over the hidden soldiers, and ground its way toward Bodie. Rock grated on rock.
An unlucky soldier had no time and tried to leap to the top but lost his handhold and was crushed under the heavy, unstoppable object.
Hoods followed it down, spying a slim chance of victory. Pang’s reappearance around the side startled them. They jumped more when he opened fire on full-auto, riddling them with bullets. The last Hood ran at him, trying to smash him off the path just as his gun clicked on dry.
Bodie saw the gap decreasing ever more quickly. The boulder was an oncoming, rumbling storm, one side of it streaked with blood. It struck the inner mountain once again and veered to Bodie’s right, heading for the edge of the path and the long drop to the ground below. Bodie’s heart leapt in relief, seeing that it would fall before striking them.
But then it hit a groove in the path, a deep fissure, that altered its path. Now, the boulder was on a direct course to him and his team.
Bodie whipped his head left and right. He backpedaled. There was no room to the left, the mountain side was vertical to the edge of the path. To the right...
It was the only way. Bodie’s ears were filled with the intense din of oncoming death. He ran for the edge of the path and looked down, saw two hundred feet of vertical cliff ending in a jagged cluster of boulders below.
Other soldiers were with them. At least four agents. One man decided quickly and flattened himself in the gap between the cliff face and where the rounded boulder edges would pass. Bodie tottered on the very edge of the path.
“It’s going over,” Cassidy yelled.
“Yes, but not until after it flattens us!” Jemma shouted back.
Bodie realized it was gathering speed. They could run... take their chances. They could wait to see what would happen when it broke out of the furrow. They had seconds to decide.
The thunder closed in. Cassidy caught his attention by giving a bloodcurdling yell. Then, she leapt off the path into midair.
Bodie gaped, his heart hitting his throat. He scrambled toward where she’d been, looking out, dreading what he
might see.
Cassidy hung by her fingertips over the deadly drop.
It was the boldest move, and the most dangerous. But they were all fit enough to survive it, strong enough to pull themselves back up. Bodie dug his fingers into several rocky grooves and lowered his body so that he hung over the side.
It was a horrible feeling, knowing that several hundred feet of pure air waited just below your dangling boots. One slip, one cramp, and he’d fall to certain death. He hung on, saw other figures climb down to his left. He stared at the mountain inches from his eyes.
Hanging on... hoping for the best.
The boulder’s roar swelled until it felt like it might burst his ear drums. For a moment his heart leapt as the noise rose to a crescendo. He fully expected it to start to fade away.
A terrible dark shape blocked out the sun.
It was coming. The enormous rock flew off the path, its momentum carrying it over his head. Bodie flattened himself against the rockface. The rush of air and crack of noise deafened him. His entire body convulsed as he felt the boulder pass inches from his body, its terrifying size and weight making him shrink.
And then it was gone. Bodie’s eyes were tightly shut. A second passed, and then another. He shuddered involuntarily when a voice came from above.
“You hanging like that all day?”
He opened his eyes. Pang knelt above him, a hand outstretched. Bodie reached up, grabbed it, and rolled back onto the path. He lay for a moment, staring up at the sky. The devastating crash of the boulder striking the ground far below made him shiver.
Moments later he was back on his feet, shaking off the close call. At least for now. The sensation of hanging helplessly while a massive boulder almost grazed his back would never leave him. Fighting to focus, he stared up at the cave.
Soldiers were gathered outside.
“We made it,” Jemma said.
“We did,” Pang said. “Are you ready for Hades?”
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
The Illuminati Endgame (The Relic Hunters 7) Page 18