‘Which means we’re going to need Lily to decipher it.’ Jack turned to the computer. ‘Looks like you’re back in the game, kiddo.’
‘Yay,’ Lily squealed over the videolink.
Jack turned to the twins: ‘Don’t tell me, no large intact dinosaur egg has ever been found, either in Japan or Mongolia?’
Julius shook his head. ‘No. Never.’
‘So let me get this straight,’ Zoe said. ‘You’re saying that if we find this Egg, and combine the images on it with the knowledge we have of the Hokkaido coast, we can find the Third Vertex and the Third Pillar?’
‘Yes,’ Julius said.
‘Yes,’ Lachlan said.
‘So we find it,’ Jack said resolutely. He turned to the twins:
‘Okay, my Mongolian experts, where did it go? Where do you think this Wingless Dragon’s Egg ended up?’
AIRSPACE OVER WESTERN CHINA
28 FEBRUARY, 2008, 0800 HOURS
12 DAYS BEFORE THE 3RD DEADLINE
(2008 BEING A LEAP YEAR)
‘Genghis Khan’s Arsenal,’ Lachlan’s voice said over the speakerphone in the main cabin of the Halicarnassus. ‘That’s where the Dragon’s Egg ended up.’
‘His arsenal?’ Jack said.
Jack, Lily, Zoe and Wizard were soaring over central Asia, heading towards Mongolia. Guessing that the Egg lay somewhere in Genghis’s former empire, they’d headed here while the twins had researched the matter further.
On the way, they had picked up Lily in Perth. When they’d collected her, however, Alby had mentioned something about a discovery he’d made regarding the Basin of Rameses II—and so Pooh Bear, Stretch and the twins had been dispatched to, of all places, England. Diane Cassidy had gone home to America, to rebuild the pieces of her life and put together all her research so she could help from there.
Sadly for Lily, Alby couldn’t come on this trip. After he’d arrived home from their last adventure with his arm in a sling, his mother Lois wasn’t letting him out of her sight.
Julius’s voice said, ‘While reading The Secret History of the Mongols, we found a few odd references to something called “the Lost Arsenal of the Khan”. Apparently, it was a secret redoubt of Genghis’s, a last refuge, and also the place where he kept all the treasures he’d acquired on his many conquests. Not even his sons knew where it was, which pissed them off immensely. Its location is one of history’s greatest mysteries.’
‘Of course it is,’ Jack said drily.
‘It was reputedly built by 25,000 Kwarezmi slaves—only when it was finished, they were all executed, so they couldn’t reveal its location,’ Lachlan said.
‘Effective way to keep a secret,’ Wizard said.
‘So how are we supposed to find it?’ Zoe asked.
Lachlan said, ‘Artefact thieves have been searching for the Lost Arsenal for years. All we can do is what we’ve been doing: connect some otherwise random dots and hopefully get an idea where to look. For instance, there are reports in Mongol literature that after a long campaign, Genghis would go off to the distant village of Unjin in the lands of the Uyghurs to meditate and recuperate—’
‘Or to go and deposit extra special booty,’ Jack finished for him. ‘Like the Egg.’
‘Exactly,’ Lachlan said. ‘Now, Unjin still exists and the ancient lands of the Uyghurs correspond to the modern Mongolian province of Bayanhongor; it’s in the south-west of the country and incorporates a large section of the Gobi Desert. It’s remote, hard to get to, and the northern half of the province is perpetually covered in permafrost.’
Julius added, ‘There’s also a curious land feature about twenty miles to the west of Unjin: a desert plain at the base of the Altay Mountains that’s pock-marked with meteor craters, some big, some small, about thirty in total. Dotted all around these craters are burial mounds, dozens of them, some as small as haystacks, others almost as big as the pyramids.’
‘Sounds like a good place to start looking,’ jack said. ‘Keep at it, Cowboys.’
‘Jack.’ Sky Monster emerged from the cockpit and handed Jack a printout. ‘Just came in from Pine Gap.’
Pine Gap was an ultra-secure communications station in outback Australia, not far from Alice Springs. Jointly owned and operated by the Australian and US militaries, the facility was used by the US to co-ordinate its satellite communications in Asia and the Middle East. What the Americans didn’t know today, however, was that an Australian operator at Pine Gap was surreptitiously monitoring their transmissions.
‘What is it?’ Zoe asked.
‘My guy keeping track of Wolf.’ Jack scanned the printout. ‘Thirty minutes ago, Pine Gap picked up some encrypted radio chatter on a US Navy satellite frequency. My man didn’t have authorisation to decrypt exactly what they were saying but he could see where the signal came from: south-western Mongolia, got the GPS co-ordinates here.’
Jack punched the co-ordinates into a plotting computer.
‘Son of a bitch, he left Diego Garcia.’ A map came up on the screen. ‘And he’s now in Bayanhongor Province, Mongolia, ten miles west of the village of Unjin. Damn it!’
Zoe said, ‘The twins were right . . . ’
‘They were,’ Jack said. ‘Only we were too slow. We’re behind. Wolf is following the same lead and he’s already there.’
‘Jack, there’s more,’ Sky Monster said, holding up a second printout and handing it to him.
Jack read it quickly . . .
. . . and this time his face went pale.
‘Oh, no . . . no. . . ’
‘What is it?’
Jack looked up. ‘Pine Gap just picked up a second cluster of encrypted transmissions coming from the exact same area an hour after the US Navy signal. Only these transmissions could be decrypted, because they weren’t American.’
‘And?’
‘The encryption algorithms matched those currently used by the special forces section of the Japanese Defence Force,’ Jack said. ‘Two messages were decoded. The first:
TELL THE GARRISON FORCE AT YOMI
TO MAINTAIN THEIR POSITION INSIDE
THE HALL OF OROCHI.
‘Yomi?’ Jack looked to Zoe. ‘My Japanese geography is kinda rusty.’
‘You’re not going to find Yomi on any map,’ she said. ‘Yomi is the name given to the underworld in Japanese mythology, like Hades or Tartarus . . . ’
‘And the Hall of Orochi?’
‘Orochi is a gigantic eight-headed serpent, also from Japanese mythology. But I’ve never heard of a hall dedicated to him.’
Jack nodded. ‘Okay. The second message is less cryptic:
OUR ENEMIES HAVE FOUND THE
ARSENAL OF THE KHAN.
IMPERATIVE THAT THEY DO NOT
ACQUIRE THE EGG.
DO WHATEVER IS REQUIRED.
‘Tank and the Blood Brotherhood are going for the Arsenal,’ Jack said. ‘Damn, this could get very crowded.’
Zoe said, ‘Jack, you said these messages were encrypted with systems used by Japanese special forces. You think Tank might be getting some unofficial help from inside the Japanese military establishment?’
Jack gave her a look. ‘I don’t know. It’s a possibility. Either way, once again we’re bringing up the rear. Sky Monster, get us there, now.’
The Halicarnassus rolled to a halt on a windswept plateau twenty miles north of the remote Mongolian town of Unjin. Stretching away to the south of the plateau was the vast emptiness of the Gobi Desert.
For most of the year the Gobi was a land hostile to human existence—desolate, dry and brutally cold—but in late February, hostile was an understatement.
Snow fell. A layer of permafrost blanketed the landscape in grey. Biting winds swept across the plain, penetrating to the bone, lowering the daytime temperature to -22 degrees. The combination of temperature and altitude prevented any kind of helicopter activity—rotor blades could not get any lift in the thin, cold air. Without ultralong landing strips, jets like the Hali struggled;
indeed, this was why they’d had to land so far away.
As the big black 747 stood parked on the remote clifftop, two small dots sped away from it, racing out across the desert floor: a pair of all-terrain quad-bikes.
Jack drove one of them, with Wizard riding pillion and Lily sitting on his lap. Zoe drove the second bike, with Sky Monster as her passenger. Not used to travelling under someone else’s command, the big hairy-faced Kiwi pilot was terrified and he rode with his hands gripping Zoe’s waist tightly. Zoe grinned at his discomfort. All of them wore heavy-duty snow gear—parkas, hoods, goggles, gloves.
As they crested a low hill, Jack scanned the terrain through some digital binoculars.
They were in the foothills of the Altay Mountains, which ran in a long line from west to east, providing something of a northern boundary to the Gobi. The desert beyond the hills was huge: ii stretched away to the southern, western and eastern horizons, flatter than flat, vaster than vast. Jack could see a narrow, dirt road heading east for thirty miles without a bend or a turn.
Everything—mountain, road, plain—was covered in permafrost.
But then he spotted something in the distance . . . on the dirt road . . . something moving.
A large white-grey dustcloud.
And it was advancing toward them.
Zoe saw it, too. ‘What is that . . . ?‘
Jack was about to say something about a sandstorm when he zoomed in with his binoculars and saw what lay at the head of the dustcloud.
Two main battle tanks.
Chinese Type-90s. Behind the lead tanks were two long columns of more tanks and armoured vehicles, vehicles that were no doubt filled with Chinese infantry troops.
Jack couldn’t guess how many troops were coming toward him: it might have been as many as fifteen hundred men. With 1 .6 million soldiers, China had the largest land army in the world. Deploying a battalion of them to the Gobi Desert was not a major challenge.
Was Wolf, with his Chinese ally, Colonel Mao Gongli, leading that massive force?
For a moment, Jack felt elated at the thought that he might have leapfrogged Wolf and would get to the Arsenal of Genghis Khan first.
From his hilltop position, Jack could see down a long narrow valley flanked by low mountains and hearing perfectly-formed meteor craters all the way along its length, every one of them covered iii a layer of the white-grey frost. Interspersed among the remarkable craters were conical earthen mounds—primitive burial mounds, some eight feet tall, others fifty or even a hundred feet high.
Jack scanned the isolated valley through his high-tech binoculars.
Beside one of the larger mounds—a towering frost—covered mass nestled close to a mountain—he saw a cluster of military vehicles, troop trucks and jeeps, all bearing red stars on their sides. They were parked beside a very narrow tunnel that appeared to burrow into the base of the giant mound.
An advance team, he thought. Damn. Wolf did get here first. He must have led a smaller, lighter team here, to be joined by the larger Chinese force later— But then, panning over the scene through his binoculars, Jack saw that nobody was moving near these parked vehicles, not even sentries standing guard. In fact, there appeared to be no-one at all stationed with the cars.
Curious, Jack increased his magnification and a horrific image appeared in his viewfinder.
Beside the Chinese Army vehicles were bodies, about ten of them, all lying with their heads face-down in star-shaped pools of blood.
‘Uh-oh,’ he breathed. ‘Wolf is here, but I think our Japanese friends have already arrived as well.’
Jack, Lily, Wizard, Zoe and Sky Monster stood beside the parked Chinese vehicles in front of the gigantic burial mound. It towered above them, wide and massive, at least a hundred feet tall.
‘Lily, stay back, okay,’ Jack said as he checked the bloodied bodies on the ground.
They’d all been shot in the head, executed.
‘Chinese special forces, plus a couple of Wolf’s CIEF guys,’ he said. ‘And they were slaughtered.’
‘Jack,’ Zoe called. ‘Look at this.’
She was standing at the top of the narrow tunnel that burrowed into the base of the mound.
Joining her, Jack now saw that it was more than just a tunnel. It was a thin chasm, open at the top and barely a metre wide, that descended via a series of about one hundred stone steps into the ground beneath the mound.
Jack frowned, threw Zoe a questioning look.
‘Search me,’ she replied.
‘Wizard?’
‘I have a feeling,’ he said, ‘that this mound is no mound at all.’
‘Sky Monster, you’re our lookout. Stay up here and maintain radio contact. Zoe, Wizard and Lily, follow me,’ Jack said, lifting his MP-7 to his shoulder, assault-style, before he headed down the stairs, descending into the earth.
Jack hustled down the narrow flight of stone steps, the chasm’s earthen walls pressing tight against his shoulders. If he looked up, he would have seen the sky, but right now his eyes were locked dead ahead, fixed down the barrel of his gun.
Down the stone steps he flew, when all of a sudden the stairway stopped abruptly and Jack skidded to a halt and beheld a stunning, stunning sight.
Jack found himself staring at what had once been a meteor crater. Only this crater had been roofed over.
And in its centre, mounted in a high upthrust of rock, stood an imposing black structure that appeared to be made entirely of cast-iron.
The overall effect was of a tower the size of an office building built in the middle of a deep circular hole. But it was beautiful; it was a genuine work of art.
The whole tower structure must have been fifteen storeys tall. Its vertical rocky flanks were lined in a cladding of cast-iron plates (some of them had fallen off), but the defensive structure at its summit seemed to be wrought wholly of cast-iron—thick and strong, with the consistency of an anvil.
Wizard appeared behind jack. ‘Like I said, not a mound.’
‘Indeed. . . ’
Jack scanned the ‘roof’ that encased the meteor crater. A chunky iron column rose above the black tower like a spire, only it was not decorative—it was the central support for a circular conical ‘roof’ that fanned out from the column’s uppermost point, reaching down to the rim of the crater.
Four mighty iron support-beams branched out from the tower, forming the skeleton of this roof—hundreds of wooden beams tilled in the gaps so that from the outside the conical structure would take the shape of a primitive burial mound.
‘Clever,’ Zoe said. ‘There are thousands of mounds like these all over China and Mongolia. And most of them have nothing beneath them except a single body. So you make your secret arsenal look like one of them.’
Giving access to the 700-year-old citadel in the middle of the crater was a far more modern creation: a steel-cable suspension bridge. It spanned the hundred-foot void between Jack’s group and the black tower.
Jack instantly recognised it as a standard US Army model.
‘Wolf,’ he said.
They crossed the long swooping suspension bridge.
Leading the way, Jack arrived at a platform on the outer flank of the iron-clad tower. From there, a steep staircase spiralled up and around the four sides of the tower, leading to the squat black citadel at its summit.
The bridge, the platform and the outer spiral staircase were all covered by aggressive archer-stations, so that—at least in ancient times—no intruder could enter the great citadel easily.
More bloodied bodies lay here—plus numerous shell casings indicating a fierce firefight—only this time the bodies were Chinese and American . . . plus at least one dead Japanese trooper dressed in black combat gear.
‘God, I hate arriving last,’ Jack muttered.
He, Lily, Zoe and Wizard pressed on, moving to the summit structure, where a great black cast-iron door yawned before them, recently blasted open by modern explosives. Two more dead CIEF troops lay on th
e floor here, their blood still warm.
‘NVGs,’ Jack ordered.
If two groups of bad guys were already here, he wasn’t going to reveal his presence by using flashlights or glowsticks. Everyone donned their night-vision goggles.
‘All right, in we go.’
Inside the citadel tower was a complex network of vertical shafts. Each shaft was square-sided with walls clad in smooth cast-iron plating, offering no handholds. All of them plummeted to ominous black depths.
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