The spear swung towards him. ‘Do not tell me what to do,’ Gadreel growled. ‘Until we wake the rest of our people, all humans are a threat. We have to find Tartarus before they know we are here.’ He kicked sand over the dead woman’s torch and stared at the landscape beyond. The great rock of Uluru was a black, whale-like shape rising into the starry sky. ‘It is definitely here?’
Sidona came up behind him. ‘I have felt it. It is here. And so are our people.’
‘Then I will lead the way.’ He called out, and one by one, the Nephilim trailed after him across the sands. Zan followed with the tracker, rounding the burst of gore with an expression of trapped horror.
By the time the Longitude landed at Ayers Rock airport north of Yulara, the sun was well into the sky.
‘All right,’ Eddie told the pilots as they stopped the jet, ‘we’re done with you. You can go straight back to China if you want, but you might want to stay in Australia for a week or two. Maybe longer.’ Neither man appreciated the suggestion.
‘You okay?’ Nina asked him as they prepared to exit.
‘Knackered.’ Though Nina and Cheng had taken shifts to watch the pilots, the Yorkshireman had been on guard for most of the night. ‘That, and about five hundred cuts and bruises and chipped bones. Apart from that, just fine.’
‘Funny, I was about to say the exact same thing,’ she said. He grinned, then opened the hatch. Hot, dry air rolled in. He lowered the stairs, then ejected the gun’s magazine and tossed it and the empty weapon to the far end of the cabin before gesturing downwards. ‘Ladies first.’
Nina and Macy descended to the tarmac. A dusty wind blew across it. Nina narrowed her eyes and looked around. The sky was a swimming-pool blue, but the ground was practically its opposite, the sand and rocks a rusty orange so intense it seemed almost unreal. Scrubby vegetation beyond the runway was the only reassurance that they had not somehow been transported to the surface of Mars. ‘This is so cool!’ cried Macy.
Cheng followed them down, awe overpowering his misery. ‘That’s beautiful. Look at those colours!’
Eddie was less concerned with the scenery than with the uniformed people approaching. ‘Ay up. Hope we didn’t leave our passports in China.’
‘Now you think to ask?’ Nina jokingly chided as she produced them.
One of the Australian customs officials checked them against a clipboard, then nodded. While it was several years since the couple had worked for the United Nations, gaining the benefit of de facto diplomatic status at international borders, Nina’s in-flight phone calls to former colleagues had allowed strings to be pulled on their behalf. Cheng was another matter, both customs officers regarding the young Chinese with suspicion, but Nina’s assurances eventually saw him allowed to enter the country.
The third member of the reception committee was from a different organisation, a badge on her sleeve showing a stylised representation of Uluru and the words Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park. ‘Hi, g’day,’ said the stringy, thin-faced blonde. ‘I’m Sandra Piddock. We spoke on the phone?’
‘We did,’ said Nina, shaking her hand. ‘Thanks for meeting us.’
‘No worries. Normally I wouldn’t have been too happy at being woken up in the night, but today I was already up. And when you called, I figured your problem might have something to do with our problem.’
‘What problem?’ Eddie asked.
Sandra gestured for them to enter the terminal building. The air conditioning was a relief even after mere minutes in the sun. ‘Somebody called and said they saw a plane going down near Uluru, so I sent Rosie Tapaya, one of my park rangers, to investigate – she lives in Mutitjulu, right by the rock. She radioed in to say she thought it was just campers, which is illegal but happens all the time. Except . . .’
‘She never came back?’ Nina offered.
Sandra gave her a grim nod. ‘Rosie’s an Aboriginal, she knows what she’s doing in the desert—’
‘An Aboriginal person,’ Macy corrected.
‘Yeah, that’s what I said,’ was the Australian’s airy response, before she continued. ‘And she’s a tough girl, your typical tourist wouldn’t mess with her. So when you called me, I was already a bit worried – then once the sun rose and there was still no sign of her, I knew there was something wrong.’
‘Did you call the police?’ Eddie asked.
‘I did, but this isn’t exactly Sydney. We only have a handful of cops to cover about a hundred kilometres in each direction. They’re looking for her, but I haven’t heard from them yet.’ The two customs officers gave her brusque farewells and headed away. Sandra waited for them to go, then lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘So what’s going on, Professor Wilde? I know you by reputation – and your reputation is that whenever you get involved with an archaeological thing, it means some nut’s trying to take over the world! We’ve had UFO reports, then one of my rangers disappears . . . and now you turn up. After phoning me from a plane in the middle of the night and asking me to close the entire park, at that. What’s it all about?’
‘Have you closed the park?’ said Nina.
‘No. I only have the authority to do that if there’s an immediate danger to life, like flash floods or brush fires.’
‘What about a murder?’
Sandra twitched in surprise. ‘What about a murder?’
‘Your ranger’s dead. If she found the people we’re after, they’ll have killed her.’
‘Macy, let’s go over here for a minute,’ said Eddie, ushering his protesting daughter out of earshot.
‘What people?’ Sandra demanded.
‘It’s hard to explain – and to be honest, if I came straight out and told you, you’d think I was crazy. Let’s just say that they’re here, they’re dangerous – and there’s something they want at Uluru. Closing the park is the best way to make sure nobody else gets hurt.’
The ranger regarded Nina in silence for a long moment. Then: ‘You’re sure Rosie is dead?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes.’
Another lengthy pause, then Sandra took out a phone and dialled. ‘Dougie, are you busy right now? Okay, can you do me a huge favour? I’m at the airport, with four other people. Can you pick us up and fly us to the rock? Yeah, it’s serious – I wouldn’t ask otherwise. Okay, thanks.’ She looked back at Nina. ‘A mate of mine owns a helicopter for tourist flights around the rock. He’ll take us there so we can search from the air.’
‘Thank you,’ Nina replied.
Eddie and Macy came back. ‘Oh great,’ grumbled the Yorkshireman. ‘Another helicopter.’
‘You don’t like helicopters?’ asked Sandra.
‘Our last flight didn’t end very well,’ said Cheng.
‘Hopefully this one’ll be better. Come on,’ she said, leading them through the terminal.
The promised helicopter arrived fifteen minutes later, a Jet Ranger painted in the colours of the Australian flag. Sandra ushered everyone else into the cabin’s rear, then took the co-pilot’s seat. The chopper quickly took off and headed south-east. ‘All right,’ she said once they had all donned headphones, ‘Rosie went looking for this plane somewhere north-east of the rock. It’s off the tourist flight path, so even if there was something there, probably nobody would have noticed it.’
‘Why not?’ Cheng asked.
The pilot, a middle-aged man with deeply tanned and wrinkled skin, pointed ahead with a chuckle. ‘They’d be looking at that, mate!’ All eyes went to the great red rock of Uluru, rising with almost startling suddenness from the desert plain. Even from a distance it dominated the landscape, a towering sandstone iceberg in an empty orange sea.
‘Wow,’ said Nina. ‘Now that is impressive.’
Eddie nodded. ‘That bloke Ayer must’ve had an ego even bigger than the rock to name it after himself. How big is it?’
‘Over three and a hal
f kilometres long and almost two and a half at its widest,’ Sandra announced. ‘Three hundred and forty-eight metres tall at the highest point.’
‘How far underground does it go?’ Nina asked thoughtfully.
‘Underground? I don’t actually know. Three or four kilometres, I think, although some people reckon it could be more. Why?’
‘What these people are after might be inside the rock.’
She shook her head. ‘You can’t get inside. There are caves, sure, but they’ve all been explored, and none of them are very deep. If there was anything there, the Aboriginals – the Aboriginal people,’ she corrected, with a patronising smile at Macy, ‘would have found them.’
‘The entrance might have been hidden.’
‘By who?’
Nina said nothing. Sandra made an annoyed sound, then turned to watch the russet landscape speed past. ‘Okay, we just crossed the highway, which is the only road in or out,’ she said. ‘The bloke who reported a plane going down was driving along it, so it’s somewhere south of here. Rosie came out of Mutitjulu, which is by the rock,’ she pointed at the huge landmark’s eastern end, ‘and came north. So we’ve got an area of about seventy square kilometres to cover.’
‘What was she driving?’ Eddie asked.
‘A Land Cruiser, one of our ranger trucks. It’s white, so it should stand out.’
‘There’s some binoculars in the back,’ the pilot chipped in.
Nina passed a set to Sandra, then she and Eddie began their own sweep of the plain. While dry, it was far from dead, dotted with desert trees and scrub. Green against red – so anything else would stand out clearly, whether white . . . or gold.
‘I see something,’ said Eddie after a few minutes. ‘There’s a truck down there.’
Sandra found it north of the rock. ‘It’s moving – it must be Barney. Another ranger, he’s looking for Rosie.’ She used the radio to contact the man on the ground. ‘He hasn’t seen anything yet,’ she reported.
Nina lowered her binoculars. The ranger’s truck was a clear white dot against the endless red, so the missing woman’s vehicle ought to stand out equally well. She looked further out from Uluru. The desert stretched away to the hazy horizon. Earth tones, as far as the eye could see . . .
‘There’s something!’ she cried, snapping up the binoculars for a closer look. ‘It’s white . . . it’s another truck!’
Sandra looked for herself. ‘Jesus, it’s rolled over! Dougie, get us down there, quick. She could be hurt.’ The pilot changed course as she radioed again. ‘Barney, we’ve found her jeep. We’re going to land – follow us in.’
The helicopter closed on its destination. A dry riverbed weaved snake-like across the plain. The vehicle Nina had seen was indeed lying inverted at its south bank, but it had been damaged by more than a rollover. ‘Christ!’ said Dougie. ‘Looks like it got blown up by dynamite!’ The Land Cruiser was a mangled wreck, torn in half with shredded debris scattered around it.
Eddie gave Nina an unhappy look. ‘One of those bloody spear guns,’ he whispered.
She nodded. ‘I can see its tracks. It came from the rock, then stopped here because it couldn’t get across the riverbed . . . so where was it going?’ Her eyes followed its path northwards—
A shock of fear. ‘Eddie!’ she hissed. ‘It’s there, look!’
The golden vimana was about two hundred metres beyond the dry river. It was half buried in the red sand; whether it had augered into the dirt in a hard landing, or its occupants had tried to hide it, she couldn’t tell.
Said occupants were nowhere in sight – but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. ‘We need to land right now and get out,’ Eddie said with commanding urgency. ‘Then take the chopper well clear.’
Sandra turned in alarm. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘The people we warned you about are definitely here,’ said Nina. ‘They blew up that truck – and they might blow up this helicopter.’
‘You what?’ squawked the pilot.
‘Just get us down, fast,’ Eddie ordered.
Dougie reluctantly landed on level ground a hundred metres from the wrecked truck, keeping the rotors just below take-off revolutions as his passengers hurriedly disembarked. As soon as they were clear, he took off again in a blinding flurry of dust. ‘Jesus!’ Nina coughed. ‘He could have let us get farther away!’
‘Can’t really blame him,’ said Eddie, shielding Macy’s face as they waited for the whirlwind to subside.
Sandra hurried towards the riverbed. ‘Rosie! Can you hear me?’
The others followed. ‘I can’t see anyone,’ said Eddie as they reached the bank. Metallic debris was scattered around them; the 4x4 had been parked here when the baraka’s bolt blasted it apart. There was no sign of a body, or even remains.
Nina slithered down the bank and crossed the dry river, seeing tracks where someone had climbed up the far side. ‘She went this way. Macy, wait there with Cheng.’
‘But Mom—’
‘Just do it, Macy,’ Eddie told her curtly as he followed his wife.
Sandra hurried after them. ‘All right. What the hell’s going on?’
‘You’ll see in a second,’ Nina told her as she picked her way through the scrub. ‘But the short version is that the Chinese found a fortress that had been buried for a hundred thousand years. The people preserved in it . . . weren’t human.’ The Australian stopped, her expression a picture of disbelief. Nina faced her. ‘Do you know your Old Testament at all?’
‘A bit. Wouldn’t call myself a Bible-thumper, though. Why?’
‘There was a race that existed before humans developed civilisation. Some of them interbred with humans, and their offspring were a hybrid of both species. They called themselves the Nephilim.’
Sandra frowned. ‘I’ve heard the name.’
‘In the Bible, they’re considered to be fallen angels, who were imprisoned for eternity beneath the earth. They’re not angels, that was just how ancient humans saw them because of their advanced technology, but some of them really were imprisoned.’ She looked back at the towering monolith of Uluru. ‘Here.’
The ranger’s instinctive response was a sharp laugh. ‘What, you reckon they’re inside the rock?’
‘I don’t know – but it’s what the Nephilim think. The Chinese found them in a kind of suspended animation, and woke them up.’
‘Not their brightest move,’ said Eddie.
‘They thought they could use Nephilim technology to create a weapon,’ Nina went on. ‘Which they did – except it was used against them! The Nephilim escaped and came to find the rest of their people.’ She set off again, cautiously ascending a low rise. ‘They came in . . . a ship, I suppose. It’s over here.’
‘Just call it a UFO and be done with it, love,’ said her husband.
She gave him a mocking smile, then dropped low as she reached the crest. Eddie hunched down beside her.
The sand-shrouded vimana was a hundred metres away. Sandra gasped. ‘Oh my God. It really is! It’s a flying saucer!’
‘So where are Gadreel and his goon platoon?’ Eddie wondered, surveying the area. ‘They definitely got out, I can see a lot of tracks around the UFO . . .’ He trailed off.
Nina saw why. ‘Oh no.’
Between their position and the vimana was a darker patch in the sand. Flies swarmed over it, the ground thick with scavenging insects. ‘What is it?’ asked Sandra, confused.
‘It . . . it’s your missing ranger,’ Nina told her, grim-faced. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What? I don’t understand. There’s no body, there’s no—’
‘There wouldn’t be,’ said Eddie. ‘The weapon that blew up the truck? It does the same thing to people. I’m sorry too, but . . . she’s dead.’
‘No, that can’t—’ The Australian regarded the bloody patch – then
jumped up and ran towards it.
‘No, wait!’ Nina shouted after her. ‘They might still be there!’
But nobody emerged from the downed craft, no blasts of earth energy tore across the sand. Sandra reached the spot, holding a hand over her mouth and nose to shield them from insects – and block out the unmistakable stench of death. ‘Oh God,’ she whispered. Dried blood splattered the ground, shredded scraps of clothing amongst it. ‘Rosie . . .’
‘Wait there!’ Eddie shouted to Macy and Cheng – despite the warnings, they had started across the riverbed – before running after Sandra. He was fully prepared to tackle her into cover, but to his relief, the area remained devoid of threats. ‘This is why you need to close the park,’ he said on reaching the ranger, who was staring silently at the remains. ‘These arseholes are still here somewhere – and they’re dangerous. You’ve got to get everyone out.’
Sandra looked up at him, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘There are hundreds of tourists here . . .’
‘There’ll be hundreds of corpses if you don’t do something.’
Nina joined them. ‘The Nephilim think we’re animals – pests. They won’t hesitate to kill anyone they meet.’
The Australian wiped her face. ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll close the park.’ She took a radio from her belt.
Eddie cautiously approached the grounded vimana. A hatch was open; he peered inside. ‘It’s empty,’ he reported. ‘A lot of footprints, though. The thing must have been packed.’ He saw a smaller set of prints. ‘Zan’s still with them.’
‘They need him to work the tracker,’ said Nina. She turned back to Sandra as she finished her urgent call. ‘I know this is hard, but we need your help. Are you up to it?’
Sandra clenched her lips, then nodded. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’
Eddie spotted more footprints in the dirt. ‘They went towards the rock.’
‘Then let’s go find these bastards.’ She set off, Nina and Eddie exchanging concerned looks before following.
The Resurrection Key Page 45