“Dammit,” he cried out as he rolled onto his stomach. Everett and Collins landed softly next to him and removed the ropes from their feet. “I think you forgot to train me on that little trick with the rope,” he said as he started to rise, wiping blood from his hands.
“Sorry about that. I Didn’t think we had the time to show you,” Jack said as he took the 9-millimeter from his belt.
“Damn, it’s dark,” said Everett as he tried to penetrate the darkness around them beyond the light shining down the shaft.
Above, they heard the sounds of many vehicles approaching the mosque.
Jack’s foot struck something and he reached down and saw that it was a field pack. He held it toward the sunlight and saw that it was marked with Leekie’s name. He opened it and fished inside until he found what he was looking for. He brought out a phosphorescent flare and struck it. He held it up and the darkness gave way to bright light.
“Whoa, I think this may be the place,” Everett said as he took in the statues.
Jack looked down and saw one set of tracks leading away from the antechamber of the cave.
“Looks like another opening there, Jack,” Everett said as he pointed his weapon at the large opening.
The three men started forward slowly. They walked along the stone-and-earthen walls carved to resemble pillars. There were strange designs etched into them that depicted bulls, disks of a blazing sun, and women and fighting soldiers in armor. Hieroglyphs identical to those they had seen on the scrolls they had recovered lined the walls.
“Ah, Jesus,” Ryan said, disgust edging his voice.
Jack held the flare closer and saw the horrible death that had befallen one of Dutton’s men. The two halves of his body lay crumpled side by side as if they were just laundry waiting to be picked up.
“Watch where you step,” Jack said as he threw the flare down and struck another. He held it close to the dirt floor and saw the sun designs on the packed earth. “Look,” he said as he pointed the flare at the ground. Then he looked up and saw a large slit in the natural rock formation where something was hidden, just waiting for someone to step on the sun designs on the ground.
“I wish Sarah was here, she knows these traps far better than us,” Ryan said as he slowly backed away from the dead man.
Collins hopped over the line of pressure plates after making sure that one trap didn’t lead directly to another. They slowly and cautiously entered what they had thought was another cave, but as the light struck and dispelled the blackness, they saw that it was a manmade extension of the natural cave. Jack could see where the ledge sloped steeply down in front of them.
“Listen,” he said.
“Running water,” Carl ventured. “A lot of it.”
As they entered the larger excavation, Jack felt the same feeling he’d had earlier in the desert above. Eyes were on them. He tried to see beyond the steep slope, but there was nothing.
“Lieutenant?” he shouted.
“Colonel?”
It was Will Mendenhall, his voice echoing off the walls just below the slope’s edge. He stood, lowered his 9-millimeter, and took a deep breath.
“I’m sure glad to see you guys.”
“Is Leekie with you?” asked Jack.
“She’s right here. I thought we were going to make a last stand. I was going to take as many of those bastards with me as I could.”
The professor limped up the slope and joined Will.
“Glad to see you made it, Doc,” Collins said as he stepped forward.
“Major Dutton, his team?” Mendenhall asked.
Everett just shook his head.
“Damn.”
“What have we got down there?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” Mendenhall said. “Show ’em, Doc.”
Leekie gestured for the men to follow. She veered to the right side of the slope and then asked Jack for the flare. She touched it to a small ledge and the entire slope lit up with a ring of fire. The ledge, as it turned out, was a trough filled with something ancient, the smell of which was horrible. Everett, Ryan, and Collins watched as the ring of fire illuminated a series of ornamental pillars that lined each side of the slope, which led to an underground river that raged in front of them. The cool waters fell from a great waterfall that exited an opening sixty feet above. As the water from above struck below, it misted and then disappeared as it entered a natural cave that had stalactites and stalagmites lining the upper and lower edges, making the cave seem as if it were an open mouth full of very sharp teeth.
The vision on the other side of the river was what caught their attention. Placed at the very water’s edge on the far shore was a small temple of marble and sandstone that gleamed in the flare’s false light. Inside, they could see a giant bronze bull, head and right leg bent as it pawed the ground, just as if it were frozen in time while in the act of attacking.
“Now that is something,” Everett said, gazing at the incredible sight.
Mendenhall took Collins by the arm and leaned close.
“I didn’t want to tell the doc this earlier, Colonel, but we weren’t the first ones here.”
“I figured as much. I saw some heavy-equipment tracks in the desert. That, coupled with the fact that the Coalition hit so fast and hard, tells me they were nearby, just waiting to spring their ambush.”
Everett heard the last of the conversation as he stepped up.
“If we recovered the plate map, how in the hell did they get here first?” Will asked, looking from Jack to Carl.
“I don’t know. After searching for it for thousands of years, they suddenly pop up out of nowhere. Did we miss something in Hawaii?”
“No one from Leekie’s group entered before you, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir; I and two Special Ops men were the first.”
Leekie and Ryan joined the group.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s get what we came to get,” she said as she looked at the serious faces of the three.
“I’m the strongest swimmer, Jack; I’ll get a rope across and tie it off,” Everett said.
“Yeah, just don’t end up in Cairo in that current.”
Ten minutes later, after Everett had given them all a scare by not coming up for six minutes, they saw him break the surface of the river a hundred yards downstream of the temple. He rested for only a moment before he worked his way back along the slim shore. He tied the rope off to the first pillar in line and made it fast. He then waved the others into the water.
Everett looked around the base of the temple for anything that resembled the trough that Leekie had ignited, but found none. He did, however, find torches, last lit when the foul place had its secret first placed there. Carl pulled his Zippo lighter out of his pocket and reached for the first of the ancient torches. He placed the flame next to it, then hesitated as he saw that it was made from a human arm. The skeletal hand of it held a small bowl. Carl hit it with the flame and it sprang to life with the same awful smell as the trough across the way. He lit all the torches that lined the walls of the temple.
Leekie and Ryan, tied together, were the first to traverse the rope hand over hand. Mendenhall and Collins followed. Everett was at the shore’s edge to assist each out of the water.
They rested for only a moment and then made their way to the temple steps. The men allowed Leekie to examine the marble steps first so that they wouldn’t make the same mistake as the sergeant had made back in the first cave. Then, she waved them forward. It was Jack who noticed that, for having been buried for close to fifteen thousand years, the temple was in remarkable shape.
Leekie was the first to enter the temple. Everett had retrieved a torch and Jack lit off one of their last flares as they looked on with amazement at the work that had gone into building such a thing beneath the earth. Spaced around and in front of each pillar, lifelike statues of men stared out at them with blank eyes. Some were dressed in ancient armor, others in the flowing robes of a politician. Most
were impressive in looks but small in stature. The largest was of a bearded man, a soldier perhaps, with a battle helmet in the crook of his right arm and in his left a bronze spear, which stood out brightly against the white marble of his body. The statue was only five foot seven inches high, much taller than its adjoining companions.
“If these were men of Atlantis, they weren’t all that impressive in size,” Ryan said, feeling even taller as he stood next to the largest statue. He had no way of knowing that the statue was once of Talos, the last of the great Titans.
“Well, ancient man was a very small creature compared with humans today. Even in biblical times men rarely, if ever, topped a height over five-eight,” Leekie said, looking at Ryan.
“Jack,” Everett called as he and Mendenhall stood in front of the giant bronze bull.
Collins joined them as Everett shone the torch over the lowered horns of the beast. Jack saw two notches about fifteen inches wide on each of the horns.
“Professor, could you look at this,” he called. “Could these notches have held something?”
“Dammit!” Leekie said as she looked at the horns. “The blue diamond was more than likely cradled by the two horns.”
“Maybe they were just—”
“It was very difficult removing the diamond from its locked base on those horns, I assure you.” The female voice, raised over the sounds of the river, caught them off guard.
Collins, Everett, Ryan, Mendenhall, and Leekie took cover behind the pillars. Jack ventured a look across the river and saw fifty men slowly coming down the slope. The blond-haired woman was behind them, walking slowly with the use of a cane. The soldiers stood silhouetted in the light of the fire ring. She gestured right and then left as her men took up positions in various places on the slope.
Jack looked at his watch and saw that he desperately needed to stall the woman.
“I was hoping you drowned at Pearl Harbor,” Jack called out.
“Almost, Colonel Collins, almost,” Dahlia said as she paced to her left behind the wall of soldiers. “The Atlantean Key is safely where it should be. We recovered it only ten hours before your arrival here.”
Collins did not respond as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a second transmitter, which he had hoped not to use. He looked at the excavated ceiling, hoping that it was mostly earth and not rock. He needed a ground-penetrating signal to pierce through to the surface. As he thought about how he was going to put the transmitter in the right spot, Everett joined him, after sneaking behind the temple.
“We’re trapped like rats—there’s no way out in the back—”
He went silent when he saw what Jack held in his hand.
“Oh, shit.”
Everett recognized the small electronic marker that had a counterpart: one attached to a thousand-pound ground-penetration bomb called a bunker buster.
“I take it you alerted the air force already?”
“Just before we broke cover in the dunes. Niles insisted we have a failsafe.”
“It would have been nice if the diamond was still here,” Everett said, not taking his eyes off the remote signal.
“It would have been, swabby, but what the hell.”
“Yeah, what the hell.”
Collins walked to the front of the temple.
“Where did you take it, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Dahlia smiled as Collins walked slowly down the steps of the temple. The man’s arrogance was beyond anything she had ever seen. She came close to laughing at the bravado of this bastard.
“This isn’t the movies, Colonel. I do not tell all even though I am sure you’re living the last moments of your life. Just rest assured that because of your failure at the Arizona, the world will—”
Collins raised his weapon and fired as fast as anyone could have thought possible. The first bullet tore through one man’s ear and struck Dahlia. It grazed her left shoulder just outside the protection of the vest she was wearing. The rest of the rounds struck men and dropped at least five of them. The commotion gave Jack the time he needed as he reared back and threw the designator across the river. The laser was broadcast on both sides, front and back, so he knew that it didn’t need to land upright to work. The device landed about twenty feet up the slope.
“What are you waiting for?” Dahlia screamed, angered almost to the point of hysteria. “Kill that son of a bitch, kill them all!”
Jack hit the temple steps just as large chips of marble started flying. He rolled until he was safe behind one of the thick pillars.
Everett was stunned at what had just happened. Jack had caught even him off guard. He had thrown the transmitter as far as he was able to, giving them hope that they could survive what was coming. Carl fired five rounds into the swirling mist of the falls and hit three of the men.
Ryan and Mendenhall added their fire to Everett’s and together they kept the Coalition mercenaries moving and ducking. Jack looked for Dahlia and finally saw her crouching low beside the fire trough. She was directing something behind her. Jack looked up the slope and saw a man place a tube to his upper shoulder.
“Get down!” he cried.
The LAWs rocket was old, but effective. It streaked out of its launch tube and struck a pillar at the front of the temple, smashing it, bringing some of the marble roof down with it.
Jack took careful aim and fired. The man holding the tube in the shadows across the way crumpled as the bullet hit the thickest part of his body; the stomach.
Dahlia saw the man lean forward and slide down the slope. She shook her head in anger, then stood and fired her own pistol at the temple.
Collins saw his chance, lined her up, and pulled the trigger, nothing. He cursed and ejected the spent clip and inserted another. He brought up the Beretta, but Dahlia had lowered her frame once more.
AIR FORCE FLIGHT 2870 LIMA-ECHO
OPERATION HEAT LIGHTNING
THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND FEET
The aircraft was a B-1B bomber. In its belly was just one large egg it needed to drop—the bunker buster. It was there just as a last ditch effort in stopping the Coalition from obtaining the diamond just in case it had not been recovered by Major Dutton and Professor Leekie. Niles knew that it was a last-resort type of mission and called for only if there was no other way. So, naturally, when the air force informed him of the bomb drop, he lowered his head, thinking the worse.
“We have a painted target,” said the pilot as he pickled his load off.
The bomb-bay doors opened automatically and the thousand-pound weapon fell free.
“We have a clean drop and designator is receiving target information.”
“I hope someone down there knows how to duck,” the copilot said as the B-1B bomber turned for home at Diego Garcia.
Dahlia waved forward more men with LAWs rockets. As the volume of Coalition fire increased, she knew she was close to ending the luck of this Colonel Collins. Her embarrassment would be erased and she would be able to look at herself once more without the shame of Collins around her neck.
She smiled, as the pitiful return fire was so ineffective that her men were starting to take chances by standing and taking better aim, pinning Collins and his few men down. It was now only a matter of time. Dahlia saw the men above her on the slope arming the rockets, and when she looked back down the incline she saw one of her men kick something along the ground. It was just dumb luck that she had seen it at all. The black case gleamed in the firelight flickering onto the slope as it skidded to a stop not five feet from her position.
Her eyes widened when she recognized the transmitter. Dahlia knew it was a geo-positioning transmitter, the sort used as a portable ground-penetrating lasing system.
“That crazy bastard is trying to kill us and himself!” she screamed indignantly as she broke free of her safe position and ran down the slope toward the return fire of Collins and his people.
The signal of the laser beacon was weakened by the topsoil and sand above it, but
it was enough for the seeker head located in the nose of the bomb to lock on to. Small fins fore and aft maneuvered the fat weapon onto its glide path. This particular smart bomb was the largest in the U.S. inventory capable of guided flight. Falling from a height of thirty thousand feet, it had little trouble penetrating the thickness of the earth.
The world above and in front of them came crashing down. The bomb exploded off-target two hundred feet behind where the slope started in the natural portion of the cave. The fireball killed every man on his feet and buried the rest. The pillars of the temple cracked and started falling as Jack and the others broke for the water below them. They felt the heat burn their skin as they dived just as the earthen roof came cascading down.
Collins was the last to dive into the water and it was he who saw Dahlia as she was catapulted forward, cartwheeling through the air. She landed in the rushing torrent of water and immediately disappeared. Collins dived in and grabbed a handful of hair. He pulled her to the surface just as they shot into the mouthlike cave, and then the world around them went dark.
Jack held on to Dahlia as he tried to relax his body and allow the current to take them where it wanted. His only struggle was to keep the unconscious woman’s head above water. At certain points, he found, the harsh current went far beneath the underground roof of the ancient river as it sped along. He saw momentary flashes of light ahead and heard the shouting of the others above the din of the rushing Blue Nile. Bright mineral deposits gleamed wetly as they screamed passed.
Jack’s shoulder struck a stalactite and he careened into the smooth, age-worn wall, then a rip current pulled him and Dahlia under. Collins thought that this was where the river disappeared far below the desert and would not rise again until its waters mixed with those of the surface Nile far from where they were.
Ancients: An Event Group Thriller Page 33