They stared out at the rolling mist in silence.
‘The creatures are gone. The soldiers too.’
‘Not quite all the soldiers,’ Rose corrected her. He pointed towards one of the bodies. A big man with bushy moustaches sat cradling one of his fallen comrades. He had been so still, Rose had at frist mistaken him for one of the dead. His white camouflage smock was covered with blood, both red and black. Most of the crimson that stained him seemed to be from the young soldier in his arms. The dead man had been torn almost in half.
Rose and McCarthy approached him together. As they drew closer, Rose recognised the man’s insignia.
‘What was his name, Major?’ he asked.
The Major looked surprised for a moment. He looked down at the dead soldier, seemingly oblivious to the pool of gore in which he sat.
‘Kumar,’ he said eventually. ‘Vijay Kumar: he was a good man.’
‘We’ve both lost too many good men today.’
The Major looked up at him. His eyes seemed to gain some of their lost focus as he looked Rose up and down. ‘You’re dressed like a civilian, but you’re a soldier. I can tell.’
‘Captain Rose, Royal Engineers. I was part of the rescue team.’
‘Well. Captain. It seems you have succeeded where I have failed. At least you have some people left to rescue.’
As they spoke the others had gathered around them. Only Tej and Frank remained down by the water’s edge.
‘What was in that case?’ McCarthy asked. ‘Why did that thing want it so badly?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Major replied. ‘My orders were to repulse an incursion into my country by foreign forces.’ He looked pointedly at Rose.
‘Don’t give me that, Major,’ Rose replied. ‘The last time I checked, Nanga Parbat was on the Pakistani side of the Line of Control.’
‘The border is disputed.’
‘Come on, Major. Are you going to tell them what’s in that case, or shall I?’
The Major just glowered at him.
‘It’s a bomb,’ Rose continued. ‘Something new, something powerful. Whatever it is, it's powerful enough for that thing, the Asura, to want to get hold of it.’
‘Ridiculous!’ the Major snorted. ‘You have been watching too much American science fiction, Captain.’
‘Have I? Why else would that thing want the case? I'm guessing it's some kind of new energy source, something so advanced that even the Asura wanted it. What is it, Major? A nuke? Or something even more powerful? There was a symbol inside the case. I'm going out on a limb here, but if I ha to guess , I'd say that case contained anti-matter.'
‘You opened it?’ the Major gasped. ‘You could have blown us all to hell!’ He gazed off towards the sea: towards the gory ruin of Millicent Carver that wallowed in the shallows. ‘That’s why it did not explode. You disarmed it!’
‘Explode!’ McCarthy shouted. ‘You mean you actually tried to set that thing off?’
‘Not me—her,’ the Major said pointing at Carver’s corpse. ‘She had a dead man’s switch: an insurance policy to ensure my loyalty. When the creature killed her, a remote control should have detonated the device.’
‘I unhooked the relay,’ Rose explained. ‘I couldn’t disarm it properly—not without knowing more about it—but I fixed it no that it no longer received signals from the remote.’
‘Then even my last chance is gone,’ the Major said. ‘I had hoped to detonate the device. To destroy that monster which killed my men.’
‘Maybe not,’ Rose said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I disconnected it, I can re-connect it just as easily.’
‘You’re forgetting one thing. That creature has the case. To reconnect the relay you will have to get it back.’
◆◆◆
‘Do you even know where you’re going?’ McCarthy asked. ‘That thing is long-gone. You’ll never find it.’
‘I’ve got a pretty good idea of where it was going,’ Rose replied. ‘Finding it shouldn’t be a problem. What happens after that could be a bit more...challenging.’
‘Even if you do manage to kill it—what then? He’ll never let you bring it back,’ she said, pointing at the Major. ‘You’ll just end up fighting each other for the damn thing, just like before.
Rose picked up a discarded rifle, pulled back on the charging handle and examined the ejection port. Satisfied he added it to the pile. They had collected all the weapons and ammunition they could find from the bodies of the fallen soldiers. A dozen of the short-barrelled SCAR carbines were propped against a large boulder like the special offer at a black-market arms dealer. Magazines were stacked like cords of wood alongside grenades, bayonets, pistols, two of the Remington 870 shotguns and the Minimi machine gun resting on its bipod. They had enough weaponry to fight a small war, but Rose couldn’t shake the feeling that they were packing light.
‘The Major and I have come to an understanding,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t want that thing any more than I do. We arm it, stash it, evac and detonate.’
‘Just like that?’
Rose flashed a smile at her. ‘Just like that,’ he said, but when McCarthy turned away he cast an uneasy look at the Major. The big Indian soldier was checking the box magazine on the Minimi machine gun. He didn’t want the bomb; he wanted revenge on the thing that had killed his men.
‘And what if this bomb is as powerful as he says it is? He’s preparing himself for a suicide mission, you know that don’t you?’
‘Anti-matter is incredibly expensive to produce. I can’t believe there’s more than a few atoms of material in that thing. Anyway, by the time it blows, we’re going to be back on the surface with the ninth biggest mountain in the world between us and the blast. We’ll be OK.’
‘If it’s that safe, why don’t you let me wait for you?’
‘No. You get Frank and the others out of here. When you get to Gilgit you can send another chopper back for us. We’ve lasted this long: we can make it another few hours.’ He looked into McCarthy’s clear brown eyes and saw the tears welling there. ‘Right now, Frank needs you, Hadeeqa needs you.’
‘What about you?’ She returned his stare defiantly, her brimming eyes locked on his.
Rose looked away. ‘I’ll see you in Gilgit.’ He stared to fill his pockets with spare magazines. McCarthy turned on her heel without a word and stormed off.
Rose noticed that Rupert Garrett had stripped off his jacket and slipped on one of the Indian’s combat harnesses. The lightweight webbing looked almost comical on his portly frame, but that hadn’t stopped Garrett from filling the harnesses pouched with ammunition. He picked up a rifle.
‘You won’t need that, Mister Garret. The Major tells me that there’s no-one left at their camp. It’s just an easy walk to the chopper.’
Garrett grunted. ‘So far very little about this whole affair has been easy, Captain. My press secretary convinced me that this trip would be little more than an extended photo opportunity.’ He looked around, theatrically shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘I can’t see any paparazzi, can you?’
‘Nevertheless, you won’t be needing that rifle.’ Rose picked up a pistol and tossed it to Garrett. ‘Take this if it make you feel better, but we’ll need all the ammunition we can carry.’
Garrett caught the pistol deftly and thrust it into the holster on his webbing. ‘Thank you, Captain, but I thought I’d join you on this little jaunt. I’ve always fancied myself as a big game hunter.’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Rose definitely. ‘This isn’t a game, Garrett. We can’t afford to carry you just so you can do the rounds of the talk shows back home and play hero.’
Garrett turned on him, furiously. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about! You think I’m here just to further my own self-image? Well maybe I was—before the crash. I’m a politician, dammit. And whether you like it or not, politics is part-time bureaucracy and a full-time popularity contest. Well like I said, there are
no cameras here, Captain. You can keep you suppositions about my motives to yourself, I’m coming with you.’
‘Why, Garrett? You’ve got a free ride out of here: why not take it?’
‘I might ask the same of you, Captain. Why aren’t you leaving on that chopper?’
‘You saw those things. Their first instinct was to kill to get what they wanted. Do you really think that I can just walk away knowing that I’ve left a weapon like that anti-matter bomb in their hands?’
‘Duty is it? Well I’m afraid I can’t claim such a noble motive. I’m out for revenge, Captain. A man gave his life for me today: a man I hardly knew. Despite my many flaws, he thought that I was worth saving. I am determined to prove him right, Captain. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.’
Garrett stared Rose down, daring him to contradict him. Around them, the others watched in silence.
‘You know,’ said Rose, ‘—I’ve seen you on TV for over ten years, but I think that’s the first time I’ve seen the real Rupert Garrett.’ He picked up a grenade and tossed it to Garrett. ‘Take as much as you can carry. We’re going to need it.’
The rest of the preparations went quickly. Rose ditched his pack and took one of the commando’s battle harnesses, packing its pouches with ammunition and clipping two of the FNP-9 pistols at his hips like an old time gunslinger. Finally he rigged a scabbard for the black rod and stowed it across his shoulders. With the mechanical work of preparation finished, for the first time he had a chance to question his decision. He dismissed his doubts. He didn’t know what that Asura was, but he was dammed if he was going to let it get away. He shook his head as if physically trying to dislodge the doubts that had settled since Campbell’s death.
‘Ok, let’s go,’ he said and led his little band around the lake. Tej, Khamas, Garrett and the Major followed him. Buddhist, Muslim, Christian and Hindu—all out to fight against a demon straight out of mythology. Rose’s thoughts drifted back to the statue of the warrior king that guarded the tunnel in the cliff face. He wondered if he had been a real individual, and what had gone through his mind when he had set out to fight the Asura.
He waded into the water and up to Carver’s body. He rolled her over with his boot. Her eyes were still open, her beautiful features caught in an expression of permanent surprise. Below her throat, her torso was a bloody ruin. Rose reached down and took the pendant that hung around her neck, snapping the thin lanyard and zipping it into the pocket of his tattered red trousers.
Without looking back the five men followed the curve of the shore and disappeared into the mist that curled up from the lake.
They walked in silence for about half a mile, following the shore as it curved gently south. Finally they reached a little spur of gravel that jutted out into the water. The conical mountain within a mountain loomed over the sea to their right. On their left an unscalable cliff rose in perpendicular slabs to the roof above.
‘Right Gentlemen, this is where we get wet,’ Rose said. He walked out along the gravel spur and into the warm, steaming water. He was quickly out of his depth and started to swim powerfully towards the southern cliff that bounded the inland sea.
The others followed him. Garrett noticed that Tej had pulled his night vision goggles down over his eyes and did likewise.
‘Are these things waterproof?’ he asked.
Tej grinned at him. ‘Let’s just say that they’ll last longer underwater than you will,’ he said mischievously.
Together they struck out towards the looming cliffs.
Rose dove into the blood-warm water, letting the weight of his combat webbing carry him down into the black depths. He flicked on his NGVs and the rock face in front of him flicked into visibility. About two metres below the waterline a perfectly circular black hole swallowed the infra-red light from his goggles. Rose kicked forward into the tunnel, noting once again the rifle-bore smoothness of its sides. It was an old lava tube. Millennia ago the geological up welling of molten rock that had created the lake cavern had drained away through tunnels like this one, at the same time coating its walls with a glassy smooth layer of basalt.
Rose shuddered as he remembered his first trip through the tunnel. Then it had been an uncertain and possibly deadly journey into the unknown. At least this time he knew where he was going. It was a more difficult swim—against the current and weighted down with equipment and ammunition—but after a few metres he surged upwards into the circular pool that caught the waters from the underground stream.
The others were right behind him. One by one they broke the surface of the pool. Rose and Tej swam to the lip of the pool where the natural weir dumped the underground river into the lava sink hole. Keeping away from the pulverising waterfall Rose found a submerged foothold and boosted Tej up until he could clamber over the smooth lip of stone.
Within seconds he had secured a rope around a nearby rock and the others were soon beside him on the bank of the surging river.
Rose led them in silence along the riverbank until he saw the light of spilling from the crack in the tunnel wall. Where before he had heard the screams of the Nagas, now there was only silence. He advanced cautiously. He had briefed the others on what to expect and they hung back waiting for his signal.
All seemed clear: Rose beckoned the others forward.
CHAPTER 32
Heat belched through the opening: a dry, sulphurous heat. In seconds their wet clothes were steaming. As they advanced further, the heat snatched the moisture from their breath leaving them dry-mouthed and panting. The exposed skin on Rose’s arms began to prickle. Much more of this, he thought, and they would have to turn back and find another route. It felt like they were walking into a blast furnace.
The strength-sapping temperature continued to rise. After sixty feet the tunnel opened into another cavern and Rose finally saw the source of the heat. The new cavern was the twin of the lake cavern: a huge natural dome of smooth rock. Only here, the primordial forces that had sculpted the cavern were still at work. They had emerged on the cavern wall above a cracked and blasted plain of jagged frothy pumice.
The soft, porous rock sprouted organic and coral-like from between deep fissures that criss-crossed the cavern floor with lines of fire, burning white through the NVGs. Rose pushed the goggles up on his head and suddenly the scene became something out of Dante’s Inferno. Green and white were replaced by a palette of reds and deep, refractory black.
Unlike the lake cavern, the roof was still whole. There was no sunlight to soften the angry red light from the superheated rock. The overarching dome towered over them, its zenith obscured by caustic clouds of vapour: trapped exhaust gasses from the hundreds of geothermal fissures.
Lava pooled and spurted in lurid orange fountains. Gobbets of molten rock spat so high that they solidified in mid-air and fell to the ground as a rain of fist-sized hailstones.
But the strangest sight was yet to come. Due south a structure rose out of the field of steaming pumice: a soaring tower of tapering spikes like a skyscraper built entirely from cathedral spires. It towered over them: sleek lines of silver and gold soaring upwards until the tops of the tallest spires were obscured in the sulphurous clouds. The structure blazed with light: angry red glinted off its metallic surfaces and shards of multi-hewed crystal embedded in the walls burned as if from some inner fire. Luminous slabs, the smallest of which was still several stories high lit up the plain for dozens of metres all around.
‘What the hell is it?’ Garrett breathed.
‘I have no idea,’ Rose replied, ‘—but I’ll bet you that’s where the Asura is heading.’
He took out a pair of binoculars and scanned the cavern floor. Magnified by the powerful lens the landscape looked even more forbidding. It was like looking back in time to when the Earth was young, and its surface still cracked and seeped with the fires of its creation.
Finally he found what he was looking for. The Asura strode towards the distant structure, seemingly oblivious to
the blistering heat beneath its bare feet.
Rose handed the binoculars to the Major.
‘Five hundred yards,’ the Indian officer estimated. ‘With a decent rifle I could pick him off from here.’
‘Too risky at this range,’ Rose replied. ‘You saw that thing in action. Anything less than a perfect shot and it would just shrug it off and we’d lose the element of surprise. Seeing as that’s about the only thing we’ve got going for us at the moment, we wait until we can be sure.’
The Major made a non-committal grunt.
Rose didn’t know what to expect. They climbed down to the cavern floor without incident. In contrast to the perfect serenity of the Lake Cavern, this new chamber roared and flexed around them. The noise and heat were almost overpowering, but it was a diffuse, unfocussed torment. If any sentry inside the great tower had seen them, then they gave no sign. For all its fire and bluster, the huge cavern seemed as sterile as its twin.
Tej talked as he climbed. The heat and thin air had the rest of them panting, but the Ghurkha seemed to take it in his stride.
‘It is said that Brahma gave the Asuras permission to establish three cities: one of gold in heaven, one of silver in the sky and one of iron on Earth. The cities were ruled by three brothers for many years and attracted countless numbers of their kind.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Garrett said. He pointed up at the towering column of silver and gold. ‘Are you saying that we’re walking into a city full of those things?’
‘It is only a legend, Mister Garrett. In any case, the conclusion of the story is that Shiva used the cities like honey pots to attract all the Asuras to one place. Then they were destroyed, burned and cast into the sea.’
‘Before today, I would have been inclined to agree with you. Captain, what’s your take on all this?’
Rose thought for a moment. An amalgam of silver, gold and iron crashing, burning into the sea. If a pre-technological civilisation tried to describe a satellite splashdown, would the description be any different?
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