by A D Davies
Six ‘chutes incoming.
“They’re not my people,” Tane said. “And I doubt the guys guarding this place are using a plane so high up we can’t see it. Whatever way, I’m moving out.”
Charlie took out her stubby knife and slashed through the first rope. “We toss these in, pack up, and seal the entrance.”
As Charlie sliced the second rope and tossed it in the hole with the other, Tane took her by the shoulders and got in her face. “We don’t have time to cover our tracks. We can’t let them get what’s down there. We have to block it up and leave.”
Charlie was about to object and deliver a message in putting their friends and the secrets below ahead of personal concerns, when Phil came through her ear firmly and clearly.
“Charlie, go.” He had a quiver in his voice. The one he couldn’t hide when Charlie was facing death. “Think about me. The kids. Get to cover. Show the Koreans you aren’t a threat, and hopefully they’ll leave you alone.”
“Well?” Tane asked. “I have the detonators ready.”
Charlie sensed something more to Tane’s eagerness. But closing the entrance wasn’t enough. She had to ensure they left nothing obvious that would help them capture her or her friends. She cut the final rope and threw it in. “Fine, but we’re not making it easy for them.”
Tane breathed out in relief, scooped up a pack for the laptop, and stuffed it an already half-full one, heading for an ATV. “They say we’re under crosshairs, so let’s head that way. Strength in numbers. Can you ask them which direction to—”
“There’s a low ridge half-a-mile south east,” Phil said. “The drone picked up movement there. And it’s the best vantage.”
Charlie conveyed that to Tane as she rummaged in the pack Toby had left, checking there was nothing of value, but hoping for a particular item. “Found it.” She pulled out a white handkerchief. “Corny, but effective. Hopefully, they won’t shoot if we’re waving this.”
Tane nodded and climbed on his ATV.
Having salvaged all she could from the bits the others didn’t take with them, Charlie kicked the remaining backpacks and detritus down the hole, hoping it either concealed their identities a little longer, or stripped their opponents of vital clues. She got on her ATV and consulted the tablet computer one last time.
“This way.” She pulled on her goggles and set off, circling back around the route they came.
The sound of the ropes dropping from above visibly caused Darkeen concern. His probing eyes reached Dan, but of course Dan couldn’t see them. Jules translated it as frustration and confusion, starting to realize Dan and Harpal might not have been lying after all.
Jules said, “I wouldn’t trust us either. But come on. Charlie’s up top, leaving us here. You know anything about these guys, and it sounds like you do, you know she don’t do that. Ever.”
“A trick,” Darkeen said.
Jules had marked him as military earlier, and Dan had mentioned something similar, but even if he had been trained by a branch of the armed forces, he couldn’t have seen much combat. Dithering was not a part of an experienced soldier’s repertoire.
“Need to decide,” Dan said. “Take us out or send one of your guys here for reinforcements while we make a stand.”
The black guy who’d left the Native American to check the way out took his eye off his target for a second. “Willis, we need a decision, man.”
“I know that, Blake,” Darkeen snapped.
Then the thump-thump-thump of heavy cloth echoed down the entrance Jules had used.
“That’s everything they can’t carry,” Jules said. “They know they can’t hold off what’s comin’. We gotta cut loose now, or fight. And we can fight if you let us.”
“I’m armed,” Dan admitted. “Ankle.”
Darkeen winced, an embarrassing oversight. More proof he had undergone training but had little experience in these matters.
“These people are crazy,” Garcia said. “One minute they want to take the shield to the Vatican, the next they say they can’t do that because of you people and what it means to you, and now all they want to do is help you defend it from the bad guys chasing me. Chasing us. But you won’t let them, which is even crazier if you ask me—”
Darkeen cut her off. “Okay!” He waved hard at the exit. “Horace, get them out. Me and Blake’ll hold off anyone coming this way.”
“That’s a mistake,” Jules said. “Let us help.”
But his mind was made up. No more discussion. No more arguing. Darkeen just pulled the blindfolds, but not the cuffs, off the group in turn and said, “Go. This isn’t your fight.”
Ah Dae-Sung touched down seconds behind Pang Pyong-Ho, accompanying the hired guns to oversee the retrieval himself. He also might be needed if the radio message they intercepted was anything to go by.
They knew the approximate area they’d be approaching, but it had taken the accumulation of activity below to trigger their attack. The bikes, the explosion, and various scurrying figures were enough for Dae-Sung to give the go-ahead.
The four new soldiers were former Republican Guard Special Forces who came to America following the fall of Saddam Hussein, where they entered under assumed identities and attempted to start fresh lives with their families. They’d been no fan of Saddam, but the commercialism, the racism, and the lies about the American dream had soured any prospect of them falling in love with their new country. It was now just a place to exist, a base from which to raise families or find different ones. They rebranded themselves and hired their skills out to whoever could pay enough. Usually more accustomed to single assassinations to silence witnesses or bullets to the knee to dissuade suitors from certain people’s precious daughters, they’d seemed positively eager to join Ah Dae-Sung’s mission.
Or, rather, the mission Dae-Sung sold them.
Acquire a work of art wanted by a businessman in the Far East. Kill anyone who tries to stop them.
The kill order was a big relief. They’d been hobbled back in the college, unwilling to finish anyone off in case they had information the Koreans needed. There’d be no such caution here.
In truth, Ah Dae-Sung could barely contain his excitement. Not for the high-altitude jump, of which he’d performed too many to count, but that his two-year quest was almost at an end.
Back in California, he’d assumed it was another bend in the road, another rung on the ladder toward their goal, but it seemed this group had proven more resourceful than they’d imagined. Zeroing in on the clues it had taken the Executive years to accumulate and decode, they had done so in mere months.
It was almost as if they had prior knowledge.
No matter the reasons for their unlikely success, Dae-Sung held the solution to his country’s woes in his grasp.
One of the Iraqi dogs of war approached. They didn’t speak Korean, and Dae-Sung knew no Arabic, so they conducted all exchanges in English.
“Commander, we can pursue using the vehicles they left behind.”
Dae-Sung and Pyong-Ho had discussed the people below, scattering as they’d descended. Even considered cutting their cables and dropping faster, pulling their backup ‘chutes at the last minute to take them out. But they were not his concern. He didn’t care who went free and who didn’t. He cared only about what lay beneath his feet, now he was on the ground.
“Can you shoot them from here?” Dae-Sung asked.
The dog sighted on the pair receding down the slope on their quad bikes. They were using H&K submachine guns, imported by the group for their ease of use, anonymous supply, and plentiful replacement of ammunition. Unfortunately, even with the folding stock, they were not long-range weapons. A master marksman might make this shot, but Ah Dae-Sung saw the impracticality of opening fire.
“Save your ammo,” he said.
The man lowered the gun, stoic but disappointed in himself. Good. Dae-Sung liked a perfectionist.
“Commander!” called Pyong-Ho.
He’d been examin
ing the hole the English and Americans had made. It was interesting watching them through the detailed camera lens designed for low-orbit applications, seeing them in cinema quality high definition as they assessed the ground before blowing up a piece of it.
They hadn’t seen them plant the secondary devices, though.
Pyong-Ho didn’t need to explain, just backed their men away. Someone had laid several bricks of plastic explosive in the entrance at different levels and on opposite sides. Dae-Sung counted four, two stuffed in the topsoil, the others jammed between imperfections in the rocky tube below. The detonators were linked, meaning they only needed to fire a signal at a single receiver to blow the access hole, and that receiver appeared to be dangling below the lowest brick.
“Why haven’t they set it off yet?” Pyong-Ho asked.
Dae-Sung retreated with him, checking between the entry point and the fleeing bikes. “They have. But the angles are wrong. They must have left in a hurry.” He laughed. “They cannot seal the hole.”
One of the Iraqis came forward, having listened in. “If they are transmitting a signal, when we lift the receiver into the open, it’ll detonate.”
“It is a good thing that we can jam such signals, then.” Dae-Sung could do that with a command on his sat-phone, which he enacted right away. “Deactivate the explosives. Then prepare to breach.”
Darkeen directed Blake to the cave’s right flank while he took up the left. Both drew down on the sounds of incoming people.
This had never been Darkeen’s preferred method of defending their oath, but Telah refused to skimp on stories of myth and legend, digging up their history and the heroism of their near ancestors. They knew little of the route taken by the original prisoners transported from their African homeland, although DNA sites in the modern era had suggested Darkeen’s ancestry stretched back to the area now known as Somalia.
Since discharging from the army, he had pledged to uphold the duty his family had beaten into him since he was a toddler, a duty he had hoped he’d never have to act upon. Blake and Horace were in a similar predicament. Although they’d learned this place existed as young men, that the shield lay in its perpetual watery grave without rotting or tarnishing, they had never believed someone might attempt to steal it.
Professor Sally Garcia was the first person Darkeen had encountered who showed anything more than a passing interest. From that moment on, the Guardians had been on high alert.
The Guardians.
A melodramatic title for what was essentially a glorified janitor, some way below the people he’d trained to defend wildlife preserves in Africa and Asia during his army days, local volunteers who armed themselves and patrolled areas where poachers picked off endangered species.
“You ready, man?” Blake asked.
“Of course I’m ready.”
Their approach from outside was not silent, but nor was it a racket like those from the Lost Origins Institute had made. But then, Toby Smith and his advance party had not expected a welcoming committee. No doubt, the men descending would be well-armed and well-prepared.
A light several yards up the tunnel shone, then was quickly doused.
“Here they come,” Darkeen hissed.
Blake firmed his grip and readjusted his position to hunker down more between the natural V in the rocks that he had made his den. He had seen more action than Darkeen, but it was Darkeen’s responsibility to lead their group.
It wasn’t a noise that alerted them to the fact intruders had made it to the mouth of their tomb. It was more of a shift in the air, perhaps a minuscule click of a firearms mechanism slotting into place, but nothing Darkeen could put his finger on. All he could do was brace himself.
Sweat dotted his top lip. Electricity shot through his spine and down his arms.
This was not just his duty. According to Telah and Andre, and his beloved grandparents, it was his destiny.
A clink clink clack, followed by a metallic noise rolling forwards, disturbed the silence.
“Flashbang!” Blake cried.
They both ducked right down.
A crack rang out, the entire chamber flaring white. Darkeen’s eardrums burst, the confined space enhancing the grenade’s potency. Even with his hands over his ears, the flesh and bone had been insufficient to defend himself.
Adapt.
Wasn’t that what soldiers did?
He braced again, blinked hard to clear his vision, which hadn’t been as badly compromised as his hearing.
Two men in pseudo-combat gear rushed out of the tunnel, firing blindly into the chamber. Darkeen returned the favor, cutting one of them down, while the other pirouetted behind a stalagmite.
Blake picked him off with ease.
They were bottlenecked. Darkeen could defend like this all day long.
Then another clink clink clack of a metal canister tumbling inside alerted him. A second and third.
“Grenade!” Blake shouted.
Not flashbangs. But grenades.
Darkeen pressed himself hard to the floor, and half a second later, a triple-layered explosion ripped through the tomb, and the entire world turned to pain.
Chapter Seventeen
The passageway Darkeen ordered them through, by typical standards, appeared plain and simple. But to Jules, it represented a feat of engineering he couldn’t help but admire. Yes, it looked like a mineshaft to the untrained eye, the passages down which miners would transport trolleys and equipment to hollow out a seam of coal, gold, or other commodity. But every ten feet, alcoves led to dull rooms, visible in the flashes of lights, dorms where people fleeing oppression could rest before commencing their onward journeys.
They were about to break into daylight when the first explosion sounded. A flashbang if he wasn’t mistaken. Then gunfire. Then an enormous boom that shook the entire structure, showering them in dust.
Everybody, including their captor, Horace, ducked and set themselves ready to sprint.
“Let us help, dammit,” Dan said for what felt like the fiftieth time.
“They’re gonna get your shield,” Jules warned.
Horace glanced back into the darkness, then up ahead to freedom. “Keep going.”
He kept his distance, sensibly out of arm’s reach from both Dan and Jules, although Harpal had shifted close enough to strike if his hands had been free.
They proceeded outside, expecting to find a unit of Guardians waiting for them. And they were right.
Sort of.
There were two men dressed similarly to Horace and Blake, currently on their knees as Darkeen had demanded of Jules and his friends. Using an outcropping of rock as cover, Tane Wiremu held his Baretta on the pair. Charlie was holding an AR-15 rifle she must’ve taken from them, a second propped up to the side. She pointed it at Horace, who removed his finger from the trigger guard and lifted his free hand above his head.
“Okay, easy.” Horace pointed the gun down, and Jules collected it from him.
It caused Horace a moment of confusion. Jules showed him the cuffs’ pieces and the two-inch throwing knife he’d used to free himself. “I keep a small blade in my belt all the time.” He shrugged. “Old habits die hard.”
“You couldn’t have done that sooner?” Dan asked.
With the three men under control, Jules cut Dan free and handed him the submachine gun. “Figured they deserved a chance. It’s their gig after all.”
As Jules slashed through Harpal’s binding, Sally moved out from cover. The crosshairs must have been on the blindside. If the presence of a sniper was not a bluff.
Charlie said, “Get back here. They’ll see you.”
Garcia pointed, her other hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “That doesn’t look right to me.”
“What are you going to do with us?” Horace demanded.
Dan had collected a second AR-15 as well as the submachine gun Jules gave him. “Gonna help you. Whether you like it or not.”
“The big guy here has backup,” Char
lie said, hooking a thumb towards Tane.
“They’re still fifteen minutes out, minimum.” Tane pointed up at the area where Jules calculated they had entered the ground. “Our new arrivals are getting busy.”
“You need to see this,” Garcia insisted, fixed on something beyond the hillside.
Jules risked a peek out from behind the boulders, but couldn’t describe what the professor was pointing at, other than he had witnessed nothing quite like it before. “Okay, yeah. Check this out. I don’t think a sniper’s gonna be too worried about us.”
With everybody free, they took it in turns to study the incoming sight.
With the wide-open spaces, it was easy to observe the fat-bellied plane skimming the ground a couple of miles away, rising slowly while—for some reason—trailing a line behind it. It reminded Jules of an old troop carrier, but it wasn’t quite distinct at this distance. As the engines whined ever closer, the cable whipped up a dust storm in its wake.
“What on earth is that?” Toby said.
“I don’t know for certain, but I can guess.” Jules rushed for an ATV, his mind performing somersaults, unsure if what he was imagining was even possible. But he could think of no other explanation. “Someone get back in there and stop what’s happening. The shooting’s ended, which is bad news for someone. I’m gonna try to change that.”
Without waiting for permission or for anyone to join him, Jules sped away, hoping against hope that nobody had to die today.
Since meeting the kid in Prague a couple of years ago, Dan had oscillated between hating Jules’s guts, to begrudging respect, to eventually kind of liking him. It was when he took decisions on his own, which impacted the wider team, that Dan veered away from the “like” side of his feelings. He doubted he could drop all the way into hatred, but when Jules chose not to free himself out of some misguided sense of respect, leaving them all in a predicament with amateurish militia holding them at gunpoint, it made Dan want to punch him.
“Do we back him up?” Harpal asked.