by A D Davies
“We could have men down inside,” Dan said. “Plus, that’s where the bad guys are headed.”
“He’ll need help.” Bridget snatched the AR-15 from Dan and racked the slide to check a bullet was chambered. While she’d never be confused for a soldier, and stayed clear of guns generally, Dan had seen that she knew how to shoot. “Anyone coming?”
“We’ll back him up,” Harpal said, the pair moving for the remaining ATV.
Tane had either read Dan’s mind or possessed the same attitude toward a battle zone gone quiet. He was already ducking through the aperture Dan had come through. “Looks like we’re on recon.”
Dan might not have trusted him with regards to information, but he’d handled himself well so far. “Charlie, Toby, you good here?”
Toby nodded, keeping close to Professor Garcia.
“Do it.” Charlie motioned to Horace and his friends, still on the floor. “You won’t give me trouble, will you?”
Horace glared Dan’s way, as if Charlie didn’t bother him. “You can’t have the shield. Darkeen will see to it.”
“You and Darkeen can keep your damn shield.” Dan hustled behind Tane for the passageway, “But only if we stop those assholes first.”
Tane had taken a flashlight from somewhere, and Dan still had his own on his head, so they made good time up the tunnel. It wasn’t a warren either, only a couple of forks Dan needed to remember. As the sounds of people moving around grew louder, they doused their bulbs.
The shield’s chambers lay only a few feet ahead. Dan should have been able to see the fierce illumination from Charlie’s arc lights, but there was only a faint glow. And not much talking, either. What he did hear wasn’t English.
Working in sync, Dan and Tane stalked to the doorway.
Every fiber of Dan’s experience told him nothing good lurked there, but he had to go on. If they’d come across a wounded man—Darkeen or Blake—they could have turned back and then joined Harpal, Bridget, and Jules up top, where they stood a better chance of stopping Ah Dae-Sung and his pals. But there’d been shooting and at least one explosion. And no one had emerged.
At the chamber entrance, Tane paused, bobbed his head to look inside, then retreated to safety. His startled face told the story. His military sign language conveyed two men down.
Not good.
Dan pointed fingers at his own eyes and then at the opposite side of the opening. Tane nodded. He then checked inside again. One fist in the air. When he judged it safe, he chopped ahead.
Dan glided over to the other side, glancing in as he went.
He only saw one injured man—Darkeen, splayed on his back, breathing rapidly, his skin and clothes bloodied—before making it to cover. He also spotted two Koreans who fitted Harpal’s description from the college. One was positioned at the access tunnel through which LORI had entered, the other holding fast by the shield. They were working with the light from glow sticks, meaning Charlie’s contraptions had been damaged.
Dan hadn’t had time to analyze the scene in that brief glimpse, but he suspected they’d used a grenade or similar ordnance. Even Phil had gone quiet. Whatever took out the arc lights must have damaged the nearest comms node, too.
Dan held up two fingers.
Tane nodded agreement. Pointed at himself, then to the right, and held up one finger, leveling it at Dan first, then back inside.
Tane will go in first, draw their fire to the right while Dan takes out the first shooter—both, if possible.
Although Dan would have preferred to go first, they lacked the capacity for a debate. He counted Tane down.
Three…
Two…
ONE.
Jules was completely exposed. The rise they’d traversed originally barely looked like a hill, but the opposite side—where they’d come out of the shaft—fell lower on the land. Here, from the rattlesnake cluster to the entry point they’d failed to seal, it was open ground, with only a few boulders and dried grass to conceal him.
He’d parked the vehicle out of earshot, then advanced on foot, keeping low. The airplane remained on an approach vector, dragging that line, banking aside and back again—a near-zigzag to time its intercept for…
What?
Jules considered several possibilities, but only one seemed right.
Gathered at the hole, four men patrolled, spread out in a square. Military fatigues, well-armed, and possessing the bearing of former soldiers. Definitely former, as they weren’t as crisp as someone who lived that life daily, but far more precise than a wannabe civilian exercising his Second Amendment rights. And they were not Korean.
Another bike revved from behind.
Damn it. Who the hell is that?
From his point amid a cluster of chest-high boulders, Jules searched behind him and waved the incoming ATV down.
Stop!
Harpal and Bridget veered aside, following Jules’s frantic gestures to go wide. But it was too late.
The gunman closest mounted his assault rifle and loosed off a burst of three, pocking the ground beyond the vehicle. One other came to join him, still unaware that Jules was crouching ten yards away.
A howl of engines came directly across the landscape, the plane nearing for its final run, that cable kicking up dirt behind. It showed why only half the contingent of goons had engaged Harpal’s approach.
Harpal?
Where was Bridget?
Jules surveyed the stretch, unable to see her. Was that a good thing or had she been hit?
No, Harpal wouldn’t have left her.
Checking back to the men hunting them, Jules held still as they progressed closer to his hiding place. They had the angle on Harpal, but it’d be steadier with a platform, and they appeared to be heading for the rocks to do it.
Hunkering lower robbed Jules of his vantage point, leaving only a sliver of view on the main activity. The other pair were readying what looked like a cross between a grappling hook and a clamp the size of a trash can lid.
He was right. These guys mean business.
In a rare stroke of luck, the airplane was almost upon them, a deafening whine of engines from a vehicle not designed for this type of maneuver forcing hands over the ears for the approaching gunmen, and ear defenders donned by those intercepting the cable.
The hook snagged the steel line as it cut along with the plane less than fifty feet overhead, and the other guy slammed the clamshell device around it, trapping the cable in place. Rather than whipping them off the ground, it remained in situ, a tremendous amount of slack playing out from its housing on the aircraft, which soared onward. Jules pictured a winch feeding out hundreds of meters of line.
If he was correct about their intentions, they had seconds to act.
As did he.
One gun barrel pointed over Jules’s head, the owner having not spotted him. That wouldn’t last long, though.
As the first shot clattered, aimed at Harpal’s now-winding ATV, Jules popped up to the side, yanked down on the machine gun, and took a blink to enjoy the look of shock on his enemy’s face, before slamming an open hand into his throat. The man gagged, and Jules used his own bodyweight to lever him up, employed him as a temporary barrier, then spun him over his hip.
By the time the guy’s face hit the dirt, Jules had disarmed him and repositioned them both behind the boulder where he applied a choke until the bad guy lost consciousness.
Bullets pinged off the rock, the other gunner getting closer with every heartbeat.
Six-two, a hundred and eighty pounds.
Counter-attacking a surprise opponent.
Near to zero winds as you can get.
Stymied by both caution and adrenaline.
70% chance of success.
“Close enough.”
Jules sprinted from cover, the gun in one hand, his two-inch throwing knife in the other, palmed and prepped.
He’d miscalculated.
The hired gun was almost upon him. All that prevented the man
from killing him was the surprise of Jules dashing out.
Jules launched his blade, which whizzed past the guy’s face, taking a nick out of his cheek, but nothing else. He found himself running backwards, aiming the gun he’d taken, but hesitating. His brain hurled calculations at him, from hitting the shoulder to the leg, or even the gut.
It took less than a quarter of a second to calculate the guy was too well built, too well trained, and in a better position. Nothing except a kill-shot would prevent him from doing the same to Jules.
A gun fired.
But it wasn’t the mercenary. His head snapped to the side, a jet of blood splintering out toward Jules. As he dropped to the ground, Bridget held the AR-15 to her shoulder, frozen in place.
The gun drooped. Her face was aghast at what she’d done.
Jules spun to the left, remembering the activity up the hill, ready to kill, ready to do what Bridget did for him, if it meant saving her, saving himself.
There was no need. The men were preoccupied with following orders. Handling the cable took two of them.
Keeping the machine gun in ready position, Jules ran to Bridget as she rose to her feet, still stunned with the shock of killing for the first time. Harpal—who’d obviously served as a distraction for Bridget—pulled up beside them.
Now they had to finish up with the men who were left, those feeding the line from the plane looping to the north. Jules only hoped Dan succeeded in his part, or nothing they did next would matter a jot.
Dan fired twice, the MP5a working like a charm as Tane swept inside. The guy at the pool shot at Dan, as expected, then took on Tane right away. This meant Dan doubled down on his target, forcing the man back.
As the gunfire from within receded, Dan advanced through, moving left where Tane had darted right. The cavern was bathed an eerie green, enough light to see both Darkeen and Blake lying injured and untreated.
Tane fired his Baretta from behind one of the larger casket-shaped rocks upon which lay the bones of a giant. Or so Sally Garcia believed. Dan had had little time to reflect on it, and he’d picked up plenty of that science stuff since growing attached to the Institute. He knew fossilized bones were just stone representations, not bones themselves, so he couldn’t comprehend how someone could tell the difference between that and a statue.
It also made it bullet resistant, so Tane had made a wise choice.
The two Koreans fired back but appeared cowed by the flanking motion Dan instigated. Pulling around, gaining a better angle, forcing them back from the shield.
“Go! Go!” Dan cried above the din.
Tane read the scene and pelted over to the pool, before continuing onward to complete the second point of their pincer.
Dan remained wary of the ammo situation, but he soon reached Darkeen’s spot, where he had dropped an identical gun to the one taken from Horace. Plus, there were two spare magazines in his belt.
“Hey, hang in there.”
He then let loose, blasting several bursts at once, driving back the men who were finding it so difficult against a former Army Ranger and… whatever Tane Wiremu was.
“You…” Darkeen croaked.
As the submachine gun clicked empty, Dan swapped it out for Darkeen’s weapon, unsure how many rounds were left. “Stick with us. We’ll get you out.” Then he called over, “Tane, you got our other guy?”
“Yeah,” Tane replied between shots. “He’s in a bad way but says he can walk.”
Dan assessed Darkeen: blood at his mouth, a ragged tear in his thigh, slashes across his face, all indicative of shrapnel injuries. And if Dan could see all this in what little light the glow sticks gave off, he was almost certain there’d be worse damage underneath.
Dan said, “We’ll get you home.”
Then he popped up to shoot at the retreating men.
“The shield…” Darkeen stained to talk, struggling to move. “Get the...”
“Yeah, I told you, we got this. They’re gone.”
The pair of Koreans moved back fully into the hole, concealed from sight. Their lights danced in the tube, getting darker as they drifted away. Not that Dan would assume they’d fled. It seemed too easy already, but there were other priorities.
“Okay, let’s get you up.” With the gun ready in one hand, he pulled Darkeen’s arm up and around the back of his own neck to lift him. He paused before doing so, leaning in to Darkeen’s bloodied face. “This is gonna hurt, but I gotta do it.”
“The… shield.”
The shield remained in the pool. Ah Dae-Sung hadn’t had time to retrieve it.
Tane staggered up alongside. “Triage. You take him, brah. I’ll hold them here in case they come back.”
Blake was conscious, one of his legs shot to bits, but he’d applied his own tourniquet and functioned freely from the waist up. Cuts showed, but he wasn’t struggling to move the way Darkeen was.
“Good call.” Dan heaved Darkeen up, eliciting a cry of pain from the Guardian.
The mangled cry evolved into, “The shield,” again.
“Would you quit it with the shield stuff? The bad guys are out of here—”
A mechanical shriek rang out. Everyone drew their eyes to where their enemies had fled, and then skipped to the pool containing the shield. A flume of water erupted as the treasured item burst out and flew into the air. It clattered on the roof, slammed to the floor, and shot into the access tunnel, leaving a fine mist behind.
Dan could not look away. “Well… I’ve never seen that before.”
Jules was usually right, and this was no exception. From the moment the two pseudo-soldiers clamped the cable trailing from the airplane, the smooth winch feeding out hundreds of yards of slack, and the operators sending it into the hole, he’d known what was next. After seconds of well-rehearsed, repeated, and perfected activity, the result was inevitable. And even though they’d secured the pair under the guns Jules and Bridget carried, they were—as Jules had predicted—too late.
First, a man in a helmet, hooked up to the steel line, shot out of the ground like a champagne cork. Must have been a gradual tightening of the cable so it didn’t tear him apart as the harness he’d attached himself to pulled him straight out. A second man followed, again connected to the line. Just when the end appeared, suggesting it was all an elaborate method of bugging out, a thinner rope became clear. Attached to this, a net containing the shield that may once have belonged to a mighty Greek warrior flew high into the air.
While Harpal and Bridget gawked at the sight, bewildered and forlorn as their prize receded into the distance, Jules bore down on the surrendering mercenaries. He rarely fell back on firearms, preferring to utilize years of training in subduing his enemies with non-lethal means.
“Where are they going?” he demanded.
The pair just laughed. There was nowhere to run, no way for them to escape if Jules gunned them down.
Harpal said, “Jules.”
“What?”
Harpal rested one hand on Jules’s shoulder, easing the rising anger in him. He needed to tell Jules something, and it didn’t sound good.
“They got Darkeen and Blake out,” he said, glancing at Bridget, who fretted nearby.
“What…” She stumbled over her words, the next ones stuck in her throat. “Are they…?”
Harpal, too, couldn’t quite get to it, distracted by incoming helicopters. They sounded like gunships rather than medical or civilian vehicles, but Jules needed to hear the news.
“Darkeen didn’t make it,” Harpal said. “He’s dead.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Beast had been procured from a US military auction by one of the Executive’s shell companies based in Canada and had served them well during their mission in and around the Americas. They had successfully registered the airplane as part of a charitable mission, granting wishes to disadvantaged and terminally ill children. Their flight plan with the FAA had included several tandem skydives, so any radar operators seeing them circli
ng much higher than most civilian aircraft ventured would not grow suspicious.
Since retrieving Ah Dae-Sung and Pang Pyong-Ho along with the Guardians’ last shield, the Beast had kept below radar for several miles, before ascending and switching on a spoofed transponder. As far as anyone monitoring their movements was concerned, they were now a Gulfstream jet transporting a Saudi oil representative to a very important meeting with a local senator. This would allow them to set down at the airport where the real sheik was due to fly in to, switch out their transport for a different shell-owned plane, and be on their way home.
With the mission a success and the pilot leveling out for a smooth approach, Ah Dae-Sung needed to report in. There was only a bench seat and no table, so Pyong-Ho set up the same rig as they’d called from the RV—which was now a burned-out husk containing the corpses of the Americans who’d botched the college raid—and Dae-Sung found himself standing, smiling up at a gray screen on the wall dividing them from the pilots.
“Executive Ryom, thank you for your patience.”
“You have the item?” Ryom Jung-Hwan said.
“Yes. We return within a day.”
Silence for a few seconds. Then, “Are there any loose ends?”
“We lost our contractors,” Dae-Sung replied. “Regrettably, they will be captured. But even if they are tortured, all they know will be insignificant in less than thirty minutes. Americans will not arrange an interrogation in that time, let alone break their own laws to extract that information.”
“Did you neutralize the Guardians?”
“Not all of them, Executive. I prioritized retrieval of the artifact.”
Again, silence. Ah Dae-Sung understood they’d missed the full parameters of their mission, but the key ingredient was in place.
“Very well,” Executive Ryom said. “But you are now under kill-on-sight orders. Do you understand?”
“Of course.” Dae-Sung gave a shallow bow toward the screen before righting himself. “Do you wish to examine it, or should we transport it directly to the Dragon’s Pit?”