Gorgon: An Alex Hunter Novel

by Greig Beck

  ‘Over here.’ Matt waved them over to the sculpture gallery, where statues, some tiny like dolls, some larger than life, were arranged by period. Many were marble, granite, or dark basalt, but there were a few of calcium carbonate.

  Rebecca pointed out one in particular, a little less than five feet tall, wrapped in a small kilt-like skirt with a bare torso. The leg was broken off, and at the center of the break was something unmistakable to the trio: a shard of bone.

  Reece Thompson bent lower. ‘You gotta be shitting me. It’s as if the sculptor had actually seen battlefield injuries.’

  Rebecca read from the brass plate at the statue’s base. ‘As we thought: recovered from the Psychro Caves … in the Cave of Zeus. It says Minoan youth – look at his face.’

  The features were contorted with terror, frozen for all time.

  ‘And this …’ Matt pointed to a stone tablet depicting several kneeling figures. It was heavily eroded, but all had the Minoan long curl of hair down beside their ears, and the fluted dress with wrapped tunic. They were praying before a huge figure, their eyes bound with cloth. The faint scratches underneath the image could easily have been mistaken for chisel marks, but to Matt and Rebecca they were another clue.

  ‘Minoan writing.’ Matt turned to Rebecca. ‘I’ll do my best, but Margaret would be helpful right about now.’ He leaned in close. ‘The goddess of night and darkness … something, something … will always protect us. Let Hades hide her palace … the symbols for 200 … kalamos beneath our feet.’ Matt frowned. ‘A kalamos was a very ancient unit of measure. Equivalent to about ten feet. I think it might be telling us the depth of where the goddess was living.’

  ‘Two thousand feet,’ Rebecca said thoughtfully. ‘There are no caves that deep here – the Psychro Cave’s only about 400 feet deep. Even the pool soundings that were taken are less than that.’

  ‘No caves that we know of,’ Matt said. ‘You said yourself that rockfalls and flooding could have sealed off some areas.’

  ‘That cave dive’s looking more likely all the time,’ Thompson said quietly.

  Matt shook his head. ‘I hate caves. I’ll be on the surface, eating baklava and keeping a lookout.’

  Rebecca put her arm around his. ‘No way – we need your Minoan expertise. Anything else written there?’

  Matt grimaced and leaned in toward the glass. ‘Yeah, there’s more. It says something like: Beware or be in fear of the Guardians.’ He groaned. ‘Great.’

  ‘I only know of one guardian of the underworld,’ Rebecca said. ‘Cerberus.’

  ‘The big angry dog? Nice. This is turning out to be a real holiday adventure, isn’t it?’ Thompson said and grinned.

  ‘These mythological tales are usually allegorical,’ Rebecca said. ‘They’re designed to teach us about the dangers of greed, lust, violence, and the like.’

  ‘And a big dog does that how?’ Thompson asked.

  Matt shrugged. ‘I wish it was only a big dog. Cerberus was actually the offspring of a half-woman, half-serpent. You see? The serpent crops up in ancient Greek and Minoan mythology time and time again.’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘Cerberus was commonly represented in Greek mythology as having either two or three heads, each with an appetite for live meat. His sole job was to guard the gates to the underworld – hell.’

  Thompson shook his head. ‘Jesus. Did these guys have any nice gods?’

  Matt grinned. ‘Sure, but fear always works best. Anyway, a guard is a good sign. After all, you don’t guard something unless it’s valuable, right? So, at least this narrows our search – seems to me the Psychro Cave is where we need to start. If it’s been sealed off by rockfalls and a million gallons of water for several thousand years, it means whatever was down there is probably still down there.’

  ‘Like a giant many-headed dog?’ Thompson raised his eyebrows.

  Rebecca laughed. ‘After about 5000 years, anything that was alive or trapped down there will be bones.’

  ‘Yeah, just like Magera.’ Thompson’s face became serious. He looked from Matt to Rebecca. ‘So, now what?’

  ‘Now … we wait for your devil to meet with us,’ Matt said.

  Thompson nodded. ‘We wait.’

  CHAPTER 28

  Uli Borshov stepped out into the road, raised a hand and waved the battered truck to a stop.

  The driver leaned out of the window, puffing on a cigarette. ‘Blackbird?’

  Borshov nodded, grinning.

  The truck driver looked him up and down for a moment, then shrugged, pushed open the door and stepped down. He flicked his smoke to the dirt, walked to the back of the truck, dropped the backboard, and stood back.

  He pointed to a large crate. ‘Is heavy. I hurt my back.’

  Borshov clicked his fingers and his Spetsnaz came out from the scrub. The driver became wary and stuck his hands in his pockets, seeming to feel around for something. Borshov’s men hauled the crate out, then one went to stand by the truck’s open door. The driver’s eyes flicked to the man, then back to Borshov.

  He licked his lips. ‘My job finish now. Pay me 500 USA dollars and I go home.’

  Borshov held up a one large finger. ‘First we check contents okay. Maybe you damage.’ He grinned again.

  The driver shook his head. ‘Only damage is to my back.’

  The Spetsnaz prized open the lid. Borshov bent to look inside, examining the half exoskeleton. Satisfied everything was there, he took off his shirt and began to drag it out of the crate. He grunted from the weight, but managed to lift it free and hoist it onto his back, his hugely muscled legs planted wide like a pair of hair-covered columns. He switched the suit on, and it clamped onto his body, the smaller electrodes penetrating the dark curling hair covering his torso and then his flesh. He winced, and then cursed, feeling the small plate dangling behind his neck. He knew there was one more painful step to go.

  He motioned to his Spetsnaz. ‘Grigor, there is small plate with needles. Push it into the base of my skull.’

  Grigor briefly examined the long needle-like electrodes, then roughly jammed them into Borshov’s flesh.

  Borshov gritted his teeth and made a hissing noise. Grigor grinned.

  The truck driver grimaced, and edged toward his open door. The Spetsnaz standing there blocked him.

  Borshov exhaled, and began swinging his arms, faster and increasingly fluidly as the MECH suit bonded with his body and nervous system. He threw fake punches, his speed increasing even more. He flicked one huge armor-plated fist into the truck’s steel side; it impacted with a clang, leaving a huge dent.

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  The truck driver stared at the ding in his vehicle. ‘Okay, all works. Pay me and I go.’ His brow was wet with perspiration.

  ‘How much you say?’ Borshov asked.

  ‘Five hundred dollars … USA.’

  Borshov nodded. He stepped toward the man, moving lightly even though he carried an extra few hundred pounds of hydraulics and armor plating. When he was within three feet of the driver, one of his arms shot out and grabbed the man’s arm, dragging him closer.

  The driver ripped a long machete blade from the leg of his trousers and swung it at Borshov, but the big Russian caught the hand and ripped the weapon free. The man frantically pummeled at Borshov’s arm, but all he did was split his own knuckles on the metal frame.

  The driver was a big man, weighing in excess of 220 pounds, but Borshov lifted him over his head and then smoothly brought his hands together. The driver screamed, and there was a sickening crunch as his body was folded in half.

  Borshov threw the corpse into the dry scrub. His men laughed, and one clapped.

  Borshov looked at his hands. ‘Good. Very good.’ He looked at his men, grinning. ‘I just saved us 500 dollars … and we also have a truck.’

  One of the Spetsnaz touched a stud at his ear, listening. ‘The local Ikoyennia have some information about Kearns, the American professor, to sell.’

  Borshov no
dded, looking at his hands again. ‘Sell? Maybe I will save us some more money instead.’ He flexed the armor-plated fingers. ‘Now we will see what happens to you in these hands, Arcadian.’

  *

  ‘We’re on.’ Reece Thompson disconnected the call and set the phone down on the café table.

  ‘You got the meeting?’ Matt said. ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Sure, and they can fill our order,’ Thompson said. ‘They’ll want to know why we want it though.’

  ‘But we’re not telling them, right?’ Rebecca said.

  ‘It’s not negotiable,’ Matt added, his expression deadpan.

  Thompson shrugged. ‘Then we might have to get it ourselves. But we’re dealing with the Ikoyennia, the local mafia. Now they know about our request, they’ll make sure we don’t get it from anyone else if we cancel. Bottom line is, if they think we’re planning a robbery, they know the heat will also come down on them. So, they’ll want a cut.’ He smiled. ‘A juicy one.’

  ‘Can we steal the dynamite?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘From the Ikoyennia?’ Thompson snorted. ‘Then we’ll end up in a war with an army of Greek and Cretan gangsters.’

  Rebecca frowned. ‘No, I mean from a mining company or the like.’

  Thompson shook his head. ‘Where do you think they’re getting it? The difference is, they’ll probably use someone on the inside – no alarms, no violence, no mess. No time-wasting.’

  Matt exhaled and sat back. ‘And if we tell them?’

  Rebecca started to object, but Matt stopped her.

  ‘Like I said, they’ll want a cut of the action.’ Thompson waved over a waiter and ordered a coffee.

  Matt looked across the table at Rebecca. ‘Do we care? Do we have the time to care?’ He paused. ‘If there are valuables down there, my professional self tells me to make sure they end up in a museum. But we need to look beyond that. What we seek has no value to the mafia, so as far as I’m concerned they’re welcome to whatever else is down there.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ Thompson said.

  Rebecca scowled. ‘Anything and everything down there belongs to Crete.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, except the stuff we might want to take,’ Matt said. ‘Look, we don’t have time to make a moral stand. People are dying … and more will die unless we can stop Magera. We get the C-4, they get a cut – like Reece says, no mess.’ Matt raised his hand. ‘In or out?’

  Thompson nodded and raised his hand.

  Rebecca scowled for a moment. ‘Argh, okay.’ Her hand went up briefly, then whipped down again.

  Matt looked at Thompson. ‘Let’s make it happen.’

  *

  Matt, Rebecca, and Thompson sat in a room filled with polished antiques, and with beautiful artwork adorning every wall. Statues and other objects from various periods were displayed in cabinets around the walls, professionally uplit. Matt’s eyes watered at the sight of so many stolen artifacts, all of which would have made any museum curator in the world drool. Behind the desk, a gray-haired but robust-looking older man poured tiny cups of coffee for them all. Carlo Vangelis was the head of the local Ikoyennia family; a businessman with fingers in too many pies to mention. He looked like a kindly uncle, Matt thought, until he fixed his green merciless gaze upon you.

  Vangelis finished pouring and motioned for them each to take a cup. ‘So, you want to blow something up?’ he said, watching Matt over the rim of his own cup.

  Matt decided to be candid. ‘Maybe. We need to get into the Psychro Caves. There might be something down there we need, and it might be buried. We’ll probably need to blast the rock.’

  ‘A lot of rock, I think.’ Vangelis grinned, showing extremely white teeth. ‘What is it?’

  Matt didn’t hesitate. ‘Maybe some writing on a wall, maybe an old document – we don’t know yet. We’ll know it when we see it.’

  ‘You want to blow up one of Crete’s national treasures, and you don’t really know if it will be worth the trouble? Not, I think, something I want to be part of.’ He lifted his cup to his lips again.

  ‘There could be Minoan treasure,’ Rebecca blurted out.

  Vangelis put his cup down slowly. ‘And now I am listening.’

  Matt talked briefly about what might be found in the lower caves, omitting any reference to the living Magera. He described the piles of gold, rivers of oil, and encrusted jewels given as tribute over the centuries – all of it, or none of it, could be hidden in the very depths of the Psychro Caves.

  Vangelis sipped slowly, his eyes steady as he watched Matt for a full minute after he’d finished. His gaze slid to Rebecca, then to Thompson. ‘So, two scientists and one SAS soldier on a secret treasure hunt, and prepared to vandalize one of the wonders of Crete. And you want to do this for some words written on something maybe 5000 years ago?’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘They must be important words.’

  ‘They are, but only to us,’ Matt said evenly. ‘They’re of historical importance. In fact, after we’ve examined them, you can keep them.’

  Vangelis nodded slowly. ‘I have been inside the Psychro Caves. They are deep, and at the bottom there is only a lake. Why do you think there is something other than more water down there?’

  Matt felt he was being subjected to a human lie detector. ‘It’s a risk that there is only water. But our research leads us to believe the caves run deeper, into other caverns. We strongly believe it’s worth investigating.’

  ‘And that investigation cannot involve the government because there is something down there that you do not wish to share with them?’ Vangelis asked evenly.

  Matt nodded. ‘Unfortunately, yes. But we seek only the words … the knowledge. Anything else is yours.’

  Vangelis bobbed his head from side to side. ‘It seems like a simple and worthwhile investment. But if you are caught …’

  Matt nodded. ‘Then we never met.’

  Vangelis grunted, scrutinizing Matt for another few moments. ‘Dynamite, semtex or C-4?’

  ‘C-4,’ Thompson said. ‘Better-quality plasticizer, and better for shaping charges, especially in a liquid environment. We’ll take three one-kilo packs, plus detonators.’

  Vangelis smiled. ‘Very good.’

  He lifted a phone and spoke rapidly in Greek for a few seconds. Matt followed the conversation, not letting on that he understood every word. Vangelis looked at his watch and hung up. He clasped his hands together on the desk.

  ‘When will you be entering the cave?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning, before dawn,’ Matt said. ‘We need diving equipment – cave diving equipment. We planned to buy it but …’

  Vangelis shrugged. ‘No problem. I assume you’ll also need keys to the security gate over the cave? My men will meet you there with the dive equipment and C-4 at say … 4 am?’

  Thompson sat forward. ‘No way.’

  Matt grabbed his arm. ‘The extra security will be fine. But they take orders from us once we’re below ground.’

  Vangelis’ face was like stone. ‘They take orders from me – above and below ground.’ The silence stretched, and his features softened. ‘But on the descent, you are … team leader.’ He opened his arms. ‘You see, we all work together just fine.’

  *

  As the day faded, a small cloud began to form on the shoreline west of Heraklion, just a few miles shy of Panormos, lifting from the rocks, shattered beams, tattered cloth, and broken mast of a fishing boat. The mist solidified at its center, then snaked along the jagged coastline, staying in the shadows.

  Like a dark tide, it surged along gulleys, around rocks, and beneath trees. Insects, rodents, and small lizards scurried from its path, the slower ones shuddering, turning white and becoming rigid.

  The mist flowed up into the mountains, and toward the ancient caves.

  CHAPTER 29

  Evening lengthened into night as the HAWCs jogged to the Psychro Caves. Franks ran beside Rogers, with Jackson a dozen paces behind them, and Sam and Alex the same distance out in front. A
HAWC was trained to run all day and all night and still be fresh enough to enter a hand-to-hand combat scenario on arrival in a conflict zone. But they were all feeling the heat. Though the biological armored suits were lightweight, and the sun had gone down, the ground still gave off residual warmth.

  The pace was hard, and Rogers blew air and wiped his brow. ‘Hot.’

  ‘Sure is.’ Franks looked across at him. ‘Lookin’ a little flushed there, Junior.’

  Rogers grinned. ‘I’m the same age as you.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve been a HAWC for four years. You’ve been in for one. To me that makes you just one year old … Junior.’

  The group pushed on, keeping in formation. They still had miles to go. The plan had been to commandeer a vehicle, but seeing they needed to keep a near-invisible profile they had to skirt towns and stay off major roads. The back roads were overgrown, dusty, and about as inhabited as Mars.

  Rogers lowered his voice. ‘What do you think about this Magera thing? The boss said he heard it weeping.’

  Franks snorted. ‘I’ll fucking make it weep all right.’

  Rogers laughed. ‘I bet you will. Hey, you know that professor said it might be a living god.’

  ‘A god?’ She scoffed. ‘Let me tell you about the time I was in the Appalachians. I went up against something the Native Americans used to refer to as the god of the mountains.’

  ‘Let me guess. You killed it,’ Rogers said wearily.

  Franks grinned. ‘Nah, it threw me off a cliff.’

  Rogers laughed. ‘That still makes you the expert in my book.’ His face became serious. ‘This thing tore the Turkish Spec Ops guys in half – legs one way, guts and head the other.’

  ‘I read the briefing too,’ she said, her eyes bright. ‘That’s a good thing.’

  ‘Huh?’ Rogers frowned.

  ‘If it can do that, it has physical form. If it has physical form, we can inflict damage … and if we can damage it, we can fucking kill it.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He reached up a forearm to wipe his brow. ‘How much further?’

  Franks looked at a small box strapped to the inside of her wrist. ‘Just eighteen to go.’