by Greig Beck
He heard Sam coming up behind him and swiveled to see the amazing sight of his big lieutenant walking along the bottom of the lake, as if taking a Sunday stroll.
Sam saluted, and Alex dived down to join him. He ran his hands over one of the rocks, roughly about five feet long and four high, and easily many tons. Even though Alex had enormous strength, the boulder had been wedged in place for several centuries and the rocks around it had bonded together.
He pointed to the large rock and then to Sam, indicating he would take one end and Sam the other. The big man nodded and moved into place. They looked at each other, and Alex nodded … one, two, three.
He strained, and felt the blood rush in a thumping torrent throughout his system. Above the pulse in his ears, he heard the whine of Sam’s suit and his grunt as he used the MECH technology and his own muscles together. Despite their combined efforts, nothing happened. There wasn’t enough room to get a good purchase on the huge stone.
Alex held up five fingers to Sam, then swam back to the surface. He quick-stroked to the edge of the pool and stood, waist-deep in the water. He pointed to the pile of equipment. ‘Franks, toss me the spike.’
Franks lifted the inch-thick, six-foot metal rod with a single sharpened end. It looked like a brutal javelin. She hefted it to her shoulder, nodding appreciatively. ‘Heads-up.’
She threw it like a spear, and Alex caught it out of the air, instantly feeling its weight. Perfect, he thought, and sank once more below the surface.
He smiled around his breathing tube as he saw Sam sitting casually on the huge rock ten feet down. Sam gave Alex the thumbs-up, and once again took his position on one side of the boulder. He dug his fingers deep into the crack between the boulders, and Alex lifted the spike and, with all his strength, stabbed down, wedging the sharpened end between the stones. He looked to Sam and counted down once more.
There was a grinding sound, and rock fragments swirled in the water, but even with their boosted power, the stone refused to budge.
Alex motioned Sam closer and together they worked on just one end. Alex withdrew the spike and jammed it back in at a different spot. This time it slid in deep between the stones. The sparkling mineral sand swirled, and sludge lifted from the bottom of the pool to mix with it around their legs. A basketball-sized rock tumbled down from higher up the wall.
Alex paused and looked to Sam; he nodded the countdown from three again, and together they gave an almighty heave. There was the whine of the metal bar bending, then a huge cracking sound as the rocks, joined for centuries, moved. The pair heaved even harder, and the massive rock slid forward, then rolled. Above it, smaller rocks started to tumble, but falling inward instead of down.
A dark hole was revealed, and what started as a gentle current flowing into it soon became a torrent. Alex guessed the water was racing toward another underground cavern, or would spout out of the mountain to become a river flowing down its sides.
He felt himself lifted and sucked toward the hole. One of Sam’s hands shot out and grabbed him by the wrist. With the other, Sam had anchored himself to another large stone, the weight of the MECH suit allowing him to resist the powerful drag of the water. Alex felt like a flag in a strong wind as he held onto Sam, his legs inside the hole, the torrent rushing past him on its way to the valley, miles below.
It took twenty minutes before the pool had drained to waist level, and Alex could pull himself out of the mouth of the tunnel and crawl up onto the stones above the lake.
Sam joined him. They pushed their masks up, and bumped fists.
Sam nudged him. ‘I figured you didn’t really want to see where that water was going.’
Alex laughed softly and looked toward the hole. The rush of water was a monstrous growl, falling away into the dark. He recalled another mission, when he’d been trapped underwater in the dark, and his stomach lurched.
When he stood again, the water was only at his calves, and still draining into the hole. Sam used the spike to move more stones out of the way, allowing the pool to empty more quickly.
Matt and Rebecca were quick to join them, sloshing through what remained of the water.
Matt peered into the hole, then stood back. ‘Well, I guess if they want to refill the pool, they only need to seal this back up. No real damage done.’
Rebecca chortled. ‘Let’s just be long gone before the guides get here in the morning.’
‘Works for me,’ Alex said. ‘Now, Professor, show us what you found.’
CHAPTER 31
Carlo Vangelis blinked in the dark, and sat up. His huge bed was unruffled by his night’s sleep – he never tossed and turned, was never troubled by tics, twitches or dreams. But he was a light sleeper, a habit developed during his early life on the streets of Crete. If you didn’t want to die while sleeping rough or in a doss-house, you had to remain on guard. He looked around the room at the heavy antique furniture – a wardrobe, dressing table, desk, and the huge four-poster bed he slept in: French, 400 years old and weighing as much as a small car. He frowned, wondering what had woken him. Lingering underneath the familiar smell of sandalwood and expensive aftershave, he detected another odor. Unpleasant. He’d get the cleaners to have a look later in the day.
He glanced across at the clock – it was still too early to rise. He lay back down, and almost immediately a huge hand clamped over his mouth. The intruder had been behind him the entire time. He was pulled from the bed as if he weighed nothing, punched in the stomach, and thrown to the ground.
He lay there, the wind knocked out of him. A rival gang? he wondered. Where were his men?
He got on all fours, straining to drag in a breath. A hand grabbed his thick white hair and pulled him up, and up. A massive ogre was holding him like a marionette doll. The giant had one eye, a dark beard, and a face that spoke of a psychopathic attraction to pain. Vangelis knew that look – there would be no mercy from this man. He could only hope his men would hear his screams.
The voice was deep and Russian. ‘Your guards are all gone. I cut their throats.’
Vangelis felt his stomach drop. His survival instincts took over. ‘I have a safe with a lot of money in it.’
There was also a gun, hidden behind the cash.
The giant shook him by the hair, causing him to cry out.
‘Keep your money, Little Mafia Man. I only want one thing – where did you take American professor?’ A wicked-looking black blade appeared beside Vangelis’ face. ‘I only ask once.’
The knife tip dug into his cheek.
*
Matt led the others to the huge column rising from the floor of the cave to the ceiling twenty feet above. It, and its smaller siblings each side, formed a massive barrier across the mosaic path. He got down on his knees and used his hand to wipe away the remaining silt, exposing more of the tiles. The face appeared in all its horror – the screaming Gorgon with writhing hair and red snake eyes.
‘Pretty, isn’t she,’ Franks said as she looked at the vicious face. ‘Not even I’d go that.’
‘Gorgon,’ Matt said softly. ‘The word means “dreadful” in ancient Greek.’
Alex stared, transfixed. He knew this was the thing he’d encountered in the desert, but if he had seen it, he’d now be nothing but a crumbling block of stone among the sand. At the time, he had felt the anger and loneliness of something that didn’t fit in or even belong among us. Perhaps he knew a little of what that was like.
Rebecca stared. ‘I still can’t believe it’s real.’
‘Well, we’re here to see what we can do to put it back to sleep,’ Alex said. He examined the huge column, then looked up. He shook his head. ‘If we knock this down, it could pull the whole roof down on top of us.’ He backed up. ‘Maybe if we knock out a few of the smaller ones, we might be able to squeeze though. It’ll be a tight fit, but we can do it.’
Sam rubbed his head. ‘Just how tight a fit?’
Alex looked at him, and grinned. ‘Suck it in, big guy.’
/> It took only twenty minutes to dig out one of the small stalagmites, and chip away some of the central column to create a three-foot-wide hole. Matt and Rebecca were first through, followed by Casey Franks, then the two SAS soldiers.
Alex, Sam, Ben Rogers, and the three Greeks remained on the other side.
Tony saluted, still grinning, but nervously. ‘No hard feelings.’ He edged back to the guard rail.
Alex grabbed him and pushed him toward the hole. ‘You’re coming too. Your men can stay here on guard duty.’ Alex glared at them. ‘Got it?’
They refused to look at him, so he lifted Tony with one hand and shook him. ‘Got it?’ His voice boomed around the cave.
Both nodded vigorously.
Sam growled, ‘Be here when we come back … or else.’
They nodded again. Alex pushed Tony toward the hole and he clambered through, cursing softly.
Alex turned to Ben Rogers. ‘We need the back door kept open. Don’t want these two thinking they can try out some dopey ambush when we come back.’ He looked back toward the surface, many hundred feet overhead, then added, lowering his voice, ‘And keep an eye on the peep – we’re still expecting company.’
Rogers smiled. ‘I’ll keep our friends out of trouble and watch the surface. Door will be open when you get back, boss. Good luck.’
Sam pulled his huge body and the MECH suit’s steel framework through the hole, scraping away a lot more of the stone. Alex turned to give Rogers a thumbs-up, and followed Sam through.
*
At the cave entrance, Borshov’s Spetsnaz took up positions either side of the gate, staying well back. Borshov crouched, a single lens to his eye.
‘Camera, on top of cave,’ he said.
One of his men lifted his AK-12 to his eye. The black assault rifle was a significantly enhanced Kalashnikov-series weapon, and in the agent’s hands deadly accurate. The rifle spat once and the small camera exploded into shards.
‘Quick now,’ Borshov ordered.
He knew the speed with which the device had been destroyed would make the operator think it had malfunctioned. But if he came to check, they needed to make first contact.
Borshov and his men sprinted into the cave, Borshov’s feet pounding heavily under the extra weight of the MECH suit.
*
Matt was first to the wall, laying his hands against it. This section of the tunnel was roughly fifteen feet wide and just as long, stopping at the perfectly smooth wall of flowstone. It glistened, and when Matt held his light up to it, he could just make out more depth beyond the natural barrier – there was something behind it.
‘Probably created long before the water filled the pool,’ Rebecca said. ‘It’s a flowing shelf of limestone that’s dripped down over the entrance and literally sealed it closed.’ She walked backward, looking along its top and sides. ‘Might be a foot thick – but that’s not too bad as calcium carbonate is fairly soft.’ She turned to Alex and raised her eyebrows. ‘Can you dig through it?’
‘Hey.’ Casey Franks moved her boot sideways along the floor. ‘More of those picture tiles on the ground here.’
The team crowded around her, shining their torches on the small tiled pathway. As they brushed aside the silt, more images were revealed – flames, huge urns filled with coins, other unidentifiable objects. Matt frowned, wishing he’d brought a camera. When he saw a huge beast the size of an ox, with three horned heads, holding the body of a man in one of its slavering jaws, he recognized it immediately.
‘Cerberus,’ he said.
Sam whistled. ‘That is one damned mother of a dog.’
‘Damned is right,’ Matt said. ‘Cerberus was the protector of Hades.’
He pushed away more of the silt, showing the creature’s monstrous muscled body covered with what looked like scales, multiple legs, and a reptilian tail.
‘Wasn’t real, was it?’ Franks asked, splashing water from her canteen over its head, clarifying the face and jaws.
‘No, but neither is Magera, right?’ Matt said slowly. He pointed. ‘Look at the horns. What other horned beast do we know of that was supposed to live in a cave?’
‘The Minotaur,’ Sam said. ‘This is gonna be fun.’
‘If it ever did exist, it’ll be dust now,’ Jackson said.
Alex was examining the wall that blocked their path. ‘Magera somehow reformed when it was released from its prison after eons, and survived thermobaric grenades and hundreds of armor-piercing rounds.’ He half-turned. ‘Franks, get me the spike we left outside.’
‘On it.’ Franks disappeared back through the hole.
Rebecca kneeled and laid her hand on one of the snarling faces. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said about Magera melting away in the sunlight,’ she told Alex. ‘This thing – it doesn’t seem to be made the same way we are, out of trillions of cells, each with its own function and purpose.’
Franks returned and handed Alex the long spike. He nodded to her, but leaned on the spike, listening to the scientist.
Rebecca stood, wiping her hands on her thighs. ‘New research has shown that some insects follow the same biological rules as individual creatures – which makes their colonies more like a super-organism. Ants, bees, termites, wasps – their controlled interactions are like cells working together in a single body.’ She folded her arms, her eyes focused inward as she thought through what she was saying. ‘So imagine this Magera thing is made up of cells, just like us, but each cell is more than just a self-functioning amino acid factory, and more like this super-organism entity. What if Magera’s cells are capable of taking care of themselves individually, but work together as a whole when it suits?’
Alex shook his head. ‘I got the impression of a single entity. And it was solid, powerful.’
Rebecca nodded. ‘Maybe the single-entity shape is its usual formation. Each of our cells contains all the information needed to create another one of us, but Magera’s cells might go a step further, in that they’re a multi-celled organism acting as a collective.’
Sam exhaled loudly. ‘So is it one creature, or an army of millions?’
Rebecca shrugged. ‘I’m just guessing here. But we might know soon, if we can get through there.’ She pointed to the wall.
Alex grunted. ‘Right about now, everything helps, even good guesses.’ He lifted the spike. ‘Make room, people – time to see where Magera came from.’
He jammed the spike into the wall, once, twice, and then again, before punching through. Gas escaped through the hole, making everyone back away. Rebecca gagged.
‘Don’t breathe it in,’ Matt said behind his hand. ‘It was airtight.’
He put his entire arm across his face and backed up further, pulling the still-coughing Rebecca with him.
Alex held his breath and stepped in close, shining a light into the three-inch hole he had made.
‘Clear,’ he said, turning his head away and sucking in a deep breath. ‘The stone must have flowed over it completely, like a wax seal on a bottle. Upside is, it’ll be dry inside … and anything in there should be preserved.’
‘That’s an upside?’ Sam said and snorted.
Alex turned back and sniffed. ‘It’s stale, not toxic. Can’t detect any explosive gases. But it smells … strange.’ He sniffed some more. ‘Kind of … primordial.’
Tony’s nose wrinkled. ‘Smells like a freakin’ zoo.’ He shone his flashlight into the small hole. ‘Nobody home – that’s a good thing.’
‘Let’s go take a look,’ Alex said. He motioned Tony away, then jammed the spike into the hole again and again, working it in a circle to make it man-sized. He turned to Matt. ‘After you.’
Matt lifted his flashlight to the hole. His hand shook slightly, making the beam wobble. Part of him, the curious, adventurous, and scientific part, wanted to dive through and hurtle like a bloodhound into the mysterious cave, seeking answers to age-old questions of myth, religion, and strange creatures. But the other part, the experienced part,
wanted to flee back to the surface, back to the safety of sunlight and fresh air – that was the part that had been in caves before, and that was the part that had seen what can exist below the earth’s fragile outer skin.
He sucked in a deep breath. The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see – thanks Winston, he thought, as he steadied himself.
Matt stepped through.
CHAPTER 32
HAWC lieutenant Ben Rogers stood with arms folded cradling his rifle. The smell of drying slime from the drained lake thickened the air; soon it would become so dominating that he knew it would overpower his sense of smell, making it useless. As a HAWC, he relied on every sense, every limb, every angle and sharp edge of his body in both defense and attack. Nothing was ever left idle – his life depended on it.
He turned to the two Greeks. Both were looking at him, but turned away sullenly when he caught them. They spoke softly to each other, obviously still pissed about getting a job that left them standing at the bottom of a stinking cave, and smoking, always smoking.
Rogers looked up at the steel walkways and steps leading back to the cave entrance. He guessed he must be about ten stories down. The lighting had been strategically placed to give a theatrical effect and highlight the more impressive structures. For tourists, the lighting would be an excellent feature. For a Special Forces soldier, it created too many shadows.
He walked a few paces into the center of the dry pool, between where the Greeks loitered and where Alex and the team had disappeared into the wall. He looked again at the two men – both seemed tough and capable, but they were amateurs. They’d be fine against other amateurs, but against professionals he doubted they’d last twenty seconds. He sucked in a deep breath and turned away again. There came a sound from high overhead and he froze. The Greeks didn’t notice, continuing to laugh and talk loudly as if they were in a local bar.