Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  “Where are you going? There’s no way out back there.”

  Raine ignored him, running fast for the canvass on the tent’s rear. He plucked a scalpel off one of the examination tables and slashed it in a straight line through the fabric. Before he could protest, King felt the other man shove him through the newly created door just as Chinese troops poured into the tent.

  Then Raine was through, grabbing his elbow and dragging him into the dense jungle beyond the camp.

  “Here,” he said, swinging King around the trunk of a large tree. King watched as he spun on the spot, took aim at the tent and fired his last two rounds.

  The tent erupted like the maw of a volcano, the bullets igniting the build-up of gas which he had released. A fireball plumed high into the clouds, blinding against the storm-dark sky.

  King had no idea how many soldiers had been taken out in the trap, but he knew it wouldn’t hold them off for long.

  “We’ve got to get into the tunnels,” Raine said and pulled him to his feet. They both turned and dashed into the thick jungle, crashing through the vegetation. King heard his own heart pounding in his ears; his legs began to burn from the exertion and the branches stung his flesh as they whipped back at him, admonishing him for his intrusion.

  The two men leapfrogged low bushes and fallen trunks, limboed beneath thicker branches and batted aside those that they could. The mud churned beneath their boots and rain seemed to twist in a vortex before the archaeologist’s eyes.

  With a meaty slap, a bullet slammed through the underbrush to embed itself in a moss encrusted trunk. King staggered, shocked. Another bullet slammed into the tree in front of him, peppering him with flecks of bark. He hesitated, stepped back, turned-

  A black-clad soldier levelled his weapon at his chest.

  A spinning streak of silver whirled past his ear and dug deep into the soldier’s throat. The scalpel Raine had taken from the tent.

  The man took a step back, throwing his arms wide in surprise, his trigger finger clenching to release a hailstorm of bullets into the jungle. He hit the muddy ground with a squelch, the thunder of gun fire ceasing to be replaced by voices shouting in Mandarin. Dark figures, little more than wraith-like shadows, shot between the trees, circling on the pair.

  “Hurry up!” Raine grasped his forearm, snapping him out of his daze. They ran forward another few steps but then the ground in front of them erupted, spraying them with hot mud and charred vegetation.

  “Mortars!” Raine yelled to be heard over the din.

  We’re never going to make it, King thought.

  Another mortar shell whistled through the air and exploded on impact with the ground thirty feet away. The concussive boom slammed into King’s chest, driving the air out of his lungs.

  “We’re close to the sinkhole,” Raine urged him on. “We’ve got to keep going!”

  They set off again through the hellish realm of Sarisariñama’s summit. A barrage of gunfire chased them while a bombardment of mortars hounded their every step, exploding to the left, then the right; in front, then behind. King’s world receded to a tunnel. He focussed all his energy into driving himself forward through the pounding rain-

  They broke out of the dense jungle and King’s eyes absorbed the familiar scene of the yawning sinkhole stretching away from him. Its sides were coated in thick green plant life which was today awash with numerous torrents of water as streams created by the storm cascaded down into the sinkhole’s black depths.

  Directly in front of King was the winch station, a jury-rigged contraption of metal scaffolding clinging to the cliff face, housing giant reams of metal cables. The science teams used the system to be lowered into the tunnels and out each day.

  Right now, however, two men in black NBC suits were rising out of the hole, dangling in their harnesses.

  They saw Raine and King and raised their weapons.

  From behind, dozens of soldiers swarmed towards them.

  All around them, mortars pounded the drenched earth.

  Trapped.

  King’s footsteps faltered, ready to surrender, but Raine dragged him on. Another mortar shell smashed into the ground at their heels. The blast slammed into them, intense and agonising. King heard himself scream as the heat wave threw both men forward.

  But Raine had been ready for it. He used the explosion to help propel them both out over the gaping sinkhole. They cried out as the momentum of the blast died away and gravity took hold, dragging them into the yawning maw of the gateway into the earth.

  King saw the black abyss below spread out to encompass him, to drag him to hell, but then, with jarring suddenness, they jerked to a halt and swung painfully into the cliff face.

  Raine had snagged the harness of both the enemy climbers, momentarily halting their death-dive. The sudden weight ripped both soldiers from their perches and now all four men fell, arms and legs cart-wheeling. They dropped like stones, bouncing off the sheer sides of the sinkhole, a tangle of limbs and a mêlée of petrified screams.

  Above them, the winches spun freely, unspooling meters of cable until, at last, the safety mechanism bit the brake into the line.

  The cables snapped taught, jarring them all to a halt.

  King’s back smashed into the cliff face, winding him. During his fall, he had reflexively grabbed hold of one of the cables and he struggled now to keep his grip on the slippery line. He glanced down. The base of the sinkhole was still hundreds of feet below him. Vertigo sent a wave of dizziness to his skull.

  The two soldiers hung limply, dazed, but secured in their harnesses, they quickly re-gathered their wits and went for their guns.

  Too slow.

  Somehow, King noticed, Raine had manoeuvred himself into position above one of the soldiers. He dangled from one arm, muscles flexing, and merely plucked the rifle from the stunned Chinaman’s hand, turned and fired point blank at his face.

  A spray of blood and brains rained down into the sinkhole.

  In one fluid movement, he twisted again, planted the muzzle of the weapon under the chin of the second man and fired. A starburst of blood splashed across the vertical walls of the hole.

  King felt bile rise up his throat. His eyes were wide, locked on the two dangling cadavers.

  “Benny,” Raine called to him, his voice hard, devoid of emotion despite his actions. “Grab his controls. We’ve got to keep moving.”

  King didn’t move. He simply dangled above the hole, his arm muscles burning yet his fist clenched tight.

  Raine reached and released the control unit from the belt of the soldier whom he shared a cable with. Pressing the red ‘down’ arrow, he and the corpse began to descend but he halted when he realised King wasn’t following.

  “Benny,” he called. But when he didn’t answer he barked more sharply. “King! Move your goddamn ass!”

  King shook himself into action and struggled, one handed, to release the dead man’s controls. Together, they allowed the winch to lower them further into the sinkhole until they reached the familiar metal platform that had been affixed outside of the entrance to the underground labyrinth.

  King jumped onto it, the clanging metal feeling good and solid beneath his feet. His eyes focussed on his companion. Raine’s face was hard, the lines of his rugged features set straight and steady. There was no shaking of adrenaline, no overly laboured breathing. There was no emotion in those icy blue eyes.

  Who are you? He wondered. “You killed those men,” he accused.

  “We’ve got to keep moving.” Raine relieved one of the dead men of his rifle then turned to head inside the tunnel. King remained fixed on the platform. Above, Chinese troops began to gather and lower themselves over the ledge. The storm continued its torrential downpour.

  “You just . . . shot them.”

  “Yeah, well,” Raine shrugged. “They were gonna shoot us.”

  “How can you be so flippant about killing?” King snarled. “Like
it was easy or something.”

  Raine whirled on him, face twisted into an angry snarl. But it wasn’t anger in his eyes, King saw. It was something else.

  A cold emptiness.

  “It gets easier every time,” he lied, then turned and vanished into the gloom of the tunnel.

  King hesitated a fraction of a second longer, and then followed him into Hell.

  11:

  Death Above . . .

  The Labyrinth,

  Sarisariñama Tepui,

  Venezuela,

  Raine and King ran through the impenetrable darkness of the tunnels. Water had found its way into the labyrinth, draining down walls and collecting on the floor. Jungle vines clung to the perfectly cut jigsaw-puzzle walls as King led the way, groping through the blackness. He directed them solely by touch and memory and he desperately tried to picture in his head where they were and where they were going.

  “We’ve got to move faster,” Raine whispered. He could hear movement behind them, sloshing through water and ripping through vines. The soldiers would move faster, he knew, aided no doubt by night-vision goggles and bristling with weapons.

  “I can’t see anything,” King hissed back, bumping bodily against a very-solid wall. The darkness was choking now and King felt claustrophobia pressing against him. “We’ll be sitting ducks in here,” he pointed out.

  “Reckon you can get us to the hidden passage you found?”

  King studied the darkness but it was impregnable. He had led them this far through the well excavated tunnels by sheer dumb luck. But the hidden tunnel he had found the previous day was deep within the underground maze, difficult to get at even with the large halogen lamps the excavation team carried with them. Nevertheless, he groped the walls, feeling his way forward.

  “Even if I can,” he asked. “What good will it do? We demolished the retaining wall so you could go play Indiana Jones with the crocodiles.”

  “Just get us there,” Raine replied. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  UNESCO Base Camp,

  Sarisariñama Tepui,

  Venezuela,

  Colonel Ming ripped through the canvass flap of the mess tent, eliciting startled gasps from its dying inhabitants.

  Order had been re-established following the explosive excitement and five guards now stood inside the tent, training their weapons on its occupants.

  Ming walked through the crowd of groaning scientists to the rear of the tent where two women had been tied to one of the poles. A guard stood beside them.

  “You,” he snapped at them. He had removed his helmet now that the mask and its radioactive properties were not in the vicinity, and now that his men’s cover had been blown anyway. Secrecy was no longer important. He had gone to Plan B. Instead of Plan A’s subterfuge - a snatch and grab operation under the guise of U.S. Special Forces - the backup plan was far more brutal: a full-on assault, leaving behind no trace of their presence. All of the scientists would be eliminated, their deaths blamed on Venezuelan terrorists.

  Glancing around at the tent’s occupants, he wondered whimsically whether he could save on his men’s ammunition. Without treatment for severe radiation sickness, these people would be dead in a matter of hours anyway.

  He stopped in front of the women, noting their attractiveness. The Indian woman’s eyes glanced up nervously at him, but the Russian woman, whom his men had dragged in earlier, held a defiant gaze.

  “Communist pig!” she snarled.

  Ming surprised himself when he was unable to stifle a laugh. “Coming from a Russian,” he replied, “I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult.” Then his eyes darkened and he crouched down to the Russian’s level. “For your sake, I hope it was a compliment.”

  Nadia bit back a quick and angry response. “What do you want?”

  “Want?” Ming’s English was flawless. His face was almost perfectly rounded, his skin silky smooth. He might even have been considered attractive in some circles, if it wasn’t for the wickedness of his narrow eyes, stained nicotine-yellow. “I would have thought that was obvious.”

  “The mask.” She had, of course, already known the answer, but she was surprised when he corrected her.

  “Wrong.” A pause. “I want to know where the mask has been taken.”

  Nadia couldn’t prevent a coy smile from curling her lips. She had seen Raine and King heading for the sinkhole. The intricate network of artificially built tunnels and natural caves twisted like a maze, many criss-crossing, some circling back, others leading to dead ends. Ben King knew them like the back of his hand, and with Nathan Raine’s resourcefulness she had no doubt they were easily eluding their pursuers. She also had no doubt as to their destination: the hidden, skull-lined passage. It was where she would have headed.

  “Why do you smile?” Ming asked.

  “Because if they are inside the tunnels,” she replied smugly, “then you will never find them . . . at least not before the Americans get here.”

  “Who would have thought it? A Russian cheering for the Americans.”

  “Better American do-gooders than you Chinese arseholes.”

  The back of Ming’s hand angrily struck her face, slamming her inside cheek against her teeth. Her head whipped to the side and she spat out globules of blood before glaring back up at her attacker with a frightening degree of anger.

  “Colonel,” a voice squawked over his radio in Mandarin. Nadia translated it. “We have the thieves cornered. Closing in on their position now.”

  Ming enjoyed watching the smug expression slide from the Russian’s face and he smiled victoriously. “Kill them and bring me the mask.”

  The Labyrinth,

  Sarisariñama Tepui,

  Venezuela,

  Two dozen Chinese troops had swept into the labyrinth of tunnels which burrowed into the Sarisariñama tepui, fanning out to flush out the thieves. Night vision goggles illuminated the gloom, casting the network of tunnels in a ghostly green pall.

  It had seemed a futile task as the two man teams wandered in circles, bisecting one-another’s paths without even knowing it. But then the breakthrough had been made. Drops of blood on the ground . . . and then more further on . . . a trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to the hapless heroes.

  The team that had found the blood trail followed it to the remains of a hastily de-constructed wall, the demolished stonework now only waist high. Four other teams had rendezvoused with them, huddled beneath the wall, waiting.

  A glance down the sealed hallway revealed two figures, huddling around a distant bend, just out of the troopers’ rifle range.

  The team leader held up a hand, counted down on his fingers and, on the clench of his fist, all ten men hurdled the low wall and moved silently down the tunnel, nearing their prey, rifles raised-

  With a resounding boom and a lurch, the ground dropped away from the first line of soldiers and they plummeted into the hole in the ground.

  But as they fell they reached out, grasping the edge of the hole. Huge stone blocks came away in their hands, one after another as they scrambled for purchase, the hole growing larger and swallowing up the second rank of men, then the third. Plumes of dust erupted, followed by the staccato of rifle fire.

  As the dust began to settle, a figure appeared in the tunnel above them, brandishing a stolen rifle. He moved to the edge of the hole and peered down.

  Illuminated by the flare of muzzle flashes, Nathan Raine pinpointed seven men sloshing in the murky water, firing maddeningly into it. Dark shapes glided with surprising agility around them.

  An explosion of gunfire, an agonised scream and the sickening crunch of bones brought seven men down to six, then five.

  Raine watched the absolute panic in the chamber as the troopers fired desperately at the enormous shapes in the water. King came up alongside him.

  “Don’t look-”

  “Oh god,” he gasped, turning away, stomach clench
ing.

  Five men became four, then three, two-

  A bullet struck the wall of skulls that lined the corridor behind them. Raine whipped out a hand, pulled King down to ground level and fired off a couple of rounds at the demolished dividing wall from where the shot had originated. Through the ambient glow of muzzle-fire he could make out shapes moving there.

  “Now what?” King shouted to him. The ruse with the hole had worked. They had lured half of their pursuers into the hidden corridor and the trap Raine had set.

  It was a gamble, but it had paid off.

  The price of the gamble was that the corridor was a dead end. They had no place else to run.

  Except one.

  “Into the hole,” Raine ordered.

  “What?”

  More bullets flew overhead as reinforcements arrived.

  Raine grabbed hold of the rope which he had left there after extracting the human remains the previous day. He secured it to the baton he had hammered into the wall and then threw the length into the hole. He fired an erratic burst of bullets at the wall, blind in the darkness and the dust. “Go!” he bellowed and this time King obeyed, scrambling down the length of rope.

  Below King’s dangling feet the chamber was completely dark, the gun fire ceased, the silence broken only by the gut-curdling crunching of human bones and the sloshing of competing beasts.

  This was madness. He was being shot at from above while being lowered to a gnashing death below. His options looked grim.

  “Hurry,” Raine called down.

  As silently as he could, King’s feet touched the hard surface of the platform at the side of the chamber. The water sloshed around his knees, much deeper than it had been the previous day. He also heard the sound of water falling from above but could not see the cascade in the darkness.

  “Okay,” he half-whispered back to Raine before hugging the wall, skirting, petrified, around it, as far away from the silhouettes of the reptilian monsters as he could.