Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  Nadia watched the six men break into two teams of three, one moving to the tent’s front entrance, one to the back. The flaps were roughly shoved aside and three soldiers stormed through the front entrance. The two women moved as quickly as their weakened states would allow, leaping up from the ground, leaving behind the bonds which they had cut earlier. Raphael del Vega led the ‘charge’ at the soldiers coming in through the rear entrance.

  Panic erupted as a thunderstorm of bullets echoed across the tepui.

  But instead of the slaughter of innocent scientists, the soldiers’ bodies were all pummelled by hundreds of bullets, shredding all six men apart.

  Caught mid-lunge, Nadia watched as eight black-clad commandoes tore into the tent, P-90 assault rifles raised.

  “Yay,” she said ironically, her heavy Russian accent dripping with sarcasm. “The Americans have arrived.”

  As though hearing her comment and focussing on her accent, the leader of the newcomers pushed through the scramble of panicked scientists and over the bloodied hulks of Chinese and homed in on her.

  “Where is the mask?” he demanded.

  Dressed head-to-toe in black, from their heavy combat boots, trousers, Kevlar breast plates and sleek black helmets, the face plates of which reflected back Nadia’s own image, the commandoes looked more like futuristic Knights of the Round Table than U.S. Special Forces.

  Without preamble, he pointed his weapon squarely at her chest. “The mask was taken into an underwater tunnel,” he said. “Tell me how to get to it.”

  Nadia’s face betrayed nothing. Whoever these people were, she realised, they weren’t American soldiers, and they certainly weren’t here to save the day.

  “What mask?” she asked innocently.

  The butt of the man’s rifle slammed against the side of her skull, dropping her in an agonising explosion of stars.

  Sid gasped and rushed to her side but one of the other soldiers made a show of hefting his rifle at her, halting her in her tracks.

  “We are not the United States Special Forces,” the man said, as though reading her thoughts. He jammed the hot muzzle of his gun right against the Russian woman’s head, pinning her painfully to the ground. “And I have no qualms about putting a bullet in your skull. There are plenty of other people here to interrogate.”

  Nadia’s vision blurred. Her eyes rolled.

  “Now,” the leader said, kneeling down beside her. “Where is the mask?”

  Airborne over Venezuela

  The two United States Black Hawk helicopters hung low to the canopy of treetops. In its hold, Laurence Gibbs frowned at the satellite telemetry he was receiving, bounced down to his durable military grade tablet computer from a CIA satellite orbiting high above the earth.

  The thirty-second time-lag updated itself, a fresh screen pixilating into existence. Fires still smouldered on the summit of the table-top mountain, spewing out smoke, but even through the heavy rain clouds, Gibbs could make out the dots of armed men killing other armed men. Whatever was happening on the mountain, there was more than one enemy to contend with.

  “What the hell is going on down there?” O’Rourke, his second in command, asked, peering at his C.O.’s data screen.

  “I don’t know,” Gibbs replied, scrambling to his feet and shuffling towards the cockpit to peer out the windshield. The storm lashed the helicopter, sheets of rain driving into them.

  He grasped the pilot, David Sykes, on the shoulder and called through his helmet’s radio. “We have to cut down our ETA! We need to get there. Now!”

  The Labyrinth,

  Sarisariñama Tepui,

  Venezuela,

  Benjamin King burst up from beneath the pool of water, thrashing about in the total blackness. He kicked to keep his head above the surface, fear of what might be beneath him gripping his heart and turning it to ice.

  It seemed like he had been consumed by darkness for hours, running through corridors, diving through submerged tunnels, never being able to see his surroundings, never knowing what was coming next: crocodiles, giant snakes and thundering waterfalls.

  He hadn’t seen the approach to the waterfall, only felt the sudden ferocious tug of the current, the stomach lurching moment as he past the point of no return and plunged into oblivion, hitting another body of water beneath, but how far beneath he didn’t know. It had felt like he had been falling for an eternity, his stomach jumping into his throat. For all he knew a bed of jagged rocks could have been waiting for his bloody touch down.

  He had survived the fall and struggled to the surface against the pounding torrents cascading from above. Nevertheless, death could still be seconds away.

  “Nate!” he called out as loudly as he could but his voice was lost to the roar of the falls. He felt the current, though far more gentle now, guiding him away from the waterfall. “Nate, where are you!?”

  What if he didn’t survive? What if I’m down here on my own?

  Claustrophobia pressed in. Panic swept over him. He thrashed in the water and began to swim aimlessly away from the noise of the falls. After only a few strokes, his outstretched hand hit rock and he hauled himself out of the water. His body trembled uncontrollably, both from fear and the biting cold which pressed against his soaked clothing.

  Forcing his breathing under control, his heart rate began to settle. The noise from the falls was still deafening, all encompassing, echoing all around. The cavern he had been deposited in must have been huge, he deduced.

  Suddenly remembering the Moon Mask, he hurriedly checked it was still safely secured in the women’s handbag he had wrapped across his shoulders. He felt the hard contours of metal through the pink fabric.

  A pinprick of yellow light suddenly erupted in the darkness across the other side of the underground reservoir, illuminating the shallow blur of an ethereal figure.

  “Benny!”

  King felt his breath release in relief.

  “Nate!” he called back. “I’m over here!”

  After several seconds of searching, the torch beam finally settled on him, its brightness blinding.

  “Stay where you are,” Raine told him. “I’ll come to you.”

  It took several minutes for Raine’s distant figure to navigate through the darkness. He splashed into the lake at the foot of the waterfall and swam in several powerful strokes to King’s side. The archaeologist helped to haul him onto dry land.

  Behind him, something splashed into the water and Raine spun, aiming the torch at the silhouetted shape of a crocodile diving down. He played the beam of light across the pool to the waterfall and illuminated a zigzagging ledge leading down from above. Several enormous crocodiles waddled ungainly down it.

  “We better get away from the water’s edge,” Raine warned, leading King back.

  “Where are the goggles?” he asked.

  “Lost them when we went over the falls,” he replied, turning to aim the torch away from the cascade. “Any idea where we are?”

  “No,” King admitted, then he grasped Raine’s arm and directed the light down the edge of the pool. Branching off of it was another channel of water, the source of the current he had felt, but it didn’t meander its way naturally through the cave. Instead, it was directed in a straight line by an artificial aqueduct composed of interconnected blocks, sitting together perfectly like the pieces of a jigsaw.

  “Its manmade,” he gasped.

  “Yeah, so was that giant water-slide we just came down.”

  “What?”

  Raine explained how he had noticed through the night vision goggles how the underwater tunnels had all been constructed in the same manner as the rest of the Labyrinth.

  “It’s a water supply,” King speculated. He frowned in the darkness. “The whole network of tunnels was built to direct rain water from the summit, underground. But why would someone go to the trouble of building such an elaborate system of water pipes? Other than the chamber where we found
the mask, which I’m guessing was originally a shrine to bless the water – hence the niche for a deity carving – we’ve found no evidence of any habitation. No temples, no store houses, no residences . . . unless . . .”

  He snatched the torch out of Raine’s hand and scanned it across the path before them. The ground, as expected, was a jig-saw puzzle of varying sized blocks, but as he brought the torch up, the beam hit one single, giant slab of stone.

  He instantly had a flash back to the time he had spent with his father in the ruins of Tiahuanaco on the shores of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. He had spent hours as a young man staring up at the enormous Gateway of the Sun, a giant doorway constructed out of a single piece of andesite. The image of the Staff Deity, a composite male/female entity portrayed holding a staff in either hand, had transfixed his father’s attention for a time, seeking links to Viracocha, the supreme, bearded god of the Andes.

  Now, he stood, staring in amazement at an almost identical looking gateway, only this one even larger.

  The doorway in the centre was easily twelve feet high and spanned the width of the aqueduct, leaving a narrow path on either side. Attached to the outer edges of the gateway were enormous walls. Their construction was, once again, Andean in style, the familiar jig-saw pattern easily identifiable. Only, the blocks of stone here were enormous, several towering above the two men as they tentatively approached.

  The wall reminded King of another Andean ruin, this time the fortress of Sacsahuaman on the outskirts of Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital in Peru. There, several blocks had been estimated to weigh in excess of one hundred tons and King could easily believe that what he saw now was comparable.

  But it wasn’t just the incredible structure itself that had captured King’s attention, nor even the promise of what the immense wall protected.

  “This is incredible,” he whispered, stepping closer. “The design is Andean, and the Staff Deity is almost identical to Chavin depictions. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say we had stumbled onto an ancient outpost of one of the Incas ancestors.”

  Raine glanced at the wall, only half interested. “That’s great.”

  “But it’s wrong,” King cut him off.

  “What do you mean?”

  He moved the light slightly to the left of the carving of the Staff Deity. More carved shapes came into focus, smaller but no less detailed.

  “These are hieroglyphs.”

  “Great,” Raine shrugged.

  “But the Incas and their ancestors never developed writing.” He stepped closer to the gateway. “These are Mayan hieroglyphs. But, what is undeniably Mesoamerican writing doing on an equally undeniably Andean structure?”

  “Beats me,” Raine shrugged. “What does it say?”

  King translated the ancient text easily. He felt an icy hand clutch his heart. Squeeze tight.

  “Roughly translated into terms someone like you would appreciate,” he replied, “it says, Welcome to Xibalba.”

  Raine shrugged and started forward. “Thanks.”

  King halted him with an outstretched arm. “Xibalba literally translates into ‘Place of Fear’.” Raine glanced at him. King elaborated. “The Mayan Hell,” he said.

  Raine’s features crinkled into a less-than-pleased frown. “Well that sounds just peachy,” he complained.

  At that moment, a bullet screamed past King’s ear and struck the ground, spitting up sparks. He dropped to his knees as more bullets spewed out of hidden locations, somewhere near the waterfall.

  “Turn off the damn light!” Raine spat at him. King fumbled with the switch, plunging them once again into total darkness. But the blackness wouldn’t protect them for long, he knew. With NVGs, the Chinese soldiers would find them again in seconds.

  “All things considered, Benny,” Raine said, grasping his arm and dragging him towards the colossal gate. “I’m going to take my chances in Hell!”

  14:

  Xibalba

  Xibalba,

  Sarisariñama Tepui,

  Venezuela,

  Bullets strafed the ancient walls as Raine and King darted through the darkness. They swung around the side of the gate and skidded to a halt just inside the entrance.

  “What are you doing?” King asked when Raine held him back from venturing further into the ancient ruins. “We’ve got to keep going?”

  “The moment you switch that torch back on, they’ll see us. And I, for one, don’t plan on spending eternity running around aimlessly in the dark in some Inca hell.”

  “Mayan,” King felt the need to correct him. Luckily, he couldn’t see the fierce glare Raine shot him through the blackness. “Okay, so how do we get out of here?”

  “Same way as the crocs,” Raine replied. Crocodiles weren’t nocturnal animals. They basked in sunlight for hours, their bodies needing the warmth it provided. Their reptilian hosts didn’t spend all day inside the hollowed out interior of a mountain, Raine knew. For such a large colony to have developed and survived, they had to have access to the outside world.

  “How are we going to-?”

  “Shut up,” Raine snapped at him. He knew it was part of an academic’s nature to question everything, but in a fire-fight it was damned annoying. Right now, he missed the discipline of well-trained soldiers watching his back.

  The firing had stopped and a painful silence had descended upon the two men. All of Raine’s senses were on alert, ultra-sensitive. King’s breathing seemed impossibly loud in his ears as he strained to listen for the soldiers’ approach. He focussed past the beating of his own heart, the dripping of moisture and the roar of the distant falls-

  There!

  The crunch of earth beneath a boot. Quiet, almost silent. But definitely there.

  It came again, one stealthy footstep followed by another, cautiously approaching the gate; ten feet away, nine.

  He wished he hadn’t lost the night vision goggles in his tumble over the waterfall. At least they would have evened the odds a little. Instead, right now, one heavily armed predator that could see in the dark stalked its totally blind prey.

  Feeling with his hands, he reached down and silently took the torch from King while gently tugging him down into a crouch. The archaeologist didn’t resist and, whether or not he had heard the soldier’s approach, he knew enough not to say a word.

  Raine took hold of the torch’s shaft, repositioning it in his palm while in his head he pictured the soldier’s position, listening to the sounds of his footfalls.

  Crunch.

  He was right on the other side of the gateway now. Raine could picture him slowly creeping along the narrow path between the gate and the water’s edge, rifle held before him, NVGs casting a green pall about his surroundings. Even the most highly trained, highly disciplined soldier would be anxious now, not knowing what or who was lying in wait.

  The soldier paused for just a fraction of a second, gathering his nerve, and then Raine sensed rather than saw the man swing around the gatepost, rifle scanning the space just above his and King’s heads.

  Nathan Raine however, even though totally blind, never hesitated.

  Like a striking viper, he jumped to his feet, one arm knocking the soldier’s rifle to the side while his finger thumbed the torch’s ON switch. The beam of light flared in the soldier’s goggles, overloading them and searing his eyes. Raine knew how painful the sudden overload of light through NVGs could be and he took full advantage of the disorientation he knew the soldier now felt. His fist slammed into his belly, doubling him over. Then he brought the base of the torch down against his exposed neck, shattering vertebrae and dropping the man to the ground.

  “Raine?” King asked quietly, uncertain of who had won the fight.

  “Shut up,” Raine snapped as he quickly removed the downed soldier’s goggles. The underground ruins came to life around him but he forced his mind not to be distracted by the overwhelming enormity of what he saw.

  This would g
ive Benny an orgasm, he thought. Too bad he can’t see it.

  Taking hold of the soldier’s QBZ-95 assault rifle, he did a quick sweep of the surrounding area. It was clear, for the moment.

  He expertly relieved the corpse of his equipment, pulling on the black tactical vest which he had worn over his NBC suit. He checked the equipment: a knife, three grenades, to replace those he had lost during his tumble over the falls, a wad of C4 plastic explosive, extra ammo clips for the rifle and a Norinco M-77B handgun.

  “Here,” he handed King the Norinco and the torch but told him not to use either unless he really had to. “Follow me.”

  Raine led the way through the ruins, rifle held at the ready. King kept hold of the back of his shirt so as not to get lost in the maze of ruined buildings which grew denser the further they ventured from the Gateway- the deeper they ventured into Xibalba.

  The ghostly green glow of the goggles cast the ruins in an eerie aura. Crumbled walls and fallen statues of grotesquely depicted creatures, half man, half beast, lay scattered all about him, littering the narrow passageways between rows of terraced buildings. The stonework was covered in layers of moss and hardy vines which he presumed needed little, even no sunlight to survive. The spongy green coating gave the ruins an almost magical feel, as though they could be home to fairies or pixies.

  Hell’s not so bad after all, he thought.

  He came to a dead-end, turned a corner and peered down a long avenue lined with human skulls.

  Shut up, Nate!

  Most of the skulls were still hugged tightly within the rough mortar the ancients had used to affix them to the walls, but many had fallen to the ground and smashed, shattered craniums and hollow eye sockets peering up at him accusingly.

  His eyes panned up the wall, registering its enormous height. Twelve feet, he guessed. The same as the gateway. But this was no city wall, but an avenue which would only take them deeper into the metropolis.