That meant that there must be some means of getting to the surface. Openings in the rock that would allow the snakes to crawl out of their home and feed on the fauna that inhabited the plateau. The air down here seemed to be fresh even after being sealed for centuries. Maybe one of those openings would be large enough for him to crawl through? It was worth exploring. He had no other hope of survival.
But first, he wanted to complete a task that had been on his mind all along. He hadn’t been able to do it while Van Klueck and his men had been around. He entered the room where he remembered one wall bore inscriptions and shone the searchlight on the carvings. They were strangely shaped inscriptions, unlike anything he had ever seen before. Holding the searchlight with one hand, he took out his smartphone and clicked a few photographs of the inscriptions before making his way back to the main chamber.
Now, to find his way out of this mess.
He picked up a shovel that lay on the floor, along with other spades, shovels and pickaxes that the men had carried here with them and left behind when they departed. It might come in useful.
There was only one problem. He would have to wade through the sea of snakes that stretched before him.
73
Nailbiting tension
‘They’re going to attack the choppers,’ Patterson announced. He was on a tele-link with Imran, who was still in his hospital bed but wired to the rest of the world through the equipment in his room.
Patterson had burned the telephone lines in Washington, reaching out to his network in the defence forces and Congress. He had gone all the way up to the President of the US. He had a team mate in the field and he wasn’t about to abandon him. It was not his way.
Finally, through diplomatic and defence channels, he had broken through to the Kazakh defence ministry and impressed up on them the urgency of the situation. However, Patterson was constrained by the fact that much of what he knew was classified information and could not be shared with a former Soviet state. It had been extremely difficult to convince the Kazakhs of the dire need to send combat troops or commandos to ground zero in the Ustyurt plateau. They had finally agreed to send a two chopper mission to reconnoitre the plateau and report back.
The entire operation was being monitored by the Kazakh air command and the video link was shared with Patterson and Imran.
They had watched as the cameras on board the Kazakh choppers had zoomed in on the two helicopters on the ground, clearly capturing the reactions of the men who had first speeded up the loading of their choppers, then abandoned the effort and taken flight.
Then, they looked on as one of the choppers on the ground took off and headed eastwards in an obvious attempt to flee the scene while the other one hovered, as if unable to make up its mind about what it wanted to do.
That was when Patterson realised that the chopper, an Agusta Westland AW139M, was planning to attack the oncoming helicopters. While the Agusta was fitted only with machine guns, if they were waiting to attack, then he was sure they were carrying rocket launchers on board.
The Kazakh air command had realised the same thing. Patterson and Imran could hear excited gibbering and commands being shouted out as people scrambled to warn their pilots and to take counter measures. They had not been expecting armed resistance. While no one really knew who these people were, they had not been expected to possess any kind of fire power. And the EC275 choppers were armed only with machine guns and a 20mm cannon.
Patterson and Imran watched in horror as the tell-tale muzzles of two rocket launchers appeared through one of the large sliding cabin doors of the AW139M.
Dogfight
The rocket launchers were fired but, warned by the air command, both Kazakh choppers had anticipated the attack and took quick evasive action. The projectiles soared through space and curved downwards directly towards the Three Brothers.
Van Klueck’s men were already reloading the rocket launchers when the rockets hit the rock formation midway up its slope and exploded just below the two larger peaks. The roar was deafening but the men in the Agusta chopper weren’t interested in what was happening below.
They were targeting the Kazakh helicopters.
They fired again.
A discovery
There seemed to be no boundaries to the cavern. The darkness stretched around him on all sides as Vijay continued to tiptoe around the snakes. He was reminded of a similar cavern from last year. Only that one hadn’t been populated by snakes.
He was worried. Until now, he had managed to sidestep, step over and evade snakes slithering past him. They had largely ignored him, except in a few cases where he had heard warning hisses as he passed by. How long would his luck hold out?
Flashing the searchlight around him, he wondered how far he had come. The darkness had cloaked the entrance to the cavern like a thick black curtain drawn across a window to block out sunlight. A more worrisome question arose in his mind. How long would his searchlight last?
But he had to keep going. He had no other choice. To stop now would be suicide.
Abruptly, the ground beneath shook, and a shudder ran through the cavern. From the invisible roof and walls of the cavern, a long moan issued forth.
He stopped and stood still. Something had happened. No, something was happening. The ground continued to tremble and the snakes had begun dispersing. They were slithering away from him, moving at speeds that he would not have thought them capable of.
It was like they were fleeing something. But what?
It dawned on him that if he followed the fleeing snakes, they might lead him to a means of escape. Unless whatever they were running away from caught up with him first.
He started after the snakes, even as they glided past him, between his legs, at his sides and sometimes even over his feet. They seemed oblivious to his presence and only intent on one thing — getting away.
Vijay continued moving forward. The snakes seemed to disappear into the darkness faster than he could follow them.
Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Not more than fifteen or twenty feet ahead, and to his right, were stone stairs. His hopes soared. He hurriedly moved forward, anxious to get to the stairs.
It was an ill-timed move. Two cobras were gliding by just as he stepped forward. One of them came under his foot and reared up hissing, ready to strike.
Vijay jumped back just as the snake struck, missing him by millimetres, but landed on a cobra which was languorously making its way in the same direction. The snake gathered its coils in preparation to strike.
Whether the fall broke something in the searchlight or the batteries chose that moment to run out of charge, Vijay would never know. The light died out and the cavern was flooded with darkness.
All around he could hear the slithering of the snakes. But he had no idea which direction the stone staircase lay.
74
Strike one
The second round of rockets fared no better than the first round. Once more, the Kazakh pilots were quick in their anticipation and managed to evade them.
Van Klueck was getting annoyed. ‘Damn it, have you guys gone cross-eyed?’ he admonished his gunners. ‘We can’t get out of here until we get them off our tail!’ He looked out towards the east where his second helicopter was rapidly diminishing in size.
One of the Kazakh choppers came straight at them now, machine guns blazing. Van Klueck knew what was coming next. Either the 20mm cannon or a 68mm rocket launcher, if the chopper had an axial pod fitted.
‘Now,’ he shouted.
One of the gunners took aim and fired the rocket launcher for the third time.
This time, it found its mark.
The chopper exploded in a ball of fire and plummeted towards the Three Brothers, striking the shortest peak and then tumbling down the slope, coming to rest on the plateau, a blazing wreck.
Trapped
For a few moments, Vijay stood still, unable to decide his next move. The slith
ering and scraping had become louder since the light died out. He didn’t know whether it was his heightened sense of hearing that was his body’s way of trying to compensate for the loss of vision, or whether the snakes were getting more perturbed. But it scared him. A wave of panic threatened to flood and overwhelm him.
He forced himself to think. He took a few steps forward and felt around in the darkness.
Nothing there.
He tried retracing his steps. That didn’t work either.
Vijay began to despair. When the stairway had come into view, he had thought he had a chance, however slim, of making it out of this place.
Suppressing the fear and terror that was rising within him, he tried to concentrate on the noise of the snakes around him. Could he make out in which direction they were heading?
Big brother
‘Missile warning!’ the chopper pilot called out. ‘Incoming! ECM initiated!’
‘The pinnacles!’ Van Klueck yelled. ‘Use the pinnacles! And then let’s get the hell out of here!’ He realised what had happened. The Kazakh air force must have been monitoring their helicopters. He hadn’t expected them to react so fast. They must have spotted his intention to attack the helicopters well in time. There was no other explanation for the speed with which they had been able to mobilise their fighter planes.
‘MiG 29s!’ his pilot called out as he took the chopper into a deep dive aiming to put the Three Brothers between them and the incoming air-to-air heat seeking missile. The Agusta had a Missile Approach Warning System, which had alerted the pilot to the missile. But the chopper also had a Counter Measures Dispensing System which used Electronic Counter Measures to throw the missile
off course.
Van Klueck saw the flares light up over the Three Brothers and realised that his pilot was taking no chances. In addition to the ECM, he was also deploying flare decoys and probably also special material expendable decoys that oxidise in air to produce an infrared signature that the missiles would home in on.
The chopper swooped in low, with the Three Brothers forming a protective cover, and gunned ahead at full throttle towards the east. The border with Uzbekistan was not far and the Kazakh jets would not undertake any aggressive manoeuvres near the border.
The mission was going to be a success.
Stairway to heaven
Vijay crouched low, his eyes shut to enhance the sense of being sightless, listening to the snakes. He tried to still his breathing so that it would not interfere with the sounds the reptiles were making as they continued their exodus.
Snakes slipped past him, some of them touching his feet as they went. He tried to combine his sense of touch and hearing to judge the direction he should take. After a few minutes he decided to move forward. He first slid one foot along the floor and then the next, so that he would not step on or trip over any snakes.
Another thought struck him. Where did the stairway lead to? He shook his head. He should have thought of this before. He looked upwards. Far above him, through the darkness, he saw a small bright point of light. An opening to the outside world.
His hopes restored, he painstakingly made his way forward, his arms outstretched and his eyes shut. Despite the overwhelming darkness, he had to fight his urge to open his eyes. It was an uncomfortable feeling.
Suddenly, his shovel, which was held outstretched before him, hit something hard. He moved quickly forward and his hands brushed against rock. He felt around in the darkness and made out the shape of one stair. Then another. He could have cried with joy. He had made it. But there was no time to celebrate. He had to get out of here. Whatever had spooked the snakes, it was not worth waiting to find out.
He put the shovel down, clambered onto the lowest stair and began working his way upwards. The shovel would have to be left behind. It was a dangerous climb. The stairs were carved into the rock and were not more than three feet in width. To his left was the wall of the cavern. On his right were empty space and a drop to the floor of the cavern. One slip was all it would take. He shuddered and clung to the rock wall on his left as he made his
way upwards.
It was a long climb and the stairway seemed to go on forever. Sweat drenched his clothes and his hands were raw from brushing blindly against the rock wall as he tried to find a grip to ensure he wouldn’t slip. His thighs were beginning to cramp from the long, slow climb. But he wasn’t going to give up.
Vijay now realised where he was. Inside one of the Three Brothers. This was a stairway carved within one of the huge pinnacles that rose from the sloping bedrock of the rock formation. Which one it was he couldn’t guess – it couldn’t be the shortest one since the entrance was below that one. But it didn’t really matter. He didn’t stop to think about what he would do when he reached the summit. He would tackle the problem of climbing down the rock when he reached there. For now, all he wanted was to be out of the darkness, out of this cave and in the open.
Slowly but surely, the opening above him grew bigger. And brighter. He redoubled his efforts and tried to increase his pace. He was close. Very close.
The light from the opening had begun to illuminate the staircase and he could see the dim shapes of each stair.
A surge of hope washed over him. There couldn’t be more than another forty or fifty feet to go. He was going to make it!
He hurried up the next few stairs.
Then, all hell seemed to break loose. The summit of the pinnacle above him exploded with a thunderous sound. Bright light suddenly shone down on the stairway and masses of rock rained down.
He held his hands over his head, trying to shield his face, abandoning the security of the wall as he tried to fend off the falling rocks, some of which were the size of footballs. Rocks pelted down, striking him on his hands, his chest, his legs, and rolled off the edge of the stairway and into the chasm.
Almost simultaneously, there was another explosion, this one more like the detonation of an explosive device. The tower of rock enclosing the stairway shuddered. Vijay staggered back under the assault of the rocks. A couple of large rocks hit him in the chest and hips, drawing blood. Intense pain shot through his thigh as another rock struck his leg.
He heard the roar of jet aircraft and the beat of helicopter rotors overhead. His right leg slipped off the stairway. Arms flailing, he tried to regain his balance. For a moment, he teetered on the stairway. He flung his arms at the rock wall in a desperate attempt to stay on the staircase.
Then, gravity took over and he was treading air as he toppled into the chasm.
75
Frustrated and foiled
Patterson and Imran watched the scene on their monitors. They had looked on, horrified, as the first helicopter was brought down. As the second helicopter took evasive action, they lost sight of the Agusta chopper. But, within seconds, they saw the missile streaking through the sky, heading eastward, its infrared homing device searching for the heat signature of the Agusta.
When the rocket launchers were spotted sticking out of the Agusta, the Kazakhs had scrambled a couple of MiG 29s to back up the helicopters.
Then, as the remaining Kazakh helicopter resurfaced, buoyed by the appearance of the Kazakh jets and the fact that the Agusta was on the run, they saw the Agusta fleeing eastward, leaving a trail of flares.
Patterson let fly a string of expletives. ‘The bloody idiots! They should have listened when I told them to send in troops backed by the airforce. These guys are well equipped. They’ve got ECM and dispensable decoys to counter the missiles.’
They watched as the missiles headed for the decoys. One of the missiles slammed into the centre pinnacle, pulverising the rock, sending debris flying down the slope. When it had passed, the pinnacle was a good fifty feet shorter than it had been earlier.
The second missile crashed into the rock formation at the base of the pinnacle, where it reared up from the bedrock, one hundred feet above the surface of the plateau.
The two men had to be content to be sile
nt observers as the Agusta made good its getaway. The roar of the jets was reassuring but couldn’t mask the fact that the enemy had escaped.
The jaws of death
As Vijay tumbled over the edge of the stairway, he grabbed desperately at the stairs with both hands. One hand got some purchase for a split second. Then it slipped off as he made another grab at the stone stairs.
This time, he managed to get a better hold with one hand and he wildly lunged with his other hand to get a grip on the rock.
But he knew this couldn’t last long. His fingers were raw and aching from the bruising climb up. His hip had a gash where the large rock had struck him and there was intense pain in his thigh.
He had only managed to postpone the inevitable for a few moments.
As if to reinforce his thoughts, the stairway shuddered and he heard a series of loud cracks.
Vijay looked down at the chasm below. Something was happening. The shuddering grew more violent and cracks began appearing in the staircase.
He now knew why the snakes had been fleeing the cavern. They were simply following what their sixth sense told them. All animals possessed the unique ability, not shared by humans, to sense disaster. And the snakes had known what he hadn’t at that time.
The pinnacle was collapsing.
The Two Brothers
The helicopter pilot made a pass over the rock. He had been instructed to search for a member of the task force who had been a prisoner of the group that had shot down his comrade. Even though it was highly possible that the man he had been sent to rescue was still held captive in one of the two helicopters which had got away, he decided to sweep the area. Just in case.
But there was nothing to be seen, apart from the plumes of black smoke rising to the sky from the wreckage of the downed Kazakh chopper and the missile that had crashed into the pinnacle.
It was futile. The man was either dead. Or gone. Either way, his mission was unsuccessful. And he had lost two comrades. They had been good men.
THE MAHABHARATA QUEST:THE ALEXANDER SECRET Page 28