by Rob Jones
His comment was met with a sharp smack in his stomach by the butt of Luk’s rifle. Hawke fell to the floor in agony while Sheng laughed in the deep silence of the cave.
“Through that hole in the rock is the final trial – the Test of Metal.”
Lea turned to Han. “What’s that?”
“I do not know,” Han said. “But he will have to use all his skills now. The final trial must surely be the greatest of all.”
Sheng smirked as Luk dragged Hawke to his feet. “After you, please, Mr Hawke.”
*
Scarlet and Sergeant Yakamoto led the way as the team jogged into the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line. The bridge-tunnel combo that stretched across the bay in the heart of the city had taken nearly a decade to build and formed a link between the two prefectures of Kawasaki and Kisarazu.
Slowly they gained ground and found themselves approaching the central point of the construction, an artificial island the Japanese named umihotaru, or the firefly. They were now entering a section full of shops and restaurants. Scarlet followed Yakamoto down a glittering escalator and into a lower level which opened out into a broad plaza lined with more stores selling books and snack foods.
People milled around browsing through magazines while others sipped tea or ordered fast food from the many restaurants. Scarlet looked at them and thought only that if they failed in their bid to stop the Lotus, these people would be the first victims of the genocide Sheng had planned for their city.
And it wouldn’t stop there. Relations between Japan and China had been worsening for decades, and she doubted Japanese public opinion would tolerate such an attack made by one of China’s most visible billionaires.
Yakamoto spoke into his headset in rapid Japanese and then led them down a narrow corridor behind a salad bar. Moments later they were facing a fire escape which the hefty sergeant opened by unceremoniously kicking the panic bar with his Army issue steel toecap boot.
They were now in a staff-only zone, and walking along another narrow corridor toward a series of stainless steel steps which led down to a longer service corridor.
Without any warning, they heard a tremendous roar of gunfire and looked ahead to see the tell-tale muzzle flash of automatic weapons emanating from a door on the side of the service tunnel.
“Looks like our welcoming committee,” Scarlet said. “Everybody down!”
They took cover and gradually moved forward using the giant concrete support pillars as protection against the bullets tracing along the tunnel. They reached the service door and Karlsson kicked it down with a savage, no-nonsense blow and before the door had even smacked against the inside wall he unleashed an unambiguously ferocious burst of gunfire, peppering the space with hundreds of bullets in just a few short seconds, screaming the whole time he was firing the weapon.
Scarlet rolled her eyes as the enormous cloud of concrete dust settled around them. “Is that really necessary, Bradley?
Karlsson released the trigger. “Is what really necessary?”
“All that dreadful screaming? It’s frightfully bad form, and so very American of you.”
“In the same way that being such a cold-hearted ice bitch is so very British of you, you mean?”
“Ouch,” Ryan said, taking his fingers out of his hears. “But she does make a point about the screaming.”
“No need to leap to my defense, boy. I think Mr Karlsson and I are going to have a beautiful future together.”
“You do?” Karlsson said, beaming.
“Sure, don’t you?”
He shrugged his giant bear shoulders and ran a chunky hand over his shaved head. “If you say so, baby. If you say so.”
Inside they ran along another corridor and down a series of steps – heading all the time toward the sound of some kind of hammering and then a drilling noise. After another minute they reached a service hatch which they climbed down inside and then found themselves inside the belly of the beast – here, the main support columns for the entire structure were exposed, and at the far end they saw the Lotus and her lackeys fixing what looked like a giant car-jack at the base of one of the columns.
“What the fuck?” Karlsson said.
“They’re drilling into the bedrock,” said Ryan. “They won’t need to go far though if what McShain told us about the device is anything to go by. We need to act fast.”
His words were cut off by the sound of hysterical shouting and screaming. The Lotus had seen them and was ordering her men forward to attack. Half a dozen of them took up defensive positions while another three moved forward, firing short bursts from their submachine guns as they crab-walked closer to Scarlet’s team.
“Take cover!” Scarlet shouted, and they leaped behind the columns. A savage firefight ensued as both sides fought for supremacy of the tunnel. Scarlet looked down to see the men finish their work on the device as the other goons kept them pinned down. The Lotus strutted forward and pushed some buttons on the top panel, then smiled and ordered her men to kill everyone in sight.
“Why are they fighting so hard?” Ryan asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Because we’re blocking the only way out,” Karlsson said. “Those assholes can’t get out of here until we’re all dead, and now the timer’s running on their personal little Domesday machine down there the pressure’s really on. I’m guessing that chopper up there with the cute little rope ladder is waiting for them, but we’re not going to let that happen, right?”
The battle raged for another five minutes until Scarlet’s team finally overcame them and broke through their defenses. They advanced on the Lotus and her inner guard who were now retreating to a recess at the back of the complex.
“Ryan!” screamed Scarlet. “Get that fucking thing switched off or your balls are mine, and not in a good way.”
Ryan scuttled forward, Sophie covering him with her pistol. Ahead of them, Scarlet and Bradley Karlsson raged forwards toward the Lotus and her surviving minions.
Ryan hunched over the device, struggling to take in all the information in such a short time. He looked at the countdown panel.
Ninety seconds.
“Umm...”
Eighty seconds.
“If I recall correctly, the wiring on this was... no – hang on. I'm remembering something else.”
“Bloody hell, stop being Ryan for a second!” Scarlet screamed, and fired off another three rounds of her pistol.
Seventy seconds.
Sixty seconds.
“Oh, dear...”
Fifty seconds.
“Ah – I remember... if I take this red wire and disconnect it, according to McShain all I need to do then is take out the green one and splice them together. Or was it the blue one?”
Forty seconds.
Then, in the heat of the battle Sophie looked up to see one of the men aiming his pistol directly at Ryan’s head. She screamed, and launched herself forward, flying through the air and firing retaliatory shots at the man at the same time.
The man fired.
She fired back – muzzle flash, smoke, bullet released.
She passed in between Ryan and the man and took the bullet through her throat.
She collapsed in a heap beside Ryan, hanging over a low concrete barricade like a rag doll.
Her bullet then struck the man in the forehead and killed him instantly.
Ryan was totally shell-shocked. He looked at Sophie, saw the blood pouring from her neck down the cold concrete.
“Is she all right?” he screamed.
“The device, Ryan!” Scarlet screamed, her SAS training kicking in hard now, ruthless, mercenary. “Turn the fucking device off. We’ll check Soph in a minute.”
Thirty seconds.
Ryan’s world seemed to slow down. He looked at Sophie and knew in his heart she was gone. He turned to Scarlet. She was now fighting the Lotus in hand to hand combat. Kung Fu versus Krav Maga. The Lotus planted a solid kick in Scarlet’s sternum and sent her flying back, breathl
ess.
Scarlet regained her balance and spun around to land a perfectly timed and devastating spinning heel kick in the Lotus’s face, smashing her nose and cutting a deep scar into her cheek with the heel of her boot. The Lotus staggered backwards but kept her balance. Scarlet saw she was searching for her knife but gave no quarter.
Scarlet snatched up a pistol and fired four shots at the Lotus’s head. She was so pumped she carried on squeezing the trigger long after the bullets had run out and the sound of the dry-firing filled the cavernous space for several seconds afterwards as the hammer struck down on the empty chamber, click, click, click, click. They were all dead now, and she, Bradley and Ryan would be joining them along with the entire population of Tokyo if Ryan Bale didn't work fast.
Twenty seconds.
“As soon as you can, Ryan,” Karlsson said, a heavy hand on his shoulder. Ryan’s eyes crawled all over the place, from the whirring numbers on the Tesla device, counting down to the destruction of the city above, to the terrible sight of Sophie’s body, flopped lifeless over the concrete retaining wall where she had fallen moments earlier, killed trying to save his life.
“I can’t do it!” he mumbled. ”I just can't do it any more... not now – not with Sophie gone like this.” His lower lip began to tremble and Scarlet was concerned he was about to fall apart.
“Listen, Ryan. The lives of twenty million people, and more importantly my life, are all in your hands right now, you got that?”
Ten seconds.
Ryan stripped the green wire...
Five seconds.
...and spliced it into the red wire he had previously disconnected...
Two seconds.
And silence.
Scarlet looked at the counter. Two seconds remaining.
“Pussy,” Karlsson said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hairy hand. “James Bond always waited until one second.”
But Ryan didn't hear any words. He was staring at the lifeless body of Sophie Durand, and choking back the tears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Hawke was now face to face with Sheng Fang for the second time since all this began, and as far as he was concerned that was two times too many.
Before anyone had a chance to think, Sheng told Luk to order the men forward, and they proceeded toward the next chamber. Ahead of them lay the final of Qin’s lethal challenges – the trial of metal.
Amid a serene sense of triumph, Sheng turned the final bend in the tunnel and saw with horror an enormous shining lake stretching out before him. The glare of the glow-sticks reflected brightly in the surface of the water as he ordered two men to move forward to the lake’s shore and report their findings.
The men nervously descended toward the water and Sheng watched with interest as they stooped to investigate. Moments later both men collapsed into the lake, dead. Luk glanced anxiously at Sheng and mumbled something about the curse of the tomb and a burning sky, but Sheng was undeterred.
He called two more men forward and ordered them down to the water to investigate further and collect the bodies. They looked at the corpses on the shore in the cavern below and objected, so Sheng had Luk shoot one of them. Their lives meant nothing to him, so long as they were able to help him achieve his destiny and fulfill the prophecy. Any man who refused to obey his orders was of no use.
The second man looked at the body of his dead colleague and swallowed hard. He was left with no choice but to make his way down to the shore and report back to his leader.
At the shore, he too began to swoon, and then he fell with a syrupy splash into the water. Luk turned to Sheng and spoke next: “It’s not water. It’s mercury. This is the test of metal.”
Sheng’s mind began to whir. Mercury was lethal, both to touch or to breathe, and the evidence of that was the three corpses on the shore a few hundred yards below him. He smiled in appreciation of Qin and his sadistic ingenuity when constructing the defenses of the tomb. He ordered Luk to confirm it was mercury and watched him make his way down to the lake.
All of this only strengthened his belief that the map must be hidden in the tomb – why else would the emperor go to such extraordinary and lethal lengths to protect the place? Now, he watched Luk trudge back up the path, holding a black cloth up to his mouth and nose.
“And?”
Luk removed the cloth. “Definitely mercury, and the men are terrified of going any further. They don’t want to end up like those three.” He flicked his hand behind himself for a moment in a dismissive and casual gesture to indicate the three dead men. “And to be honest, I can’t blame them. I’ve looked around and I can see no way across the lake at all.”
“Wrong – there is a way, look.” Sheng pointed at the far end of the cavern where a ledge of natural rock stuck out over the lake of shimmering mercury. On the far side of the cavern opposite it was another rock ledge, but much smaller. Once, a long time ago, a natural rock bridge must have connected the two sides.
“No man can jump that,” Luk said. “It must be twenty-five feet.”
Sheng nodded appreciatively at the distance and snapped his fingers. Two goons dragged Hawke over to him.
“What do you think, Mr Hawke? Twenty-five feet like my man here says, or perhaps even wider?”
“No,” Hawke said firmly. “I’d say your pet monkey has a good eye for distances.”
Luk moved forward aggressively, but Sheng stopped him with a raised hand and a few short words barked in Cantonese. Luk obeyed immediately and returned to his place behind Sheng.
“Always with the jokes. Perhaps a little mercury vapor will make you more serious. You will jump that gap and take with you a length of rope in order that we may all cross. If you miss and fall in the mercury, I will kill your three friends here by making them go for a swim in this delightful little lake, understand?”
Hawke nodded grimly and approached the ledge. Thanks to his parkour he knew Luk had been right in his estimation of twenty-five feet, the only problem was that his personal record at a running jump in parkour was twenty-three feet. He knew that two feet didn’t sound like much, but he also knew from his parkour how long two feet was if it was two feet further than you could jump.
Sheng pushed the gun into Lea’s neck. “Now, Mr Hawke.”
Hawke took a deep breath and then a long running jump, and leaped into the air using everything his parkour training could give. For a few seconds, he was mid-air, sailing above the terrifying mercury lake like a wingless bird. Now was too late to reconsider his actions – if he had misjudged the width of the gap he faced a desperate and toxic death.
He landed with a savage crunch in the loose gravel that was strewn over the far ledge. With no small measure of relief, he dusted himself down and returned his gaze to the others standing on the other side. Lea looked so small, standing in between Sheng’s goons.
“And now the rope, Mr Hawke,” Sheng said “Throw it back, if you please.” He raised his gun to Lea’s temple. She closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath.
He knew had no choice but to follow Sheng’s instructions. He secured the rope around one of the boulders on his side of the cave and tossed the other end back to Luk, who caught it in one hand and then lashed it around a boulder on their side. Moments later, Luk led the way by traversing the taut rope with what Hawke silently acknowledged was a pretty impressive commando rope crawl. Han, and Reaper followed, and then Lea. Hawke watched anxiously as she crawled along the rope, slipping only once, but it was a heart-stopping moment for the Englishman.
Sheng and the last of his goons followed up the rear, and then they were on their way again. Hawke and the others were forced to go in front of Sheng at gunpoint in case there were any other nasty little surprises in the emperor’s tomb.
They walked for several minutes until they finally reached an impressive arch carved out of the stone with Chinese dragons carved into each supporting column either side of it.
Sheng gasped when he saw the
m. “We are here! Behold the dragon – the symbol of the Thunder God. We have finally reached the real tomb, the sacred inner sanctum of the great Emperor Qin himself, and final resting place of the Map of Immortality, kept hidden from mankind until now and it’s all mine!”
“So, do we get the runner-up prize or what” Hawke said.
“Silence!” screamed Sheng, and Luk punched him to the ground. Reaper darted forward in his defense but he too was struck down by two of the men who had been holding him. “Any more heroics and Luk will start shooting people, understand?”
Hawke clambered to his feet, followed a second later by Reaper.
“It was only a question, Sheng...” Hawke mumbled.
“Wrong. It was an impertinent question, asked by a mortal man to a God.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Through the small arch was their final destination – a tomb of exquisite beauty carved out of the bedrock. All around them, more terracotta statues watched them in perfect silence, their faces dusty from thousands of years of relentless duty to their emperor, and in the center was the man himself – an enormous, intricate tomb of carved stone jutting out of the stone floor.
It loomed fifty feet high, and at its apex was a bridge that connected it to a ledge running high around the top of the cavern. Around its four sides was a series of stone steps carved into the edge of the tomb. At the base was a deep pit, its bottom lurking somewhere below in the darkness, and all around the outside of the tomb hundreds of tiny holes were drilled into the cave walls.
Sheng gasped. High on the upper ledge was the real sarcophagus of the Emperor Qin. They had come face to face with the real man after all this time. The stone face on the sarcophagus was silent, passive, imperious. Mocking.
Sheng pushed the others aside and raced up the steps toward the sarcophagus.
“I am the Thunder God!” Sheng screamed insanely. “This power is my destiny!”
Sheng would soon hold the map in his hands, the first mortal man to do so for thousands of years. Where Hugo Zaugg had failed, Sheng Fang had succeeded and in the most stark of ways. “This is my divine fate! It is my divine destiny to live forever and now I have the map that will lead me to the destiny of the gods.”