The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel

by Matthew Reilly

  ‘Genghis Khan. . . ’ Lily whispered.

  Awe gripped them. This was Genghis, the great Khan, arguably the greatest military commander in history. For a moment his remains, lying there in perfect repose, held them completely transfixed.

  Jack’s eyes fell upon the shield resting on the skeleton’s chest.

  Unlike most Mongolian shields, which were circular, this one was pentagonal and constructed of iron. Moulded into the iron were some beautifully crafted raised images, all of which had been painted over in lustrous gold and silver:

  Jack recognised two of the images instantly, the two at the very bottom of the shield: the pyramid-shaped hills in the desert at Abu Simbel and Table Mountain in Cape Town.

  The locations of the First and Second Vertices.

  But this shield had six images on it.

  It showed the entrances to all six Vertices.

  ‘Genghis had the images on the Egg carved onto his shield . . . ’ Jack said, realising.

  He reached down and took the pentagonal shield from the skeleton. ‘He won’t be needing it anymore, and as a guy who always had a plan of retreat, he also might have provided us with a way out of here.’

  Jack then gently pulled the skeleton of Genghis Khan off its slab, to reveal something beneath it: a round pipe-like shaft that appeared to bore right through the slab and into the floor beneath it.

  The shaft, however, was filled with densely-packed rubble right up to the rim.

  ‘This place was a fortress before it became a tomb,’ Jack said, ‘a fortress designed specifically for use in a siege. So it would have had escape tunnels built into it, like this one. I imagine when Genghis had this place converted into his future tomb, he ordered all the tunnels to be sealed up, filled with rubble. This shaft was once an escape tunnel. And now it’s going to be ours.’

  ‘Jack,’ Zoe said, ‘we’re about to be invaded by half the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. How can we possibly excavate all that rubble before they arrive?’

  Jack stood, a fire in his eyes once again.

  He moved to the doorway of the Arsenal and spotted Wolf’s jackhammers over by the entrance to the cave.

  ‘I’ll defend this castle,’ he said, ‘and while I do that, I’m going to send Sky Monster down here to help you excavate that escape tunnel.’

  Jack raced out of the Arsenal and up through the shaft system until he arrived at the summit of the tower and to his surprise burst out into cold daylight.

  With its false roof blasted away, the cast-iron citadel atop the tower was now exposed to the elements. A chill wind blew, snow fell, the sky was a glaring grey.

  From his position atop the citadel, Jack beheld the angry Chinese army surrounding the crater. He saw over a thousand troops, many tanks, three howitzers. In this age of aerial warfare, it was an awesome amount of force to bring to bear on one location.

  Jack came alongside Sky Monster, gazing out at the frightening sight.

  ‘This is a whole new world of bad,’ Sky Monster said.

  ‘You can say that again,’ Jack agreed. ‘We’re lucky it’s too cold for an aerial assault.’

  ‘So what’s the plan, fearless leader?’

  ‘You go below and help Zoe dig out an ancient tunnel which will hopefully open a back door for us while I stay up here and hold off these guys.’

  ‘How are you going to do that? One man against a thousand?’

  Jack said, ‘Monster, this place was designed for siege warfare. It can’t hold them out forever, not with their modern weapons, hut hopefully it can hold them out just long enough for us to dig out that tunnel and get away. Now, go downstairs and help Zoe.’

  ***

  As Sky Monster headed below, Jack hustled around the battlements on the topmost level of the citadel.

  Fizz-ping!

  Bullets started whizzing past him, pinging off the cast-iron crenellations. Jack looked down to see some Chinese infantrymen standing at the rim of the crater, firing their crude Type-56s as if they were sniper rifles.

  Jack came to a trebuchet at one corner of the citadel’s roof. Four corners, four iron trebuchets. On the citadel’s lower level, there were four more.

  A trebuchet is like a catapult, only with greater range, thanks to its heavy counterweight and to the hammock-like sling that flings its ordnance.

  Behind each corner-mounted trebuchet, Jack found a cast-iron ordnance dome inside each of which was a clever system of ramps, levers and stacked-up projectiles: huge round boulders, clusters of smaller iron cannonballs that were loosely pasted together, and even some iron balls surrounded by a wooden latticework filled with kindling.

  Jack pulled on a lever, and one of the 700-year-old cannonball- clusters rumbled down a ramp and plonked into the trebuchet’s waiting sling.

  ‘Nice. . . ’ he nodded.

  Suddenly, three thunderous artillery shots rang out in the valley. Jack dived inside the ordnance dome as the modern shells impacted against the cast-iron citadel and exploded.

  Fireclouds erupted all over the citadel. A wave of superheated air rushed around Jack’s little dome. But the citadel took the blows like an anvil being hit by a hammer. When the smoke cleared, the squat black fortress was, impressively, completely undamaged.

  Jack leapt into action, turning cogwheels and pulling levers—actions that simultaneously readied his trebuchet and turned it on its base so that it was aimed at the nearest Chinese artillery unit.

  Jack grabbed the launch lever. ‘Okay, Genghis, you old son of a bitch. Let’s see if you were as good as they say you were.’

  He yanked on the lever.

  To his amazement, the ancient trebuchet worked. It groaned loudly as its sling swung through and flung its load. The tightly hound cluster of cannonballs soared through the thin Mongolian air . . . missing the artillery unit Jack had been aiming for by a full twenty metres . . . only to smash down on a Chinese tank, denting it, at which point the cluster broke apart, sending 100-kilogram iron cannonballs spraying out in every direction.

  Men dived for cover. A jeep was hit and knocked completely over. Windshields shattered.

  Jack gasped. ‘Thank you, Genghis.’

  On the other side of the chasm, Mao Gongli swore. ‘Artillery! Target those catapults!’

  And so the most bizarre modern skirmish was fought: a surrounding Chinese force firing shells upon an ancient Mongolian citadel, while Jack West Jr fired back from the citadel with its medieval weapons.

  Each of his trebuchets would unleash a few shots before the Chinese nailed them with modern artillery fire. But every shot from the catapults did some damage—mainly to the Chinese vehicles approaching the narrow stairway that gave access to the crater.

  Racing from one damaged trebuchet to another, with bullets and artillery shells sizzling all around him, Jack centred his fire on that stairway.

  On one occasion, he scored a direct hit on a tracked vehicle parked beside the stairway, nailing it with a massive boulder, causing the vehicle to flip and land, upside-down, right on top of the stairway, temporarily blocking access to it.

  Then he loaded one of the lattice-shrouded cannonballs into the trebuchet’s sling and as Genghis Khan’s catapulters would have done seven hundred years previously he pulled out a lighter, lit the wooden kindling inside it and fired.

  This flaming projectile crashed down to earth, slamming right into the upturned vehicle lying over the stairway’s entrance. The vehicle’s gas tanks ignited instantly and it exploded, sending tentacles of fire spraying out all over the entrance to the tight stairway, and causing the Chinese troops near it to pull back.

  A few moments later that trebuchet was hit by an incoming shell but by then Jack had already run to the next one to inflict more damage and soak up more time.

  ‘Zoe!’ he yelled into his radio. ‘How’re you doing down there!’

  Down in the cave, Zoe was busily jackhammering at the densely-packed rubble choking the escape tunnel beneath Genghis Khan’s uptu
rned sarcophagus.

  It was a tight vertical tunnel, so she would have to jackhammer for a few minutes, then step away while Lily and Sky Monster hauled out the broken rocks on an ancient—and probably priceless—golden bowl hanging from the end of a rope.

  It was slow going, and after thirty minutes of this, they were all covered in a grimy layer of sweat and dust.

  ‘We’re sixty feet down!’ Zoe called back to Jack. ‘It’s dense. Really dense. And who knows how far it goes!’

  ‘Just keep digging!’ Jack ordered. ‘Hopefully, you’ll break through before these guys break in.’

  Despite Jack’s efforts with the trebuchets, the Chinese forces kept advancing.

  They used tanks to push the smouldering snow-vehicle off the entrance to the narrow stairway. Then those same tanks covered the stairway while two dozen Chinese infantrymen hustled down it, heading for the crater.

  At the same time, the vast numbers of troops on the rim of the crater kept firing up at the citadel—from their slightly lower position, they had little chance of hitting Jack, but their constant fire kept him perpetually crouched as he moved about.

  But then, from among their ranks, grappling hooks trailing ropes soared across the sky and landed on the citadel itself. When a grappling hook caught hold, the rope behind it would go taut—creating an upwardly slanted zipline up which Chinese stormtroopers quickly began to climb.

  Ducking the incessant gunfire, Jack ran back and forth around the top level of the citadel, slashing at the ziplines with his knife.

  Every now and then, he’d check on the Chinese infantry team down at the spot where the suspension bridge had been. They were in the process of a bridging operation themselves: trying to fire some ziplines over the chasm, get across on them, and then pull a ropebridge over after them. Once they had a ropebridge in place, Jack knew, covered by strategic fire, the Chinese force would come flooding in and his last stand would be over—

  Abruptly, the shelling stopped. Silence hung over the icy landscape.

  ‘Captain West! Captain Jack West Jr!’

  A voice came in over a megaphone.

  Jack spun and saw Mao Gongli standing at the rim of the crater beside a huge Type-90 main battle tank, holding a loudhailer to his mouth.

  ‘Captain, know this: we are not coming to capture you, we are coming to kill you! But the more you resist now, the more painful I will make your death! If you surrender now, I promise you a quick clean bullet through the head!’

  ‘That’s some offer . . . ’ Jack said to himself.

  He tried to shoot at the Chinese infantrymen down at the bridge platform, but a renewed wave of cover fire from the troops on the rim forced him back.

  Then he glimpsed the bridging team secure two ziplines and start shimmying across the chasm on the ropes.

  ‘Damn it, shit!’

  He was now officially out of time.

  They’d be across within ten minutes.

  Down in the cave, deep in her pipe-like vertical tunnel, Zoe was jackhammering away when suddenly the chisel of her jackhammer popped through the rubble at her feet and the ground gave way and she fell six feet, landing clumsily in a dark horizontal tunnel.

  She switched off the jackhammer and by the light of her helmet flashlight, peered down the tunnel. It appeared to lead westward, disappearing into black infinity.

  ‘Jack!’ she called into her radio. ‘I’m through! I’m in a tunnel of some kind. Looks like it heads west.’

  ‘Go!’ Jack replied. ‘Follow it! And take the shield! The bad guys are about to break into the tower up here! I’ll be right behind you!’

  ‘Roger that.’

  And so with Lily and Sky Monster behind her and with Genghis Khan’s shield slung across her back, Zoe charged down the horizontal escape tunnel.

  She guessed they’d run for about eight hundred metres when—damn! —they came tip against a wall of densely-packed rubble, completely filling the tunnel.

  ‘No . . . ’ she breathed.

  ‘A dead-end,’ Sky Monster said. ‘We’re fish in a barrel.’

  Zoe bit her lip. ‘Maybe...’

  ‘Maybe what?’

  ‘The vertical escape shaft under Genghis’s sarcophagus was entirely filled with rubble. But not this tunnel. Maybe Genghis’s people only filled both ends of the escape system with rubble. We might be only a hundred feet away from salvation . . .

  Sky Monster started running back up the tunnel. ‘I’ll get the jackhammer!’

  Another Chinese shell exploded against the ancient black citadel. Fires blazed everywhere. Smoke billowed into the sky.

  Jack peered out from the reinforced doorway of the citadel and to his dismay saw a suspension bridge being lifted into place by the Chinese infantrymen down in the crater.

  They were in.

  His rearguard action was over.

  It was time to go below.

  Into the shaft system he flew, sliding down the ropes still hanging there.

  He left timer-delayed grenades beside the A-frames at the top of each shaft—which he detonated after he was safely down that particular shaft. If Mao was coming in here to kill him, he was going to delay the bastard as long as possible.

  He came to the cave containing the Arsenal, ran across the repaired bridges—also blowing them apart behind him—until he came to the Arsenal structure itself.

  He paused only once: to gaze out at Wizard’s covered body in the far corner of the cave, partially hidden by a thick column.

  ‘See ya, Max,’ he whispered. ‘Rest in peace.’

  Then Jack entered the Arsenal and went over to the small round hole that had been hidden for centuries beneath the body of Genghis Khan.

  He looked at the skeleton of Genghis: gifted leader, enlightened ruler, unparalleled warrior.

  ‘Nice to meet you, old man.’

  A groan answered him

  Jack spun.

  To see the slumped and bloody figure of Tank Tanaka lying facedown on the floor, groaning painfully. Shot and scorched from the grenade blast, Tank was still alive, just.

  In the nanoseconds of time in which the mind operates, Jack weighed up his options: he thought about Tank and the knowledge he possessed (a lot), about the threat he would pose to them (not much), and about the trouble it might cause to take him with them.

  ‘Okay, Tank,’ Jack whispered. ‘But if we have to hot-foot it, I’m dropping you like a stone and leaving you to face the Chinese by yourself.’

  Jack hurried over to the semi-conscious Japanese professor, hoisted him onto his shoulders and hustled over to the escape shaft.

  With Tank slumped over him, Jack then climbed into the escape shaft underneath the carefully balanced stone sarcophagus, still standing poised at a 45-degree angle on one of its sides. Then Jack released it, allowing the big box-shaped coffin to drop back into place over the top of them: concealing him, Tank, the skeleton, and the escape hole in the floor.

  To anyone entering the Arsenal now, the sarcophagus would look almost exactly the way Wolf had found it earlier that day, a great stone tomb in the middle of the ornate subterranean chamber, surrounded by grenade-scorched treasures. The only thing missing: the Egg that had long sat on top of it.

  Back on the surface, the Chinese force stormed the citadel.

  They swarmed onto it, crossing the suspension bridge and whizzing across ziplines from the rim of the crater.

  Into the citadel they charged, setting up ropes and A-frames inside the vertical shaft system, aided by a map of the system Wolf had left with them.

  It slowed them down a little, hut onward they came, hunting Jack West Jr.

  Jack raced headlong down the horizontal escape tunnel with Tank on his shoulders, following the sounds of the jackhammer, until he arrived behind Zoe, Lily and Sky Monster.

  Zoe was jackhammering away at the wall of rubble, with Genghis Khan’s ancient shield still on her back, while Lily and Sky Monster flung dislodged rubble back down the tunnel, out of the
way.

  ‘What’s the story?’ Jack shouted.

  Zoe said, ‘We’ve cut through fifty feet of hardpacked rubble. There’s no knowing how far it goes.’

  Jack looked behind him, half expecting to see the flashlights of Mao’s men charging down the dark tunnel.

  ‘Either we strike daylight or we die when they catch up with us,’ he said grimly.