The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel

by Matthew Reilly

  Wolf snorted. ‘What makes you think I’ll help you? You hold nothing of value to me.’

  Carnivore smiled at him. ‘Oh, but I will soon. I have a special bargain in store for you, West the Elder.’

  ‘What about the Sixth Pillar?’ Jack asked. ‘The last one? We don’t even know where it is yet or where its Vertex is located.’

  Carnivore waved at Alby and Lois Calvin in their tanks. ‘Their fate depends on you finding the last Pillar, Young West. If it is found and returned to me, they emerge from their living tombs. If not, then they do not.’

  At the old man’s words, Jack saw Lily’s horrified face. Her eyes pleaded: Don’t let that happen. Not to Alby.

  ‘So I’m your bitch, then,’ Jack said to Carnivore. ‘I now have to do all this for you.’

  Again, Carnivore smiled, that mean silver-jawed crocodile smile. ‘Why, West the Younger, I never said that. You see, as your father pointed out, I currently have no leverage over him. You may indeed go and do these things on my behalf. . . but then, so might he. I fear you’re going to have to fight for the privilege of doing so.’

  With those words, Carnivore pushed the large sliding door open a little further to reveal one last imprisonment tank. Like the others, this tank was half-filled with green formaldehyde solution, but unlike the others, its handcuffs hung open.

  It did not yet contain a prisoner.

  Carnivore turned to face Jack. ‘Only one Jack West will continue in this adventure. Having two of you on the loose is far too dangerous even for me. No. You, West the Younger, will fight your half-brother here’—a nod at Rapier, whose eyes jerked up—‘for my amusement and titillation. A fight to the death between rival siblings.

  ‘If you win, Huntsman, your half-brother will be dead, your father will be imprisoned in this tank and you will go free to continue on this quest on my behalf.’

  He turned to Rapier. ‘And if you win, second son of the Wolf, you not only get the pleasure of killing the brother you so despise, you will win for your father the right to continue on this quest. You will then remain here as my hostage to guarantee your fathers future performance of this bargain—although I will reward you with confinement in a cell and not a tank; victory must have its privileges, after all. But as I’m sure you’ll understand, I still need my leverage. In the end, though, only one Jack West will continue on this quest. Is this satisfactory?’

  ‘Abso-fuckin-lutely,’ Rapier said quickly, glaring at Jack.

  Wolf nodded.

  Jack swallowed, sizing up his huge half-brother. He glanced over at Zoe and Lily. They both looked horrified.

  A fight to the death.

  With Rapier.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ he said.

  Led by Carnivore, Jack and Rapier were marched at gunpoint out of the observatory and onto the curving upper rim of the enormous dam.

  From there they were directed across a long straight concrete bridge that extended out over the dam’s lake to a pair of cylindrical intake towers, also made of concrete, that jutted up from the lake.

  The two towers seemed to rise only about fifty feet above the surface of the man-made reservoir, but in truth they plummeted all the way down to the lakebed some five hundred feet below.

  Their job was twofold: to draw water from the reservoir into the dam’s power-generating turbines deep in the bowels of the structure and to regulate the level of the lake itself.

  Valves positioned all the way up the intake towers’ flanks could allow water into their cylindrical bodies, water that would then flow either down through the huge turbines or into a spillway that delivered it to the gorge on the low-side of the dam.

  Jack entered the second intake tower, just as one of Carnivore’s men lifted the lid on the tower’s central well. Jack looked down into the well: about thirty feet in diameter, its smooth concrete walls disappeared into darkness. Rusty intake vents could be seen at regular intervals along its length.

  About sixty feet below Jack’s feet, a large grated basket made of interlocking steel struts stretched across the width of the tower. It looked like a large sieve— ‘A catching tray,’ Carnivore said, ‘for collecting debris before it reaches the turbines. Tree branches, roots, animal carcasses that fall into the lake. Today, it will serve as your arena.’ To his guards:

  ‘Put them in.’

  Jack and Rapier were shoved over the rim of the well and clambered down some handrungs cut into the concrete wall.

  Soon they were standing sixty feet below Carnivore, balancing on the thin steel struts of the catching tray. The struts intersected in a grid formation, at right angles; the square gaps formed between them were roughly two feet wide—wide enough for a man to fall through if he didn’t keep careful footing. Jack also noticed a small hinged gate in the very centre of the floor, also made of steel struts.

  It wouldn’t be so bad if you dropped through a gap, Jack thought, you’d probably still land in water— ‘Start the turbines!’ Carnivore called. A moment later, an immense mechanical roar came echoing up the shaft beneath Jack— it sounded like a jet engine had been switched on down there.

  That was bad, he thought. Now if he or Rapier fell through the grating of the tray, they’d be sucked into the dam’s turbines and diced into a million pieces.

  ‘Release the water!’ Carnivore shouted above the din and instantly a pair of shockingly powerful water-blasts came spraying into the catching tray from two intake vents on opposite sides of it. The blasting water hammered into both Jack and Rapier, drenching them, almost knocking them off their feet.

  Difficult footing. The deafening roar of the turbines below. The blasting sprays of water up here. It was the arena from hell, and Carnivore knew it.

  He smiled. ‘Now, gentlemen. If you would be so kind, fight.’

  The unexpected blast of whitewater gushing into the tray had momentarily caused Jack to lose sight of Rapier—which was why he was taken by surprise when Rapier came rushing out of the mist, fists clenched and flying.

  Jack ducked, avoiding the first blow by millimetres. He crabwalked sideways, through the spray of the horizontal white water geysers, losing his footing briefly as one of his boots dropped through the grating.

  Jack recalled Rapier at the Vertex in Japan, in the Hall of Orochi, where he had killed the last Japanese soldier with a vicious one-two combination: the first punch stunned you, the second killed you.

  Don’t let him land a solid first hit, Jack’s mind screamed. If he stuns you, it’s over.

  Having seized the initiative in this battle, Rapier didn’t let it go—he pursued Jack across the tray, moving surely while Jack slipped and tripped backwards on the lattice of wet struts.

  And then Jack stumbled through the powerful incoming spray and he tripped again, looking up in time to see Rapier rush at him and unload two swift punches to his face. Jack fell to the grating.

  They were good hits, but not stunning blows and Jack rolled just as Rapier tried to stomp on his backbone, his boot missing and going through a gap in the tray, allowing Jack to spring to his feet, grab Rapier by the collar and jam his face into one of the incoming water-geysers.

  But Rapier shook himself free and in a rapid series of moves, elbowed Jack hard in the face and—bam!—landed a withering blow on Jack’s nose, breaking it, and suddenly Jack’s vision blurred and he knew immediately Rapier had landed one of his stunning blows.

  Jack swayed on his feet, willing himself to move, to swing a fist, to run, to do anything. But he couldn’t. His brain was slowing, his vision hazing over.

  All he saw was Rapier towering over him, advancing toward him, his right fist drawn back ready to deliver the final killing blow and then—

  —Jack dropped through the air and Rapier’s killer blow swished above his head.

  Unable to move quickly or whip up a defensive forearm, Jack had done the only thing he could think of to avoid the death blow: he had stepped off the steel struts and allowed himself to fall through the two-foot
gap beneath him.

  As he fell through the square gap, Jack allowed his right armpit to loop over one of the steel struts and it stopped his fall abruptly and painfully.

  But his mind was working again now, and hanging half through the tray’s floor, Jack lashed out at Rapier’s left boot, punching it, knocking Rapier’s foot off the slippery strut and suddenly Rapier fell awkwardly through the lattice-like floor too and found himself hanging alongside Jack.

  The roar from the turbines was deafening. The spray from intake vents still rained down on them.

  Rapier yelled at Jack: ‘I was always better than you! I was always loyal to our father! And yet he still thinks you’re better!’

  Hanging one-handed, Rapier loosed a big punch that caused Jack to jolt from his awkward position. His armpit came free of its strut and now Jack hung from the tray’s floor by his fingertips, arms outstretched above him, his face bloody, completely at Rapier’s mercy.

  ‘Goodbye, brother!’ Rapier yelled, drawing back his huge fist for the blow that would knock Jack off the tray and down into the well, into the grinding turbines somewhere down in the darkness.

  ‘Yes, goodbye . . . ’ Jack replied.

  Rapier swung, roaring with anger—

  Just as Jack unlatched something near his fingertips—

  With startling suddenness the small but heavy steel gate in the floor of the catching tray came swinging downward on its hinges, swinging right into Rapier’s face, smashing into it with frightening force. The leading edge of the gate swung directly into Rapier’s nose—not just breaking it, but exploding it—and in a grotesque instant, Rapier’s face was completely splattered with his own blood, his eyes springing open in shock, in perhaps the last conscious thought of his life.

  He may have already been dead, Jack couldn’t tell, but a full two seconds after the horrific blow, Rapier’s grip on the floor of the tray came free, and with his eyes staring balefully into Jack’s, he fell.

  Jack watched as the body of his half-brother dropped into the shaft beneath him, falling with the rain of water toward the roar of the turbines.

  A brief crunching noise followed as the turbines chewed Rapier’s body, before they resumed their regular droning and Jack—hanging from the floor of the tray, exhausted, bleeding and soaked to the bone—looked up to see Carnivore peering into the well, and although Jack couldn’t hear it, he could see that the bastard was clapping.

  ‘Daddy!’ Lily ran into Jack’s arms as he re-entered the observatory. Soaked and limping, his cracked nose leaking blood, he still managed to hold her tight.

  His happiness was shortlived. While he’d been fighting Rapier in the intake tower, Carnivore’s guards had been busy.

  Alby and Lois were now fully immersed in their formaldehyde tanks, suspended in the green haze, their eyes wide with terror. Sheik Anzar al Abbas was also fully submerged in his living tomb, as was the Neetha warlock, his robes billowing in the haze.

  Astro and Zoe had also been placed into tanks of their own.

  Astro hung limply in his, completely submerged, his energy sapped by his wounds.

  Zoe hung spreadeagled in her tank, which was in the process of being filled with the green solution—it was half-full now and rising. When she saw Jack re-enter the observatory, she tried to shout to him, but her mouth and nose were covered by a tightly fitted scuba regulator.

  When Wolf saw Jack re-enter the wide space, walking beside Carnivore, his face just went white with shock.

  ‘I know!’ Carnivore exclaimed. ‘Unexpected isn’t it? I thought the brawny one would win, too! But the fight was won fairly by this West. Your other boy was turned into chum by the turbine.’ Carnivore nodded to his guards. ‘Entomb West the Elder.’

  And so as Jack watched, Wolf was secured inside a tank and the tank began to fill with the green preservative fluid.

  After all he’d done, perhaps this was the fate Wolf truly deserved, Jack thought, to spend the remainder of his life in a state of total powerlessness.

  Nearby, Vulture and Scimitar also watched in silence.

  As the green liquid in Zoe’s tank sloshed up around her throat, Jack called to her: ‘Stay strong, Zoe. I’ll be back for you. I promise.’

  Carnivore eyed Jack sideways.

  He strolled up to Zoe’s tank and addressed her. ‘What heroic words. Pledging to return for you. If only he knew of your betrayal of him, Miss Kissane, two years ago in Dublin . . . ’

  Zoe’s eyes bulged, flashing to Jack.

  Jack frowned, not understanding.

  Lily swung from Zoe to Jack to Carnivore, also perplexed.

  Carnivore turned to Jack, his eyes narrowing. ‘I’m so sorry, hero. Over the years, your love for her has grown. But in the months after your mission to replace the Capstone, while she was back in Dublin, your loved one betrayed you and gave her body to another.’

  Jack felt his face flush red. ‘What—?’

  He snapped to face Zoe. . .

  . . . only to see her close her eyes and bow her head.

  It was true.

  Jack was floored. Zoe with another man. He couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t. . . she couldn’t. . .

  And then he thought, With who?

  Carnivore was loving it. ‘Will you still be rushing back for her, West the Younger?’

  At first, Jack said nothing. Then he turned to face the Russian. ‘I’ll be back for all of my people after I go and do your dirty work and bring you back the last Pillar. And when I do come back, I’m going to rip your heart out through your throat.’

  Carnivore smiled again. ‘And at last we see it: the raw anger of the famously noble Huntsman. Doesn’t that feel good, Young West? I shall look forward to your return.’

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, Jack, Lily and Sky Monster were standing on an exposed runway a kilometre away from the remote dam, braced against the wind. The Halicarnassus, flown here from Vladivostok by Carnivore’s forces, stood proudly on the tarmac. Twenty yards away, a massive twin-rotored Russian Chinook helicopter was powering up.

  Vulture, Scimitar and Mao Gongli were also there, as were Carnivore and some of his Spetsnaz guards.

  ‘Captain West,’ Carnivore called above the din. ‘Accompanied by some of my guards, you will make your way to the Vertex at Diego Garcia with the Fifth Pillar. You may take your daughter, as you will no doubt need her skills. I will ensure that by the time you get to the American base, the Basin will be waiting there for you, and your father will have forewarned the American forces there of your arrival. Place the Pillar by the due date, then return it to me, charged with its reward. I have already taken the Twin Tablets of Thuthmoses from your plane, as I will be needing them at the last Vertex.’

  He turned to Vulture, Scimitar and Mao. ‘You, Saudi. You know the whereabouts of the tomb of the Christ, do you not?’

  Vulture blinked, surprised Carnivore would know this. But slowly, he nodded. ‘By repute, yes. My people have heard whispers of its location for over a thousand years.’

  ‘My helicopter will take the three of you to a Chinese airbase four hundred miles from here. From there, also under the watchful eyes of my guards, you are to get to the tomb and find the Sixth and last Pillar inside it. You will return that Pillar to me for cleansing since by then I will have all three of the cleansing stones: the Philosopher’s Stone, the Firestone and the Basin of Rameses.’

  Carnivore stepped away, leaving the two groups to hoard their respective aircraft.

  ‘Godspeed to you all on your missions,’ he called. ‘I look forward to seeing you again.’

  Vulture, Scimitar and Mao headed for their Chinook, but Jack hesitated. Something Carnivore had just said had triggered something in his brain.

  He went over to Carnivore. ‘Why are you letting me take Lily? She’s far too valuable to risk. You need her to read from the Twin Tablets at the last Vertex, to recite the final Thoth incantation written on them.’

  A thin smile appeared on Carnivor
e’s deformed face.

  ‘I don’t need anything, Young West. The girl is valuable but not invaluable. Nor is she unique. I already have someone to read the Twin Tablets at the final Vertex.’

  ‘You already have—?’ Jack began, confused.

  Carnivore nodded toward the observatory. Jack followed his gaze, and saw a small figure standing on a balcony up there, watching the scene on the runway with cool detachment.