The Five Greatest Warriors

by Matthew Reilly

  “All units!” Wolf yelled. “Return fire! And get to the entrance before the wave comes in!”

  CIRCLING IN the Halicarnassus in clear skies high above the storm clouds fifty miles to the west, Jack listened in on Wolf’s communications—at the same time watching the battle via a live satellite infrared feed beamed to him from Pine Gap.

  He saw the entire battle from a black-and-white overhead view: saw the Japanese warships firing tracers skyward; saw the American armored pods raining down; and most bizarrely, he saw the waters of the Sea of Japan retreat in a wide semicircle away from the coastal cliffs, revealing the seabed, the shipwrecks, and the jagged rocks.

  “—All units! Return fire! And get to the entrance before the wave comes in!”

  Gunfire. Orders. Whizzing bullets.

  And then came the screams.

  “—Thompson’s hit!”

  “—Fuck!”

  “—Team One is inside the entrance! Come on, people! Move it!”

  “—Sir, this is Rapier! I’m experiencing heavy fire from those fuckers on the cliffs—we’re pinned down at the supertanker!”

  “—Well, you better get fucking unpinned, because that tsunami is nine minutes away! All units, provide cover fire for Rapier. I need him inside! He’s carrying the Philosopher’s Stone—”

  Jack snapped upright.

  Wolf had timed his forced insertion perfectly, coinciding it with the outflow of the tsunami wave. But now the tidal wave was coming in and one of his units—the one carrying the all-important Philosopher’s Stone—was stuck out on the exposed seabed under heavy fire from the Japanese forces on the cliffs.

  Then, to his surprise, Jack heard a familiar voice over the radio.

  “—Sir, this is Astro,”—the puncturelike whump of a rocket launcher rang out—“We’re targeting those guys up on the cliffs with RPGs. Rapier! Go!”

  Rapier: “—Can’t! That fire is still too strong!”

  Astro: “—Hang tight! We’re coming to you!”

  Astro, Jack thought. He’d last seen him inside that mine in Ethiopia, standing beside Wolf. Had Astro really betrayed Jack’s group? Had he been working for Wolf all along?

  More gunfire. More RPG explosions. It sounded like total battlefield hell.

  Astro’s voice came in again. “—Sir! That cover fire from the cliffs ain’t stopping! We can’t get to Rapier! Oh shit, do you see that . . . ?”

  Gun in hand, Lieutenant Sean Miller—“Astro”—stood on the most bizarre battlefield he had ever seen.

  He was crouched behind a high triangular boulder out on the exposed seabed beneath the cliffs of the Hokkaido coast, pelted by sleet and ducking a seemingly unending fusillade of bullets and rocket-propelled grenades coming from the Japanese troops on the clifftops above him.

  The Japanese were annihilating them.

  Astro had landed with a force of forty CIEF men, at least fifteen of whom were now dead. This was a nightmare.

  “—We can’t get to Rapier!” he yelled into his radio, seeing Rapier’s team pinned down behind the upturned supertanker a hundred yards from the Vertex’s entrance. Some of Rapier’s team lay dead on the wet sand. Rapier himself was huddled behind the massive rusted propeller of the wreck, bullet sparks impacting all around him.

  It was then that Astro saw the wave on the horizon. “Oh shit, do you see that . . . ?”

  It looked like a thin line of dark blue superimposed on the gray ocean, stretching across the width of the horizon, a great rolling wave that had not yet crested.

  A wall of water.

  And it was advancing fast.

  The exposed section of seabed wasn’t going to be exposed for much longer.

  Wolf’s voice exploded in his ear: “Team Four, do whatever you have to do to get Rapier out of there! We need that Stone!”

  “Sir”—Astro saw Wolf taking shelter inside the hangarlike entrance cut into the cliff’s base—“those Japanese guys on the clifftops are dug in! They’ve had years to prepare this place for a defense like this!”

  “Get—That—Fucking—Stone!”

  Astro spun, wondering how he was possibly going to get out of this alive, when he again saw the wave . . .

  . . . only now he saw something in the air above it, a small fast-moving aircraft flying incredibly low over the advancing sea, also incoming.

  What the hell . . . ?

  THE SLEEK black glider skimmed over the surface of the Sea of Japan, flying at phenomenal speed low over the waves.

  It shot between two Japanese warships—ships whose radar crews hadn’t even noticed the tiny attack plane until their gunners saw it whiz by the deck.

  Designed by Wizard, it was a very small Light Attack Glider, christened by him “The Black Bee.” Based on the dual-tailfin airframe of the highly maneuverable ARES light attack fighter, the Bee had no engine to weigh it down. All it had was an advanced stealth bodykit and a superlightweight carbon-fiber cockpit that seated two people.

  Without the heat signature of an engine, its stealth profile was tiny, smaller than that of a seagull. Indeed, the Bee was so physically small, Jack had long kept it in pieces in a single Ziploc bag in the hold of the Hali.

  Of course, being a bee it still possessed a vicious sting: two Sidewinder missiles hung from its swept-back wings, weighing more than the plane itself.

  As the Black Bee sped toward the Hokkaido coast, it overtook the fast-moving tsunami wave, zooming out over the expanse of bare seabed in front of the coastal cliffs.

  In the cockpit, Jack flew, while Zoe sat in the rear navigator’s seat with Lily on her lap. “Would you look at that wave . . .” Zoe gasped.

  Jack, however, was looking intently forward.

  Hokkaido loomed before him.

  It was covered in snow, almost totally white. Its endless mountain ranges were covered in drifts, while directly ahead of him, just as it was depicted on Genghis Khan’s shield, he saw an immense extinct volcano towering above a frozen coastal waterfall.

  At the base of the waterfall, he could just make out the rectangular hangar-sized Vertex entrance and the shipwrecks on the seabed before it.

  “Hang on,” he said as he fired both Sidewinders and brought the Bee even lower over the seabed, extending its skilike landing struts as he did so.

  The two missiles lanced out toward the Japanese positions on the clifftops, smashing into them simultaneously, sending twin geysers of snow, dirt, and men flying into the air.

  The Bee’s struts touched down on the exposed seabed and the little glider slid across the hard-packed sand like a car on a wet road.

  It skidded to a stop right alongside the rusty wreck of the supertanker and Rapier’s CIEF team trapped behind it.

  Jack flung open the Bee’s canopy and leaped out, with Zoe providing cover and Lily running behind him.

  Despite the barrage of Japanese fire raining down at them, not a single round struck them.

  The reason: Jack, Lily, and Zoe carried activated Warblers in their jacket pockets.

  Jack hadn’t used Warblers since that time at Hamilcar’s Refuge in Tunisia. Designed for frontal assaults just like this, the Warbler was another invention of Wizard’s: a grenade-sized Closed Atmospheric Field Destabilizer that created a powerful electromagnetic field which disrupted the flight of high-subsonic projectiles like bullets. They had only one drawback: their superstrong electromagnetic fields also disrupted radio signals.

  And so the wave of Japanese bullets just fanned out, left and right, away from them as they ran across the open ground of the seafloor.

  Jack, Zoe, and Lily came to Rapier—hunched behind the enormous propeller of the beached supertanker and now out of ammo. Only one other member of his team had survived the assault from the cliffs, and he lay on the ground with wounds to his chest. Dead men lay all around them.

  “Get up, you’re coming with us,” Jack said roughly, ripping the Samsonite pack off Rapier’s back and slinging it over his shoulder while dragging his half
brother toward the cliffs, firing with his spare hand.

  Zoe covered them as they went, firing measured bursts. The two Sidewinder hits had been very effective, blowing apart the Japanese nests closest to the Vertex’s entrance, while the Warblers took care of the rest.

  Jack saw the entrance before him.

  It was absolutely huge—high and rectangular with sharp edges, it was an intricately crafted yet massive stone doorway cut into the uneven natural stone of the cliff.

  He was reminded of the underwater entrance to the Second Vertex near Cape Town. It had been easily large enough for an entire submarine to pass through it. This one was just as big. It looked like the biggest airplane hangar in the world.

  Jack saw Wolf and his remaining men—about twenty-two of them, plus Astro and the Neetha warlock—huddled at the base of the gigantic entrance, waving them over.

  Jack, Zoe, Lily, and Rapier joined Wolf at the entrance but didn’t stop. Wolf and his men—including Astro and the warlock—fell into step beside them, hurrying inside the cave.

  “I’m getting tired of watching over you,” Jack said. “Didn’t expect this many Japanese defenders?”

  “We suspected the Brotherhood was acting with the tacit approval of the Japanese government. We didn’t know it was the government,” Wolf said.

  “Let’s just get through this, ’cause while I’m pretty fucking angry with you right now, I’d rather save the world first. How you doing, Astro?” Jack said as he passed the astonished young Marine. “Long time, no see.”

  Astro just hurried to keep up, momentarily speechless.

  The cave inside the entrance was broad and high-ceilinged, with a polished floor and smooth stone walls, all covered in Thoth hieroglyphs; a long and broad avenue of thick columns supported the soaring ceiling.

  About five hundred yards in, Jack saw a small mountain of steps rising into a wide void in the ceiling.

  Just like at Cape Town, he thought.

  He and Zoe both grabbed Lily by the hand, and with Wolf’s team around them, they started climbing the hill of stone stairs at speed.

  Then a chilling rush of air billowed in through the entrance and a great roar filled the cavern. Jack spun as he climbed the stairs to see a terrible sight filling the entrance doorway.

  The tsunami had arrived.

  THROUGH THE rectangular frame of the entrance, Jack saw the massive tsunami rush across the exposed seabed, easily traveling at 100 kilometers an hour.

  Then, in a kind of majestic slow motion, it crested—rising and rising and rising—before it crashed down—smashed down—right on top of the wreck of the supertanker. The six-hundred-foot-long supertanker just vanished in an instant, swallowed by the immense wave.

  As the leading edge of the tsunami crunched down on the seabed, it made a boom that was beyond deafening.

  But it wasn’t done yet.

  Now the mighty tsunami rushed toward the shore as a ten-story-tall body of deadly foaming whitewater.

  It swept in through the Vertex’s entrance at outrageous speed, blasting through the entry hall, rampaging down the avenue of columns, heading for the base of the step mountain that Jack and the others were still ascending.

  Jack hustled up the step mountain as fast as his legs would carry him.

  “Keep running!” he yelled to Lily and Zoe, eyeing the eerie red glow leaking over the summit of the step mountain above them.

  Moments later, Jack leaped up onto the topmost step and beheld the space beyond the step mountain.

  THE STAIRCASES AND THE AQUEDUCTS

  He glimpsed a vast cavern and a fantastical landscape—a wide lake of molten lava that was dotted with towers, bridges, and even a stepped pyramid—but the first thing he saw before him were three parallel descending staircases, all leading down to a series of multiarched aqueducts that rose above the lava lake.

  Next to Jack, a wide rectangular vent opened onto the three descending staircases, as if designed to spurt some kind of liquid down them.

  An ominous gurgling sound echoed from within the vent . . . and Jack saw a reddish glow rising up it.

  “Something’s coming up that vent . . .”

  The roar of the tsunami blasting into the entry hall behind them was as loud as ten jet engines.

  The glow inside the vent grew brighter.

  Things were happening too fast.

  “We have to choose a staircase!” Zoe yelled.

  “But which one!” Astro called, staring at the three staircases. Each descended for about fifty meters before ending at a small horizontal ledge that separated each staircase from its matching aqueduct.

  “Screw this!” a CIEF man yelled as he and two other members of Wolf’s team bolted down the nearest staircase, the right-hand one.

  “Get back here!” Wolf called after them, but they didn’t hear him.

  “Damn it,” Jack said. “Which one . . . ?”

  “The left one!” a voice called firmly from beside him.

  Lily. She held something in her hand.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Wolf glance at the Neetha warlock. The warlock shook his head in an “I don’t know” gesture.

  “Okay, kiddo!” Jack shouted. “We follow your lead! No time for explanations! Let’s move!”

  JACK, LILY, and Zoe raced for the left-hand staircase and hurried down its steep stone steps. As he charged down it, Jack noticed that the stairway was guttered.

  That was a bad sign. It usually meant some kind of deadly liquid flowed down it . . .

  Wolf followed them, accompanied by the warlock.

  Astro, Rapier, and the other nineteen members of Wolf’s CIEF force raced after them, taking the same downward staircase.

  Two CIEF men hesitated, unsure, and remained atop the summit of the step mountain.

  Their hesitation killed them—for a moment later, the tsunami came crashing over the summit in a furious explosion of whitewater.

  Like an ocean wave smashing against a coastal rock, the tsunami exploded over the stair mountain in a starburst of spray, spray that hurled the two hesitant CIEF men off it and out into the lava lake beyond it.

  As the initial spray of the tsunami rained back down to earth, a huge body of frothing water came surging over the summit, carrying the carcass of the supertanker within its mass and hurling the great ship clear over the top of the step mountain!

  The great rusted hulk of the supertanker groaned as it rolled over the summit of the step mountain and dropped into the lava on the other side, landing to the right of the three parallel staircases with a massive glooping thud.

  The rest of the tsunami came to rest a few feet below the summit of the step mountain, swirling and roiling on the ocean side, contained for now.

  “Holy moly . . .” Lily gasped as she hustled down the left-hand staircase, which—like the other two staircases—had been protected from the tsunami by the wide vent at the summit.

  The reason why became clear a moment later.

  They came bursting forth from the vent at frightening speed: twin bodies of knee-deep molten lava that surged down the middle and right-hand staircases, contained by their gutters and descending fast.

  The left-hand staircase, however, remained clear.

  Agonized shrieks rang out as the lava caught up with the three CIEF men who had taken the right-hand staircase.

  The pouring lava melted their shins, causing them to drop into the superheated fluid. Their clothes caught fire; their skin bubbled; then their hands and forearms liquefied, becoming grotesque mixes of skin, bone, and blood; they died screaming, watching their own bodies deform horrifically.

  Everyone on the left-hand staircase had the same realization at once: if they’d taken either of the other two staircases, the lava would have got them. There was no way they could have outrun it.

  Somehow, Lily had made the right choice.

  In any case, they were finally inside the Third Vertex—and thanks to the waters of the tsunami, they were sealed i
nside it, safe from their enemies outside.

  THE THIRD VERTEX AT HOKKAIDO

  AT THE bottom of the steep guttered staircase they all leaped over a narrow gap onto the next horizontal ledge—a kind of intermediate platform between the three staircases and the next three aqueducts.

  Jack spun to look back at the staircases behind him.

  Long fingers of glowing-hot lava oozed down the other two staircases, dropping off their ends in thin lavafalls.

  Lily had made a crucial choice, literally a choice between life and death.

  Jack turned to take in the motley crew around him. It hadn’t escaped his notice that he was now inside a Vertex with his enemies, people who had tried to kill him on several occasions.

  It was certainly a strange situation.

  On the one hand, there was himself, Zoe, and Lily, looking like a cute little family.

  On the other was what remained of Wolf’s assault force: Wolf himself, the warlock of the Neetha, Rapier, Astro, and seventeen other CIEF troops, all of whom were covered in sand and blood after the disastrous frontal assault out on the seabed.

  “Nice choice, young lady,” Wolf said to Lily. “I’m very curious to know how you figured that out.”

  Lily just glared at him. “Don’t speak to me. You killed Wizard. You’re a horrible man and I hope you die.”

  Wolf feigned hurt. “Now, now, don’t be like that . . .”

  Rapier whipped up a gun and aimed it at Jack. “Father, we should kill them now—”

  The head of the CIEF trooper standing beside Wolf exploded. There was no sound of a gunshot.

  Shot in the back of the head from long range, the man’s face just blew apart, spraying blood all over Wolf, before his body fell off the high aqueduct and sailed down into the molten lake below.

  Shwap! Shwap! Shwap!

  More bullets slammed into the aqueduct all around the gathered group. Another CIEF man was hit and fell to the platform at Lily and Zoe’s feet.

  Someone was firing on them!