The Five Greatest Warriors

by Matthew Reilly

  The brick crumbled and Jack threw its pieces behind him, creating a small hole—

  —only to see the wheels of a huge HEMTT truck rumble by right in front of his nose.

  Enlarging the gap, Jack discovered that they had arrived back at the entry tunnel leading to the spiral cavern; their brick was part of the tunnel’s sandstone wall.

  The tunnel was dimly lit and as he pulled the crumbling pieces of his brick away, making the gap wide enough to fit through, Jack saw several Humvees speed by, heading for the Vertex, their headlights bouncing in the darkness.

  Heading in the other direction, however, were some of the earth-filled HEMTT dump trucks Jack had seen on the way in. They were getting them out of the way of the incoming troops.

  “Quickly!” Jack whispered to Lily and Iolanthe. “This way!”

  Moments later, one of the fleeing HEMTT dump trucks emerged from the tent-covered pit into bright daylight, swerving to avoid a bunch of Humvees rushing into the pit complex.

  No one saw the three figures clinging to its underside. Nor did they see them leap into the cab of a HEMTT towing a Patriot missile launcher, immobilize the driver, and rumble off in the direction of the strife-torn southern runway.

  Jack’s HEMTT sped across the long causeway that gave access to the island runway. Smaller jeeps carrying armed troops overtook it, heading for the battle there.

  Jack knew exactly where he was going: the hangar that had housed the base’s F-15s. Only he didn’t enter it from the front.

  Instead, his giant truck blasted through the flimsy rear wall of the hangar, smashing through it and shoving aside a couple of FA-18 fighters as if they were toys, before Jack brought the big truck to a skidding halt beside one of the semidestroyed F-15s on the taxiway in front of the hangar.

  Of course, the fighter’s pilot had long since abandoned the broken jet, its nose tilted down over its destroyed forward landing gear.

  “Into the cockpit!” Jack pulled Lily with him, Iolanthe running along behind them. Into his radio: “Sky Monster! Aerial pickup! On the next pass! Give us thirty seconds!”

  “You got it, Jack!” The Halicarnassus swept round in a wide arc until it was flying directly toward the taxiway.

  Jack clambered into the cockpit of the damaged fighter.

  Iolanthe hesitated. “What are you doing! This thing isn’t going to fly!”

  Jack hoisted Lily onto his lap and started checking the cockpit. “It’s not but we are. Now you can come or you can stay.”

  Iolanthe bit her lip, and decided that whatever Jack West Jr. was planning was better than staying at Diego Garcia.

  “Where do I sit?”

  “On my lap, with Lily in between us and the seat belt around all three of us.”

  Iolanthe did as she was told. She now sat facing Jack, on his lap, with Lily snuggled between them. Jack clicked the seat belt around them all.

  “Is this plan as crazy as I think it is?” Lily asked him softly.

  “Pretty much.” Jack looked up at the sky above them.

  Iolanthe saw this and suddenly she got it. “Oh, you can’t be serious—”

  “Hang on, princess.”

  And with those words, Jack yanked on the F-15’s ejection cords.

  Whoosh!

  The ejection seat of the F-15 rocketed into the sky above the island runway, bearing Jack, Lily, and Iolanthe on it.

  It shot a full two hundred feet into the air before a parachute blossomed above it and the seat itself fell away, leaving the three of them dangling awkwardly from the chute.

  Normally, with such extra weight, the chute wouldn’t have been able to hold them for long—but today it didn’t have to.

  For a second later, the Halicarnassus came roaring by, trailing a long hook from its open rear hold. Designed for snagging weather balloons, Wizard had reconfigured it using the arresting hook from an old F-14 Tomcat. It was kept for occasions just like this: for a hot extraction where no landing was possible.

  The hook snagged Jack’s parachute perfectly and swept it forward, pulling it along behind the low-flying 747, the arresting hook’s elasticized cable taking the brunt of the massive whiplash.

  Then the Halicarnassus was out of there, a tiny speck soaring off into the lightening sky dragging the parachute behind it, speeding away from the American base at Diego Garcia and the ancient Vertex concealed beneath it.

  LUNDY ISLAND (4TH VERTEX)

  At length, Pooh Bear, Stretch, and the twins emerged from the Fourth Vertex, resigned to being picked up by their Royal Marine helicopter outside.

  The four of them climbed out of the Well, stepping up into the rain. Waves crashed all around them.

  They signaled to the Royal Marine chopper and held up the charged Pillar, and saw the chopper’s copilot say something into his radio.

  Then the chopper exploded. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. It just burst apart in a billowing ball of flames.

  The night sky flared with orange light and the Royal Marine chopper fell into the sea, a flaming smoking wreck—in doing so, revealing another helicopter in the sky far behind it.

  “What the hell—?” Stretch shouted.

  This new helicopter came closer and as he saw it clearly, Pooh sighed with relief: it bore the markings of the Irish Army. It was friendly.

  Indeed, sitting in its copilot’s seat, smiling at them, was the familiar face of their Irish liaison officer, Captain Cieran Kincaid.

  CARNIVORE’S

  LAIRFAR EASTERN RUSSIA

  MARCH 18, 2008

  1133 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0233 HOURS GMT)

  MINUTES AFTER THE 4TH AND 5TH DEADLINES

  AS SOON as he was certain that the Fourth and Fifth Pillars had been laid at their respective Vertices, Carnivore gave the order.

  His small personal force of Spetsnaz guards had been busy these last thirty-six hours.

  Key equipment had already been gathered and taken on board Carnivore’s private jet—a sleek black Tupolev-144. With its delta shape, long slim body, and distinctive downturned nose, the Tu-144 looked like the long-lost twin of the famous Aerospatiale Concorde. Indeed, like the Concorde, it was capable of supersonic cruise.

  Under Diane Cassidy’s direction, all manner of documents, computers, and astronomical charts—all of Carnivore’s research on the Machine—had been brought onboard the Tu-144.

  Then the calls came in: from the Royal Marines hovering in their chopper above Lundy Island and from Diego Garcia. The Pillars had been laid successfully.

  It was time to go.

  Carnivore was abandoning his lair.

  As his men departed, the wily old Russian royal stood for one last time in front of his grisly collection of human trophies encased in their liquid tombs. Diane Cassidy stood by his side.

  Carnivore gazed at the formidable Wolf; at the younger soldiers, Zoe and Astro; at Anzar al Abbas, the proud sheik from Dubai; at the Neetha warlock; and last of all, at the very end of the line of tanks, the little figure of Alby Calvin, the friend of the Oracle, beside his mother.

  Carnivore smiled philosophically.

  It was a shame to leave behind such a fine collection.

  He pressed an intercom button connected to speakers inside all the tanks.

  “My guests. Sadly, the time has come for me to leave. I thank you all for the pleasure you have given me—in the cases of some of you, for many years. This base is being abandoned. The consequence for all of you is unfortunately somewhat dire. With no one manning this base, there will be no one to replenish the oxygen tanks connected to your mouthpieces. At a guess, I imagine you have about 72 hours of air left, longer if you can breathe shallowly. Good-bye.”

  The responses from his captives were varied: Abbas shouted soundlessly; Zoe looked up sharply; Astro just bowed his head wearily; and Alby’s eyes boggled. Wolf did nothing but stare evenly back at Carnivore.

  “May I?” Diane asked.

  “If it will make you feel better,” Carnivore said.

  �
��Oh, it will.” Diane stepped forward and stood before the Neetha warlock’s tank. She knocked on the front window and the old man looked up. “Hey! My return gift for the years of slavery in your tribe.”

  Then with a firm hand Diane turned a valve and shut off his oxygen supply. The old man coughed once before he started convulsing violently, gagging, unable to breathe. After a few moments of this, he became still, hovering in the haze, dead.

  “Much better.” Diane strode past Carnivore and headed outside.

  A few seconds later, Carnivore followed her, sweeping out of his observatory and taking off in his plane, leaving the isolated base behind him, its location known only to a privileged few, its living decorations left there to die.

  NINE MINUTES after Carnivore’s departure, the observatory was silent and still.

  The massive telescope sat on its mounting, pointed toward the sky. The only movement: the rising bubbles in the tanks lining the walls.

  Then abruptly one of the tanks shattered, and stinking green liquid came gushing out of it, washing across the porcelain floor.

  It was Wolf’s tank.

  Inside the shattered, now-empty tank, Wolf hung from his manacles, covered from head to toe in a layer of green fluid, only now his left hand was hanging free. He immediately used it to yank off his half-face scuba mask, before he sucked in deep gasps of fresh clean air.

  It had taken an incredible effort in patience and concentration to get to this point.

  If one looked closely, one would have seen that the false top on Wolf’s Annapolis graduation ring had been popped open—a ring that contained a small amount of C-2 plastic explosive. Jack West Jr. and Pooh Bear weren’t the only soldiers in the world who carried escape gear on their persons.

  First, Wolf had very carefully used the fingers of his manacled left hand to pop open the ring and use some of the plastique in it to crack open his left manacle. Then, when that hand was free, he stuck some C-2 to the front wall of his tank and shattered it.

  Dripping with green wetness, Wolf slowly unclasped the other three manacles gripping his limbs and dropped to the floor of the empty tank and stood on his own two feet.

  Now came to the painful part: removing the excretion catheter from his own body. Wolf grabbed the scuba face mask and, biting down hard on its rubber edges, set about the grim task. It took three shockingly painful yanks—he almost fainted with the last one—but he got it out.

  A moment later, staggering a little but okay, Jack West Sr. stepped down from the semidestroyed tank.

  Free.

  For a moment Wolf pondered the other tanks—as the occupants of those tanks stared incredulously back at him. Zoe screamed and shook her bonds, begging him to set her free. Astro also looked up, waiting to see if Wolf would help him.

  Wolf didn’t set any of them free.

  He went over to the radio console on the wall and called his people for a pickup. He also radioed Diego Garcia and ordered the force there not to let Jack and Iolanthe leave the island alive. After that, he found a shower room and some clothes in a nearby building and cleaned himself up.

  Then Wolf returned to the observatory, pulled up a chair and, gazing at the green tanks and the captives within them, waited for his extraction team.

  It arrived a few hours later in the form of a pair of F-15s. And then just like Carnivore before him, Wolf left the remote observatory without a word, leaving the other prisoners there to slowly run out of air.

  MILITARY AIR BASE, DUBAI

  UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

  MARCH 18, 2008, 2200 HOURS

  THE HALICARNASSUS sat parked on the runway in a remote corner of the U.A.E., a black shadow against the nighttime horizon.

  Jack sat in his office at the back of the plane, lit by a single lamp, bent over his desk. An array of books, notes, and maps lay strewn on the table in front of him. Horus sat loyally on his chair back, ever watchful, while Lily lay on the floor behind him, fast asleep. One of his two Spetsnaz minders stood guard at the door while the other slept in a bunkroom. Iolanthe was taking a shower in the crew quarters.

  Jack was gazing at the James Letter that the twins had found earlier, which purported to reveal the final resting place of Jesus Christ:

  He lies in peace,

  In a place where even the mighty Romans fear to tread.

  In a kingdom of white

  He does not grow old.

  His wisdom lies with him still,

  Protected by a twin who meets all thieves first.

  Jack was pondering what it meant when Pooh Bear and the others came in over the videolink.

  Jack told them what had happened at Diego Garcia, and Pooh informed him about their mission at Lundy Island, including how Cieran Kincaid had rescued them on the way out. Pooh, Stretch, the twins and Cieran were now in Dublin at a friendly army base with the charged Fourth Pillar in their possession.

  “What do we do now?” Pooh Bear asked.

  Jack cast a glance at his Spetsnaz guard who showed no outward sign that he understood English.

  “I don’t see that we have a choice,” he said. “We have to go for the Sixth Pillar. Carnivore sent Vulture, Scimitar, and Mao to get it for him, but we can’t allow any of them to find it and lay it. We have to get it first.”

  “Which only requires us to find the lost tomb of Jesus Christ . . .” Julius said.

  “I’m aware of that.” Jack indicated the mess of books and notes around him.

  Cieran Kincaid appeared on the screen beside Pooh Bear. “Jack . . .”

  “Yes, Cieran.” Jack could see what was coming.

  “Jack, Jesus Christ rose from the dead and ascended bodily to heaven. This is beyond a question of faith. It is accepted fact. There is no tomb.”

  “Cieran, I thank you for saving my guys, but I’m sorry, I can’t agree with you. I’ve seen enough crazy stuff in my travels to say that where religion is concerned, there are no facts, only beliefs. You can believe whatever you want. In the meantime, I’m going to search for that tomb.”

  “Crunch time’s coming, and we’re further behind our adversaries than usual, Jack,” Stretch said seriously. “We have two days to lay that Pillar at the final Vertex and we don’t know where either the Pillar or the Vertex is.”

  “I know, I know,” Jack said. “But where there’s life, there’s hope.”

  “So this is our plan?” Lachlan said. “This is it?”

  “This is all I’ve got,” Jack said wearily. “Just hit the books and help me out. I’ll call you if I find something.”

  He clicked off, sighed, and went back to work.

  A few minutes later, Iolanthe appeared in the doorway, freshly showered and now dressed in shorts and a close-fitting white singlet that accentuated her sleek physique. Her usually tied-back hair hung loose to her bare shoulders. She placed a coffee mug on Jack’s desk.

  “You seriously think you can find the Jesus Pillar?” she asked.

  Jack looked up at her. “I can’t let your Russian cousin get that Pillar and plant it at the final Vertex. I have to find it first.”

  Iolanthe leaned against the door, eyeing him closely. “If you find it, I’ll have to inform Carnivore. So will they.” She nodded at the guard at the door. “We are here to keep an eye on you, after all.”

  “You don’t have to tell him,” Jack said softly.

  Iolanthe smiled, shaking her head. Then she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, leaving the guard outside. “You really are something, you know that?”

  “I do what I think is right.”

  “But you just keep doing it. You never stop. You’re the most determined man I’ve ever met.”

  “It’s a gift—”

  “It’s why your people follow you. And”—she stepped closer, whispering—“it could be why I might be convinced to follow you, too. I suppose I could be persuaded not to tell Carnivore . . .”

  Jack stopped what he was doing.

  “You’d betray the royal famil
ies?” he said.

  “Like all families, our members have their differences and their petty schemes. Carnivore is the most senior member of the European royals, but some in Britain think him too ruthless, too . . . unseemly. His blood might be blue, but his methods are crude.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think Carnivore looks out for Carnivore. I think I’ve given my royal relatives far more than they have ever given me.” She licked her lips. “I think I deserve some reward for my efforts. My family expects my loyalty, whereas you win people’s loyalty. You impress me time and again, and that tends to win a girl over . . .”

  She stepped behind Jack, moving smoothly and quietly, leaned over him to look at his notes. He could feel her breasts pressing gently against his shoulder. Her long hair smelled wet; her beautifully scented skin was soft, feminine.

  “You saved my life in that Vertex,” he said, not looking at her. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “Like I said, you inspired me in a way I’ve not been inspired before.”

  Jack said nothing.

  Iolanthe looked at him. “I was sorry to hear about Miss Kissane’s betrayal of you. I didn’t know about that.”

  “Neither did I.” Jack still didn’t look her in the eye.

  When Iolanthe spoke again, her voice was a whisper, spoken directly into Jack’s left ear from millimeters away.

  “A girl would have to be crazy to see another man behind your back, Jack West. You’re all I’d need.”

  Jack swallowed. He looked straight ahead, a flurry of thoughts and images swirling in his mind: of Zoe back at his farm, covered in dust; of Iolanthe here, beautiful and sweet-smelling and pressed against his shoulder in her tight little singlet, practically offering herself to him; the image of Carnivore informing him about Zoe sleeping with another man, and Zoe in her tank, bowing her head in admission.

  He turned to answer her—

  —only to abruptly feel Iolanthe’s lips press against his own. She was kissing him, smoothly, sensuously, with genuine passion.

  Jack didn’t move. He closed his eyes as he let her kiss him. The touch of her lips was simply electrifying.