Then a bullet blasted into the rubble nearby, raising a mini explosion of shale. Damn, how the hell were they going to cancel out that bastard?
The Russian half-buried up the slope was laughing, making a point of taking careful aim. There was nothing they could do to stop him. “Hold still!” he cried. “I want to take your stupid heads off.”
“Wing them,” came Maxim’s authoritative command. “We can bury them down here. A fitting end, I say.”
“Get your fucking arse off me!” Victoriyah shouted.
Alicia, never a girl to stay put and take it, exploded into action, sprinting through the debris and shrieking like a banshee. Drake ran in her wake, feeling the itch as crosshairs lined up on his exposed back.
Mai screamed from behind them, “Drop—”
Then the cry of Torsten Dahl crashed down like thunder and the big Swede came feet first, slipping and sliding down the crumbling slope, torrents of rock streaming around him, smashing into the half-buried Russian and almost breaking him in two. Both men plummeted to the bottom, the Russian bent and shattered, the Swede brushing himself off and seeking out his next target.
Alicia hit Maxim hard, tackling him around the waist. Drake came up against Victoriyah, thrusting with his knife, but thrown off balance by the shifting mounds of debris. When he realized he was falling, he threw his body hard against the slope. Victoriyah laughed at him.
“What’s this? You want to play?”
Drake crouched as she came at him, almost wincing at the sight of her shapely bare legs bloodied and scraped by the headlong tumble. He caught her lunge by dropping a shoulder, and heaved her aside. As he turned he noticed, beyond Mai, that the far edge of the fissure was slowly collapsing into the pit of Babylon.
And the drop-off point was running fast back toward Mai!
“Run!” he yelled. At that point, a thick rope slithered down from above, anchored by Kinimaka, Hayden and, Drake momentarily saw, Yorgi.
The little Russian thief must have disobeyed him. Thank God.
He launched his body on top of Victoriyah and took a blow to the ribs, but brought his weight to bear and lowered the knife. Her hands came up, stopping the tip of the blade an inch before the bridge of her nose.
Drake bore down harder. The Russian woman spat and thrashed about, screaming expletives. Alicia beat Maxim down hard, turning his face into pulp before ending his misery with a thrust to the brain pan. Mai outran the crevice’s collapse, leaped for the rope and held a hand down to Alicia. “Hurry!”
Drake removed one hand from the blade, then brought it crashing down on top of the hilt, beating at it as a hammer beats a nail. The tip sliced through skin.
Victoriyah glared coldly into his eyes. “Fuck you all to hell,” she said and let go of Drake’s wrist.
The knife, unimpeded, drove down through her forehead. Drake left it in place and grabbed the flapping end of the rope, planting his feet against the slope and leaning back, right beneath Alicia. They all started to walk upward.
Dahl ran hard up the collapsing slope at a sharp angle, his course planned to intersect the rope just above Mai.
Kinimaka and the others took the full strain. The Hawaiian’s voice could be heard clearly through the sudden stillness. “I’ve pulled many pigs out of many pits back home before, guys, but this takes the trophy.”
“Hurry, Mano,” Hayden urged. “This is far from over. We can’t let Razin get away with those other swords.”
Alicia peered over her shoulder and down at Drake. “Enjoying the view?”
Drake sent her a smirk. “I dunno, love. It’s just not quite the same when you’ve seen it all before.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
Above ground, Drake saw that Akerman and Patterson had also been part of the rope-pulling team. Everyone except Kinimaka fell to the ground exhausted, as Drake, the last man, stepped over the top.
“Thanks, Mano.” Drake slapped their enormous colleague on one meaty shoulder. He noticed straight away that Dahl was already stalking toward two trussed up guards.
“Answers,” the Swede said. “Give them to me, men, and we might let you live. Stay quiet and you can take your chances in the pit.”
Both men stared into space, their expressions a mix of despair and hangover. One of them wrenched at his bonds. “We tell you shit.”
“Olle,” Dahl said to Akerman as he passed. “You’d better look the other way.”
As the Swede hammered his point home, Drake took a moment to approach Yorgi. “Thanks for being useful, mate.”
“It is my new job.” The thief laughed. “Saving your life.”
Drake took a momentary look at the site of the Tower of Babel. “Can’t see a thing. You think your old mates are there?”
“If they are close to finding your swords, they will not just leave. They will fight.”
“Good.”
Drake brushed himself off as he approached Dahl. The Swede was watching Hayden and Kinimaka approach a solitary crate positioned beside the furthest tent. “Our songbirds say they found three swords. Two are inside that crate. Razin and Zanko took the other.”
Patterson heard the comment and rushed up. “Wait. Why did Razin take the other sword?”
Dahl raised questioning eyebrows at their captives. One of them spat blood. “He called it Great Sword, like Alexander the Great. I do not know his meaning.”
Patterson practically wet himself. “No! They cannot have the Great Sword. It is the key. The key to understanding the whole inscription. The key to all the earth energy. The key to the vortex. It is—”
Dahl patted him on the head. “Calm down, boy. We’ll get it back.”
Mai and Alicia stationed themselves to watch the distant hillock. Time was against them now, and every second that passed increased the danger and the Russians’ chances of stealing away with the prize. Drake drifted over toward the crate with Yorgi and Patterson.
Kinimaka smashed the side open with a discarded crowbar, then stood back as the contents spilled out. Packing foam littered the sand, amongst which several tightly wrapped packages tumbled.
Hayden reached down to her feet and picked up a long bundle. Kinimaka scanned the rest, but saw no shapes consistent with that of a sword. Hayden knelt down in the sand and quickly severed the wrapping twine.
The bundle fell apart. Two swords clattered against each other, their blades suddenly revealed and catching the light. Drake shielded his eyes as the sunlight flashed off a polished blade, still potent after all these years, ablaze with promise, fire and the sparkle of unfulfilled prophecies.
Hayden held one easily, turning it before her eyes, letting the fire of the sun flicker and flare down the deadly length of the blade. “Stunning,” she said.
Kinimaka stooped down for the other. “I’ll say.” The sword was short and stylish, with a wicked curved double-edged blade and some kind of ancient pattern on the hilt. It looked to be made of cast steel.
Patterson ran up to them, frothing at the mouth. “My God, they’re real. My God. Let me touch it!”
Kinimaka handed his over. Patterson turned it to reveal the ancient symbols, a set of characters that ran down the middle of the blade. Akerman walked up to him, staring. “That, my friend, isn’t the language of the gods. At least, not as I know it.”
“But the swords, when seen together and read in order, should tell us how to deal with the device.”
Akerman let out a long sigh. “The characters, though similar, are not the same.”
“You are questioning Alexander?”
“I’m not questioning anything,” Akerman breathed. “I’m stating a fact.”
“Alright,” Dahl shouted. “We’ll worry about that later. Are you sure they’re the swords we’re looking for?”
Patterson nodded. “They bear the seal of Alexander. The portrait head and the spear thrower.”
Drake swallowed his awe. Right now they had God-Zanko to deal with.
****
Mai sto
od a little apart from the rest, making a show of watching the indistinct tower, but actually only focusing half of her mind there. Behind her, the majority of her team members talked quickly and listened hard to Patterson’s descriptions of the tower, its history, and what they could expect there. Hayden outlined a plan, but without time-consuming surveillance, they were still only a step away from swinging in the wind.
Mai attempted to shut down the creeping contemplations of her own past, particularly the terrible memories that had moved stealthily to the front of her mind during the past few weeks. The knowledge that she was being sought by the Clan smoldered through her mind like the inactive embers of a fire, just waiting to flare into life. It was an outrage that these people even believed they owned her. How could their arrogance attain such a level? The Clan Master, who had offered her destitute parents a great sum of money to take just one of their daughters off their hands, had seemed such a great man at the time, almost like a loving grandfather. Living in a poor and remote area of Japan at the time, many traders and shady dealers offered desperate, impoverished parents cash to take a child off their hands. For the parents, losing one child sometimes meant that at least the other would survive. A horrific choice, but an essential one.
Mai had been sold to a Clan Master in need of pupils. Her parents had cried; they had fallen to their knees, grasping the hand of their remaining daughter tightly so that she wouldn’t run after her sister; realized the depth of what they had done and probably never recovered. But she never saw them again.
And for Mai, being literally torn from the arms of her parents was one of the easier trials of her younger years.
And now the men she had learned to both hate and fear were searching for her again. For a long time, she had believed that she had broken free. Now she knew. They would never stop, never give up their claim on her.
She was stuck in the middle of a lethal situation with two distinct outcomes – death and vengeance. For both sides.
At last, she became aware of the conversation behind her. Professor Patterson was quickly explaining the origins of the tower.
“They built this stone tower straight up to the sky. They reached for heaven. They used slaves, tens of thousands of slaves, and whipped them till they died, burned from the midday sun right through their flesh and bone. They were challenging God, you see.” Patterson swept his arm around the general area of Babylon. “All this – a challenge to God. What we know today about the tower comes from a smattering of archeological evidence and ancient writings. According to one account, the builders of the tower said, ‘God has no right to choose the upper realm for himself. We will build us a tower with an idol on top holding a great sword, so that it may appear as if intended to war with God’.”
Yorgi whistled at that. “Hard words.”
“Indeed. Some members of that generation even wanted to assail God in Heaven. More learned men with sly ambitions encouraged them by saying arrows they shot amongst the clouds returned to Earth dripping with blood. So the people believed they could wage war against the inhabitants of Heaven and were persuaded to build the towers.”
Drake’s voice rose. “Towers?”
“There were two near Babylon alone. The Tower of Babel and the Tower of Babylon, though no one knows where the latter existed. There are the remains of towers in Central America, Mexico, Africa, Nepal and within the lands of the Indians of America, all surrounded by similar traditions. One holds that the Great Pyramid of Cholula was built in order to storm Heaven. Or . . ." he paused. “A quote from a scribed legend found in Lozi mythology, supposedly taken from an account by David Livingstone, states – to follow the gods who fled back up to Heaven. The tradition of towers being built to facilitate an entry to heaven exists all over the world.”
“But why?” Hayden questioned. “To kill the gods?”
“No. To escape their wrath.” Patterson smiled. “All these towers were built for one overwhelming purpose – to escape the next great deluge.”
Hayden cleared her throat. “As in the Great Flood, and Noah’s Ark?”
“The first great deluge. Those who survived or read about the event thought that challenging the gods might lead to further reprisals. So they made many men sweat and die so they could sit atop their mighty refuges and watch the great waters lap away down below.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, right there is where we get the origin of the Tower of Babel. It is said that the gods – or God – seeing these monstrosities being constructed confounded the language of the builders. And that is why all the countries of today speak in different languages, my friends. Because once there was only one, and in order to confuse mankind and halt the erection of the towers, the gods created many. No man could understand the other and they all went to separate parts of the Earth.”
“Babel,” Hayden repeated. “As in babbling. Each man thought the other was babbling. Is that the origin of the name?”
“Yes, it is.”
“So the towers are inextricably linked to the gods,” Hayden said.
“Yes. There are some old legends that tell of thunder and lightning bolts being sent to destroy the towers of Babel, shooting and channeling from one to the other.”
Hayden picked up on his use of the word. “Channeling? As in earth energy?”
“Yes. They were all built atop an earth energy vortex. It is—”
“And there we have to end it,” Mai spoke up suddenly. She pointed at the distant hill where tiny figures were frantically rushing around. “We need to hurry. We have a fight to get to.”
Patterson’s rhetoric, pitched low, still reached every ear as the team moved out at pace. “The battle for Babylon is about to begin.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Jonathan Gates exited the new SPEAR headquarters via the parking garage and decided to walk the few blocks over to his own offices. Karin was running the show single-handedly from this end, as he had always known she could, but Komodo was due to return in a few hours. The rough-looking Delta officer with a heart of gold had already requested a private chat and Gates had a good idea as to what it might entail.
Romero and Smyth. Technically, the two soldiers were still without a unit, although, of course, they could slot in anywhere. Gates already thought they’d bring good extra cover to the team.
As he walked, Gates saw the figure approaching from his peripheral vision. His heart immediately gave a thud of alarm and he stopped mid-stride. The form moved closer, inescapable now, much too close to avoid.
Gates sighed. “Miss Moxley? Are you well?”
The wiry redhead showed no qualms about invading the personal space of the Secretary of Defense. “Yes sir, thank you.”
“Back on the job already?”
The newspaper reporter’s façade cracked a little. “Work is the place I go to heal, sir. Always has been.”
Gates studied her anew. It was the same for him. “I’m sorry about the deaths of your colleagues.”
“Me too, sir. They were good men. I tried to contact your office for an interview, but they stonewalled me.”
“They’re under strict instructions to severely limit my media exposure. It’s the same for everyone.”
“Why? Is there something going on?”
Gates almost smiled. The bloodhound instinct of this reporter would never be quelled. He noticed the bright blue of her eyes and grew a little wary of her winning, open smile. “There’s always something going on in D.C., Miss Moxley. Being a reporter for the Post, you should know that.”
“Is that a quote?”
Gates laughed despite himself. “Do you ever let up?”
“No, sir. It’s not in my nature. And, please, call me Sarah.”
“And nor in mine,” Gates checked his watch. “Look, I believe I owe you one, Sarah. Despite our many warnings, you stuck to your job and almost paid the price. Your colleagues did pay the heaviest price. If you were soldiers we’d be giving you medals for that. So, gi
ve me the afternoon. I’ll clear your name at the office. Then call and arrange an interview. Alright?”
“Thank you, sir.” There was no mistaking the happiness as the lights danced in her eyes. But the stare. The speculative look. It wasn’t like the Secretary of Defense to get nervous around women, but her sudden interest made him almost feel young again.
She held out a hand. “See you soon, sir.”
Gates coughed. “I hope so.”
The touch of her skin would stay with him long after Sarah Moxley had departed. He started to walk again, but then his cell vibrated. When he checked the screen it was the call he’d been dreading.
“Yes?”
“Stone won, sir. He’s been allocated the funds to configure his plan.”
A bad day for the world, Gates thought. “Thank you.” He ended the call abruptly. He firmly believed in stopping a charging rhino before its legs had even got going. And he would stop General Stone.
Hard.
He already had a plan.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Drake and the rest of the team piled into the nearby vehicles and took only a few moments to find two sets of keys. The third was nowhere to be found, probably thrust deep in the pocket of someone still falling to their deaths down the bottomless pit of Babylon.
But two were enough. The team raced hard for the vague stack, reloading weapons and readjusting vests and straps as they got closer. The vehicles bounced along the rough terrain, sometimes travelling hard up slopes, other times barreling down the other side, but rarely staying straight.
“The bastards can see us coming a mile off,” Alicia said, handing Drake a pair of binoculars.
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