by Rob Jones
Lea stared with anxious uncertainty as the Englishwoman covered everyone with her gun in a slow, casual sweep before training it once again on Hawke. For the first time, Lea saw the truth in Victoria’s eyes and that truth looked like hate and avarice.
“I’m sure,” Victoria said quietly, “that you know what’s coming next.”
“You’re going to perform a Vaudeville rendition of My Fair Lady?” Scarlet said.
“Shut up, and step away from your weapons – all of you!”
Scarlet turned to Hawke. “Never trust a woman with diamond ear-rings worth more than your house, that’s what I always say.”
“Enough! Get over there!”
Victoria waved the gun menacingly in their direction and then pointed its muzzle toward the treasure.
“So what happens now?” Hawke asked.
“I want you to start filling Sala’s Triton up with some of this gold, starting right now. He wanted the weapons but all we’re interested in is money.”
Scarlet gave a nod of agreement. “Understandable.”
“What then?” asked Hawke.
“Then, Leon and I are going back to the surface and you’re going to live out the remainder of your short and pointless lives in here, with your beloved gods. When I return to the world I’ll be sure to tell Dickie how brave you all were.”
“And how are you getting back to the surface?” Hawke’s voice was heavy with scepticism.
“I’m not a complete fool, Mr Hawke. I’ve trained on Tritons in the Keys, so I know what to do, and there’s always Leon.”
“We’ll just follow in our mini-sub.”
“I don’t think so, because I’m going to destroy it before I leave, and I know the Migaloo is useless to you because it requires a full crew to pilot it. Now, get going!”
Hawke picked up a large golden plate studded with emeralds and handed it to Lea who in turn handed it to Scarlet. Slowly they started their march back to the subs.
Lea looked over her shoulder at the archaeologist. “Who are you Victoria? Is that even your real name?”
“Of course it is, I’m not bloody Poison Ivy, you know. Just get on with it – I don’t want to spend all day here. Leon and I have an early retirement to fly to.”
*
Hawke heaved a trunk of gold over to the Migaloo and began to load the precious cargo inside the Triton mini submersible in the back of it. They had been slaving away for an hour now, hauling various pieces of treasure and other significant artefacts from the Hall to the lake where the subs were moored up. If Victoria’s plan was executed how she wanted and she forced him to destroy their mini-sub, that would cut off their only other escape route.
He looked up as he worked and watched the traitor as she surveyed their labor. She was now standing beside Leon Smets on a ledge at the side of the cavern running parallel to the water and keeping them under strict surveillance. He wasn’t exactly sure how Sir Richard Eden knew this woman but he thought maybe it was time for the old man to review his list of friends.
While the former SBS man’s mind raced with potential tactics – and none of them seemed particularly conducive to a successful escape – he saw not everyone shared his concerns. Even under threat of immediate execution, Ryan couldn’t contain his excitement as they uncovered one amazing ancient relic after another.
“Check out this incredible spear,” he said, peering inside one of the chests. “How did they make such a thing?”
Scarlet sighed “As pressing as that question is Ryan – and believe me it will certainly keep me up many a night – I think we have other concerns at the moment.”
“Hurry up, you idiots!” Victoria shouted.
After filling the Triton until it was almost dangerously overloaded, Victoria had Hawke pilot it out of the Migaloo and position it near the underwater exit where they had arrived. He sailed it past their mini-sub and returned to shore.
“Right,” Victoria said, turning to Hawke. “Get the C4 out of your bag in the mini-sub and set them to explode in thirty seconds or I shoot Lea.” She turned the gun on Lea and cocked the hammer.
Hawke clenched his jaw but knew he had no alternative. Following Victoria’s orders to the letter, he climbed inside their mini-sub and pulled some explosives from his C4 supply. Then he placed them on the most vulnerable points in the sub and inserted blasting caps.
As he clambered out of the sub, Victoria flicked her hand at him. “Give me the detonator, now.”
He walked toward her, ready to take her down if he had half a chance, but she wasn’t taking any chances. “Not so fast, Superman,” she said, taking a step back. “Put it on the floor and kick it over to me.”
He did as he was told and a moment later she held the detonator in her hand. She turned to face them and raised the detonator. “Any funny business and I’ll blow up your little sub right now! Now get back in the Hall!”
Lea was closest to Victoria as they turned to leave, and without any warning she lunged at her, but missed the gun and fell forward onto her knees.
Victoria turned the gun on Lea and squeezed the trigger. Ryan leaped in front of her and tried to grab the weapon but the archaeologist fired three more times. The sound of the gunpowder exploding so close to them in the enclosed space was deafening.
Ryan fell to the floor in a heap, and in the chaos Hawke punched Smets hard. In one move he smashed his jaw and disarmed him but the Belgian darted into a tunnel.
Victoria fired blindly at the others but quickly ran out of bullets. With no time to reload so close to the enemy, she turned on her heel and sprinted into the darkness of one of the tunnels behind her. In her panic she had dropped the detonation device for the C4 Hawke had put in the mini-sub.
“I’ll have that,” Scarlet said, snatching it from the ground.
“She’s getting away!” screamed Lea.
Hawke watched as Victoria receded into the darkness while Scarlet ran to Ryan. She pulled up his Batman t-shirt and after studying the wound she looked up at Hawke with a rare expression of anxious doubt on her face. “This is bad, Joe.”
Hawke’s mind filled with a desperate déjà vu as he recalled the terrible day Lea had gotten shot in the Tomb of Eternity. He couldn’t believe it was all happening again, but now to Ryan instead.
“Lea – get into your Dad’s research, fast. We know he was a student of Norse healing and we’re in the heart of Valhalla. Scarlet – look after Ryan while Lea’s looking for something to help him – and don’t forget that Smets could be anywhere.”
“Sure, but what about you?”
“I’m going give Lady Victoria Hamilton-Talbot a course in SBS etiquette.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Hawke crossed the bridge by the waterfalls and sprinted for the tunnel leading to the subs. Smets could wait, because right now the priority was stopping the treacherous Victoria. He knew she was planning on taking the Triton back to the shore where presumably the plan was to catch up with Trond and tell him the rest of them had been killed. That didn’t leave him much time to stop her.
If she got away in the Triton and somehow destroyed their mini-sub on the way out, it could block the exit tunnel and they would be trapped. Underwater cave systems like these had viciously strong currents and there was a reason why cave diving was considered a potentially deadly sport. He knew even he would have a seriously hard job getting out of this one, never mind Lea and Scarlet. A badly wounded Ryan Bale stood no chance at all.
He reached the other end of the tunnel a few moments later, and was just in time to see Victoria Hamilton-Talbot sprinting across the cave toward the subs. The Triton packed with gold was at the far end, but the mini-sub packed with C4 was closer and when he opened fire on her she had no choice. Desperate for cover and with the Triton another thirty seconds’ sprint away she clambered inside the explosive-laden mini-sub. She had obviously decided to cut her losses and try to escape with her life, leaving both the gold and her lover behind to face oblivion.
> Charming, he thought.
He drew his gun and fired single-burst shots at the woman as she retreated inside the vessel, carefully avoiding striking the sub. She saw him and didn’t hesitate to return fire, blasting her gun in his direction.
Bullets whistled past his head and smashed into the cave wall behind him. He dived to the gritty floor, softening his landing with a classic parkour break-fall roll. Using his shoulder to redirect his forward momentum he pivoted over and came to a stop on the other side of the tunnel behind the cover of an enormous boulder.
He rubbed the dirt from his eyes and ducked as she fired another burst of bullets at him. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he had to take her out of the game.
*
Lea frantically ran toward Eir’s Hall. She had seen enough bullet wounds in her time to know Ryan’s were fatal, at least from any conventional medical point of view. His only chance was if she could find something from this weird world of the gods like the elixir that had saved her life in Ethiopia. She knew Sala had sent the apples back to the Migaloo but with no idea what they would do to Ryan’s mortal physiology she decided to trust her father instead.
Hurriedly, she burst into the small chamber and started searching for anything she could think of that might be able to help Ryan. Her father was a good man – she knew it in her heart – and if he had researched Eir in her capacity as the goddess of medicine and healing she knew there must be something in here that could help Ryan.
She flicked her phone and desperately scanned through the uploaded copies of her father’s research files. Somewhere in here she knew she would find the answer. Scrolling past the unsettling reference by her dad to the Athanatoi, she navigated to the section on Eir. Her eyes crawled over the words as she wildly sought a way to save her former husband’s life.
*
Scarlet held Ryan’s head in her lap as he continued to bleed out over the dusty, ancient flagstones of Valhalla. His face was ashen now, and covered in a thin veil of sweat.
He struggled to speak through the rapid, shallow breaths caused by his failing heart. “I knew I’d get you one day, Cairo.”
For once, Scarlet Sloane couldn’t think of anything to say. She was watching a valued member of the team die in her arms, but it was more than that. Ryan was young – he had his whole life ahead of him.
“Stay with me, Ryan.”
“Why, are you going somewhere?”
She laughed, and hoped its fraudulence wasn’t obvious to Ryan. “Not me, you tit. I’m talking to you so you don’t go and do something stupid like croak in my arms.”
“Hey Scarlet,” Ryan said, his voice weak now. “What did Arnold Schwarzenegger say when a man made from spaghetti served him coffee?”
“Stop talking Ryan – for once in your life.”
“Pasta barista, baby!”
Scarlet looked at him stony-faced. “You don’t say things like that in public, do you?”
Ryan coughed some blood and gripped her hand. “I’m scared, Cairo.”
“No need, Ryan. We’re going to get you through this. Lea’s on the case and you trust her, right?”
“As long as there’s no cooking involved, then yes.”
“That’s the spirit.”
She noticed he was starting to pass out and she gently tapped the side of his face. “Stay with me, Ryan. Lea’s almost here.”
She looked over her shoulder but saw Lea was nowhere in sight. She had no idea where she was or what she was doing – she could have been shot and killed by Smets or Victoria for all she knew – but she had to keep Ryan alive as long as possible. “Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Rich’s place in the country?”
“He has a place in the country?”
“Sure – just outside Oxford.”
“A little two-up, two-down affair, no doubt?”
“A little more than that. It’s got fifteen bedrooms and it’s set on ninety acres.”
Ryan began wheezing. “He’s not one to do things by half, is he?”
“I only ever went there once. It was when he was thinking about recruiting me to ECHO.”
“So just after the last Ice Age?”
“Do you want to hear this story or not?”
“Sorry…” more coughing.
“He’d just had a terrific row with the Prime Minister because they’d decided to cut his department over in MI5. His valet accidentally backed my Jag over his topiary peacock – you wouldn’t think a box hedge could make such a mess of a color-coded fender.”
“Was he angry?”
“Not nearly enough – he said it was barely a scratch.”
“I meant about the cuts to his department, Scarlet.”
Scarlet knew what he meant, and smiled. Making jokes in tough times was what she did best, but this was testing her to the limits. She looked at her watch and then back up to Ryan’s cold, clammy face. He was running out of time fast.
*
Hawke kept up the assault, his bullets ricocheting off the sub’s hatch and flying into the roof of the cave with a gentle thud. In response, Victoria emptied her magazine at him, firing wildly until the bullets were gone, and then she slammed shut the hatch and began to turn the wheel to secure the airlock.
With no longer any danger of getting shot, Hawke sprinted for the sub which had now begun to move slowly away from the lake’s shore and out into the middle of the water.
He launched himself from the shore’s edge and leaped with all his might at the mini-sub, slamming into its smooth exterior and sliding down the hull casing toward the icy water. He reached out with his arms for anything that would arrest his fall but the hull was perfectly hydrodynamic so he continued his slide.
He scrambled diagonally across the casing with a view to using the bow planes as a foot rest, and it worked. He came to a stop on the large, metal plane and caught his breath. Inside the mini-sub he saw Victoria’s face lit low in the orange glow of the internal lights. A fiendish smile crossed her lips when she saw how he had saved himself and she instantly moved to the controls.
Seconds later the bow planes tipped forward, presenting the former Commando with two problems. The first being his footrest was now at a sharp angle and much harder to cling to, and the second being that the sub was diving under the water.
He knew he had only seconds left before she took the mini-sub beneath the waves and then she would be gone forever. At the front of the sub now, he was able to walk up the shallower degree of the bow casing and run up to the safety of the deck. Inside, Victoria looked panicked and speeded up the dive, but it was too late.
Hawke was now on the central portion of the sub’s deck and climbing up what passed for a conning tower on the mini-sub. He began to unwind the airlock wheel and then he opened the hatch. With the freezing water now up to his knees, he dropped down inside the sub to find Victoria waiting for him.
She was turning in her chair at the controls and pointing a gun at him in the cramped space. All around he could see the C4 he had positioned but without the detonation device it was of no more use than modelling clay – and the device was in Scarlet’s hands.
The sub continued to dive but Hawke realized with some degree of relief that the gun in her hand was the same SIG Sauer P226 she had used to keep him pinned down on the shore. He decided to gamble that she couldn’t possibly have reloaded it while she was diving the sub, and lunged forward.
She squeezed the SIG’s trigger, but nothing more happened than classic dry firing as the hammer struck the empty chamber.
“Allow me,” he said, knocking the gun from her hand. He bent over and picked it up.
She frowned. “I always thought you had a disarming personality. Listen – there’s no need for us fight each other. What do you say to us getting out of here together? I can be very accommodating.”
She leaned forward and ran her hands up his arms. Moving closer now, she parted her lips and tried to kiss him.
Hawke pushed her away wit
h the tip of his forefinger and scowled.
“Sorry, but I have a long-standing policy never to date shits who shoot my friends.”
Crestfallen, she flounced back to her chair, but then snatched up a spanner and took a chunky swipe at Hawke. He ducked and the heavy tool struck the air-conditioning controls with a loud clang.
Hawke reacted in a heartbeat and rammed the butt of the pistol into her face, knocking her back into her chair. She righted her balance and wiped the blood from her mouth.
“You should never hit a lady!”
“Thanks. When I see a lady I’ll be sure not to hit her.”
Before she could reply, he turned the pressurization system on and smashed the controls to pieces with his butt of the SIG. With the C4 option unavailable, and no rounds left in the gun he had only one choice. “You shot a very good friend of mine. I don’t let things like that pass.”
“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear as the realization of her fate stretched over her like a dusk shadow.
Hawke picked up the spanner she had tried to kill him with and tested its weight and length in his hand. “At least we get to find out how you react under some real pressure. Goodbye, Victoria.”
He climbed out of the sub and swung the hatch down, jamming it shut with the spanner. Then he jumped into the water and swam back to the shore. Behind him, just as the mini-sub sank beneath the waves he heard an enormously deep explosion as the pressure inside it reached its maximum level and detonated the vessel.
Without looking back, he sprinted back along the tunnel toward Ryan and Scarlet.
*
Lea ran her eyes over the tiny iPhone screen and muttered a thank you to her father. She was looking at a scanned and uploaded image of a pencil sketch her dad had made decades earlier. It was a flower, with delicate apple-white petals and a thin fern-green stem. Beneath the drawing were the words: Eirflower & the healing ritual.
She had no clue what an Eirflower was, but she knew Eir was the goddess of medicine and she liked the sound of a healing ritual. By the time she got to the small chamber she knew what she was looking for.