Ethan put one hand out to steady himself, confused, and then the cold bit deeper into his bones and he realized that he must be losing blood. In the faint light he looked down and he realized that amid all the mud and water there was an oozing of fluid from somewhere in his stomach.
Ethan put his hand over the wound as the pain finally hit him. His vision blurred and stars whorled in front of him and he sucked in a deep breath as he realized that there was no strength remaining in his body and that he could’t keep himself upright any longer, even on his knees.
‘Ethan?!’
Ethan slumped over his wound, his breath coming in short gasps as he heard Lopez calling for him, but he could not move his head to look at her even when he heard the soldiers’ rifles clatter rounds that sounded as though they were hitting the stone walls around the entrance.
Ethan closed his eyes and then he heard the stone block that they had removed from the entrance shoved back into place and the interior of the temple was plunged into an absolute blackness that matched the cold darkness that now overwhelmed him.
As gentle as a lullaby, Ethan felt the last of his strength leave him and all around him fell silent and still.
***
XLVI
Lopez squinted in the brilliant sunlight as she shielded her eyes with her hands and tumbled out of the temple and onto the sand, the heat of the sun on her skin. Lucy staggered alongside her as they stumbled away from the entrance to the temple, trying to let their eyes adjust to the brightness. As her vision cleared, Lopez saw several dead bodies of Russians nearby, shot where they must have been guarding the approaches to the site.
Lopez whirled as she heard the stone cover being shoved back into place behind them.
Petrov slammed the heavy block into position and then turned with a pistol in his hand and aimed it at them. Lopez froze as she saw the look in the Russian’s eye, one of absolute fury and the cold–blooded need for vengeance. His left leg was bleeding and he was limping from a wound he must have sustained when the American soldiers had blasted their way into the cavern, but he was still standing despite the damage.
‘You,’ was all that he could hiss at her, his lips twisted with rage.
Petrov stepped away from the block and stalked toward Lopez, the pistol never wavering from her face.
‘You, and those idiot friends of yours, have just lost us all a fortune!’
Lucy backed away and raised a hand. ‘Killing us isn’t going to change anything!’
Petrov grinned, his jaw clenched and his teeth bared. ‘No, but it will make me feel a whole lot better about everything!’
Petrov turned to aim at Lucy and Lopez swept her boot across the sand and kicked it up into Petrov’s face. The fine grains splattered across his vision and he growled as his eyesight was spoiled, turning back to aim at Lopez.
Lopez ducked down and swivelled on her left heel as she struck out with her right boot and slammed it into Petrov’s leg, her heel driving deep into his wound. The Russian squealed in pain as he fired and the shot went over Lopez’s head. Lopez rushed in and smashed his pistol arm aside with her left fist as she dropped a round house punch right down across the Russian’s temple. Her knuckles smacked into his forehead with a loud crack and she saw his eyeballs roll up briefly into their sockets as he plummeted onto his back on the sand.
Lopez kicked the pistol from his grip and fell upon him, straddling Petrov’s chest as she punched him in the face over and over again. The Russian’s nose broke and two of his teeth flew clear of his splitting lips, trailing drools of blood as Lopez rained down a frenzy of blows that rocked his head this way and that.
The Russian eyes fluttered as he fought to maintain consciousness, and then he thumped Lopez in her side. Lopez barely noticed the blow until she felt something rasp against bone inside her and heard Lucy scream.
She looked down and saw Petrov’s serrated blade buried to the hilt in her flank, his hand gripping the handle. She looked at Petrov, saw his eyes glittering with malice through a mask of blood and bruised tissue as he twisted the blade in her side. White pain ripped through Lopez and she cried out in pain as she rolled away from him and the serrated blade tore out of her.
Lopez slumped onto her back on the sand, both hands clasping her wound and her eyes wide as she sucked in a deep breath and tried to master the crippling pain seething through her body as Petrov crawled to his feet. Blood sagged in long loops from his ruined mouth, his eyes already swelling up and his skin torn and bruising heavily as he staggered upright and towered over her. His voice when he spoke was taut with pain and thick with the swelling already affecting his lips and cheeks as he pointed at his own face.
‘This will heal,’ he gasped as he turned the blade in his hands and gripped it. ‘You won’t.’
Petrov moved to stand over her, then raised the knife above his head as he made to plunge the weapon down and into her heart.
The gunshot came from behind the Russian, a single round that slammed into his back with a dull thud and exited his chest with a fine spray of blood that splattered across the sand next to Lopez. Lopez squinted in the sunlight and saw Lucy holding the Russian’s dropped pistol in both hands, her face a mask of shock and terror.
Petrov stared sightlessly at the horizon, his fractured heart spilling blood down his shirt as he toppled slowly sideways and then crashed down onto the sand with a thud. Lopez looked at him and then she felt the warmth of the sun fading away as a chill began to envelope her.
‘Charming,’ she uttered as she tried to stem the flow from her wound.
Lucy dashed to her side and forced her hands over Lopez’s side. ‘Stay still, you’re gonna be fine.’
Lopez chuckled grimly and shook her head, her voice tight with pain.
‘Oh good, ‘cause I was worried I was bleeding out here real quick, miles from any hospital.’
Lucy winced and grief twisted her features, as from somewhere in the distance Lopez thought that she heard the sound of a helicopter coming closer. The beating air reverberated through her chest and shuddered through the ground beneath her, and against the bright sky she saw a huge blue helicopter thunder into view, plumes of sand whipped up into a vortex nearby as it descended toward the ground.
‘Stay with me!’ Lucy yelled into her face.
Lopez smiled, although she had no idea why. She felt her own hand press down on Lucy’s and she could feel the blood slick between them, and she figured that there was nothing much left to hold on for. She’d seen Ethan go down, and if he was still in there now then there was little point in expecting the American soldiers to attempt to save his life. Both of their families were in danger as a result of their work over the years, and really there was only one way to ensure that they weren’t caught up in any of this mess ever again.
Lucy didn’t fight the cold as it washed over her, nor the darkness that followed.
*
They waited.
The sound of the helicopter outside was not that of the Super Stallion that would extract them in less than an hour, for it was to meet them at the rendezvous on the coast. Conscious of the risk that the Russian interlopers might have called in reinforcements, the SEAL team waited with their weapons trained on the exit. They heard the helicopter take off again a minute or two later and then the sound of its rotors faded away into the distance.
Convinced that the way was clear, the leader of the team shoved the stone block out of the wall and brilliant sunlight streamed in as he and his men rushed out into the daylight and secured the area.
Within minutes, they had dragged their cargo of flotation devices out of the temple, the valuable haul having conveniently floated out of the cavern with the flood waters. They then hauled the bodies of the dead Russian guards off the sand and tipped their bodies back into the opening. Finally, they heaved the stone cover back into place and with military efficiency they covered the entrance once again with the soil and sand displaced earlier in the day. Two of the team spent sever
al minutes carefully ensuring that it was impossible to tell where the entrance was.
Satisfied, the SEAL team leader gathered his men together and they hurried toward the coast, each carrying the burden of a single flotation bag packed with untold riches destined for their superiors back aboard the USS Bataan, and four men each bearing the extra load of a field stretcher carrying one of their own. They reached the dunes of the shoreline within twenty minutes, moving at a pace that only trained Special Forces could sustain, and then they settled into the undergrowth to await the arrival of the Super Stallion. After only fifteen minutes the Super Stallion helicopter, known in Navy terms as a “helo”, thundered up the coast on its routine mission, cleared with the Spanish government, and briefly it slowed and hovered just a few feet above the rollers and the dunes, its immense blades whipping up huge clouds of sand that swirled in a diaphanous cloud around it and helped conceal the eight–man SEAL team as they burst from cover and dashed for their extraction.
Sixty seconds later, the Super Stallion climbed away from the beach and thundered out to sea, the beach and the park behind it once again returned to the anonymous solitude and silence it had enjoyed for thousands of years.
*
Lieutenant Colonel Foxx watched as the Super Stallion touched down on the Bataan’s deck, her soldiers disembarking with their concealed cargo on their backs. The men quickly headed for a sector near the stern of the assault ship that had been cordoned off to avoid any prying eyes from examining whatever the SEAL team might have brought back with them.
Foxx did not intend to search the contents of the flotation sacks until later. The fact that they were all filled with something was enough for him to know that the mission had been a success.
Foxx made his way instead to the ship’s observation deck and grabbed a pair of binoculars that he used to sweep the horizon until he found what he was looking for. The sleek gray form of a Russian destroyer was looming out of the early morning haze and heading for their position off the coast, and judging by the head of her bow she was at full speed.
‘Any communications chatter from the Severomosk?’ he asked the captain.
‘Repeated calls on a high–frequency channel,’ the captain confirmed. ‘We have heard no response. What do you want us to do?’
Foxx lowered the binoculars and thought only for a moment before he replied.
‘Take us out of here, all ahead one half. Make it look like we’re not rushing.’
The captain nodded and Foxx felt the ship start to move as the captain gave the orders and the Bataan eased away from her position, giving ground to the Russian destroyer so as to neither help nor hinder her passage.
Foxx watched the destroyer for the next hour as she slowed and cruised along the coast in international waters, but the Russian vessel did not make contact and she did not attempt to follow the American ship as it sailed away into the Atlantic Ocean. Foxx eventually lost sight of her over the horizon along with the European coast, and it was then that he finally abandoned his vigil and headed for the stern.
The SEAL team were prepared for the debrief, and they filled him in with their customary efficiency before showing him the contents of seven of the flotation sacks they had recovered from the site. Foxx regarded those contents with interest before the team leader showed him the contents of the eighth sack, now laying before them on a bed in the sick bay.
Foxx raised an eyebrow as the soldier looked at him. ‘What do you want us to do about this?’
‘You weren’t supposed to bring back any casualties,’ Foxx pointed out.
The SEAL remained stoic in his expression as he replied. ‘Semper fi, sir: once a Marine, always a Marine. We opened fire without prejudice, but this one still fired in support of my men. We might have our orders, sir, but we also have our honor.’
Foxx thought for a moment, and then he made his decision.
‘I’ll handle it when we get back to DC,’ he said. ‘For now, keep doing what you’re doing and tell nobody.’
***
XLVII
Capitol Hill
Washington DC
( Six months later )
Allison Pierce watched from the steps of Capitol Hill as a line of executive vehicles rolled up in the warm summer sunshine. She leaned against a wall and waited patiently as four of the legislators due to deliver the oversight hearing to the rest of congress exited their vehicles and walked up the steps toward the building.
Allison could see that they were all talking together, sharing the odd chuckle here and there, oblivious to the world beyond their cossetted capitol and the miasma of legalese that was their currency in life. She waited until they were almost alongside her before she called out.
‘Milton.’
Congressman Keyes looked across at her and his joviality slipped away into something akin to a scowl. He uttered something to his companions and changed direction, moving reluctantly toward her as the other lawmakers hurried up the steps and into the building.
‘You just don’t quit, do you?’ Keyes uttered as he confronted her.
Allison enjoyed watching the congressman squirm, but she had no interest in twisting the knife further into his guts and simply got down to business.
‘We agreed upon an open hearing,’ she snapped, ‘and yet you’re all closed doors again.’
‘I can’t help what the rest of congress wants to do, and besides it was out of my hands the moment the FBI got involved. They kept the investigation under wraps for three months, remember? Right up to the point where Little Miss Pierce got all impatient and went global with her report.’
Allison allowed herself a small smile that curled stubbornly from one corner of her lips. Her independent report, which was aired live by all of the major networks and eventually as a documentary that was shown around the world, secured her reputation and revealed many of the lies and deceits used by men of power to influence elections around the world to suit their own business needs. Even she could not have imagined the sheer scope of the corruption that had become a hallmark of democracy, where even the United States was not immune to the influences of other nations with the will and the means to interfere with the democratic process.
Now, as a result of her work and the worldwide scandal that it had exposed, Allison had become one of the world’s most respected investigative journalists and her woes of six months before seemed trite and distant now. She had dedicated herself to exposing men like Keyes to the extent that the White House routinely dismissed her reports as “fake news” until it became obvious that they were anything but faked. She had kept Keyes in her pocket however, her evidence against him overwhelming and ready to let go the moment he considered doing anything other than the decent thing.
With the director of the FBI having recently been fired by a president desperately trying to prevent his links to the Russians and the treasures uncovered at the site in Spain from being exposed, not to mention the more expansive links to Majestic Twelve that had been enjoyed by senators and congressmen alike, she knew that she had the halls of power trembling with uncertainty and fear.
‘A flawless report,’ she warned him, ‘with full disclosure afterward, or I’ll blow your career into the water.’
‘You can’t keep doing this,’ Keyes hissed. ‘Sooner or later it will become old news and by God when it does I will bring down the full force of congress upon you and…
Allison held up her cell phone and Keyes saw that it was recording everything he was saying. Even as he stumbled on his words, Allison pressed a button and a video played. Congressman Keyes’ features blanched as he saw himself stagger in front of a vehicle, the camera mounted on the dashboard and looking through the windshield at him, the sky a hard blue and his face sheened with sweat. In the background he could hear Allison Pierce’s voice.
‘Tell me what happened! There’s no time to argue! If you don’t talk then Petrov will kill everybody he finds out there!’
Keyes watched himself struggle to
stay focussed and then speak in a ragged voice.
‘The Russians were involved in a campaign to spread fake news during the presidential election. They set up a control room in downtown DC and used cybercrime to influence the way people think. They’ve been doing it for years inside Russia but have now spread their work to the United States. Militarily, Russia isn’t the force it once was and so the Kremlin has resorted to other means to project their influence into world events.’
‘How do you fit into all of this?’
‘They wanted me to act as a go–between for the Russian hackers, and to ensure that the investigation into Majestic Twelve did not reveal the lost billions but only that which had already been declared to the public.’
Allison heard her own voice on the recording.
‘Damn it! I knew it! It’s all about the damned money and you people don’t care whose lives get destroyed in the process! How much were you in for, Keyes? How much did they promise you?’
Allison shut the video off and slipped the cell into her pocket.
‘I’ve made more copies of that film than a Disney movie,’ she uttered as she leaned close to the congressman, ‘and we have the records from the hospital in Spain detailing your treatment and my involvement. I’ll spill it all in an instant, any time between now and the end of our lives, the moment you even think about hesitating to speak anything but the truth. And I want everyone formerly of the DIA associated with these events and their families completely exonerated. It’s your call, Keyes: do the right thing, or spend twenty to life in prison for treason.’
Keyes scowled in frustration but Allison turned and walked away, not dignifying him with a chance to reply or protest as she walked down the steps of the Capitol and turned right. She walked along the avenue and a sedan slipped alongside the sidewalk as a door opened smoothly. Allison got into the still–moving vehicle with practiced grace and closed the door behind her.
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