Hunt at World's End gh-3

by Gabriel Hunt

  Gabriel drove the edge of his shovel into the wall of sand before him, and it struck something hard. Something the metal blade of the shovel struck with a ringing clank.

  “My God,” Daniel whispered. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s hope,” Gabriel said.

  The sky was turning red with sunset by the time they cleared the sand away from a buried door. The door itself was made of metal, though it was set into a wall composed of blocks of sandstone. Like the others they’d seen, this door was covered with ornate carvings and had no handle, only the keyhole with its three slots and the small skull design carved above it. Gabriel took the key from around his neck and lined it up with the lock. This time he was prepared—but when the key jumped from his hand and pulled itself into the lock, he still found his heart beating faster. Gabriel threw his strength into turning the key. It seemed to take more effort than the first two, but it was hard to say—after all, he hadn’t been the one turning it the first time and they had been underwater the second. All he knew for sure was that the imprint of the skull would be pressed into the flesh of his palm for a good long time. But he kept straining until he heard the loud, metallic click he was waiting for. He felt the resistance give way as the internal mechanism kicked in and the door began creaking open. They stepped back to make way. Dry, fetid air blew out of the crypt, stirring the sands around them.

  Daniel limped back to the jeep to get the flashlight. When he returned, he handed it down to Joyce. “This is your find, Joyce. It’s your name they’ll put on this before anyone else’s. It should be you who has the honor of being the first to set foot inside.”

  Joyce took the flashlight from him and held onto his hand. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

  “I know, my dear. I know how much you wanted this. And I want you to know I’m sorry for—well, for everything, but especially for trying to stand in the way of your doing…this. I never should have treated you like you’re still a little girl who needs her foolish, overprotective uncle’s help.” He squeezed her hand. “But most of all, I want you to know how proud of you I am. I’m frightened for you—but I couldn’t be prouder.”

  Gabriel raised his left hand in the air. The luminous digits on the dial of his wristwatch had begun to glow as the daylight faded into darkness. “Not that I want to come between a girl and her uncle, but…”

  “No, you’re right,” Daniel said. He released Joyce’s hand, picked up a pair of electric lanterns and handed them down. Then he climbed down into the pit himself.

  Joyce led the way through the door. Gabriel followed and Daniel brought up the rear. The stale air inside the crypt was stifling. They followed a stone stairway down into darkness, their footsteps echoing off the walls, the lanterns lending an orange tint to their surroundings.

  At the bottom of the steps, a long corridor stretched into the blackness. The lantern beams illuminated alcoves along the walls on either side. The bodies inside them had been mummified by the dry air, their skin shrunken against their bones like a thin layer of old leather, brown and cracked; but their armor remained mostly intact, preserved by the lack of moisture. As the lantern light passed along the corpses’ empty eye sockets, it almost looked like the dead soldiers were watching them pass.

  Ahead, the corridor led through an archway into a small chamber where colored light shimmered against the wall. But instead of the green light they’d seen in the other two crypts, this time the light was a deep, rich crimson. Gabriel raised his lantern up over his head and Joyce did the same with hers. At the far end of the chamber, atop a pedestal and gripped in a stone hand, sat an enormous ruby.

  “Well, that’s different,” she said. She walked to the pedestal for a closer look.

  “Be careful,” Gabriel said. “Don’t touch it yet.” He glanced up at the ceiling, wondering what trap the Hittite architects had in store for them this time.

  “Look at this,” Joyce said. “The inscription is different, too.” She held her lantern up to the wall behind the pedestal. Nesili symbols were carved into the rock—but more of them this time than there had been in the other crypts.

  “Fascinating,” Daniel said, stepping forward.

  “Want to do the honors?” Gabriel asked. “My Nesili’s okay, but I’m not the best sight reader.”

  Daniel translated as Joyce moved the light slowly across the symbols. “ ‘Three armies will determine its fate…’ It’s the final verse of the legend. It explains how, when the time comes, three armies will determine how the Spearhead will be used—as a force for destruction or as something that benefits mankind. And it describes Teshub’s final judgment as to whether mankind is wise enough to possess the Spearhead.”

  “I guess the answer was no,” Gabriel said.

  “More like ‘not yet,’ ” Daniel said. “Teshub didn’t destroy it, after all. He hid it. And what’s hidden can be found.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Gabriel said. “Why don’t you two get over by the door.” They went to stand by the archway while Gabriel carefully approached the ruby. “And if I say run, you run—understand? Don’t even look back, just get the hell out of here.”

  Joyce nodded. “Be careful.”

  Gabriel studied the ruby in the stone hand’s grasp. It was lit from within by the same natural iridescence as the emeralds had been. It had the same wide, flat octagonal cut, too, but this gem was bigger, almost twice the size of the others. As Gabriel reached for it, he heard the pitch of the electrical hum emanating from it change and felt the hairs on the back of his arm stand straight up. He took hold of the ruby with both hands and lifted it gently out of the stone fingers’ grasp. The stone felt warm in his hands, and the electrical charge it gave off was much stronger than that of the second Eye.

  The fingers of the stone hand began to scrape closed. Gabriel backed away, watching the ceiling for any signs of movement. There weren’t any—in the ceiling. But the whole chamber began to shake, almost as if the area were in the grip of an earthquake. Daniel put one arm around Joyce and braced himself in the archway. Sand sifted down from cracks in the ceiling.

  “Run,” Gabriel said.

  They raced out of the chamber and into the corridor, sprinting toward the steps leading up to the desert. Knocked free by the tremors, the mummified bodies tumbled out of their alcoves and smashed against the floor. In the lead, Joyce leapt over one and kept going, while Daniel, limping on his bad leg, took pains to skirt another. Behind them both, Gabriel hurtled over one only to find another falling against him. He found himself wrestling with a corpse, its shriveled head inches from his face, the mummified jaw hanging open in an eternal expression of shock. Gabriel shoved the body aside and kept running, taking the stairs two at a time while the crypt trembled and shook around him.

  Outside, he pulled himself quickly out of the pit. Joyce and Daniel were already standing on the sand, looking around nervously. A deep rumbling continued to emanate from somewhere below, but none of the baobabs in the distance were swaying, no animals had run into the open. Definitely not an earthquake, Gabriel thought. Something rarer and stranger was happening.

  “What’s that?” Joyce shouted, pointing.

  A few dozen yards away, the sand had begun to undulate, bulging upward in the shape of an enormous dome. A massive stone broke through the surface and kept rising, the sand pouring off its sides. Initially it looked like it was only a dome, a smaller version of Uluru in Australia, perhaps, an extrusion resulting from plate tectonics. But after a moment it became apparent that this was no mere dome. Because the next thing that came into view as the stone continued rising was a pair of roughly carved eyes. The eyes were followed by an enormous carved nose. It was a giant stone head—then a giant bearded head—then a head and neck—then head, neck, and shoulders—and still it came, this giant figure, displacing tons of sand as it emerged into the night air. The figure’s wide shoulders appeared, then its chest, its torso. Its arms; its hips and thighs; its knees. Gabriel watched a
s the titanic figure emerged, until finally the statue towered seventy feet above them, silhouetted against the moonlit sky.

  Daniel stepped forward, staring with awe. “Teshub.”

  The statue of Teshub stood silently before them, one hand at its side, the other held out, palm up, as if offering something to his followers. But the hand was empty. The Spearhead wasn’t there.

  “Look at the eyes,” Daniel said, craning his neck to do so.

  The statue’s eyes were wide, blank ovals of stone, and where the iris of each eye should have been was a dark, empty socket, that looked just about deep enough for one of the gemstones to fit inside.

  “Fascinating,” Daniel said. “The storm god risen from the desert sand, awaiting the return of his eyes, and ready to give his gift to the world. Have you ever seen anything so magnificent?”

  Before Gabriel could answer, they all heard the roar of engines behind them. Turning, Gabriel saw a half dozen jeeps speeding toward them across the desert, clouds of sand billowing in their wake. Gabriel cursed under his breath and drew his Colt. Even before he saw the man’s face through the grimy windshield of the lead jeep, he knew it was Grissom. And Grissom had brought an army with him. With five or six men in each jeep, they were hopelessly outnumbered.

  The jeeps pulled to a stop a few yards in front of them. Grissom and his men climbed out of the vehicles and raised a variety of shotguns and automatic handguns into view.

  Grissom stepped forward. “Well, well. Here we are again.” He reached out his free hand for the gemstone. “Hand it over.”

  Gabriel cocked the hammer of his Colt.

  “Come now, Mr. Hunt. I know you’re an excellent shot. And I know,” Grissom said, his face clouding over for a moment, a twitch pounding on his temple, “that you have no qualms about taking a life. But I don’t think of you as suicidal. And how long do you think you’d live after you pulled that trigger? How long would your friends live? It would be a foolish gesture.”

  Gabriel surveyed the crowd around them. Six jeeps, some three dozen men, all of them armed and all of them looking well trained in the use of arms. He ground his teeth. He wasn’t confident they’d live a whole lot longer if he lowered his gun, but in cases like this, every minute was worth something. He tossed the Colt onto the sand.

  “Now the gemstones.”

  Gabriel looked at the ruby in his hand. Its energy buzzed along his arm, a thousand feathers tickling on his skin.

  Grissom held out his hand. “My men aren’t used to having to restrain themselves, Mr. Hunt. I will not ask again.”

  Gabriel handed the ruby to Grissom, who slipped it into one of the large side pockets of his cargo vest. He turned to the gunman beside him, a man with a pockmarked face and an eyepatch over his right eye. He wore a bandolier filled with shells across his chest and was carrying a pump-action shotgun. “Bring me the other one, DeVoe,” Grissom said. The mercenary went to the jeep, retrieved a black velvet sack and brought it back. Grissom took the sack from him, opened it, and let the emerald from Borneo slide onto his palm. He slid it into another pocket of his vest.

  Grissom turned back to Gabriel. “Now, the last one. The gemstone from Turkey.”

  “Sorry, but I can’t give you that one,” Gabriel said. “We don’t have it anymore.”

  Grissom’s stare darkened. “What are you talking about?”

  “It was stolen on the way over here,” Gabriel said. “By the Cult of Ulikummis.”

  “Oh, that’s rich,” Grissom said, and he laughed. “It was stolen, was it? By the, what is it, by the cult of…?” He turned to his men. “It was stolen from them!” His men didn’t move. Grissom spun, his fist connecting with Gabriel’s face. Unprepared for the blow, Gabriel fell backward, landing hard on the sand. Joyce launched herself toward Grissom, her hands balled into fists, but Daniel grabbed her and held her back. Gabriel got to his feet again, wiping blood from his nose on the back of his hand.

  “Enough games, Hunt,” Grissom said. “Give me the other gemstone.”

  Gabriel spat on the sand. “I can’t. It’s gone. You can search us if you don’t believe me.”

  Grissom spoke to DeVoe: “Do it. Search their jeep, and search them.”

  DeVoe gave instructions to several of the other men and within minutes a thorough search had been completed. DeVoe took responsibility himself for patting them down, taking rather longer in Joyce’s case than would have been necessary just to confirm she didn’t have a softball-sized emerald on her person. Gabriel saw her gritting her teeth as the eyepatched mercenary worked his way up and down her person.

  “Nothing,” DeVoe reported.

  “All right, Hunt,” Grissom said, stepping forward and whipping out the ivory-handled dagger. In a flash its three blades were open and glinting in the moonlight. “Where is it?”

  “I told you,” Gabriel said. “The Cult of Ulikummis took it.”

  “And where, exactly,” Grissom said, raising the dagger to Gabriel’s throat, “did they take it?”

  Gabriel stared over Grissom’s shoulder. “Apparently,” he said, “right here.”

  Grissom turned, and his men turned with him. Several yards behind them, standing silent in the darkness, was an army of skull-masked men in white robes, at least one hundred of them, their bows loaded with arrows and ready to be fired. At the head of the army stood the high priest. The stolen emerald was lashed with rope to the top of his staff. They heard him shout a single word to his men.

  The cultists released their bowstrings, and a wave of arrows sailed across the sky toward them.

  Chapter 23

  “Take cover!” Grissom shouted. He and his men scattered, crouching behind the jeeps as the arrows bore down. Gabriel snatched his gun off the ground and, together with Joyce and Daniel, ran toward the statue, the only other source of cover in sight. Behind them, the arrows came down, landing in the sand or bouncing loudly off the hoods and frames of the jeeps. Gabriel heard several of Grissom’s men cry out, but he didn’t turn around or stop running until he reached the statue. Ducking behind one of its massive stone legs, he grabbed Joyce’s arm and pulled her down next to him. Daniel dropped to the sand behind her.

  Grissom’s men frantically signaled each other and shifted position behind the jeeps. The cult let loose another volley of arrows and, under cover of the assault, ran forward, exchanging their bows for swords. Grissom’s men opened fire as they came, the chatter of automatic weapons erupting loudly in the night. The smell of gunsmoke drifted over to where Gabriel was, that and the smell of blood.

  Gabriel turned away from the battlefield. Daniel was still watching the battle, an expression of horror on his face. “The three armies,” he murmured.

  “I only see two,” Joyce said.

  Daniel turned to her. “No, there are three. The cult, Grissom’s men…and us.”

  Gabriel raised his gun. He had six bullets. “Some army.”

  Cult members dropped under the avalanche of gunfire, their white-robed bodies littering the sand, but more kept coming, flooding into Grissom’s men like a tidal wave, transforming the battle into hand-to-hand combat, where they had the advantage. Swords clashed against shotguns raised to block them.

  Scanning across the carnage, Gabriel realized he didn’t see Grissom in the thick of things—or the high priest, for that matter.

  A figure suddenly rounded the statue’s leg: DeVoe. “Hold it!” he said, leveling his shotgun at Gabriel.

  Gabriel swung his leg out, sweeping it across DeVoe’s feet and knocking the mercenary backward onto the ground. He jumped on top of him, wrestled the shotgun out of his hands, and butted DeVoe in the face with the stock. DeVoe groaned briefly and fell back, unconscious. Gabriel pocketed a handful of DeVoe’s extra shells, then stood up and inspected the shotgun. Their army had just doubled its arms. He tossed his Colt to Joyce. “Here, take this. And keep an eye on this guy—if he’s some sort of second in command, Grissom might actually value him, which would give us a bargainin
g chip.”

  “I don’t think that man values anyone,” Joyce said. But she knelt beside the unconscious mercenary and aimed the gun at him. “What are you going to do?”

  Gabriel opened the shotgun, inspected it quickly, and snapped it closed again. “I’m going to get the gemstones.”

  “I guess Grissom was wrong,” Daniel said. “You are suicidal.”

  Joyce leaned forward and kissed him. “Don’t go getting yourself killed,” she said quietly. “Not now. Not after all this.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Gabriel said, and darted out from behind the statue’s leg.

  As he went, skirting the edge of the fray, Gabriel looked for Grissom in the chaos and darkness. He finally spotted him at the far end. Grissom had picked up a fallen sword and was using it to block someone’s attack. At first Gabriel couldn’t make out who Grissom was fighting, but then another figure stepped out of the way and he saw the flash of a long metal staff swinging down to batter Grissom’s sword. The high priest. Grissom had gone straight for the missing gemstone himself.

  Gabriel pumped a shell into the shotgun’s chamber and dove into the battle. He weaved around the first jeep in his path, butting a cult member in the head with the shotgun, then pulled the trigger and blew another off his feet. He shouldered past one of Grissom’s mercenaries, who spun on him with his handgun, and Gabriel blasted him aside. No favorites in this fight. Gunshots rang out all around him, the clash of swords, the cries of the wounded. He shoved his way past men locked in battle, ducked blades as they swung at him, and reloaded the shotgun as he went.

  The fighting lessened as he broke through the crowd and made it to the spot where Grissom and the high priest were facing each other. The high priest whirled his staff, knocking the sword out of Grissom’s hand. Grissom backed away, out of reach of the staff’s bronze blade, and drew his ivory-handled dagger again—his weapon of last resort, it seemed. The two extra blades slid into view as he thumbed the hidden button. The cult leader didn’t look impressed.