“Whatever you do,” Alicia cried, “don’t hit one of those fucking coffins!”
*****
Hayden had fanned out to the left, spying a spectacular staircase. Wide at the bottom, it narrowed drastically all the way to the top of the vast cavern, ending in a point where it touched the very heights. The staircase offered a way up to the several ledges and tiers that ran around this circular tomb, and the many niches beyond. Kinimaka followed her, picking off mercs stationed near the stairs.
As she neared the first step, a merc pounded toward her. Hayden shot him point-blank, desperate not to get into hand-to-hand. Her knife wound hurt like a bitch. It would only take one hard, precise punch to incapacitate her.
But she fought anyway. She fought to win the day for her country, for her father, but most of all, for her friends. As the bullets flew, she prayed for them all. As she stepped foot on the high staircase and saw a dozen mercs suddenly jump from the first level up and come screaming toward her, she began to pray for herself.
*****
Ben Blake stood directly behind the Delta soldier who collapsed. He fell with the soldier, aware that Karin and Gates were at his side, and tried to see the wound. But the man’s hands were holding onto his own throat with a death grip. His eyes were wide, full of pain, focused on nothing. Ben touched the man’s wrist gently, feeling the blood running slickly like dark oil. Within seconds, the man had died, his hands falling apart to reveal a fatal wound.
Ben stared, choking back tears and bile. This was about as up close and bloody as war got. There were more terrible aspects of it, Ben was sure, but this soldier, lying still and dead where seconds ago a virile, young man had stood, shook him to his core. It showed him how his daily worries and struggles were irrelevant. How every second of life should be savored. How horrifying death could be.
He rose to his feet, temporarily alone. The remaining Delta man inched forward, covering their international teammates with precision-placed shots. Karin stood next to him, saying nothing. They knew how each other felt. Gates was still on his knees, holding the dead soldier’s hand and whispering something about sorrow.
Ben’s eyes were drawn to the cavern itself. The enormous structure rose hundreds of feet and was as wide as it was tall. It was a huge bowl, comprising of three different levels, not including the floor. Around each level ran a wide ledge. Beyond the ledge, hewn into the rock of the ancient volcano, were hundreds and hundreds of niches. Tombs.
Tombs of the Gods.
The floor level was also ringed with tombs. Ben squinted at several opposite, but unlike the niches in the first two tombs, these were sparsely appointed, containing little except the oversize coffin itself and a few austere carvings. Of course this place had been where the gods had imprisoned the worst of their kind. No tribute necessary.
Komodo glanced back at them. “Stay close!” He gestured for them to join him before turning back to the battle. Ben saw Hayden stuck on one of the two staircases with Kinimaka at her side, beset by the enemy, holding her side in agony.
Komodo veered his team toward her.
*****
Drake kept the snipers pinned down as best he could. When it became clear even their sharpshooting wasn’t going to pin down the enemy for long, Dahl took off toward the cavern’s second staircase with a crazy, weaving run. Drake shouted a warning, but the mad Swede was already up to full speed. He hit the staircase at a dead run, leaping up two steps at a time. Drake saw no option but to follow. The Swede was reckless, but their team really needed to get up higher.
A bullet zinged by, whistling as it parted the air in front of his nose and then Alicia’s. One handed, Drake fired blindly into the enemy as he ran. He hit the staircase six steps behind Dahl and one behind Alicia. Even among the mayhem, his pride took a hit. Then, a man flew over from the side and collided with him, knocking him off his feet. The rough stairs scraped his face. Drake struck toward his opponent’s eyes and throat and brought his knees up to protect his stomach. A knife flashed. Drake palmed it aside. It came again, but Drake shifted inside it, caught the man’s wrist and snapped it. Even then, the assault didn’t stop, but Drake hadn’t expected it to. The knife clattered away. The mercenary brought his bulk to bear, trying to pin Drake to the staircase and smashed his large forehead downward.
Drake slipped aside again. The merc’s forehead connected solidly with the stone edge of the staircase, temporarily stunning him. Drake flipped him over, finished him with a stiff-fingered jab and looked up.
Dahl and Alicia were already partway along the first level. Fierce opposition had forced them to take cover in one of the niches, next to a bullet-pocked coffin.
Drake grimaced. Alicia wouldn’t be happy.
*****
Hayden staggered as the pain ripped through her side. Oddly, it hadn’t been an enemy blow that had hurt her, but a misstep on the stairs, sending both her and her weapons crashing to the ground. Instantly, the mercenaries were among them. Hayden forced herself up, gritting her teeth to hold in the pain, and swiped the first one off the step with a swing of her rifle. The second she clubbed right on the nose. A bullet fired from a handgun pinged off the concrete between her legs and zipped on through. Kinimaka was a giant at her side. Men actually collided with him and rebounded right off the staircase, landing heavily in the dust below. But Kinimaka’s real strength was his surprising speed. Three assailants fell before they even knew the man had grabbed hold of them.
Then, Komodo and his men were with them. They advanced up the stairs. Hayden stayed in place for a while and used her elevated position to fire down upon the disorderly mercenaries.
Then Ben was at her side. “Are you ok?”
“No. Are you?” The lad’s face was deathly white.
“Death is everywhere.” His eyes darted from the fallen soldiers to the tombs of the gods.
“This place was built for death.” Hayden squeezed off another shot, sending another mercenary folding in a wheezing heap.
“Look at the floor,” Ben said quietly. “Just look.”
Hayden paused for a moment and removed her eye from the gun’s sights. What she saw made the hairs on her arms rise. The floor of the tomb, dusty and strewn with debris was slowly being covered in blood. Thick, red pools were spreading from the many dead and dying men across the wide expanse, making it slick and slippery for men’s boots. Even the SAS down there were losing their balance, drenching their fatigues and turning red themselves.
“And look.”
Ben pointed out something that, amidst the chaos, Hayden had so far failed to see. Arranged around the outside of the cavern, in a circle, were a number of small altars, each one with a different shape carved into its surface.
Hayden looked down on them, momentarily at a loss for words.
“There are eight of them,” Ben said as if in explanation. “And the whorls.” He gestured toward all the ground floor walls. “Are everywhere.”
Hayden’s eyes traveled from the ground floor up, past three levels of niches, and it was then that her eyes fell on a figure she partly recognized.
She patted Ben’s hand. “That’s Russell Cayman,” she said. “He’s up there, watching how this whole thing goes down.”
*****
Drake scurried up the stairs double-time, pausing at the ledge as his two teammates laid down covering fire and then leapt into the niche. Instantly, it seemed a clammy hand took hold of his skull and gripped it with ice-cold fingers. He shivered.
“Not exactly Starbucks.”
“Shut it,” Alicia whispered. “This place gives me the creeps.”
The niche was long and narrow, cut back into the rock about forty feet. The overall impression was that it had been constructed quickly and with little thought. The walls and ceiling were irregular and jagged, as if cleaved by a mighty weapon or hand.
Alicia shook her head at something down below. “Your baby boy’s causing us trouble, Drakey.”
Drake glanced over and saw
Ben distracting Hayden as she tried to pick off bad guys. “I’ll talk to the little fool.”
Dahl appeared at that moment, coming from the rear of the cave. Drake eyed him “Bit of a risky place to take a piss, mate.”
“For you, maybe.” Dahl flashed a brief smile, then turned serious again. “I discovered several relatively crude carvings back there. And a statue. I think this is the tomb of Amatsu, literally the god of evil. This is a very bad place, my friends.”
“Well, for now,” Drake said, “let’s deal with the evil we can see.”
He refrained from lobbing a grenade toward the enemy, but leaned out and let loose a burst of automatic fire. The mag ran dry. He dropped it and clicked another into place. “One-two combination?”
“Do it.” Dahl fell in behind him. Alicia took rearguard. Firing together they hopped out of the niche and rushed to the next one along, felling startled enemy soldiers and then taking cover behind the next big coffin.
As they ran briefly along the ledge, the entire cavern opened up for them. Drake saw the SAS team and Mai directly below, crawling among the heavy equipment as they took cover whilst peppering bullets at the few remaining mercs. He saw the great staircase to his right. A contingent of Cayman’s men were being beaten back by Komodo’s Delta team and Mano Kinimaka. Hayden was sniping the snipers, her eagle eyes seeking out every niche.
Back near the arched entrance, Gates and Belmonte had taken cover, armed but holding their fire for fear of harming a member of their own team.
And two levels up, standing rigidly still, he saw a figure watching them. A figure he guessed could be only one man.
The figure observed until the last of its men on the ground floor was killed and the group on the stairs beaten back. Only then did it raise a hand.
“Stop this,” it cried. “Your efforts, though noteworthy, are trivial. You cannot win this battle.”
Then, hundreds of men suddenly appeared around the third tier, silent, weapons carefully aimed. Cayman began to laugh.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Drake took a deep breath. Cayman had them hopelessly outnumbered. It was do or die, or run like hell. Behind him another coffin sat in ancient stillness.
“We stand a virgin’s chance in hell,” Alicia commented. “That means fu—”
“We know what it means.” Dahl and the Englishwoman still hadn’t had chance to become properly acquainted yet. Of course, for each of them, the idea had totally different meanings. Dahl pointed out the stairs, and a wicked grin twisted the corner of his mouth. “There’s our play.”
Drake stared and understood. “No way. You’re fucking crazy, Dahl.”
“Yeah, but good crazy.” The Swede scanned the cavern, and tapped his Bluetooth mic. “Let the bastard talk whilst you figure out a move. Then go on my signal.”
Squawks of static conveyed understanding. Cayman, the DIA ghost, the wetwork specialist, the business end of the Shadow Elite, shouted in a voice that dripped with disdain.
“I was a child of the system,” he said. “A child in time, nothing more. Now I rank above presidents. You should feel honored, being allowed to die by my word.” He spread his arms. “I am the voice of the Shadow Elite. No common man could achieve more.”
Drake stared hard at this individual. There was a chance he might soon hold the fate of the world in his hands. Cayman looked like an ordinary man, slightly built, average height, not outstanding in any way. But an aura of menace surrounded him. A sense that this man had never known compassion, love, nor forgiveness. That all his days were filled with ice-cold fantasies.
Cayman laughed once more, the sound strained and foreign. Drake knew then that Russell Cayman had never had a good hour in his life.
“You would be too late anyway. I have sent for the eight pieces of Odin. They are already on their way here, and once they arrive—the doomsday device will be ours.”
“The eight pieces are important?” Alicia grumbled. “What a twat. Dahl, you should really have hung on to those bad boys.”
“The advice is duly noted. I’ll file it where I think it belongs.”
“Don’t get testy, Torsten. They’re in Stuttgart, right?”
“They were.”
“Well, he can’t have gotten ‘em that far. Maybe we can intercept them.”
Drake shushed them. “We have bigger problems.” He pointed out the eight altars arrayed about the floor below. “Ben just Bluetoothed me. His guess is the pieces fit in there.”
“And that activates the device?” Dahl shook his head in disbelief. “So the nastiest tomb holds the nastiest weapon. And it all seems to revolve somehow around Odin and Norse mythology. We really need to learn more, you know, and talk to my language guy back in Iceland’s tomb.”
“We will,” Drake said. “As soon as we get out of here.”
And then he stepped forward. “Hey! Cayman!” He stared up at the emotionless man. “Do you know me?”
Silenced stretched as taut as a tripwire, then Cayman shrugged. “I know all of your names. But the names of dead men mean nothing to me.”
“Ah, but I’m not dead yet,” Drake said. “You’ll find that I’m pretty hard to kill. Maybe one of the hardest you’ve ever known. Do you know why?”
Cayman said nothing.
“Because I’m looking for the man who ordered my wife’s murder. And for the man who murdered her. And I think you know something about that, Cayman. You and Wells. What is it that you know?”
Cayman licked his lips. “You’re about to die, Drake. Do it with honor and stop whining.”
“Did it involve the Shadow Elite?” Drake asked. “Are they connected to her death? Who is the Norseman?”
With that one word, Drake got a reaction he’d never imagined. Cayman’s body literally lurched in shock. His face and his clenched fists turned bone white and he opened his mouth to scream an order.
Dahl was quicker. “Move!”
All hell broke loose. Dahl burst from cover and sprinted for the stairs, Drake and Alicia right behind him. Drake and even the daredevil Alicia were gritting their teeth in anticipation of Dahl’s next move. . .
. . .at the same time Mai and the SAS force leapt toward the tomb walls and the weapons of the soldiers who stood above them, reaching for the abseil ropes that Cayman’s men had been attaching earlier to help move heavy equipment. They were attacking the enemy. . .
. . .as Hayden and her team stood their ground and focused all their firepower on the superior force!
Dahl rushed to the top of the stone staircase and then jumped into space. Anyone watching would have stopped in shock, wondering what on earth the Swede was up to. Was he committing suicide? But then he landed, gun aimed and firing, on the stone railing that ran down the side of the stairs and slid, gathering speed, loosing bullets, screaming and with hair flying all around him, at high speed toward the ground floor.
Drake came next and then Alicia, also screaming to help dull their anxiety. The trio slid down the stone railing, their weapons firing on full auto.
Mai and a single SAS soldier grabbed ropes and scurried up the walls as fast they could whilst Sam and the remaining men unleashed a devastating salvo of covering fire. Up they flew, just twenty feet, and then threw timed grenades into the air. It seemed a random, hopeful move, but in fact was carefully calculated to disorganize and disorient the enemy.
Then they let go, jumping to the ground. . .
. . .and Hayden’s team made a break for the exit, using the mayhem as cover. A Delta soldier took a round that killed him instantly, but for a second his legs kept going under their own momentum and he took another round meant for Komodo, the man saving his commander’s life even after he was dead. Hayden bounded to the floor and then Gates and his last remaining agent and Belmonte slipped from cover and added their own firepower to the lead-filled fray.
Mai and the SAS soldier landed together, rolled, and came up just as the grenades they’d thrown detonated in the air at the center of the cav
ern. Fragments exploded outward in every direction, striking enemy bodies on all sides of the tomb.
Dahl, Drake and Alicia descended speedily down the stone rail, but even at that speed, their aims proved accurate. Enemy soldiers twisted and fell from the third level, plummeting over the edge and down to the ground. More danced like puppets as shots riddled them, falling back amongst their brethren and pulling them down. Dahl flew off the end of the railing and, with nothing to stop him, crashed into the ground at speed, his graceful flight turning into a wipeout landing. Drake and Alicia couldn’t help but follow suit.
“Fuck me.” Alicia mumbled into the ground. “That’s one way of showing a girl a good time.”
Drake pulled his aching body up. Most of their enemy, in shock at being assailed by a weaker force from three angles, stood in temporary disarray. Those that weren’t readied their weapons. Drake spied the exit.
It was now or never. No choice
“Hurry.”
He led the way toward the exit. A few bullets slammed into the stone around their feet, but not nearly as many as it might have been. Even the superior soldiers among their enemy were thrown off by their screaming accomplices. Drake knew that no soldier, no matter who he worked for or what agenda he followed, could stay fully focused whilst his comrades screamed and died around him. Then Drake saw that Hayden and her team were already there and laying down some first-rate covering fire. As he passed one of the eight altars, he slowed to take a better look.
A rectangle of stone sat, fused into the rock floor of the cavern, with the oval altar set on top. Within the body of the altar, a precise shape had been carved. Cayman, it appeared, was right. The eight pieces of Odin were meant to be fixed into the eight altars to, presumably, activate the doomsday device.
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