Billie jaw was set hard. “It’s all right, Jeremy. I knew long ago he wasn’t coming back. At least now I have some sort of closure. Say, what do you know about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”
His eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”
“Do you know anything about the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse?”
“A little. Not much. The Christian apocalyptic vision is that the Four Horsemen are to set a divine apocalypse upon the world as harbingers of the Last Judgment. The world will be purged of its great wickedness and purity of the new world shall rise. Why do you ask?”
“I found grandpa’s journal. His last note was that the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse would soon rise.” She stood up to leave.
“Did he mention anything else?”
“Yeah. He wrote about the rise of something I’d never heard of.”
“And what’s that, dear?” He spoke casually, more like the Godparent he’d been, but his eyes were studying her, scrutinizing her somehow as she spoke.
She met his eyes and said, “The Third Temple.”
His breathing paused for a split-second. She saw instant recognition in his eyes. The muscles of his jaw tightened, and then he smiled. “The Third Temple?” he confirmed.
“Yes, have you heard of it?”
He broke their eye contact and shook his head. “No. It certainly sounds quite mysterious though, doesn’t it?”
Billie heard heavy breathing coming from the entrance of the obsidian room. Suddenly reminded of the more pressing need to escape, she stood up to leave. Broken snow from the tunnel above the opening fell in through the iron doors. A moment later Ahmet arrived. He was wild with adrenaline. His face was covered in sweat and his pupils were massive like an ice-addict at the peak of psychosis. The man roared as he approached. Blood stained his jacket where a shot had clipped his right shoulder.
Her eyes darted to Jeremy. He looked suddenly terrified, but there was something else there, too. Was he surprised to see Ahmet still alive? She needed to know what happened, and quick. Her mind raced. Was there still time to hide somewhere inside the crevasse? Or did they still have the ability to break through their attackers and make it down the mountain? She opened her mouth to speak, but Jeremy beat her to it.
“For God’s sake, man!” Jeremy yelled. “What happened?”
Ahmet tried to speak, but the words came out garbled. He spat dark red blood. Evidently, one of the shots had penetrated more than his shoulder. He had internal bleeding, and would probably die this far away from medical help.
Jeremy softened his voice, but maintained his authority as he spoke. “Sit down. Tell me who attacked you?”
Ahmet spat more blood and then began to speak. “We were ambushed. The climbing team who were following yesterday must have split in two in the night. Some of them left in the darkness of the early hours of the morning and climbed ahead. They waited until we reached the inside of the temple, and then attacked from above and below us.
“Who else is alive outside?” Billie asked.
“No one.”
“What happened to the other men?” Jeremy asked. “There were six of you, and you were well armed!”
“They had more men, and they came with machineguns.”
“You’re equipped with Israeli Uzis!” Jeremy spat the words out. “So what the hell happened?”
Ahmet stared at James, but his eyes were distant. He was vacantly reliving the moments just past. “They outnumbered us. One by one, they took out each of our men. When I was the last one alive, I decided to play the last card I had left to play – I opened both of my grenades and destroyed the entrance.”
“You caused an avalanche, didn’t you?” Jeremy asked. “Did any of the attackers survive?”
“I don’t know. But I doubt it. Half the mountainside came down in the avalanche. I only survived by sliding back down into the entrance.”
The edge of Jeremy’s lip curled upwards. It was more of a smirk than a smile. There was something sinister about his reaction. His eyes betrayed bewilderment at the turn of events, and then he started to laugh. Without any hesitation, he withdrew a handgun and fired twice. The shots hit Ahmet in the chest, and the man fell to the ground, as blood quickly filled his lungs.
Jeremy glanced at the dying man. “Ahmet I do believe you just did me a tremendous favor. It appears I no longer have to contend with Conquest for a place in the Third Temple.”
Billie’s eyes darted to the Uzi lying on the ground next to Ahmet, and then back to Jeremy. It would be impossible for her to reach it before Jeremy got a shot off. Her eyes fixed on Jeremy and she spoke with the confidence of a woman who knew she was about to die. “You killed my grandfather, didn’t you?”
“Guilty, I’m afraid,” Jeremy said. “I’m so, so very sorry, Billie. Really, I am. I was worried when you saw your grandfather’s corpse that the bullet holes would give it away. But even that I could have easily justified by telling you it was further proof of the lengths some would go to keep the truth hidden. I was happy, truly I was, that you could finally achieve closure. I always did love you, and never wanted it to end like this. But you had to bring up the news about the Third Temple, didn’t you?”
She studied his eyes. He looked frightened, like he didn’t want to kill her, but he no longer had a choice in the matter. After all, he was her Godfather for God’s sake! “What is it? What is so damned important about the Third Temple?”
He leveled the barrel of his handgun at her. “If it was up to me, I’d let you live – and then hope to hell you never found it. But I’m afraid it’s not up to me. It’s up to the man I work for. The man paying for this expedition was quite explicit – if we found it, there were to be no survivors.”
She held her palms outward, in supplication. “Wait! Please. Found what?”
“You still don’t know, do you?” Jeremy grinned as he aimed directly at her head.
“Know what?” she asked. “Who paid for the expedition?”
“His name is Death – and he’s been waiting a long time for the Third Temple to rise.”
*
Billie heard the report of the weapon fire multiple times. She held her breath, expecting the pain to follow quickly. It took a moment to realize the shots weren’t aimed at her. They were aimed at Jeremy, and they’d gone much too wide. She reacted fast, and it was a split second before she saw who had fired. But Jeremy responded faster. He turned to face Ahmet and fired a further two shots into the man’s chest and one in his head, killing him instantly.
Ahmet’s Uzi dropped to the floor. His failed attempt to save her life, had cost him his. She didn’t wait for Jeremy to turn around and kill her. She launched herself at him. Her speed had caught Jeremy off guard. Instead of trying to reaffirm his footing, he made the mistake of concentrating on shooting her instead. Billie swung her left foot into the back of his knee and pushed him hard with every ounce of force her muscular and lithe frame could assemble. He pulled at the Glock’s trigger. The shot went high, and he fell backward into the chasm.
She heard his scream as he fell into the same blackened abyss that had earlier swallowed the focus of her flashlight indefinitely. Jeremy pulled at the trigger as he continued to fall. The last thing she heard was the clicking sound of the Glock’s firing pin striking the empty chamber. She never heard him hit the ground.
Billie shined her flashlight into the chasm. The dark and sinister looking opening toward the earth had swallowed his body whole. There was still something evil about the crevasse, like it had been drawn to the darkness inside her Godfather. She shook her head, cursing herself for not seeing the darkness before. She’d known Jeremy her entire life, and yet she’d never predicted his wicked nature. Her mind drifted to the past few weeks, trying to find a time when she should have picked up on his real nature.
She found none. Instead, the sound of thunder roaring from outside the tunnel interrupted her thoughts, and returned her to her more pressing concern – was ther
e still time to escape from her pursuers? She picked up Ahmet’s Uzi and climbed out through the ancient iron doors, and into the ice tunnel.
She scanned the new landscape. The avalanche had rendered the previously steep but traversable slope into a vertical cliff face. No longer covered in snow and ice, her crampons would provide little benefit in climbing the volcanic stone wall, and the rest of her ropes and climbing equipment had been lost in the avalanche. To her right a jagged ledge of volcanic rock ended in a vertical drop of nearly eleven thousand feet. Without climbing equipment, or a lot more experience, she had no way of descending or even traversing it. To her left the ledge was narrow and barely traversable. She looked up. There was no way she could climb, and down, was out of the question.
She carefully moved along the narrow volcanic rock-shelf. Her heart raced as she concentrated on moving quickly along the delicate route. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but she wasn’t all too keen on falling to her death either. She made certain of the strength and placement of each footing and handhold as she moved along. Her eyes continuously scanned the area for signs of her pursuers.
She made it probably three hundred feet around the face of the avalanche before she spotted her goal. It was an area another four hundred feet away, where the spur of Mount Ararat met a minor saddle, before descending steeply into the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan. Her eyes followed the spur toward the Armenian plains, where the Aras and Murat rivers ran through the closed Turkey-Armenian borders. She swallowed hard. Even if she made it, she would have trouble crossing the border.
Billie continued to move along the route, and then stopped. She dropped down as low as she could along the rock-shelf, reducing her visual silhouette as much as possible. Ahead of her, by no more than ten feet, the volcanic rock scattered into a hundred smaller fragments, as a heavy machine gun pummeled large caliber shots at her. The sound of machine-gun fire echoed throughout the mountain. For a moment, she was worried the damned thing would cause another avalanche.
The sound stopped, and she struggled to find its original source. She shuffled backward, trying to find any form of cover. Billie made it twenty feet and then stopped. The ledge rose about a foot and then dipped again. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. She stretched out, and dipped her head close to the ground, lowering herself as much as possible. Billie picked up the Uzi and stared through its scope, searching for the location of her attacker.
A few minutes went by and there were no more shots fired. Her eyes followed the narrow pathway, if it could be called that at all, until she reached the spur running down Mount Ararat. In an instant she spotted her attacker. He was positioned about two hundred feet away from her, and just up from the path. The man was lying down, looking straight at her. He had some sort of machine gun set up on a tripod. Why did he stop shooting? She wondered if he’d somehow lost her through his sight, or simply accepted that she was an impossible shot from that distance. It was unlikely. Her attacker had already managed to place a close grouping of bullets less than ten feet from her head, proving he could hit her from that distance. So why hadn’t he? Could he have intentionally missed her? She considered why he hadn’t killed her. Maybe he wanted her alive, but why? Then she recalled the words Jeremy had said to her – there could be no survivors once it was found.
The obsidian vault was empty. They found nothing. But maybe her attackers still didn’t know that. Or maybe they needed her grandfather’s journal. She shook her head. None of that mattered right now. What she needed was a way off the damned mountain. Then she could set about working out what this was all about.
She tried to shuffle slightly further forward. Maybe she should fire a burst at him. She might get lucky. It was unlikely, but what other choice did she have? Billie carefully lined up her attacker through the fine cross-hairs, and carefully prepared to make the shot. She’d been to a shooting range only a couple of times in her life, and tried all the tips her instructor had given her. She settled into a comfortable shooting position. Took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Her right trigger-finger gently squeezed on the trigger, but she didn’t take the shot.
Falling snow tumbled onto her back. She quickly glanced upward. At least thirty people, covered in snow-camouflage worn by the military were abseiling toward her. That’s why the sniper hadn’t taken another shot. His purpose was to stop her from retreating. They needed her alive. She stood up and turned to run toward the entrance to the Temple of Illumination.
She heard the roar of the machine gun start to fire, but none of the bullets struck her. She raced all the way back to the entrance of the temple forgetting about any caution over the life-ending drop to her left. She reached the opening and backed into the tunnel. Billie checked the Uzi’s magazine. It had less than ten rounds. Even if she made every shot count, her attackers still outnumbered her.
Her mind raced to find a solution. She considered the dark chasm that ripped its way through the middle of the obsidian vault. Could she hide inside? She recalled the bullet-holes where her grandfather had been killed taking the same sort of refuge. It certainly wasn’t her first choice, but what other one did she have?
She slid back down the tunnel and stopped. Set against the back of the rock above the iron doors was a bomb. Its digital timer showed a few seconds under five minutes. She tried to move it. The back of the device had been drilled into the volcanic rock-face, and glued in position with a rock-hard climbing adhesive. Ahmet must have fixed it there while she was down the crevasse. Jeremy had said that some people would kill to make certain that some truths remained hidden.
Billie was confronted with the impossible decision of choosing between hiding and possibly becoming entombed after the explosion, or taking her chances on the outside of the mountain. It wasn’t a choice. And it wasn’t like she had long to consider her options.
She climbed back out of the tunnel and into the open again and turned right. She knew her options had run out and her only option was to gamble big. She ran along the narrow ledge. Below her, the heavy roar of rotary blades whined. They were close to fourteen thousand feet. Few helicopters were capable of reaching such heights. Whoever was after her, wasn’t taking any chances – they had spent a fortune to capture her.
Behind her, the small group of soldiers was now on the narrow ledge and approaching fast. The clock was ticking on the timer, and the bomb would explode at any moment. She ran fast. No longer interested in looking back at her pursuers, her only chance was to get past the final edge by the time the explosion destroyed the entrance to the temple. If she got really lucky, she might just escape in the pandemonium.
The sound of the helicopter’s turbojets screamed and the ground began to vibrate. She heard the sound of multiple automatic weapons firing. Billie kept running. A stray bullet was the least of her problems now. She glanced at her wristwatch. One minute and forty seconds to go. She was three hundred feet from the end of the ledge, and then she saw it – an entirely black helicopter.
It rose quickly and hovered less than twenty feet above her. She knew little about helicopters, but this one was clearly special. Even just to fly at this altitude placed it among some of the most advanced in the world. This one was entirely matt-black, and covered in strange, angular, radar absorbing materials, like those on stealth planes seen in movies. It was a deadly predatory machine, probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nowhere were there any lights, colors, or identifying markings to be seen aboard the aircraft.
And it was after her.
Her eyes darted to the men behind her and back to the helicopter. Above her, more pursuers were descending diagonally. It made her run faster, as though she could outpace the helicopter. The strange predator continued to follow her, matching her speed closely.
She heard more weapons fire, but the bullets scattered nowhere near her. The helicopter suddenly banked heavily to the left and dipped suddenly, disappearing below the height of the ledge. She ran along the edge of the mountain, looking for
any means of escape.
Billie suddenly reached the end of the ledge. She glanced at her watch. Forty seconds to go. She looked at the drop below her, and wondered if she could ever survive it if she just let herself go? There had been many stories over the years of climbers surviving hundred plus foot falls as a result of continuing to slide. Her pursuers were close – less than fifty feet behind her and she had nowhere else to go. She closed her eyes and glanced at the snowy slope hundreds of feet below. It would take a miracle to survive the fall, but it was the last option she had left.
On the count of three…
She braced herself to jump, and breathed in deeply.
Two…
She forced herself to breathe out.
One…
She stepped forward and stopped. The helicopter’s rotors whined sharply as the predator turned and rose from beneath the ledge until it was facing directly at her, about three feet above her head. The windshield was covered in some sort of pitch dark tinting that made it impossible to see the pilot inside.
Billie watched the twin rockets ignite from its fuselage, sending powerful missiles screaming past her. She dived onto the ground and covered her head. The missiles hadn’t even exploded before the helicopter’s Gatling-style heavy machine gun started to rotate, sending hundreds of large caliber bullets skyrocketing past her.
She closed her eyes and heard the massive dual explosions as the missiles struck their targets. She heard the screams of the few attackers still alive. When she opened her eyes the helicopter was right above her. The downward pressure of its rotor blades sent a torrent of air down on her. A small opening appeared in its undercarriage and a man in a completely black flight suit stared out at her.
“Doctor Swan?” A man’s voice asked, through a loud speaker.
“Yes?” she nodded.
“You better come with us.”
She looked at the snowy slope hundreds of feet below and the dozen or more men who were pursuing her in the distance. It was probably a trap, but she’d run out of any other options. She nodded, and the man reached down with one hand.
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 8