The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake 4) (9 page)

At the base of the steep hill, they abandoned the vehicles and took to the trees. Beneath the priceless cover, the special multinational force hotfooted its way to the volcano’s summit.

“We aim for the choppers.” Dahl breathed into the throat-mics. “Cayman and his men either found the entrance or made one. It wouldn’t be too risky with the proper GPRS systems.”

Drake remembered that ground-penetrating radar was the Swede’s specialty. He listened to the chatter but eyeballed every inch of the surrounding hostile territory as he ran. The competence of the people around him gave him confidence. He was used to venturing into the unknown and striking a supposedly superior target. Though Kennedy’s death had been avenged and even now the Blood King, Dmitry Kovalenko, was suffering in prison for all his terrible sins, Drake couldn’t help but look forward to the dark violence that was to come. He had been forced to embrace it for Kennedy.

It would always be a part of him.

A deep rumble came from up above. The ground shook for a few seconds and in between small gaps in the trees, he strained to see a plume of spreading smoke. Cayman and his men had made their entrance, maybe even destroying part of the ancient castle. Nothing would get in the way of their arrogance and their progress.

Except us.
Drake saw the four SAS men at point, Sam and his colleagues. All four had once worked with Drake and with Wells. He trusted their judgment with his life. Next came the two Japanese, Mai’s friends, and Gates’s four secret service agents. Komodo and his three Delta soldiers had volunteered to watch their backs and allowed Belmonte, Ben and Karin to join them.

Hayden, Kinimaka, Gates, and the rest of them formed a formidable central column. Up they went, eyes peeled for trouble, but it was their ears that easily pinpointed Cayman’s position. Loud shouts and curses rang around the hillside. The mercs who worked for Cayman were in a hurry, making no effort to keep their presence under wraps. The DIA operative would know that Gates followed and had no doubt left orders to quickly enforce the perimeter.

They were soon among a set of old ruins, now closing in on the castle. The signal went up for absolute silence and readiness. A whisper rattled down the throat-mics, asking for half a dozen men to circle around the staging area. Drake crouched behind a rough free-standing concrete archway that might once have been a window. A cursory glance ahead and he saw the staging area. Cayman’s men rushed around, setting up a communications array and a makeshift HQ. They lugged equipment from three stationary choppers as their rotors whirled gently. The old castle’s tumbledown walls made a crazy backdrop to the proceedings, its gaping doorway emitting clouds of smoke that drifted up from somewhere deep inside.

Drake heard the Bluetooth squawk that signaled the flanking team’s readiness. Mai, Alicia and Dahl knelt in readiness alongside him. In the stand of trees behind them lay Komodo and his team with Ben and Karin among them.

Hayden took them all in with an enigmatic expression. “The doomsday device and Cayman,” she whispered, a ghost in their ears. “That’s what we’re here for.”

They broke cover with devastating force, coming at Cayman’s men from three sides, dozens of professional soldiers firing in short, accurate bursts. The screaming began immediately, bodies and equipment struck and sent smashing to the ground. Even then, Cayman had had the foresight to conceal a few sharpshooters in the castle itself. Shots rang out, and the grass around Drake’s feet was peppered with gunfire, sods of earth kicking up as if they’d jumped out of the ground. Immediately, one of Mai’s men fell and the rogue Japanese agent dropped to one knee, squeezing off shot after shot, each one at a different window to keep the shooters neutralized.

But the mercs were hardened fighters. Showing no sign of panic at the onrushing force, they located weapons and held their ground. Drake smashed his rifle into the face of the first he came to, aware that Cayman would already know the enemy had arrived and would be hatching a plan.

When the man went down, Drake shot him and moved onto the next. Hayden was struggling beside him. Nowhere near healed yet, she had no choice but to fight until they could find someone to help them, someone they could trust. Drake felled his man and looked around. A few dozen mercs were down. The chopper pilots were dead or tagged and gagged. Alicia was already tailing the SAS soldiers as they ran for the wide castle entrance. Mai fired without pause, and had now been joined by more men. It seemed a couple of sharpshooters still remained, but the SAS would soon take care of that.

Dahl kicked a man’s knee out. When the man fell and let out a shriek, the Swede hesitated. But Daniel Belmonte didn’t. Coming up with the rear guard, he stepped around Dahl and shot the man point-blank in the head.

When Dahl turned a confused expression on him, Belmonte’s cultured tones were frayed with pain. “One of them killed Emma. That tars them all. None of them deserve to live, not here and certainly not among civilized people.”

Drake caught hold of Dahl’s shoulder. “No time to argue. Go.”

They ran along the path and passed under the castle walls into a suffused dimness. Alicia was just descending a stairwell to the left, hissing with distaste.

“Bloody regimentals got to ‘em first. That leaves me with a zero body count so far.” The Englishwoman looked glum.

Mai caught up. “So take point and stop your whining.”

“My pleasure.”

“Alright.” Drake spotted two exits. He was about to follow Hayden and Kinimaka as they stalked toward the farthest when a stream of enemy soldiers suddenly burst from both doors. Drake rolled as gunfire erupted. Everyone evaded as best they could, leaping sideways or even falling backward. A hail of bullets was not something to confront standing up. But when Drake hit the deck, he was already aiming and squeezing the trigger of his M16. His skull struck concrete, but his aim didn’t waver. Bullets strafed the room, whizzing and zipping from wall to wall. Boots came toward his face. With his hands full of rifle, he had little chance of defending himself.

He braced for the impact and hoped not to lose too many teeth.

Then the boots skipped sideways and folded. A second later, a body landed beside him. He found himself staring into the newly dead eyes of a pock-marked mercenary.

A hand appeared. A voice. “You owe me. Saved your looks.” Then a sigh. “Such as they are.”

Alicia had gotten her first kill. Drake jumped up, saw a man wearing leather leaping at him, pounding hard, gun drifting up. Drake moved faster than his opponent’s eye could follow. Hand strikes to the body and the head, all purposely aimed and weighted to rupture organs and snap bones. Another enemy body came at him, but his focus was solely on the parts of the body where he could cause maximum damage in minimum time. He didn’t even see the face of the man he killed.

He finally earned some breathing space. Hayden and Kinimaka fought at the front of a pack, which included the four SAS soldiers. Dahl battled over on the other side of the room, helping Komodo and his Delta team while also protecting the non-fighters. Alicia fought on her own. The joint prowess of his team members impressed him, and they swiftly overtook their opponents.

But it was Mai Kitano who cut them down. Wherever she went, men lay convulsing in her wake. Fear spread among their enemies as the Japanese woman inched toward them. When a man tried to spray the room with automatic fire, Mai grabbed his arm and shoved it down so the first burst fired into the floor. With superhuman speed, she twisted his wrist, snapping it, but keeping the barrel steady so that the second burst ravaged his nearby colleagues. When he fell to his knees, Mai made sure the third burst ended up in his skull.

Between them, Mai and Alicia mopped up the remainder of their assailants. When they had finished, the two women stared at each other.

Alicia said, “Maybe we should start keeping a head count. The winner gets to—” Her eyes swiveled toward Drake as Hayden’s shout drowned everything out.

“Let’s go!”

Mai ran to the hole in the wall, peering through and then signaling the all clear. They jogged after her, leaving their dead and dying enemies behind. The castle was a warren of rooms, some partly furnished and some left barren and bare. Modern displays and cabinets clashed with ancient austerity. The empty rooms felt haunted and lonely, things that could not quite be seen shifted among the dirt and the dust, befitting for a structure built atop a tomb of the most wicked gods ever known. The wind whistled through gaps in the windows and through hidden loopholes among the battlements. More than one empty shadow made the group turn their heads as they ran past.

Mai led the way, following footsteps and wisps of smoke and damage left by the modern-day invaders. Bluetooth chatting kept them organized and highly alert. Drake swapped his mag for a fresh one. A head count confirmed what they all already knew—three of their number had fallen. Both of Mai’s agents and one of Gates’s. Sam was still human and frosty enough to give Drake a look as Mai led the SAS team forward. The regiment leader seemed in awe.
Oh no,
Drake thought.
Not another.

Through another room where tapestries and paintings had been torn off the walls and flung to the floor. Cayman must have been looking for something. Maybe something explained by the whorls—the ancient language they had found in the other tombs. Drake wondered if Dahl’s language expert had been trying to contact them.

At last, they tore through the open doorway of a grand state room, throwing flash-bangs before them. Mai had heard the voices of whispering guards from two rooms away. Once the guards were taken out, they finally arrived at the blasted hole in the wall—a wide, ragged void through which a frigid, keening breath of wind blasted in intermittent gusts.

Drake paused for a moment and looked at Dahl. “One more time, mate?”

“Let’s hope so.” The Swede’s serious face spoke pessimistic volumes.

Ben’s small voice spoke up from the back of the group. “Can you tell why they chose this place to break through? Any clues are good right about now.”

Drake lifted his eyes to the demolished wall for the first time. The far edges and some of the top blocks were intact. A picture of some kind had been carved into the wall. Hard to decipher at first, but then Torsten Dahl’s eagle eyes figured it out. “Look at both edges of the wall, and the base, where part of the wall remains. You have the base and far side of a triangle. This—” he said.

“Was a carving of Odin’s symbol, the
Valknott
.” Ben finished. “A symbol of death.”

“And there.” Karin moved closer to the wall. “The whorls again. The language of the gods. Odin, it seems, really was the father of the gods.”

“He sacrificed his eyes for wisdom.” Ben recalled their search for the first tomb. “For future knowledge. He knew what was going to happen.”

“In that case,” Hayden said, “his eight pieces—the ones that seemed redundant after we found the first tomb—might be more important than we thought.”

Mai and Alicia were itching to move forward. “We’ll learn nothing stood around up here,” Mai said softly and Alicia grunted.

Drake and the other soldiers agreed. The enemy shouldn’t be allowed any more time to prepare.

Mano Kinimaka eyed the hole and the narrowing passageway beyond. “I’m not even sure I can fit down there.”

“But the gods are waiting,” Hayden said carefully. “And so is Cayman. Sir—” She half turned toward Gates.

“Screw it, Jaye. I’m coming.”

The darkness beckoned them, a darkness that crawled with the presence of evil gods, evil contraptions and evil men.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The four-man SAS squad took point with Mai Kitano, closely followed by Hayden and Kinimaka. Drake shadowed the big Hawaiian closely, impressed by the big man’s agile moves as the passage started to descend quite steeply. The walls turned from smooth clad stone to ragged earth and then to roughhewn rock as they moved down. The breeze died for a while and then began to sweep past them again, carrying with it the stench of ages, the reek of old things gone bad.

They heard whisperings on the wind. Faint voices that tugged at their ears, that caught their attention like the suggestions of a malicious temptress. Down and down the passage ran. Their feet crunched through ancient debris, their heads brushing against bruising rock and stone. The way was already lit, but the SAS team left nothing to chance, stopping the team regularly whilst they scouted ahead.

Everyone knew they were heading into a trap. There could be no other outcome. It was simply a matter of when and if they could identify and counteract it.

Time slipped by. The real world fell away. There were no traps they could see. The malevolent air would be enough to warn most people away. They passed a high gothic archway with supreme care. A foul miasma drifted up and began to swirl around their bodies as if sniffing, testing, and touching, and even the Special Forces soldiers shivered.

“I.Don’t.Like.This.” Alicia was the one who spoke up, enunciating her words like bullet shots, probably trying to chase away her own feelings of dread with her form of ammunition.

Farther down and underneath another gothic arch, they still couldn’t hear their enemies. Drake began to wonder if this passage was a false lead, and that Cayman was somewhere else. The backs of his calves burned. Several times something dropped on his head, something that skittered or squirmed quickly away, making him swallow hard to conceal the revulsion.

Then, from a distance, they heard faint voices—many men shouting. The team halted for an agonizing five minutes and then began to proceed even more cautiously. Drake knew even the shouting could be a ruse. Where Russell Cayman was concerned, nothing could be taken at face value. Behind him, he heard Komodo whispering at Ben and Karin that they should now prepare for absolutely anything, even running back the way they had just come.

At length, and after interminable minutes of sneaking slowly through the awful creeping dark, an enormous archway could be seen ahead. Still some way to go, but Drake, craning his head around Kinimaka and Hayden, could make out the floor of a well-lit cavern. He could hear men shouting back and forth. He could hear heavy gear being dragged.