by Rob Jones
“Something’s come through here for sure,” Hawke said. “And look down at the path – it’s obvious a number of people have been through here recently by the footprints.”
“And whoever it was, they were carrying something heavy,” Reaper said.
“How can you tell?” Ryan said.
“Forensic track analysis isn’t rocket science,” the former French Legionnaire said as he crouched down and pointed at the tracks. “Look here and you see they are deeper and further apart and also at a slightly odd angle. The fact that there are two tracks parallel to each other with these features suggests that two men were carrying something from the boat all the way into the cave.”
“There’s been an explosion here recently too,” Hawke said, running his hands over freshly blasted rock at the mouth of the tunnel. “Kruger widened this entrance.”
“So, what now?” Ryan said, peering inside the gloom.
“Now, we go pot-holing,” Hawke said.
As they were expecting, the temperature dropped rapidly when they ventured inside the mesa and suddenly the atmosphere changed from casual banter to one of imminent danger. There was so sign of Kruger or Korać and his army yet – not even a trace of a glow stick, which meant they were probably using some pretty chunky Maglites to light their way inside the mesa caverns.
Hawke did the same thing and switched on his flashlight. “Looks like we’re going up this time,” he said with surprise as he shone his flashlight up an incline.
“Great, more sodding climbing,” Ryan said.
Reaper joined Hawke at the front while Chabat and his men took up the rear and they began to climb the incline inside the mesa. After nearly thirty minutes of twists and turns they found their first evidence of Kruger – and more evidence as to why whatever was hidden here had remained untouched for so long. Ahead of them, another part of the tunnel had been blown out with explosives and what had been solid sandstone was now a few piles of shattered rocks and gravelly dust lying around at the newly-formed entrance to a second tunnel.
They shifted inside and noticed yet another drop in temperature as they went deeper into the mesa, only this time part of it that had been off limits to the rest of humanity for countless centuries.
They continued on their way, each of them thinking about the dangers ahead but never considering failure, and then they found a shaft which descended from a rock ledge. They gathered around it, and Hawke was the first to spot the gentle glow of artificial light as the silver Maglite beams of Kruger’s team bobbed about down at the bottom of the shaft.
He hushed the team and got down on his stomach to listen and instantly recognized the voices of Kruger and Korać. He felt a surge of hope as he realized he had another chance to redeem himself after his failure in Serbia.
He jumped back up to his feet and lowered his voice to a gentle murmur. “Looks like the whole Groovy Gang is down there.”
“So what now?” Chabat asked.
“We go down, of course,” Hawke said, and with that he jammed the Maglite in his belt and started to climb down into the shaft.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
From his new vantage point inside the shaft, Hawke saw it wasn’t as deep as he’d initially thought and that explained how Kruger and his men had managed to descend it without the use of abseil lines, but he could see scratch marks where they had lowered down a serious quantity of explosives.
He used brute force to hold himself level in the narrow tunnel as he moved himself down, and then after listening carefully to make sure the coast was clear he lowered himself out of the shaft and dropped gently to the sandy floor, instantly retreating against the wall and gripping the Maglite in his hand like a club in case Kruger had left guards behind.
He levelled his flashlight and scanned the cavern. It was not a large space and, as it happened, the place was empty. Most of it was nothing more than hollowed-out bedrock, but intricate, carved columns stood like silent sentinels every few yards. Kruger had obviously decided the chances of anyone being clever enough to follow him were so unlikely he hadn’t left any men behind to guard his way back out. Not guarding your logistics trail was a cardinal error in warfare, and this only showed what an unpredictable amateur Dirk Kruger was, but the fact Korać had made the same mistake surprised him.
He gave the rest of the team a signal with his Maglite and they followed him down the shaft and soon they were all gathered together in the new cavern.
“The lights I saw have long gone,” Hawke said, pointing down a long twisting tunnel. “But they must have gone down there because it’s the only route.”
They followed the tunnel but it wasn’t long before they started to find more evidence of Kruger and his team by way of angry shouting and then more lights bobbing about up ahead. Moving forward along the final stretch, it didn’t take long before they had caught up with the enemy who were now gathering in a much larger chamber, clearly built to strike awe into anyone trying to approach whatever awaited them.
Kruger was running his hands over what at first looked like a flat stone wall until their flashlights uncovered the faintest of slits running directly down the center. Both sides of the stone door were covered in the same peculiar symbols they had seen in Mictlan.
“This is the entrance!” Kruger yelled over his shoulder.
Van Zyl whistled in amazement and shook his head. “Must be fifty tons of rock here.”
“Which is why we brought the drill and the explosives,” Kruger said, and then turned and gave Korać his instructions.
Chabat and his team finally joined Hawke, rifles gripped in their hands and anxious expressions on their faces. Hawke guessed crawling through ancient tunnels not seen by man for countless millennia wasn’t part of basic training for the Royal Moroccan Army.
“I do not like this place,” Chabat said, glancing over at the ghostly glow of Kruger’s flashlights up ahead. He passed a hand over his sweaty forehead and swallowed. “How many did you say there were?”
“We thought around twenty,” Camacho replied.
Hawke nodded. “And judging from the jet boats out on the river I’d say there couldn’t be much more than that.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Scarlet said. “The quicker we get this over and done with the quicker I get a smoke.”
Kruger stood beside the giant rocky entrance while Korać ordered his men to assemble the rock drill and ready the C4 explosives. Moments later the hidden ECHO team heard grunts and heavy lifting as the men rigged up the drill and then Kruger gave the order. When they fired up the enormous rock drill, the cavern was filled with the deafening sound of drilling.
“They’re drilling holes for the explosives,” Hawke said over the shrill noise. Another sequence of drilling was followed by yet more grunting as they hauled the drill out of the way.
“They’re not going to blow up the entrance?” Ryan asked, hurriedly pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “They’re not going to rub through it with tea towels, are they?”
“But what about the symbols?” he replied with genuine concern on his face. “They’re an invaluable archaeological find just by themselves, not to mention they could contain any amount of information leading to hidden knowledge.”
“I think that ship has sailed,” Camacho said. “They’re pushing the C4 inside the drilled-out holes… jamming it in good as well.”
Hawke carefully watched the men as they prepped the door for the detonation. “They’re not taking any chances, that’s for sure.”
“So you’ll just have to suck it up, in other words,” Scarlet said.
“Those symbols could also lead to treasure…”
Scarlet stared at him. “Hang on a minute – we can’t let this wanton destruction of priceless archaeological petroglyphs go on!”
“Your conscience is thirty seconds too late, Cairo,” Lea said.
Scarlet’s eyes narrowed. “Eh?”
“Ear plug tim
e,” said Hawke.
“But I didn’t bring any ear plugs!” Ryan said in a panic.
“Fingers, numbnuts,” Scarlet said with a roll of her eyes.
And then a tremendous explosion as Kruger blasted his way through the wall with the petroglyphs on it.
The blast struck one of the Serbian mercs who was too close and smashed him hard against the rocks behind them, cracking his skull and instantly killing him. Korać and Kruger barely glanced at him, the South African especially now utterly fixated by the progress they had made.
“We did it!” he yelled, his heavy accent hanging in the air with the smoke and dust. “We broke through!”
The men cheered but Kruger yelled at them to shut up when he saw part of the roof had been damaged and was now crumbling down dangerously into their path. “Look out!”
They staggered back and waited until the rock-fall had settled, allowing a clearer view of the wall once again.
“They were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” Scarlet said, glancing surreptitiously at Hawke who simply rolled his eyes in response. “If that accent was supposed to be Michael Caine, I actually feel sorry for you.”
“They’re going inside!” Lea said.
“So let’s get after them,” Camacho said. “Why should they have all the fun?”
As they progressed they discovered Korać’s men had cleared the piles of detonated rocks away from the entrance. The left-hand side of the stone barrier was still standing with only a deep fissure running through the center of it where the C4 had tried and failed to break it open, but the stone to the right was now no more than smouldering chunks of rock and the occasional misshapen boulder.
ECHO proceeded with caution through the smoke and dust until they reached the end of a short tunnel and stumbled upon the top of a broad set of stone steps leading down into an imposing catacomb.
“They must have gone down there,” Ryan said, pointing at the glow of the Maglites as they bobbed about along the wall at the far end of the catacomb.
“Do you think?” Scarlet said turning to face him. “Are you still Captain Obvious or have they promote you to Major Obvious yet?”
They continued pursuing Kruger until they reached a large chamber constructed of perfectly hewn granite blocks.
“It’s like the chambers in the middle of the pyramids!” Ryan said.
The South Africans and Serbians swarmed all over the chamber, and then Ryan saw it first at the far end.
“Oh my God!” he said. “That’s a statue of Tanit!”
“Are you sure?” Maria asked.
“I can see the resemblance,” Lea said.
“And it’s in some kind of shrine,” he continued. “This must be her tomb!”
Kruger approached the shrine and then pulled the idol from his canvas back. Flanked by his goons, he held it in his hands for a few seconds while savouring the moment.
“What’s he doing now?” Lexi asked.
“Taking a shit,” Scarlet said. “What does it look like?”
“Now, now,” Hawke said. “There’s no need for nastiness.”
Kruger pushed the star-shaped base of the idol into a slot in the base of the shrine and the far wall began to grind open. Behind it was a small chamber filled with an intricate sarcophagus and another statue of Tanit looming above everything. Kruger placed the idol back in his canvas sack and moved forward.
“The idol’s a key!” Ryan said. “I knew it!”
Hawke looked into the final chamber and saw Korać’s men were arranging their flashlights on rocks to act as mini spot lights as they circled the magnificent sarcophagus carved out of the limestone itself. Stacked up all over the tomb was not gold, or gems, but books.
“That’s amazing!” Lea said. “Looks like something out of Lord of the Rings.”
“A bit like Ryan’s ears,” Scarlet whispered, keeping her eyes fixed dead-ahead on the chamber.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ryan said.
“They’re just a bit pointy, that’s all.”
“I do not have pointy ears!” he said.
“No, he doesn’t have pointy ears,” Maria said, coming to his defense, but Ryan was now compulsively checking his ears with his fingers.
Kruger ordered his men to raise the lid of the sarcophagus and a moment later he was trembling as he peered over the rim into the inside. “It’s here!” he yelled. “We just took another step closer to Atlantis.”
“You were right, mate,” Hawke said as he gazed at the ancient lock-and-key combo. “About Atlantis, I mean.”
“One of the side effects of always being right, I suppose,” Ryan said, but was quickly cuffed across the head by a fast-moving back-slap delivered courtesy of Scarlet Sloane’s right hand. “Ow!”
“Arrogant twat,” she said, but leaned forward to kiss him on the temple.
“What the fuck?” Ryan said, as stunned as everyone else.
“It’s for all the times you’ve been right in the past, and all the times you’ll be right in the future, so you’re only getting the one.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“Well that’s a first,” she said, and gave him another slap. “Right, let’s move on.”
Silently they watched as the men circled the sarcophagus like vultures.
“There’s that little bastard Luk again,” Hawke said, gritting his teeth.
“Let’s not forget that weasel Kvashnin who tried to kill me in Germany,” said Lexi.
“Two nutcases led by the not-so-funny double act of Kruger and Korać,” Scarlet added.
“And all four of them caught in flagrante delicto,” Ryan said.
Lea sighed. “Say caught red-handed if you mean caught red-handed.”
Then Kruger pulled something from the sarcophagus and a cry went up among the men. It was a stone cylinder of some kind. “We have what we need… move out!”
“They have it,” Hawke said.
“What?” Chabat said.
“The latest Network Rail timetable,” Scarlet said under breath. “What do you think?”
“What does she mean?” Chabat said, confused.
“We don’t know exactly what they have,” Ryan said. “It looks like it could be another key but we’ll need to get hold of it for a better idea. Whatever it is, we know we don’t want them to have it.”
“You think?” Scarlet said, the unlit cigarette still bobbing about on her bottom lip.
“They’re moving out!” Camacho yelled.
“And they’re coming straight for us!”
The fireworks started when Chabat ordered his men to open fire on the Serbs and seconds later the cave was filled with a brutal strobing effect as his men’s carbines lit the semi-darkness with savage muzzle flashes.
Kruger’s archaeological genius was no longer enough to lead the mission, and a split second after Chabat’s assault, Dragan Korać took charge, ordering his army of mercenaries to take cover and return fire. They all knew what was at stake here, and no one was playing games.
“They have to get through us to escape back to the boats,” Maria said.
“Apparently not,” Reaper said as he fired on Van Zyl. “Look!”
Dirk Kruger was now climbing inside the sarcophagus and calling the others over to join him.
“I read about how they got fourteen people in a phone box but this is just ridiculous,” Scarlet said. “You wouldn’t think they had the time for world records.”
Ryan sighed. “Duh! It’s an escape tunnel…”
Scarlet looked at him and pursed her lips. “You think?”
Van Zyl was the last man to climb into the sarcophagus and before he vanished he turned to give a final burst of submachine gunfire at the ECHO team. Ten seconds later a deep roar emanated from below their feet and then the sarcophagus lurched heavily to one side and sunk into the floor.
“They blew the sodding tunnel up,’ Hawke said. “They’re going back to the boats so I’ll lead a
team back the way we came and cut them off.” He turned to Ryan. “I need you to stay here and go through this place looking for anything that can help us. Kruger has the key but there has to be something else.”
Ryan and the others began the laborious process of sifting through the rubble in their search for anything that might help them work out what the South African had looted, while Hawke, Lea, Reaper and Lexi sprinted back along the tunnel in a bid to head Kruger off before he got to the river.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Clambering back up the vertical shaft took longer than Hawke had allowed for, and when they reached the fresh air of the outside world Kruger and the others were already emerging from a pile of scrub-covered rubble at the bottom of the mesa’s northwest slope.
“They took a hell of a risk going into that second tunnel,” Reaper said.
Hawke nodded sharply, exhilarated by the hunt. “Eden said he was the luckiest bastard alive, and I’m starting to believe him.”
They jogged down the hot, rocky mesa, occasionally slipping on loose scree but making good progress until they reached the bottom of the slope and took cover behind a number of juniper trees growing around a small oasis. They were now on the same level as Kruger, who was totally exposed as he and Korać ordered their men into the boats.
“We can’t let them get away,” Lea said.
“She’s right,” Reaper added. “If they get into the boats they’ll be out of sight in seconds, and it’s a half hour hike up to Chabat’s Eurocopter.”
Hawke’s response was to bring his Glock into the aim. For a second he heard nothing but the gentle desert breeze as it whistled through the thick leaves of the date palms and juniper canopies above his head. In the distance was the splashing sound of the river as it moved west though the deep gorge.
Softly, he squeezed the trigger…
Gunshot crack, puff of smoke… one of the mercs clutched his throat and dropped into the muddy bank beside the boat.
Korać and the mercs reacted with speedy professionalism, moving into defensive positions while Kruger and Van Zyl fired up the front two boats.
