“We don’t have five minutes,” she said over the sound of the shooting, the gunmen no more than fifty yards away, and flipped off the safety on her pistol with a resolute expression.
Spencer twisted toward the explosion of gunfire from the far ruins, his AKM trained on the distant muzzle flashes. “Get down,” he yelled, and Reynolds dropped to the ground as Spencer took cover behind a crumbling wall. “Drake and Allie are over there,” Spencer said, pointing at the ruins. “You can see where the shooters are, over by the tree line. They haven’t seen us, so we should be able to flank them and take them out before they know what hit them.”
Reynolds nodded and was reaching for his weapon when Roland’s voice called from behind them.
“Drop the guns,” he ordered, his pistol pointed at them.
“Roland! What the–” Reynolds exclaimed.
“You heard me. Drop them or I’ll shoot.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Reynolds demanded.
Spencer slowly set the rifle down and raised his hands. “No, he hasn’t. You set us up, didn’t you? That’s why the gunmen were waiting for us, isn’t it?”
Roland spat to the side, his eyes never straying from them. “Very good, genius,” he said dismissively. “Your pistol, too. And you as well,” he warned Reynolds.
Spencer slowly reached for his holstered weapon and withdrew it with two fingers. He tossed it aside as Reynolds’s face clouded with anger.
“You filthy bastard,” Reynolds snarled. “It was you all along!”
“Shut up and lose the gun. Last warning,” Roland called out over the chatter of gunfire from the assault rifles hammering at Drake and Allie’s position.
Reynolds flipped his holster up and made to comply, and then threw himself to the side and fired at Roland, narrowly missing him. Roland’s aim was better, and his round caught Reynolds in the shoulder, sending his pistol flying.
Roland’s smile of triumph turned to one of confused pain as he looked down at where blood was spreading from the center of his chest. He coughed pink foam and tried to raise his gun, but Spencer fired again, Helms’s Beretta barking in his hand, still warm from its hiding place at the small of his back. Spencer’s second shot sent the Frenchman spinning, but he still gripped his weapon, and Spencer fired again, this time vaporizing part of Roland’s head.
Roland dropped like a sack of rocks, and Spencer scrambled to retrieve his rifle and the other pistol as Reynolds gasped in pain. When Spencer had rearmed himself, he crouched down by Reynolds’s side.
“How bad is it?” Reynolds asked. Spencer did a quick inspection of the damage.
“Bad enough. I can do a pressure bandage that should stop the worst of the bleeding. Looks like it missed your lung, so you got lucky, but it shattered your shoulder blade on the exit.”
“I can’t believe he sold me out.”
“Hard way to learn that lesson. Did he know your operative was headed into this area?”
“Yes.”
“Another mystery solved.”
“But who are they? And why is a private army ambushing us?”
“Beats me.” Spencer looked over the rocks, but it was now too dark to make much out. “So much for flanking the shooters.”
“You still going to try?”
“One against, what, six or eight, maybe more on their way? Sounds like a great way to get killed.” Spencer paused. “You have your sat phone?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s retreat back to the cave and you can call your headquarters. I’d say we’ve got enough for them to mobilize some people, wouldn’t you?”
“What about Drake and Allie?”
Spencer peered down to where the gunfire was slowing. “Nothing we can do to help them now, other than call in the cavalry and pray.” He checked the time and then helped Reynolds to his feet. “Let’s get moving. I’ll do the triage in the cave. We’re sitting ducks out here if more of them come to the party.”
~ ~ ~
A lull in the shooting gave Drake the opportunity he had been waiting for. He could see that they were far outgunned, a pair of pistols no match for a half dozen assault rifles, and when there were no more gunshots, he called out at the top of his lungs, “Don’t shoot. We give up.”
Another couple of shots answered his cry, and then silence returned to the area and a male voice called to him from the trees, heavily accented but intelligible.
“Throw out your weapons.”
He and Allie had discussed their options and she’d agreed that their best choice was to surrender and live rather than be cut to pieces by automatic rifle rounds, which was a guarantee given the number of gunmen and the intensity of the inbound fire. Drake nodded to her and tossed his pistol onto the rocks on the other side of the rubble, and Allie followed suit.
“That’s it. Two pistols,” Drake yelled.
“Stand with your hands up,” the voice answered, and Drake took a deep breath and rose, Allie by his side.
Robed figures surrounded them in the dark, rifles trained on them as one of the gunmen looked them up and down. He snapped at the fighter next to him, and the man searched them for hidden weapons. Finding none, he stepped away and nodded to the leader.
“Where are the others?” the leader demanded.
Drake shook his head. “I don’t know. We split up. They probably took off when the shooting started. That would be the smart move.”
The leader had a hushed discussion with his men that Allie and Drake didn’t understand, and then he raised a small two-way radio to his lips and spoke into it. A terse response crackled from the device and he turned to face them. “Come,” he said, and barked an order. Two of the gunmen sauntered over to Drake and Allie and lashed their hands behind their backs, and then led them up a trail toward the top of a small ridge.
“Where are you taking us?” Allie asked. The man next to her pushed her roughly in the small of the back, and she almost tumbled face forward. The leader laughed, the sound ugly and mean.
“To pay the devil his due.”
Chapter 52
Drake and Allie stumbled along a rocky trail that twisted through a ravine. The gunmen lit the way using torches they’d left at the base of the trail, and as they descended the slope into a valley adjacent to the clearing, barbed wire strung along the edge of the valley glinted orange from the reflected flames. A dull thrumming met their ears once they were on flat terrain, and they realized it was a motor – a generator in a soundproof enclosure beneath camouflage netting that formed a canopy over a small utility building to their left. Nearby, at the base of a mountain, a cave yawned wide, and they could make out more torches at its mouth as the column of gunmen led them toward it.
“What is this?” Drake asked, and earned a stony stare from the leader of the gunmen.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” the man growled.
They marched through the nocturnal landscape, past plots of vegetables in ragged rows, the putrid waft of human waste used as fertilizer tainting the air. A guard sat behind a heap of sandbags, manning a .50-caliber machine gun on a turret with a darkened spotlight beside it, the arrival of the gunmen apparently expected. The leader offered a nod to the guard, who returned the signal and resumed his cleaning of the weapon’s breech with an oil-soaked rag.
Once inside the cavern, they continued deeper into the mountainside, and it was obvious that the passage had been widened by human hands. Wooden beams supported the ceiling, and the marks of tools on the soft stone were plain to see in the dim illumination from low-wattage bulbs strung every dozen yards. They marched alongside a hand-laid railway track that stretched into nothingness, and when they reached a fork where it veered left, they bore right, where three armed sentries waited.
The leader exchanged a greeting with the gunmen and the group continued into a large cavern, easily several hundred yards across. Allie and Drake gasped at the sight of at least a thousand near-naked slumb
ering youths and children pressed together like sardines on the floor, the stink of unwashed bodies overpowering. Allie’s eyes narrowed as they walked along the edge of the nightmarish scene; the sleeping figures were malnourished and so pale that their skin was translucent, even the toddlers old before their time.
Gunmen stood every few yards along the edge of the cavern, keeping watch, their faces covered, likely to help mask the smell of disease and deprivation. Drake fought to keep his gorge from spewing through his nose, and it was clear that Allie was fighting the same battle as she trudged unsteadily after her captors.
They traversed the first cavern and entered another, smaller cave, with still more sleeping laborers, to a lit passage at the end. Once at that opening, after passing more guards, they were led into a room where an overfed Indian man sat behind a hand-carved wooden desk, incense burning to mask the stink from the outer areas, fresh air piping through a duct that ran from the edge of the ceiling.
“You have caused me much distress,” Mehta said, looking Drake and Allie over. “Your reward for successfully pursuing this adventure will be a death that is far more agonizing than any you can imagine.”
“Who are you?” Drake demanded.
An almost shy smile tugged at the man’s rotund lips and he snapped his fingers. “Suri, cut their backpacks off and let’s see what they brought us.”
The leader of the gunmen stepped forward and flicked open a switchblade, and then sliced through the shoulder straps and placed both backpacks on the desk. Mehta unzipped Drake’s and dumped it out, and then did the same with Allie’s, pausing when the bundled dagger slid from the black nylon with a thump.
“Ah, perfect. This spares me more effort. Very kind of you to return that which was stolen from my brother’s safekeeping,” he said, unwrapping the gold blade and turning it over in his hands. Suri stepped forward and murmured into his ear, and Mehta nodded. “Now, tell me everything you know, and don’t lie or it will go worse for you.”
“Know? We know what’s on the blade – it led us to a ruined temple, beneath which is supposed to be some sort of cache of treasure.”
“Really? Then it’s as I suspected. You are not only fools, you are unlucky ones at that.”
Drake glared at him, and he waved a limp hand at them. “Suri, have you summoned our friends?”
Suri nodded. “They are on their way.”
“And our valued clients? Are they satisfied with the shipment?”
“Most assuredly. The money is counted, and they are ready to leave.”
Mehta nodded to Suri and returned his attention to Drake and Allie. “You caught me at a bad time. I have other guests, or I’d give you a tour of my little camp.”
“Who are these people? Slaves? They look like they’re half dead,” Allie said.
Mehta nodded. “I own them. They were born in these caves and will die here. They are a natural resource to be harvested and put to use, like oil or natural gas, nothing more.”
“Put to what use?” Drake asked.
“You really do not know, do you? I suppose it does not matter now – dead men tell no tales, as they say.” Mehta paused. “This is a mine. We dig for uranium – an outlier vein my grandfather discovered many years ago, which we’ve been mining ever since. What was originally a population of criminals condemned to death became generations of new labor, each giving birth to more diggers as they matured into adults, and ultimately wasting away from the effects of a lifetime in the mines.”
“You…these people are born and die here?”
“Most without ever seeing the sun. It is better that way for them – they know nothing of the outside world. Any newcomers we are sent are segregated and work in the milling and chemical processing area, which takes a heavy toll on them.” Mehta looked up as three figures arrived at the chamber opening. Allie and Drake twisted their heads to get a glimpse of the newcomers and stiffened at the sight. The filthy men were clad in rags, their skin smeared with ash, their waist-length beards and hair dreadlocked and greasy, and necklaces and amulets of human bones adorned their chests and arms.
“Oh, God…” Allie gasped at the men’s ruined mouths and sharpened teeth.
“Not God, no,” Mehta said. “Quite the furthest thing from it, actually. They believe themselves to be human incarnations of ancient demons, bringers of death. They are worshippers of Kali, the black goddess of destruction, and mutilate themselves as an act of homage to her, a symbol of their faith and devotion. They are a centuries-old cult of ruthless killers…and they are the guardians of this treasure you so imprudently covet. A treasure that they hold to be sacred and which must be kept from human sight at any cost. They believe that to fail in their task is to invite the end of the world. Quaint, but a useful conceit to encourage. I’ve found it helpful to use for my purposes.”
“The statue at Swami Baba Raja’s…” Drake murmured.
“Is of no consequence to me, other than as a memento, a gift that helped establish my brother as a holy man capable of manifesting ancient rarities, the icon shown to only a chosen few in exchange for their devotion…and silence.” Mehta pursed his lips as though he’d tasted something sour. “This is a superstitious country, and the old ways die hard. It does not matter whether I believe these trinkets to be inconsequential. What matters is that for my brother, the power they wield is sufficient to bend them to one’s will, just as any holy relic’s true worth is in the minds of the faithful, not in the eyes of the skeptic. And so the sword will be returned to my brother in good time, and then the goddess shall be whole again, her legacy undamaged, your meddling in affairs that don’t concern you an inconsequential ripple on the surface of a limitless lake.”
“Why are you doing this to us?” Allie asked quietly.
“Surely you can’t be that dim. I cannot afford interlopers, whether fortune hunters or adventurers, intruding into my valley and exposing my operation to prying eyes. Your quest for the treasure sealed your fate – it is now out of my hands.”
Mehta spoke rapidly to Suri, who nodded and spoke in a different tongue to the members of the death cult. Suri turned to Allie and Drake and sneered. “You have been gifted to them for their ritual. Believe me that it is a curiosity unlike any you have ever witnessed – and it will be your last.”
The tallest of the cult members stepped forward to take Allie by the arm. His bloodshot eyes darted to Mehta’s desk, where the dagger was resting beside Allie’s backpack, and then returned to Drake and Allie with a smoldering glower. He grunted a hoarse monosyllable and the other two cult members joined him.
“As an archeologist, I’m sure you’ll find their primitive ceremony as fascinating as it is monstrous,” Mehta called out to Allie. “Oh, yes, of course I know who you are. The irony being that all of your money couldn’t buy your way out of this predicament. It is of no value to these men, whose only interest is to desecrate your souls in the cold light of a blood moon. Enjoy your final breaths, my curious friends. Remember it’s the journey, not the destination, which makes things interesting.”
Mehta’s laugh followed them like a taunt as the cult killers dragged Drake and Allie from Mehta’s chamber. They passed back through the hellish vista of the slave camp, past generations of slave laborers whose lives were preordained to be short and brutal, their existences determined by a corpulent madman who cared nothing for them. Once outside the cave mouth, Suri and his men followed the cult killers to the barbed wire and stopped at the trail, watching wordlessly as Drake and Allie disappeared into the night, bound for an agonizing death they would beg for before the night was done.
Chapter 53
Reynolds’s face was covered in a film of clammy sweat by the time Spencer had helped him to the mouth of the small cave. Spencer crafted a pressure dressing from the first aid kit in his backpack, and after slipping off the DOD man’s shirt and pack, he fitted the dressing into place. Once he had taped it tight to staunch the worst of the blood flow from th
e wound, he rooted around in the kit and offered Reynolds a syringe filled with amber fluid.
“Morphine,” Spencer said.
“I need to call my superior first,” Reynolds said with a shake of his head.
“You sure? Maybe just half?”
“Later. Hand me the sat phone,” Reynolds insisted.
Spencer opened Reynolds’s backpack and removed the satellite phone, and inspected it in the gloom. “Damn. Looks like it got nicked by the bullet when it exited your back,” Spencer said.
“Does it still work?”
Spencer powered the phone on, and the screen lit with an amber glow before locking on a satellite and beeping once to indicate it had acquired a signal. “Looks like it.”
“Hand it to me.”
Spencer did, but it quickly became apparent that Reynolds couldn’t dial. His face fell and he handed it back to Spencer. “Dial this thing for me,” he said, and gave Spencer a number in Pakistan. Spencer listened until the line rang and then passed the sat phone back to Reynolds, who clamped it to his ear while Spencer scoured the ruins, distrustful of the silence that had fallen over the area.
When the call was answered, Reynolds whispered a name and then waited. Seconds dragged into a full minute, and then a voice came on the line.
“Monroe.”
“General Monroe, this is Casey Reynolds.”
“Not a good time, Reynolds.”
“I’m on a satellite phone. In Kashmir. I’ve been wounded, and we have a situation on the ground here, General. I need help.”
“Wounded! What in the blazes…”
“We took fire from hostiles. And we have civilians who’ve been taken prisoner by gunmen. Americans.” Reynolds gave Monroe a rundown on their situation and, when he finished, listened in tense silence.
Monroe’s response, when it came, was an outraged growl. “You idiot. I told you to mind your own damned business and to stay out of Kashmir, didn’t I?”
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