Valhalla Gold (Joe Hawke Book 5)

by Rob Jones

  “So that’s our peak right there,” Ryan said, twisting a map around and placing a compass against it. “If my orienteering skills are correct, and of course they are, we have only a short hike until we reach the base of our mountain and then it’s not much further from there to the lake in question!”

  “Your orienteering skills are not correct,” Hawke said, taking the map and twisting it around in Ryan’s hands before pointing at the horizon. “That way is north, not over there.”

  Ryan looked sheepishly at the former SBS man for a second but moved along with a grin and a shrug of the shoulders. “Ah…”

  “It’s absolutely fantastic!” Victoria said, changing the subject. She moved closer to the mountains, utterly spellbound. “I had no idea.”

  “Come on, let’s get on with it,” Scarlet said. “I doubt there’s a decent bar anywhere around here so the sooner we get back to Kiruna the better, even if it was about as lively as a morgue there.”

  They picked up their kit and stepped off of the road and into the taiga. Hawke was immediately reminded of old times, not just of the SBS and their punishing training programs but of his childhood too – like the time they went hiking on Dartmoor and he and his sister played hide and seek around Birch Tor. Those days seemed impossibly far away now and when he recalled them it almost felt as if he were imagining someone else’s childhood and not his own.

  “Whatcha thinking about?”

  He turned and saw Lea had caught up with him and linked her arm through his.

  He smiled, looked over at the sun and replied: “I was just thinking about how much I’d like a cold beer.”

  “Don’t! You sound like Scarlet Bloody Sloane. I swear if she ever gets shot she’s going to bleed vodka.”

  “I doubt that would happen.”

  “Which bit?”

  “Getting shot, of course… because she’d definitely bleed vodka.”

  To the west, the sun momentarily dipped behind the ridgeline and lit the tops of the mountains and the few, light clouds a faint pink color. High above and behind them they saw some pale stars sparkling in the east, and the air took on a decidedly chilly feel despite the late summer month. This was about as isolated as Europe got – cool, distant and far from life.

  “It’s bloody freezing around these parts,” Ryan said with a shiver.

  “Don’t be such a baby,” Scarlet said.

  “I agree with Ryan,” Victoria said, with a sideways glance at Scarlet. “It is rather chilly here, but then one would expect that at this latitude.”

  “Yes, I suppose one would,” Scarlet said.

  Hawke and Lea shared a private smile, and they pushed on.

  By the time they arrived at the canyon at the base of the mountain the sun had sunk ever lower and darkened the ridgeline of the mountain ranges around them. Up here, the latitude was so high that the time before sunset – what photographers called the golden hour – could last for much longer than sixty minutes, and that was the case tonight. It felt like it had been sunset for hours by the time they finally reached the rocks that they had been seeking, and there, stretching out beyond them in the purple, dusky haze, was the lake.

  Hawke stepped up. “Right, here’s where we have to get our hands dirty. If Alex and Ryan are right, somewhere around the shoreline of this lake is a concealed entrance to a tunnel. You only have to look at the place to know it probably hasn’t been touched for thousands of years, so let’s get looking.”

  They worked their way around the shoreline, the ridges of the Kebnekaise massif looming above their heads as they went. Twilight lasted forever up here, so they had light to work with even if it was subdued, but it was over an hour before they found what they were looking for.

  “You think this is it?” Lea asked.

  Hawke took a step back and nodded his head. “Our best chance yet.”

  He was looking at a jumble of rocks, some up to ten feet high, that to the casual observer looked random, but he thought otherwise. A large flat rock at the front looked like it had been placed there a very long time ago with the specific intention of concealing something.

  “Let’s get it out the way then,” he said flatly.

  “It must weigh ten tons!” Ryan said.

  Hawke grinned. “Which is why I’ve brought along a decent quantity of military-grade C-4 in my picnic basket.”

  Hawke pulled the explosive from his backpack and weighed it in his hand.

  “Oh my goodness!” Victoria said, taking a step back.

  “Don’t panic, darling,” Scarlet said. “It’s not dangerous until we detonate it with a shockwave.”

  Hawke took a few seconds to evaluate the best areas to place the explosives, and then inserted the blasting caps. He dusted his hands down.

  “You really like this bit, don’t you?” Lea said.

  “Well…”

  Ryan rolled his eyes.

  They took cover and Hawke detonated the C-4. The explosion was heavy and loud, and blasted the thin upper end of the flat rock to oblivion. When the dust settled Hawke was the first to his feet and after briefly checking his work he gave the others the order to come up the embankment and join him with the equipment.

  It was time to go inside the mountain.

  *

  Álvaro Sala lowered the binoculars and handed them to Leon Smets who was standing a yard to his left. Although they were wrapped in kid leather gloves, he rubbed his hands together for warmth. It was much warmer in Andorra at this time of year, but that wouldn’t stop him taking what was rightfully his.

  Less than a kilometer to the west the Donovan girl and her friends had recently disappeared into a ravine on the south slopes of the Kebnekaise massif. It looked like they were planning an ascent via the eastern route, but not to any real altitude since their equipment was limited.

  Tracking down their aircraft to Bromma airport hadn’t been the hardest challenge of his life, and tracking it on live radar was a simple facility on any handheld device. Perhaps they should have switched off their transponder, but such things were frowned upon by the authorities and would have generated an enormous security response.

  Either way, he and the surviving members of his team had landed at Kiruna less than twenty minutes after the ECHO Gulfstream, and now not only would they lead them directly to the tomb and the location of Thor’s Hammer, but they would also pay for killing Deprez and putting Dasha Vetrov on life support.

  Now, a hefty explosion rang out down the valley to the south and sent clouds of willow grouse and gray herons bursting into the air.

  “They’re going inside the mountain,” Smets said. He spat on the gorse and sniffed deeply.

  Sala gave him a look of disgust. “Of course they are, but they still have no idea what they’re looking for.”

  Smets smirked and nodded his head in agreement.

  “If they’re like everyone else then they probably think they’re looking for a hammer.”

  “Or a Tesla Coil, perhaps?” Smets said, his face breaking into a malevolent smirk.

  “Or a Tesla Coil… Ha!” Sala laughed and shook his head in disbelief before turning back from the ridge. He walked back toward the line of pick-up trucks parked up roughly at the eastern edge of the range.

  Yes, perhaps they thought they were looking for a Tesla Coil, but whatever it was they were seeking they wouldn’t live to find out the truth, and even if they did they wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy it.

  Sala shouted at the men hanging around and smoking cigarettes. “Into the trucks! We’re going inside the Kebnekaise!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Hawke led the team into the cave, and if they thought outside was cold, it was nothing compared to in here. The cramped cavern was icy and damp and their breath bloomed out before them with each exhalation.

  “Place is like a bloody meat freezer.”

  “It’s a cave inside the Arctic Circle, Cairo. What did you expect?”

  “I meant Scandinavia.”
/>   “Now that’s just offensive,” Lea said.

  Ryan sighed. “Ladies, if it’s going to be handbags at dawn can it at least wait until we’ve found the tomb?”

  Lea and Scarlet turned and faced him. “What was that, Ryan?” they said in perfect unison.

  Ryan looked at them both, noting the expression on their faces. “I was just saying that we have a lot of work to do and thank mercy you’re both here to help.”

  They shuffled deeper inside until reaching a narrow split in the floor of the tunnel which disappeared into darkness and didn’t exactly look like it promised safe passage.

  Ryan peered over the edge and squinted. “Anyone got a glow-stick?”

  Hawke fired one up and dropped it into the crack. They watched it tumble down, striking the sides of the shaft as it went. It hit the bottom with a gently thumping sound and a cloud of powdery dust puffed out around it.

  “Mind the gap,” Scarlet said.

  Hawke raised an eyebrow. “Looks like our next stop.”

  They dropped rappel lines over the rocky ledge and began to descend into the abyss with Hawke in the lead, another glow stick in his hand.

  He hit the bottom and after releasing himself from the line he gave the others the signal to come down.

  “This is all terribly exciting,” Victoria said, eliciting an eye-roll from Scarlet.

  They started down the vertical surface of the rock-face, working their way down into the depths of the vast mountain above them. Victoria was last, helped down by Scarlet, and when she touched down on the cavern floor they were all ready for the next stage.

  At the far end of this lower cave was another tunnel partially obscured by a series of impressive stalagmites and stalactites.

  Scarlet stared at them as she released her rappel line and checked her pistol.

  “Yes, Cairo,” Ryan said, glancing at her. “They do look phallic, don’t they?”

  She sighed. “I was thinking they were vaguely redolent of a set of jaws but if yours looks like any of those then I pity the poor borscht woman.”

  “Her name’s Maria,” Ryan said with a disapproving sideways glance.

  They moved cautiously through the cave and then through what Scarlet had described as a set of jaws until they found themselves staring into a twisting, ever-narrowing tunnel. The frozen darkness of the place was not something Lea would forget in a hurry, and for a second she wondered if her father had ever been down here.

  No, she told herself. Stop being so stupid. Okay, so she now knew her father was mixed up in all of this somehow, but she couldn’t let her thoughts run away with themselves like this. Her thoughts ran fast, after all, and usually to the darkest of places. It was hard sometimes to pull them back… like taming so many horses. Whatever her father had known about all of this, how could he ever possibly have been down in this place?

  She joined Hawke at the front and looked at his face as he moved fearlessly into the darkness. His strong profile and unshaven jaw were now lit an eerie green in the light of the glow-stick.

  He turned to her. “What is it?”

  “You just look kind of spooky,” she said with a quick smile.

  “Do I?”

  “Chemiluminescence will do that for a man,” Ryan said from behind her. “Even a rugged daredevil like Joe here.”

  “I wonder what you would look like with a glow stick up your arse, Ryan?” Scarlet said, tipping her head back and pretending to visualize the spectacle.

  “I’d like to see you try!” Ryan said. “No wait, that didn’t come out right.”

  “Look at the walls!” Victoria said quietly. She ran her hand along the rock. “The carving at the entrance looked manual, but these tramlines here suggest some sort of machinery.”

  “Machinery?” Ryan asked. “Are you sure?”

  Victoria took a step back from the wall and nodded. “Almost certain – in fact the lower part here looks like it’s constituted of rectilinear stone blocks cut to size by high-precision cutting tools.”

  Hawke frowned. “Modern stuff?”

  “Sounds mad but yes,” Victoria said.

  “Ryan?”

  Ryan weighed it up. “The temple complex at Pumapunku in Bolivia has attracted a lot of conspiracy theories for the same reason – high-precision engineering of stonework around fifteen hundred years old that many people say must have been done by a higher intelligence. The thing is the theories are highly questionable because the stone there is a mix of red sandstone and andesite, both of which are conducive to precision carving by hand.”

  “But this isn’t sandstone,” Victoria said. “This is granite.”

  Ryan tipped his head to one side and stared at the tunnel wall for a moment, silent and perplexed. “Granite… yes. Odd.”

  They descended the declining tunnel until they reached the inner chamber. Immediately the atmosphere changed and they felt the temperature drop again.

  “This must be it!” Ryan said.

  “It can’t be,” Victoria said in a whisper. Her eyes crawled over the cavern, lit low by the flickering glow sticks. “Thor’s tomb?”

  “Got it in one,” Hawke said. “Now let’s see where the old boy’s hiding out.”

  Ryan clicked his teeth and shook his head gently. “Blasphemous mockery of the gods is not a good idea, Joe.”

  Hawke said nothing as they progressed into the tomb complex, but Lea was starting to think Ryan might have a point. The place reminded her of what she had seen in Kefalonia when they’d discovered the vault of Poseidon. Ancient motifs were carved into the chamber walls, there were faded renderings of Thor on the floor tiles and a bewildering array of weapons was stacked up in piles wherever she looked. Yet this place seemed different from Poseidon’s tomb. It felt more military.

  She heard Scarlet whisper a few feet behind her. “Take look at this place!”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Victoria said, running her hands over the smooth, painted walls. “Apart from some deterioration in the paint pigments it’s like they just finished it yesterday.”

  They saw Thor’s sarcophagus and moved toward it, their flashlights illuminating the dust they’d kicked up as they walked through the frozen chamber.

  Lea’s breath formed into a thick cloud in front of her face. “It’s all very similar to the Poseidon tomb. That’s bothering me.”

  “It definitely raises a few questions,” said Hawke. “Not only were none of these legends supposed to exist in the first place, but their mythologies all grew up thousands of miles apart from each other.”

  The sarcophagus was a similar shape and size to Poseidon’s, but it didn’t stop there – leaning against the base of the pedestal was a stone shield covered in carved letters – the same letters they had seen back in Kefalonia.

  “Looks like Thor went on holiday to Greece,” Hawke said.

  “Or maybe Poseidon took a visit up here to see the northern lights or something like that?” Scarlet said, lowering her voice in the sombre atmosphere.

  “Or something like that,” Lea said, turning over the shield with the tip of her boot. It clattered to the floor with startling volume in the icy silence of the tomb.

  Hawke frowned. “I don’t think it was just Poseidon who came here – don’t forget this is pretty much where the NSA found Medusa’s head back in the sixties. Why am I getting the feeling we’re just not getting something about all of this?”

  “Beats me,” Scarlet said with a sigh. She shone her flashlight over the sarcophagus for a second and then swept the beam around the chamber. It illuminated rows of swords and axes. “We’re certainly not getting any bloody treasure out of it, that’s for sure. I mean look at this place – it’s like an ancient arsenal but where’s the loot?”

  “Yes, but look at all these weapons!” Ryan said. “I’ve never seen so many swords in all my life.”

  “Leave them alone, boy,” Scarlet said. “They’re not Fisher Price.”

  “And check this out!” Ryan sa
id, lifting a leather belt studded with gold and emeralds from the floor. He blew the dust off it and strapped it around his waist.

  Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “What is this – professional wrestling?”

  “Get lost, Scarlet.”

  “What would your wrestling name be? What about Big Mummy?”

  “Leave it, Cairo,” Hawke said. He turned to Ryan. “It’s not a wrestling belt, obviously – but what is it?”

  A look of recognition spread on Victoria’s face. “I know! It’s the megingjörð.”

  Ryan beamed, barely able to contain himself. “I know!”

  Scarlet sighed. “Well that clears that up. Shall we move on and look for some gold?”

  “Just wait where you are, Cairo.” Hawke looked at Ryan and Victoria. “In English please, for the rest of us.”

  “Sorry!” Ryan said with excitement. “This is Thor’s magical power-belt, the megingjörð!”

  “Then take it off, Ryan!” Lea said.

  “Yeah, better stop pissing about, mate.”

  “One hates to be a clock-watcher,” Victoria said, pointing at the sarcophagus. “But oughtn’t we get on and take a look in that thing or not?”

  Lea saw Hawke glance at her and then at the others. “That’s what we do, so… yeah.”

  It took longer than they thought to prise the lid off the sarcophagus, even with the climbing ropes and crow bars they had brought with them from the plane’s hold. After tying off the massive, stone lid and making sure it was secure, they took a tentative step forward toward the gaping black hole in front of them.

  “Well…” Lea said with a casual resigned tone usually reserved for the most banal of observations. “That’s Thor’s corpse, all right.”

  “Thank God it’s so cold in here,” Hawke said quietly. “Or it might have thawed out by now.”

  Lea laughed, but Scarlet was less amused. “Oh please,” she said. “That was not funny in the least.”