The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake 4)

by David Leadbeater

  And the eight pieces were already en route.

  Game and set to Cayman, it seemed. But not yet match. Not by a long way. And if Cayman’s reaction was anything to go by, then the Shadow Elite and its leader, the Norseman, were not only fully invested in the terrible events unfolding around the tombs of the gods, but also responsible for the horrors of Drake’s past.

  As was Cayman himself.

  Drake needed to get to that SAS facility and find Wells’s research. The way this thing was panning out—everything was connected.

  Hayden met him with a pained grin. “Survived again, huh?”

  “At least until she’s avenged,” he said with a grimace. “How many didn’t?”

  “Too many,” Hayden said, and Drake saw Ben standing behind her. The young lad’s face was drip white, his hands bloody. Just then, bullets began to pepper the sides of the archway behind Drake.

  He pointed the way back up the long passage they had followed down here. “We should get moving.”

  *****

  The team retraced its steps. At first, they proceeded quickly, but without haste. Then Hayden voiced her concerns about the eight pieces of Odin.

  “They can’t be that far away. It all depends how Cayman transports them. My guess is he’ll have to do it covertly and quietly, since that’s how his masters work. So it will take a bit longer. But even then—” She left the obvious unspoken.

  “They must be intercepted,” Dahl said. “It’s imperative that we get to them before Cayman takes delivery. And, as soon as we get out of here. . .” He glanced ahead through the deep gloom. “I need to talk to my man in Iceland. He’s had time to decipher at least something by now.”

  “What is the doomsday device?” Belmonte spoke up now. “And how does it work? Does anyone know?”

  “Not yet.” Dahl breathed as he started to pick up the pace. “That’s part of what my language expert in Iceland is looking into.”

  “I bet it relates to Odin in some way,” Karin said. “The Norse gods are all over this. It all seems preordained, as if we’re following a path set down in ancient history. . .” She paused. “But to what end?”

  “If, like you say, it has anything to do with Norse mythology—Odin and Ragnarok—it’ll be pretty earth-shattering,” Dahl told her. “Ragnarok was the last stand of the gods. If they all laid down to die before it happened, then—”

  “It hasn’t happened yet.” Belmonte finished for him.

  Karin nodded. “I bet it was Odin who first saw the future and realized that the gods died in a different manner. At first, he would’ve laughed and ridiculed it, but maybe. . .seeing that it had happened made it happen.”

  “Whoa.” Ben was struggling to keep up. Drake half-grinned as Komodo half-dragged the lad along. “That’s some very deep shit, sis.”

  “Very, very deep,” Karin replied. “But probably true.”

  “And the shield started it all?” Hayden wondered. “Your brother and Parnevik were always rambling on about it being the principal piece.”

  “The finding of the shield started a chain of events—” Karin told her. “That led to the finding of tomb three. That, I’m sure of.”

  “And as for the Shadow Elite.” Jonathan Gates was being helped along by his last agent and Komodo’s last remaining Delta soldier. “We still don’t know who to trust.”

  “Speaking of the pieces,” Hayden said, grimacing as she held her wounded side. “Let’s move.”

  They began to really pick up the pace, lights bobbing as they ran. The going was strenuous and, at times, painful, but they all knew now what was at stake.

  Every minute counted.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Daylight greeted their eyes as they emerged from the eerie tunnel. The dead and the dying still lay all around. One enemy soldier had managed to crawl all the way to the edge of the tunnel shaft, gun in hand. He looked startled when the entire team emerged in front of him.

  Hayden pointed. “Grab that guy. His reward for perseverance will be telling us all he knows about Cayman’s plan for the eight pieces.” She nodded toward the other rooms. “Gather any other survivors too. Check outside.”

  Kinimaka, Komodo and the other Delta soldier took off. Sam and his SAS colleagues followed after a brief consultation. Drake took a moment to bask in the sunlight, enjoying its soft, mellow beams flickering through the many windows and the disturbed dust motes drifting through the still air. Beyond these old castle walls lay a busy city, jam-packed with men and women who had no idea of the immense conflict going on around them.

  Torsten Dahl walked toward one of the windows, taking out his mobile phone and jabbing at several buttons. Drake, Ben and Karin joined him and they were soon joined by Belmonte. Alicia and Mai stayed to cover the tunnel.

  Dahl looked dubious as the phone rang and rang. After a minute, he glanced at his own screen and switched it to speakerphone. “Bloody hell. Does he not have voicemail?”

  “He might not know how to use it.” Ben smiled. “These crustys don’t have much of a grasp on modern technology, do they, Matt?”

  Dahl heard a click. “Hello?”

  “Ja?”

  “It’s me—Dahl. Are you alright, Olle?”

  “Ja. I am good. Where are you? I thought you were dead.”

  “It will take more than a few gorillas with guns to kill me, Olle.”

  “I have something for you. Actually, more than something. I have many things.”

  Dahl pulled a face at the others. “He’s an odd sort of guy.”

  Drake nodded. “You don’t say.”

  “Akerman.” Dahl added some weight to his voice. “If you can talk freely, now would be the time.”

  “Talk freely? Bah. I’m lucky I can talk at all. No, you’re lucky. Because if they killed me, Torsten, you would be the one I came for.” He paused. “To haunt. As a ghost.”

  Dahl frowned in concern. “Do they know you’re working for me?”

  “They might do. They never trusted me since they caught me with all the pictures.”

  “What pictures?”

  “The ones of your wife. Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha.”

  “Akerman. . .”

  “Ja, ja. Okay, I get the hint. The tomb language is very tricky. You know that. I had to take pictures and work on it back in my room. It was the only way.”

  Dahl shook his head. “Go on.”

  “It’s a mix of old Akkadian and Sumerian. Maybe some old Babylonian, just for fun. My findings are very preliminary right now, but I can say that much at least. It’s possible that ancient languages actually first began when some enterprising soul discovered this so-called god language. As you know old Akkadian was written on clay tablets using a Cuneiform script—adopted from early Sumerian. Once I translated the frequent logograms, I was away.”

  “Logogram?” Drake wondered.

  Karin whispered. “Pictures that represent words.”

  “Fill in the gaps?” Dahl said with a fond smile.

  “It’s a little bit more complex than that, Torsten. I know most of what you soldiers do is point and click, but translating an unknown language—well, that takes a little skill.”

  Dahl waited.

  “Anyway. Once I discounted the logograms as a somewhat secondary script and realized the rest of the language was, in fact, a complete syllabary, I began to make some headway.”

  Drake glanced at Karin. The blond-haired Blake girl said, “A syllabary is a set of symbols that represent all the syllables of a language. A complete writing system.”

  “Admittedly, there’s a bit of ancient Greek, some Nu Shu of ancient China and even some Mayan, but it seems to blend in quite well.”

  “That makes sense,” Dahl said. “The tombs are full of gods from every land.”

  “After trawling through some dross, I started to piece it together. To make it easier for you, Torsten, I’ll stick to the simple stuff.”

  “Kind of you, Akerman.”

  “I know. It was pre-
ordained that the unearthing of Odin’s shield would start in motion a series of events that would lead to the discovery of all three tombs. That includes the portal devices found in Blackbeard’s ship and the gate you found in Hawaii. You see? They were not discovered at this time by accident.”

  “It had occurred to us,” Drake murmured.

  “But—” Akerman shouted the word. “It goes on to say that the sequence of events will reveal all of the god’s secrets and ‘mankind’s decision to save or destroy itself’”

  Belmonte whistled. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Mankind’s decision?” Dahl said wonderingly.

  Karin gave a weary sigh. “To use or not to use the doomsday device,” she said. “It’s all in our hands.”

  “Of course. Odin’s poem—forever shall thou fear this, hear me sons of men, for to defile the Tomb of Gods is to start the Day of Reckoning. Akerman, go on.”

  “As for the gods themselves? Odin was the one who saw the future—then literally traveled through time. It so happened one day that he traveled to a time when no gods existed. They were dead. When he took his findings back to his Council and his sons, they laughed at him. They would not believe him. It was then that he crafted the teleportation devices and allowed several of the more trusted ones to see the future. What had come to pass would come to pass. You see? Before that moment, the gods saw themselves as perpetual, an undying breed. But a hard truth can reveal one’s true mortality, and so it was with the gods.”

  Karin smiled at her brother. She had been right.

  “It is said that no god is truly evil,” Akerman went on. “But some are definitely nastier than others. It was these few, of course, who wished to use the teleportation devices for their own ends—imagine the chaos they could cause—and so progressed Odin’s plans apace. The great gods and he built tomb three first to negate the threat. Then the one in Iceland. And then the one in Hawaii. Apparently, there is some kind of throne there?”

  Drake nodded to Dahl’s questioning look. “Yes. A huge, dark throne overlooking the biggest cavern you ever saw.”

  “It’s where Odin sat,” Akerman told them. “Before he died. The last of the gods contemplating his momentous decisions. And then he returned to his own country to die.”

  It’s where Odin sat. Drake’s heart pounded in disbelief. I climbed over the throne where Odin sat. For a moment, his vision blurred.

  “Odin created fate,” Akerman continued. “He created the fate of the gods and of mankind, and I have no doubt, planted many turning points in the course of our history. Not just this one.”

  “Do the texts explain anything about the device itself or how it may relate to Norse mythology?” Karin asked impatiently.

  “Who said that?” Akerman blustered. “Never mind. The female is aggressive, but I suppose I may have been getting a bit carried away. And yes—it does. My main focus was, of course, on this part of the text.” Akerman coughed uncomfortably.

  “Go on, old friend,” Dahl said gently.

  “The doomsday device is a weapon designed to cause an overload of the elements. The earth will quake. The air will be split apart by megastorms of unbelievable ferocity. Chains of volcanoes will erupt. And the oceans shall rise.”

  “The worst scenario we can imagine.” Ben nodded. “Naturally.”

  “Thor was the god of thunder and lightning. Poseidon—of the seas. Loki—of fire. And both Loki and Poseidon are also known as the gods of earthquakes. You have found them all, have you not?”

  “Among thousands of others.” Dahl’s eyes were bleak.

  Drake wanted to reassure him, but the words dried to ash in his throat. Assurance was beyond him now.

  “That’s the point. The device will use the natural elements to rip the planet apart. But it’s based around the Norse version of the apocalypse—Ragnarok. Ever heard of it?”

  *****

  Hayden had no wish to hurt the man, but her obligations ran far deeper than his pitiful wish to cling to life. A right he’d given up the moment he chose to become a mercenary.

  If he chose it, Hayden thought, remembering the plight of many of the Blood King’s men.

  She searched his eyes. “What do you know of the eight pieces, huh? Where are they?”

  His expression didn’t change. Hayden tapped his skull with the barrel of her handgun. “Tell me. Now.”

  “Cayman sent for them.” The man spit out at last. “He. . . They were at Stuttgart. Not far.”

  “Sure thing, I know all that. But how is he transporting them to Singen?”

  As she said it, the answer popped into her brain. There was only one way to do it quickly, safely and quietly. But she needed confirmation.

  The man shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Hayden scowled. She looked around. Kinimaka labored over another man a few feet away. He came up with a similar expression.

  Then Sam, the SAS Commander, appeared a nearby decrepit doorway. “We found their communications array and worked one of the operators until he came up with the answer. Cayman went for secrecy and stealth, probably at the insistence of his masters. The pieces are being transported overland, by civilian train.”

  Hayden jumped to her feet. “Get ready for another battle, guys. We need to stop that train—at all costs.”

  *****

  At Dahl’s urging, Akerman explained as quickly as he could. “Ragnarok is the great battle of battles. The one that ends it all. It is, basically, the last stand of the gods. The last stand of all the heroes. Heimdall blows his great horn. The midguard serpent thrashes, causing immense tidal waves. Cliff faces are sundered. People walk the road to hell and the heavens split apart. The great World Tree, Yggdrasil, shudders. The gods do battle with the invaders. Odin dies at the jaws of Fenrir. Freyr fights Surtr and loses. Odin’s other son, Vioarr, avenges his father and spears the enormous wolf. Thor, the Protector of the Earth, desperately fights the great serpent and defeats it, but is only able to take nine steps afterward before falling to his death, poisoned. People flee their homes. The sun turns black, great storms batter the earth and it sinks into the sea. Stars vanish. Fire and steam rises and flames touch the heavens.”

  “But it never happened,” Dahl said.

  “Maybe not. Maybe not yet. Odin was always considered the wisest of all beings. He may have found a way—this way—to postpone the inevitable. In any case, your battle, our battle, is real. As real as can be. This is our Ragnarok, my friend.”

  “Interpreted how?”

  “Heroes must rise to save the day or villains will end it. Whatever you believe in doesn’t matter. A last stand is coming. A battle of battles. You must make this stand together and you must win.”

  Drake suddenly felt the presence of Mai and Alicia. They had heard and were looking suitably shocked. “The Shadow Elite are behind all this,” he said aloud. “They want the eight pieces to hold the world to ransom. We’ll stop them.”

  “So why bring the pieces here?” Dahl momentarily turned away from his call.

  “To prove the worth of what they have,” Karin said in a sickened voice. “They mean to give the world a little taster.”

  Drake thought it a little ironic—that the eight pieces they had thought at one time irrelevant were now turning about to be crucial. He watched, lost in thought, as Karin broke away from the conversation to talk to the approaching Komodo.

  Hayden joined them. “It’s time to move.”

  Dahl thanked Akerman, told the Swedish language expert to leave Iceland immediately, and ended the call. “So,” he said. “Who wants to catch a train?”

  *****

  Karin intercepted Komodo as he walked to join the group and took the big soldier to one side. They passed through a narrow, crumbling doorway and into a quiet alcove with more windows and collapsed masonry than walls.

  “I missed you, Trevor.”

  The big man blanched a little at the use of his real name. It was Karin’s way of teasing him. Th
ey hadn’t known each other for long, but they had known each other long enough.

  “And I you, Kazmat.” His nickname for her was based around the abbreviation for Hazardous Materials—the family, he said, to which she belonged.

  Karin kissed him hard on the lips. The soldier had to bend down to reach her. By the time they broke away, they were both breathless.

  “You’re the first thing I’ve believed in since Rebecca died.” Karin said the words again as she’d said them to him many times. “Don’t make me regret it.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “I threw my life away all those years.” She buried her head into his shoulders, not caring about the dust and grime.

  “When this is over,” Komodo said quietly, “we’ll work something out.”

  “I tried to help. I tried. But I was so young. . .” Karin blocked out the memories, brought to the surface now, she thought, in reaction to the danger they had just escaped and her feelings for Komodo.

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was the others. The grown-ups who ignored you.”

  “I do know that.” Karin breathed. “But—”

  “It was their fault.” Komodo reiterated, trying to make her believe.

  “We need time to make this work.”

  The soldier pulled away a little. “We will have time. I promise you.”

  “Your work—”

  “All that bullshit will not get in the way. There are other jobs.”

  Karin looked dubious. “For a six foot six, tattooed, beefy Delta commando who looks like a biker and has the name Trevor? Unlikely.”

  “I’ll guard your body.” He moved closer.

  Karin choked back a laugh. “And sometimes talks like a nine-year-old. Ugh.”

  “You wanna fight me?” Komodo pulled away with a laugh. “You really wanna tussle with this shit?” He puffed out his chest

  Karin glanced toward the foliage outside the window. “Just grab my ass and drag me over to those trees. Then, we’ll see who wants to fight.”