by Rob Jones
THE CURSE OF MEDUSA
(Joe Hawke #4)
Rob Jones
Copyright © 2016 by Rob Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
THE CURSE OF MEDUSA is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and occurrences are entirely fictional products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you would like to share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, please go to an ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Other Books by Rob Jones
The Joe Hawke Series
The Vault of Poseidon (Joe Hawke #1)
Thunder God (Joe Hawke #2)
The Tomb of Eternity (Joe Hawke #3)
The Curse of Medusa (Joe Hawke #4)
Valhalla Gold (Joe Hawke #5)
The Aztec Prophecy (Joe Hawke #6)
The Secret of Atlantis (Joe Hawke #7)
The Lost City (Joe Hawke #8)
This novel is an action-adventure thriller and includes archaeological, military and mystery themes. I welcome constructive comments and I’m always happy to get your feedback.
Website: www.robjonesnovels.com
Facebook: http://bit.ly/RobJonesNovels
Email: [email protected]
Blog: http://robjonesbooks.blogspot.com
Twitter: @AuthorRobJones
DEDICATION
For Snowdrop
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
Finnmark, Northern Norway, October 1968
Max Henriksen tightened the hood of his Parka and stamped his feet against the hard Arctic snow. It was a vain attempt to warm up, but he did it all the same.
He sighed and scanned the bleak horizon. This was one hell of a place to build a listening station, but what the National Security Agency wanted, the National Security Agency generally got.
He watched with growing impatience as Frank Laurie began to lower the hollow drill-head into the hole in the ice. It had gotten stuck somewhere a few thousand feet below the surface and the young scientist from New Jersey was now attempting to lubricate the process with some drilling fluid. He wasn’t making a very good job of it.
“It’s not budging, Max,” he said.
Max scratched his beard. “What’s the depth?”
“Seven thousand feet.”
“Let me get a look in there, kid,” Martinez said, moving Laurie aside and pushing his way to the drill. Like Henriksen, Tony Martinez wasn’t a scientist, but part of the NSA team assigned to scout the area for its suitability as a listening station. “You’ve got no strength in you. Let a real man do the job.”
He laughed heartily as he began to rotate the drill barrel in an attempt to move the cutters into the ice again, but his laughter faded when he realized the drill wasn’t going any deeper.
“This ain’t right, Max,” he said. “Should be nothing down there but ice and water. Am I right, Laurie?”
Laurie nodded, equally perplexed. “Nothing but ice and water.”
Henriksen frowned. “Then let’s see if we can drill around it.”
It took them the best part of the day to work out where the drill head could penetrate at that depth and where it couldn’t. They worked out whatever was blocking their way was no more than a couple of square feet.
“I for one want to know just what the hell is down there,” Henriksen said.
The others agreed, and three hours later they were hoisting the mystery object up through the small tunnel made by the various attempts with the core driller.
Henriksen saw it first – a blackened object about the size of a small TV set.
“What the hell...?” Martinez said. “That thing look man-made to you, Max?”
Henriksen nodded grimly. It did look man-made to him.
When they got it to the surface, it was encrusted in ancient ice and hard to see, but clearly some kind of chest.
“This is freaking me out, Max,” Martinez said.
“Me too,” Laurie said, taking a few steps back.
Max unhooked it from the hoist and laid it in the snow. A storm was rising now and the freezing air was filling with snow once again.
Henriksen stared in wonder. “Well, I’ll be damned...”
“It looks Greek,” Martinez said.
“What the hell is a metal chest covered in Greek letters doing buried at this level in the Arctic ice?” Laurie said, scratching his head. “Ice at this depth is thousands of years old.”
Henriksen frowned as he studied the intricate carvings on the lid of the chest. They looked older than time itself, and someone had carved them with the greatest of care. “Thule,” he said in wonder, barely above a whisper.
Martinez looked over at the station commander. “Huh?”
“Thule,” Henriksen repeated. “It’s all I can think of.”
Anxiety crept into Laurie’s voice. “Yeah, I heard you the first time, Max. But what does it mean?”
Henriksen rubbed his gloved hands together. “Thule? I’ll tell you when we’re in the warm – come on.”
They collected their ice core equipment and trudged back through the thick snow to their research station, dragging the heavy box behind them with lines from a dog sledding harness.
Inside, the electric fire whined almost as loud as the wind howling over the communications aerials on top of the building. Laurie hung his gloves up to dry while Martinez made coffee.
Henriksen simply couldn’t take his eyes off the chest. Now it was warm and they were out of the wind he could get a good look at it for the first time. On closer inspection it was made mostly of wood – a hea
vy hardwood like walnut maybe – but the edge clamps and handles were made of something resembling iron. He could see that once there had been leather straps but they had almost completely degraded and they crumbled away in his hands when he touched them.
Laurie handed him a hot mug of coffee. “So tell me about this Thule thing.”
Max looked up, startled by the interruption. “Thule was a place first written about by the ancient Greek geographer Pytheas. He described it as a location in the far north of Europe, but most scholars generally agree it was nothing more than a myth.”
“Until now,” Martinez said, staring at the box.
“Maybe...” Henriksen rubbed his eyes and ran his hands over the box again. He tentatively pulled on one of the drawbolts but it was locked by something – he looked closer and saw they had been nailed down.
“Someone seriously didn’t want this thing opened,” he muttered.
“Hey – don’t mess with it, Max,” Laurie said quietly. “We don’t know what’s in it, and... and I’m pretty sure it’s not our place to find out.”
Henriksen didn’t agree. He was a government man, and more than that he was in the NSA. As far as he was concerned, whatever was inside this chest could represent some kind of national security threat to the United States.
“Martinez – get me a hammer and chisel.”
“You got it, boss.”
The tall New Yorker returned a moment later with the tools and handed them to Henriksen.
The station commander concentrated hard on the chest as he lined up the cutting edge of the chisel, rested it gently on the top of one of the hasps and tapped the handle of the chisel with the hammer’s face.
He’d expected some resistance, but all that time in the ice had weakened the metal and it fell apart immediately, crumbling into black dust on the table top at the base of the chest.
“One down, one to go,” Henriksen said.
Laurie looked at the other two men and took another step back from the table.
“I’m not sure about this at all...” he said, his voice drifting into the chilly air of the cabin.
“Just calm down, kid,” Martinez said, “It’s just a chest.”
Henriksen’s concentration didn’t break as he raised the chisel to the second hasp and repeated the exercise, popping it open and leaving another small pile of degraded metal on the table top.
“Well... that should just about do it,” he said, laying the tools beside the ancient black box.
He raised his hands to the chest and began to open the lid.
“Listen, Max...” Laurie said, his voice wobbling. “Whoever put that thing down there did it for a reason, and I bet it was a real good one, too. Maybe we should call the government or something?”
Martinez laughed and ignored the growing anxiety in the younger man’s voice.
“We are the government, son,” Henriksen said, without lifting his eyes from the chest. Then he opened the lid and stared inside. A look of confusion crossed his face.
“What the hell..?”
Martinez joined him and looked inside. “Excuse my high-school French, but what the fuck is that?”
“I have no idea.”
Henriksen put his arms inside the chest and pulled out a strange, black box covered in more writing and secured with a leather strap. He pulled on the strap and it broke in his hands – another example of the deterioration caused by the extreme cold over such a long period of time.
“Max, please...”
Henriksen opened the box and a look of horror spread over his face. “Oh my God...”
Martinez’s eyes narrowed and he covered his mouth to stop himself throwing up. “God damn it, Max!”
Laurie watched Henriksen slam the box shut and close the chest. Then both he and Martinez took a few steps back from the box.
“What the hell did you see, Max?”
“I…I don’t… I…can’t…”
Laurie saw something in Henriksen’s face change as he looked at him. His eyes began to cloud over and his voice grew hoarse.
“Laurie…it was….inside the box…”
Martinez started to look the same as his boss, only now the skin on their faces looked like it was going a gray color and beginning to harden.
“What the hell is going on here, Max?” Laurie said, moving back to the door and grabbing the handle. Outside the wind had risen and was howling like a pack of hungry wolves.
Henriksen strained to speak. “Get out, Laurie! Get somewhere safe…”
Laurie watched in horror as Max Henriksen seemed almost to solidify right in front of him as he spoke. His skin went silver in complexion and turned into a strange matte texture before going completely rock-hard. A second later, the same happened to Martinez, who had tried to run away to the door but was now frozen in place with cold, dead eyes.
Laurie panicked and opened the door. He ran out into the night, and strained for some fresh air in the icy wind-chill. The storm had passed now and the moon was full and low in the sky. As he stared at it he noticed it was growing darker and getting blurry. Then he felt his chest grow heavy and it became harder to breathe.
He turned to run inside to get to the radio but found his legs were frozen to the ground. He felt it creep up his body like ice, only it was much colder and when he looked down at his hands he saw they had turned a strange silver color. Then he was rock-solid, unable to move, blink, breathe. Slowly the moon dimmed completely, and then, a second later, he was gone forever and the Arctic night wind howled around him as if he were nothing more than a piece of granite.
CHAPTER ONE
Present Day
The Englishman sprinted toward the edge of the cliff with all his might and leaped into the void without a second thought. Instantly he felt the air rush up and flow over him. It was a little colder at this altitude. Joe Hawke liked cold air. It brought back memories of home. Sometimes, he thought, memories are the best part of life.
He looked beneath him and saw a river far below flash in the sunlight as he plummeted toward the rocky ground. He noticed he was flying a little slower than usual and his path through the air was choppier than he normally managed. All things considered, this was not one of his best wingsuit exits but it would do, and he could always try again tomorrow. He had nothing else to do.
His suit had started flying earlier than usual, and a few seconds after leaving the cliff he was gliding through the summer air like an eagle. As he raced forward, his arms stretched out behind him, he glanced back and saw he had a tail flutter, where part of the suit in between his legs had failed to pressurize properly. The result made the fabric flap wildly as he cut through the air. He cursed – this was what was slowing him down.
No matter. The valley floor below was still thousands of feet beneath him as he sailed out further into the hot Idaho day and twisted to the right to correct the direction and speed of his descent to earth. He felt alive. He felt free.
As he ripped through the sky at nearly two hundred miles per hour, he looked down again and searched for his landing site. They’d been staying at the cabin now for a few weeks – his way of winding down and staying away from the press. It turned out that saving the world back in the Ethiopian Highlands had stirred the interest of the world’s media. Sending Maxim Vetrov to his horrifying death in the catacombs inside the Tomb of Eternity had livened things up even more, despite Eden’s attempts to suppress the story. At least Eden had managed to keep Hawke’s name out of the papers – he’d rather be hunted across Siberia by Spetsnaz than face a press pool.
He shook it from his mind and returned to the day.
The horizon was hazy today, but the day was hot, and the ground was rushing up toward him as fast as it always did. He chose his usual landing place as his mind drifted back to Africa and the argument he’d had with the team back in Luxor. How they said they’d all been lying to him from the very beginning, that they’d mostly known each other from the start and were testing him to see if he wa
s suitable to join their gang. He’d been angry and walked away from them – leaving even Lea Donovan behind, just hours after she had almost died. He’d been a stupid fool, and he knew it.
Now, the adrenalin pulsed through his veins as the ground zoomed toward him, but receded when he turned upwards and performed a move wingsuiters called the cobra – using forward momentum to pull up and drastically reduce speed. Then he pulled the ripcord and his parachute opened out behind him. He felt the jerk as the chute rapidly slowed his fall and he gently guided himself to the selected drop zone with the careful use of the steering lines. Moments later he jogged to a stop outside the cabin and his parachute fell gently to the dusty ground behind him.
He stepped out of the harness and unzipped the wingsuit on his way up the cabin steps, pausing to tap the little barometer she had placed on the porch. Pressure rising.
Inside he could smell cooking and heard her singing along to a song on the radio. He walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge to find a cold drink.
“Hey,” she said, without turning to face him. She was busy cooking breakfast. “Good jump?”
“Yeah, not bad,” Hawke said, pulling a bottle of water from the fridge and walking over to Alex Reeve. He leaned over her to smell the cooking eggs. “Looks great.”
“You know...”
Hawke sighed. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“Oh yeah? So what am I going to say, Nostradamus?”
“You’re going to tell me to call Lea. I could tell by your tone... Anyway, you tell me the same thing every morning, so it doesn’t exactly take Nostradamus.”
“Wrong. I was going to tell you to go wash up because I’m about to put this on the table.” She lifted the pan to underline the point.
Hawke hesitated to take some bacon out of the pan. “Yeah, right. You’ve told me to call her about a thousand times. I’m starting to think it’s all you can say – plus, I’ll have my breakfast on a plate thanks, not the table.”
