The God Extinction

by Kevin Tumlinson

  It wasn’t much, but it was more than he’d had just a couple of hours earlier. He wasn’t sure if there was anything within his grasp that might aid in their escape, however.

  They drove the transport to the edge of the ravine, and one of Sarraf’s men rappelled down to the stone. The winch was activated, and the cable was fed to the man below. Kotler stood next to the edge and watched as the man drove pitons into the boulder, snaking the feed line through the hooks and securing it to itself before ascending back to the plateau.

  “Are we ready?” Ammon asked, his voice filled with barely contained anticipation.

  “We will use the winch to lift the stone,” Sarraf said. “We will then sever the line and allow the stone to fall. Prepare to rappel to the rock shelf.”

  Ammon nodded and motioned for Kotler to follow him. They stepped up to the back of the equipment truck, where several harnesses had been laid out. Kotler had done his share of rock climbing in the past and quickly pulled on his harness, securing the buckles and checking the straps and carabiners. Everything checked.

  Ammon seemed to have trouble, and Kotler assisted, ignoring the man’s nodding and thank-yous and focusing on the task. He toyed with the idea of sabotaging Ammon’s harness somehow, but it would look immediately suspicious. Denzel would pay for a trick like that, and Kotler let it pass.

  Nesahor joined them. “I will remain here. But you’ll wear this helmet camera.” He handed Kotler a helmet with a small camera mounted to the top.

  Kotler strapped it on, and Nesahor lifted a small portable display, showing Kotler the image. Anywhere Kotler’s head turned, the screen reflected what he saw.

  “Two of Sarraf’s men will accompany you,” Nesahor said.

  Kotler nodded. “I’d like Agent Denzel to be there as well,” he said.

  It was a gamble. A play. But as Kotler suspected, it didn’t pay off.

  “Dr. Kotler, please,” Nesahor smiled. “Do not insult me. Agent Denzel will remain here, as insurance that you do not betray us.”

  Kotler smiled, though it was a bit forced. “I had to try.”

  “If you deem that you must try anything else,” Nesahor replied, “I will have Sarraf kill your friend and send his body down to you.”

  Kotler studied Nesahor. The man meant it, and for the first time, Kotler realized that Nesahor may have been playing a similar strategy, lulling Kotler into complacency through professional camaraderie. His body language told Kotler that the man wouldn't hesitate to kill him, however. The threat was clear.

  Kotler nodded and followed Sarraf’s men who guided him to the cliff’s edge.

  “Down we go!” Ammon said.

  Kotler found himself hoping that Ammon’s line would snap. But there was little hope in that. Kotler would have to continue to play along until an opportunity presented itself.

  He did have some resources, though.

  In among the items he’d gained access to, there had been a multi-tool. It was effectively a pair of pliers that could fold open to reveal a set of other small tools, including a knife blade. The whole thing folded neatly into something resembling a pocket knife, and Kotler had been able to palm this and slip it into a pocket. Now, as he was led to the cliff’s edge, he patted himself as if verifying that his harness as secure, and he felt the lump of the multi-tool in his pocket. He could reach in and grab it at any time.

  He wasn’t sure how this would help him, but he at least felt better knowing it was there.

  “Down we go,” Kotler repeated, blowing out a breath and steadying his nerves. Moments later he was rappelling down, his feet bounding from the cliff face, toward the gateway to the Otherworld.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The soldiers shoved Denzel ahead of them until they reached the transport. He could see the winch line extending over the edge of the rock, pulled taut and ready to lift the stone from its place. Down below, Kotler and the others would land on the shelf of rock where the stone rested. The plan was to winch the rock upward, and then one of the men below would sever the line and let the stone fall away.

  There was little wiggle room in that plan that Denzel felt either he or Kotler could exploit. Which meant he’d have to keep watching, keep listening, keep hoping that something opened up.

  The soldiers shoved him into the side of the transport’s driver-side door, and one of them held a weapon on Denzel while the other removed one of Denzel’s cuffs and clipped it to the support of the truck’s mirror. They left him then, joining the rest of their squad.

  Sarraf approached, a smirk on his face. “When Dr. Kotler has delivered what we need, I will enjoy killing the both of you.

  Denzel nodded. “So there never was any chance we were making it out of this alive,” he said.

  Sarraf laughed. “Of course not.”

  “What if you end up needing Kotler again?” Denzel asked. “He’s pretty good at figuring things like this out. He could be useful somewhere else.”

  Sarraf studied him, then shook his head. “There are other archaeologists. Kotler was a convenience, not a necessity. And now he has become a liability.”

  He stepped past Denzel and opened the truck’s door, forcing Denzel to step forward. It was a show of his disdain for Denzel, and his confidence that the agent had no chance of escape, even if he could take down Sarraf in this moment.

  Sarraf fished around inside the truck and then straightened, holding up a small device. A remote, Denzel realized, to operate the truck’s winch. “Soon,” Sarraf smiled, closing the driver’s door before moving away to join his men.

  The timetable was accelerating. Denzel and Kotler couldn’t afford to wait for rescue. Denzel started looking around, trying to decide what options he had, even if they were terrible.

  The mirror for the transport was attached to a bent and shaped length of flattened steel, secured to the door by two bolts. Though the transport was armored, it was skinned in aluminum, with the plating on the inside. It was possible that the mirror was bolted to the skin of the vehicle, rather than the steel armor beneath. So it might be possible to yank one of those bolts free, to create a gap that he could slip the cuffs out of.

  Which was all well and good, but there was zero chance he could do it without making a lot of noise, including the sound of the gun that would put a bullet in his skull.

  The door was unlocked, but Denzel was cuffed at an angle that made it impossible to get inside. And even if he could get inside … then what? There were no weapons, that he could determine, and no keys. It was pretty bare bones—steering wheel, manual stick shift, brake and accelerator pedals, parking brake. Denzel noted with some alarm that the parking brake wasn’t engaged, which meant that the only thing keeping the truck from rolling was the fact that it was in gear. He wasn’t too keen on being dragged down into the ravine below by several tons of military transport. He might attempt to get inside just to pull that brake.

  So much for the truck.

  At his feet, some of the stones might be useful, particularly for smashing the truck's window. But as weapons, he'd have to be close up and have the element of surprise, not to mention two free hands, to really do any good.

  What he needed was a distraction. And he wasn’t likely to get it.

  Except …

  He realized he’d been hearing the buzz for a moment now. A sound, ranging through the mountains, distant but getting closer. He looked toward the west and saw four small objects in the sky. Birds, but not the feathered kind.

  He smiled.

  Someone among Sarraf’s men noticed the approaching helicopters as well and shouted an alert. The men scrambled, taking cover and raising weapons.

  In moments, all were engaged in a heavy firefight.

  Denzel ducked, though there was nowhere for him to go. Cuffed where he was, he was out in the open and in the hot zone. If he couldn’t get free, he might take friendly fire.

  The helicopters were banking and making passes, door gunners laying suppression fire and dropping
smoke. The whole scene brought back memories for Denzel, combat in the desert. It adrenalized him, and his training came screaming back to the foreground of his brain. His first order of business had to be freeing himself. His options opened up from there.

  He stooped and picked up one of the heavy stones at his feet and raised this high over his head. He brought it down hard, again and again, on the seam between the steel support of the mirror and the metal of the door.

  At the same time, he gripped the frame with his cuffed hand, and put his weight into it, practically hanging from it until finally, he saw the skin of the door pucker and tear, the bolt pulling free.

  He dropped the stone then and yanked downward on the support with both hands, putting all of his weight into it. The gap opened, and he was able to slip the cuff free.

  Bullets rained onto the site from above, plowing the stone and soil of the plateau, adding dust and debris to the suppressive smoke being launched from the choppers. Sarraf’s men took cover and returned fire. Denzel, having nowhere else to hide, flung the truck door open and dove inside. He slammed the door closed behind him and got down into the floorboard, praying that there was enough steel surrounding him to provide protection. He heard several rounds thunk into the side of the truck, like large hail on a tin roof.

  In a lull in the battle he looked up, peering out of the driver’s window. The scene was carnage. Several of Sarraf’s men were down, bleeding and dying on the rock. More were still hunkered behind the second transport, or behind equipment, firing back at the helicopters. Smoke swirled around the whole scene, making it difficult to see everything, but it was clear that Sarraf’s soldiers were losing this fight. It was only a matter of time before ground support came in to clean up this mess.

  Denzel wondered about Kotler and the others below. They would be waiting for the stone to be lifted but would surely hear and see evidence of the attack happening above. Would Sarraf’s men kill Kotler? If they’d had that as a general order, once Kotler’s usefulness came to an end, they might decide to cut their losses and take him out. Or Ammon, in a fit of zeal, might do it for them.

  Denzel couldn’t think about that now. As he peered through the smoke, he saw a figure approaching, walking for all the world as if nothing were happening around him. Trails of bullets rose in plumes to either side of him, dust and debris arcing behind his back, like the wings of a fallen archangel. The angel of death.

  Sarraf.

  He raised a pistol and fired as he walked. Denzel ducked back into the floor of the transport as bullets pinged from armor plating and pierced the glass of the door, eventually sending shards of it raining down on him. He covered his head and face with his hands.

  He prepared for the inevitable, shifting his position, laying with his legs scrunched against the door.

  The door of the transport was yanked open, and Sarraf stood over him, aiming his weapon.

  Denzel kicked upward just as Sarraf fired, and the bullet ricocheted within the truck’s interior until embedding in the passenger seat. Denzel used Sarraf’s surprise, rolling forward to grab the man’s arm and slam it against the door frame.

  Sarraf fought back, landing several well-placed punches. Denzel was dazed but held on.

  He doubled his effort and yanked Sarraf forward into the cab of the truck. Denzel clutched the loose handcuff in his right fist, and used it as a set of brass knuckles, punching Sarraf in the temple, the jaw, the neck.

  It was having an impact. Sarraf wobbled a bit, blood trickling down the side of his face from deep lacerations. But he quickly regained his wits. He struggled now to tilt the barrel of his weapon, to aim for Denzel’s torso. One shot would be all it would take.

  Rather than fight, Denzel used Sarraf’s own strength against him, pulling Sarraf forward and throwing the man off balance. Denzel twisted, pressing Sarraf into the gap between the seat and door frame.

  Another punch using the cuffs, and Denzel was now on top of the man. Sarraf had dropped the gun in the struggle but was scrambling for it now, pushing against Denzel's chin, and kicking wildly.

  His head struck the gear shift, and Denzel felt a sick stab in his gut as he realized that they were moving.

  He looked up, out of the open driver’s side door, and saw the edge of the cliff moving toward the rear of the truck, and then the horizon tilted.

  Sarraf managed to get his hand on the pistol then and turned it on Denzel just as the front end of the transport dipped, and they went with it over the edge, falling toward the ravine below.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Kotler, Ammon, and the two soldiers hugged the cliff face as Armageddon landed on the men above.

  The sound of helicopters banking and diving, laying fire on the plateau, echoed into the ravine, amplified by the stone and nearly deafening them.

  For a long moment, everyone on the rock shelf forgot they were enemies and busied themselves with taking cover. After a while, however, it became clear that they were in no danger here. Not from gunfire. Not from above.

  The soldiers drew their weapons and ordered Kotler to kneel.

  Ammon stepped away from Kotler then, standing behind the soldiers, watching.

  So much for camaraderie, Kotler mused.

  And then he laughed. Loud, but not manic. The tension of all of this, the worry that they might kill Denzel and then kill him, it all fell away. Right now, Kotler was fully aware that he was about to die, and it didn’t bother him.

  He knelt. He tilted his head downward. He laughed.

  The soldiers stepped forward, apparently deciding they should shoot him at close range, to be sure to end him quickly. They would dump him over the edge, where he’d become a part of the landscape here.

  Fitting, in its way, Kotler thought. More bones in proximity to an archaeological site of profound importance. Kotler couldn’t for the life of him think of a better way to go, and suddenly he wanted it. If he had to die, at least he’d die knowing that he’d helped Alihat Iadida—the New Gods—in this particular raid on history. And he’d become a part of the story of this place. It was a fitting and honorable end.

  “Look out!” Ammon shouted, and Kotler realized he'd said it in Arabic, out of panic.

  Kotler glanced up, along with the soldiers, and couldn’t quite make sense of what he was seeing.

  There was a truck driving toward them.

  Not driving, he suddenly realized. Falling!

  Despite his earlier acceptance of the inevitable, Kotler suddenly felt the driving need to live. He rolled back onto his heels and sprang to his feet. He then leapt out from the shelf, into the void of the ravine.

  The rope was still attached to his harness. He’d been in the process of untethering himself, after assisting Ammon and one of the soldiers in the descent, and he clutched at the line now, swinging from it in an arc that carried him away from the cliff face.

  He looked back just as the truck smashed headfirst into the stone that blocked the Otherworld entrance, in an orgy of mangled metal and fractured rock, accompanied by a cacophony of noise that momentarily blotted out the sounds of combat from above. For a moment, as Kotler swung out to his apex and the motion of the truck ceased abruptly, there was the sense of time stopping, and the moment stretching. As Kotler’s momentum resumed, however, so did that of the truck. It slowly tilted, like a felled red oak, falling to the side, directly on top of Ammon and the two soldiers.

  The men screamed and tried to scramble and escape. One of the soldiers teetered on the edge of the shelf before losing his balance and falling into the gap below. He too was still attached to the rope, but apparently hadn’t had the wits to take hold of it. Kotler lost sight of him.

  The other soldier and Ammon disappeared under the heap of smoldering rubble from the truck.

  Kotler’s arc finally brought him back to the cliff face, and he absorbed the impact with his legs, stopping himself and dangling with his feet planted on the rock, his gloved hands gripping the rope. He watched as the truck’s
momentum caused it to roll, carrying it slowly over the edge, leaving behind only bits of rubble, smashed auto parts and chips of stone mingled with blood and gore.

  Ammon and the other soldier were nothing but smears on the shelf now. Kotler couldn’t say he would miss them.

  From above, Kotler heard more sounds of combat, though the pace of it seemed far less frenetic. It was the sound of a battle being won.

  He glanced up to see what he could make out, and what mess he’d be climbing into.

  He spotted a someone dangling above him a few feet below the ridgeline, and recognized the animated, cursing figure immediately.

  “Roland?” Kotler called.

  Denzel was clutching one of the ropes, possibly Ammon’s, and hugging the cliff face, struggling for a foothold. “Kotler,” he shouted down, and even at this distance, Kotler could see his partner's relief. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Up top, the smoke was clearing, and Sarraf's men were being taken into custody. Ground support had pushed into the spot just as Kotler and Denzel managed to swing over the edge of the rock. They’d made short work of ending the skirmish after the helicopters had taken out most of the enemy.

  Kotler and Denzel were treated for minor abrasions and injuries and were deemed fit to release.

  They met with some of the Egyptian military personnel, who were more than happy to brief them on everything that had transpired, including the condition of Martook Maalyck.

  “He is alive," one man, the Ra'id in charge, told them. "His condition is critical, but he is being cared for. He will be transported to Cairo when he is well enough."

  Kotler was relieved to hear it. He smiled as he looked around. Sarraf’s men were being loaded into one of the transports, and Kotler noted that at least one face didn’t seem to be among them. “What about Dr. Nesahor? Was he killed during the fight?”