The two soldiers hung limply, dazed, but secured in their harnesses, they quickly re-gathered their wits and went for their guns.
Too slow.
Somehow, King noticed, Raine had manoeuvred himself into position above one of the soldiers. He dangled from one arm, muscles flexing, and merely plucked the rifle from the stunned Chinaman’s hand, turned and fired point blank at his face.
A spray of blood and brains rained down into the sinkhole.
In one fluid movement, he twisted again, planted the muzzle of the weapon under the chin of the second man and fired. A starburst of blood splashed across the vertical walls of the hole.
King felt bile rise up his throat. His eyes were wide, locked on the two dangling cadavers.
“Benny,” Raine called to him, his voice hard, devoid of emotion despite his actions. “Grab his controls. We’ve got to keep moving.”
King didn’t move. He simply dangled above the hole, his arm muscles burning yet his fist clenched tight.
Raine reached and released the control unit from the belt of the soldier whom he shared a cable with. Pressing the red ‘down’ arrow, he and the corpse began to descend but he halted when he realised King wasn’t following.
“Benny,” he called. But when he didn’t answer he barked more sharply. “King! Move your goddamn ass!”
King shook himself into action and struggled, one handed, to release the dead man’s controls. Together, they allowed the winch to lower them further into the sinkhole until they reached the familiar metal platform that had been affixed outside of the entrance to the underground labyrinth.
King jumped onto it, the clanging metal feeling good and solid beneath his feet. His eyes focussed on his companion. Raine’s face was hard, the lines of his rugged features set straight and steady. There was no shaking of adrenaline, no overly laboured breathing. There was no emotion in those icy blue eyes.
Who are you? He wondered. “You killed those men,” he accused.
“We’ve got to keep moving.” Raine relieved one of the dead men of his rifle then turned to head inside the tunnel. King remained fixed on the platform. Above, Chinese troops began to gather and lower themselves over the ledge. The storm continued its torrential downpour.
“You just… shot them.”
“Yeah, well,” Raine shrugged. “They were gonna shoot us.”
“How can you be so flippant about killing?” King snarled. “Like it was easy or something.”
Raine whirled on him, face twisted into an angry snarl. But it wasn’t anger in his eyes, King saw. It was something else.
A cold emptiness.
“It gets easier every time,” he lied, then turned and vanished into the gloom of the tunnel.
King hesitated a fraction of a second longer, and then followed him into Hell.
11:
Death Above…
Raine and King ran through the impenetrable darkness of the tunnels. Water had found its way into the labyrinth, draining down walls and collecting on the floor. Jungle vines clung to the perfectly cut jigsaw-puzzle walls as King led the way, groping through the blackness. He directed them solely by touch and memory and he desperately tried to picture in his head where they were and where they were going.
“We’ve got to move faster,” Raine whispered. He could hear movement behind them, sloshing through water and ripping through vines. The soldiers would move faster, he knew, aided no doubt by night-vision goggles and bristling with weapons.
“I can’t see anything,” King hissed back, bumping bodily against a very-solid wall. The darkness was choking now and King felt claustrophobia pressing against him. “We’ll be sitting ducks in here,” he pointed out.
“Reckon you can get us to the hidden passage you found?”
King studied the darkness but it was impregnable. He had led them this far through the well excavated tunnels by sheer dumb luck. But the hidden tunnel he had found the previous day was deep within the underground maze, difficult to get at even with the large halogen lamps the excavation team carried with them. Nevertheless, he groped the walls, feeling his way forward.
“Even if I can,” he asked. “What good will it do? We demolished the retaining wall so you could go play Indiana Jones with the crocodiles.”
“Just get us there,” Raine replied. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
Colonel Ming ripped through the canvass flap of the mess tent, eliciting startled gasps from its dying inhabitants.
Order had been re-established following the explosive excitement and five guards now stood inside the tent, training their weapons on its occupants.
Ming walked through the crowd of groaning scientists to the rear of the tent where two women had been tied to one of the poles. A guard stood beside them.
“You,” he snapped at them. He had removed his helmet now that the mask and its radioactive properties were not in the vicinity, and now that his men’s cover had been blown anyway. Secrecy was no longer important. He had gone to Plan B. Instead of Plan A’s subterfuge — a snatch and grab operation under the guise of U.S. Special Forces — the backup plan was far more brutaclass="underline" a full-on assault, leaving behind no trace of their presence. All of the scientists would be eliminated, their deaths blamed on Venezuelan terrorists.
Glancing around at the tent’s occupants, he wondered whimsically whether he could save on his men’s ammunition. Without treatment for severe radiation sickness, these people would be dead in a matter of hours anyway.
He stopped in front of the women, noting their attractiveness. The Indian woman’s eyes glanced up nervously at him, but the Russian woman, whom his men had dragged in earlier, held a defiant gaze.
“Communist pig!” she snarled.
Ming surprised himself when he was unable to stifle a laugh. “Coming from a Russian,” he replied, “I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult.” Then his eyes darkened and he crouched down to the Russian’s level. “For your sake, I hope it was a compliment.”
Nadia bit back a quick and angry response. “What do you want?”
“Want?” Ming’s English was flawless. His face was almost perfectly rounded, his skin silky smooth. He might even have been considered attractive in some circles, if it wasn’t for the wickedness of his narrow eyes, stained nicotine-yellow. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
“The mask.” She had, of course, already known the answer, but she was surprised when he corrected her.
“Wrong.” A pause. “I want to know where the mask has been taken.”
Nadia couldn’t prevent a coy smile from curling her lips. She had seen Raine and King heading for the sinkhole. The intricate network of artificially built tunnels and natural caves twisted like a maze, many criss-crossing, some circling back, others leading to dead ends. Ben King knew them like the back of his hand, and with Nathan Raine’s resourcefulness she had no doubt they were easily eluding their pursuers. She also had no doubt as to their destination: the hidden, skull-lined passage. It was where she would have headed.
“Why do you smile?” Ming asked.
“Because if they are inside the tunnels,” she replied smugly, “then you will never find them… at least not before the Americans get here.”
“Who would have thought it? A Russian cheering for the Americans.”