“Yes, of course.”
Raine began stripping what he could out of what remained of the dead soldier’s torn combat webbing: a torch, a large knife, a Norinco M-77B handgun and three grenades.
“Well,” he replied. “We’re there.”
As if to punch home his point, a bullet sparked across the wall behind him. He dived out of the way just in time, just as his assailant switched his rifle from single shot to full auto. A hailstorm of bullets tore into the chamber, spitting through the water. Some embedded themselves in the crocodiles’ thick scales, inciting an even bigger frenzy. Others chattered across the walls, ripping out chips of stone and chunks of masonry.
Raine pushed King against the wall beneath the alcove where he had found the Moon Mask, just out of the shooter’s line of fire. A quick glance up confirmed that the shooter was adjusting his position. They wouldn’t just be sitting ducks. They would be ducks lying down sunbathing with their arms behind their heads and a bulls-eye painted on their chests!
Raine’s mind hurried through every possible scenario in the blink of an eye, but there was only really one option.
“Get in the water!”
“What!? Are you insane?” King protested, shielding his head from flying chips of stone. He could not see Raine grin and shrug.
“Yeah, a little.”
Then, before the archaeologist could argue further, Raine grabbed his elbow and dragged him forward, firing blindly and one handed at the hole above his head. He threw them both into the water just as three more Chinese troops took up positions and strafed the entire chamber with bullets.
12:
…Death Below
The water was icy cold and putrid, stinging Benjamin King’s eyes as he squinted. Orange bursts of machine gun fire blazed above, muted by the water, distorted by the ripples… and, terrifyingly, revealing the silhouettes of the killing machines amidst which he now swam.
Panic rose in him. He broke the surface, gasped for air but felt something strong grasp his ankle and pull him back down.
In terror, he thrashed, kicking and punching through the water. His fist hit something hard and leathery. An enormous shape whipped away from him, a muscle-bound tail smacking into his chest like a sledge hammer. And still, whatever had hold of his ankle did not let go, but instead pulled him deeper into the churning pool of water, towards the far wall.
He dared to glance down and, fearing the sight of a crocodile’s jaw crunching through his lower leg, he was slightly relieved to see that it was only Nathan Raine.
The other man kicked with all his might, dragging King deeper. He didn’t understand why but then Raine clicked on the waterproof torch he had commandeered. The beam cut through the dark water and there, at the base of the wall, King saw a submerged tunnel, roughly five feet in diameter.
It suddenly made sense to him. For the crocodiles to have survived, they couldn’t have been isolated in the one chamber. They must have been coming and going through this tunnel. He also remembered seeing something emerge into the pool the previous day from somewhere else. Raine must have seen the tunnel through his night vision goggles but, despite having a destination, King was still far from happy. Nevertheless, he stopped resisting Raine and kicked with him and before he knew it, they were at the entrance.
Raine clicked off the torch, plunging King back into absolute darkness. He had never been more terrified, nor more reliant on someone else.
Raine guided him down. King’s eyes readjusted to the gloom, aided by the muzzle fire from above. He kicked towards the tunnel and was just about to enter it when Raine slammed him back into the wall. He resisted the automatic urge to gasp and felt a flare of anger pass through him until he saw the reason for Raine’s actions.
Through the flickering orange eruptions of light, he saw something emerge.
Something massive.
A long, black, serpentine body glided silently out of its lair, exuding a menacing, though agile grace. It had a girth of almost four feet, nearly filling the tunnel, but its length was even more colossal. Yard after yard, its great, undulating body spewed out into the pool and King watched, both awed and horrified as it shot towards the surface.
A melee of panic erupted among the crocodiles, their colossal shapes now dwarfed by the much larger serpent. They shot down through the water, darting like torpedoes into the tunnel, ignoring Raine and King. Above them, the giant snake finished off their meals, wrapping its immense bulk around the hulks of dead crocodiles and men alike. A final flash of gun fire from high above illuminated the water just enough for King to see a monstrous mouth, dislocated at the jaw, encompassing the upper torso of a bullet-riddled croc.
Then, with a severe tug, Raine pushed him into the tunnel.
“Then follow them!” Colonel Ming barked into his radio.
“But sir,” the soldier’s voice replied. “There are crocodiles down there!”
“Well shoot them!”
“And…”
“And what?” he demanded, impatient. He was in no mood for this whimpering little boy on the other end of the radio. This ‘simple’ mission against a bunch of scientists had cost him over a dozen men so far and still their prize had not been secured. The soldier’s report about the thieves vanishing into a crocodile infested pool had only soured his already bleak mood.
“There is… something else down there,” the man said.
“Is it frightening?” Ming asked with mock sympathy.
“Well, sir, it is… I do not know what it is.”
“I’ll tell you what it is, Mister.” His voice hardened. “It is nothing compared to the fear you should have of me if you don’t get down that fucking hole right now!”
A nervous pause was followed by a timid reply. “Yes sir.”
As the soldier signed off, Ming sighed and looked about himself. Rain continued to lash in horizontal slants across the smouldering camp, smoke and steam coiling up into the tumultuous clouds.
The Americans would arrive soon, he knew. Time was running out.
He opened a communications channel to the next highest ranking soldier on the summit. “Take command up here,” he told him as he hurried purposefully across the mountaintop to the sinkhole. “Purge the site. Kill all the scientists, burn the labs. I want no trace of this place left.”
He followed the well-trodden path through the jungle and emerged on the edge of the enormous green sinkhole, peering down into its depths.
It was time to take control of the situation.
The leader of the eight, black-clad men hung just below the summit of the tabletop mountain, listening into the Chinese transmission which his communication’s expert had managed to hijack.
He had been monitoring the transmission ever since the three helicopters had arrived, trying to keep track of the events above as they happened while urging his men to climb faster. He hadn’t expected the terrific explosion of one of the Chinese helicopters being destroyed, nor the eruptions of gunfire that followed. Nevertheless, the noises had not been unwelcome. The theft of the mask had given him more time to get his men to the summit. If it weren’t for the hapless thieves, the Chinese would most likely have gotten away with the prize by now.