Raine took his shot, pushing up out of cover and firing a burst at the soldier. He dropped in a plume of red, the remorseless attack momentarily surprising the other soldiers and giving Raine his chance to dash from cover and sprint around the street corner.
It was a desperate race for his life as King charged up the pyramid faster and faster, adrenaline pushing him far past the limits of endurance. He had gone beyond exhaustion, beyond fear. He worked now purely on instinct, knowing that the moment he gave up would be the moment he died.
With that thought, his palm hit the surface of the platform at the top of the pyramid and he hauled himself up. Dominating the summit was a pillared temple, its walls covered with carvings but he ignored the archaeologist in him and turned away from the visage, pulling the Norinco handgun Raine had given him from his waistband. He crept back to the ledge of the pyramid and aimed the handgun down the vertiginous slope.
It was empty.
Where the hell?
He felt the hot muzzle of a gun jam itself into the delicate flesh just behind his right ear.
He froze, petrified, yet also irritated that he hadn’t considered the possibility of the soldier switching to another face of the pyramid and beating him to the summit.
Idiot!
He suddenly found it difficult to breath. His heart pounded so heavily that he feared it might actually break through his ribcage.
So this is how I’m going to die.
He didn’t know how long it had been since his mad dash from the summit of Sarisariñama had brought him face to face with death in so many forms, but this was the most intimate moment of death he had yet faced. It was silent and drawn out. A rifle at his head, a moment of dread and terror instead of the adrenaline of being shot down during the chase, ripped apart by hungry crocs or sliced open by a Mayan ballgame.
He feared he might break down into tears, sobbing, pleading for his life, urinating his pants while screaming like a school girl.
So it surprised him as much as the soldier when, as the other man squeezed the trigger, King spun, knocking the rifle away with his own gun while slamming his shoulder into his opponent’s stomach, throwing them both backwards into the temple in a spray of bullets.
Raine zigzagged his way through the ruins as machine gun fire blew them apart around him. Orders were barked in Mandarin and he watched as two soldiers raced up a parallel street, trying to cut him off. They spun around the corner and fired down at him just as he jolted to the side, leaping through a vacant window frame and rolling into a gutted building.
The soldiers swept in after him but he hauled himself back out of the opposite window just in time.
Machine gun fire rattled from the summit of the pyramid and he glanced up to see the orange strobe of muzzle flash from within the temple. He tried heading towards the pyramid again, but once again, the soldiers outflanked him, forcing him back towards the aqueduct—
A leg slammed into his groin with agonizing force, doubling him over. He cried out as he staggered, all of his training trying to resist the reflex to drop his weapon and grasp his genitals.
Nevertheless, winded, he staggered and dropped to the ground, sprawling beside the narrow alleyway where the man with the torn face had been hiding.
Before he could regain his wits, the Chinaman’s foot smashed into the side of his head. His neck jarred. His vision blurred. And then, his eyes seething with fury, the colonel hauled him to his feet. Raine took a swing at him but the other man blocked his weak attempt and punched him in the nose, splattering them both with a spray of blood.
Staggering, Raine nevertheless had the sense to freeze when a Norinco M-77B handgun was planted firmly against his forehead.
“Where is the mask?”
King was lucky.
He landed on top of his attacker, accidentally knocking the wind out of him. He didn’t waste a second in driving his fist into the man’s face, pulverising his nose, cracking his jaw—
The soldier heaved, bucking beneath him and flipping him over so that he was on his back, on the defensive, and it was all King could do now to block one blow after another, fending off the trained killer.
A lucky, glancing blow bounced off the soldier’s head but a fierce one caught King’s jaw in return.
White hot pain flashed through him, his arms fell limply to his side—
And his fingers instinctively wrapped themselves around the soldier’s fallen rifle.
He had no time to work out how to use it — he didn’t even know what part of it he was holding — but he nevertheless brought it up and swung it like a club. It smashed into the soldier’s head once, twice, three times. On the fourth savage blow, King watched the man’s eyes roll up and his head loll to one side. Then, exhausted, he pushed the man off of him, scrambled onto all fours and scuttled away, sucking in deep breaths of air.
For several long moments he simply stared at the corpse, his mind as numb as his battered body. He felt bile rise and fought it back down.
“You killed those men,” his accusing words to Raine echoed through his mind. “How can you be so flippant about killing? Like it was easy or something.”
“It gets easier every time.”
A deep shudder trembled through him. He closed his eyes, rubbed them hard, glanced up—
And immediately forgot about the dead man as his eyes took in the fire-lit carvings dancing on the façade of the temple.
“Incredible.”
Colonel Ming’s face felt as though it was on fire. The razors on the ball the American had flung at him had torn apart the right side of his face. Now his cheek flapped as he spoke and he could not hear out of his right ear. Nevertheless, his orders to his men still rung true in his head.
Whatever the cost.
“Eat my shorts,” the man snarled in reply to his question.
He slammed the butt of his pistol against the American’s forehead again, cracking the skin and drawing blood.
“Where is the mask?” he repeated.
“I lost it,” the American growled, icy eyes glaring at him. Xan and the three surviving soldiers had circled the dangerous man now and had their weapons trained on him.
“When I went over the waterfall,” the prisoner elaborated. “Go check if you don’t believe me. And, if you don’t mind skinny-dipping with the crocs.”
Enough! The American didn’t have the mask, which meant his accomplice did. As much as he wanted to make the smug, blue-eyed man pay a painful price for his injury, Ming knew he was running out of time. He had lost contact with his team on the summit and—
“Colonel Ming,” a voice called over Ming’s radio, loud enough for the American to overhear. It was the soldier he had left guarding the hole leading into the crocodile chamber in the Labyrinth. “I’m under attack—”
The call was cut short by the crackle of gun fire, followed by static.
Ming glanced at the American, expecting to see a cocky, smug grin at the knowledge of the U.S. Special Forces arrival. Instead, the American seemed just as concerned as he was.
He tried to say something, his throat gurgling on his own blood.
“What did you say?”
The American leaned in closer, speaking softly into his good ear. “I said, catch.”
Ming frowned. “Catch?”
Then the prisoner head butted him in the nose and, as a spray of blood obscured his vision, Ming saw the grenade which the man had somehow concealed in his hands. He pulled the pin and tossed it vertically above the group. While Ming’s soldiers stood, confused, the American pushed between them and ran for the water’s edge. Ming turned and followed, running fast. Behind them, Xan and the three soldiers took a second too long to register what was happening. It was not until the grenade’s rate of ascent peaked and it began its fall back down to earth that any of them caught up with their senses and moved.