Quickly, feet tripping and nerves frayed by desperation, they raced over to the hole. It was small, man-size, and completely black inside.
“A leap of faith,” Karin said. “Kind of like believing in a god.”
The heavy rumble of the ball of stone grew louder. It was within a minute of crushing them.
“Glow stick,” Komodo said, voice tight with tension.
“No time.” Drake cracked a glow stick and leapt down the hole in one swift movement. The drop seemed interminable. Blackness flickered, seeming to reach out with twisted fingers. Within a few seconds, he hit rock bottom, allowed his legs to fold and hit his head hard on solid stone. Stars swam before his eyes. Blood seeped across his brow. Conscious of those who had to follow he left the glow stick in place and crawled out of range.
Someone else landed with a crash. Then Ben was beside him. “Matt. Matt! You alright?”
“Oh aye, I’m fuckin’ peachy.” He sat up, holding his temples. “Got an aspirin?”
“They’ll rot your gut.”
“Polynesian Mai Tai? Hawaiian Lava Flow?”
“Geez, don’t mention the ‘L’ word down here, mate.”
“How about another stupid joke?”
“Never run out of those. Hold still.”
Ben checked his gash. By now the rest of the team had landed safely and were crowding around. Drake shrugged the young lad off and rose to his feet. Everything seemed to be in working order. Komodo fired off a couple of flares that struck the roof and bounced down a steep incline.
And tumbled over and over until they exited through an archway at the bottom.
“That’s it,” Drake said. “I think that’s the final level.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Drake and the Delta team came out of the tunnel firing hard. There was no choice. If they were going to stop Kovalenko, then speed was vital. Immediately, Drake looked to his right, recalling the layout of the cavern, and saw the Blood King’s men had leaped over to the first S-shaped ledge and were congregated around its farthest point. The start of the second S-shaped ledge began a few steps in front of them, but over on the other side of the gargantuan cavern, a yawning chasm of unknown depth separating them. Now that he was closer, and since the Blood King’s men seemed to have fired off several more amber flares, he finally got a good look at the far end of the cavern.
A great rock plateau jutted out from the back wall, on the same level as both of the S-ledges. Cut into the back wall itself was a steep staircase, seeming so close to vertical it would give even Maverick vertigo.
At the top of the staircase, the big black shape protruded. Drake only had a second, a glimpse, but…was that a colossal chair made of rock? An implausible, extraordinary throne maybe?
Bullets peppered the air. Drake fell to one knee, picking off a man and hearing his terrible scream as he plummeted into the abyss. They ran for the only cover they could see, a broken mass of boulders that had probably crumbled from the balcony above. As they watched one of Kovalenko’s men fired a loud weapon, a weapon that expelled something that looked like a bulky, steel dart across the gap. It hit the far wall with a loud crack and lodged into the rock.
As the dart flew, a heavy line unraveled behind it.
The other end of the line was then inserted into the same weapon and fired into the nearer wall, embedding itself several feet higher than the first. The rope was quickly tensioned.
They had created a zip-line.
Drake thought quickly. “If we’re gonna stop him, we need that line,” he said. “It would take too long to set our own up. So don’t shoot it. But we also need to stop them cutting it when they’re across.”
“Think more like the Blood King,” Karin said with distaste. “Think of him cutting the line when the last few of his men are still on it.”
“We don’t stop,” Drake said. “Not for anything.”
He burst from behind the cover and opened fire. To his left and right, the Delta force ran, shooting carefully but accurately.
The first of Kovalenko’s men zipped across the chasm, picking up speed as he went and landing deftly on the other side. Quickly, he turned and began to lay down a wall of covering fire on full-auto.
A Delta soldier hurtled sideways, shot to pieces. His body crashed in front of Drake, but the Englishman jumped over without breaking stride. As he approached the first S-ledge, a wide gulf of emptiness opened up before him. They would have to leap onto it!
Still firing, he sprang over the chasm. The second of Kovalenko’s men flew down the line. Boulders were dislodged from the nearby cavern wall as bullets impacted with devastating force.
Drake’s team sprinted and leapt behind him.
A third figure jumped onto the highly-tensioned line. Kovalenko. Drake’s brain shrieked at him to take the shot. Risk it! Take the fucker out right now.
But too many things could go wrong. He might sever the line and Kovalenko might still fall to safety. He might only wound the bastard. And — biggest of all — they needed the Russian arsehole alive to lift the blood vendetta.
Kovalenko landed safely. Three more of his men made it across. Drake dropped another three as the two forces came together. Three close shots. Three kills.
Then a rifle flew at his head. He ducked, hefted the assailant over his shoulder and heaved him off the ledge into blackness. He turned and fired from the hip. Another man fell. Komodo was at his side. A knife was drawn. Blood sprayed across the cavern wall. Kovalenko’s men backed up slowly, driven to the sheer drop at their backs.
The remaining four Delta soldiers knelt at the edge of the chasm, shooting carefully at any of Kovalenko’s men who lingered near the line. It was only a matter of time though, before one of them thought to retreat and start taking pot shots.
Speed was all they had.
Two more of the Blood King’s men had climbed up to the zip-line and now pushed off. Drake saw another start the ascent up the jagged wall and fired, blasting him off like a swatted fly. A man charged at him, head down, screaming, no doubt seeing that he was cut off. Drake sidestepped toward the wall. Komodo bundled the man off the ledge.
“Up!”
Drake wasted precious seconds casting around. What the hell had they used to hold the bloody line? Then he saw. Each man must have been given a small purpose-made pulley, the kind used by professionals. There were several lying around. The Blood King had come prepared for all eventualities.
As had Drake. In their packs they carried professional Caving — spelunking — equipment. Drake quickly dragged a pulley out and attached a harness to his back.
“Ben!”
Whilst the young man crab-walked over, Drake turned to Komodo. “You’ll bring Karin?”
“Of course.” Gruff, hard-faced and battle-scarred, the big man still could not hide the fact that he was already smitten.
Of all the places…
Trusting the Delta men to keep Kovalenko’s goons at bay, Drake kept up the pressure by rapidly linking his pulley onto the highly tensioned zip-wire. Ben fastened himself into the harness and Drake passed him the rifle.
“Shoot like our lives depend on it, Blakey!”
Screaming, they pushed off and shot down the zip-line. From this height and at this speed, the distance appeared greater and the far ledge seemed to recede. Ben opened fire, his shots spreading high and wide and sending chunks of rock showering onto the Blood King’s men below.
But that didn’t matter. It was the noise and the onslaught and the threat that was required. Picking up speed, Drake lifted his legs as the air whipped past and the great, bottomless chasm opened up below. Terror and exhilaration made his heart pound. The sound of the metal pulley whipping across the zip-wire fizzed loudly in his ears.