They wasted no time in their pursuit of him, powering away from the airport and heading south in half a dozen ageing Mil Mi-8s which had once belonged to the Egyptian Air Force but were now mothballed in a hangar at Luxor International Airport. Just a few minutes after taking off there was no longer any sign of civilization below them at all as they headed out into the desert — just endless sand dunes to every horizon.
In the lead chopper, banter was light but good-natured as they raced low across the south of Egypt and then gained altitude as they crossed the Ethiopian border and slowly flew up into the mountains. Hawke’s mind was clear and he was ready to fight, as were the others. Scarlet looked like she could skin a live grizzly bear — she was obviously thinking about Karlsson, but refused to talk about it.
“I’ll let this do the talking,” she said when asked, and pointed to the Heckler & Koch MP5 she was holding between her thighs.
They arrived at the site — a vast plateau of elevated ground deep in the Highlands. It was a scrubby landscape at lower altitudes, but up here the mountainsides were covered in a thick, lush rainforest and a dense, steamy mist hung in the air.
Hawke looked out across the terrain from the chopper and was filled with something approaching despair. Endless forest stretched everywhere he looked, obscured here and there by the low cloud and he half expected to see a dinosaur plodding through the jungle. The place was as isolated as anywhere he had seen on earth, and there was an ominous feeling of despondency inside the chopper.
Hawke thought about Vetrov and how his insane hunt for the elixir had led them all to this forgotten corner of Africa. He thought about how Vetrov had gotten so much further than the others — so far in fact it looked like he could beat them to it and seize the ultimate power for himself. Inwardly he was shocked by all the things that had happened to him over the last few weeks and could hardly believe what he’d learned about the world in that short space of time, but there was no time for speculation now. Now was the time for focus and fighting.
Beside him, Ryan studied the landscape carefully on a couple of Apps as the chopper moved deeper into the mountains, looking out for a lake he had seen in the Osiris Palette. When he found it, it was just a matter of correlating its location with several of the closest peaks until the rough location was found.
Then he saw it — the Semien Mountains came into view — an ancient World Heritage Site often called the Roof of Africa.
There at last was a fifteen thousand foot-high peak rising high above the misty clouds and stretching into the blue African sky.
“We’re almost there!” Ryan said, the excitement rising in his voice. “That’s Ras Dashen, the highest mountain in Ethiopia and the tenth highest in the whole of Africa… plus this place still has Egyptian wolves, leopards and the Masai Lion.”
Scarlet scoffed. “Thank you for that totally fucking useless piece of information, boy.”
“I take every opportunity I can when it comes to enlightening you, Cairo. I’m even hoping to get your IQ into double digits one day.”
She scowled at him. “No one calls me Cairo!”
Hawke smiled as they began to descend into the jungle. He pulled a compass from his pocket and set it on the map.
“What’s that?” Ryan said.
“It’s a compass, mate. Never seen one?”
“Of course, but we’ve got this.” He held up his iPhone.
“Sure we have. But when the battery fails in this humidity or you drop it in a steaming pile of Masai lion dung, we’ll still have this.” Hawke waved the compass in his face and smiled. He checked his weapons and secured his pack and then gave the order to the pilot to tell the other choppers to get ready for disembarking. This was it.
As they descended closer to the edge of the plateau they had chosen as the most appropriate landing zone, Hawke noticed there was still no sight of Vetrov’s choppers or any of his men — or Mazzarro.
“Are you sure this is right?” Hawke asked Ryan.
“Joe, it’s me. I don’t make mistakes.”
“Modest,” Lexi said, strolling past them with an assault rifle over her shoulder and an ammo belt slung around her waist. “I like that in a nerd.” She strapped herself in and prepared for the landing as the chopper swung violently to the left and executed a sharp descent to make the landing site. As it touched down, Hawke unbuckled his seat belt and swung open the door. He ordered the others to get out and as they assembled at the edge of the clearing the other choppers in their contingent touched down all around them.
The gradient of the slope meant they had to land the chopper half a kilometer from the entrance to the tomb. They hiked through the rainforest, sniping at one another with the occasional barbed comment, but it was all just to relieve the tension. There was a heavy feeling of anticipation in the humid air as they drew closer to the long-awaited site.
“I can’t believe we’re finally here,” Lea said.
“Sure,” said Scarlet. “Just one problem — where the hell is that Russian psycho?”
She was right. They knew that Vetrov had left Luxor before them, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Maybe Mazzarro led him to another location to protect the source?” Lea said.
“Or maybe your ex-hubbie led us to the wrong location,” Scarlet said, looking over at Ryan.
“Maybe their chopper got a flat tire and or they had to stop for sandwiches,” Hawke said. “Or maybe we should just shut the hell up and get going?”
They made their way through the jungle at the speed of the slowest man, who, as usual was Ryan Bale. Hawke was in the lead, followed closely by Scarlet and Lea, with Lexi bringing up the rear. Snowcat stayed back with Ryan, ostensibly on the grounds of protecting him, but Hawke thought maybe there was another reason as they chatted to each other up the hill. Captain Koura and his men were marching behind them in the distance, fanning out with guns raised ready for firing. They were professional, active soldiers but they knew the local terrain no better than Hawke’s crew.
Then they saw it.
It reminded Hawke immediately of some kind of ruined Aztec temple, only the architecture was somehow different. They were looking at two stone columns that had obviously once supported a beam of some kind and formed what once would have been a grand entrance to the tomb. Now, they were broken down into rubble and covered in wild coffee plants and fallen gum leaves.
“Oh my God,” Ryan said, approaching the ruins slack-jawed. “It’s like the Lagunita temple… this is amazing.”
“The what now?” Lea said.
“Lagunita — it’s a massive set of ruins in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. We’re talking about an entire palace that was lost in the Campeche jungle for two thousand years.”
Scarlet laughed. “How can these nerds not have found an entire palace after hundreds of years of explorations? Idiotic.”
“Not really — in jungle that thick you could be as little as a few hundred feet from an entire lost city and never even know you’d walked past it.”
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “You mean there could be more of these places?”
“More?” Ryan offered a low, condescending laugh. He liked it when people relied on him for information, especially Scarlet Sloane. “I guarantee there are literally countless palaces and temples lost in those jungles, just waiting to be discovered.”
“Just waiting to be looted, you mean,” Scarlet said with a smirk.
“If you’re of that mindset,” Ryan said haughtily. “Others would see it as an opportunity to fill museums and extend knowledge.”