“Look at the floor,” Ben said quietly. “Just look.”
Hayden paused for a moment and removed her eye from the gun’s sights. What she saw made the hairs on her arms rise. The floor of the tomb, dusty and strewn with debris was slowly being covered in blood. Thick, red pools were spreading from the many dead and dying men across the wide expanse, making it slick and slippery for men’s boots. Even the SAS down there were losing their balance, drenching their fatigues and turning red themselves.
“And look.”
Ben pointed out something that, amidst the chaos, Hayden had so far failed to see. Arranged around the outside of the cavern, in a circle, were a number of small altars, each one with a different shape carved into its surface.
Hayden looked down on them, momentarily at a loss for words.
“There are eight of them,” Ben said as if in explanation. “And the whorls.” He gestured toward all the ground floor walls. “Are everywhere.”
Hayden’s eyes traveled from the ground floor up, past three levels of niches, and it was then that her eyes fell on a figure she partly recognized.
She patted Ben’s hand. “That’s Russell Cayman,” she said. “He’s up there, watching how this whole thing goes down.”
Drake scurried up the stairs double-time, pausing at the ledge as his two teammates laid down covering fire and then leapt into the niche. Instantly, it seemed a clammy hand took hold of his skull and gripped it with ice-cold fingers. He shivered.
“Not exactly Starbucks.”
“Shut it,” Alicia whispered. “This place gives me the creeps.”
The niche was long and narrow, cut back into the rock about forty feet. The overall impression was that it had been constructed quickly and with little thought. The walls and ceiling were irregular and jagged, as if cleaved by a mighty weapon or hand.
Alicia shook her head at something down below. “Your baby boy’s causing us trouble, Drakey.”
Drake glanced over and saw Ben distracting Hayden as she tried to pick off bad guys. “I’ll talk to the little fool.”
Dahl appeared at that moment, coming from the rear of the cave. Drake eyed him “Bit of a risky place to take a piss, mate.”
“For you, maybe.” Dahl flashed a brief smile, then turned serious again. “I discovered several relatively crude carvings back there. And a statue. I think this is the tomb of Amatsu, literally the god of evil. This is a very bad place, my friends.”
“Well, for now,” Drake said, “let’s deal with the evil we can see.”
He refrained from lobbing a grenade toward the enemy, but leaned out and let loose a burst of automatic fire. The mag ran dry. He dropped it and clicked another into place. “One-two combination?”
“Do it.” Dahl fell in behind him. Alicia took rearguard. Firing together they hopped out of the niche and rushed to the next one along, felling startled enemy soldiers and then taking cover behind the next big coffin.
As they ran briefly along the ledge, the entire cavern opened up for them. Drake saw the SAS team and Mai directly below, crawling among the heavy equipment as they took cover whilst peppering bullets at the few remaining mercs. He saw the great staircase to his right. A contingent of Cayman’s men were being beaten back by Komodo’s Delta team and Mano Kinimaka. Hayden was sniping the snipers, her eagle eyes seeking out every niche.
Back near the arched entrance, Gates and Belmonte had taken cover, armed but holding their fire for fear of harming a member of their own team.
And two levels up, standing rigidly still, he saw a figure watching them. A figure he guessed could be only one man.
The figure observed until the last of its men on the ground floor was killed and the group on the stairs beaten back. Only then did it raise a hand.
“Stop this,” it cried. “Your efforts, though noteworthy, are trivial. You cannot win this battle.”
Then, hundreds of men suddenly appeared around the third tier, silent, weapons carefully aimed. Cayman began to laugh.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Drake took a deep breath. Cayman had them hopelessly outnumbered. It was do or die, or run like hell. Behind him another coffin sat in ancient stillness.
“We stand a virgin’s chance in hell,” Alicia commented. “That means fu—”
“We know what it means.” Dahl and the Englishwoman still hadn’t had chance to become properly acquainted yet. Of course, for each of them, the idea had totally different meanings. Dahl pointed out the stairs, and a wicked grin twisted the corner of his mouth. “There’s our play.”
Drake stared and understood. “No way. You’re fucking crazy, Dahl.”
“Yeah, but good crazy.” The Swede scanned the cavern, and tapped his Bluetooth mic. “Let the bastard talk whilst you figure out a move. Then go on my signal.”
Squawks of static conveyed understanding. Cayman, the DIA ghost, the wetwork specialist, the business end of the Shadow Elite, shouted in a voice that dripped with disdain.
“I was a child of the system,” he said. “A child in time, nothing more. Now I rank above presidents. You should feel honored, being allowed to die by my word.” He spread his arms. “I am the voice of the Shadow Elite. No common man could achieve more.”
Drake stared hard at this individual. There was a chance he might soon hold the fate of the world in his hands. Cayman looked like an ordinary man, slightly built, average height, not outstanding in any way. But an aura of menace surrounded him. A sense that this man had never known compassion, love, nor forgiveness. That all his days were filled with ice-cold fantasies.
Cayman laughed once more, the sound strained and foreign. Drake knew then that Russell Cayman had never had a good hour in his life.
“You would be too late anyway. I have sent for the eight pieces of Odin. They are already on their way here, and once they arrive — the doomsday device will be ours.”
“The eight pieces are important?” Alicia grumbled. “What a twat. Dahl, you should really have hung on to those bad boys.”
“The advice is duly noted. I’ll file it where I think it belongs.”
“Don’t get testy, Torsten. They’re in Stuttgart, right?”
“They were.”
“Well, he can’t have gotten ‘em that far. Maybe we can intercept them.”
Drake shushed them. “We have bigger problems.” He pointed out the eight altars arrayed about the floor below. “Ben just Bluetoothed me. His guess is the pieces fit in there.”
“And that activates the device?” Dahl shook his head in disbelief. “So the nastiest tomb holds the nastiest weapon. And it all seems to revolve somehow around Odin and Norse mythology. We really need to learn more, you know, and talk to my language guy back in Iceland’s tomb.”
“We will,” Drake said. “As soon as we get out of here.”
And then he stepped forward. “Hey! Cayman!” He stared up at the emotionless man. “Do you know me?”
Silenced stretched as taut as a tripwire, then Cayman shrugged. “I know all of your names. But the names of dead men mean nothing to me.”
“Ah, but I’m not dead yet,” Drake said. “You’ll find that I’m pretty hard to kill. Maybe one of the hardest you’ve ever known. Do you know why?”
Cayman said nothing.
“Because I’m looking for the man who ordered my wife’s murder. And for the man who murdered her. And I think you know something about that, Cayman. You and Wells. What is it that you know?”
Cayman licked his lips. “You’re about to die, Drake. Do it with honor and stop whining.”