Kingdom of Darkness (40 page)

The moment was broken as Zane returned with five of his men. ‘The Nazis are still in their camp, but I don’t know how long they’ll stay there. Haber, are you ready?’

The agent picked up the pack of explosives. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. Nina? You should lead the way – this is your find.’

‘And Ubayy’s,’ said Nina.

The Egyptian shook his head. ‘It is an incredible discovery, but . . . the credit is yours. I wish I had not found it.’

She gave him a sympathetic look, then faced the darkness beyond the secret door. ‘Okay, then. Let’s end this.’

Steeling herself, she entered the passageway, Eddie and the others following.

34

They made their way up the steep tunnel. The last man, Krebs, tried to pull the door shut behind them, but was forced to leave it slightly ajar as the gap closed on his fingers. The passage was only wide enough for the group to proceed in single file, Nina’s caution – and archaeological urge to examine her surroundings – soon bottling up the others behind her. ‘Come on, love, shift it,’ Eddie complained. ‘We’re on the clock.’

‘I know, but look at this.’ Dust covered the stone floor, undisturbed for millennia – and visible in her flashlight’s beam were faint imprints, the sandalled feet of the last person to exit before the place was sealed. ‘Who knows how old these are?’

‘Nobody, and I doubt anyone but you cares either.’

‘All right, Jeez! Can’t a dying woman make her last discovery without being hassled?’ But she increased her pace.

Zane shone his own light past the couple. ‘How long is the tunnel?’

‘I think I can see the top,’ Nina reported. ‘It opens out.’

‘Sounds echoey,’ said Eddie as they neared the summit. ‘Must be a fairly big space.’

Nina reached it – and stopped in surprise, the others bumping together behind her. ‘Ah . . . yeah. You could say that.’

They had emerged on to a ledge overlooking a deep vertical shaft, a ragged rift at least a hundred feet across that dropped away into the heart of the mountain. ‘So,’ said Eddie, peering over the edge, ‘finding the spring’s going to take a bit longer than we thought.’

Nina shone her torch downwards. The powerful beam was reduced to a dim pinprick on the bottom far below. ‘Damn, that’s deep.’ She brought the light back up, seeing pathways carved into the walls of the shaft. They had been paved with stone slabs, but many were uneven or missing entirely, exposing the raw rock beneath.

‘There’s a way down here,’ said Zane, moving left along the ledge to illuminate the top of a steep path that descended clockwise around the shaft.

‘And here,’ added Eddie, finding a second route to the right. This one spiralled anticlockwise into the darkness below.

‘Which do we take?’ Banna asked.

Nina tried to track one, but sections were blocked from view by the folds of the craggy walls. ‘I don’t know. It looks like there are junctions lower down, but I can’t see how they connect.’

‘We should split up,’ said Zane. ‘One group takes the left path, the other the right. We’ll divide the explosives – that way, whoever gets—’

‘No, no!’ she interrupted, disparate pieces suddenly slotting together. ‘We take the right path. We
always
take the right path!’

‘What do you mean?’ Eddie asked.

‘It was written on the arch – “Heed Alexander’s words, and you will have nothing to fear.” It’s what he said in the
Romance
, remember? Once you go through the arch, you always take the right-hand path or else you’ll become lost. “Lost” in this case meaning falling two hundred feet on to solid rock. This whole thing is part of Andreas’ challenge; I wouldn’t be surprised if the left path’s booby-trapped somehow.’

Banna surveyed the chasm nervously. ‘We still might fall, whichever path we take. It does not look safe.’

‘He’s right,’ said Eddie. ‘Nina, it’ll take ages to get to the bottom – if we even can. We should just rig the tunnel with C-4 and get out of here.’

‘I don’t think we’ll get the chance,’ Zane said, whirling at the sound of someone running up the passage. He hefted his Uzi, but lowered it as he saw the two rearguard Mossad agents. ‘What’s happening?’

‘They’re coming,’ Arens reported breathlessly.

‘How many?’

‘All of them,’ the other agent told him. ‘We could never have stopped them, so we came to warn you.’

‘Shit,’ muttered Zane. ‘We won’t have enough time to set the explosives.’

‘We could hold them off here,’ suggested Behr. ‘They can only come up that tunnel one by one.’

‘They’ll make it eventually,’ Eddie warned.

Zane considered his options, then: ‘Okay, Arens and Behr, hold them for as long as you can, then follow us down.’ He looked back at Nina as he went to the anticlockwise path. ‘I hope you’re right about going right.’

‘So do I!’ she replied. ‘I’ll go first – just in case I’m not.’ She started down the ledge.

‘Going into the depths of the bloody earth after some ancient legend?’ grumbled Eddie as he followed. ‘Been doing that a
lot
lately . . .’

‘Sir! Over here!’ yelled a soldier. Kroll looked towards the source of the shout as he strained up the hill. The man was pulling a bloodied corpse out from behind a tree.

‘Here’s another one!’ a second soldier reported.

‘It can’t have been the Egyptian,’ snarled Rasche, striding ahead of the Nazi leader. ‘Someone else is here.’ He glared back at Leitz. ‘Your Iranian friends, perhaps?’

‘It’s not them,’ panted Kroll. ‘It’s
Wilde
. She survived the bridge explosion, then followed the clues on the fish, just like us. And she brought the Mossad with her.’

‘So where are they?’ asked Schneider, eyes darting nervously across the forest.

Kroll reached the arch, pausing to catch his breath as he pointed at the opening. ‘In there. Secure it,’ he ordered. ‘Quickly!’ Several soldiers ran into the shrine.

‘But there was nothing inside,’ said Rasche.

‘Nothing that
we
saw. But there must have been more to it.’

‘Then Banna lied to us. I’ll kill him when I find him!’

‘We’ll kill them all,’ Kroll growled. One of the soldiers hurried back out and saluted him. ‘What have you found?’

‘There’s a tunnel,
mein Führer
!’ the man said excitedly. ‘It wasn’t there before.’

‘Obviously it wasn’t there before, idiot,’ snapped Rasche. ‘Where does it go?’

‘Up into the mountain, sir. We couldn’t see the end.’

‘That’s where they’ve gone,’ said Kroll. ‘To find the spring – before we do.’

Schneider regarded the opening with alarm. ‘To take the water for themselves?’

‘No. To stop
us
taking it!’ He called out to his troops. ‘We are going to make an assault on the spring! Everyone ready weapons!’

‘How big is this tunnel?’ Rasche asked the soldier.

‘Only wide enough for one man at once, sir.’

The SS officer turned back to his commander. ‘We won’t stand a chance. Two or three men could hold off an entire
Zugtrupp
.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Kroll replied. ‘Leitz! The equipment you supplied; did you bring a thermal sight?’

‘If you asked for it, it’s here,’ Leitz replied.

‘Good. Then fit it to a rifle – if anyone puts their head around the end of that tunnel, blow it off!’

Nina made her way carefully down the ledge. It was just wide enough for her to walk normally, but she still kept her back against the wall, sidestepping as quickly as she dared. Her flashlight picked out the path ahead – but she paused as someone else’s light briefly flicked across the chasm.

Eddie stopped behind her. ‘Hang on, everyone,’ he called. ‘What is it?’

‘I saw something, over there.’ She redirected her torch. ‘On the other path . . .’

She fell silent as she saw it. As did the others.

‘What is
that
?’ Zane exclaimed, adding his own beam to Nina’s. Others followed suit to illuminate the entire object.

‘That,’ said Banna, astonished, ‘is a Phytoi.’

The lights danced over a statue carved from the rock face, a humanoid male over thirty feet tall. It was naked, but appeared entwined in vines and leaves. The sculpture had been hidden from their initial vantage point on the ledge by a fold in the cavern wall. The other route downwards crossed right in front of its chest, the great figure’s arms spread wide along the ledge. Bizarrely, instead of hands it had what resembled curved saw blades extending from its forearms.

Nina remembered the name. ‘It’s a creature from the
Alexander Romance
, isn’t it?’

‘Yes; plant men or forest men, according to different translations,’ Banna confirmed. ‘Alexander fought a tribe of them after conquering the Achaemenid Empire. They killed a hundred of his soldiers.’

‘Something to avoid, then,’ said Eddie. ‘Those arms – they look like they might swing out.’

‘You’re right,’ Nina said as she directed her light along one of the jagged limbs. ‘Could be a booby-trap.’

‘Then you were right about taking this path,’ said Zane.

‘I hope so. It doesn’t mean we won’t run into something ourselves, though.’

‘Find out soon,’ the Yorkshireman said, with a note of impatience. ‘We can’t stand around when there’s a bunch of Nazis coming after us.’

‘Okay, okay,’ she said, turning the light back to their route. ‘How long do you think we’ll have before—’

Gunfire erupted above.

‘About
that
long,’ said Eddie. ‘Arse!’

Nina turned unwillingly to hurry on down the narrow path. The unyielding stone wall brushed her right arm, nothing but darkness waiting below to her left.

The firing continued, the Mossad agents’ shots interspersed with more distant retorts and the whine of rounds ricocheting off stone – then a much louder
boom
made both Eddie and Zane look up in alarm. A cry came from one of the Israelis, followed by the sound of something crashing over the lip of the precipice. Zane snapped up his torch just in time to see one of his men flash through its beam. He plunged out of sight. A few seconds later, a faint thump reached the group.

The remaining man above shouted in Hebrew. ‘They’ve got a sniper rifle,’ Zane told Eddie, tight with anger.

‘They must have thermal sights,’ said the Englishman. ‘Get your other guy out of there.’ Zane yelled an order, then hurried after Nina and Eddie as they set off, even faster than before.

The American made her way around another crease in the rock – then slowed. ‘Careful, there’s a junction,’ she warned as Eddie came up behind her. The path split, the right-hand route continuing on around the chasm while the other doubled back, beginning a clockwise descent.

‘Which way?’ he asked. ‘Right again?’

‘What if it’s a trick?’ said Zane.

‘I don’t think so,’ Nina said, with what she hoped wasn’t misplaced confidence. ‘Alexander said always to follow the right path.’ She set off down it.

Zane looked up as the rest of the team descended after her. A light above told him that Arens was making rapid progress. But a rising tramp of boots also warned that the Nazis were closing. He shone his torch past Eddie and Nina at the route ahead. ‘There’s no cover – they’ll be able to snipe us from the top ledge.’

Nina traced the path with her own light. The Israeli was right: anyone at the entrance would have clear line of sight, unless . . . ‘No, keep going!’ she said. ‘We couldn’t see the statue until we were partway around, so if we go far enough, the wall will block us too!’

‘Unless they follow us,’ Eddie pointed out. ‘Maybe we should’ve gone the other way at that junction.’ He directed his torch along the alternative route. ‘Or maybe not!’

Nina looked across the chasm to see what he had found. Another section of the towering wall bore carvings, these of trees, rising sinuously up along the other ledge. Ominous holes dotted amongst them suggested that the petrified forest held secrets. ‘I definitely think we came the right way.’

Shouting in German. She looked up. They hadn’t yet gone far enough around the shaft for the upper ledge to be blocked from sight; lights flickered from it as the Nazis exited the tunnel. ‘They’re here,’ Zane warned. ‘Come on, faster!’

‘
Sie sind hier unten!
’ someone yelled. Torch beams swept from the high ledge, finding Arens as he scurried down the path, locking on—

Muzzle flashes erupted amongst the shafts of light. The chasm rang with the shrill crack of bullets hitting rock – then a scream as the Mossad agent was hit. He fell into the darkness below.

Galitz yelled an obscenity. He stopped to fire back up the shaft – forcing Haber behind him to halt as well. ‘No, keep moving!’ Eddie shouted. He, Nina and Banna were almost at the point where the towering fold in the cliff face would shield them.

Zane hesitated, caught between the desire for revenge and the need to reach safety. He chose the latter. ‘Come on!’ he cried, hurrying after the trio. ‘Get into cover!’

The next three men followed their leader as Haber yelled for Galitz to move. He turned, starting after his companions—

A boom from above – and a high-velocity bullet ripped through his back and exploded out of his abdomen, the impact throwing him against the wall.

Haber jerked away in shock before recovering. He started to step over the fallen body—

A second round blew his skull apart.

‘Got him!’ the sniper reported, staring intently through the thermal imaging scope attached to his MSG-1 rifle. There had been no time to check that the sight was correctly aligned after its hurried fitting, but at a range of less than a hundred metres, it made little difference.

‘Shoot the others, quick!’ Kroll ordered. More lights were scuttling along the ledge ahead of the two dead men – heading for cover behind part of the cavern wall. The first three torches disappeared from view, the others racing to catch up.

The sniper swung the rifle to track them. Bright shapes appeared in the electronic haze of his sights. He zeroed in on the leader. Taking out the first man would trap the others behind him, making them easy prey. The luminous red cross-hairs found the running figure . . .

He fired – just as the ghostly shape disappeared as if it had darted behind a curtain. A flash as the bullet struck rock. The cavern’s walls were a uniform temperature, a featureless grey in the thermal scope, rendering the obstructing outcrop invisible. The sniper whipped back to find a new target and fired again, but in his haste the round hit only stone between two of the fleeing men. Before he could reacquire, they too had vanished.

‘Damn it, you missed them!’ Rasche snarled.

‘Go after them,’ Kroll ordered. ‘Schneider, take the lead.’

‘With me,’ Schneider told the sniper, before calling several other soldiers to join him. He fixed his torch upon the left-hand path. ‘Down here! We’ll go around that rock formation and pick them off from above.’ He led the descent, heading clockwise around the chasm’s inner wall.