Moon Mask (17 page)

He dared to glance down and, fearing the sight of a crocodile’s jaw crunching through his lower leg, he was slightly relieved to see that it was only Nathan Raine.

The other man kicked with all his might, dragging King deeper. He didn’t understand why but then Raine clicked on the waterproof torch he had commandeered. The beam cut through the dark water and there, at the base of the wall, King saw a submerged tunnel, roughly five feet in diameter.

It suddenly made sense to him. For the crocodiles to have survived, they couldn’t have been isolated in the one chamber. They must have been coming and going through this tunnel. He also remembered seeing
something
emerge into the pool the previous day from somewhere else. Raine must have seen the tunnel through his night vision goggles but, despite having a destination, King was still far from happy. Nevertheless, he stopped resisting Raine and kicked with him and before he knew it, they were at the entrance.

Raine clicked off the torch, plunging King back into absolute darkness. He had never been more terrified, nor more reliant on someone else.

Raine guided him down. King’s eyes readjusted to the gloom, aided by the muzzle fire from above. He kicked towards the tunnel and was just about to enter it when Raine slammed him back into the wall. He resisted the automatic urge to gasp and felt a flare of anger pass through him until he saw the reason for Raine’s actions.

Through the flickering orange eruptions of light, he saw something emerge.

Something massive.

A long, black, serpentine body glided silently out of its lair, exuding a menacing, though agile grace. It had a girth of almost four feet, nearly filling the tunnel, but its length was even more colossal. Yard after yard, its great, undulating body spewed out into the pool and King watched, both awed and horrified as it shot towards the surface.

A melee of panic erupted among the crocodiles, their colossal shapes now dwarfed by the much larger serpent. They shot down through the water, darting like torpedoes into the tunnel, ignoring Raine and King. Above them, the giant snake finished off their meals, wrapping its immense bulk around the hulks of dead crocodiles and men alike. A final flash of gun fire from high above illuminated the water just enough for King to see a monstrous mouth, dislocated at the jaw, encompassing the upper torso of a bullet-riddled croc.

Then, with a severe tug, Raine pushed him into the tunnel.

UNESCO Base Camp,

Sarisariñama Tepui,

Venezuela,

“Then
follow them!” Colonel Ming barked into his radio.

“But sir,”
the soldier’s voice replied.
“There are crocodiles down there!”

“Well shoot them!”

“And . . .”

“And what?” he demanded, impatient. He was in no mood for this whimpering little boy on the other end of the radio. This ‘simple’ mission against a bunch of scientists had cost him over a dozen men so far and still their prize had not been secured. The soldier’s report about the thieves vanishing into a crocodile infested pool had only soured his already bleak mood.

“There is . . . something else down there,”
the man said.

“Is it frightening?” Ming asked with mock sympathy.

“Well, sir, it is . . . I do not know what it is.”

“I’ll tell you what it is, Mister.” His voice hardened. “It is
nothing
compared to the fear you should have of me if you don’t get down that fucking hole right now!”

A nervous pause was followed by a timid reply.
“Yes sir.”

As the soldier signed off, Ming sighed and looked about himself. Rain continued to lash in horizontal slants across the smouldering camp, smoke and steam coiling up into the tumultuous clouds.

The Americans would arrive soon, he knew. Time was running out.

He opened a communications channel to the next highest ranking soldier on the summit. “Take command up here,” he told him as he hurried purposefully across the mountaintop to the sinkhole. “Purge the site. Kill all the scientists, burn the labs. I want no trace of this place left.”

He followed the well-trodden path through the jungle and emerged on the edge of the enormous green sinkhole, peering down into its depths.

It was time to take control of the situation.

The North Face,

Sarisariñama Tepui,

Venezuela,

The
leader of the eight, black-clad men hung just below the summit of the tabletop mountain, listening into the Chinese transmission which his communication’s expert had managed to hijack.

He had been monitoring the transmission ever since the three helicopters had arrived, trying to keep track of the events above as they happened while urging his men to climb faster. He hadn’t expected the terrific explosion of one of the Chinese helicopters being destroyed, nor the eruptions of gunfire that followed. Nevertheless, the noises had not been unwelcome. The theft of the mask had given him more time to get his men to the summit. If it weren’t for the hapless thieves, the Chinese would most likely have gotten away with the prize by now.

Satisfied that his team was still in the running, he gave the order and the eight heavily armed commandoes swung up onto the mountain and headed towards the base camp.

The Labyrinth,

Sarisariñama Tepui,

Venezuela,

Nathan
Raine’s lungs burned as he swam down the length of the tunnel, the night vision goggles cutting through the darkness. Small flecks of dirt and detritus, bright in the NVGs, drifted past like stars streaking past a spaceship.

The current was getting stronger the deeper into the tunnel they swam, propelling them faster with every second. He had noticed the current in the chamber when the dead Chinese soldier had bumped against the submerged platform and guessed that it had been created by the storm. The rain water draining into the chamber had caused the water level to rise. If the same had happened at the other end of this tunnel, he theorised it had broken over some sort of dam and created a flow of water from one end to the other.

If that was the case, there had to be another chamber somewhere ahead. That meant oxygen.

Right now, however, he was beginning to doubt his decision. The tunnel walls boxed them in on all sides. Glancing back to check on King every few seconds, he scanned the walls, floor and ceiling for any breaks, any air pockets but there was nothing but solid rock all around him.

He resisted the urge to breathe, falling back on his training. He could last at least another minute, he knew, having been taught to hold his breath for far longer than most people. But King was a different matter. Glancing behind, he saw panic on the other man’s face. His eyes were wide and a stream of bubbles flowed from his mouth and nose. Any second now and his reflexes would take over his rational mind and force him to suck in a lungful of water
.

Death above, death below.

Something pounded against his back, slamming him down onto the floor of the tunnel. He rolled and looked up through the goggles. The water frothed and foamed above him, which meant that there was a break in the tunnel.

Without thinking, he grasped King and thrust them both up into the hole.

The thunderous roar of cascading water pounded down around them, struggling to push them back under but Raine braced himself and held King’s head above the surface. They both sucked in a desperate lungful of stale air.

“It’s okay, Benny, it’s okay!” Raine shouted at the archaeologist over the noise. Still in utter blackness, King could not see what he saw, not that that would have filled him with much hope.

They had emerged inside a narrow vertical shaft, barely three feet wide, its far end obscured high above. Water, most likely runoff from the torrential storm, cascaded down all its sides. Nevertheless, there was air and both men were hungry for it.

“Where are we?” King called between ragged breaths, shielding himself as best he could from the spray.

“I don’t-”

Something black and solid slammed into King’s legs and took them out from under him. He was dragged under and Raine reached out but was also pulled beneath the surface.

In a thrash of arms, legs, jaws and tails, the two men rolled over the top of the fleeing crocodile, its shape vanishing as it darted like a missile down the tube. Raine dragged them back into the vertical shaft and they both took in more air, coughing and spluttering.

“I don’t know where we are,” Raine admitted, amazed and more than a little relieved that the crocodiles were more concerned about saving their own skins than they were about supper. “But if ten foot long crocodiles are running away from something, then I suggest we follow them!” He grasped King’s shoulders to steady him, imagining how much more terrifying this experience must be blinded. “Take a deep breath!”

They both did, and then Raine guided King down into the tunnel and kicked into the current. The pull of the water grew stronger and within another sixty seconds they arrived at another vertical shaft, took another deep breath and then dived again.

Now, the current really took hold and it swept them forward and swirled them around a tight bend. Raine’s back impacted the wall. He scrambled with his hands to slow his movements but the skin of his fingertips tore against the stonework. The tunnel raced around him, a kaleidoscope of psychedelic greens and whites-

And then his head broke the surface. He took in a deep breath, expecting to go under once again but then realised they had emerged into a much larger chamber. A rocky beach straddled either side of the underground river into which the tunnel had spewed them but no safety lay there. Swimming with powerful strokes, the Orinoco Crocodiles swam to the beaches and scrambled onto them.

Through the NVGs, Raine saw dozens of the giant reptiles populating the shores.

“What’s happening?” King demanded.

“Just stay in the water,” he told him. “Let it take us.”

“Take us where?”

Raine turned his head to see if he could make out a destination. A roaring filled his ears and, the green glow of the goggles moving past the writhing shores of black armoured crocodiles, he saw-

“Oh . . . shit!” he shouted, a moment before they plummeted over the waterfall.

13:

The Place of Fear

The Labyrinth,

Sarisariñama Tepui,

Venezuela,

Colonel
Ming hurried down the skull-lined corridor deep inside the heart of Sarisariñama, six men in tow. He came to a halt beside the soldier who had drawn the long straw and remained to guard the hole in the floor rather than follow the thieves.

“Sir!” he saluted.

“Report.”

“Lieutenant Xan led the rest of his team into the chamber, sir. There is a submerged tunnel which they proceeded down. I’ve not had any contact with them since.”

Ming peered over the edge of the hole, his night vision goggles piercing the gloom. The chamber below was empty, silent. There were no signs of his men, either dead or alive.

He pulled his NBC suit’s mask and headpiece back into place and connected it to the air-supply on his back. As well as protecting the wearer from nuclear, biological or chemical threats, the durable, self-contained units could be used underwater. He’d also had the foresight to bring fins from the choppers and he and his men now affixed them to their feet.

“We have one objective,” he addressed his team when they were ready to be lowered into the chamber. “Retrieve the mask, whatever the cost.”

UNESCO Base Camp,

Sarisariñama Tepui,

Venezuela,

Nadia
knew something bad was about to happen when she saw the silhouettes of six men all converging on the mess tent.

They were coming to kill them all.

“Are you ready?” she asked Sid. Though still weakened from their exposure to the tachyon radiation, Sid and Nadia were still two of the strongest survivors. The radiation had affected different people at different levels, regardless of their exposure time to the Moon Mask. In a distant part of her brain, the scientist looked forward to analysing the varying effects on different individuals’ body chemistry. But first, they had to survive the Chinese soldiers sent to kill them.

“I guess,” Sid answered nervously. A handful of the other, stronger expedition members also nodded, knowing they had little choice but to fight. The alternative was to sit there and die. At least this way they had a chance.

Nadia watched the six men break into two teams of three, one moving to the tent’s front entrance, one to the back. The flaps were roughly shoved aside and three soldiers stormed through the front entrance. The two women moved as quickly as their weakened states would allow, leaping up from the ground, leaving behind the bonds which they had cut earlier. Raphael del Vega led the ‘charge’ at the soldiers coming in through the rear entrance.

Panic erupted as a thunderstorm of bullets echoed across the tepui.

But instead of the slaughter of innocent scientists, the soldiers’ bodies were all pummelled by hundreds of bullets, shredding all six men apart.

Caught mid-lunge, Nadia watched as eight black-clad commandoes tore into the tent, P-90 assault rifles raised.

“Yay,” she said ironically, her heavy Russian accent dripping with sarcasm. “The Americans have arrived.”

As though hearing her comment and focussing on her accent, the leader of the newcomers pushed through the scramble of panicked scientists and over the bloodied hulks of Chinese and homed in on her.

“Where is the mask?” he demanded.

Dressed head-to-toe in black, from their heavy combat boots, trousers, Kevlar breast plates and sleek black helmets, the face plates of which reflected back Nadia’s own image, the commandoes looked more like futuristic Knights of the Round Table than U.S. Special Forces.

Without preamble, he pointed his weapon squarely at her chest. “The mask was taken into an underwater tunnel,” he said. “Tell me how to get to it.”