Moon Mask (52 page)

He absently stroked his chin as he watched the men’s progress. He felt nervous for them, knowing that the ancient mine could come crumbling down on their heads at any moment. Then there was the added Russian involvement. If Moscow had betrayed the U.N. agreement, was the team safe even in the middle of a British naval base? The Russian agent, Nadia Yashina, had been detained, so an angry Gibbs had reported to him, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be some other attempt to snatch the Moon Mask from Raine and King. The Russian Permanent Representative had been refusing to return his calls, his aides fobbing him off with one weak excuse after another ever since their treachery had come to light.

He had delayed taking this information straight to the U.N. Security Council, knowing that it would spark yet another major international incident.

The situation with the Chinese had gone from bad to worse. The situation was spiralling out of control. Heated discussions in the Norwegian Room had erupted into full scale arguments between the members of the Security Council. Threats and allegations of wrong doing, all centred around the Moon Mask, were hurled like spears. The former façade of friendship and cooperation was beginning to crack. The promise of the power of a tachyon bomb was bringing out the worst in all involved. To openly accuse the Russians, even with the evidence he had, would form a schism from which the council, and indeed, the world, may not recover.

The nuclear threat had fuelled the paranoia of the Cold War.
Would the power of the tachyon erupt into a second Cold War? Or worse?

Yet something still didn’t sit quite right in his gut. And, in his line of work, Alexander Langley had learned to trust his gut instinct.

As he continued to watch the live video feed, he typed his password into another computer on his overburdened desk. Before the mission, background files had been accumulated on the three civilians, King, Siddiqa and Yashina. He tapped his keyboard, bring up the file which had been compiled by the CIA, the NSA and the FBI on the Russian woman. He had read it before the mission, but now he read it again.

Born in the old oil extraction town of Izberbash on the Caspian coast, part of the Republic of Dagestan, Nadia had won a scholarship to the Moscow State University at the age of sixteen. There, as one of Russia’s brightest young minds in the turbulent years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, she had become one of the youngest people to earn a PhD in Quantum Physics. She then went on to study across a wide range of fields, earning degrees in mathematics, practical science and medicine. But then her life took a very different course. During the resurgence of separatist hostilities in Dagestan, her father, mother and three sisters were killed by Russian Special Forces. The reports claimed that her father, Iosef Yashin, himself a respected physicist, had been feeding sensitive information to the followers of Abdul Madzhid, the leader of the militant organisation Shariat Jamaat until his death in 2008.

Fearing for her life also, Nadia had fled to the west, seeking and being granted political asylum in Great Britain where she had attended
Oxford University and deviated her studies towards archaeology, earning a second PhD, this time in osteoarchaeology.

“Why would you sell us out to the people that killed your entire family?” he asked the photo of the woman on the screen. But the answer was obvious.

She hadn’t.

He read through the files on King and Siddiqa too, and he likewise came to the same conclusion that they were innocent. Besides, they had both been prisoners at the time one of the data-bursts was sent.

Which meant it had to be one of the SOG operatives.

But they had all been through the most rigorous vetting process imaginable. No one got to be on what some people considered to be the ‘President’s Private Guard’ without being one hundred percent loyal to the most powerful man in the world.

No one, he suddenly realised with a gut wrenching sense of despair, except Nathan Raine.

RNAS Culdrose,

Cornwall, England

“I
have to talk to Gibbs,” Nadia demanded futilely. “Or Doctor Siddiqa.”

Locked inside the office compartment of Hanger 14, she became exasperated and in her temper she kicked the desk that occupied the middle of the room.

“Hey!” Garcia snapped through the glass window at her. The traitor had been handcuffed to one of the hot water pipes that ran from floor to ceiling and stripped of all her equipment. The young soldier couldn’t help but admire the curves of her body. Her black pants and vest-top clung to her and perspiration glistened on her smooth skin. “Shut it, or I’ll gag you.” In truth, he wouldn’t mind doing just that if it gave him the excuse to get his hands on those curves for thirty seconds.

He and Murray had been left to guard the prisoner while the rest of the team, Gibbs, O’Rourke, Lake, West and Siddiqa were stationed at the mine shaft, monitoring Raine and King’s progress on a laptop which West, the teams communications specialist, had rigged up to a camera on Raine’s helmet.

“Garcia,” Nadia replied. “Screw you!”

“I wish,” Garcia mumbled under his breath. Murray chuckled next to him. Outside, more jet engines thundered above the airbase and across the way hoards of spectators milled about food stands, market stalls and static aircraft displays.

“Take me to see Gibbs!” she demanded. “Now!”

“Okay, I’ve had it,” Garcia complained. “Cover me,” he told Murray as he unlocked the door and walked into the office. Murray pulled out his M1911 handgun and kept it trained on Nadia’s prone form while Garcia plucked a small roll of duct tape from one of the pockets of his tac-vest and-

Nadia’s legs moved in a blur, whipping out and wrapping tightly around Garcia’s neck. She clamped hard, cutting off his airflow, but that wasn’t the main threat.

“Drop it!” she demanded of Murray. His gun remained steady in his hand but Nadia had positioned Garcia’s body between them. She clung to the metal pipe, her athletic body tangled around her captive, her knees clamped firmly on either side of his head. “One twist, and his neck will break like a twig,” she explained calmly to Murray in her accented voice. “I will not hesitate to do it. So, last warning, Murray. Drop your weapon and kick it to me.”

Garcia, for his part, was gagging. His neck firmly squeezed, he struggled to draw any oxygen into his lungs. His face had turned deep red and his eyes bulged but Nadia did not relinquish her hold on him. She twisted slightly, producing a yelp from her hostage.

“Okay, okay!” Murray held his gun away from him and then slowly lowered it to the ground. He kicked it towards her.

“And the rifle,” she ordered and Murray pulled the M14 from over his shoulders and again kicked it towards her. “Good, now cuff yourself to that pipe behind your head. Slowly,” she added. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Garcia’s hand move towards his holstered gun, more instinctual than orchestrated. She squeezed tighter, twisted. He yelped once before sagging to the ground, her body lowering with him.

“You double crossing bitch!” Murray barked at her but by now he had already tied his wrists to the pipe with plastic ties.

Expertly, Nadia dragged Garcia’s body towards her then crouched down, feeling around his belt until she found his knife and pulled it free. “He’s not dead,” she explained to Murray. “But he’ll have one hell of a headache when he wakes up.” She inverted the knife’s blade towards her and quickly cut through her own plastic bonds. Then she slipped the knife into her waistband and picked up Murray’s handgun. As she ran out the doors, she jabbed the handle of the gun into the base of Murray’s neck with calculated force. It slammed his head forward into the water pipe and he sagged, unconscious.

Alysya
Siddiqa’s eyes were fixed on the laptop screen, carefully following each movement that Nathan Raine made through the ancient network of tunnels three thousand feet below the naval base. She knew that Ben was somewhere behind him and, not for the first time, wished that the camera had been fixed to his helmet instead of Nate’s. Instead, all she could do was hope that her fiancée was in fact behind the man assigned to protect him.

In the hours since Nadia’s arrest, Sid had been feeling more vulnerable than normal. The betrayal of her friend had hit her hard, shaking her to her core. Once she had calmed down, her mind had gone into overdrive, seeing villains in everyone around her. If her best friend couldn’t be trusted, then how could she trust Gibbs and his team? Or Nathan Raine?

Raine had insisted on carrying a gun into the tunnels. Gibbs had argued that it wasn’t necessary but Raine had proved persuasive. It was his job, after all. The reason he had been released from prison and issued with a presidential pardon- to follow Ben wherever their mission led, as the only other person immune to the tachyon emissions, and protect him against whatever threat awaited.

Now, however, Sid couldn’t help but find some agreement in Gibbs’ argument. The threat had been neutralised. Nadia was under armed guard. The mercenaries employed by the Russians had been reduced down to two and surely they wouldn’t launch an assault on a Royal Navy base. Nor would the Chinese for that matter. Due to the stash’s location beneath Culdrose, the threat of enemy attack was practically nil. So, why the hell did he need a gun?

“According to the map, it should be just around this corner,”
King’s voice suddenly cut in over the com-link.

Poldark Mine,

Cornwall, England

“Roger
that,” Raine’s voice replied into King’s helmet speakers as he led the way around the sharp right hand bend in the tunnel and-

Into a dead end.

“What the hell?”

“I think we took a wrong turn, Benny-boy,” Raine replied. His voice was as calm and level as ever, contradictory to King’s own rising concern. In the dark, damp, claustrophobic confines of the mine, his paranoia had only been growing worse. That, added to his rising excitement at finding Kha’um’s treasure, followed by the shock of the dead end, threatened to topple him.

“Damn it!” he cursed angrily, pushing past Raine. Six feet ahead, right where the line on the map ended at the red gem affixed into the dagger’s hilt, right where the treasure should have been, there stood only a very solid looking wall.

“Take it easy.”

“Take it easy?” King snapped. “I’m stuck down here is this hell hole with . . .
you
, and you want me to take it easy?”

“What’s going on, Raine?”
Gibbs’ voice crackled into both their speakers.

“Firstly,” Raine ignored the SOG operative, “you’re not stuck. The way back is as clear as it was on the way here, so long as your little tantrum doesn’t bring this whole place down on us. Secondly, what the hell do you mean,
me
? And thirdly,” he added before the archaeologist could reply, “I know where the treasure is.”

This last statement brought King up short. “What?”

“Raine, King, report.”

“Stand-by,” Raine replied. Then he took King by the arm and turned him around to face the dead-end, running his light over the wall, down to the floor . . . where the shaft of light pierced the ground, dropping through the hole to a yawning chasm beyond. There, it hit something and flared back more brightly than ever.

Gold.

With that irritatingly smug look on his face, Raine didn’t say another word as he began un-looping the rope from his shoulders. He spent several minutes fixing two cams into a secure section of the wall and fed the rope through a series of karabiners until he had built a rig like he had done several times previously on their way down through the abandoned mine.

“Okay, Benny,” he said when he was done. “Just like before, I’ll strap you up, then I’ll go first-”

“No,” King cut him off. “I’ll go first.”

The two men’s eyes locked for a moment and King saw that dangerous glint that he had seen before. It was as though Raine was secretly telling him that he knew he was onto him.

“Alright,” he replied slowly. “Just like before, nice and slowly. We don’t want any accidents, do we?”

RNAS Culdrose,

England

All
eyes were now glued to the video streaming from Raine’s helmet as he squeezed down through the hole in the floor of the tunnel and shimmied his way through about ten feet of solid rock. For a moment all the screen showed was the jagged interior of the hole, then he squeezed out from below and hung above the cavern.

The view from the camera was limited and it jumped about as Raine slid with militaristic ease down the rope. The beam from his torch, and that of King’s below, couldn’t pierce its way to the walls, giving the impression that the chamber was very large.

“Benny, heads up,”
he warned. Then Sid watched as he pulled himself to a stop part way down the rope and yanked something out of the webbing attached to the outside of his hazmat suit. A bright explosion sent the camera out of focus and Sid gasped in fright.

“It’s only a light-stick,” Lake said. The female operative stood looking over her shoulder, as did Gibbs and O’Rourke.

Sure enough, Raine threw the stick down into the darkness and it instantly chased away the gloom that had encompassed the cavern for centuries. But the eruption of light was even more brilliant than any of them had expected, for it was amplified by the chamber’s contents. It bounced off of surfaces, reflecting from one piece of gold to another in quick succession until, for just a moment before the light-stick started to die, the hoard of pirates treasure shone like the surface of the sun.

Gasps of awe escaped from all the spectators’ lips, far more enraptured than the hordes of tourists watching the world famous Vulcan Bomber sweep through the sky, its booming engines masking the noise of the approaching footsteps.

Their lapse of concentration was the SOG team’s undoing as Nadia Yashina appeared, as if out of nowhere, and clutched Sid around the throat, pressing her stolen handgun against her temple.

Poldark Mine,

Cornwall, England