The Goddess Legacy (33 page)

The column of dark figures shambled closer, stretching endlessly into the shadows, and then the figure at the head of the procession stood before Allie, whose eyes were riveted on his mangled features and bloodshot eyes. He inspected her curiously, touching her cheek with a grime-crusted finger as she recoiled, and then he slowly circled around to look at Drake, who noted that the cult high priest’s sharpened teeth were discolored to the same gray as the ash that covered his hair and skin.

Drake turned his head away, the stench rising from the man so toxic that bile burned in his throat, and then the cult priest turned from him and held a curved dagger in the air. The cult chanted its perversion faster at the sight of the blade, anticipation palpable in the crescendo of maimed utterings.

Drake’s voice sounded stronger than he’d feared it would when he spoke the words he’d been saving for a time that now would never come. “Allie, I lo–”

The boom of automatic rifle fire from nearby filled the clearing, and the cult priest’s chest exploded with red blossoms. He screamed in pain and lunged for Drake with the dagger, and then more rounds pounded into him and he tumbled sideways. The knife bounced harmlessly off the stones at their feet as the man crumpled in a heap. More shooting deafened them as Spencer stepped from the darkness, wielding his AKM with mechanical precision.

The cult scattered, its members running from the gunfire back into the cover of night, and then they were alone. The dark priest lay dead near the fire pit, face down in a lake of blood.

Allie eyed Spencer as he approached and unfolded a pocketknife. “Took you long enough.”

“I had a nap,” he said, and then glanced at Drake. “You okay? Looks ugly,” he said, studying the bleeding tear in the side of Drake’s head left by the torch.

“It only hurts when I breathe.”

“Hold still, or you won’t have to worry about that for long.”

Spencer worked the small blade through the knots that bound them together on the pole, and after a few judicious cuts, Allie pulled free. Drake shook off the rope and turned so Spencer could sever the bindings that secured his wrists. Spencer freed Drake’s hands and was attending to Allie when the staccato rattle of rifle fire shattered the silence in the clearing, and fountains of rock and dirt geysered around them.

“Take cover,” Spencer cried, pulling Allie down with him behind a small mound of stone blocks. Drake dove in the opposite direction and dragged himself to the crumbled base of an ancient wall as rounds whizzed nearby.

Spencer returned fire and emptied his magazine in a sustained burst as he felt for another in his pocket. He slipped it free, ejected the spent one from his rifle, and slapped the fresh magazine home as more gunfire strafed their location.

“I guess we drew some unwanted company,” he yelled to Allie, their ears ringing from the gunfire.

“You got a spare gun?” Drake called to him.

“Just my pistols,” Spencer screamed. “Useless at this range.”

“Toss one over here. Better than nothing.”

More slugs thudded into the stone blocks as Spencer freed his holstered pistol. He waited until there was a lull in the firing and hurled the gun to Drake. “I’ll lay down some cover,” he called out, seeing the gun fall short. “You try for it when I start shooting.”

“Try?” Drake said, and then more incoming fire chewed up the ground near the pistol. “Maybe I’ll wait.”

“How many more rounds do you have?” Allie asked.

Spencer frowned. “One more magazine, but it’ll go quick at this rate.”

“Shoot slower.”

Spencer loosed another volley. “I can’t see much.”

“I know,” she said, and winced as a stray bullet blasted chunks of stone a few feet from her head.

Rounds pounded their hiding place from off to the right, and Spencer shifted his aim to the new threat, doing his best to conserve ammunition but fighting a losing battle. He emptied his rifle and ejected his second spare magazine before seating the final full one, and then continued fending off the attackers, who were multiplying like mosquitoes with each heartbeat.

Drake rolled and snatched up the pistol and barely made it back behind his remnant of wall before a flurry of shots ground the earth around him to hamburger. He kept his head down and held his fire, recognizing that to waste shots was foolish – the pistol would only do him good when the enemy was within thirty yards.

Spencer emptied the AKM and tossed it aside, and then drew Helms’s Beretta from his waistband. The slavers sensed their opportunity in the sudden halt in the shooting, and Spencer spied movement from the brush as the gunmen closed in. He looked over to Drake with a grim expression. “Make every shot count,” he said.

“How many rounds does it hold?” Drake asked.

“Eighteen-round box mag.”

“That won’t go far.”

Spencer eyed Allie. “Best to save two bullets, Drake.”

Drake swallowed hard – Spencer’s message was clear: better a swift end than whatever horror the death cult had in store for them.

“On your left,” Spencer warned, and Drake twisted in time to see a pair of gunmen nearing, crouched low. He squeezed off six shots as Spencer fired at more slavers closing in from their right, the report of the pistols mere pops after the AK’s blast. One of the two gunmen went down, but the other opened fire, and it took Drake four more shots to silence him. More shooting exploded from the trees, and then another slaver ran toward Drake, strafing his hiding place with his assault rifle. Drake loosed a half dozen rounds and the man pitched forward no more than fifteen yards from his position.

Remembering Spencer’s words, Drake glanced at the pistol and then to Allie, whose eyes were locked on him, her expression terrified…and something else. Time seemed to slow to nothing, and he realized that what he was seeing reflected in her eyes was resignation – the quiet acceptance of the unthinkable.

The moment was shattered when more rounds slammed into the ground by Drake, and then the brush line shielding the slavers shredded to pieces as a deafening roar sounded from the sky. Hundreds of high-velocity rounds chewed the gunmen to confetti, the stream of glowing tracers slicing through everything in their path. Drake blinked in disbelief and rolled onto his back in time to see the hazy outline of a huge helicopter nearing, its heavy machine gun relentlessly raining death on the attackers.

The gunship hovered over the clearing, and two lines unfurled from either side of it and bounced against the ground. A string of black-clad figures rappelled down, weapons blazing. Answering fire greeted them from a grove of trees on Spencer’s right, which immediately invited several hundred rounds from the new arrivals, decisively silencing the slavers and terminating the threat.

Drake watched the commandos mop up the few surviving gunmen, and then the helicopter set down on the ground and a spotlight blinked to life, its high-wattage beam blinding him and framing them in its glare.

Suri heard the gunfight erupt over the hill from the mobile buildings and was immediately on his handheld radio, ordering more gunmen to the clearing. Something had obviously gone wrong if there was shooting – the cult had no guns, preferring to rely on antiquated but effective methods: the dagger and the garrote. Which meant that they’d missed a straggler earlier – an annoying wrinkle, but hardly fatal.

A dozen guards raced over the hill with orders to kill anything that moved, and then Suri was faced with the approaching terrorists, obvious worry written across their faces. The elder faced him with a snarl.

“What is happening?” the man demanded. “And no more of your ludicrous stories of target practice.”

“We have some hikers who stumbled onto our land. We are dealing with them.”

“Hikers? Do you not think I know the sound of an AK? What sort of hikers carry Kalashnikovs?” the man snapped.

“That is what we are trying to identify. Many of the hill people carry those types of rifles – they are readily available due to the proximity of Afghanistan and Pakistan.” They listened as the gunfire stopped, and Suri nodded. “See? It is over.”

His radio crackled, and he turned from the men and listened for several tense seconds, and then issued an order. The night was shattered by more shooting, this time many weapons, and Suri returned to the men. “I sent a patrol to finish them off. That’s what you’re hearing.”

The lead terrorist frowned at his men and then turned to Suri. “We’ll take our chances in the mountains tonight. Where is our material?”

“In your sleeping quarters. You are free to leave if that is your wish. I can arrange for an escort.” Suri looked at the ATVs the men had ridden to the camp. “Your vehicles have headlights – you should be fine as long as you drive prudently. Shall I have your case strapped to the back of one of them?”

“I’ll take care of that,” the terrorist said. “Just fetch me some line.”

Suri did as asked and was returning from the cave when he heard approaching helicopter blades. He stood motionless for a moment and then barked orders to the guard manning the .50-caliber machine gun, who nearly fell off his seat in his haste to swing the big weapon skyward.

“What’s going on?” the lead terrorist demanded, his voice cracking on the last word.

“I don’t know,” Suri said, trying to get a report from the gunmen he’d sent to the clearing on the radio. His eyes widened in shock at the ghostly image of five dark gray helicopters converging on the camp, and then the .50-caliber opened up beside him, the guard firing wildly at the airships as a pulsing green laser swept from the lead helo and settled on his sandbagged area.

Suri and the Pakistanis were running for the cave when the sandbagged gun station exploded in a ball of flame, vaporized by a rocket from one of the gunships that sent scraps of metal, earth, and flesh skyward in flaming arcs. They made the cave mouth just in time to see dozens of heavily armed combat soldiers dropping from the bellies of the aircraft, their weapons firing at the slavers caught in the open, mowing them down without mercy.

“Hold them off,” Suri commanded the guards at the cave opening, and motioned to the terrorists to follow him through the passage. The gunmen fired at the helicopter force and instantly drew a barrage of answering shots, the rounds ricocheting in the interior of the cavern. The shooting from the cave mouth receded as Suri led the terrorists deeper into the earth, and then they were in the main sleeping area. Hundreds of startled faces watched them as they ran along the edge of the cavern, Suri shouting orders to the gunmen, who rushed to defend the approach.

When Suri and his companions had disappeared into the second chamber, the remaining guards glanced around nervously, suddenly aware that they were outnumbered a hundred to one. The same thought simultaneously occurred to some of the younger men, who stood and began moving toward them. One of the guards fired a warning shot overhead, which only served to galvanize the slaves, and then a wave of humanity rushed the gunmen, who emptied their rifles into the mob in blind panic. The bodies of the dead barely slowed the survivors, who leapt over the fallen in their haste to tear their captors apart with their bare hands.

Suri arrived at Mehta’s chamber, pushed open the heavy iron door, and froze at the sight of an empty vault. He twisted around to where the terrorists were waiting, the stink of fear thick in the passage as more gunfire boomed through the caverns behind them. The elder terrorist grabbed him by the robe and pulled him near.

“You will pay for your treachery, you lying dog,” he hissed.

Suri shook his head in terror as bursts of automatic weapon fire, higher in pitch than that of the distinctive AKs the guards were equipped with, rattled from the cave.

“No. We must try to–”

Suri’s jaw gaped open as the terrorist stared into his eyes, and then a wash of blood erupted from his mouth as his gaze drifted down to the hilt of a knife protruding from his chest. The Pakistani released his hold on Suri, who staggered backward, grabbing at the knife handle with weakened hands before slumping down the front of Mehta’s desk, dead.

Running boots reverberated in the passage, and the terrorists spun around just in time to face eight fighters with black body armor and night vision monocles, their helmets and uniforms unmarked and black smeared on their faces to kill any glare. One of the men pointed, his M4 assault rifle trained on the leader’s head, and another handed his rifle to the commando next to him and spoke, first in Hindi and then in Arabic.

“Move and you’re dead. Hands over your heads. Now,” he ordered.

The terrorists looked to their leader, who nodded slowly and raised his hands. The soldier patted the men down, tossing their daggers onto the stone floor, and then cinched tie wraps around their wrists. When he was done, four of the gunmen continued down the passage, past Mehta’s office, toward the ore milling cavern, and the soldier who’d bound the Pakistanis pulled black hoods over their heads. When he finished, his companion handed him back his weapon, and the soldiers escorted their captives from the cave, past the riot of slaves who were exacting lifetimes of revenge upon their captors in a tableau drawn straight from the bowels of hell.

Drake held his hands in the air as a dozen commandos approached through the spotlight’s blinding beam, and was surprised when the man at the head of the group spoke to him in American English.

“Where’s Reynolds?” the commando demanded.

Spencer shielded his eyes with one hand. “Over by that hill. There’s a cave. I patched him up as best I could, but he’s not going to walk out of this on his own power.”

“You hurt?” the soldier asked.

“No.”

“Get up, nice and slow, and the sergeant here will search you. Then show me where he is.”

“Fine by me. I’m guessing you’re the cavalry he called in.”

The soldier didn’t say anything, and Spencer pushed himself to his feet and allowed himself to be patted down. When the frisking was done, he gestured toward the cave. “Couple hundred yards. But you might want to ensure the perimeter’s secure, just in case there’s a straggler who wants to play hero.”