Moon Mask (79 page)

Just as he had once done.

Raine dived and rolled into the protection offered by the metal stairs. Booted feet thundered down them as more and more marines spilled onto the deck.

Bill had taken cover behind a T-junction in the corridor. Every few seconds he would swing around the corner and fire. Every shot landed on its target, blasting mercilessly through the marines body armour. One went down, then another. They fired back on full auto and the sound was deafening in the enclosed environment.

More gunshots came from the left where Raine realised Langley had taken cover through one of the doors. He lay on his belly and fired into the corridor, taking out first the soldiers’ feet then, as they fell, finishing them off with a headshot.

Godfrey sprinted down the corridor and dived behind a shipping pallet piled with food outside the door to the galley. A bullet slammed into his hip just as he dropped behind the cover and Raine heard him scream in agony. One marine let loose on full auto and his bullets tore into the food tins and containers. Splashes of pummelled produce splattered over the bulkhead and Raine realised Godfrey wouldn’t last long under the onslaught.

Two more marines ran down the corridor behind Bill. The veteran noticed at the last possible moment, spun and fired. He dropped one but the second got a shot off which crunched into his shoulder. Protected by Kevlar, the shot wouldn’t kill but it still slammed the man back into the bulkhead. He slid down it, gasping for breath, giving the marines the time they needed to advance.

“Nate! What at you waiting for?” Langley yelled into his radio.

Hidden beneath the nook of the stairs, the marines had come down them and run right past him, oblivious to his concealment. He was therefore right in the middle of their ranks. Right where they would least expect a threat.

“Nate!” Langley practically screamed at him. The marines closed on the open door and Langley was forced to roll fully inside so as not to be hit. It also meant that he couldn’t hit them.

With all their positions overrun, Raine had no option.

He had killed United States soldiers before.

He had sworn he would never do it again.

But he had no choice.

He rolled out from the cover of the stairs, keeping low beneath any stray bullets, and planted a shot directly into the head of the marine attacking Godfrey. Before the boy had dropped to the deck, Raine spun, aimed down the corridor between the legs of the marines advancing on Langley and fired. The bullet sizzled between them and ripped into the throat of the man aiming at Bill. The two heading for Langley spun but, flicking his weapon to auto, Raine pummelled lead into their bodies and faces, making them dance for a second before they dropped to the deck.

More footsteps came from above, more marines descended. Godfrey struggled up over the smashed food produce and fired at the stairs. A scream and a thud and another body rolled down the steps.

Bill was back in action, swinging around the corner to take out another. Langley burst out of the room he had been hiding in and took down one more. As the final body splashed down into the pool of blood on the deck, a surreal silence descended upon them.

Blood, brain matter and gore dribbled down the bulkheads and soaked into Raine’s clothes. His eyes were hard as crystal, his heart thudded angrily and he shot an evil glance at Langley.

Langley ignored it and hurried past him to the stairs. “Godfrey,” he glanced at the injured man. Raine could see that the bone of his hip had been smashed and his entire leg lay at an awkward angle. His face was ashen and covered in sweat. For a moment, he felt a pang of respect at the fact that he had managed to keep fighting through the sheer agony.

“I’ll hold off anyone who comes this way,” he grunted.

Langley nodded, jumped over the body at the bottom of the stairs and then started up them, gesturing at the remainder of his team. “Let’s go.”

Raine was just about to follow when it struck him.

He spun around, searching through the carnage.

“Where’s Ben?”

59:

Belly of the Beast

USS Eldridge,

Pacific Ocean

Benjamin
King ran away from the thunderous gunfire in the corridor.

He did not, however, run in fright.

Instead, he ran with purpose.

He twisted down the corridor, desperately searching the bulkheads and opening any door he came to. There had to be another staircase somewhere. The one where Raine and the others had fought the marines only led up, but he remembered seeing on the ship’s plans access ladders leading below decks. He had to find one.

The P-90 assault rifle he clutched felt bulky and obtrusive yet gave him a sense of comfort and protection as he fled down the corridor. The sounds of the gun battle and, further off, the Chinese aerial assault, echoed along with his footsteps. His breathing sounded loud in his ears and his heart raced.

He came to another branch in the corridor. It looked much the same as the others, featureless and dull, save for a door at the far end. He considered ignoring it, then changed his mind and ran to it. He spun the circular handle and heard the lock disengage. He pulled the heavy door open. Behind it was a narrow vertical shaft with a ladder leading straight down into the belly of the beast.

“He’s
gone for the Mask!” Bill spat angrily but Raine knew it was more than that this time. When he locked eyes with Langley he knew that his former commander had come to the same conclusion. But, he also read something deeper and darker in those eyes that had once been so fatherly towards him.

“He’s going to use it,” Langley said.

They all should have seen it! Distraught over the death of Sid, how could he not take up an opportunity like the one the
Eldridge
presented? Yet, so caught up in the revelations of the
Urshu,
Langley and Phoenix, he had totally neglected King’s obvious motivations!

His eyes locked onto Langley’s. He knew that King couldn’t be allowed to change the past any more than anyone else could. And, he knew that Langley would go to any lengths necessary to stop him. He’d seen the way he had so easily killed the marines who got in his way. King was nothing to him, just another obstacle, a wild-card, an oversight.

Silent communication passed between the two men, the teacher and the student. Raine knew that Langley would kill King to stop him. And Langley knew that Raine would never let that happen.

Just like that, their brief alliance ended.

Raine watched Langley’s every move: the tightening of his grip on his weapon, the shifting of his eyes, the silent order passed to Bill. Time seemed to slow around him. It was like a stand-off in some wild-west movie. They stared each other out, trigger fingers twitching, fighting stance shifting-

Bill made his move, but Raine was a fraction faster!

Just as the other man was about to bring the muzzle of his weapon around, Raine lashed out with his own. The two P-90s clashed with a metallic clang, his own slamming Bill’s up and punching it into his nose. He cried out as bone, gristle and cartilage crunched under the impact and a spray of blood erupted like Vesuvius. Godfrey fired but Raine hurled Bill into the path of the bullets. They pounded into his Kevlar vest but also into his unprotected legs. Before Godfrey could release his trigger finger, countless bullets had ripped the appendages to shreds and he lay on the deck, writhing in agony, screaming.

Langley made his move then and fired. Raine arched back, out of range of the bullets. He swung under the stairs and slammed the butt of his P-90 between the steps upon which Langley stood. The blow was powerful and Raine felt the bone of the man’s ankle give. He dropped, crashing down the steps but rolling across the deck to fire at Raine.

Raine pushed back, leaving his rifle wedged in the steps, jumped to his feet and ran, skidding around the corridor and out of Langley’s line of sight.

“Nate!” his former friend screamed behind him. “We can’t let Ben use the mask!”

Mrs Marley’s warning echoed through Raine’s skull as he set off down the corridor at a sprint.

‘Kha’um believed that the Moon Mask could control time. If he could harness its power, he could go back and save his wife and his son. But that would have given him the power over life and death and who was he to say who lived and who died, or even who does or does not even exist! To control the Moon Mask is to control the power of god, and no man should have that power.’

Unfortunately, Raine had come to the same conclusion.

At
the bottom of the access shaft, King had come to another hatch, this one lying below him. He spun the lock and then heaved it open before continuing down the ladder and dropping onto a metal catwalk.

He paused for a moment, his breath catching at the sight.

The immense cylinder into which he had emerged was three hundred feet long and almost entirely filled the hollowed-out innards of the World War Two-era destroyer. Four metal walkways ran the entire length of it at the top, bottom and to either side, suspended by metal struts to the multi-faceted walls of the particle accelerator. Lines of thick tubes, currently glowing a dull, suffused bluish tinge lined the sides also, terminating at a large red and blue disk at the bow of the ship which itself was injected with dozens of cables and antennas.

He had the sudden sense of being on some alien planet, an unwelcoming realm into which he had trespassed.

Indeed, he supposed he had.

Half way down the aft bulkhead, the control room was little more than a single-story box, about ten feet high but extending into a conical tip about thirty feet long. The tip itself was attached to numerous high-tech antennas and emitting diodes.

A sudden loud clang startled him and he wheeled about to see that the hatch through which he had just come had slammed shut. The mechanical clunk of large bolts electronically sealing echoed through the cavernous space.

For a moment, he felt trapped and toyed with the idea of climbing back up the ladder, but then he focussed his thoughts, set his resolve and headed off down the catwalk to the control room.

“All
access hatches are sealed,” one of the technicians reported.

Lawrence Gibbs glanced at Doctor Tobias. Small, bald and bespectacled, Tobias was everything he expected him to be. Reserved and quiet, there was no doubting his genius. For the last thirty years he had been involved with Phoenix, struggling to use constantly developing technology to put the theory of science’s greatest minds into practice. Now, his lovechild was about to be born, one of the greatest moments in history was developing, and still he hunched over the screen of his quantum computer, watching the readouts with a meticulous and oh-so-unexcitable demeanour.

“Okay,” he replied. “Bring the accelerator online. Lock the source material into position-”

“Doctor,” the technician interrupted. “The particle accelerator’s failsafe is preventing the start-up sequence.” He paused. “It’s detecting an unexpected heat signature on the upper walkway.”

“What?” Tobias frowned.

“What’s going on?” Gibbs demanded. By order of the president, this was his project, his baby. He wanted to be in-the-know every step of the way.

Tobias held up a hand to silence him as he accessed the technician’s readings. He brought the surveillance cameras up on the position of the heat signature and gasped when he saw that it was a
human
heat signature.

A human that Gibbs recognised all too well.

“King,” he snarled.

Raine
and King could wait, Alex Langley had decided.

He limped up the stairwell, the agony of his broken ankle shooting white-hot fire up his leg and almost overloading his nervous system. After every few steps, he had to pause to catch his breath before it was snatched away again the moment he placed his foot back down.

Bill and Godfrey were both dead. Godfrey had passed out from the pain and blood loss and never woken back up. Bill had struggled on, determinedly clinging to life until Langley had put him out of his misery with a bullet to the head.

For a moment, he had considered pursuing King, certain that the archaeologist intended on using the Moon Mask to rescue his lost fiancé. Instead, he had decided to continue with his original plan. Whether it was King or Gibbs,
someone
was going to try to use the mask. The best thing he could do was stick to the plan, sink the ship and prevent
anyone
from messing with the timeline.

He made it to another landing and paused, catching his breath. When no further resistance was met from the marines, he proceeded up the next flight, slowly but surely heading for the bridge.

“Benny,
answer me,” Raine called angrily into his radio. “Where the hell are you?”

Only static answered him. He upped his pace, running faster through the maze of corridors, swinging expertly around corners with his M1911 handgun held out before him. The corridors were empty, devoid of life. He wondered if the entire contingent of marines was dead. If so, other than the
Eldridge’s
skeleton crew, the only resistance he would meet would be from Gibbs’ team. Unfortunately, Gibbs’ team was the worst kind of resistance to meet.

He spun around the next corner, handgun aimed straight ahead of him. At the far end of the dull, featureless corridor a door was open. It was the only open door he had seen on his journey through the ship. He grinned.

“Gotcha.”

He ran to the door and hauled himself through it, onto the ladder inside and descended quickly, landing on top of a hatch. He tried to turn the wheel to unlock it but it wouldn’t shift an inch.

Just then, from below, muffled by the hatch, he heard the unmistakable crack of gunfire.

“No!”
Doctor Tobias snapped at Gibbs as he heard the gunfire. “I told you, no guns! The chemicals in those pipes are highly volatile. They could blow us all to hell.”