BLOOD GURKHA: Prophesy (James Pace novels Book 5) (21 page)

This, in turn, allowed Pace's ears to prick at the distant sound of a footfall somewhere over to the trees on their right. Instantly turning, rifle at the ready, the Maglite blazed a path across the snow but lit up only empty white and knotted tree trunks.

'Get moving,' he said urgently. 'There's definitely something out there and it's getting restless. Come on!'

Hill had not heard the noise himself; engrossed as he was in opening shutters that had not seen human hands for over a  century but he recognised danger in Pace's tone. His own torch beam cut inside the darkness beyond the shutters. No glass, just a dark, empty room, wooden-floored. He did not wait to have a closer inspection from outside; they could do that when they were safely within the building's walls.

Slipping off his backpack, he tossed it in through the window, hoisted one leg over the sill, and vanished inside. Pace backed up slowly to the window, ever watchful, trigger finger ready. His own pack was also too large for him to keep on, and get through the space, but Hill did not need him to ask for help. No sooner had he backed up to the window than the professor was reaching out, pulling it from his shoulders himself. Pace was grateful for the man's help, timing the movement of the shoulder straps down over his arms so that he could shift the rifle from hand to hand; keeping a hold of it. Suddenly free from it, he sat down on the sill and dimply dropped backwards, into the room, landing softly on the two backpacks Hill had left there.

Rolling back up quickly, he brought the Mauser to his shoulder just in time to see Hill reach his arms through the window to take a hold of the open shutters, intending to close them.

He never succeeded.

To Pace's horror, as Hill leaned slightly outwards; fingers reaching for the shutter edges, something grabbed his arms from outside and yanked him bodily through the window with a thunderous snarl that was so loud it shook the room and stunned Pace's senses, crashing painfully inside his ears. It happened so fast that Hill did not even have time to scream.

Recovering his senses, Pace lunged for the window, determined to help his companion. It was only two steps away; it took less than a second to get there, yet when he reached it, there was no sign of Hill. Not pausing to think, Pace threw himself back outside, hitting the snow perfectly on one shoulder and rolling up into a smooth, shooter's crouch. The rifle blurred to his shoulder, its cutting light beam scything the darkness all around.

Subconsciously he noted the huge footprints in the snow all around the window, as well as the vivid red of several fresh blood pools but it was the blood-curdling shriek of terror that finally drew his gaze to the right spot. Turning towards the sound instinctively, Pace was just in time to see the huge bulk of
something
just arriving at the treeline, dragging a screaming, terrified Hill behind it. Light brown in colour; it was more human in gait than ape-like, but appeared to be three or four times the size of the largest silverback gorilla Pace had ever seen in a zoo. Massively long arms, heavily furred and tipped with powerful hands, were the thickness of small tree trunks.

Pace could not see the creature's face, only the back of its head; slightly stooped forwards as it strode purposefully into the shadow of the trees. Without even pausing for conscious thought, the Mauser was centred on the huge back and Pace fired off a single round. He should have hit it but the creature gave no sign before it was gone, and Hill along with it.

If Pace had taken time to think about it, or had been a lesser man perhaps, he would have stopped and written Hill off for dead, which he probably would very soon be. But James was not someone who'd ever given up a comrade on the battlefield.

Against all reason, a fierce anger and determination exploded inside him as he set off, pounding hard across the snow, following the trail of prints and blood splatter, spurred on by the distant shrieks of the archaeologist. When he reached the tree line, he did not even pause for a breath but headed straight inside, his Maglite biting deeply beneath the canopy. The trail was easy to follow; broken boughs, prints and blood.

'Hold on, Professor!' he bellowed, realising it was a futile gesture. 'I'm coming for you!'

The hunt was on.

23

The Sledgeways had proven themselves to be a Godsend, allowing Hammond and Rachel to cover the vast majority of the distance needed without any effort on their part. Performing flawlessly, the little machines carried them across ice fields, over hills and through mountain-edged valleys with ease. On more than one occasion, though the riders were totally oblivious to the fact, the vehicles' lightweight construction and speed had allowed them to coast over snow-encrusted crevasses so fast that the weak snow bridges had no time to collapse beneath them.

The final three miles were very different. The terrain had increasingly become a mixture of snow and exposed granite until, as they made their final approach to the lower slopes where the mine shaft was situated, they could not afford to risk riding any further. If they damaged the Sledgeways now, getting back in time for the agreed rendezvous would be impossible.

Under cover of darkness, they had covered the Sledgeways with a white sheet similar to the one Pace had used to conceal the Lynx, logging the exact position into the handheld GPS unit that Rachel was using, then made the final approach on foot.

In between the rocks, the snow was surprisingly deep and it made for slow going. They could not afford to use any torches. Luckily, the skies above had cleared again after a brief flurry. Thick clouds still scudded above them, a thousand feet above them, but a gorgeous moon made enough appearances to reflect off the snow, giving them more than enough light to navigate by.

On their ride, moving over the terrain closely enough to hear each other speak, Hammond and Rachel had discussed their options in great detail.

They had programmed the co-ordinates of the mine head into the GPS unit. Their satellite recce, surprisingly easy to obtain given that they were taken over China, stood as testament to the number of low-orbiting, covert satellites the McEntire Corporation had access to.

The head of the silver mine, allegedly wound up decades before, still retained a single gear housing; a non-descript, low-level building with a flat roof and few windows. Bolted together from reinforced concrete slabs, in an unflattering shade of grey, the building sat alone in the foothills of the Himalayas. This had allowed the old miners to dig horizontally into the mountains rather than having to burrow vertically down into the earth.

No useable road existed any longer, linking the mine to civilisation, but its remnants remained. Cracked, broken and washed away by years of eroding meltwater every spring, it was navigable by a heavy truck or a really robust four-wheel drive jeep.

Their intelligence told them that it was never used. Anyone travelling to the mine came in by military helicopter; even the dozens of scientific staff that they knew were working in there.

'What do we think they're doing there?' Rachel asked Hammond as they were flying through a snow-filled valley. 'Why did they send someone like Barbara? The Janitor is meant to deal with internal risks. I should know,' she smiled ruefully, involuntarily touching her scarf-wrapped throat. 'This doesn't look like an internal problem.'

'Barbara is known to very few people, even within the covert side of the Corporation. The few that do know about her history are even more wary of crossing her. She was a very able operative before she became Doyle's hatchet woman. He must have had a reason to assign her personally to this operation but I confess, I have no idea what it is.'

'Do you think she's even alive?' Slewing the Sledgeway around a protruding rock, Rachel steered her machine back next to Hammond's so she could hear his reply.

'She has been in many scrapes before and her skills are frightening to see. I think that overpowering her would take a small army, if it's even possible.'

'That doesn't answer the question.'

Hammond steered around several jagged rocks himself, returning to her a few seconds later. 'I think stopping her without having to kill her would be virtually impossible.'

Rachel knew he was probably right and that they were heading into danger to try and rescue someone who was already dead. But Barbara had believed in her enough to save her life and force McEntire to give her another chance. Rachel felt a fierce sense of obligation to her.

The heavy blizzards of winter had layered the lower passes and valleys with thick snow. As they curved around a couple of lower peaks, circling around to the ridge from which Barbara had been surveying the mine, a freezing darkness descended to cover their approach. The wind whipped snow and ice with stinging ferociously into their eyes as they rode their Sledgeways , reminding Hammond of the storms in the Antarctic that had nearly cost Pace and himself their lives.

The Sledgeways had been fitted with a powerful single headlamp, which they switched on so they could keep moving. They slowed their speed a little to make sure they saw any rocks in good time. The snow had been unusually heavy this year, so far, and most of them were well buried. They ran the risk of being spotted, moving with their lights on, but the weather closed in so badly as the evening aged that visibility dropped to less than ten metres, even with the headlamps on full.

They had stopped about two hundred metres from where the GPS told them they would find Barbara's camp and secured the vehicles. The storm had risen to a gale by then, making the final stage of the journey on foot. Leaning heavily into the teeth of the wind, they trudged onwards, struggling their way up a steep incline that tipped them both over a couple of times each and constantly snatched the breath from their lungs.

It took ten minutes to reach the campsite but they would have walked right past it if they had not been looking out for it.

The white tent had been shredded by bullets and hung in tatters from a couple of pegs that had originally held it down to the snow. Torn and ragged, the material flapped in the agitated embrace of the wind. A few belongings lay scattered around outside, most half buried in fresh snow. Hammond recognised a couple of food packs and a coil of climbing rope but that was it.

All traces of what had happened to Barbara had been buried by the storm. A couple of darker patches of snow, when Hammond dug down with his gloved hands, turned up the unmistakeable colour of spilled blood.

'She did not give up easily, it seems.' Rachel had to virtually shout directly into Hammond's ear before he heard her. He nodded, pointing down the opposite slope with his fist, in the direction he knew the mine building lay.

'No sense in waiting around here,' he shouted. 'If she's alive, they've taken her. Let's go down and take a look around while this bloody awful weather is still around to help us.'

'Agreed. I'll go first. I've got the mine co-ordinates loaded into the GPS already. Wouldn't want to get lost in this blizzard,' she decided.

'Okay,' Hammond bellowed. 'Let's go.'

The going, downhill, was easier and the blocked shape of the gear building soon materialised out of the stormy darkness. There was no perimeter fence; one was not needed out in the wilds of the mountains and they were within touching distance before too long.

Walking around the perimeter, they found only a single entrance. Devoid of a handle, the flush-fitting door looked out of place set into the battered, pitted concrete. There was no mechanism of any sort visible.

'How do we get inside?' Rachel asked the obvious question.

Hammond cast a closer, scrutinising look over the door until he spotted it. Barely noticeable, clearly designed only to be released from the inside, a tiny service panel could just be made out on the right of the door frame. Pulling off his gloves he felt around with rapidly freezing finger tips until he wandered across the pressure plate, flipping the cover open to reveal a coded keypad.

'Shame we don't know the code,' she stated. 'How are your lock-picking skills?'

'Not great. Yours?'

'Stand back and let a master work,' she boasted lightly. She had very recently taken a refresher course in electronic locks and recognised the panel as a Dumas type X-23. Like any lock, it had a failsafe that could be triggered with the correct sequence of numbers and symbols. With an almost photographic memory, she delved inside her mind for a moment and retrieved the override sequence, slipping off her own gloves to quickly tap it into the keypad. Obediently, the door hummed and clicked open, inwards.

The security team, all clad in dark grey battle fatigues, was settling in for another long, boring night when the door sprang open and the two unexpected visitors stepped inside, out of the raging blizzard.

Ten men were permanently posted in the building, which was stripped bare except for a simple seating area, kitchen and bathroom. Over in the far wall, some thirty metres from the entrance door, an elevator appeared to be the only thing they were actually guarding.

Hammond and Rachel were lucky. The shift had only been changed a few minutes before. If they'd tried opening the door any sooner, there would have been twenty heavily armed guards to overcome. As it was, ten semi-automatic rifles versus two handguns did not offer great odds.

Fortunately, new to the shift, the guards had not yet sorted out who was going to do what. Instead they had all descended into the kitchen area to make tea, grumbling loudly in Chinese about their outgoing colleagues and the mess they'd left behind them.

Neither Hammond nor Rachel spoke Chinese but they seized upon the moment to snatch the advantage.

Screaming for the guards to freeze, which was such a universal word that Hammond knew they'd understand, he and Rachel ran towards the kitchen, keeping their hastily pulled automatic pistols aimed unwaveringly at the stunned men.

Caught off guard, only three still had their rifles slung over their shoulders and none of them had a gun anywhere near ready to fire. Faced with the muzzles of the pistols, in the hands of clearly professional shooters, nine of the guards did the sensible thing and simply raised their hands in surrender.

One guard; younger and more impetuous than the rest, wore an old-fashioned western holster instead of the modern military equivalent of his colleagues. An equally antique, replica Colt .45 Peacemaker, sat in the holster. A lover of American cowboy movies since his teens; with an almost fanatical passion for Gary Cooper, his bosses had humoured him and allowed him to wear the gun belt. Seeing himself as a skilled, quick-draw gunfighter, the man had practised his draw religiously for years and was lightning fast.

His hand moved in a blur but he was no match for Rachel, who already had a bead on him with her Sig Sauer P226. Before the Peacemaker lifted clear of its holster, she put a single bullet in between his eyes, dropping him like a stone and spraying a mixture of grey brain matter, bone splinters and blood across the kitchen wall behind.

As the sound of the shot faded, the remaining guards were left in no doubt that surrendering had been the wisest move.

None of them resisted when Rachel used clear hand signals to instruct them to strip down to their underwear. One at a time, using sections of Barbara's rope that Hammond had seen fit to recover from the snow and bring with them, they cut off sections with Hammond's survival knife and bound each man's hands behind his back. Once bound tightly, the same process was applied to their ankles before, one by one, Hammond and Rachel dragged them all into the small bathroom.

It was barely large enough to take them all but it did, with a few heaves and shoves. Closing the heavy door on the jumble of bound humanity, Hammond found a wooden kitchen chair and jammed it up underneath the door handle, effectively sealing them all inside.

Fifteen minutes had passed since they had entered the building and, suddenly, they had a few minutes to breathe and think clearly again.

There was a single security panel set against the wall near to the elevator doors. All the lights were green and the small viewing screen was switched off. It was unlikely that anyone would check in with the mine team too soon but they needed to find Barbara quickly.

'The elevator is the only way out so this must be how we get inside,' Rachel observed. 'Although what we're going to find is a mystery.'

'The main man here is a chap named Chang-Lei Kwon. He is an expert in nuclear technology, with a specialism in space research and nuclear fusion. My guess is that this old mine has been developed into some kind of nuclear testing facility, buried deeply within the mountains.'

'It would make sense and cause less harm if there was a meltdown, or accident,' reasoned Rachel.

'Especially if you burrow far enough away so that you actually conduct your experiments in another country,' Hammond suggested, pulling off his hood and unzipping his snowsuit. Rachel had already done the same.

'Sneaky but brilliant,' said Rachel.

'Talking of sneaking, let's see where this lift takes us, shall we?'

Leaving the guards' heavier weaponry behind, favouring the speed of handguns at close quarters, Rachel pressed the call button and was rewarded by the rapid arrival of a large, empty car. Stepping inside, there was only one button to press, which Rachel again activated. The doors slid closed and the lift began to drop.

Twelve floors later, the doors opened and they stepped out into the station area, sweeping their guns from side to side until it became clear they were all alone.

The train was not there, just the maglev lines. The station was as quiet as the grave.