Moon Mask (21 page)

“Get over the bridge,” Raine ordered and King didn’t need to be told twice.

“What’s the plan now?” he asked through a ragged breath as they scrambled onto the far bank.

“Beats me,” Raine admitted as a hailstorm of bullets erupted from behind. He turned to see the seven surviving Chinese soldiers running towards him, crossing the bridge.

“Get to the top of the pyramid,” he told King, hoping the archaeologist realised that the high point would be the most defensible position. “I’ll hold them off for a second.”

He dived behind the cover of a low wall, rolled, hurled his torso over the top and fired his stolen QBZ-95 at his pursuers. He hit one squarely in the neck who gurgled and groaned as he rolled over the side of the ruined bridge and splashed into the water. The other soldiers scattered, three of them on this side of the bridge, three on the other.

They moved to out-flank him.

Benjamin
King ran through the streets of Xibalba’s temple district, keeping the purse containing the Moon Mask tucked snugly beneath his arm.

He hurdled toppled masonry and ducked beneath collapsed arches, rounding the final corner which led directly towards one of the pyramid’s steep stairways.

He hit it running, hauling himself on all fours as fast as he could up the ancient structure.

Gunfire suddenly came at Raine from a different angle as he failed to prevent the Chinese soldiers from slipping around his flank. He dropped down, allowing the crumbled wall to take the brunt of the weapons fire. The remaining soldiers crossed the bridge, the one with the torn cheek bellowing at another. A second later, the soldier ran off in the direction of the pyramid while the others focussed on Raine.

King
was only a third of the way up the pyramid’s face when the bullets began to chase him, chipping the ancient stone work. Flecks of rock bit his skin, stinging, but he ignored the pain as he continued to climb the steep slant.

Realising he was out of range, the soldier gave up firing and began to climb also.

Raine’s
keen eyes picked out the distant shapes of King and his pursuer on the face of the pyramid.

Damn it!

His cover was slowly pummelled to pieces by an endless barrage of bullets but then he heard the tell-tale click of a magazine running empty, the clang as it hit the floor and the soldier efficiently reloaded.

Raine took his shot, pushing up out of cover and firing a burst at the soldier. He dropped in a plume of red, the remorseless attack momentarily surprising the other soldiers and giving Raine his chance to dash from cover and sprint around the street corner.

It
was a desperate race for his life as King charged up the pyramid faster and faster, adrenaline pushing him far past the limits of endurance. He had gone beyond exhaustion, beyond fear. He worked now purely on instinct, knowing that the moment he gave up would be the moment he died.

With that thought, his palm hit the surface of the platform at the top of the pyramid and he hauled himself up. Dominating the summit was a pillared temple, its walls covered with carvings but he ignored the archaeologist in him and turned away from the visage, pulling the Norinco handgun Raine had given him from his waistband. He crept back to the ledge of the pyramid and aimed the handgun down the vertiginous slope.

It was empty.

Where the hell?

He felt the hot muzzle of a gun jam itself into the delicate flesh just behind his right ear.

He froze, petrified, yet also irritated that he hadn’t considered the possibility of the soldier switching to another face of the pyramid and beating him to the summit.

Idiot!

He suddenly found it difficult to breath. His heart pounded so heavily that he feared it might actually break through his ribcage.

So this is how I’m going to die.

He didn’t know how long it had been since his mad dash from the summit of Sarisariñama had brought him face to face with death in so many forms, but this was the most intimate moment of death he had yet faced. It was silent and drawn out. A rifle at his head, a moment of dread and terror instead of the adrenaline of being shot down during the chase, ripped apart by hungry crocs or sliced open by a Mayan ballgame.

He feared he might break down into tears, sobbing, pleading for his life, urinating his pants while screaming like a school girl.

So it surprised him as much as the soldier when, as the other man squeezed the trigger, King spun, knocking the rifle away with his own gun while slamming his shoulder into his opponent’s stomach, throwing them both backwards into the temple in a spray of bullets.

Raine
zigzagged his way through the ruins as machine gun fire blew them apart around him. Orders were barked in Mandarin and he watched as two soldiers raced up a parallel street, trying to cut him off. They spun around the corner and fired down at him just as he jolted to the side, leaping through a vacant window frame and rolling into a gutted building.

The soldiers swept in after him but he hauled himself back out of the opposite window just in time.

Machine gun fire rattled from the summit of the pyramid and he glanced up to see the orange strobe of muzzle flash from within the temple. He tried heading towards the pyramid again, but once again, the soldiers outflanked him, forcing him back towards the aqueduct-

A leg slammed into his groin with agonizing force, doubling him over. He cried out as he staggered, all of his training trying to resist the reflex to drop his weapon and grasp his genitals.

Nevertheless, winded, he staggered and dropped to the ground, sprawling beside the narrow alleyway where the man with the torn face had been hiding.

Before he could regain his wits, the Chinaman’s foot smashed into the side of his head. His neck jarred. His vision blurred. And then, his eyes seething with fury, the colonel hauled him to his feet. Raine took a swing at him but the other man blocked his weak attempt and punched him in the nose, splattering them both with a spray of blood.

Staggering, Raine nevertheless had the sense to freeze when a Norinco M-77B handgun was planted firmly against his forehead.

“Where is the mask?”

King
was lucky.

He landed on top of his attacker, accidentally knocking the wind out of him. He didn’t waste a second in driving his fist into the man’s face, pulverising his nose, cracking his jaw-

The soldier heaved, bucking beneath him and flipping him over so that he was on his back, on the defensive, and it was all King could do now to block one blow after another, fending off the trained killer.

A lucky, glancing blow bounced off the soldier’s head but a fierce one caught King’s jaw in return.

White hot pain flashed through him, his arms fell limply to his side-

And his fingers instinctively wrapped themselves around the soldier’s fallen rifle.

He had no time to work out how to use it - he didn’t even know what part of it he was holding – but he nevertheless brought it up and swung it like a club. It smashed into the soldier’s head once, twice, three times. On the fourth savage blow, King watched the man’s eyes roll up and his head loll to one side. Then, exhausted, he pushed the man off of him, scrambled onto all fours and scuttled away, sucking in deep breaths of air.

For several long moments he simply stared at the corpse, his mind as numb as his battered body. He felt bile rise and fought it back down.

“You killed those men,”
his accusing words to Raine echoed through his mind.
“How can you be so flippant about killing? Like it was easy or something.”

“It gets easier every time.”

A deep shudder trembled through him. He closed his eyes, rubbed them hard, glanced up-

And immediately forgot about the dead man as his eyes took in the fire-lit carvings dancing on the façade of the temple.

“Incredible.”

Colonel
Ming’s face felt as though it was on fire. The razors on the ball the American had flung at him had torn apart the right side of his face. Now his cheek flapped as he spoke and he could not hear out of his right ear. Nevertheless, his orders to his men still rung true in his head.

Whatever the cost.

“Eat my shorts,” the man snarled in reply to his question.

He slammed the butt of his pistol against the American’s forehead again, cracking the skin and drawing blood.

“Where is the mask?” he repeated.

“I lost it,” the American growled, icy eyes glaring at him. Xan and the three surviving soldiers had circled the dangerous man now and had their weapons trained on him.

“When I went over the waterfall,” the prisoner elaborated. “Go check if you don’t believe me. And, if you don’t mind skinny-dipping with the crocs.”

Enough!
The American didn’t have the mask, which meant his accomplice did. As much as he wanted to make the smug, blue-eyed man pay a painful price for his injury, Ming knew he was running out of time. He had lost contact with his team on the summit and-

“Colonel Ming,”
a voice called over Ming’s radio, loud enough for the American to overhear. It was the soldier he had left guarding the hole leading into the crocodile chamber in the Labyrinth. “I’m under attack-”

The call was cut short by the crackle of gun fire, followed by static.

Ming glanced at the American, expecting to see a cocky, smug grin at the knowledge of the U.S. Special Forces arrival. Instead, the American seemed just as concerned as he was.

He tried to say something, his throat gurgling on his own blood.

“What did you say?”

The American leaned in closer, speaking softly into his good ear. “I said, catch.”

Ming frowned. “Catch?”

Then the prisoner head butted him in the nose and, as a spray of blood obscured his vision, Ming saw the grenade which the man had somehow concealed in his hands. He pulled the pin and tossed it vertically above the group. While Ming’s soldiers stood, confused, the American pushed between them and ran for the water’s edge. Ming turned and followed, running fast. Behind them, Xan and the three soldiers took a second too long to register what was happening. It was not until the grenade’s rate of ascent peaked and it began its fall back down to earth that any of them caught up with their senses and moved.

In a panicked scrabble they dashed away from the falling grenade. It hit the ground in between them and exploded on impact, ripping up huge chunks of ancient roadway and the earth beneath and blowing it out in a mushroom of flame.

Two of Ming’s men were too slow and were almost instantly incinerated. Another fared little better and had most of his flesh roasted like a joint of meat.

Xan had the sense to follow the American and Ming, several footsteps behind, and as the blast wave rippled out, it plucked all three off the ground and hurled them into the icy water.

His
head throbbing from the pounding Ming had given him and the concussion of the blast, Raine broke the surface and gasped for air, turning to face the two Chinese soldiers who had landed in the water alongside him.

Ming had lost his weapon, but Lieutenant Xan had not.

He moved quickly, bringing the water-proof weapon up to aim at Raine’s chest, point blank.

All Raine could do as he treaded the deep water was raise his hands in submission.

That was when, without a single sound and in the blink of an eye, the soldier was dragged beneath the surface of the water in an explosion of startled bubbles.

Dread dawned on the American and the Chinaman at the exact same moment.

Beneath the water, they felt the current surge and, peering nervously down beneath their feet, they saw the mammoth coils of the leviathan undulating as it digested its human prey.

Ignoring each other, both men threw themselves forward and swam for the water’s edge.

But they were both too slow.

Raine felt a sudden, intense and agonising weight wrap itself around his body, crushing his chest, mere moments before he was dragged into the dark domain of the monster.

17:

Leviathan

Xibalba,

Sarisariñama Tepui,

Venezuela,

Nathan
Raine thrashed manically, losing sight of Colonel Ming. The giant snake, an anaconda he guessed, clutched him in its coils, its giant girth squeezing. He felt muscles, incredibly strong, clenching beneath silky skin and he gasped for breath but was rewarded only by choking. He panicked and futilely smacked the snake with the palms of his hands-

He saw Ming, in a similar predicament, struggling, eyes bulging, gasping for air and drinking in the stale water. The coiled lengths of the snake slithered and twisted and brought the two men close together.

Raine saw his chance. As momentum and serpentine muscle brought him near to Ming, he reached out and plucked the Chinaman’s dagger from his combat webbing. With only seconds of consciousness left in him, he jabbed the blade deep into the snake’s flesh. He felt the beast contort in pain a second before a giant head whipped around, gnashing at him. But by that point the snake’s hold on him had loosened and he slid through its coils, out underneath and kicked to Ming’s side.

He repeated the process, stabbing the monster again and then ducking for cover, dragging Ming with him.

They broke the surface in a splutter of gasping breaths but already the anaconda, unwilling to lose a meal tastier than crocodile flesh, twisted and glided through the water towards them. Its terrifying head broke the surface, slicing through the fire-lit water like a shark. It closed on them, immense jaws opening-

Raine pushed to the side just before the anaconda’s jaws came crashing down on nothingness. Ming had duplicated his actions on the other side of the four foot girth, reaching out and holding on to the side of the snake’s head, careful to avoid its jaws. It was far safer to cling to the side of its head than be in front of it, Raine decided.