Moon Mask (55 page)

A hand suddenly grasped his ankle and yanked him back sharply. The roughness of the assault scraped his body along the walls, ceiling and floor and his felt his suit tear and his skin rip. He had the foresight to release his hold on the case and push it forward as hard as he could. Then he scrambled futilely along the ground, digging his fingernails into the mud in an attempt to escape West. But it was no use. With a final, savage thrust, West yanked him free of the hole. The blinding light of his rifle-mounted light glared in King’s eyes.

“Where’s the mask?” he demanded but realised the answer immediately. He pulled the trigger and in a desperate move, King lunged at him. The gun barrel swung to the side and the bullets pounded into the wall as King threw West backwards. But West struck out with the heavy stock of his rifle and slammed it into the side of King’s head. With a searing bolt of agony, he dropped to the ground and was defenceless as West took aim on the centre of his skull.

The gun blast was deafening in the confined space but King watched as the bullet slammed into West’s shoulder, spinning the soldier around before he had a chance to fire.

Down the far end of the corridor stood a ghostly figure, a black silhouette illuminated only by a torch beam.

Raine.

West opened fire on fully automatic in Raine’s direction, the hailstorm of bullets racing down the corridor. Raine vanished, presumably diving for cover. King’s head swam and he felt nausea threaten to overcome him, the blow to the head harder than he had expected. He wanted to move, to help Raine but found that his body would not respond to his demands. All he could do was watch helplessly as West emptied his magazine then discarded his useless weapon.

Raine reappeared, firing his handgun but West dropped to the ground, seemingly oblivious to the bullet hole in his shoulder, and shimmied quickly into the hole where King had left the Moon Mask.

United Nations Headquarters,

New York City, USA

“Gibbs,”
Langley shouted into his satellite phone. The team leader’s voice came back, faint.

“Sir?”

“West isn’t coming back your way,” he explained urgently. “Get back above ground now.”

“He’s got to come this way. There’s no other way out.”

“Just do as I say,” he ordered, hanging up and dialling a different number immediately. He didn’t even let the young woman who answered finish her greeting. “I need to speak to the base commander immediately.”

“Captain Robertson isn’t available at-”

“This is Ambassador Alexander Langley calling from the U.N. Headquarters. Now, you find Captain Robertson, young lady, and you tell him that he has a Russian terrorist running about on his base. Then see if he’s available to take my call.”

“Uh . . . okay,”
was the feeble response. On the other end of the line he could hear rapid footsteps as the young officer ran off to find her C.O. Behind that, he could hear the thunder of jet engines as planes paraded through the sky to the delight of the spectators at the Air Day. The voice of a man giving a commentary over a loud speaker system cut through the drone of the airplanes and helicopters.

He looked at his computer screen again, feeling anxiety building. “Come on,” he pleaded quietly.

The schematics on the screen showed a network of wide sewage tunnels that had been built during Victorian times to service the seafaring towns littering the south Cornish coast. Five hundred feet below ground, it had been blocked off when the Royal Navy had built their base above it to prevent any ingress into the camp. But access could still be made into the system through manholes
inside
the base. And the main tunnel, Langley saw, passed very close to the chamber where Raine and King had found Kha’um’s treasure.

“This is Captain Robertson, C.O.,”
a flushed voice suddenly erupted over the phone, breaking into Langley’s thoughts.

“Captain,” Langley cut in. “Listen to me very carefully.”

Poldark Mine,

Cornwall, England

“Benny!”
Raine rushed to the fallen man’s side and helped him sit up. Blood dribbled from a nasty looking gash on his forehead, not dissimilar to the wound on Raine’s own skull. He had removed his smashed helmet in the treasure chamber and hurried after West despite the world spinning around him in sickening circles.

“You alive?” he enquired.

King squeezed his eyes tightly shut in an effort to focus, then opened them again. “I think so,” he replied.

“Good, ‘cause I’m gonna kill you,” Raine hissed angrily. “But first, let’s get that bastard.”

He spun around and dropped onto his belly to shimmy into the narrow chasm. He moved with far more speed and agility than King had managed to and was even able to gripe at him as he did so.

“I can’t believe you still don’t trust me,” he grumbled as he pulled himself out the other side and shone his torch around. West was nowhere in sight. Nor was the Moon Mask. “You must be the most paranoid man I know!”

He helped pull King out of the chasm and to his feet.

“What do you expect? Everyone keeps trying to kill me!”

“I’m not,” Raine said. “At least, not yet.” Then he broke into a sprint, dashing up the tunnel. The incline grew steeper and despite King’s fitness he had trouble keeping up with the military trained Raine. “Come on,” he called back.

“Just go, get the mask!” King shouted at him, knowing he was slowing him down. Raine didn’t need to be told twice. Somehow he managed to increase his speed further still and was soon way ahead of King. The mine tunnels widened slightly as they drew closer to the surface and then King noticed something bizarre. Ahead, the roughhewn, rock-cut tunnel wall on the left gave way to an orange brick-built structure. An old sewer, he guessed. A hole had been smashed through it, the old mortar crumbling easily under the assault of a sledge hammer that had been discarded nearby.

Raine vanished into the hole.

West
climbed the metal rungs of the ladder which stretched up from the Victorian sewer to ground level, the lead-lined rucksack strapped securely to his back. He heard running footsteps below and knew that Raine wasn’t far behind. The bastard didn’t know when to give up.

Then West reached the top of the ladder. He heaved on the modern day manhole cover and pushed it open just as Raine reached the bottom of the shaft and fired blindly up it. He missed and started climbing himself.

West hauled himself out of the shaft and rolled across the tarmac, the bright summer sun glaring. Four Royal Marines ran around the back of the aircraft hangar where the manhole was located. West swore, realising that if the marines had been scrambled then his treachery was out. In truth though, he had expected as much and had planned accordingly.

Just as the marines raised their weapons and were about to open fire, West fumbled with the detonator attached to his tac-vest. The pack of C4 which he had planted on the side of the hanger earlier exploded, showering the marines with shrapnel. Three of them went down, their bodies impaled with chunks of metal. West finished the fourth off with a gunshot to the head, from one of his comrade’s own weapons, then turned and bolted down between two more hangers towards the runway. On the other side of the runway, thousands of tourists still milled about the tents and food stalls or stood watching as the latest display of three planes came to an end and they touched down on the tarmac, their engines having masked the C4 explosion.

Behind him, Raine pushed out of the manhole and quickly took in the scene of devastation before setting off after his quarry.

United Nations Headquarters,

New York City, USA

“I
don’t understand,”
Robertson was saying, more to himself than to Langley over the sat phone.
“How does he hope to escape a naval base?”

Langley had just been pondering the exact same thing. It was one thing to use the sewers to access the mine and steal the Moon Mask, but those sewers were blocked off, according to the base commander, by steal-enforced concrete plugs, so the traitor would have to surface back into the base. Robertson had ordered marines to quickly lockdown every manhole cover in Culdrose, quickly but subtly. The last thing anyone wanted was a mass panic to send the crowds of spectators at the Air Day into a stampede which would undoubtedly cost lives. Nevertheless, the base
was
locked down. Public access into and out of Culdrose had been halted. Military Police and Royal Marines stepped up their perimeter patrols. There was no way West was getting out of there. Langley knew it. Robertson knew. But, puzzlingly, West knew it too.

All this processed through Langley’s mind in the exact same instant as he heard the commentator’s voice in the background.

“Our next display is a Sukhoi Su-30,”
the voice boomed to the crowd,
“being flown today by Captain Andrayvoz from the Russian Air Force.”

Langley felt the blood drain from his face while the voice in the background continued its commentary.

“Oh my god,” he whispered.

RNAS Culdrose,

Cornwall, England

West
was out on the runway, running full pelt down its length. The three planes raced past him, their engines almost deafening him but he ignored the pain in his head and the wound in his shoulder as he ran straight behind the three planes towards the Russian Sukhoi. Its canopy was still up even as the sleek, predatory prow came about on the runway, lining up for take-off.

“West!” Raine bellowed from behind. West stumbled and looked behind, dodging a bullet as Raine opened fire. The sudden commotion on the runway was noticed by many of the spectators and murmurs of alarm rippled through the crowds. The commentator smoothly covered the situation.

“Don’t worry folks. Just a little demonstration by two of our commandoes, warming up for our famous commando challenge a little later.”

Raine had read about the Commando Challenge in the Air Day programme he’d skimmed through earlier, where Royal Marines put on a display of their prowess in a mock assault, complete with pyrotechnics and loud bangs.

But Raine was getting a live preview.

West fired back blindly at him then drove ahead faster. The thumping of feet as dozens of marines converged upon the runway came from all around. West threw down his gun, as though the lack of its weight would increase his speed, and ran for all his might towards the waiting fighter. The pilot was waving at him to hurry up. The thrum of the plane’s engines reverberated through the tarmac.

West wasn’t acting alone, Raine realised. He was fully supported by the Russian government. He knew the reverberations of that treachery would vibrate much further than the runway.

West practically ran into the side of the idling Sukhoi and scrambled up the ladder into the cockpit, falling ungainly into the co-pilot seat. The pilot didn’t give him time to up-right himself. The plane lurched into motion, slowly at first, scattering the bewildered technicians who were gathered about it. West twisted in his seat and pulled on an oxygen mask as the canopy lowered itself with a hydraulic hiss.

Raine continued running down the runway, head-on with the deadly fighter jet just as its engines roared to life and it bounded with shocking speed down the runway towards him, covering the distance in the blink of an eye. Raine fired his last two remaining shots at the fuselage which rebounded harmlessly away and then he dived to the ground and rolled clear as the jet powered into the sky.

The audience erupted into enraptured applause as the Russian plane, and the Moon Mask, shrunk into the distance.

Raine didn’t waste a second. He jumped to his feet and ran into the crowd of gawking technicians. The marines swarmed around him and Raine knew he didn’t have time to explain the situation to them. He needed to get into the sky.

He searched around, looking from one parked fighter jet to another. One was being refuelled; another had its innards spilled out and was being worked on by mechanics. But a pilot was scrambling into the only plane which looked ready to fly immediately.

He ran to it, yanked the stunned pilot from the plane and scrambled up in his stead. There was a commotion as the marines, realising a second plane was about to be stolen, swarmed in from all sides. But the plane’s engines were already thrumming, having been warmed up ready for its return flight to its home base.

He worked the controls, feeling right at home instantly in the cockpit of the small plane. He strapped the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose then throttled up, driving the plane into the mass of marines which scrambled desperately out of his way.

He lowered the cockpit canopy then gunned the engines and felt the intense thrill of sudden acceleration as the Red Arrow shot down the runway and blasted into the sky.

But, despite the urgency of the situation, his vanity took over for just a second and he spun the Arrow into a barrel-roll. He pictured the delight and applause of the crowd far below as he tore through the sky in pursuit of the Moon Mask.

41:

A Call to Arms

United Nations Headquarters,

New York City, USA

“Where
the hell are they?” Langley demanded as he marched into the TOC beneath the Secretariat Building.

“NSA is repositioning a satellite over Europe to track them,” a voice shot out from the chaos that had erupted.

“General Rhodes from the Pentagon is on-line, Ambassador.”

“The only person I want to speak to right now is the Russian Ambassador,” Langley snapped.

“His office says he’s in a meeting and cannot be disturbed-”

“I don’t care if he’s in a meeting was the ghost of Tsar Nicholas the Second. I want him on the phone,
now.
”

RNAS Culdrose,

Cornwall, England

“What’s
going on?” Benjamin King demanded as two Royal Marines escorted him into the Operations Centre.