Gorgon

CHAPTER 29

Evening lengthened into night as the HAWCs jogged to the Psychro Caves. Franks ran beside Rogers, with Jackson a dozen paces behind them, and Sam and Alex the same distance out in front. A HAWC was trained to run all day and all night and still be fresh enough to enter a hand-to-hand combat scenario on arrival in a conflict zone. But they were all feeling the heat. Though the biological armored suits were lightweight, and the sun had gone down, the ground still gave off residual warmth.

The pace was hard, and Rogers blew air and wiped his brow. ‘Hot.’

‘Sure is.’ Franks looked across at him. ‘Lookin’ a little flushed there, Junior.’

Rogers grinned. ‘I’m the same age as you.’

‘Yeah, but I’ve been a HAWC for four years. You’ve been in for one. To me that makes you just one year old … Junior.’

The group pushed on, keeping in formation. They still had miles to go. The plan had been to commandeer a vehicle, but seeing they needed to keep a near-invisible profile they had to skirt towns and stay off major roads. The back roads were overgrown, dusty, and about as inhabited as Mars.

Rogers lowered his voice. ‘What do you think about this Magera thing? The boss said he heard it weeping.’

Franks snorted. ‘I’ll fucking make it weep all right.’

Rogers laughed. ‘I bet you will. Hey, you know that professor said it might be a living god.’

‘A god?’ She scoffed. ‘Let me tell you about the time I was in the Appalachians. I went up against something the Native Americans used to refer to as the god of the mountains.’

‘Let me guess. You killed it,’ Rogers said wearily.

Franks grinned. ‘Nah, it threw me off a cliff.’

Rogers laughed. ‘That still makes you the expert in my book.’ His face became serious. ‘This thing tore the Turkish Spec Ops guys in half — legs one way, guts and head the other.’

‘I read the briefing too,’ she said, her eyes bright. ‘That’s a good thing.’

‘Huh?’ Rogers frowned.

‘If it can do that, it has physical form. If it has physical form, we can inflict damage … and if we can damage it, we can fucking kill it.’

‘Yeah.’ He reached up a forearm to wipe his brow. ‘How much further?’

Franks looked at a small box strapped to the inside of her wrist. ‘Just eighteen to go.’

She saw that Sam and Alex in front were chatting as they ran at a speed that was almost a sprint for her shorter stride. As far as she was concerned the boss was back. She still thought that inside him there lurked something unspeakably violent, but she guessed there were demons running loose in all of them. He’d kept it together and under control in Italy, and he’d been ice cool ever since. But she doubted that cool would be maintained if he got in front of Uli Borshov. Good, she thought.

Franks smiled; she rated herself highly skilled in combat and warfare, even among the HAWCs. With the Arcadian back, and Sam in a full MECH suit, the super-soldiers bolstered their team. Look out, world, she thought.

Alex and Sam kicked up the pace another notch.

‘They aren’t even sweating,’ Rogers said.

‘Go and complain.’ Franks winked and lifted her stride.

He snorted, and increased his pace. ‘I’d rather die.’

Matt lay on the bed in the hotel room, arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. They’d given themselves a few hours off while they waited to meet up with Vangelis’ men at the cave. The room was cool, the sheets clean and pressed, and fatigue dragged on his frame. But still he couldn’t drift off. His mind kept whispering warnings, refusing to let him slip away.

Truth was, he was dreading going into the deep caves. The thought of swimming in inky water beneath mega-tons of rock made him want to throw up. His mind was dredging up memories of previous encounters with things from his worst nightmares — things that really existed. He’d accompanied a team of scientists and HAWCs to the Antarctic, where they’d gone down into the darkness beneath the ice. Of all the fifty on that mission, only three had returned: Matt, scientist Aimee Weir, and Alex Hunter. There were things down in that subterranean darkness that had torn at his sanity. He’d spent years working hard to push them into a secure part of his brain, imprisoned under a mental lock and key. He was rarely successful at keeping them there.

The doorbell buzzed, and he nearly leaped a foot into the air.

‘Matt.’ It was Reece Thompson. ‘Downstairs in ten.’

Matt tried to calm his rapid heartbeat and swung his legs over the side of the bed. ‘Got it, Reece.’

He stood, and rubbed his face hard. ‘In and out in a few hours — no problem,’ he told himself. ‘No problem at all.’

Fifteen minutes later, he exited the elevator and crossed the empty foyer to see Thompson standing outside in the humid night air. There was an enormous moon rising.

Thompson nodded and Matt returned the gesture. ‘Nice night for a swim.’

‘Or to blow some shit up,’ Thompson replied.

‘Let’s hope our friends get us the right explosives.’ Matt raised his eyebrows. ‘And they’re the real thing.’

Thompson grunted. ‘I’ll know if they’re real or not, don’t worry.’

Rebecca pushed through the doors and stretched. Her eyes were slightly puffy. ‘Couldn’t manage a cat nap — overtired, or overexcited, I guess.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Matt half-smiled. ‘Don’t worry, this’ll be fun.’

She looked at him like he’d just grown another head. ‘Fun … for who?’

His smile fell away, and he couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Well, if we find something that gives us a clue how to control Magera, and perhaps save lives, it’ll be worth it. Agreed?’

Rebecca bobbed her head once, and turned away.

‘Load ’em up, people,’ Thompson said. ‘It’s about an hour’s drive up to the plateau.’

The road soon gave way to a dirt track, and the Land Rover rocked and bounced along it, heading up the mountain. Vapor rose from the ground like ghosts between the pine trees.

The moonlight showed three big men standing beside a truck near the entrance to the main cave. The truck looked in worse condition than their Land Rover, Matt thought.

Thompson eased the Land Rover to a stop. ‘Welcoming committee’s already here.’

‘The birthplace of Zeus,’ Rebecca said, and stepped down.

Matt and Thompson followed, but Matt noticed the soldier kept the car door open between himself and Vangelis’ men, and his hand hovered near his gun. He quickly ran his eyes over the dark rocks bordering the cave, and the stands of pines rising around them, before returning to the men. Only then did he step out fully.

He nodded toward the men’s truck. ‘Where’s our equipment?’

Matt began to translate, but one of the men waved at him to stop. ‘We understand. That is why we are chosen to be here, to … help you.’ He smirked. ‘I am Antonis Papariga — call me Tony.’ He pointed to the large man on his left. ‘Petro.’ And then to the one at his right. ‘Andronus.’

Tony walked to the truck and dropped the backboard to reveal wetsuits, air tanks, goggles and flippers, knives, numerous lights, hammers and spike bars like long crowbars, shovels, and even some spear guns. There was also a heavy metal box with a yellow warning symbol on the front.

Tony flipped it open. ‘This was not easy to get so quickly.’

Thompson walked over and peered inside. Matt could see there were six packages the size of a large block of butter, twice as many as they’d requested, each wrapped in brown paper with Greek writing and more warning symbols. Thompson lifted a block, squeezed it slightly, and held it to his nose. He nodded, replaced it, and then lifted what looked like a capped silver pen.

He turned to Matt. ‘All good.’

Tony grinned and held his arms wide. ‘Mr. Vangelis hopes for a good return on his investment.‘ He unbuttoned the front of his shirt, opening it slightly to show a wetsuit underneath. ‘Now, you pay for equipment. Ten thousand euros.’

There were urgent words from behind him, and Tony nodded, then turned back to Matt. ‘For each of us.’

‘What?’ Matt spluttered.

Rebecca crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. ‘Why don’t we see what Mr. Vangelis says about this, hmm?’ She held up a slim phone, and started to press numbers.

Tony’s face went red, then he grinned and waved his hand. ‘No, no, do not call. I was only having big joke with you. We are ready when you are, Professor.’

Matt nodded. While the men unloaded the truck, he whispered to Rebecca, ‘You don’t really have his number, do you?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Nope … but they don’t know that.’ She leaned closer to him. ‘Should we wait for the HAWCs?’

Matt thought for a second or two, then shook his head. ‘The search could take hours, and they might be still miles away.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘Let’s make a start.’

Matt’s heart was racing. The night air surrounding them was warm, humid, and pine-scented, but he felt a depressing cold radiating from the blackness of the Psychro Cave. He detected a faint movement of air, and with it a whiff of rocks and moss and dampness. He shivered even though he wore a rubberized wetsuit.

Like Rebecca and Thompson, he had a backpack over his shoulders containing excavation equipment, climbing gear, and extra flashlight batteries. Thompson got to carry the explosives. Matt looked at their three Greek minders. All wore wetsuits over their sizable frames, and two had shoulder holsters. Matt wondered what they’d do with the guns when it came time to enter the water.

He pointed to Tony’s holster. ‘You know, a gun goes off down there, we could all be buried alive.’

Tony shrugged. ‘Then we hope we don’t need them.’ He nodded toward Thompson. ‘I think these peashooters are not as loud as your friend’s gun, huh?’ He winked, but Thompson ignored him.

‘They’re dangerous,’ Matt persisted.

‘And the fucking explosives — are they for redecorating?’ Tony said with a grin. He nodded toward the dark cave opening. ‘Do we go in or what?’

Rebecca narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about these guys,’ she whispered to Matt. ‘Once we get down there and show them anything of value, we may not get out again.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Matt gave her a crooked smile. ‘It’s not really them I’m worried about. There are far worse things in caves than thugs with guns.’

Thompson gave them the go-ahead, and Matt sighed. He switched on his headlamp and aimed his big flashlight into the stygian darkness. Behind a heavy metal gate, concrete steps with a railing led down into the dark.

‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here,’ he whispered.

Rebecca finished the quote. ‘Through me you pass into the city of woe. Through me you pass into eternal pain.’

Thompson groaned. ‘Is that supposed to be motivational? Because it’s not working.’

Matt smiled despite his fear. ‘Dante’s 700-year-old poem about Virgil’s travels to Hell.’

Thompson rolled his eyes. ‘Like I said, motivational.’

Tony went first, unlocking the gate and heading down the steps into the darkness. Fifty feet in, he stopped at a small metal box fixed to the wall with a large padlock at the bottom. He inserted another key, popping the padlock open, and lifted the lid of the box to expose rows of switches. One after the other he flipped them down. With a clanking sound and a hiss of sodium, lights began to shine overhead, behind stalagmites and stalactites, and from within smaller grottos, all illuminating a wonderland of different mineral colors.

Matt snorted. ‘You can see why earlier inhabitants thought this was a magical place.’

‘Brave little buggers, coming in here in the dark,’ Thompson observed as he looked around.

‘And nothing but ghosts for company,’ Rebecca said.

As they descended, the temperature seemed to drop a degree every dozen feet. The colored lighting gave the caverns a mystical feel, and signs on the walkway indicated the names the natural structures had been given: Hades’ Grotto, Zeus’ Throne, Titan’s Spear.

Matt pointed out a pathway worn into the stone along one of the walls. ‘Probably where Minoan feet trod thousands of years ago.’

After twenty minutes they came to an enormous central pit, with a lake another hundred or so feet below. The water was so still it could have been glass. There was a hoicking noise and then Petro let loose a gobbet of spit that sailed downwards.

Matt shook his head and cursed.

The blob struck the surface and created ripples on a lake that had probably lain undisturbed for over a century. The big man grinned, and was dragging up another gobbet when Thompson came up behind him and nudged him hard in the back.

‘Ach!’ Petro pulled back from the edge, looking panicked. He glared at the Englishman.

‘We’ve got to swim in there, you dumb bastard,’ Thompson said, his eyes daring the Greek.

Tony snorted, and smacked Petro over the back of the head. ‘Work first, play later.’

It took them another hour to reach the lowest level of the cave. At a nod from Thompson, Matt stepped over the guard rail and edged along a narrow slab of rock to the lake’s edge. Lights had been placed just at its surface to illuminate the shallows. The water was so clear that, unless you concentrated, it was hard to see where it started and the air stopped. He looked up and saw an alcove across the pool, with a portion of wall and a few fragments of paving tiles still embedded in the ground. Marble covered a flat rock that would have been a magnificent polished surface thousands of years before.

‘Hercules’ Table,’ Matt said. ‘This is where Professor Myres found many of the artifacts back in 1896 — axe heads, darts, and knives.’ Matt looked at Tony. ‘There were also gem-encrusted daggers, a golden chariot, and beautifully carved ivory figurines — all priceless.’

Tony grinned and nodded.

Matt adjusted the angle of his headlamp, shining it into the darker recesses of the cave. ‘The ancient Greeks, Minoans, and even the early Neolithic tribes, held festivals deep in these caves, usually heralding the change of the seasons, and when they wanted to bring fertility back to the earth. Gifts of gold, weaponry and, in many cases, virgins were thrown into cave pools and volcanoes. Dozens of skeletons of young woman were pulled from the silt of this pool alone.’

He pointed to the deeper center of the pool. ‘One story has it that the cave god of Crete was a mother goddess who rested upon hills of gold and gave birth each season to a son who was made of stone.’

Tony lit a cigarette. ‘Hills of gold, you say?’

‘Put that out,’ Rebecca said. ‘There’s a chance we could open a cave filled with methane. One spark and you’ll kill us all.’

Tony dragged hard on the cigarette, unmoved. Rebecca sighed and went and added her torch beam to Matt’s.

‘This is a good place to start,’ she said. ‘This cave flooded in the early 1800s after some dynamiting on the surface — it collapsed some of the deeper caves, and also allowed rain water to pour in during ensuing rainy seasons. The artifacts that Professor Myres found were believed to have washed out from smaller caves. We need to find out which ones.’

‘So, what are we looking for?’ Thompson was moving his light over the surface of the lake.

‘The earth leaves us clues,’ Matt said. ‘The rock formations down here grow incredibly slowly — about a third of an inch in ten years.’ He shone his light on an enormous column reaching from floor to ceiling. ‘That started off as a single drip of water loaded with calcium carbonate and other minerals. A stalactite forms on the ceiling, a stalagmite on the floor, and over hundreds of thousands of years they grow toward each other, touch and then combine. So we’re looking for new growths or scars on the rock, above and below water. Anything indicating fresh action that began in the last few hundred years.’ He turned to Thompson and pointed with his thumb at the lake. ‘And that means pool time, I’m afraid.’

He stood with Thompson, looking down into the water. It looked about two feet deep, but the clarity was deceptive — it could have been ten. Tumbled boulders were visible below the surface, with occasional snaggle-tooth islands lifting calcium carbonate and mineral spires toward corresponding stalactites on the cavern roof above. As they watched, a small sprat-type creature wriggled from one shard of stone to another.

‘There are things living in there,’ Thompson said.

Matt nodded. ‘Could be blind eels, blind fish, blind shrimp — you name it. Could be all kinds of things, but all blind.’

Thompson stepped into the water — up to his waist. Clouds of silt billowed around his ankles.

‘Try not to disturb the layer of slime and silt on the bottom, if possible. The water will end up like soup.’

Thompson nodded and lifted his feet, floating in the water. ‘It’s warmer than I expected.’

‘Really?’ Matt frowned and placed his hand into the water. ‘Hmm, might be thermal vents.’ He straightened. ‘Well, lucky you. Remember, you’re looking for rockfalls, scraped stone, tunnels below the surface, anything like that.’

Thompson pulled the mask over his face, gave Matt a thumbs-up, then rolled over. The small tank he wore only carried about twenty minutes of breathing time, so he used his snorkel, and the sound of his breathing through the tube was loud in the echoing cavern.

Matt went to supervise their three Greek minders, who were looking for treasure, while Rebecca edged along the waterline, bending now and then to examine small imperfections in the melted-candle-like cave formations.

After thirty minutes or so, the Greeks gave up their search and leaned against a metal guard rail, smoking and laughing. Reece Thompson had swum away into the darker recesses of the cave, his headlamp creating a glowing circle around him in the immaculate water. Matt and Rebecca were exploring different corners of the cave.

Matt found a small grotto and poked his head inside, noticing a glint of something pressed into the far wall. He leaned in further and extended his arm, straining toward it. Could it be? He couldn’t reach past some stalagmites that were like teeth in a bottom jaw, creating bars over the opening. He stared at them, trying to find an angle he could squeeze through.

Rebecca came and kneeled beside him. ‘Got something?’

‘Maybe … if I can work out how to get it.’

He eased in against one of the stone columns.

‘Oh, please,’ Rebecca said.

She grabbed the calcium carbonate pillars and tugged. One — as thick as an arm — broke off. Matt looked at her horrified.

She snorted. ‘What? We came down here to blow a hole in these caves if need be, remember?’

He grimaced, knowing she was right. ‘Thanks.’

He leaned in again, using his flashlight to extend his arm another foot to scrape at the object. It broke off and tumbled down the wall, rolling toward him. He grabbed it and turned it over, his excitement abating.

Rebecca crowded in close. ‘What is it?’

He held it out. ‘Pretty jewel for a pretty lady?’

It was a crystal pressed into some glittering pyrite, perfectly formed like the end of a large diamond.

She sighed. ‘Nice, but no cigar.’

In another half-hour they had exhausted all the obvious caves, nooks, and crannies. Most had been well and truly turned over by archeologists over the centuries.

Matt rested on his haunches as he sipped from his canteen. ‘We’re not looking at this right.’

Rebecca glanced around. ‘We should have expected that any new passages would be hidden. We could do with some stratigraphic sonars to penetrate the rock.’

‘Yep.’ He nodded slowly, staring toward the dark end of the cave where Thompson had disappeared. ‘I’m guessing it’s a bit late to ask Vangelis, so … let’s think laterally. Imagine we’re here a few thousands years ago, the only technology we have is burning torches. We’ve scaled down here in the darkness, using ropes and clambering along slippery walls. This place would be as scary as hell — in fact, a lot of early cultures thought these passages were a path to hell.’

She nodded, following his train of thought. ‘Go on.’

‘We know there were probably other paths into the cave, which have since collapsed or been flooded. We also know the early inhabitants of the island were good fishermen and not afraid of water. If you wanted to keep something hidden, or stay hidden yourself, the best place would be somewhere that’s difficult to get to …’ Matt shone his light toward Thompson, now a hundred feet away in the enormous lake. ‘When Reece entered the pool, he stirred up mud, and I immediately told him not to do that to keep the water clear. What if the clues we need to find are below the mud?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s possible — it’s the only thing left that makes sense.’

Matt waved their Greek minder over. ‘Tony, we need to search under the mud. Anything that might indicate another cave.’

Tony didn’t look keen. ‘Like what? A door handle or something?’ He frowned in confusion.

Matt shrugged. ‘At this point, just anything that shouldn’t be there naturally. We’re still looking for fresh gouges, or tumbled rocks, but man-made.’

Tony grunted in understanding, and turned, whistling sharply. ‘Petro, Andronus, in the water, now.’

A rapid-fire conversation in Greek took place for a few moments, with Tony raising his voice at his men. Eventually, with a lot of cursing and grumbling, the two Greeks pulled goggles down over their faces and sloshed into the water. There was no need to tell them not to worry about stirring up the mud. In a second, the water was like milky coffee.

Matt pointed to the lake, then half-bowed to Rebecca. ‘After you.’

She pulled her goggles down, put the snorkel in her mouth, switched on her headlamp and fell forward into the water.

Matt stayed standing, watching them paddle off in different directions. The once pristine pond now resembled a hotel swimming pool in summer. He chose a different direction to others, waded into the water and swam out.

All he could hear now was the sound of his breathing. Silt swirled around him, and even though the shallows were only a few feet deep, he had to feel his way along the bottom by hand, stopping from time to time to bring his flashlight in close to examine a raised surface or indentation. As he went deeper, the water cleared and he saw stalagmites rising up from the depths, like terracotta warriors standing guard in a sunken city.

Matt felt a chill run up his spine. He hated caves, hated the dark, and especially hated black water. He had witnessed men and women die horribly in caves. One man had been eaten from the inside out by a tiny carnivorous worm. Matt felt his groin contract at the thought of something swimming inside his wetsuit and into an open part of his body. He reached up and tugged the neck of his wetsuit tighter at his throat. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, he repeated over and over.

He trod water for a few seconds, pushed the snorkel away from his mouth, and lifted the scuba tank mouthpiece to his lips. He sucked the dry and metallic-tasting air into his lungs, then floated again, sighting down into the depths for a moment, before diving ten feet.

Deeper, the water felt even more ominous. His lights were the only illumination in a world of dark liquid. He could hear the faint splashing of his fellow searchers, but his breathing was louder, and there was a faint pounding in his ears caused by his racing heartbeat.

Matt allowed himself to drift lower into a depression in the lake floor. He paused to repressurize his ears, and found himself hanging weightless between a pair of stalagmites. The giant columns would have originally formed on the dry cave floor, but flooding had submerged them long ago. He swam toward a wall made of large boulders covered in mosses, with silt piled against one side. A school of tiny fish shot past him to disappear into cracks between the boulders. As he watched, he saw some strands of lichen bend as if in a breeze. Promising, he thought, and drifted lower.

He bent forward to sweep his hand over the silt, a layer about six inches thick. Immediately it clouded his vision. He brought his face closer, ignoring the sliminess of the particles, and ran his hand over the cave floor beneath the silt. It was smooth. It could be flowstone, or calcium carbonate that had run like melted wax over the eons — or it could be something more. He carefully pushed more of the sludge out of the way, wishing he had an industrial underwater vacuum cleaner that could have sucked up a ton of muck in minutes.

He brought his flashlight around. A glimpse of something white … He waved his hand in the water, trying to create a current to drag the silt away from where he was working. In another few seconds, he saw it again — the flash of white.

Matt felt his heartbeat kick up a gear, and he waved furiously at the water now, clearing more silt away. He could see tiles, small mosaics all fitted together, each no more than an inch square. They formed a structure, a floor. Other colors started to show too …

Matt turned, grabbed onto a column, and used his flippers to create a huge torrent that billowed the debris into huge clouds. His thighs burned, but he kept at it, eventually displaying a tiled section half a dozen feet wide — and long. He was wrong; it wasn’t a floor, but a path, and many of the newly exposed tiles were still vivid, protected by the oxygen-poor silt at the bottom of the deep pool.

A face showed at the center of the path. It didn’t belong to a dark-haired Minoan beauty, or a bull-jumping athlete with bronzed muscles and aquiline nose. Instead, it was something designed to strike fear, or perhaps awe, into whoever saw it: the screaming face of the Gorgon, with writhing hair and the red-slitted eyes of a snake.

Got you, Matt thought, as he let himself descend to the cave bottom.

He used his hands like a snowplow, following the edge of the path until it met the wall. A huge column rose from the floor, blocking his way, but he could see a light current moving around its sides. He guessed the wall had probably collapsed many years before the cave flooded, and the column had grown up over its entrance. He looked upward, following the column to where it breached the water’s surface — about ten feet around. Doing a quick calculation, he estimated the column to be about 5000 years old, which made the time scale right.

Matt let go of the column and drifted to the surface, immediately bumping his head on stone. The roof here was low; it was no wonder this end of the cave hadn’t been fully explored.

He dragged his mask from his face and spat out the mouthpiece. ‘Rebecca! Found it!’