Gorgon

CHAPTER 31

Carlo Vangelis blinked in the dark, and sat up. His huge bed was unruffled by his night’s sleep — he never tossed and turned, was never troubled by tics, twitches or dreams. But he was a light sleeper, a habit developed during his early life on the streets of Crete. If you didn’t want to die while sleeping rough or in a doss-house, you had to remain on guard. He looked around the room at the heavy antique furniture — a wardrobe, dressing table, desk, and the huge four-poster bed he slept in: French, 400 years old and weighing as much as a small car. He frowned, wondering what had woken him. Lingering underneath the familiar smell of sandalwood and expensive aftershave, he detected another odor. Unpleasant. He’d get the cleaners to have a look later in the day.

He glanced across at the clock — it was still too early to rise. He lay back down, and almost immediately a huge hand clamped over his mouth. The intruder had been behind him the entire time. He was pulled from the bed as if he weighed nothing, punched in the stomach, and thrown to the ground.

He lay there, the wind knocked out of him. A rival gang? he wondered. Where were his men?

He got on all fours, straining to drag in a breath. A hand grabbed his thick white hair and pulled him up, and up. A massive ogre was holding him like a marionette doll. The giant had one eye, a dark beard, and a face that spoke of a psychopathic attraction to pain. Vangelis knew that look — there would be no mercy from this man. He could only hope his men would hear his screams.

The voice was deep and Russian. ‘Your guards are all gone. I cut their throats.’

Vangelis felt his stomach drop. His survival instincts took over. ‘I have a safe with a lot of money in it.’

There was also a gun, hidden behind the cash.

The giant shook him by the hair, causing him to cry out.

‘Keep your money, Little Mafia Man. I only want one thing — where did you take American professor?’ A wicked-looking black blade appeared beside Vangelis’ face. ‘I only ask once.’

The knife tip dug into his cheek.

Matt led the others to the huge column rising from the floor of the cave to the ceiling twenty feet above. It, and its smaller siblings each side, formed a massive barrier across the mosaic path. He got down on his knees and used his hand to wipe away the remaining silt, exposing more of the tiles. The face appeared in all its horror — the screaming Gorgon with writhing hair and red snake eyes.

‘Pretty, isn’t she,’ Franks said as she looked at the vicious face. ‘Not even I’d go that.’

‘Gorgon,’ Matt said softly. ‘The word means “dreadful” in ancient Greek.’

Alex stared, transfixed. He knew this was the thing he’d encountered in the desert, but if he had seen it, he’d now be nothing but a crumbling block of stone among the sand. At the time, he had felt the anger and loneliness of something that didn’t fit in or even belong among us. Perhaps he knew a little of what that was like.

Rebecca stared. ‘I still can’t believe it’s real.’

‘Well, we’re here to see what we can do to put it back to sleep,’ Alex said. He examined the huge column, then looked up. He shook his head. ‘If we knock this down, it could pull the whole roof down on top of us.’ He backed up. ‘Maybe if we knock out a few of the smaller ones, we might be able to squeeze though. It’ll be a tight fit, but we can do it.’

Sam rubbed his head. ‘Just how tight a fit?’

Alex looked at him, and grinned. ‘Suck it in, big guy.’

It took only twenty minutes to dig out one of the small stalagmites, and chip away some of the central column to create a three-foot-wide hole. Matt and Rebecca were first through, followed by Casey Franks, then the two SAS soldiers.

Alex, Sam, Ben Rogers, and the three Greeks remained on the other side.

Tony saluted, still grinning, but nervously. ‘No hard feelings.’ He edged back to the guard rail.

Alex grabbed him and pushed him toward the hole. ‘You’re coming too. Your men can stay here on guard duty.’ Alex glared at them. ‘Got it?’

They refused to look at him, so he lifted Tony with one hand and shook him. ‘Got it?’ His voice boomed around the cave.

Both nodded vigorously.

Sam growled, ‘Be here when we come back … or else.’

They nodded again. Alex pushed Tony toward the hole and he clambered through, cursing softly.

Alex turned to Ben Rogers. ‘We need the back door kept open. Don’t want these two thinking they can try out some dopey ambush when we come back.’ He looked back toward the surface, many hundred feet overhead, then added, lowering his voice, ‘And keep an eye on the peep — we’re still expecting company.’

Rogers smiled. ‘I’ll keep our friends out of trouble and watch the surface. Door will be open when you get back, boss. Good luck.’

Sam pulled his huge body and the MECH suit’s steel framework through the hole, scraping away a lot more of the stone. Alex turned to give Rogers a thumbs-up, and followed Sam through.

At the cave entrance, Borshov’s Spetsnaz took up positions either side of the gate, staying well back. Borshov crouched, a single lens to his eye.

‘Camera, on top of cave,’ he said.

One of his men lifted his AK-12 to his eye. The black assault rifle was a significantly enhanced Kalashnikov-series weapon, and in the agent’s hands deadly accurate. The rifle spat once and the small camera exploded into shards.

‘Quick now,’ Borshov ordered.

He knew the speed with which the device had been destroyed would make the operator think it had malfunctioned. But if he came to check, they needed to make first contact.

Borshov and his men sprinted into the cave, Borshov’s feet pounding heavily under the extra weight of the MECH suit.

Matt was first to the wall, laying his hands against it. This section of the tunnel was roughly fifteen feet wide and just as long, stopping at the perfectly smooth wall of flowstone. It glistened, and when Matt held his light up to it, he could just make out more depth beyond the natural barrier — there was something behind it.

‘Probably created long before the water filled the pool,’ Rebecca said. ‘It’s a flowing shelf of limestone that’s dripped down over the entrance and literally sealed it closed.’ She walked backward, looking along its top and sides. ‘Might be a foot thick — but that’s not too bad as calcium carbonate is fairly soft.’ She turned to Alex and raised her eyebrows. ‘Can you dig through it?’

‘Hey.’ Casey Franks moved her boot sideways along the floor. ‘More of those picture tiles on the ground here.’

The team crowded around her, shining their torches on the small tiled pathway. As they brushed aside the silt, more images were revealed — flames, huge urns filled with coins, other unidentifiable objects. Matt frowned, wishing he’d brought a camera. When he saw a huge beast the size of an ox, with three horned heads, holding the body of a man in one of its slavering jaws, he recognized it immediately.

‘Cerberus,’ he said.

Sam whistled. ‘That is one damned mother of a dog.’

‘Damned is right,’ Matt said. ‘Cerberus was the protector of Hades.’

He pushed away more of the silt, showing the creature’s monstrous muscled body covered with what looked like scales, multiple legs, and a reptilian tail.

‘Wasn’t real, was it?’ Franks asked, splashing water from her canteen over its head, clarifying the face and jaws.

‘No, but neither is Magera, right?’ Matt said slowly. He pointed. ‘Look at the horns. What other horned beast do we know of that was supposed to live in a cave?’

‘The Minotaur,’ Sam said. ‘This is gonna be fun.’

‘If it ever did exist, it’ll be dust now,’ Jackson said.

Alex was examining the wall that blocked their path. ‘Magera somehow reformed when it was released from its prison after eons, and survived thermobaric grenades and hundreds of armor-piercing rounds.’ He half-turned. ‘Franks, get me the spike we left outside.’

‘On it.’ Franks disappeared back through the hole.

Rebecca kneeled and laid her hand on one of the snarling faces. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said about Magera melting away in the sunlight,’ she told Alex. ‘This thing — it doesn’t seem to be made the same way we are, out of trillions of cells, each with its own function and purpose.’

Franks returned and handed Alex the long spike. He nodded to her, but leaned on the spike, listening to the scientist.

Rebecca stood, wiping her hands on her thighs. ‘New research has shown that some insects follow the same biological rules as individual creatures — which makes their colonies more like a super-organism. Ants, bees, termites, wasps — their controlled interactions are like cells working together in a single body.’ She folded her arms, her eyes focused inward as she thought through what she was saying. ‘So imagine this Magera thing is made up of cells, just like us, but each cell is more than just a self-functioning amino acid factory, and more like this super-organism entity. What if Magera’s cells are capable of taking care of themselves individually, but work together as a whole when it suits?’

Alex shook his head. ‘I got the impression of a single entity. And it was solid, powerful.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘Maybe the single-entity shape is its usual formation. Each of our cells contains all the information needed to create another one of us, but Magera’s cells might go a step further, in that they’re a multi-celled organism acting as a collective.’

Sam exhaled loudly. ‘So is it one creature, or an army of millions?’

Rebecca shrugged. ‘I’m just guessing here. But we might know soon, if we can get through there.’ She pointed to the wall.

Alex grunted. ‘Right about now, everything helps, even good guesses.’ He lifted the spike. ‘Make room, people — time to see where Magera came from.’

He jammed the spike into the wall, once, twice, and then again, before punching through. Gas escaped through the hole, making everyone back away. Rebecca gagged.

‘Don’t breathe it in,’ Matt said behind his hand. ‘It was airtight.’

He put his entire arm across his face and backed up further, pulling the still-coughing Rebecca with him.

Alex held his breath and stepped in close, shining a light into the three-inch hole he had made.

‘Clear,’ he said, turning his head away and sucking in a deep breath. ‘The stone must have flowed over it completely, like a wax seal on a bottle. Upside is, it’ll be dry inside … and anything in there should be preserved.’

‘That’s an upside?’ Sam said and snorted.

Alex turned back and sniffed. ‘It’s stale, not toxic. Can’t detect any explosive gases. But it smells … strange.’ He sniffed some more. ‘Kind of … primordial.’

Tony’s nose wrinkled. ‘Smells like a freakin’ zoo.’ He shone his flashlight into the small hole. ‘Nobody home — that’s a good thing.’

‘Let’s go take a look,’ Alex said. He motioned Tony away, then jammed the spike into the hole again and again, working it in a circle to make it man-sized. He turned to Matt. ‘After you.’

Matt lifted his flashlight to the hole. His hand shook slightly, making the beam wobble. Part of him, the curious, adventurous, and scientific part, wanted to dive through and hurtle like a bloodhound into the mysterious cave, seeking answers to age-old questions of myth, religion, and strange creatures. But the other part, the experienced part, wanted to flee back to the surface, back to the safety of sunlight and fresh air — that was the part that had been in caves before, and that was the part that had seen what can exist below the earth’s fragile outer skin.

He sucked in a deep breath. The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see — thanks Winston, he thought, as he steadied himself.

Matt stepped through.