Land of the Gods

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lea tensed as she heard Lim stepping through the grass behind her. Somewhere beyond him she now heard Razak give the kill order from over at the tents, his voice echoing in the steaming canopy ahead of her. She knew what she had to do — they all did. She dived into the long grass and rolled to the tree line as fast as she could.

Lim and Rafizi fired their weapons at her, unleashing strange neon-blue crossbow bolts in their direction as they raced to the trees.

Lea got there first, just managing to dive to the ground in time as one of the bolts raced over her head and flashed past her. She rolled in the undergrowth as the bolt twisted in the air like a heat-seeking missile and turned to find her once again.

Speeding toward her and aimed directly for her heart, she lifted the thick piece of bark to her chest at the last second and the bolt rammed into it. She gasped in fear as the lethal projectile’s razor-sharp tip tore a hole through the bark and poked out the other side before stopping half an inch from her chest.

He heart thumped as she dropped the bark to the ground and tucked herself down behind one of the oil palms. To her right, Lexi was trying to dodge another of the bolts by diving behind the trunk of a kempasa tree. Beyond, in the clearing, Lim and Rafizi were reloading their weapons and firing on them again.

“We’ve got to take them out!” Lexi said.

“No shit, Sherlock!” Ryan called over.

Zeke wiped the sweat from his brow. “But how?”

Another bolt tore past Lea’s hiding place and burned a hole through a nearby trunk, and then another so close it scorched her cheek before burying itself in the undergrowth behind her head. She gasped and dived into the dirt as the rest of the ECHO team scattered in the jungle. Wiping blood from her cheek, she scanned the immediate area of the jungle for any sign of Lim and Rafizi or any other of Razak’s men.

Zeke dived through the air to avoid one of the neon bolts and slammed down next to her.

“Holy shit!” he yelled. “I thought that Razak son of a bitch was all hat and no cattle but when he said execute us he really meant it!”

“Where the hell is Joe?” Lea asked.

“I don’t know,” Zeke said. “But I think I see Razak — is that a river?”

She saw it now, running further north. “I think so.”

“Well, that asshole Razak’s right over there by the river. He’s holding one of those crazy crossbows.”

“But I still can’t see Joe,” she said. “I hope he’s not wounded.”

A bolt flashed over their heads and ripped a path through the jungle to their east. Leaving a scorched trail of blackened undergrowth in its wake, it exploded a few hundred meters away. In response, they heard what sounded like Nikolai and Scarlet screaming.

“This is getting out of control!” Lea said.

Zeke scrambled to his feet and clamped a heavy hand on Lea’s shoulder. “I’m going to take that son of a bitch out!”

“No!” she called back.

It was too late. She watched the Texan tank commander vanish into the undergrowth, its broad green leaves and slender tendrils closing back up again as if it had swallowed him alive. “Dammit!”

Ezekiel Jones pounded through the jungle like a leopard. Spying Razak ahead of him, he leapt onto another fallen trunk to gain some elevation and sprinted along it until he was exactly behind and above him. The Malaysian hadn’t noticed him. He was too engrossed in aiming his crossbow bolt at Hawke and some of the others taking cover on the south bank of the rushing river.

Zeke launched himself from the trunk and slammed down onto Razak’s back, pulling him down to the ground and piling a heavy-duty punch into the back of his head.

Razak went out like a light, giving Zeke time to take the ring from his hand and snatch up his crossbow. As he turned, Lea was now standing at the edge of the small clearing.

“You got the ring!”

“Here,” he said, tossing it over to her. “Means jack shit to me.” Hefting the crossbow in his hands, he grinned. “This baby on the other hand is mine all mine.”

“You see Joe yet?” Lea’s heart was full of hope.

“Sure did — he’s over on the riverbank up there with Ryan. Looks like the others are making their way toward them.”

They heard a scream echoing in the canopy. Instinctively, Lea slipped the ring into her pocket and looked over to Zeke. “That sounded like Lex. We have to help her.”

“Where did it come from?” Zeke asked.

“Over there, by the river. This is chaos!”

They ran north until reaching the river bank, just in time to see Lexi bobbing up and down in the rapids. She was calling out for help but struggling to keep her head out of the rushing water.

Lea gasped. “Oh my God!”

“There’s a man on the bank firing at her. I think it’s Rafizi.”

“And there’s Joe and the others!” Lea said, pointing further along the river.

“They’re further along than when I saw them.” Zeke lifted the crossbow and aimed at the Rafizi. “Here goes nothing!”

He fired the ancient weapon, gripping it hard as the air flashed with static and blue lightning. He winced and shielded his eyes as the bolt ripped out into the humid air and raced after its target. “Godspeed, you little bastard!”

Rafizi saw it, and his eyes opened wide with terror as he tried to sprint into the jungle. The crossbow bolt reacted instantly, bending in the air like a biased bowl and lining up behind the fleeing man. A second later it tore through his back and burst out of his chest, exploding his heart and sending him crashing to the ground amid a scream of terrified agony.

“This is like the goddam Predator movie!” Lea said.

Up ahead, Hawke and the others were diving into the river.

“What the hell are they doing?”

Then they heard the gunshots.

“There’s more goons coming, Lea, and it sounds like they’re armed with regular weapons,” Zeke said. “They jumped in to get away and I think we should do the same — besides, Lexi’s in there!”

Lea knew they had no choice and gave a reluctant nod. She wasn’t going to lose Joe Hawke in the middle of the Malaysian jungle. “Let’s do it, Ezekiel!”

A bolt flashed over their heads, and then the chatter of submachine gunfire. “It’s Zeke to my friends!”

They jumped in and crashed into the water, instantly being dragged by the current into the center of the river. Thrown about like a pathetic straw doll, Lea worked hard to keep her head above the surface as she strained to breathe. Zeke was gone and no one else was in sight either. Only the screams of her friends reassured her that she was not completely alone as the mighty power of the river swept her toward the rushing rapids up ahead.

And then she saw it.

She was about to go over the top of a waterfall.

Hawke was no stranger to long runs with a heavy pack. It was such a central fact of life in the Royal Marines Commandos that it even had its own slang name — yomping. The dreaded yomp was a long-distance forced-march with full kit on your back The most famous yomp being when the Commandos landed at San Carlos in the Falkland Islands and proceeded to march nearly sixty miles in just three days, loaded down with packed bergens, weapons and ammo.

With every pace he pounded out along the side of the riverbank he thought about his days in the marines and what he had gone through to win the coveted green beret. Legs pumped up and down and his breathing hardened as he looked around for his friends. Ryan to the left and Lexi somewhere behind. Scarlet and Nikolai were to the right, but further away. All of them had been flushed out of the jungle and toward the river, but there was still no sign of Lea or Zeke, and Reaper was AWOL too.

“Into the water!” he yelled. “It’s out only chance!”

He launched into a racing dive position and flew through the air, neon bolts tracing inches above him as he cut through the surface of the river like a hot knife through butter. Spinning around in an explosion of bubbles, he swam to the surface just in time to see the last of his team crashing into the water, including Reaper. Already carried at speed away from the river bank by the current, Razak’s goons were rapidly being left behind, and then he saw Lea and Zeke further behind.

Ryan called out from up ahead.

Hawke fought to keep his head above the rushing water. “Say again?”

“Waterfall!”

Then Hawke saw it. They were speedily approaching what looked like some heavy duty falls, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

By the time she reached the overhang, Lea realized she was the last of her friends to go over the edge. With froth and water in her eyes and ears and the deafening noise of the rushing water raging all around her, she gulped a deep breath of air and held on for her life.

Sliding over the edge was painless, but now came the hard part. She felt her stomach floating up inside as she tumbled through the saturated air. How high were the falls? How long would she fall? She had no answers, and clamped her eyes shut to pray for her survival.

When she hit the bottom, she was sucked down into the plunge basin at the bottom of the waterfall. More froth and bubbles and confusion. She almost passed out. Was that someone’s leg kicking in front of her face? The cascading water crashed around her as she struggled to work out which way was up and swim to the surface. When she finally got there, she saw the rest of her team crawling over wet rocks to reach the riverbank.

Exhausted and frightened, she followed suit and swam across the plunge pool where a relieved Hawke helped her out of the water and pulled her up into his arms. “Late again, Donovan.”

“I sure earnt my pay on this mission!”

“Time to get moving, non?” Reaper said.

They marched for another hour through the jungle before they were certain that Razak and his men were no longer pursuing them. Reaching another clearing and with the weakest of signals, Lea set her iPhone to speakerphone and set it on top of a fallen tree trunk and put a call through to Richard Eden. As they grouped around it, she increased the volume so they could hear his voice above the raging cicadas.

“Go ahead, Rich,” she said. “You’re on speaker.”

“I have determined the location of another ring.”

The team reacted with joy. “Just as well,” Ryan said. “My copy of the Codex is what you might call water damaged.”

“I won’t ask,” Eden said.

“Where do we go?” Lea asked.

“Tokyo.”

Hawke caught Lea’s eye. “Tokyo?”

“The Ring of Cyrus the Great is in the possession of a family of treasure hunters.”

“How I hate treasure hunters,” Scarlet said. “They’re always so greedy.”

Ryan furrowed his brow. “Is she being sarcastic or not?”

“I have spoken with the treasure hunter’s daughter. She says it’s a sad story, but she may be able to help us with the ring, and there’s more,” Eden said.

“Let us have it,” Hawke said.

“I’ve had some intel from MI6 that the Oracle has sent a large number of Athanatoi to Hawaii.”

“Funny time for a surfing holiday,” Ryan said.

“It’s no surfing holiday, Mr Bale. We’re looking into it and so far, it seems the intel is good. At least two dozen heavily armed men took off from Athens a few minutes ago in a private plane registered to a holding company linked to Otmar Wolff. The flight plan has it stopping in Anchorage.”

Ryan scrunched up his nose. “Eh? Now he’s surfing in Alaska?”

Scarlet sighed. “It’s a refueling stop, Dumble.”

“Ah.”

“From there it’s due to land at Honolulu and onto a property owned by a man named McKenna. I think it’s safe to assume this is a serious move by the Oracle to secure one of the rings. He has a copy of the Codex and is more than capable of translating it.”

Lexi said. “We’ve known right from the start that this was going to be a race and the idea we’d just get all the rings one by one was like Ryan’s haircut.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ridiculous,” she said deadpan.

Hawke laughed. “Not only do we now have two of the rings already, but we also have all the idols. It’s a great start and we’re winning, but we can’t afford to give the Oracle even an inch or he’ll destroy us. We’re going to need to split the team. Lea, Reap and Kolya come with me to Hawaii and Cairo takes Ryan, Lexi and Zeke to Tokyo.”

“And what about getting out of here?” Lexi said.

Eden’s voice crackled over the tiny speaker. “A chopper from the Royal Malaysian Air Force is already tracking the GPS signal on this phone. If the battery fails, stay where you are or they’ll never find you.”

“Great stuff.” Hawke slapped his hands together. “All set?”

“All set, locked and loaded, darling.”