Land of the Gods

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

After receiving the coordinates from Alex, the team had flown north in a private helicopter arranged by Sir Richard Eden. Their crossing of the Iraqi deserts was uneventful and some even managed more sleep until they finally reached the Iranian border. Dawn was still hours way, and they landed on some flat scrub south of the foothills before setting up a makeshift camp and waiting for their rendezvous.

Zeke took the night vision monocular and tracked the passage of the two Land Rovers winding along the mountain roads to their west. “I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut that’s gotta be him. What do you think?”

He passed Hawke the compact optic and the Englishman took another look. “I’d say so, yeah.”

“Good,” Scarlet said. “Because there’s fuck all else out here.”

“How long do you think it took him to get here?” Lexi asked.

“Not long,” Lea said. “He’s only driving over from Mosul.”

“It’s definitely him,” muttered Hawke. “Look at the bloody awful driving. That’s him all right, and he managed to get a second vehicle as well. Good lad.”

They watched the two Discoveries wind their way through the winding roads of the foothills, behind them the mighty snow-capped Zagros mountains stretched up into the night sky like jagged razors. Hawke walked back to the area of flat ground where Eden’s helicopter had dropped them moments earlier and gave the pilot the signal to leave. It rose into the night and turns south, its rotors no more than a faint beating sound cutting into the otherwise silent Iraqi night.

“They’ll be here within the hour,” Hawke said. “Everyone take some time out.”

Hawke and Lea strolled along one of the goat tracks, their faces lit steel blue in the pale light of the desert moon. A breeze blew through the gulley below them, raising the fragrant scent of myrtle, scrub oak and pistachio into the air.

Hawke turned to her. “How are you doing?”

She tipped her head. “I’m okay, all things considered. For me this is about closure, and finding what my father wanted to find, but never did.”

He nodded. “I know. Just don’t be disappointed if we don’t find it, or if we do but it’s not what you expect. There are no guarantees in this world.”

She looked back at the rest of their crew, gathered in the darkness waiting for the ride to what they all hoped and prayed would be their final destination. Scarlet, a woman running from ghosts as she chased illusions. Lexi, the quiet one with a locked heart full of dangerous secrets. Vincent “Reaper” Reno, the lost soul who drifted out of the French Foreign Legion and into ECHO, and who lived for his twin boys. Zeke and Nikolai were fitting in, even if the Russian was a little quiet. Only Ryan was missing, snatched from Mokrani’s by the Athanatoi so they could use his mind. If any of them survived this mission, she knew they would be a very different team forever.

“Hey!” Zeke called out. “They’re here.”

She watched as the two Discoveries turned a hairpin bend to the north and pulled off the sealed road, crunching on the gravel as they parked up beside the team.

“Let’s go and see how the old bastard’s doing,” Hawke said.

They walked back down the track. By the time they reached the group, Hawke’s old friend was already out of the Land Rover and dragging on a Turkish cigarette. Ali al-Majid blew the smoke up to the full moon. “It’s good to see you again, Joe. How long has it been?”

“Too long, old friend. All good?”

He shrugged. “Life has its ins and outs, you know.”

“Ups and downs,” Zeke said.

Ali looked from Zeke to Hawke. “Who the hell is this?”

“Meet Ezekiel Jones — one of our newest friends, and this is Professor Qasim al-Hashimi, our archaeological consultant.”

Ali held out a hand. “I’m pleased to meet you. Ali is pleased to meet all of you. As Joe says, it’s been a long time.” The other man climbed out of the second Discovery. “And this is my brother Mohamed.”

They shook hands. Hawke said, “How’s Abiha?”

“She went to university in America. Now I only get a telephone once a month. She forgets about her old man.”

Scarlet wandered over, cigarette hanging off her lower lip. “Fuck me, it really is you, Ali.”

“Cairo Sloane! How long has it been?”

“Not long enough, you old fleabag.”

They laughed and hugged. Ali took her by the shoulders and fixed his eyes on her. “I trust all is well in your life?”

“My life is the basket-case it has always been. What about yours?”

“Same old same old.”

“Still hustling the markets of Mosul?”

A broad grin broke out on his face. “And what else would I be doing?”

He flicked his cigarette into the gravel and crushed it under his boot. “These vehicles are big enough for all of us and your weapons, and…”

Zeke said, “And it’s such a shit heap it has the added benefit of drawing zero suspicion to itself?”

Even Nikolai smirked.

Ali shrugged. “I was going to say that they’re yours for as long as you want them. The owner is in Iran on business and will not report their disappearance for at least a week, if you know what I mean.”

Zeke looked at the rusted panels and cracked windows. “Right, thanks.”

Ali swung open one of the rear doors. “And there is this much storage in the other one as well — easily enough for the equipment I see here.”

“Excellent work, Ali,” Hawke said, heaving one of the ammo bags up into the back. The others slowly loaded the gear into the Land Rovers, working silently in the moonlight while Hawke and Ali wondered over to the cliff edge and looked down at the scrubby valley to the west.

“How long to the destination?” Hawke asked.

“As the crow flies, three hours, but the Zagros Mountains are a treacherous place. Winding roads, hairpin bends, avalanches… you call it.”

“You name it.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Either way, old friend, the journey will go through the rest of night and that’s supposing we don’t come under attack from these people you talked about.”

Hawke let the words drift into the valley. “Thanks for coming out tonight, Ali. Even when I told you how dangerous this could be, you never hesitated.”

“For an old friend like you? Ali would do anything. You saved my life.”

“And you mine. You don’t owe me anything, but I would love to see these rings. They sound like something from another world.”

“They are,” Lea said. “In a manner of speaking.”

Ali’s brother walked over and the two men waited expectantly to see the ancient rings of the god-kings.

Lea handed them over to Ali and they studied them in the moonlight as the rest of the team packed the rest of their gear into the backs of the two Discoveries. When they were ready to go, he passed them back to her with a goofy grin on his face. “I have stolen many things in my time, but never have I seen such objects of beauty as these. To think they once adorned the hands of the gods is beyond my comprehension. Now I know why you must find this place! If it filled with treasures like this, I cannot wait to get there!”

“Then lead on, mate,” Hawke said. “You’re the only one who knows how to get there, after all.”

They drove through the night, drifting in and out of exhausted, troubled sleep as Ali wound them deeper and deeper into the Zagros Mountains. Desolation met them every time they looked out of the windows. Thickets of brush, wormwood, more scrub oak and kunar trees, and here and there an ibex in a ravine or a startled gazelle.

As they gained elevation and left the steppe behind, thornbushes and juniper trees thinned out to be replaced by acacia and dwarf palms scattered in the dunes. It was an alien landscape, bleak and uninviting and they all felt a sense of dread as Ali drove them further into its desiccated heart.

An hour after sunrise, they pulled off the unsealed track and Ali killed the engine. “This is the closest I can get to the location you gave me. The ground is too rocky for an airstrip, and we’re too high for any helicopter to hover. It’s on foot from now on, my friends.”

The team checked their weapons and followed Ali into the shade of the oak and pistachio trees above the narrow winding goat track. “This is the best way if we wish to go up the mountain.”

The march through the mountains was hot and hard and Hawke wondered how Ryan was bearing up over in the Oracle’s party. He had trimmed up a lot since they had first met and he was tougher now, but he was without any formal military training, never mind the Special Forces fitness levels some of them could muster. He guessed he might be struggling, and Lexi was slowing down too. He kept it to himself, but even he was starting to get tired.

When he saw a sheltered gully, he knew what everyone wanted to hear. “We can take a break here.”

“Thank God!”

Even Ali and Mohamed looked relieved, but Reaper was a different story. His energy was sometimes shocking to behold, and now he sprang up over the final rocks like a mountain goat and jumped down into the narrow gully. Taking it all in he gave a nod of approval and then lowered his pack to the ground. “This is a good place,” he said. “We should be able to rest here. I think we can even disguise a fire in these walls, at least enough to hide most of the smoke.”

“Great minds think alike,” Lea said.

Zeke chuckled. “And fools never differ, sweetheart.”

“That’s why I chose it.” Hawke started to gather the dead wood they had collected on the way and began building up a fire for later. “We stay here until we’ve recovered and then we move on again. We know the Oracle and his Athanatoi are in the area. We can’t afford to go into this battle knackered, right?”

Lea cracked open one of the cans of food. “Too bloody right. We didn’t come this far to get killed in the final bloody act, Josiah. We have a family to start.”

Hawke gave her a startled look.

“Not now ya eejit. When we get home. When all this is over.”

Hawke heard her loud and clear. The blood-soaked hopes and dreams they had lived with for so long were coming to an end, and perhaps sooner than he thought. When he turned the next corner on the track, he was shocked by what he saw.

A vast valley cut between two razorback mountains, littered with boulders and scree stretching away from them until fading out in a heat haze.

“Welcome to the Land of the Gods,” Ali said, strolling over to the edge of the path and widening his arms to emphasize the enormous scale of the place.

Hawke reached out and grabbed his arm. “Get down!”

“Why?” Ali said.

“Yes, what is it?” Lea said, rushing over to him.

“Je vois!” Reaper whispered.

Hawke pointed across the final gully at a freshly blown hole in the mountain. A group of people were standing around it holding maps and compasses and weapons. The Oracle was clear to see in his broad-rimmed sun hat, and so were his Athanatoi lieutenants. Standing close to Wolff, one of them was holding a gun to Ryan’s head.

“Looks like they beat us to it,” Hawke said. “How the hell did they know this location?”

“I don’t get it,” Scarlet said. “They only have one ring — not even Ryan could decipher the Citadel’s location from one of the rings. It took everything Alex had to work it out from the other seven.”

Hawke frowned. “However they did it, they did it fast and they got here first.”

Reaper scanned the gully with his binoculars. “Look over there, to the east.”

“What is it?” Lexi asked.

“An Osprey.”

Nikolai frowned. “A bird?”

“No, a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey.” Hawke took the binoculars from the Frenchman and studied the chopper. “It’s a very powerful, multi-mission Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft.”

“I thought Ali said no chopper could hover up at this altitude?” Lexi said.

“He’s right,” Hawke said, “but this is no chopper. They were recently upgraded to be able to operate at much higher altitude, including this one. At least we know how they got here so much faster than us, but the real question is where did they get it from?”

“What do you mean?” Nikolai asked.

“There are only around two hundred of them in service and as far as I know they’re all with the US military.”

“The Oracle has very high contacts,” Nikolai said.

“But still…”

“I still want to know how he got the location,” Lea said.

Nikolai pulled up the hood on his jacket. “Do not put anything past the Oracle,” he growled. “He is capable of committing any evil to get what he wants.”

“I can back that up,” Zeke said. “Son of a bitch treated me like an animal in that damned dungeon. When I get my hands on him he’s going to be one sorry bastard.”

“We have to get to him first,” Hawke said.

Lea linked her arm through his. “At least Ryan is still alive!”

Hawke nodded and watched as one of the monks dragged Ryan closer to the hole they had blown in the mountainside. “They’re going in, everyone. Let’s get moving — we haven’t got a second to waste.”