Raiders

CHAPTER FIFTY

Kiya raised her gun but before she could fire, Eva threw a fistful of sand in her eyes, temporarily blinding her. The Bride cried out and took a step back, instinctively dropping her weapon in order to raise her hands to her eyes and rub the sand out.

Kranz also took a step back, his eyes swivelling down to Kiya’s gun on the sandy floor of the tomb.

Mason saw it too, and snatched it up, firing at the cultists seconds before launching himself into a forward roll and tumbling behind Cleopatra’s tomb. The other Raiders took cover as Mason fired again, this time on the fleeing figure of Schelto Kranz.

Striking him in the arm, Kranz released the Book of Thoth and clutched his wound as he staggered to the safety of the chamber at the top of the steps. Kiya was a step behind him, still struggling to see through her sand-streaked, red eyes.

“Tekin! Finish them! And retrieve the Book of Spells!”

Tekin ordered the soldiers to open fire, and they did so with a vengeance as they gradually advanced toward the book.

Returning fire on the soldiers, the Raiders cut down several and drove the rest to seek cover before any others were slaughtered.

“Fuck! They’ve got grenades!” Ella cried out.

“Things are getting desperate, Jed!” Milo said.

Eva shook her head in disbelief. “Whose frigging idea was this?”

Kiya and Tekin threw their grenades through the chamber and they rolled to a stop at the base of the pillars either side of the river.

“I’m not liking this one bit,” Ella said.

“Time to throw them back?” Milo called over.

Mason looked grim. “No chance.”

The detonations were ear-piercing, and achieved precisely what Kranz desired — the explosions had blasted enormous chunks of marble out of the supporting pillars and fatally weakened them.

Mason watched in horror as the damaged pillars began to buckle under the strain of supporting the chamber’s ceiling with so much of their strength now destroyed by the grenade blast.

“The chamber ceiling’s starting to crumble!” said Milo.

“It’s the weight of the aquifer,” Mason said. “And it’s coming down on top of us in about ten seconds!”

Eva pointed across the chamber. “The book!”

Mason looked up and saw Kiya sprinting for the Book of Spells.

“No way,” he said to himself, and broke cover. He scrambled across the tomb under a hail of bullets and falling ceiling plaster, determined to reach the book before Kiya.

Reaching it a few seconds before him, she snatched it up with a good fistful of sand on the side and ran back to cover under a barrage of cover fire.

Ella fired on her, forcing her back once again, but it was too late. They were out of rounds, and the Hidden Hand had pinned them down with their superior firepower.

“Damn it all!” Mason yelled.

“What the hell are we going to do now?” said Milo.

“He asks a good question,” Ella said. With the terror rising inside her, she tried to reload her weapon.

Eva watched Kranz as he ordered Kiya to bring him the ankh — the strange, jewel-encrusted artefact that had started everything back when they murdered Scala in the Vatican.

Ella saw it too. “What’s he doing now?”

“Not flash tuning his Aventador, that’s for sure,” Milo said.

Kranz held the book in his hands. “You failed, Mason! I have it! The Gods have given it to me at last!” He placed the ankh in the hole in the cover and they all heard a click. The front cover popped open, and Kranz’s eyes started to widen as he gently lifted the heavy cover and looked inside the Book of Spells.

The Dutch aristocrat began to read, quietly at first. As his confidence grew, he repeated the words louder and faster until his trembling voice reached fever pitch and the strange mantras tumbled from his mouth like birds escaping a cage.

“That is one weird-sounding language,” Milo said.

“It’s Coptic,” said Eva. “Kranz is better educated than I thought.”

“What happens if he finishes the spells?” Ella said. “Does he get to speak with the gods or what?”

“No one’s speaking with any gods today!” Milo yelled. “The ceiling’s collapsing!”

“Please tell me this is happening because of the grenades and not that freaky book!” Ella said.

Eva gave her a strange look, and Mason looked up and saw the ceiling finally give way under the tremendous weight of the water. Kept in place for millennia by the support pillars, it now tumbled through the hole in the ceiling in an awesome jet and immediately started to fill the chamber.

“Jed Mason,” Eva said. “You’d better have a damn good idea about saving our lives, you son of a bitch!”

Yes, Mason thought with an inward sigh.

If only I did.