The Gates of Hell

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The next passage was short and descended rapidly downhill. Drake and the others had to walk on their heels with their bodies’ angled backward to stay upright. At any moment, Drake thought he might slip and slide helplessly down to God only knew what dreadful fate waited below.

But in only a few minutes, they spied the now-familiar archway. Drake readied a glow stick and paused at the entrance. Mindful of snipers, he quickly ducked his head in and out.

“Oh, balls,” he breathed to himself. “It gets worse.”

“Don’t tell me,” Ben said. “There’s a giant concrete ball poised over our heads.”

Drake stared at him. “Life’s not a movie, Blakey. God, you’re a geek.”

He took a deep breath and led them into the third gargantuan cavern. The awesome site they beheld stopped every one of them in their tracks. Mouths fell open. If the Blood King could have chosen any point in their journey so far to lay a trap, this was it, Drake thought a few minutes later, the perfect chance. But, luckily for the good guys, nothing lie in wait. Maybe there was a good reason for that…

Even Komodo gawped in awe and disbelief, but he did manage to croak out a few words. “I guess this one’s lust then.”

Coughs and grunts were his only response.

The path before them ran in a single straight line to the exit archway. The hindrance was the path was lined on both sides by short pedestals topped with statues, and by high pedestals topped with paintings. Every statue and every painting presented several erotic forms, ranging from the surprisingly tasteful to the downright obscene. Beyond that, cave-drawings filled every available inch of the cavern walls, but not the primitive depictions normally found in ancient caves — these were stunning representations, easily the equal of any renaissance or modern-day artist.

The subject matter was shocking in another way. The images portrayed one mass orgy, every man and woman drawn in excruciating detail, committing every lustful sin known to man… and many more.

All in all, it was a stunning blow to the senses, a blow that didn’t let up as more and more dramatic pictures unfolded to strike the human eye and mind.

Drake almost shed a crocodile tear for his old pal Wells. That old perv would be in his element down here. Especially if he’d discovered it with Mai.

The thought of Mai, his oldest living friend, helped divert his mind from the pornographic sensory overload all around. He glanced back at the group.

“Guys. Guys! This can’t be everything. There has to be some kind of trap system here. Keep your eyes peeled.” He coughed. “And I mean for traps.”

The path ran on ahead. Drake now noticed that even staring at the ground wouldn’t help you. Exquisitely detailed figures writhed there too. But it was all surely a diversion.

Drake took a deep breath and stepped forward. He noticed that, to either side of the pathway, a four-inch raised edging ran for about a hundred yards.

Komodo spoke up at the same time. “See that, Drake? Could be nothing.”

“Or everything.” Drake placed one foot gingerly in front of the other. Ben followed a step behind, then a couple of soldiers and then Karin, watched carefully by Komodo. Drake heard the big, tough Komodo whisper a quiet apology to Karin for the insolent images and the rudeness of his gawping men, and stifled a smile.

At that moment, as his lead foot touched the ground at the start of the raised edgings, the air filled with a deep, rumbling sound. Immediately before him, the floor began to move.

“Ay up.” His broad Yorkshire came out in times of stress. “Wait, folks.”

The path was divided into a series of wide, horizontal stone shelves. Slowly, each shelf began to move sideways so that anyone standing on it would fall off if they didn’t step onto the next. The sequence was quite slow, but Drake guessed they had now found the reason for the chambers audacious distractions.

“Step carefully,” he said. “In pairs. And keep your minds off the filth and on the way ahead, ’less you wanna try that new sport ‘abyss-diving.’”

Ben joined him on the first moving shelf. “It’s so hard to concentrate,” he moaned.

“Think of Hayden,” Drake told him. “That’ll get you through.”

“I am thinking of Hayden.” Ben blinked at the nearest statue, a writhing threesome of tangled heads, arms and legs. “That’s the problem.”

“With me.” Drake stepped warily onto the second sliding shelf, already gauging the movement of the third and fourth. “You know, I’m so glad I spent all those hours playing Tomb Raider after all.”

“Never thought I’d end up being the sprite in the game though,” Ben muttered back and then thought of Mai. Most of the Japanese intelligence community likened her to a character in a video game. “Hey, Matt, ya’ don’t think we’re really asleep, do ya? And this is all a dream?”

Drake watched his friend tread carefully onto the third shelf. “I never had a dream this vivid.” He didn’t need to nod at their surroundings to make his point.

Now, behind them, a second and third group of men had started their painstaking journey. Drake counted twenty shelves before he reached the end and jumped off, thankfully, onto solid ground. Thank God, his pounding heart could take a breather. He watched the exit archway for a minute then, satisfied they were alone, he turned back to check the others’ progress.

Just in time to see one of the Delta men wrench his gaze away from the gaudily painted ceiling—

And miss the shelf he was about to step on to. He was gone in a split second, the only reminder that he’d ever been there was the terrified shriek that followed his fall.

The entire company stopped and the air trembled with shock and fear. Komodo gave them all a moment and then urged them on. They all knew how to survive this. The fallen soldier had been a fool to himself.

Again, and more warily now, they all started to move. Drake fancied for a moment that he could still hear the soldiers scream, falling forever into that limitless chasm, but shrugged it away as hallucination. He focused on the men once more just in time to see the big Komodo take the same fall.

There was one desperate moment of flailing, one angry, regretful cry about his terrible lapse of concentration and the big Delta team leader slipped over the edge of the shelf. Drake cried out, almost ready to leap to his aid but woefully sure he couldn’t possibly make it in time. Ben screamed like a girl—

But this was because Karin simply dived after the big man!

Without hesitation, Karin Blake left all the highly-trained Delta team staring in her wake and leapt headlong at Komodo. She had been in front of him, so her momentum should help push him back onto the concrete slab. But Komodo was a big man, and heavy, and Karin’s point-blank leap barely moved his bulk.

But she did move him slightly. And that was enough to help. Komodo managed to turn, as Karin gave him an extra two seconds of air-time, and clamp hold of the edge of the concrete with vice-like fingers. He clung, desperate, unable to haul himself up.

And the sliding shelf moved agonizingly slow toward its left-hand perimeter, at which point it would disappear, taking the Delta team leader with it.

Karin took firm hold of Komodo’s left wrist. At last, the other members of his team responded and grabbed his other arm. With a huge effort, they hauled him up and over the slab just as it disappeared into its hidden runner.

Komodo shook his head into the dusty concrete. “Karin,” he said. “I will never look at another woman again.”

The blond ex-student dropout genius grinned. “You guys with your straying eyes, you will never learn.”

And cutting through Drake’s admiration came the realization that this third level of ‘hell,’ this chamber called lust, was nothing more than a depiction of man’s age-old affliction with the wandering eye. The cliché that if a man was sitting in a café with his wife or girlfriend, and another pair of pretty legs walked by — he would almost certainly look.

Except down here, if he looked he died.

Some women would have no problem with that, Drake mused. And not unreasonably, either. But Karin had saved Komodo and now the pair were even. It took another five minutes of anxious waiting, but at last the remainder of the team made it across the sliding shelves.

They all took a breather. Every man in the company made a point of shaking Karin’s hand and commending her bravery. Even Ben.

Then a shot rang out. One of the Delta soldiers fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. All of a sudden, they were under attack. Half a dozen of the Blood King’s men poured out of the archway, guns blazing. Bullets fizzed through the air.

Already on their knees, Drake and his team hit the deck, reaching for weapons. The man who had been hit stayed kneeling and took another four rounds to the chest and head. In less than two seconds he was dead, another victim to the Blood King’s cause.

Drake dragged his loaned M16 assault rifle up and fired. To his right one of the statues was riddled with lead, alabaster chips sent zipping through the air. Drake ducked.

Another bullet whistled past his head.

The entire team was prone, calm, and able to take careful aim with their rifles balanced on the ground. When they opened fire it was a massacre, dozens of bullets riddling Kovalenko’s running men and making them dance like bloodied marionettes. One man bulldozed his way through, miraculously unharmed, until he met Matt Drake.

The ex-SAS man leapt to meet him head-on, leading with a devastating head-butt and a quick series of knife-strikes to the ribs. The last of Kovalenko’s men slipped into that place all evil men ended up.

Hell.

Drake motioned them on, sparing a regretful look for the fallen Delta team member. They would collect his body on the way back.

“We must be catching the bastard up.”