The Gates of Hell

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Drake swung across a small gap and landed squarely on the wide block of stone that formed the foot of the throne. He waited for Ben and Karin and the last Delta soldier to arrive before looking up at Komodo.

“What you got up there?”

The Delta team leader had climbed onto the seat of the throne. Now he moved to the edge and stared down at them

“Whoever built this throne included a not-so-secret passage. There’s a back door behind the back of the throne up here. And it was open.”

“Don’t go near it,” Drake said quickly, thinking of the trap systems they had passed. “For all we know it flicks a switch that sends this throne straight down.”

Komodo looked guilty. “Good call. Problem is — I already have. Good news is…” He grinned. “No traps.”

Drake extended a hand. “Help me up.”

One by one they climbed up onto the seat of the obsidian throne. Drake took a moment to turn around and take in the view over the abyss.

Directly opposite, across the massive chasm, he saw the same stone balcony they had occupied earlier. The balcony where Captain Cook had quit. The balcony where the Blood King had most likely lost any last remaining thread of sanity he had possessed. It seemed like a step away but it was a deceiving mile.

Drake made a face. “This throne,” he said quietly. “It was built for—”

Ben’s shout interrupted him. “Matt! Bloody hell. You won’t believe this.”

It was not the shock in his friends voice that sent fear shooting through Drake’s nerve endings but the foreboding. The apprehension.

“What is it?”

He turned. He saw what Ben saw.

“Fuck me.”

Karin crowded them out. “What is it?” Then she saw it too. “No way.”

They were looking at the rear part of the throne, the tall upright that someone might rest against, and the part that formed the rear door.

It was covered by the now familiar whorls— the beyond-ancient symbols that appeared to be some form of writing — and the same symbols that were inscribed upon both the time displacement devices and also on the great archway under Diamond Head that Cook had called the Gates of Hell.

The very same symbols Torsten Dahl had recently discovered in the tomb of the gods, far away in Iceland.

Drake closed his eyes. “How can this be happening? Ever since we first heard about the nine bloody pieces of Odin, I feel like I’ve been living a dream. Or a nightmare.”

“I bet we’re not done with the nine pieces yet,” Ben said. “This has got to be manipulation. Of the highest order. It’s like we’ve been chosen or something.”

“More like cursed.” Drake growled. “And quit with the Star Wars crap.”

“I was thinking a bit less Skywalker, a bit more Chuck Bartowski,” Ben said with a little smile. “Since we’re geeks and all that.”

Komodo was regarding the hidden door with impatience. “Shall we continue? My men gave their lives to help get us this far. All we can do in return is find an end to this hellhole.”

“Komodo,” Drake said. “This is the end. Has to be.”

He pushed past the big team leader into a giant passageway. The space was already larger than the door that led into it and, if it was possible, Drake sensed the passage widening, the walls and the ceiling withdrawing further and further until—

A cold, stiff breeze caressed his face.

He stopped and dropped a glow stick. By the faint light he fired off an amber flare. It flew up, up, up, then down and down without finding purchase. Without finding a ceiling, a ledge or even a floor.

He fired a second flare, this one more to the right. Again the amber infusion vanished without trace. He snapped a few glow sticks and threw them ahead to illuminate their way.

A sheer cliff edge dropped off six feet in front of them.

Drake felt intense vertigo, but forced himself to continue. A few more steps and he faced the void.

“Can’t see a thing. Bollocks.”

“We can’t have come all this way to be thwarted by the bloody dark.” Karin voiced everyone’s thoughts. “Try again, Drake.”

He sent a third flare into the void. As it flew this one picked out some faint highlights. There was something on the other side of the chasm. An enormous structure.

“What was that?” Ben breathed in awe.

The flare plummeted quickly, a brief spark of life lost forever to the darkness.

“Wait there,” the last remaining Delta soldier, a man with the call-sign Merlin said. “How many amber flares do we have left?”

Drake checked his webbing and his pack. Komodo did the same. The number they came up with was about thirty.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Komodo said. “Fireworks display, right?”

“One time,” Merlin, the team’s weapons expert, said grimly. “Find out what we’re dealing with and then hump it back to a place where we can call in support.”

Drake nodded. “Agreed.” He set aside a dozen flares for the way back and then readied himself. Komodo and Merlin came up to stand beside him at the edge.

“Ready?”

One by one, in rapid succession, they fired flare after flare high into the air. The amber light blazed brightly at its highest point and threw out a brilliant glow that shattered the dark.

Daylight came to the eternal blackness for the first time in history.

The pyrotechnical display began to have an effect. As flare after flare continued to shoot up and explode before drifting slowly downward, the great structure at the other end of the gigantic cavern became illuminated.

Ben gasped. Karin laughed. “Brilliant.”

As they gazed in wonder, the pitch black was set on fire and a stunning construction began to appear. First, a series or arches cut into the rear wall, then a second series beneath that. Then it became apparent that the arches were in fact small rooms — niches.

Below the second row, they saw a third and then a fourth and then rows upon rows as the dazzling lights drifted down the great wall. And in each niche great glinting treasures reflected back the brief glory of the drifting amber inferno.

Ben was stunned. “It’s… it’s…”

Drake and the Delta team continued to fire flare after flare. They made the massive chamber appear to burst into flames. The magnificent conflagration flashed and raged before their eyes.

At last, Drake fired the final flare. Then he took a moment to appraise the mind-numbing revelation.

Ben was stammering. “It’s huge… it’s—”

“Another tomb of the gods.” Drake finished with more worry in his voice than wonder. “At least three times the size of the one in Iceland. Jesus Christ, Ben, what the hell is going on?”

The journey back, though still fraught with danger, took half the time and half the effort. The only major obstacle was the big chasm where they had to rig another zip-wire to travel back across, although the chamber of Lust was always going to be a problem for the guys, as Karin pointed out with a wry glance at Komodo.

Once back through the archway, Cook’s Gates of Hell, they hoofed it back through the lava tube and out onto the surface.

Drake broke a long silence. “Wow, that’s the best smell in the world, right now. Fresh air at last.”

Mano Kinimaka’s voice came out of the surrounding dark. “Make that Hawaiian fresh air, man, and you’d be nearer the mark.”

People and faces drifted out of the semi-dark. A generator was fired up, lighting a hastily-erected set of string lights. A field-table was being erected. Komodo had called in their position as soon as they started up the lava tube. Ben’s signal returned and his mobile bleeped on four separate occasions with voicemail. Karin’s did the same. The parents had been allowed to call.

“Only four times?” Drake asked with a grin. “They must have forgotten you.”

Now Hayden came up to them, a battered, weary-looking Hayden. But she was smiling and she gave Ben a tentative hug. She was followed by Alicia, glaring with killer-eyes behind Drake. And in the shadows, Drake saw Mai, an awful tension stretched across her face.

It was almost time for their reckoning. The Japanese woman, rather than the English woman, seemed the most ill at ease about it.

Drake shrugged the dark cloud of depression away. He topped it all by flinging the trussed and gagged figure of the Blood King onto the rough ground at their feet.

“Dmitry Kovalenko.” He growled. “The Bell-end King. The most depraved of his kind. Anyone fancy a few kicks?”

At that moment, the figure of Jonathan Gates materialized from the growing hubbub around the makeshift camp. Drake narrowed his eyes. He knew Kovalenko had personally murdered Gates’s wife. Gates had more reason to hurt the Russian than even Drake and Alicia.

“Take a shot.” Drake hissed. “Fucker won’t need all his arms and legs in prison anyway.”

He saw Ben and Karin flinch and turn away. In that moment he caught a glimpse of the man he had become. He saw the bitterness, the vengeful anger, the spiral of hate and resentment that would lead to him becoming something not unlike Kovalenko himself, and knew all these emotions would eat away at him and eventually change him, make him over into a different man. It was an end that neither of them would want…

…Alyson or Kennedy that is.

He turned away too and put an arm around each of the Blakes’ shoulders. They were staring eastward, past a set of swaying palm trees toward distant glittering lights and the rolling ocean.

“Such a sight might change a man,” Drake said. “Might give him a renewed hope. Given time.”

Ben spoke without turning. “I know you want a Dinorock quote right now, but I ain’t gonna give you one. Instead, I could quote several relevant lines from Haunted. How about that?”

“You’re quoting Taylor Swift now? What went wrong there?”

“That track is as good as any of your Dinorock. And you know it.”

But Drake would never admit it. Instead, he listened into the chatter shooting back and forth behind them. The terror plots had been foiled competently and quickly, but there had still been some loss of life. An inevitable consequence when dealing with fanatics and madmen. The country was in mourning. The president was on his way and already promising another complete overhaul of the U.S. intelligence system, though it was still unclear how anyone could have prevented Kovalenko from hatching a plan twenty years in the making when, during all that time, he had been considered a mere figure of myth.

Much like the gods and their remains they were finding now.

Still, lessons had been learned and the U.S. and other countries were determined to take it all on board.

The question of charges being brought against those people in authority who had acted under coercion and out fear for the wellbeing of their loved ones was going to tie up the judicial system for years.

But the Blood King’s captives had been freed and were being reunited with their loved ones. Gates was promising that Kovalenko would be made to retract the blood vendetta, one way or another. Harrison had been reunited with his daughter, albeit briefly, and the news only made Drake sad.

If his own daughter had been born and loved and then kidnapped, would he have done the same as Harrison?

Of course he would. Any father would move heaven and Earth and everything in between to save his child.

Hayden, Gates and Kinimaka drifted away from the hubbub until they stood near Drake and his group. He was pleased to see Komodo and the surviving Delta soldier, Merlin, with them too. Bonds forged in comradeship and action were everlasting.

Hayden was quizzing Gates about some guy called Russell Cayman. It seemed the man had replaced Torsten Dahl as head of the Icelandic operation, his orders coming from the very top… and maybe even from a foggy and distant place above that. Cayman was a hard man, it seemed, and ruthless. He usually ran black-ops and, it was rumored, even more secretive and select operations both at home and abroad.

“Cayman is a troubleshooter,” Gates was saying. “But more than that. You see, no one seems to know whose troubleshooter he is. His clearance is beyond top-level. His access is immediate and unreserved. But, when pushed, nobody knows who the hell he actually works for.”

Drake’s mobile rang and he tuned out. He checked the screen and was pleased to see the caller was Torsten Dahl.

“Hey, it’s the mad Swede! How’s it going, mate? Still talking like an arsehole?”

“It would seem so. I’ve been trying to contact someone for hours and I get you. Fate is not being kind to me.”

“You’re lucky to get any of us,” Drake said. “It’s been a rough few days.”

“Well, it’s about to get rougher.” Dahl came back.

“I doubt that—”

“Listen. We found a drawing. A map to be more accurate. We managed to decipher most of it before that wanker Cayman classified it a top-level security issue. By the way, did Hayden or Gates find anything out about him?”

Drake blinked with confusion. “Cayman? Who the hell is this Cayman? And what do Hayden and Gates know?”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t have a lot of time.” For the first time Drake, realized his friend was whispering and in a rush. “Look. The map we found, at the very least, points to the locations of three tombs. Did you get that? There are three tombs of the gods.”

“We just found a second.” Drake felt the wind knocked out of him. “It’s huge.”

“I thought so. The map appears to be accurate then. But Drake, you have to hear this, the third tomb is the biggest of all and it’s the worst.”

“Worst?”

“Filled with the most terrible gods. The real nasty ones. The evil ones. Tomb three was kind of like a prison, where death was forced rather than accepted. And Drake…”

“What?”

“If we’re right, I think it holds the key to some kind of doomsday weapon.”