The Prisoner's Gold

63

Lim Bao had watched the helicopter peel away nearly fifteen minutes ago, but his leader had yet to rise. Instead, Feng He lay perfectly still, as if literally frozen in place. Lim dared not budge until his mentor moved first.

They were both hidden among a plot of shrubberies that had grown near the lion’s paws entrance to the plateau, waiting for their opportunity to surge ahead. During the arrival of the UN aircraft they had hunkered low, each of them wondering what new addition the aircraft had delivered above. They knew the American woman had been left atop the rock — they had seen her in the open door as the helicopter approached and noticed her absence during its departure — but assumed there was more to the story.

Finally, Feng spotted the missing piece to the puzzle.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he whispered as he stared up at the rock through high-powered binoculars.

‘Sir?’ Lim replied.

Feng slowly lowered the tinted lenses from his face and extended them toward his companion. ‘See for yourself.’

Lim took the offering, but he had no idea what he was searching for.

Fortunately, Feng answered the question before Lim could even ask it.

‘The soldier and the sniper took no weapons to the summit, but look now at the widest edge of the rock,’ Feng whispered. ‘Outside the fence line, in the trees that sprout horizontally from the stone. He’s waiting there like a tiger. Do you see him?’

Lim moved his gaze to the spot that Feng had described and adjusted the focus. The sniper had somehow squeezed through the protective metal fence that encircled the top of the plateau and had crawled out and up the rounded trunk of one of the trees. From that vantage point, he could cover the entire series of zigzagging stairs that led from the lion’s paws to the upper levels — and he could also fall to his death if the wind blew strongly.

‘That man is crazy,’ Lim said.

Feng sneered at the comment, wondering how many of his followers considered him crazy for battling gunmen in Sri Lanka instead of running his organization from the safety of his hotel penthouse. On the surface, it did seem rather foolish to risk his life for a pile of gold, but Feng valued something even more than the promise of wealth. He sought the political clout he would gain if he discovered Marco Polo’s treasure and brought it back to China.

To Feng, that was priceless.

Though he was respected, even feared, in certain circles, Feng was not a household name in his homeland. He knew the only way to change that was to do something memorable; something the general populace viewed as heroic. That wouldn’t happen by outfoxing telecom giants like Harold Ledner. Corporate deals weren’t sexy to the working class. They weren’t talked about in schools, in offices, or in rural villages, even though his efforts brought thousands of jobs and billions of dollars to his country.

But the recovery of gold, jewels, and artifacts from the time of Kublai Khan?

That would make front-page news around the globe.

‘He’s not crazy,’ Feng assured Lim. ‘He’s dedicated. Never mistake the two.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Lim handed the binoculars back to his boss. ‘It appears he has us pinned down. I don’t see how we can mount an assault from this direction.’

‘We can’t,’ Feng agreed. ‘Not yet.’

Feng knew that as long as the sniper held his location, there was little they could do. From his elevated position, the sniper could pick off anyone that approached from below.

‘We need a diversion.’

Cobb had thought that the handholds in the cave wall would be smooth, shallow, and useless, just like the steps near the base of his initial ascent. But once they were inside the shaft, he realized that the scooped-out holes were actually quite deep, with pronounced lips that allowed for easy finger grip. Spared for centuries from the elements, the built-in ladder allowed them to make their way down without the need for a rappelling harness.

But, just to be safe, they tied a rope around their waists.

The floor was ten stories down into the rock. When Sarah reached the bottom, she shined her flashlight in all directions, illuminating a cavern that was eighty feet long and nearly half as wide. She remembered from Maggie’s discourse that the entire Sigiriya rock was some four hundred and fifty feet long, so she assumed that there was plenty of solid stone around them on all sides to support the chamber. Still, the lack of any apparent bracing gave her a moment of pause.

‘Amazing,’ Cobb said. ‘Hector?’

‘Reading you loud and clear,’ Garcia replied as he marveled at the video.

Cobb touched the walls. ‘The surface is rough. Tools leave a smooth finish. This wasn’t man-made.’

Sarah nodded. ‘Polo and Lobsang found a natural cave inside the mountain.’

The ‘natural cave’, as she called it, was technically known as an igneous lava bubble. It was a hollow space that had been formed eons ago when the whole rock mountain had been shoved up from the bowels of the Earth.

‘Do you see anything that looks out of place?’ Maggie asked.

Cobb and Sarah walked carefully around the periphery of the space. At first, the room seemed completely empty, like an unused chamber in the world’s biggest anthill. But as they moved deeper they spotted something in the farthest corner of the chamber. They were about to investigate when they heard a warning in their ears.

‘Guys,’ Garcia said, ‘you might have a problem heading your way.’

‘Explain,’ Cobb demanded.

‘A helicopter is coming,’ Garcia said. ‘It doesn’t look like the UN chopper that brought Sarah. It’s too early to tell if it’s actually going to the rock, but it’s headed in that direction.’

‘You’re watching via satellite?’ Cobb asked.

‘No. I won’t have sat coverage of the rock for another ten minutes. I had to get creative. I’m using a UAV.’

‘A what?’ Sarah asked.

‘An unmanned aerial vehicle,’ Garcia said. ‘The Pakistanis were testing it nearby, so I borrowed it for a few minutes.’

‘What?’ Sarah asked incredulously. ‘You stole a military drone?’

‘Relax,’ Garcia answered. ‘They have no idea what’s going on. It’s not like they’re going to report a rogue UAV the moment they lose control of it. These things have to go through channels. Ain’t that right, Josh?’

‘Actually,’ McNutt laughed, ‘Guillermo the Kid has a point. The Pakis won’t say a word to anyone until they know exactly what happened. No one will believe that they just lost it. They’ll be accused of trying to start some shit in foreign airspace.’

‘Jack,’ Garcia pleaded. ‘You told me to get you some eyes, and this was the only thing available. I made sure to swing well south of India, just in case they had an itchy trigger finger, but I’m telling you—’

‘I’m sold,’ Cobb said. ‘We can worry about it later. What are you flying?’

‘It’s a US-made RQ-7.’

‘Josh?’ Cobb asked, searching for more information.

‘RQ-7 Shadow,’ McNutt explained. ‘About eleven feet long, with a wingspan of fourteen feet against a height of only thirty-six inches. Top speed of, um, I honestly don’t know, but the fucker moves really fast.’

‘Armaments?’ Cobb asked.

‘It can be outfitted with a variety of toys, but I’m guessing an M134 minigun with a firing rate of about four thousand rounds per minute.’ McNutt chuckled. ‘Hey Guillermo, wanna trade?’

‘Nope,’ Garcia replied. ‘And guys, the chopper is still headed your way.’

‘That’s not all,’ McNutt said, his tone suddenly serious. ‘Unless I’m seeing things, we’ve got hostiles on the ground.’

McNutt peered down into the thick undergrowth, scrutinizing even the slightest movement. He had already noticed a few monitor lizards — huge reptiles that stalked the lush vegetation looking for smaller prey — so he had grown accustomed to spotting things in the bushes. But the lizards were brown, and the flash of color he had just noticed was not. It was olive drab: the color of jungle camouflage.

McNutt was quite familiar with the hue.

He focused his scope on the suspect, waiting for any signs of movement. Instead, he saw a telltale burst of smoke and heard the whine of an RPG.

Unfortunately, he knew those, too.

In an instant, McNutt grabbed his Russian Dragunov sniper rifle and jumped from his perch in the tree. He hit the side of the rock and started a controlled slide toward the staircase below.

Behind him, the rocket-propelled grenade smashed into the surface of the rock only feet from where he had been lying. The impact of the warhead’s tip against rock fired its piezoelectric fuse, transmitting a small electrical charge to the base of the projectile. The shaped charge exploded, forcing its way out the path of least resistance: the tiny opening at the nose of the cone-shaped rocket. The force of the blast was multiplied as it exited the cone.

McNutt felt the shards of razor-sharp rock tearing into his back and shoulders as he rolled nearly twenty feet down the rocky slope. He tried to grab the lip of the ledge but was unable to gather himself as he plunged an additional ten feet to the steps below. He hit the stairs with a meaty thud, but somehow managed to survive the fall without any broken bones.

He was bruised and battered, but very much alive.

‘Josh!’ Garcia shouted. ‘Are you okay?’

‘No, fuck-tard, I’m not okay. I just fell off a mountain.’

‘I know, I mean … what can I do to help?’

McNutt rubbed his sore ribs and spat out some blood. The residue stained his teeth like a ravenous wolf’s. ‘Bring in the drone and start kicking ass.’