The Swords of Babylon

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Drake tumbled forward, clawing at anything that might arrest his fall, but the rocky earth fell away in a steep cascade, taking all three of them with it. Evidently, the cave-in wasn’t confined to their area, but extended all the way to the tents, as Victoriyah’s echoing voice berated Maxim for his insanity.

Time stopped as Drake fell. Their lives hung in the balance. This could be an endless fall down a bottomless pit or a sharp plunge down a steep slope. He tucked his body as it bounced off the sides, drew his head down as shale and stones poured all around it. At last, he hit the bottom, plainly a narrow space, since he immediately rolled a short way up the opposite side.

And that meant…

He dragged himself to his knees, head spinning, limbs howling with pain. He steadied himself by staring at the ground and bringing a pile of rocks into focus, then looked up.

A Russian’s top half protruded from rubble further up the slope, partly buried, but still miraculously holding his gun and staring wild-eyed at his situation. Two more guards groaned and crawled through the debris that had collected at the bottom. Beyond them, Drake saw Maxim and Victoriyah sprawled across each other, struggling hard.

Rivers and streams of rock continued to run down both slopes.

Far above, Drake saw one of the tents leaning over the new crevice, balanced precariously and slowly slipping.

Crap! He pulled at Mai and cast about for a weapon. Their guns were nowhere to be seen. Alicia ran past him then, leaping nimbly from pile to pile, drawing her Army-issue knife as she closed the gap on the fallen Russians. Drake followed her. Alicia slammed the hilt of her weapon under the first man’s chin, giving him no chance to react. The second struck out at her, glancing a blow off her shoulder. Alicia caught the arm and broke the wrist as Drake drove his own knife through the man’s throat. Only Maxim and Victoriyah remained.

Then a bullet blasted into the rubble nearby, raising a mini explosion of shale. Damn, how the hell were they going to cancel out that bastard?

The Russian half-buried up the slope was laughing, making a point of taking careful aim. There was nothing they could do to stop him. “Hold still!” he cried. “I want to take your stupid heads off.”

“Wing them,” came Maxim’s authoritative command. “We can bury them down here. A fitting end, I say.”

“Get your fucking arse off me!” Victoriyah shouted.

Alicia, never a girl to stay put and take it, exploded into action, sprinting through the debris and shrieking like a banshee. Drake ran in her wake, feeling the itch as crosshairs lined up on his exposed back.

Mai screamed from behind them, “Drop—”

Then the cry of Torsten Dahl crashed down like thunder and the big Swede came feet first, slipping and sliding down the crumbling slope, torrents of rock streaming around him, smashing into the half-buried Russian and almost breaking him in two. Both men plummeted to the bottom, the Russian bent and shattered, the Swede brushing himself off and seeking out his next target.

Alicia hit Maxim hard, tackling him around the waist. Drake came up against Victoriyah, thrusting with his knife, but thrown off balance by the shifting mounds of debris. When he realized he was falling, he threw his body hard against the slope. Victoriyah laughed at him.

“What’s this? You want to play?”

Drake crouched as she came at him, almost wincing at the sight of her shapely bare legs bloodied and scraped by the headlong tumble. He caught her lunge by dropping a shoulder, and heaved her aside. As he turned he noticed, beyond Mai, that the far edge of the fissure was slowly collapsing into the pit of Babylon.

And the drop-off point was running fast back toward Mai!

“Run!” he yelled. At that point, a thick rope slithered down from above, anchored by Kinimaka, Hayden and, Drake momentarily saw, Yorgi.

The little Russian thief must have disobeyed him. Thank God.

He launched his body on top of Victoriyah and took a blow to the ribs, but brought his weight to bear and lowered the knife. Her hands came up, stopping the tip of the blade an inch before the bridge of her nose.

Drake bore down harder. The Russian woman spat and thrashed about, screaming expletives. Alicia beat Maxim down hard, turning his face into pulp before ending his misery with a thrust to the brain pan. Mai outran the crevice’s collapse, leaped for the rope and held a hand down to Alicia. “Hurry!”

Drake removed one hand from the blade, then brought it crashing down on top of the hilt, beating at it as a hammer beats a nail. The tip sliced through skin.

Victoriyah glared coldly into his eyes. “Fuck you all to hell,” she said and let go of Drake’s wrist.

The knife, unimpeded, drove down through her forehead. Drake left it in place and grabbed the flapping end of the rope, planting his feet against the slope and leaning back, right beneath Alicia. They all started to walk upward.

Dahl ran hard up the collapsing slope at a sharp angle, his course planned to intersect the rope just above Mai.

Kinimaka and the others took the full strain. The Hawaiian’s voice could be heard clearly through the sudden stillness. “I’ve pulled many pigs out of many pits back home before, guys, but this takes the trophy.”

“Hurry, Mano,” Hayden urged. “This is far from over. We can’t let Razin get away with those other swords.”

Alicia peered over her shoulder and down at Drake. “Enjoying the view?”

Drake sent her a smirk. “I dunno, love. It’s just not quite the same when you’ve seen it all before.”