The Swords of Babylon

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

Dahl knew that time was running out fast. The journey by plane and vehicle, ending in rough terrain, had taken many hours. On the way, Akerman only made matters worse by reminding him of one of his earlier translations, ‘The doomsday device is a weapon that will cause an overload of the elements. The Earth will quake. The air will be split apart by mega storms of unbelievable ferocity. Chains of volcanoes will erupt. And the oceans shall rise.’

“It’s happened before,” Akerman said with cold certainty. “I’m sure you know about the startlingly factual proof that a continent once existed in the middle of the Pacific. This is where all the ‘lost continent’ theories find their roots. And proof does exist to corroborate a ‘world-changing’ event that occurred ten to fifteen thousand years ago.”

“Meteor. Supervolcano. Pacific Rim eruption.” Dahl counted the apocalyptical events off on his fingers. “Doesn’t mean it was Odin’s device, Olle.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t, either.” The translator almost pouted.

Dahl slowed as Eyjafjallajokul reared in the distance. The car bounced along the winding road, alternately surrounded by mist and bright sunlight. Akerman pointed out the view to their left.

“Y’know, Torsten, that mountain over there is Mount Hekla, Iceland’s most active volcano. It was known as the gate to Hell in olden times. Small world, eh? This place.” He motioned around. “Has always had its ghosts.”

Dahl nodded, not really listening. He was scanning the road ahead. During the flight he had contacted his Statsministern and secured the help of an SGG unit, at least two of them once part of his old team. On speaking to Karin, who was coordinating operations at the three tombs, he had learned that everyone was running late except Alicia — the gang of bikers were speeding along quite nicely to Singen.

Dahl pulled off the road, now quite close to the rendezvous point. He tapped the wheel. The SGG were late. They had agreed to meet here because Akerman, intimately familiar with the tomb and its access points, knew of an alternate entry point — one made by the coalition to facilitate dignitaries and less vigorous individuals. It might still be guarded, but it would make an easier breach than having to crawl single-file through a meandering tunnel.

Whilst they waited, the dark skies turned to black and the outline of the mountain stood out sharp against the clear sky. Dahl received a message to say his men were close and then, minutes later, they emerged out of the gloom.

“Did you walk?” Akerman asked pointedly.

Dahl held up a hand. “Quiet now, Olle. This is where the soldiers do their work. Are you ready to assault this volcano?”

His men nodded.

“Good. Because the world’s future may depend on our success.”

Dahl led the way, Akerman at the center of the group behind. If his calculations were right, and nothing else happened to slow the other teams en route to Hawaii, Singen and Babylon, they had about an hour to clear the tomb and find the third man. They had planned to make this a simultaneous strike on every tomb. Hayden had worked the timings out, but the time zone differences and estimated journey schedules were a bewildering web. Even so, everyone agreed, the chaos of a joint attack would confuse the enemy and hopefully throw their seemingly precise plans into disarray.

Now Dahl rested momentarily with his hand against an upstanding slab of cool rock. The ground underfoot was soft, shifting soil, the surrounding landscape shaded stark silver by the low-hanging moon. A gust of wind blasted past, its ice-cold jaws snapping. Dahl shivered. He had been spending too much time in warmer climes.

As one, the group moved stealthily into a man-made tunnel, supported in places by heavy-duty acrow props. The passageway had a temporary air about it, as if this insignificant warren would soon be reclaimed by the enduring mountain, but the men who searched and toiled here had at least tried to make it appear welcoming. A coalition flag hung across a wall marked at twenty-foot intervals by Pepsi vending machines, and chocolate bar and crisp packet dispensers. A leather bound visitor’s book lay open on a desk half way along, a pile of flashlights, helmet lamps and other safety equipment stood near the end. Dahl noticed two CCTV cameras, but neither of them blinked a red light.

At the entrance to the mountain, Dahl found the first body. A man in a white coat lay sprawled out and cold, the crusted red balloon shape on his lab coat revealing that he’d been shot in the back whilst attempting to flee.

What difference would it have made, Dahl thought. If one scientist had escaped?

A cold fury filled his veins. The work of mercenaries was seldom pretty, and was often marked by a cold, merciless dispassion, but such callousness as this demanded equal payback.

He paused. Akerman’s description had this entry way emerging at the top of the bottomless pit, which had been hastily railed off, but if they followed the path to the right it led to the one thing the coalition forces had rigged that had made this fantastical excavation much simpler.

A lift.

A temporary elevator had been bolted to the side of the mountain, affording access to all three levels of the tomb, albeit the last level deposited them at its opposite end, giving them the choice of either a hair-raising climb or a short trip in a small capacity cable car that had also been recently erected.

Neither was recommended for the faint of heart.

Dahl spotted the lift right away. A sturdy red-painted array of metalwork with a simple box car attached to the side. As he emerged from the tunnel, he was taken back almost six months to when he had first accompanied Drake into this tomb, searching for the bones of Odin. The black abyss stood before him, seemingly overflowing with ancient power, vast and endless and hiding secrets in the deepest chasms that man could never hope to discover.

A little way above, he saw the first row of niches that signified the tombs of the gods, now brightly lit by a framework of lights. It all seemed a far cry from his previous visit.

“Clear.” Bengtsson, one of Dahl’s old teammates, surveyed the area. “Maybe they’re dug in around the main entrance and Odin’s tomb, sir.”

“It makes sense.” Dahl led the way carefully to the lift and studied the controls. Nothing fancy, but the sound of its mechanisms at work would alert everyone to their presence.

In another second it didn’t matter. A figure appeared out of the dark beyond the lift, just the pale bloom of a face. Bengtsson fired first, the other man’s shot going wide. Dahl cursed and leapt onto the lift, dragging Akerman with him. Their attacker crumpled as the rest of the SGG team joined Dahl, who thumbed the controller for level two.

As the lift ground into gear and started to rise, bullets shot out of the dark, peppering the lift’s wire frame door and glancing off its surrounds.

Dahl crouched low, shielding Akerman. Bengtsson, Forstrom and Hagberg returned fire blindly, hoping to panic the enemy. The lift grumbled slowly, taking its time. Dahl looked up, thinking of the approaching levels, but saw no sign of defenders waiting up there.

“I get the feeling,” he said. “That whichever force captured this tomb didn’t expect to have to wait around long enough to defend it. And that is a bad feeling, my friends.”

The lift juddered as it approached the first level. Dahl raised his weapon and fired through the diamond-shaped wire holes as they ascended, taking no chances, but there wasn’t a single guard positioned on the first level. They rose higher still, the view below switching from breathtaking to pitch black as the rock of the mountain got in the way. Then the second sloping level of niches came into sight. Dahl peered hard at the tombs, one of which he knew must belong to Thor, the other Loki. Time stood still for the Scandinavian. How he wished he had made the time to visit this place.

SPEAR isn’t everything. And that was true, but he felt a deep loyalty to his friends now, and to Jonathan Gates, the man who had given him the chance to become a part of one of the most elite secret ops teams in the world. He owed them a debt.

At last the lift quaked to a halt at its highest level. The SGG team quickly threw open the door and stepped off, fanning out. Akerman followed Dahl and pointed out the cable car.

“Bollocks.” Dahl tracked its twin support cables as they vanished on an incline up into the dark. They would finish at the very top, next to Odin’s tomb. “We need a better plan.”

It wasn’t pretty, but it was the best they could do in the circumstances. The SGG team took off at pace, aiming to reach Odin’s plateau the hard way. Dahl gave them a five-minute head start and then climbed into the swinging cable car with Akerman at his side. He gave his friend a rueful smile.

“Sorry, Olle, but with so much at risk I need you with me.”

“If I die I will haunt your bedroom, my friend.”

“I feel like you already do.” Dahl punched the green button, bringing the three man car quivering to life. It gave a jerk that sent Akerman to his knees, and set off. Dahl held out a hand. “No expense spared on the machinery, eh?”

The car swayed precariously as it travelled upward. Even Dahl made a point of not looking over the sides. Darkness soon swallowed them, and, for a time, he felt as if he were dreaming, all this effort merely the way out of a well-travelled nightmare. But when Olle touched his shoulder he patted the man’s hand firmly.

“It’s all good, mate. Won’t be much further now.”

Dahl peered into the blackness, fingers gripped tight around a thick supporting pole. Akerman stood next to him, the two men surrounded by a total absence of light, the only sound the slithering and grinding of wheel tracks over cable. Dahl almost jumped out of his skin as a heavy grinding sound fired his imagination.

“Now that sounds like something crawling up the mountain,” Akerman breathed in his ear.

“It is,” Dahl whispered back. “Us.”

The cable car scraped slightly over rugged rock as it approached the precipice. The radiant glow of lights illuminated the dark above. Dahl prepped his weapon confidently without looking as the car swung over the final mound of rock, swinging into view out across the wide plateau of Odin.

His first impression was a memory of the crazy pitched battle they had both won and lost here, of how he had leapt into darkness tethered with nothing but a length of rope to save Drake’s life.

And back then, he hadn’t even liked the thick-headed Yorkshire terrier.

His second impression was alarm. The welcoming committee was eight strong, fully tooled-up mercs with hard expressions and only one intention. To blast this intruder out of the sky.

Beyond them stood the tomb of Odin, empty now, but still as magnificent to him as when he had first seen it. An older man stood by the entrance and, even as he met Dahl’s eyes, turned away agitatedly to check his watch.

A sharp bark from below indicated the call to action. Machine guns opened fire. Dahl grabbed Akerman and ducked below the vacant windows. The whole car swung wildly. Metallic pings punctuated the roar of automatic weapons.

Akerman swore. Dahl tightened his grip. “It’s okay. The—”

A bullet tore through the floor of the car and exited the roof, leaving two jagged holes.

Akerman scrambled backward, but there was nowhere to go. Another bullet penetrated the floor. Men’s laughter erupted from below. They were having a great time. The attitude of mercs.

Dahl sprang into action. To stay there was to die. Somehow, they had to keep moving. On the car’s backward swing he leapt forward, reaching the front in one bound. He grabbed hold of the window frame and popped up fast, peppering the ground below with bullets. The mercs yelled and scattered, their sport interrupted. He slung his gun over his shoulder, took hold of the curved roof and hauled himself outside of the car. Using his legs as a piston, he thrust himself onto the roof of the car, holding tight to the edges on both sides to keep from falling. More bullets clattered around it, some pinging through and passing close to Dahl’s body. Without pausing, he rolled and heaved, ending up on one knee, gun sighted immediately, and fired down at the mercs as the cable car swung wildly to and fro. Somehow he stayed on and planted both knees firmly apart. In another second, he heard shouts of surprise from below.

At last. Bengtsson and the others had arrived.

Dahl reached up and grabbed the car’s guiding rope. Hand over hand he swung across the last few feet to the cable car’s station, a minor rock outcropping with a vertical ladder leading down to Odin’s plateau. As he swayed, a bullet fizzed past his shoulder. Dahl fought fire with fire, relinquishing his hold with one hand, unhooking his weapon and spraying lead at his target. The man scrambled clear, but caught a round in the vest and hit the ground face first. Dahl, hanging by one hand, threw his gun onto the rocky outcrop and swung over.

Suddenly, he had the perfect vantage point.

He fell to one knee and sighted in on the mercs. This battle, he thought, is over.

But then the civilian stopped checking his watch, screamed a warning to the mercs and raised his hands in the air.

Dahl’s eyes flew wide as the rumbling began. The real battle, it seemed, was about to begin.