Valhalla Gold

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

At the head of the group with his hands raised, Joe Hawke searched the narrow tunnel for anything he could use as a weapon. He knew the others were counting on him — Lea, Scarlet, Ryan and now Victoria. For one reason or another, he felt responsible for all of them and the idea of leading them to their deaths in Thor’s tomb complex, of all places, was just unthinkable.

If it came down to the wire, they could turn on Smets and attack him mob-handed but it would have to be soon while they were still in an enclosed area, and… he knew not all of them would make it. Smets would mow some of them down with that machine pistol before the survivors could take him out. It wasn’t much of a plan.

He looked at Ryan, who was beside him. Judging from his facial expression he was also beside himself — with fear. With Thor’s tomb rapidly receding behind them, Hawke looked down and saw Ryan had the answer around his waist.

“Hey!” Hawke whispered.

“What?”

“You’re still wearing it.”

“Wearing what?”

“Thor’s jock strap or whatever the hell you said it was.”

Ryan looked at him, confused. “Sorry — I’m wearing Thor’s jock strap?”

Hawke nodded his head at Ryan’s waist. “That thing!”

A glorious epiphany seemed to spread across the young hacker’s face. “Ah! You mean the megingjörð — Thor’s power-belt!”

“That’s the one, mate. What does it do, exactly?”

“According to Norse legend, it increased Thor’s godly power many times.”

“But you don’t have any godly power,” Scarlet whispered over his shoulder. “What if all it does when you wear it is increase how annoying you are?”

“Thanks for your input, Cairo,” Hawke said, “but we’re out of options. This is our only chance now.”

Ryan frowned. “Sorry, but what exactly do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to slam our host into the middle of next week.”

“Me? I can’t fight!”

“He’s right, Joe,” Scarlet said. “I’ve seen toddlers punch with more anger and determination.”

“What?” Ryan replied, raising his voice. “After you stole their sweets?”

“Hey! Shut up and keep moving!” It was Smets. He cocked his gun and shoulder-barged his way past Lea and Victoria. He leaned into Ryan and lowered his voice to a gravelly whisper. “I hear anyone else say a word I’ll shoot you in the stomach and let you bleed out for hours. That includes you, Batman,” he said, tugging disrespectfully on Ryan’s t-shirt.

Ryan saw his moment and lashed out with his right hand, striking Smets’s arm out of the way and hitting his chest. Ordinarily Hawke would expect a man like Smets to take the punch and return fire in a second, but instead he flew through the air like a paper plane and crashed into the rock-face wall with a mighty thud.

Ryan looked at his hand in wonder. “Wow.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Scarlet said. “It’s the magic jock-strap, not you… Batman.”

Smets shook his head from side to side in a bid to regain his composure, and raised the MP7 shakily in front of him, firing off a wild burst wherever the muzzle pointed. Bullets raked all over the far wall of the cave, bursting ancient plaster into clouds and sending chips of stone fragments flying all over the place.

“We have to get out of here!” Lea shouted.

Victoria frowned as she looked at Smets. “But the only way out is back through the main tomb with Sala and his goons.”

“Then that’s where we’re going — run!” Hawke shouted.

The wounded Smets fired blindly at them as they raced from the cavern, but he quickly got to his feet and gave chase. Now they were caught between Smets behind them and Sala and his other goons in Thor’s tomb.

“Good plan,” Scarlet said.

Ahead of them, they saw the tomb, and with it Sala and his men who were in the process of moving out. He obviously had what he’d come for and now the place was worthless to him.

“Kill them!” Sala screamed, and his men opened fire.

“What now?” Lea asked.

Before Hawke could reply, Smets fired at them again from behind. Everyone dived for cover and Smets scrambled closer, firing more shots until the magazine was empty. He hurried to reload with a new magazine but the few seconds it took was enough for Hawke to make his move.

In the chaos, he sprinted through the arch which formed the boundary between the tomb and the tunnel and grabbed a sword from the floor. Swinging it into Smets’s stomach, the Belgian doubled over in agony and Hawke brought up his boot and smashed it into his face. Smets flew back with the force of the kick and stumbling over a pile of old pottery he lost his footing and crashed into the side of the sarcophagus.

With Sala’s other men still firing on them, Lea grabbed Smets by the belt and using his own momentum against him she finished his journey by spinning him around to use as a human shield. Hawke watched as she crouched behind the Belgian’s body as it was filled full of holes by Sala’s men.

With Smets dead, Hawke made a bid for the sarcophagus, but Sala and his men fought back hard, spraying the room with lead and making everyone dive for cover once again. The Andorran maniacally laughed with the submachine gun chattering away in his hands, empty jackets spitting out of the extractor.

Chaos now reigned in the chamber as the fighting increased, then Sala ordered a retreat and his men fired flash-bangs into the tomb. The noise of their detonation was deafening, but things got worse when they deployed the smoke grenades. Not only were they disoriented by the flash-bangs, but now the room began to fill with a noxious zinc chloride smoke composition.

“Cover your mouths!” Hawke yelled.

Victoria screamed as the room began to fill with the thick smoke and everyone lost each other in the pandemonium.

As the smoke cleared in the freezing air of the chamber, Lea strained in the gloom to try and find her friends. She snatched up a flashlight and shone it hurriedly around the room, its bright beam shining in the smoke like a car’s headlight lighting up a heavy fog. All around her she could hear the sound of screams, gunshots and fighting. It was total chaos and she knew one mistake would mean spending the rest of her life here in the caves.

She felt what she presumed was a bullet trace past her head and her thoughts were confirmed a millisecond later when she heard it smash into the wall behind her. A shower of shattered tile exploded behind her ear and she felt some of the shards strike the back of her head. That was too close, she thought, and ran for the cover of the sarcophagus.

With the smoke much thinner now, she was able to see Hawke across the other side of the chamber. He was fighting with one of the goons in hand-to-hand combat and it looked like the former SBS man was getting the better of him.

Nearer the entrance, she saw Scarlet fighting with another man but it looked like another unfair fight as the former SAS officer disarmed him and spun the folding stock of his submachine gun up into his groin with eye-watering speed and accuracy.

The man’s screams were cut short by Scarlet firing a burst of bullets into his chest which exploded and knocked him back into the rocky wall.

Another flash-bang exploded close to Ryan and blasted him back against the rock, blowing Thor’s belt clean off him. He clambered to his feet uneasily and tried to make his way back to the safety of the others but as he staggered backwards, he was met by a shadow looming out of the darkness. Lea and the others stared in horror as they saw who it was.

Leon Smets had risen from the dead.

“How the hell..?” Hawke mumbled, numb with disbelief.

“Sala must have given him something to bring him back,” Lea said. “Like you did for me.”

“Ryan, look out!” Hawke shouted, but it was too late. Smets knocked Ryan out with the butt of his machine pistol and the young man’s limp body fell to the dusty floor.

“I’ll kill you for that!” Lea screamed.

“Not unless you can get to him before me,” Hawke said.

Smets, whose tanned face was now a pale, greasy white complexion, hauled Ryan to his feet and waggled a knife blade haphazardly in front of his throat. “Get back or you know what happens next.”

Sala laughed as they made their way to the rappel lines, this time using Ryan as the human shield.

Smets secured Ryan to the harness on the end of the rappel lines and when the job was done he tugged on them, giving the signal to winch the unconscious cargo to the upper level of the cave complex.

Lea looked on in disbelief as she watched Ryan disappear up into the vertical shaft alongside Sala, Smets and the handful of surviving gunmen, but there was nothing they could do while they held a knife to his throat.

Hawke punched the wall. “Damn it!”

“No time for that,” Scarlet said. “Let’s get after them!”

But before they reached the rappel lines, Sala cut them and they tumbled into useless pools of black nylon at the base of the shaft.

“What now?” Victoria asked. “I can’t climb!”

Hawke sighed and looked at Scarlet. “Race you to the top?”

“Fifty quid.”

The two of them free-climbed up the rock-face, hauling the rappel lines behind them in their wake, and when they reached the top they secured them and tossed them back down for Lea and Victoria to climb up.

Then they made their way along the tunnel they had used earlier until finally seeing the faint shimmer of natural daylight up ahead once again, even if it was weakened by the Scandinavian dusk.

Lea reached the opening fissure in the base of the mountain just in time to see Smets fire an RPG into their Hilux. It exploded in an enormous fireball and lit the otherwise silent twilight in a surreal white and orange after-glow. Seconds later various parts of their vehicle — doors, wing mirrors and the tailgate, clattered back to the damp gorse with muffled thuds.

On the road behind the burning wreck of their truck, Sala’s crew were moving out. They watched, stranded and helpless as the three black vehicles snaked their way toward the main road with their special cargo of Thor’s mysterious scroll and Ryan Bale.

Things had looked better for the ECHO team.