The Traitor's Gold, page 31
The man fought insanely. Almost immediately, Mason realised he was up against the leader of the SED, the man called Miura. In the flurry of battle, Mason’s gun went flying away, landing in the soft sand nearby, so he caught hold of Miura’s and wrenched it from side to side. The man tried to head-butt him, but missed. They leapt and tussled and staggered in the sand. Mason put a foot behind the guy’s right boot and pushed.
Miura hit the wall, stumbling back. His bald head caught the sun, flashing and sweating and streaked with blood.
‘I will end you, scum,’ he spat.
‘Hey, we want to share.’ Mason still had hold of the gun and now wrenched it away from the man. It was too big for close-quarter fighting, so he flung it away, reached for a knife. Miura whipped a black blade out and slashed forward. Mason deflected it with his own.
There in the desert, beside a sweeping sand dune that looked like a wave and under the blistering sun, Mason and Miura struck at each other, back and forth. Mason caught blows intended for his neck and heart, deflected them, tried to make Miura overstretch. But the man was a good knife fighter, striking underhand and skipping aside, already folding into the next move, constantly attacking. Mason went backwards, not because he had to, but to allow Miura time to wear himself out with his incessant attack.
Roxy smashed her enemy across the top of the head, reared back when he caught her in the stomach, fell gasping. He then bashed her over the head with his weapon, sending her tumbling back into the wall. Roxy struck it head first. Blood flew, leaving a mark on the bricks. Flesh tore. Roxy spun round, lashing out. Her fists struck true, swiping a knife from the man’s hand that had been about to bury itself in her neck.
She leapt at him, spitting blood.
Quaid and Hassell rolled across the top of the wall, clutching at their opponents. They landed hard in the sand, but the soft mounds cushioned the fall, and let them slip from the grasp of their enemies. Quaid kicked sand in his enemy’s face while Hassell buried his in the sand, pressing down hard on the nape of the man’s neck.
Mason retreated a hundred yards, past the last of the brick walls and onto the hard-packed desert. The sun was in his eyes, glaring down. His clothing stuck to him; there was sand in his boots. He slashed left and right, wrists dripping blood as he attempted to keep Miura at bay. The man was stocky, powerful and well-trained.
‘Did you find the casino?’ Miura asked.
Mason tried to bait him. ‘Oh yeah. Footage is gonna be on TV screens any day now.’
It worked. Miura snarled and lunged. Mason sidestepped the attack and sliced with his knife, slashing the man across the face. Two flaps of skin were instantly parted and blood flowed. Mason winced.
‘That’s gotta smart,’ he said.
Miura yelled out a curse and flung himself at Mason, who staggered back further. Now, at his back, he knew the hole that led into the casino was visible.
Miura clapped eyes on it, eyes that widened. He backed off. ‘Is that it?’
Mason flung a hand at it. ‘Yes, it’s the goddamned casino. Why couldn’t you back off and stop being murdering bastards and let something of such historical value to the whole world be unearthed? What is wrong with you people?’
‘The Shadow Kings take what they want,’ Miura said. ‘They are far from weak, and will not be bullied.’
Mason saw it now. Weakness? Bullying? ‘But all that is just political bollocks,’ he said. ‘Your bosses, they’re nothing more than men in positions of power getting greedy. Listen…this is all just a political statement, and you’re in the middle of it. Powerful men are always sending men and women off to war to further their own agendas, while they keep their hands clean and take home the money later. It’s why my friend quit the army, some of the reason I did. They send boys and girls off to die, to be brought home in body bags, and all for a bit of imagined power that won’t matter next year anyhow. They promise them honour, a future, glory, and they give them bloody dirt and exploding missiles. Save the rest of your men now. Call this off.’
Miura almost looked swayed. There was a strange look on his face, something that was almost placid. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.
‘There is something in what you say,’ he said. ‘Something almost pure. I can understand it. But I am part of the agenda. We all are. We are the sword that wields it, that delivers it.’
And Miura struck at him, face changing instantly. Mason backtracked, still catching the blows, hearing the ring of metal on metal. He edged around the hole in the ground and watched as Miura eyed it.
‘Don’t die for that,’ Mason said.
Miura leapt at him, knife raised. The blade came down, slashed Mason’s upraised arm and sliced a chunk from it. Mason flinched, staggered. Blood poured from the wound and dripped to the ground, mingling with the sand.
And Miura disappeared down the hole.
At first, Mason was dumbstruck, wondering where the hell the man had gone. One second he was a flying, terrifying figure, knife silhouetted against the bright, blazing skies, and the next he had disappeared without a sound.
Mason leapt at the rope, grabbed it with one hand and let himself down. His arm burned, blood ran from the wound, soaking his clothes. His eyes adjusted quickly to the sudden dark and he saw Miura crouched below, head in his hands, clearly having taken a knock during his long fall.
Mason landed beside him, grabbed him and threw him back against the wall of the cave. Miura suddenly slid around him with a slinky action, grabbed the rope, and curled it around Mason’s neck in one swift movement. Then he leaned back and pulled.
Mason didn’t panic. He reached up and grabbed the rope, couldn’t find purchase for his fingers beneath it, but created a small gap. He could breathe, barely. But Miura was yanking on the rope with both hands, leaning back. The thick twine tightened around Mason’s neck, cutting off his air. He was practically pulled off his feet, nowhere to turn, nowhere to go. He couldn’t turn around, couldn’t free the rope. He was helpless. The knife fell from his hands as his vision blurred.
Out of the darkness came a screeching blur. It hit Miura in the solar plexus and then the balls, all elbows and knees, practically in flight. It hit harder than a rock, and with bone-crunching accuracy, driving Miura away from the rope. The SED leader let go of the rope and collapsed to the floor, groaning.
Sally stood over him, Luciane at her side.
The two women had treasures in their hands, a ceramic bowl and a jade statue, both of which they now used to beat Miura into unconsciousness. As they worked, Mason eased the rope from around his throat.
‘Thank…’ he gasped. ‘…you…’
Miura reared up, face twisted, eyes ablaze. His face was a mask of blood; it was dripping off his chin, his nose. He screamed. The knife was suddenly back in his hand, and he lunged straight at Sally.
Mason was all out of choices. He plucked the knife off the floor and, on his knees, threw it end over end at Miura. The blade flashed past Sally’s left ear, nicking it and drawing blood, and then slammed point first into Miura’s face with a clunk. The impact arrested the man’s momentum, stopped him dead in his tracks, and sent him slithering down to the floor.
Sally looked away, felt her ear and turned to Mason.
‘Close as fuck.’ She didn’t usually curse.
Mason let out a deep breath and rubbed his aching throat. ‘Help me up.’ He grabbed the rope once more, thinking only of Roxy, Quaid and Hassell, and climbed it back out into the blazing day.
Up top, he shaded his eyes and started staggering back towards the ongoing fight. He still couldn’t breathe properly, and his lungs were heaving. He saw Roxy flat on the ground, a man atop her, and Quaid and Hassell struggling over to the left.
Mason ran as fast as he could. He didn’t stop. He launched himself through the air and struck the man on top of Roxy full in the face with both his knees. He tumbled, rose and, in the blinding heat, shook his head. Sweat droplets flew in all directions, but Mason only had thoughts for his team. He started running again, smashed into the man fighting Hassell and then flung himself at the one battling Quaid. His actions helped both men gain the advantage.
And then he realised Roxy was at his side. Mason had knocked her opponent out cold with his flying knee attack. He was crouching, hands on knees. He looked up at her.
‘You good?’
In front of them, Hassell knifed his man in the chest. A shot rang out – Quaid using a handgun to finish his own opponent. As it was, the final gunshot echoed back off the wavelike sand dune, the sound repeating again and again in their ears. It pinpointed the moment when a profound silence suddenly covered the scene.
Mason looked around, saw the bullet-strewn trucks, the lifeless bodies of the SED men. He fell to his knees in the sand, exhausted.
There was movement in front of him: Sally and Luciane exiting the hole in the ground, backpacks secured, their faces worried as they blinked in the light. Mason waved at them.
‘It’s safe,’ Quaid yelled.
But they hadn’t finished yet. Mason knew not all the SED fighters were dead. They set about securing the living, making sure they had no weapons near them but had bottled water they removed from the back of the truck. Mason bit his lower lip when he realised only two of their enemy had survived.
Sally and Luciane came up, bent over under the weight of their backpacks. Both women wore radiant smiles.
‘Did you get everything you needed?’ Hassell asked.
Sally nodded. ‘Incredible footage,’ she said, ‘of the world’s oldest casino. We’ve removed nothing, stolen nothing. It’s all intact.’ She said this for the benefit of the listening SED soldiers, though Mason was unsure if they spoke English. ‘We have not disturbed the casino’s heritage or taken anything from it. We just wanted to share this historic moment with the world,’ she finished. They all knew that this meant it was over. The Shadow Kings could not attempt to hoard the casino’s treasures for themselves now that the precious archaeological site and its riches had been filmed and put front and centre on the global stage for all to see.
Mason grunted as Roxy fussed over his wound, binding it with a strip of her T-shirt. His own clothes were soaked and would need changing before he embarked on any kind of civilian transport.
Speaking of that, he looked over towards the Mogao Caves. ‘One last hike,’ he said.
The team gathered around, set their faces to the south, and started on their long journey back.
Chapter 49
Days passed. Mason and the team returned to the West. Mason’s wound started healing even as a vacuum of purpose opened up around them. This was the aftermath, the sudden cessation of action. Mason found Sally wanted to stay with Luciane, at least until they had divided the footage of the casino between them and formed a plan of action.
So, days later, he found himself back in Dublin.
It was after six, getting dark. They had seated themselves at the very back of an old pub in central Dublin on O’Connell Street, the city’s major thoroughfare. They had pushed two tables together and were ensconced in a little niche, so that nobody bothered them. Half-empty pint glasses and bottles of beer and cut-glass tumblers littered the chipped black table in front of them, along with plates, the remains of hearty meals of steak and chips and burgers and chicken fillets, all loaded with salad that, for some reason, remained on the plates.
Mason was sitting back, watching the band set up on stage. The bar to their left was getting busier and busier. It wrapped around the wall to the entrance, where people were flowing in, more arriving every second. The stage was soon set up, the band pausing over their instruments, waiting for someone to announce them.
Mason took another swig of his beer. His arm still ached, his knuckles were bruised, but otherwise he was fine. His body had been battered time and time again throughout the mission, and was now healing.
Figures started crowding around the stage, filling the spaces between Mason’s team and the musicians so they could no longer see them. All they could hear was the sound of a drum kit and then a guitar as they started up, and then the singer’s voice crooning a song. Even from the very first beat, the crowd was hooked and started singing along, filling the bar with their voices.
Mason leaned in to Roxy, who was sitting beside him. ‘At least we all survived to talk about it.’
She smiled without humour, her raven hair falling across her face. ‘There were moments when I thought we wouldn’t, especially in the desert.’
‘Me too,’ Mason agreed. ‘But we’re here now, and we made a coup.’
Sally leaned over as far as she could, voice faint beneath the music and the crowd. ‘The footage we have will form a documentary which will be enhanced by diligent research. It will be great. We can mix modern gambling, say at Vegas and Macau, with the ancient forms, showing how it used to be. The networks will eat it up, especially when we announce the discovery of the world’s oldest casino in conjunction with it. Public awareness will be on a high.’
‘The Shadow Kings killed to prevent this,’ Hassell said mordantly.
‘They approached it with pure aggression,’ Sally replied. ‘They caused all the problems, from the beginning, desperate to sell the relics on the black market for their own gain. All Luciane wanted was a chance to be astonished by history. They came in with all guns blazing.’
‘Literally,’ Roxy said wryly.
Mason finished his pint. ‘Now the most serious question of all,’ he intoned – and waited for everyone to look at him. ‘Who’s going to get up to go to the bloody bar?’
They laughed. Roxy rose at the chance to use her elbows and Quaid went with her. Soon they were back, armed with trays of drinks rather than anything more dangerous. Mason raised his glass and said, ‘Cheers.’
‘To what comes next,’ Roxy said, clinking her rum and Pepsi Max against his pint.
‘Any ideas?’ Quaid looked at Sally.
The brunette with the blue-tipped hair took her phone out and laid it heavily on the table. She jabbed a finger at it. ‘This thing has been going off day and night for a week,’ she said. ‘There’s no shortage of jobs out there.’
‘And the good thing is, we can pick and choose,’ Mason said. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
Luciane joined them, raising her own cocktail. Their glasses rose, the bar’s lights shining off them and sparkling, the liquid inside reflecting glimmers of amber and gold and green. The glasses lingered for a long time in the air.
And then the team drank, celebrating their success of the moment and far more to come.
THE END
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About the Author
David Leadbeater has published more than fifty novels and is a million-copy ebook bestseller. His books include the chart-topping Matt Drake series and the Relic Hunters series, which won the inaugural Amazon Kindle Storyteller award in 2017.
www.davidleadbeater.com
Also by David Leadbeater:
The Joe Mason Series
The Vatican Secret
The Demon Code
The Midnight Conspiracy
The Babylon Plot
The Matt Drake Series
The Bones of Odin
The Blood King Conspiracy
The Gates of Hell
The Tomb of the Gods
Brothers in Arms
The Swords of Babylon
Blood Vengeance
Last Man Standing
The Plagues of Pandora
The Lost Kingdom
The Ghost Ships of Arizona
The Last Bazaar
The Edge of Armageddon
The Treasures of Saint Germain
Inca Kings
The Four Corners of the Earth
The Seven Seals of Egypt
Weapons of the Gods
The Blood King Legacy
Devil’s Island
The Fabergé Heist
Four Sacred Treasures
The Sea Rats
The Blood King Takedown
Devil’s Junction
Voodoo Soldiers
The Carnival of Curiosities
Theatre of War
Shattered Spear
Ghost Squadron
A Cold Day in Hell
The Winged Dagger
