The Mongol's Coffin, page 1
Bone Guard One
The Mongol’s Coffin
E. Chris Ambrose
Copyright © 2017 by E. Chris Ambrose
All rights reserved.
* * *
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
About the Author
Chapter One
Grant Casey dove behind the nearest statue, a huge sandstone lion with wings and curly hair surrounding a wise human face—at least, until the shots blasted its face into gravel. Bullets and bits of stone pinged off the display cases and the concrete walls, leaving gouges and sending ricochets that stung his exposed hands and cheeks. Grant scowled into his goggles. He'd seen someone come this way, someone who should have been to-hell-and-gone before the shooting started, but now he didn't dare to call out.
Along the corridor, ahead, he glimpsed a tall soldier—Nick—herding a small group of civilians out of the museum—a woman in full burka, with children, a pair of older men, looking flustered. At the sound of gunfire, Nick placed himself between the civilians and the shots and hustled them all out of sight. Good.
The latest barrage ended with a settling of dust, and shattered glass from museum cases glittered on the floor. He held back a sneeze. The statue's head wore a mask of pock-marks . A few other, smaller figures lay dismembered and rocking on the ground. If they had stronger fire-power, even the stone lion couldn't protect him.
"Chief, do you copy?" D. A.'s voice buzzed in his ear. Grant dare not answer
"He took off west," Nick replied. "Shots fired in that direction."
"Don't tell me the Indian's gone cowboy on us." Commander Wilson, the putative leader of this supposedly joint operation.
"It's not his first rodeo, sir. He's got a reason," D. A. answered. "Chief, the building's clear—team's clear, do you copy?"
"Y'all are intel, not ops—Casey, you get your people out of here," Wilson barked. "You are in defiance of orders, Lieutenant Casey, and—"
"Saving twenty-eight lives and counting, sir." D. A. cut in, begging to be charged with insubordination. "Chief called in the threat, you didn't respond. Did you expect us to sit tight while the place went up in smoke?"
"I expected you to follow orders—"
Grant snapped off his set, the argument dropping into silence. Cautiously, he adjusted his position, settling his back to the solid stone, breathing carefully, listening. This room sat only a corridor and a lattice-trimmed courtyard short of the entrance, where the rest of the team would be wondering, despite orders to the contrary, if they should come and get him now that they'd cleared the place of civilians. Only, they hadn't.
He caught a flicker of movement and a flash of a red heat signature in his left-hand lens, furtive, somebody slipping from the bulk of that leafy-looking column to the base of a nearby display of jewelry and tablets. Grant tracked the movement with his rifle.
"Allahu Akbar!" shouted a gruff voice to his right. The shooter, seeking his compatriots. No answer. So the third party wasn't his, and wasn't Grant's. Civilian.
Grant jumped back to the tail of the lion, caught the flash of red, the shooter's position. He fired three shots and ducked away again as the shooter returned fire.
Glancing over, Grant silently urged the civilian to get the hell out while the shooter was looking for him. Instead, the civ lunged along the display and stuck his hand over the top, snatching a jeweled diadem and pulling back, stuffing the piece into his dark tunic. A looter, in the middle of a firefight. Could be someone taking advantage, trying to fund a ticket out of the chaos that was Afghanistan, or maybe a museum staffer hoping to save something from the destruction.
Boots pounded up the hallway from the heart of the museum, accompanied by shouts of "Allahu Akbar!" and a hundred other things. Shit. His shooter called out in reply, then the air in the room sucked dry, something boomed, and the lion exploded. Grant dove away, toward the civ. He ran hard, gunfire spitting in pursuit. The civ dodged behind a wooden doorway that wouldn't stand up to automatics, never mind the rocket they just fired. He scooped up the civ with one arm and launched them both into the courtyard, rolling so he landed on top behind some kind of tomb. Ironic, if he bought it right then.
"Stay down!" he barked, first in English, then in Dari, the local dialect.
"Get the fuck off," the civ growled back in accented English, shoving at him. A woman? Yeah, he could tell now, despite her genderless tunic and trousers. The wrap slipped back from her face, revealing sharp green eyes, dusky skin, parted lips.
Women had every reason to need the cash to fund a getaway. He couldn't blame her for taking advantage. "Get out of here, lady. I'll cover you."
For a moment, their eyes locked, and those lips gave a slight quirk, then she gave a nod, and he rolled aside, taking a knee behind the low tomb, weapon in hand. When he popped up, peppering the stone lattice with shots, she checked her stolen diadem, tossed it aside, and ran: straight back into the chamber.
Grant ducked down again, the shooters taking pot-shots at his head, while the crazy woman flanked them, making for the same case she'd robbed moments before.
Leaning left, aiming upward, Grant fired again and heard a shriek as a bullet struck home, then he pulled back, yanking out the magazine and slamming in another. His last. On the other side of the lattice, the shooters snapped at each other, loud enough to hear, too soft to make out the words. Draw their fire, or make for home? One last civ, and she was nuts.
When the rocket roared, Grant plunged left, rolled, and pounded down the side hall to come up next to their hide-out, already shooting, turning them away from the civ. Three heat signatures, one of them meeting his eye as he fired into the man's chest. The next one brought up his automatic, then he fell forward, blood spilling from his lips.
The crazy woman pivoted out of her stance, the gun still in her hand. Okay, not the usual civilian, not at all.
Between them, the last shooter froze, glanced behind him, then shouted a stream of fury at a woman in pants and swung his weapon toward her.
Two shots, chest and head, one from each direction, and the shooter went down.
She shoved the gun into her waistband and swung around the corner of the lattice.
"Hey!" Grant held up his off-hand to stop her.
Too late. She slipped her hands and feet into the diamonds of the lattice surrounding the courtyard and scrambled up, climbing fast to the roof and disappearing, even the patter of her steps fading in a heartbeat.
"Chief! We should be out of here—what're you doing?" Nick led with his gun around the entrance at the far end of the hall.
"Finishing the job." Grant released his gun and stepped back, the tether keeping it ha
"Up there? Fuck. You sure about that?" Nick came up beside him, half a head taller, maybe seventy pounds heavier, a running back compared with Grant's track-and-field physique. "Commander's raising Hell on the radio—you heard?" Behind his helmet and goggles, Nick's dark face looked grim. "Could be bad news back on base."
"Twenty-nine lives and this place still standing? I'll take it." Grant swept the room, listening, watching: no more sounds, no heat signatures he could see.
"They all down?" Nick leaned a little closer.
Grant scanned the insurgents. The first one to fall shifted a little, moaning, his breath hitching. A living insurgent meant a chance to get some intel and get back to doing their job. Would it appease the commander? Unlikely.
"Trauma kit," Grant ordered as he stepped over the bodies, pausing to roll a body from the wounded man's legs. "Lie still. We can help." The words rang a bit hollow, given he was the guy who'd shot him, but it wasn't personal. Nick held out the trauma kit, edging into the space on the other side. The wounded man moved again, muttering, his arm underneath him as if he were trying to sit up. Nick's eyes flared, then he shouted, "Chief!" and launched himself over the downed man, knocking Grant aside as the insurgent's hidden explosive went off in a shower of blood and bone. Grant flew backwards from the thrust of Nick's tackle. He tumbled past the bulk of that wise, ruined lion, the stone wings fluttering in a breeze of fire, shielding him from the worst of the blast, and the even worse anointing of Nick's blood.
Chapter Two
Minister of Antiquities Jin Wang-lo mopped his brow lightly with a kerchief as he gazed down on the gates to a tomb fit for an emperor. It contained instead, a criminal—one of the greatest ever known, but Jin did not begrudge him this final resting place. Indeed, it was the culmination of Jin's archaeological career.
In the narrow valley below, his Assistant Minister, a pudgy academic by the name of Li labored up the slope as the tomb doors shut behind him. "Minister," he panted, "it is done. I have confirmed the inventory." He stumbled to Jin's side and nearly slipped back again, waving a hand as if he expected the Minister himself to offer aid. Jin helped those who helped themselves. He smiled thinly. Indeed, when the rewards for this project came to fruition, perhaps in a decade or more. It would be Jin who then helped himself and his family.
"Seventy-eight crowns?"
"Seventy-eight crowns, Minister," Li confirmed, then tried a smile, though he was still panting from his exertions. "They are magnificent. What shall I tell the workers?" He gestured back at the thousand or so men in workmen's garb who labored in the defile with shovels and picks.
"No need, Li. Sub-minister Yang will take care of them." He gave a flick of his hand. Yang stood stiff as a terra cotta warrior in the shade of a cluster of trees, sunglasses shielding his eyes, his square jaw suggesting foreign ancestry. Still, Yang could be trusted utterly. Without glancing toward the Minister, Yang nodded and stepped up to the edge of the ravine. A line of men in loose beige clothing joined him, and another, similar line of men matched them across the other side. The mountains around echoed with a growl of engines as the tanker trucks finally arrived.
Li flicked his eyes over the arriving trucks. "So much water? Is it even necessary to re-supply the camp now that our work here is complete?"
"I do not suggest you drink what those trucks contain." They carried the last ingredient he needed to complete his life's work.
"Now?" Yang asked.
Jin watched the trucks maneuver into place, their pipes ready to dispense their contents into the valley below. "Now." He turned on his heel. "Come, Li, the cars will bring us back to Beijing to deliver our final report."
"Ah, yes." Li's head bobbed, then his glasses slid from his sweat-streaked face and he turned back, bowing to search for the spectacles as Jin walked down the trail. His foot hesitated over the ancient stone pathway. The first twang and whisper of bowshot reached his ears, then the screaming began, echoing in the walls of stone.
"Minister!" Li bleated, staggering toward him, then back toward the edge of the ravine. "What are they doing? Stop! You must—Minister!" He waved his hands, but Yang and his men continued to fire, launching volleys of arrows down into the valley below until there were no more screams.
Li's slippery hands clung to Jin's arm. "Minister." His eyes looked too big and altogether too round, like his flapping mouth. "What have they done? Why?"
"Because none must ever know about this tomb." Jin stared down at him. "You knew that when the project began, that our work, if successful, must be eternally kept secret. Have you suddenly forgotten?"
"No, of course not, but this—" he gave a helpless gasp, his hands translating his tremors down Jin's arm, his sweat marking the Minister's suit.
"Is in keeping with the requirements of the Party." Jin gave a twist of his arm to free himself from the other man's grip. "You did sign the pledge, did you not?"
"Yes, of course, Minister." His head swiveled back to the line of men in beige, still holding their bows, more like the terra cotta warriors of the First Emperor than ever. The archers froze, listening and watching below, then Yang approached the Minister's position.
"It is done."
"Tell the trucks they may proceed."
"But they're already dead," Li said. "What good can it do to drown them?"
"They were enemies of the Han people, Li, just like the man in the tomb. Persons without worth or status."
Li's round gaze rose from his view of the ravine, but he looked pale as a dumpling, swimming in sweat, owl-eyed without his glasses. At Li's back, Yang lifted that chin, his shining black lenses reflecting the Minister's face, the high sun, the rough terrain, revealing nothing. Jin tipped his head, and Li's flapping mouth gaped open, then filled with blood as his knees buckled and he bent backward over Yang's knife. Yang stepped aside in a fluid motion, like the finest masters of wu shu, away from the path of the blood.
"I will strip him," Yang said, "and add him to the others."
Liquid flowed from the tankers, splashing down the walls into the ravine and the smell already drifted toward them. Jin pressed his kerchief over his nose once more. "The knife wound may be conspicuous."
Yang held up the blade, its old metal dull. "I took the precaution of arming myself appropriately, Minister."
Jin gave a short bow of acknowledgment. They should recruit sub-ministers from the army more often, if all of them could be as efficient as Sub-Minister Yang. "It appears that I am in need of a new assistant. I should be pleased to recommend your advancement."
Yang placed his hands formally over the hilt of his weapon and bowed more deeply. His blade dripped blood onto the stones. The ravine behind reeked of death, and it sizzled. Minister Jin strode carefully down the slope to his air-conditioned limousine. He had achieved greatness. Now all he need do was wait.
