Treasure of Babylon, page 19
part #2 of Avalon Adventure Series
“Let’s get in there, then!” Charlie said, racing to the tunnel.
Riley grabbed his arm. “I wouldn’t, mate. Bloch was an Austrian commando. No way he’s retreating without leaving booby-traps. You go into that tunnel in all that smoke and dust and I’m guessing you’re not going to make it to the other side.”
Selena sighed and leaned up against the wall, slowing her breathing. “So, what then?”
“Yeah, what?” said Charlie.
“Hey, just everyone calm down. We know where they’re going, right?” Decker said. “So, let’s get our asses down to Mozambique.”
32
Namuli Mountains, Mozambique
“They’re murdering bastards,” Atticus said coldly. “They killed Hassan in cold blood, and now they’re holding the rest of our team as hostages. They have a hell of head start on us, too.”
Decker sighed as he looked out of the small cockpit window. Atticus was right about Hagen having a head start on them, and it was true his old Albatross was slower than modern aircraft, but it had two advantages over newer jet planes. First, there wasn't an airline in the world that would fly them to a place like the Namuli Mountains, and second, it was a float plane.
Terrain like this would never allow a regular landing on the ground, so whatever aircraft Hagen had used to fly to Mozambique would get them only so far and then they’d have to transfer to boats. The Avalon could land anywhere there was a sufficient stretch of water, and if tropical Zambezia had a shortage of anything, it wasn’t lakes or rivers.
“Any more word of this Mocumbi character?” Decker asked Riley, referring to an old friend of the Australian’s whom he thought might be able to help.
“No phone signal out here, mate. I know what you know.”
“There!” Selena said. “I see boats on the river!”
Decker glanced over the starboard side of the cockpit. She was right – three boats were moored on the north bank of an unnamed river. Considering the epic scale of the rainforest landscape stretching to the horizon in every direction, he knew it must have taken Hagen’s party a long time to make it this far on those boats.
“Land as near as you can, Mitch,” Selena said.
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” He was still surveying the landscape. “Looks like the mountain in question is a former volcano – looks like the form of a caldera beneath the undergrowth…wait – what do I spy over there?”
Selena and her father peered over the instrument panel. “Oh my gosh!”
“Do my eyes deceive me, or is that a plane wreck?” Atticus asked
“It’s a wreck all right,” Decker said. “Looks like an old war plane.”
“What the hell’s it doing out here?”
Decker shrugged. “I’ll give you one guess.”
Selena looked over at him, disappointment on her face. “Looking for the Ark! So we’re not the first.”
Decker rubbed his chin. “That plane is World War Two, no doubt, and you can see from the undergrowth all over it that it’s been here for decades.”
“One of ours?” Atticus asked.
“Not American.”
“I meant British, old boy.”
Decker gave him a look and turned the Avalon to get a closer look. “Looks German to me.”
“Wartime German?” Selena said. “As in Nazis?”
“Yup, pretty much.”
“The plot thickens,” Atticus said. “We better get this thing down.”
Spying a good straight section of a broad, chocolate-colored river a few hundred feet below, Decker banked the old plane to port a few degrees and reduced power to the rotary engines. The lower torque made itself felt through a series of bone-shaking vibrations as Decker lined the plane up over the river. “All right, guys,” he said into his headset. “Brace for landing.”
As he descended toward the rushing river, memories of his landing in Tibet’s Yadong Valley during the Shambhala mission rushed into his mind faster than the tropical rainforest canopy was approaching the bottom of the Avalon. Flying no higher than seventy feet above the river, the tropical tree-tops flashed past the cockpit windows as he fought a powerful crosswind and tried to keep the plane level.
“This is a bit hairy, isn’t it?” Atticus said, tightening his seat belt and gripping the back of Selena’s seat until he squeezed all the blood out of his knuckles.
“He’s done it before,” Selena said, giving Decker an admiring glance through the cockpit door.
“Any sign of Mocumbi?” Charlie asked.
Decker shook his head and his voice came through their headsets. “Not yet.
“And who is this man again?” Selena asked.
“Carlos Mocumbi,” said Riley.
“And how do you know this guy?”
“I don’t, not personally. A mate of mine from the regiment spent some time in Mozambique as part of his international risk management company.”
“And what does that involve?” Selena said.
“Mostly maritime security, specialist training and so on.”
“You mean mercenary, right?” Decker said.
“Tomato, tomahto,” said Riley. “Anyway, he worked with Mocumbi a few years back around Nacala. They were hired to recover a number of ships that had been hijacked by pirates sailing through the Mozambique Channel on their way into the Indian Ocean.”
Decker shook his head and lowered his voice to a cynical whisper. “Risk management…”
“You want his help or not, buggernuts?” Riley said.
Decker lifted his hands from the yoke. “I’m sorry, Riley. Sure, we could use his help. I’m presuming he’s bringing some muscle along with him?”
Riley nodded. “That’s what Mick said. Maybe three or four guys, all former Mozambique Defence Armed Forces, army mostly.”
“Sounds like we’re in with a chance,” Atticus said.
Decker put the Avalon down in the river and powered it over to the eastern shore. It didn’t take them long to unpack their equipment and move it to the riverbank. Hauling their packs up away from the water they stood silent for a moment, more aware than ever that they were about as close to the middle of nowhere as it was possible to get. Thousands of square kilometers of African rainforest stretched in every direction and the only way in or out was the Avalon, now moored to the riverbank and quietly bobbing up and down on the water.
“Can’t be many places as remote as this,” Selena said. “I don’t like it.”
“Hey, we’re not remote as long as we got the Avalon.” Decker said with a reassuring smile. “It’s a private hotel with wings, remember?”
“We have enough fuel to get back to Pemba, right?” Charlie said.
Decker gave him a weary look. “I know how to make fuel calculations, Charlie. I’ve been flying planes all my life.”
“Just checking, boss.”
“Hmmm.”
Selena flicked her head to the right and pointed into the undergrowth. “What’s that over there?”
Decker and Riley drew their guns and aimed them where she had pointed.
Atticus took a step closer to his daughter and lowered his voice to an anxious whisper. “What did you see?”
“I thought I saw something move.”
Decker squinted into the dusky tropical gloom and saw some shadows moving in the rainforest. He tightened his grip on the gun and stood in front of the others. “You see that, Riley?”
Riley nodded and then shouted loudly. “Is that you lurking out there, Mocumbi?”
Charlie slapped at a mosquito on his arm and stared into the trees. “Well, is it?” he whispered.
The shadows turned into men dressed in jungle camos and armed to the teeth. There were three of them in total and when they had finally made their way out of the jungle and stepped onto the riverbank, one of them stepped forward and nodded his head. “You are Corporal Carr of the Australian SAS?”
“Guilty as charged,” Riley said.
“Maybe you would like to lower your weapons?” the man said.
Decker moved to lower his but Riley told him keep it where it was and then fixed his eyes on the man. “Where’s number four?”
“What?”
“Mick Smith told me there were four of you. Where’s number four?”
They heard a laugh from behind them and whirled around to see another man moving through the jungle toward the front end of their aircraft. “You’re just as suspicious as Mick said you would be, and his surname always used to be Davison. Has he changed it for some reason?”
Riley smiled and lowered his gun. “You must be Mocumbi.”
“Guilty as charged,” Mocumbi said, and extended his hand. “Nice touch with the last name trick.”
“Just checking, the Australian said.
Mocumbi searched through his sweat-soaked camos for a crumpled pack of Grande Turismo cigarettes. He fired one up and offered them around, but they all declined. “Next time you see Mick, you tell him he still owes me five thousand meticals for the bet he lost about the stripper.”
Riley slipped his gun back in the holster. “I’ll be sure to do that, Carlos.”
“Good,” Mocumbi said, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. “So we have four Mozambique soldiers and one Australian SAS, but who are the rest?”
“Captain Mitch Decker, retired US Marine Corps,” Decker said, shaking hands with Mocumbi. “And this is Charlie Valentine, ex British secret service; Professor Selena Moore and her father Professor Atticus Moore, and our translator Dr Diana Silva from Portugal has been taken hostage by the enemy.”
“OK,” Mocumbi said with a smile. “You said one of your friends was murdered in Iran?”
“That’s right,” Riley said. “An archaeologist called Hassan L…”
“Larijani,” Atticus said, helping the young Australian out. “Dr Hassan Larijani. He was one of my PhD students in London. Hagen murdered him in cold blood.”
“And how many men does this Hagen have?” Mocumbi asked.
“There are at least eight of them,” said Decker. “But some of them have been genetically modified.”
Mocumbi looked confused. “What?”
Selena said, “Mr Mocumbi, the man we are hunting is a genetic scientist who has been snatching people and conducting experiments on them.”
“I don’t understand – how exactly?”
“Gene therapy,” she said. “It’s been possible for some time to replace old genes with newer, stronger ones and change the body in that way, but Hagen has taken things much further and created a number of men with extraordinary strength, speed and agility.”
“Super-soldiers, basically,” Charlie said with a sigh. “And he’ll be able to do a lot worse if hey gets his hands on what he’s looking for here.”
“How many of these super soldiers?”
“Three so far,” said Decker. “Or three that we know about, at least.”
“Plus he could have hired more men locally,” Atticus said.
Mocumbi shook his head. “No, not possible. The boats they arrived in could only carry twelve without equipment, so with their packs and weapons I would say we are looking at the original eight, and there’s something else too.”
“What?”
“Since we got here, I’ve had the feeling we’re being watched, and not by Hagen.”
“So who, then?”
Mocumbi shrugged and gave a toothy grin. “Ghosts of the jungle.”
Riley laughed if off, but it was obvious the others were more concerned. He picked up his bag and started heading into the trees. “No ghost’s stopping me from getting Diana back and finding the Ark. Anyone coming with me?”
33
Tor Hagen’s destiny was almost within his reach. Soon, he would possess the true treasure of Babylon – the power of God himself would be in his hands and the whole world would come to fear him. Now, he watched as Leif and the other two super-soldiers ripped at the giant spider webs, vines and tropical mistletoe covering the entrance of the ancient temple. Finding the entrance at the base of Mount Namuli had taken over twelve hours even with the LIDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging system.
But now, the search was over. “We have finally arrived, Fräulein Moser! Your God has delivered his power unto us!”
Moser studied Hagen’s profile before replying. “Let’s hope my God is in a generous mood when we break into the temple.”
Kurz and Bloch exchanged the most subtle of glances and then each man readied his weapon. Somewhere in the distance the desperate cry of an Egyptian vulture filled the lush canopy far above their heads.
Leif and Marius continued tearing the thick, tangled undergrowth from the temple’s façade while Oddvar started work on removing the boulders that had fallen from the upper parts of the temple and crashed in front of the entrance. This time, Hagen knew he wasn’t looking at another defense strategy of Antipater, but the inevitable result of the many earthquakes suffered in this part of the country.
Hagen turned to Diana and fixed his piercing, pale blue eyes on her. “You see now how useful my modified men are, no?”
The Portuguese academic strained and tugged at the torn shirt still binding her numb hands together. When Oddvar had tied her up, he pulled the knot so tight she thought he had snapped both her wrists. “Men?” she said with contempt. “They are no longer men. You took that away when you turned them into mindless automatons.”
He raised his hand and stroked her bruised cheek with his finger. “Perhaps when we return to Valhalla I will modify you? Perhaps you will prefer life as a mindless automaton, serving me in total obedience?”
She spat in his face. “I will kill myself before you get a chance to do such a thing!”
He wiped the spit from his face and delivered a hefty back-slap to the right side of her face, nearly knocking her over. “You will pay for your insolence, Dr Silva. I will not allow you to kill yourself, and soon enough you will see me as your god.”
“He’s almost through!” Bloch called out.
A flinty look of determination jumped into Hagen’s eyes. “Our time is nearly here.”
“That’s presuming it’s in there,” Moser said. “We thought we’d found it back in Iran, and look what happened then.”
“She’s right,” Kurz said. “For all we know someone beat us to this temple as well and the Ark is long gone. Remember that plane wreck by the river?”
Hagen heard their words but dismissed them from his mind. “Nei! Nei, it’s here, all right. I can sense it.”
“And I can sense trouble,” Kurz said, lighting a cigarette and leaning against the truck of a jackfruit tree. “Big trouble.”
Moser glanced at him but gave no reply. She turned back to the main event just in time to see Leif pick up a pick-axe and start piling its head into the ancient stone blocks. Chips of Mozambique granite sprayed out in all directions. Bloch turned his head and cursed as he wiped the tiny splinters out of his face, but Leif just kept piling the head of the axe into the temple’s masonry.
Marchand took a break from the front line and wandered over to Kurz and Moser. He sat on one of the giant roots protruding from the base of the jackfruit and took his boots off. He peeled off his wringing-wet socks and squeezed them dry, letting his feet dry in the air but it was a fool’s errand in such high humidity.
“This place is beautiful,” Moser said, glancing at Marchand’s damp feet with disgust.
“You mean this place is cursed,” replied the French archaeologist.
Behind them, the roar of one of the many waterfalls continued to fill the air, and the crash of the water on the rocks at the base of the falls was sometimes almost deafening. “When the hell are they going to break through?” Kurz said, anxiously scanning the jungle with his miniature binoculars. “Decker and his team could be anywhere.”
“Don’t worry about Captain Decker and the Moores,” Hagen snapped. “If I know Atticus I would not wager on him making very fast progress through terrain like this, and they know I’m serious about the girl if they try and stop me again.”
He turned to Diana, but she looked away in disgust and turned her eyes to the hybrids working in the jungle. The one they called Leif finally broke through, and Hagen after a short celebration he ordered everyone inside the gaping new hole in the mountain ahead of them.
The entrance was two meters wide and not much higher. Cut into the walls on either side were small cavities for ancient wooden staves used as torches to light the darkness. Now, there was nothing but the remnants of greasy ash, sulfur and lime on the bottom of the tiny holes, left over from the ancient fires that burned here thousands of years ago.
Time ticked away as they pushed ever deeper into the depths of the mountain, lighting their way through the labyrinthine tunnels with their puny flashlights. The air temperature had dropped significantly after the humidity of the jungle back on the surface, and they started to wonder if the legends were right after all.
“There!” Moser said. “I see something up ahead – a ravine.”
Diana saw it too. A ravine at least twenty feet across lay ahead of them, and when they reached it they saw it stretched into the blackness on either side of them like a black snake. The only way across was the flimsiest rope bridge she had ever seen in her life.
Hagen swept his flashlight beam along the bridge. The bright light fell over the frayed rope and crumbling wooden planks. “This is the way. You first, Dr Silva.”
The fear crawled out of her stomach and started to choke her as she stared down at the bridge. It looked like it wasn’t strong enough to support a small child, and the blackness spiralling away beneath it terrified her.
“What are you waiting for?” Hagen said. “We haven’t got all day.”
A loud smashing noise filled the cave. “What was that?” Moser said.
“It was a gunshot,” Marchand said.
Bloch laughed. “That was no gunshot.”
