He spun around but there was no sign of him. Instead, he was surprised by the sudden attack of Richter himself who was now charging toward him from the other direction with a knife in his hand. The German lunged at Golan, slashing the blade in the air and missing his throat by millimeters.

  The Israeli sidestepped and brought a heavy ball of a fist smashing into the Nazi’s ribcage. They both heard one of the rib’s crack. Richter grunted with pain and staggered back as he clutched at the fractured bone but Golan whirled around and delivered a brutal riot boot in the man’s face, breaking his jaw and powering him back over the wall.

  Decker saw Kurz, racing not to Hagen and the island but to the exit. Clearly, the man from Salzburg had decided that he wanted to be anywhere but here. Decker raised his gun and prepared to fire when he watched a spear tear into his stomach and poke out through his back. Then another, and another, making a swishing noise as they flew through the air.

  “Holy shit,” Riley said. “He looks like an echidna!”

  Decker concurred and winced as Kurz fell back into the dirt and rammed several of the spears even further though himself. Blood bubbled from his mouth, and his arms waved pathetically as he went into his death throes, never seeing the hidden tribe who had thrown the savage weapons at him.

  “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Charlie said.

  Mocumbi came sprinting through the chaos and skidded to a halt beside Decker. “My men are dead,” he said. “They killed Richter in a skirmish but then other Nazis got them in a surprise attack over in the city.”

  Before he could reply, Decker heard a series of detonations rumbling through the enormous cavern above the underground city. The explosions were going off all around them inside the upper rim of the caldera where the vines and jungle roots twisted and snaked around each other to hide the city from the air but still allow light into the streets below.

  “They’ve got the entire place wired!” he yelled.

  “He’s right,” Riley said. “The whole city’s booby-trapped.”

  The detonations continued blasting all around them, high up in the cave walls and inside the root system of the jungle plants directly overhead.

  Riley looked up as another explosion ripped into the rim of the caldera. “Fuck me, they’re going to bring the whole jungle crashing down on us!”

  “We’ve got to get out of here or we’re dead,” Charlie said.

  Diana looked up at the crumbling roof. “You can say that again.”

  A second detonation was too close for comfort, and propelled Selena through the air like a rag doll. The force of the blast slammed her into the archway entrance of the Ark island and she fell into the dirt face first and unconscious. Roots and branches began to rain down, and among the detritus falling from the jungle sky were enraged bush vipers, blasted out of their nests and now falling to the bottom of the caldera ready to attack anything that moved.

  “Lena!” Decker said, and sprinted over to her.

  “Get back!”

  Just inches away from Selena, Decker was confronted with the burned, scarred figure of Tor Hagen. Richter’s Wehrmacht stick grenade might have been three quarters of a century old but it had proved its savage power in the most terrible way on the Norwegian. He was barely recognizable thanks to a horrific third-degree burn that had rendered the left side of his face into a landscape of melted skin and exposed blackened teeth. His hair was also gone, singed to a grotesque, waxy black stubble peppered on his terrible scarred and burned head.

  Decker almost gasped but stopped himself. Hagen was still a man, a human being, and now he had finally gotten the fate he deserved. The former US Marine was too much of a man to mock him, or show horror at what he had become. “She needs my help, Hagen!”

  “I said get back!” He waved the Luger at Decker and pulled back the hammer. “Don’t make me kill you.”

  “It’s over, Hagen. Just drop the gun.”

  The Norwegian gripped the Ark and started hauling it through the sand. “It’s not over until I say it’s over! Now, you’re going to help me take the Ark outside to that plane of yours and you’re going to fly me out of here.”

  Decker watched the Norwegian desperately trying to drag the Ark through the sand. “Help me! Help me damn it!”

  The American saw it first – a faint glow around the Ark. It looked like someone had highlighted it. It was a gentle glow at first but began to radiate until it was a much brighter light.

  Hagen released the Ark and cried out, pushing his hands into the water to cool the burns he had just sustained. His eyes swivelled up to Decker and back to the Ark again. “You have to help me! We can create new life! We can…”

  What Decker would later describe as mini-electrical storm exploded around the Ark and wrapped itself around the dying Norwegian. The bright blue and orange lightning rods curled around his body and face and pushed themselves inside his mouth and eyes, growing in intensity until he was almost glowing from within.

  “It’s healing me!” Hagen cried out, raising his arms into the air. “The power of God is healing me!”

  Decker winced. “I don’t think so… get down!”

  The rest of his crew crouched down behind the stalagmites a few seconds before Hagen exploded in a fiery cloud of sparks and smoke, and then everything went black and silence fell over the temple.

  “Good God,” Riley said.

  Charlie patted him on the back. “Exactly.”

  “What happened?” Decker asked.

  “He never used the key,” Atticus said. “The symbols on the key are a prayer, a prayer you have to say before you open the Ark.”

  There was no time to celebrate. The tribe were still on the loose, and now a section of the jungle high above broke off and fell down into the caldera, striking the central section of the underground city and smashing into a tower. The structure gave way under the incredible weight of the trees and vines and crumbled it to pieces. Broken bricks and earthen plaster spilled down into the street around it and a cloud of dust billowed up into the air.

  Decker stared up into the collapsing jungle. “The rim of the caldera’s starting to crumble away now. We haven’t got long before the whole damned thing comes down on our heads. We’ll either be crushed to death or trapped in here until the air runs out.”

  Mocumbi gave him a doubtful look. “And I’m not sure we’re all that welcome, my friend.”

  “Don’t know about you guys,” Riley said. “But I’m getting my arse out of here!”

  38

  Mitch Decker led the way through the ruins deep inside the dead volcano. It was a desperate and hard race for their lives as the entire structure of the place fell down around them in massive car-sized boulders. Staggering out into the light of the rainforest at the base of the caldera, they heaved the breath back into their bodies, each one of them overjoyed simply to have escaped with their lives.

  “What about the Ark?” Atticus said.

  Riley looked at him like he was mad. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

  “I’m not going back in there!” Mocumbi said.

  “Me neither,” said Golan.

  Atticus was aghast. “But it’s the most precious relic in the world!”

  Charlie gestured to the entrance they had just burst out of with a generous sweep of his arm. Smoke was pouring out of it in a great, thick column and drifting up through the jungle canopy and into the blue sky high above. “Be my guest, professor.”

  Atticus frowned and stuffed his hands into his pockets. For a moment, he looked like a petulant child but then a smile broke on his face. “It was bloody amazing to see it though, wasn’t it?”

  Selena brushed some dirt off his jacket and gave him a peck on the cheek. “It really was, Dad. We found it at last.”

  “I hate to break up the congrats and all,” Decker said. “But we still have a tribe of insane Nazis after us. There’s no way they would have set those charges if they didn’t know how to escape safely, and something tells me they’re going to want revenge on the people who made them blow up their little kingdom.”

  “Mitch is right,” Charlie said. “Let’s get back to the Avalon.”

  Diana sighed. “Supposing they haven’t already found it and destroyed it!”

  Decker gave her a look. “Thanks for that, Diana. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

  After a long and humid march through the jungle, they were all relieved to see the Avalon was still bobbing up and down in the river.

  “It’s just where we left it!” Charlie said.

  “Her,” Decker corrected. “She’s just where we left her.”

  Charlie laughed and punched his shoulder. “Anything you say, Captain! I’m just bloody grateful that we can get out of here.”

  They climbed aboard and got to their seats, and moments later Decker had steered the float plane out into the center of the river and hit the throttles. The vintage Albatross flying boat roared up out of the water and quickly ascended high above the jungle landscape.

  A buzz of excitement filled the cabin, but Atticus looked longingly out the little porthole at the smoking caldera above the treetops. “We really must come back and save the Ark one day, though.”

  “I don’t think it wants to be saved, Dad,” Selena said. “I think we need to leave it where it is. We’re going back to London now.”

  “Wrong,” a steady voice said from rear of the aircraft.

  Selena whirled to see Ursula Moser standing just behind the small door leading to the bunks. Her face was smeared with the blood of the grandfather she had known for only a few moments, and hatred burned in her eyes. In her hand she held Richter’s Luger.

  “What the hell?”

  Charlie went to get up.

  “Stay where you are.” Moser kept the gun trained on them as she moved forward to the cockpit.

  “Woah,” Decker said, turning in his seat. “Be careful with that thing in here! You could bring the whole plane down and kill us all!”

  “I am ready for that fate,” she said coolly. “Are you?”

  “Hell yes!” Mocumbi said.

  “Fuck no!” Riley said. “I’m not even halfway through my bucket list!”

  Golan looked at her with disgust. “Your fate waits for you in hell!”

  Moser ignored him and stayed cool. “We’re flying to Argentina, Captain Decker. Turn the plane.”

  A long silence was broken by Charlie Valentine. “Well, this is awkward.”

  “We’ll never make it across the South Atlantic,” Decker said.

  “Not in one flight, but there is a refuelling station on the way.”

  Decker looked confused. “I know of no such place.”

  “Neither did I until my grandfather told me. Just before you murdered him, he told me I could seek sanctuary in Argentina and that we could stop in New Swabia en route. From there we fly northwest to Argentina. If this aircraft can make the flight from Iran to Mozambique then it can make both those legs as well.”

  She turned and fired the gun at Atticus, plowing a round into his stomach. The old man collapsed to the aircraft’s riveted floor and Selena screamed. “Dad!”

  Moser smiled. “I have lost my grandfather, and now you have your father. I will kill another of your team every minute until you turn this aircraft around!”

  Decker was horrified as the sight of Atticus Moore crawling on the floor in a puddle of his own blood, and his daughter crying as she cradled his head in her arms. As shocked as he was, his officer training kicked in and he focussed on containing the threat. “New Swabia? You can’t possibly be talking about that ridiculous conspiracy theory about Nazis populating part of Antarctica during the war?”

  “It’s not a conspiracy theory,” she said. “He assured me there is a base there.”

  “Fuck me sideways,” Riley said, glancing at the gun in her hand. “Your grandfather hadn’t seen a flushing toilet since 1943. How could he possibly know if there was still a U-Boat refuelling station on Antarctica or not?”

  “We’ll die if we try!” Diana said.

  “Diana’s right,” Decker said flatly. “I’m not flying the Avalon south to Antarctica. We’ll be flat out of fuel by the time we reach the coast, we’ll have nowhere to land and even if we can find a bay to make a water landing on, we’ll freeze to death in days. It’s a suicide mission.”

  Moser clicked back the Luger’s hammer with her thumb and pointed it at the back of his head. “You have no choice, Captain.”

  “We need to get my father to the hospital in Quelimane,” Selena said from the seating area where she had dragged her father. He was now slumped down on one of the long sofas. “He took a bullet to the stomach! He needs a surgeon as soon as possible.”

  Riley charged Moser. She fired again but missed and the bullet tore through the Avalon’s port wall and blasted a hole in it. The unpressurized aircraft made no response, but Charlie had flung open the door behind Moser. She spun around and grabbed hold of the back of a seat to secure herself from the gaping void that had opened up behind her, but the wounded Atticus hooked her feet out from under her and she fell back. She had not been expecting the shot man to fight back, and it had cost her life.

  “Not bad for just an old man, eh?” Atticus said weakly, pretending to polish his knuckles on his lapel. He went to say something else, but then he passed out from blood loss.

  Scrabbling on the floor, Moser fired wildly, and the bullet tore through Riley’s shirt, but he turned and punched her out of the door. She flew out the aircraft, screaming as she plummeted all the way down to the jungle hundreds of feet below.

  Selena dusted her hands off and slammed the door shut. “We are not going to bloody Argentina!”

  Decker turned and looked back down the cabin. “Has she gone?”

  “Gone the way of the dodo, mate!”

  “And good riddance,” said Golan.

  Decker looked at Riley and saw the flesh wound on his upper arm. “You got shot?”

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’ve had worse injuries from my Nan’s cat.”

  “We need a hospital right now, Mitch!” Selena said.

  Decker turned in his seat and saw Atticus, his face the color of putty. He didn’t like what he saw but he kept his thoughts to himself. “Hold on, everyone!” Turning the yoke to the right, he pulled a sharp starboard turn and powered the old Albatross north to Quelimane.

  EPILOGUE

  Quelimane

  Selena stepped out of the provincial hospital and into the blazing Mozambique sunshine. Shielding her eyes with her hand as she scanned the grounds for her friends, she soon saw them sitting in the shade of some raffia palms – everyone except Mitch Decker. They were gathered in a small circle on the freshly cut buffalo grass and laughing at something Riley had just told them.

  Charlie had been lying down, but now he hooked himself on his elbows and gave Riley a sly look. “Sorry, what was that punchline?”

  The Australian went to repeat the joke when Selena cleared her throat and he stopped in his tracks. She gave him a look and shook her head. “You’re incorrigible.”

  He raised his hands in a surrender gesture. “I was fine before I joined the army, I swear it.”

  “I find that very hard to believe.”

  “Me too,” Golan muttered.

  Mocumbi smiled and jumped to his feet. “I must go my friends.”

  “Anything good?” Riley asked.

  The old soldier shook his head. “I had a date, but after what happened in the mountain, I want to be alone. I have a cabin outside of Maputo with a bottle of whisky in the kitchen. There, I will get drunk and say goodbye to my friends.”

  They watched him fade into the crowd, and Selena wondered if she would ever see him again. She felt she was able to relax for the first time since London. Hagen, Moser and their thugs had all met their maker in the jungles of Zambezia. More than that, she had just heard on the news that Karin Larsen had shut down Hagen’s research laboratory in the mountains above Stavanger and the local authorities were conducting a full investigation into the activities of both Hagen and Jens Olsen, the corrupt police officer. As for Marchand, he was a disgrace to his profession and he had gotten what he deserved.

  She sighed with relief and fell down on the springy grass beside her friends.

  “How’s your Dad?” Diana asked.

  “They say he’s going to be all right,” she said. “He even spoke to me.”

  “What did he say?” asked Riley.

  “I believe his exact words were that I really need to stop hanging around with Riley Bloody Carr.”

  “Ha bloody ha,” the Aussie said.

  “He kind of has a point though,” Charlie said with a wink. “You are one dangerous bastard.”

  Riley laughed and punched Charlie in the shoulder. “Get lost, wanker.”

  Selena sighed. “They say he’ll be ready to travel in a week or two.”

  “That’s a good sign,” Charlie said.

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” said Golan.

  Selena gave a nod, and Diana smiled.

  “What?”

  “A good sign,” the Portuguese woman said. “The river here is the Cuacua, but it flows into the Rio dos Bons Sinais. That’s Portuguese for the River of Good Signs.”

  “Spooky,” Riley said.

  “I think we can rest now,” Diana said, stretching back into the grass.

  Charlie slipped his phone in his pocket. “We sure can,” he said. “That was one of my old friends back at Five. The Austrian Government just pulled the plug on Moser’s fake church.”

  “Thank heavens,” Diana said.

  Riley laughed. “You can say that again.”

  Charlie was leaning up against the trunk of a palm, and now he lowered his battered straw hat over his face, stubbed his cigarette out and crossed his arms over his chest. “Think I’ll catch a few zees.”

 

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