Joe Hawke Series Boxsets 4 Read online

  “Tell me about it. We’ve seen a lot of tombs and temples but nothing like this.”

  “They’re always dead places, dry and dusty. Brittle bones and chipped relics, but this… this is like something from another world.”

  Her eyes danced over the gleaming golden surfaces of the temple’s interior, the impeccable and intricate ornaments, untouched by the passing of eons.

  “It looks like something out of the movie Alien.”

  She turned to see Ryan behind her. They were all in here now, including the Oracle and his Athanatoi. Also stunned by the awesome spectacle, they meandered around the structure with open jaws trying to take it all in.

  “Weird,” Lexi said. “Alien was the first thing I thought of too.”

  “But it’s not a ruin,” Hawke muttered.

  Reaper turned to him. “Hein?”

  “It’s not a ruin,” he repeated. “These ancient tombs, temples and chambers are always old ruins by the time we get to them. Hundreds or thousands of years old, they’re crumbling old wrecks today. This place looks like it was built this year.”

  “It looks like it was built about a thousand years from now, more like,” Ryan said. “I’ve never seen materials like some of this stuff. Look at the walls! Looks at the way the ceiling arches are constructed. I don’t know how any of this is possible.”

  “That’s because you don’t have the mind to know what you’re seeing.” The Oracle pushed past them and walked out into the center of the giant structure. He raised his hands in the air and when he spoke, he raised his voice to a shout and his words echoed eerily around the gigantic space. “This is the Citadel! The beings that built this place built it millions of years before humans even crawled out of the swamp! Their technology had reached levels we may not attain for thousands of years, if we get there at all without killing ourselves. Now I am here to claim it all!”

  “We’re going into crackerjack territory again,” Lea said.

  “Silence!”

  “The last thing I want to do is upset you, Wolff,” Hawke said. “So before I do that I’m going to tell you what an arsehole you are.”

  The Oracle ignored the insult. “Your time on this planet is short, Englishman.” He walked over to the towering iron sphere in the center of the building, carefully climbing the golden steps as if approaching a religious site. “I cannot believe I am finally in the Altar Room!”

  “My destiny shall be fulfilled. Absalom! Start the search for the weapons.”

  “Yes, Oracle.”

  “Salazar, keep your gun aimed on the scum.”

  “Yes, Oracle.”

  The old man took the last few steps until he was parallel with the sphere. His eyes danced all over the dark iron ball in search of some unknown thing only he was aware of.

  “What’s he doing?” Zeke asked.

  “You can never tell with him,” mumbled Nikolai.

  Laying his hands on the equator of the metal sphere, he began muttering some kind of prayer now, and the sphere began to glow blue at the poles.

  Zeke took a step back. “This shit is way above my pay grade. This is voodoo.”

  “It’s not magic,” Nikolai said grimly. “It’s technology.”

  “Could have fooled me, but then I’m just a tank commander, so what do I know?”

  “No, he’s right,” Ryan said. “It’s Clarke’s third law.”

  “Clarke?”

  “Arthur C. Clarke,” he said. “The famous science fiction author. His third law states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

  “To dumbbells like us you mean?” Lexi said.

  Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Speak for yourself, darling.”

  The sphere was brighter now, a dull dark blue at the equator but a brighter neon color at the poles where it had first started glowing. When the Oracle screamed, his voice was a hoarse cry of insanity. “The world will be rent asunder by the powers this will give me!”

  Reaper was in awe, moving closer to the sphere. “Mon Dieu! This color I have never seen before.”

  “Get back!” Salazar barked, lifting his weapon. “Or I’ll shoot.”

  The former French Legionnaire looked at him like he was scum and took a step back into the line beside Lea and Ryan.

  As the Oracle continued to chant his mantra, Absalom returned and nervously approached his leader. “The place is empty, sir.”

  The Oracle snapped, “Empty?”

  “No weapons anywhere to be seen,” he said. “No technology of any kind.”

  “Or knowledge. The libraries are empty.”

  “What? Search again!”

  Hawke turned to Lea and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m looking for an egress point. Something tells me this is not going to end well, and when the shit starts flying, we’re going to need to get out of here in a hurry.”

  “What about that over there?” Lea pointed to the west side of the sphere. “Looks like some sort of ledge with an archway in it.”

  Hawke shook his head. “That’s no good. Look more closely and you can see it’s on the other side of a chasm, at least twenty feet wide. I can’t see the bottom but going by everything else I’ve seen around here I’m going to guess it’s a long way down.”

  “No, further up there’s a rope bridge.”

  He saw it now, barely visible in the darkness on the far side of the temple, toward the northern end of the vast space.

  The sphere was humming now and glowing so brightly they had to look away. Somehow, the Oracle was able to stand right in front of it, his arms stretched out his sides as he repeated his mantra over and over again, the alien words tumbling out of his dry lips.

  Then the sphere exploded in light, almost blinding them all. When the bright blue flash receded, they all saw the sphere was now a circular gateway filled with spinning, swirling gases and bolts of cyan electricity.

  “Okay then,” Lea said. “It’s going to be one of those days.”

  Hawke turned to a mesmerised Ryan. “What’s going on, mate?”

  “Looks like some sort of plasma,” he said nervously. “To be honest, it’s beginning to frighten the shit out of me.”

  “Moi aussi,” Reaper said.

  “Over there!” Zeke yelled. “We got incoming!”

  Hawke saw them next. At least a dozen men and women in white robes running through the arches at the rear of the temple.

  The Oracle saw them too his face painted white with shock and terror.

  “Who the hell are they?” Lexi said.

  “I don’t know,” Hawke said, “but whoever they are it doesn’t look like Wolff knows either.”

  “And what are those weapons?” Reaper said.

  Lea took a step back. “They remind me of those weird crossbows Razak pulled out of the dirt back in the jungle.”

  The white-robed figures streamed out of the archways and began firing on the Athanatoi with a vengeance.

  The Oracle’s men took up positions of cover and returned fire, forcing the white robed guardians into positions of cover on a ledge running above the sphere.

  “We’re out of here,” Hawke said. “Zeke, check if we can get out of here the way we came in. Take Kolya.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  The team watched the two new recruits as they jogged away into the gloom, not knowing if they would ever see them alive again or not.

  A furious Lea turned to Hawke. “We can’t just go! We don’t know anything about this place! We have so much to discover!”

  “You can’t discover anything in the grave, Lea.”

  “What about my Dad?”

  “We know where it is now,” Hawke said. “We can return with a bigger force.”

  “But…”

  “We know enough.” Ryan reached out to her. “We know there was a civilization on this world millions of years ago. We know they had different DNA and could live for thousands of years. We know this was their capital, and we know they seeded th
e world as we know it, using their idols to create new societies.”

  In the center of the temple, the white-robed figures were gradually overcoming the Athanatoi. The fire fight intensified, but the Oracle refused to take cover. Standing tall before the sphere, he was soon strafed by bullets and bolts of blue neon from the white-robed guardians’ weapons, ripping into his upper legs and cutting him down where he stood.

  His bloodcurdling screams made everyone turn and stare as he continued to crawl forward, blood pouring from the terrible wounds in his thigh. He stretched his arm desperately toward the glowing circle. “Please… show me the light!”

  A thundercrack of electrical discharge and then he was wrapped in the blue plasma.

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  Hawke saw the Texan and Russian Athanatoi monk stagger back over from the main entrance and then a loud explosion behind them. “What is it, Zeke? Can we get out that way or not? Did I hear firearms down there?”

  He stumbled over to them, a fresh bullet wound gouged into his shoulder. “We’re in deep shit, guys. That noise was the sound of around a hundred Special Ops making their way into the heart of this mountain right about now.”

  Hawke darted his eyes over to the Texan. “Who?”

  Zeke whipped off his battered and torn ten-gallon hat and wiped his brow. “Can’t be sure, but my best guess is US.”

  “Which makes sense given Faulkner is now the President,” said Lea.

  “A hundred?” Scarlet said.

  Zeke nodded. He looked nervous for the first time since they’d seen him. “At least, and those boys sure are tooled up. They have enough weapons to take Moscow. M134 miniguns at fifty rounds per second, pintle-mounted machine guns, swing-arm GPMGs, you name it.”

  “We can take them!” Ryan said.

  “No,” Hawke said coolly. “We can’t. We’re good, but we’re not that good. We’ve been on the road for a long time. We’re exhausted and we’re injured and we’re out of ammo. There’s no way we’re beating over a hundred Special Ops guys freshly fed and looking for a fight, especially as we also have those white-robes guys to think about.”

  With the Athanatoi guards heavily pinned down under incoming fire, Hawke led the ECHO team behind the support columns and around the outside of the temple to the rope bridge Lea had noticed moments earlier.

  “It’s almost in sight!”

  A white-robed man appeared on the other side of the chasm, a submachine gun in his hands. When he raised the weapon, Hawke screamed at the team to take cover, but before they had hit the dirt, the man in the robes was blasted off his feet by Athanatoi fire. With his white robes covered in deep red blood, he crashed down into the dirt on the far side of the chasm.

  “Keep going!” Hawke yelled. “This is our only chance to escape this nightmare.”

  Barely alive, the man in the white robes crawled through the dust and gravel and filth, pulling a grenade from his belt. He pulled the pin and threw it at the chasm where it detonated and blew the rope bridge into a thousand pieces before slumping down to the ground.

  Lea turned to Hawke, bullets tracing over their heads. “What now?”

  “Wait, I’ve got a great idea!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Lea put her hands on her hips. “What’s this great idea, Josiah?”

  “Rope!”

  Hawke tore off his pack and pulled out a length of thick climbing rope. He tied one end around the remains of the previous rope bridge and then grabbing the other end he sprinted toward the chasm.

  “Is he crazy?” Zeke said.

  “Yes.” Nikolai shook his head, fully expecting the Englishman to fall down into the void, but those in the team who knew him had more hope.

  Drawing on his vast parkour experience and formidable strength, Hawke leapt over the chasm, flying across the bullet-streaked void and landing with a heavy crunch in the gravel on the far side. The mayhem that had unfolded since the arrival of the new soldiers was like nothing he had ever seen before. Foreign Special Ops teams, Athanatoi cultists and this unknown new force now fought, rucked and brawled wherever they found each other in the massive system.

  With hot lead chewing into the rocky path all around him, Hawke launched himself into another parkour roll until he was behind the cover of a jumble of boulders at the base of the rock wall. Securing the rope to a hefty boulder, he created a way for the rest of the team to cross the startling void surround the Citadel.

  One by one, the team monkey-crawled over the void while Hawke provided cover fire on the few Athanatoi who weren’t engaged in a desperate fight for survival against the mysterious white-robes. Behind it all, the Special Ops team were fanning out and searching for something. Other Athanatoi tried to defend a position leading to an unknown corridor but the men in black combat fatigues dispatched them in seconds with their carbines.

  With Lexi halfway across the rope, a vicious explosion detonated and blasted Qasim off his feet. With a terrible, bloodcurdling scream he tumbled down into the chasm, one of his legs blown clean off.

  Lea turned away, unable to watch the horror as the mutilated archaeologist fell to his death at the bottom of the gaping chasm.

  “Hurry!” Hawke yelled. “No time to think about that!”

  Lexi landed behind him, sprinting over to his newfound cover as the enemy rounds bit at their heels. Ryan and Zeke were still pinned down on the other side of the chasm, but managed to crawl through the dirt until they reached the bridge. One by one with Ryan in the lead they monkey-crawled over the void while Reaper and Nikolai were engaged in a terrible fire fight further along the gaping crevasse.

  Reaper stayed behind to pour cover fire on the enemy while Nikolai made it to the end of the frayed rope bridge and made his way across. When safely on the other side, the Russian returned the favor by firing on the soldiers while the former legionnaire ran at top speed across the wobbling, shaking bridge. Bullets tore into the suspender cables and blasted them apart. The bridge collapsed away, slowly falling down into the chasm as the Frenchman sprinted for all his life to the other side.

  With seconds to spare, Reaper leapt to the far side of the chasm and grabbed on with both hands as the rest of the bridge collapsed from under him, falling down with a smack until it lay flat against the rock wall from where he was dangling.

  Hawke saw it all with horror on his face. His old friend was a living target for the assorted soldiers and mercs on the south side of the chasm.

  They turned their guns on him and fired.

  “Your hand!” Nikolai screamed.

  Reaper thrust his right hand into the air and the Russian monk grabbed it with all his strength, pulling the heavy ex-merc up out of the void as the bullets smashed into the cliff face all around him. Rocks exploded into dust as Nikolai finally managed to heave Reaper clear of the danger. Both men scrambled for the cover Hawke had established.

  “That was too close!” Reaper said, turning to Nikolai. “Merci, mon ami. You have made a friend for life.”

  Nikolai saw the out-stretched hand and hesitated. Then, he took the Frenchman’s hand and the two men shook hard. “You would have done it for me.”

  Reaper gave his customary one nod. “Yes, of course.”

  The moment was shattered by Scarlet’s voice, harsh and cold in the chaos. “It’s Lea! She’s been wounded!”

  Hawke looked across the chasm and saw her under heavy fire. Someone had almost killed her with a bullet but it looked the round had created only a flesh wound. The problem was that the shot had knocked her off her balance and now she was tumbling back into a smaller gorge to the south of the chasm.

  And it looked like it was full of water.

  “Lea!” Grabbing his pack, he sprinted for the rope bridge with everything he had.

  *

  Lea felt herself falling deeper into the darkness. For a second, time stopped, and then she felt a hard smack as her body broke through the surface of the icy black water. Immediately she felt the cold, scratching at he
r like claws of steel as she plunged ever deeper in the water.

  She wanted to cry out for help, but instinct sealed her mouth. It felt like a million needles were sticking into her body now, and her arms and legs were growing numb. She knew from her army training she had only a few seconds to get her bearings and swim to the surface before she lost consciousness.

  Remembering what Hawke had told her about when he fell into the crevasse in Pavlopetri, she spun around in the water and blew out some air. The bubbles showed her the way home, and she started to swim up to the surface with all the strength her muscles cold muster. The agony of pushing through the freezing water was almost more than she could bear, but now there was a faint light in the darkness.

  Above her up on the surface she saw a familiar face.

  Hawke jumped in and grabbed hold of her, pulling her to the edge of the gorge and hauling her out of the icy water. On dry ground now, he slung her over his shoulders in a fireman’s lift. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “You took your damned time, Josiah. I could have made a cup of tea in the time it took you to get your sorry arse over here.”

  “I’m so sorry about that.”

  “You’re forgiven… what are you doing?”

  With Lea still over his shoulders, he pulled his canteen from his pack and filled it with water from the gorge. “Just a hunch,” he said quietly. “Now hold on tight!”

  “Is there any other way to hold on to you?”

  He rolled his eyes, and with bullets spitting at their feet and tracing past their heads, they made it back to the improvised rope crossing. “Listen, it’s one at a time from here on, can you do it?”

  She gave a quick nod. “I can get across their no problem, it’s walking when we’re on the other side that’s going to give us grief.”

  He smiled at her. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Eejit.”

  “Get across the bridge!”

  She crawled across, with the team on the other side covering them while Hawke secured the other end of the rope.

  “Hurry up!” Hawke fought with everything he had to keep the rope from slipping and hold the bridge in place. Pain tore through his body as the rope started to slide through his grip and scorch friction burns into his arms. Behind him, the Special Ops troops saw what was going on and started to make their way over. “I can’t hold this thing for much longer!”