convulsions had begun to lessen.
Lang watched almost to the end before he found the strength to shut his eyes and turn away. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes again, focusing on the placid black pool in front of him. This time he saw something else besides the thin trail of bubbles: not gold as the dying soldier had seen, but green. A small green disk; two actually. They were eyes.
CHAPTER 30
A dark shape burst from the water. It slammed into Lang and knocked him backward, sending the camera and his body flying in different directions. As the camcorder crashed to the stone floor its floodlight blew out, bathing the cave in a flash of electric blue.
The others turned at the flash, and in the dim illumination of the remaining lights they saw a shape mauling Lang. It pinned him down, clamping its jaws onto his torso and yanking its head from side to side. As Lang struggled, it reared back and, accompanied by Lang’s screams, tore him completely in half, slinging the top half of his body toward the shocked mercenaries.
That sight jarred them from their trance and, as the black shape charged toward them, in a panic they grabbed for the weapons they’d just cast aside.
Despite the frantic shots sent its way, the thing hit one of the soldiers in full stride, plunging into the lake with the man in its jaws and disappearing. They watched the light on the man’s belt going deeper and then going dark. A trail of bullets followed after it, but to no avail—the beast and the man were gone.
The mercenary who’d been firing backed away from the water’s edge as bloody red foam boiled to the surface. “Is it dead?”
The other soldier looked at the water briefly and then shook his head. It wasn’t dead, but their comrade was. He looked at the seven pools and what remained of Lang’s body. That was enough.
He took off, sprinting down the pathway in a reckless attempt to get out of there, tripping and stumbling in his haste. His eyes flicked from the path ahead, to the exit on the other side of the lake, then to the water beside him.
His friend shouted to him, but he kept running, dashing for the exit, leaping over piles of rock like a hurdler. He seemed as if he might make it, until a surge in the water’s black surface started toward him. The wave closed on him rapidly and the animal burst from the lake, slamming him into the cavern wall and snapping its jaws on his legs like a crocodile taking a water buffalo. Shrieks of agony echoed through the cave, followed only by gurgling sounds as the creature dragged him back into the water and beneath it.
Susan Briggs and the last of the mercenaries remained at the site of the first attack, out on the plaza at the edge of the dam. Susan was on her knees, gasping for air, in the grips of an asthma attack, while the remaining mercenary pulled the blood-covered ELF unit from the lower half of Lang’s torso. He shouted into the device. “We are having an emergency!”
He waited for a reply, and then tried again, holding the switch down with all his might, as if that would somehow boost the signal. “Lang is dead, only me and the girl are left. We have been attacked. We need help.”
He heard nothing. It was hopeless. They were too deep. The signal could not get through.
The mercenary stopped transmitting and switched off his flashlight, backing deeper into the cave, farther from the dam and the lake and directly across the smooth stone from where Susan was struggling.
From this position he scanned the cave, now eerily lit by the unmoving flashlights of the fallen men. At the lake’s edge, a bulky shape was pulling itself free of the water.
Across the plaza, the girl remained on her knees, coughing and wheezing, unaware of the danger. It would go for her and, once it had committed, he would open fire. He placed the radio on the ground beneath his feet and brought both hands to his rifle.
In the shadowy light, the bony, angular thing stalked her. It moved with its belly pressed against the ground, its long limbs folded awkwardly beneath it, its claws quietly clicking with each step. It seemed to move with deliberate caution now, pausing at one point, holding a limb off the floor as if the ground were hot to the touch. It lowered its head to sniff the spot, and then moved around the area for reasons unknown.
A moment later the beast stopped again. The girl had somehow managed to stifle her coughing. The resulting silence seemed to confuse the creature. The head lifted slightly, turning from one direction to another, rotating like a turret.
The mercenary clenched his jaw as the hideous thing crouched; the girl had her back to it, she wouldn’t see it coming. He raised his weapon. From this distance he would not miss.
The soldier glanced at his feet. The radio was squawking in a scratchy, electronic tone. He looked up as the animal hit him.
A blur of teeth and claws slashed him, his own blood splattered across his face. It whipped him to the side and his foot kicked the orange radio, sending it flying across the stone. The rifle was gone; he grabbed his knife and swung it upward, but it was jarred from his hand as if it had impacted solid rock. He kicked at the thing and tried to pull free, but the creature’s claws dug into his gut and it pulled him closer and then sunk its teeth into his neck. His mouth opened, as if to scream.
Susan watched in horror, backing away as the animal stood above the lifeless body. Strangely, it did not damage him further. It just stood there, eyeing him, its jaws opening and closing, its bony exterior glistening in the dim light. It sniffed the dead man. In the space behind its neck, a row of short, bristly hairs waved back and forth, swaying and parting like reeds in the wind. A gurgling noise resonated from deep within its throat and its segmented tail rose up above its head like a scorpion’s stinger. As the tail shot forward, the animal’s head tilted back and it released a hideous, inhuman cry.
It would be more than thirty minutes before any help arrived. The leader of Kaufman’s mercenaries brought six of his men, half the remaining force. They’d come ready to fight, but encountered nothing that would force them to do so. The only man they found was far beyond help.
One of the soldiers bent close to the body. The smell of sulfur was intense; the acid was still eating away at him. A trail of blood led to the pool next to them.
He picked up the man’s discarded shirt and threw it in. The water foamed up and the shirt quickly sprouted holes. “The water. It’s acid.”
Another soldier suggested a possibility. “Perhaps the girl pushed him.”
“Then what happened to the rest of them?” someone else asked.
Their leader looked around, aiming his flashlight into the corners of the cave. He spotted Lang’s camcorder and two more great swaths of blood. There was no acid smell at these sites, but there were marks in the blood, two-pronged tracks that led away from each site.
As the soldiers examined them, a piercing call echoed from the depths of the cave. The soldiers froze. It was a haunting sound.
Guns raised in all directions, the leader made a quick decision. “We’re going.”
“What about the others?” one man asked, remembering that there were still two soldiers unaccounted for. “And the girl.”
The leader motioned to the swaths of blood. “You won’t find them,” he replied, “not alive anyway.” He turned around and began heading for the exit.
————
Kaufman waited on the roof of the temple for his mercenaries to return. As the minutes ticked by, the tension grew. Devers approached him in the silence.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
“Now is not the time,” Kaufman warned him.
“When the hell is the time?” Devers asked. “You said I’d be out of here as soon as you took the camp. First flight out, you said. Well, your helicopter is gone but I’m still here.”
