The Covenant of Genesis

behind them.

Almost clear . . .

One of the cherubim’s feet bumped against the little step round the chamber’s edge.

The statue jolted, throwing off the timing of its swinging arms. Sophia saw it coming and dropped lower, but Chase barely had time to react.

He flattened himself against the wall - but the very tip of the sword caught the side of his shoulder. A fine spray of blood splattered the wall behind him, though the pain of the cut was nothing to the burning as a fat electrical spark spat from the point of contact.

The glowing blade swung back at him—

Sophia shoved him forward, throwing herself flat against the floor where it met the wall. The spinning sword buzzed over her head, lopping off a clump of bleached hair. ‘Eddie, go!’ she shouted, pushing at his legs. Clutching his shoulder, he staggered upright as Sophia crawled beneath the arc of the blade.

The door was not far away. He could see Nina’s worried face on the other side. A glance at the entrance: the Covenant forces were not yet in sight, but he could hear them cautiously advancing, not knowing that their prey was now unarmed.

But they would realise any moment . . .

Sophia was on her feet. The cherubim was already reversing course, the eagle face sneering. The other statue was also grinding back across the chamber. ‘Run for the door!’ Chase told her. She didn’t need any prompting, rushing past him before he’d finished speaking.

He followed, looking down the passageway. Three men in desert camouflage, Zamal in the lead, recognition then anger crossing his bearded face.

Sophia was through the gap. Chase dived after her, clothes tearing on the door’s edges as a fusillade of bullets clanged against the thick panels just behind him. He landed hard on the stone floor and rolled away.

The moment he cleared the room, the flashes of earth energy across the ceiling ceased. The two cherubim stopped moving, their swords winding down.

‘What happened?’ Chase demanded, sitting up. Nina peered through the opening to see Zamal running into the chamber, his two men behind him.

The cherubim remained still.

‘Oh, crap,’ she gasped. The act of getting safely through the door had deactivated the trap - which meant Zamal and the others had a clear run at them. ‘Shut the door, quick!’

She shoved one of the doors. Chase braced himself and pushed the other, Sophia joining him. The mechanism moaned in complaint, offering stiff resistance on top of the sheer weight of the metal panels. The gap narrowed, inch by sluggish inch, as Zamal sprinted past the cherubim, yelling in Arabic, about to hurl himself against the bullet-dented doors—

The doors closed. Something clunked; a fraction of a second later came a bang as Zamal barged against them, but the lock had re-fastened.

And as the lock closed . . . the trap came back to life.

The two troopers reached Zamal, flanking him as they tried to force the doors open - then all three looked up in surprise as crackling energy bolts flashed across the ceiling. Sparks spat from the wings of the two cherubim, their swords glowing with the unnatural rippling blue light as they started to spin once more. The massive figures ground towards the soldiers, terrifying angels straight out of ancient mythology, a sight fearsome enough to freeze even Zamal for the briefest moment before he fired his SCAR at the nearest behemoth.

To no effect. The bullets punched straight through the thin copper plate of the wings, unable to do anything more than dent the thicker metal of its body.

The other troopers also fired, but with no more success - and now they were trapped against the doors as both cherubim closed in, fiery swords turning every way . . .

Nina heard the men’s screams, which were cut off abruptly by a series of wet thunks as pieces of their bodies splattered over the doors. The cherubim bumped against the step, shifting back and forth in inanimate confusion as the objects to which they had been drawn were suddenly spread out over a much larger area.

But the electrical charge generated by living bodies quickly dissipated, and without it the trap shut down. Silence and stillness returned to the chamber.

Nina recoiled from a trickle of blood running under the doors. ‘I don’t think we want to go back out that way.’ In the light of her torch, she saw Chase’s face tight with pain as he held his shoulder. ‘Eddie, are you okay?’

‘Won’t be going to the world juggling championships.’ Wincing, he opened his fingers slightly to examine the wound. A three-inch slash had been cut through his shoulder muscle, blood seeping from it.

‘I’ll get some bandages,’ she said, opening her pack.

‘Work on the move,’ said Sophia, striding past her. ‘There’ll be more of them on the way. And I think,’ she announced, looking up, ‘we have quite a climb ahead of us.’

Around them rose the steep face of the plateau. Part of the cliff had been cut away by the statue’s builders; a stepped a stone path zig-zagged precariously up to the summit, doubling back on itself multiple times before finally reaching the top.

For a moment, Nina forgot about the bandages as she stared at the clifftop above.

Whatever the Covenant had been fighting to keep from them, whatever the secret of the Veteres . . . it was waiting up there.

36

Two Humvees emerged from the tunnel into the enormous chamber and stopped near the edge of the ravine. Vogler, at the wheel of the first vehicle, struggled to contain his astonishment. Even as a devout, lifelong Christian, a true soldier of God, he had been forced to admit that in an age where new scientific discoveries pushed the boundaries of human knowledge further on a daily basis, there were aspects of the Book of Genesis that seemed more likely to come from the fallible interpretations of ancient man than to be the flawless word of the Almighty.

But this . . . this reaffirmed his faith in a moment. The Garden of Eden was real. Undeniable. And if the stories of Eden were true, then so too were all the other events of the Bible.

The question was, he thought as he spotted the vast idol: what did the Garden of Eden hold that was not in the Bible?

Callum was less impressed by the wonder of their surroundings. ‘So where’s Zamal?’

Vogler picked up the radio handset. ‘Zamal, this is Vogler. Zamal, come in.’ No response but the faint hiss of static. He repeated the call, still with no result.

‘They’re dead,’ the American said bluntly. He let out a dismissive snort. ‘Muslims. Huh. If they spent less time praying and more training . . .’

‘Be quiet,’ Vogler ordered. Muslim or not, abrasive and arrogant or not, Zamal had still been a comrade. He scoured the surreal landscape of the pocket jungle with binoculars. His adversaries would almost certainly have headed for the statue . . . ‘I see them,’ he announced at the sight of three small figures slowly picking their way up a narrow path behind it. ‘Chase, Dr Wilde . . . and Blackwood.’

Callum took out his handgun. ‘Time for a reunion, don’t you think?’

‘I do.’ Vogler turned the wheel and set off, driving the big 4x4 into the jungle.

Nina reached yet another hairpin twist and stopped, leaning exhaustedly against the rock wall. ‘I think I’m gonna throw up.’

Chase, ahead of her, paused in his ascent of the path. ‘Ah, come on, this is nothing. You walked up more stairs than this when the lift broke down at our old apartment, remember?’

‘Yeah, but I hadn’t been chased and shot at and blown up then, had I? And I almost threw up that time, as well.’

‘If you’re going to be sick,’ Sophia said as she caught up, ‘at least have the courtesy to let me get above you first.’

Nina irritably brought up a hand as if about to stick a finger down her throat. Sophia sneered, but still