“No! You mustn’t hit it! You’ll shatter it! It’s too fragile!”
The shooting intensified. He felt a bullet rip into his leg and screamed in pain.
“Boss?”
Breathing has hard as if he had been sprinting, and sweat beading on his forehead, he turned and saw Tarántula. The experienced gangster was staring back at him, terrified. The Snake King screamed again and pointed at the archway. “Get down! They’re shooting!”
Tarántula looked confused. “Sir, who is shooting?”
“The other team! Decker. The Moores! They’re in here, they’re trying to take the capstone! They’re…. they’re….”
“There is no one in this cavern but us, sir,” said Tarántula. “Carlos, Miguel. Diego and Diablo and some of the other men. Me. No one else.”
The Snake King felt his heart pounding in his chest and worked hard to slow his breathing. He felt confused. Dazed. Then, another gasp fled his lips like a frail baby bird when he realized what he was witnessing. Decker and the Moores hadn’t charged into the chamber with guns blazing.
Not yet.
“Praise the gods!” he said.
“Sir?”
“Praise the gods, for they have given me the wonderful gift of augury!”
Tarántula frowned. “I don’t understand. I thought the capstone gave us the power of Huracan? The power to destroy cities?”
“Indeed it does, my loyal servant, but it has also given another gift. The demons inside this capstone have shown me the future, Tarántula! Our enemies are close and will soon attack us through that archway over there. I saw it all with my own eyes.”
Tarántula noticed the way the Mercado brothers were looking at each other. He felt they might be thinking the same thing he was. Had they placed their futures in the hands of a total madman?
“You saw the future, sir?”
The Snake King grew silent. The implications of what he had seen were only just beginning to register in his whirring mind. Drunk with the potential of his new power, he turned and barked at the Mercado brothers.
“Cover it with the tarp,” he snapped. “It’s important no one looks directly into the capstone!”
“Yes, boss.”
“Then prepare the men to get it out of here and back to the chopper. We have a world to destroy.”
19
Riley had the most caving experience, and now he set his faithful alloy descender to seventy feet, checked the rig was safe and switched his flashlight on and off. Good – all was still functioning properly. Peering over the edge of the giant abyss inside the cave, he slid on a pair of rope rescue gloves, gave the rope one final tug to make sure it was secure and then walked backwards over the edge.
“Take care, Riley!” Diana called out.
“No worries. This is a piece of cake compared with some of the stuff those bastards in the regiment made us do.”
Then he gave her a cheeky wink and loosened the rope weaving through the rappel rack to reduce the friction and let it slide through. Then he was gone, plummeting away from them and into the darkness below.
Within seconds, he felt the ambient temperature change around him. He expected this, and continued sailing down the side of the rock-hole, using the glowstick down in the dirt below to guide his speed and know when to slow down and land. As the glowstick raced up to meet him, he tightened the rope feeding through the rack and reduced his speed. Then, a few feet from the cave floor, he stopped completely, uncoupled himself from the rigging and hopped down onto solid ground.
Flashlight on, he scanned his new surroundings. He was the original class clown when workload permitted, but no one was more serious when the rubber hit the road. Trained to a brutally competent degree by the SASR out in the deserts of Western Australia, he knew what was expected of him when he clocked on to a serious job. This was one of those times.
“You see anything?”
Selena’s voice. He stared up at them far above his head. He didn’t know why, but looking at the top of a tunnel from the bottom always looked further away than looking at the bottom of a tunnel from the top. A breeze blew on his face and rippled his hair. A slight sulphur smell. Odd.
“Not really,” he called back, returning to his examination of the cave. “Regular looking cave with one exit. Looks scary. Someone going to come and hold my hand?”
“I will!” Selena said. “I can’t wait to get down there.”
“Just hold on a damned second,” said Decker. “I’m going down next.”
“Why you?”
“I’m an ex US Marine.”
He needed no more words, and moments later he was rappelling down the same line Riley had used. When he hit the ground, he unhitched himself from the rigging and pulled a flashlight with one hand and a pistol with the other.
“G’day, Cap!” Riley said.
“Howdy. We’re going to make sure that tunnel is safe before bringing the whole team down here.”
“Lena’s seen worse – and Charlie too!”
“Sure, but if there’s anything ugly in there, we don’t need Diana, Atticus and old man Acosta down here. We’re not discussing it.”
“No need, Mitch. We’re singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to the old crumblies up there.”
“Huh?”
“Atticus and old Pepe.”
Decker rolled his eyes. “Crumblies?”
“Just a figure of speech.”
The two men walked down the tunnel at the base of the shaft. Gravelly dust crunched under their boots as they inched forward, flashlight beams searching the darkness ahead of them for threats. Ahead they now saw a cave mouth opening out onto a large cavern. When they reached it, they
