Beneath the Dark Ice (12 page)

Monica came and stood next to him. “What’s it all say?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Damn, if only we had that other guy from Central America.” Monica elbowed Matt in the ribs and he laughed.

“Well, I can see the symbols for the brothers and also for that eye and coiled ropes which is the symbol of the deceiver god—the
Qwotoan
I mentioned before. And there’s more about following the path to the underworld. Other than that, at this stage it’s what we in the archaeology business call a vanished language; the images and symbols are mostly a mystery . . . and would be to
ev-ery-one
.” Matt turned and shone his torch directly into Monica’s eyes as she mouthed the word
magic
again.

“I wonder where they all vanished to?” asked Aimee.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing. And I’ve been wondering a few other things about those two warriors,” Matt replied.

The medics, Margaret and Bruno, had joined them now, and Matt turned to them. “You know, this could be just coincidental, but there is an ancient Mayan myth about the creation of the universe that described their version of heaven and earth and the gods and creatures within it. It also featured two brave twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque,
the sons of the blood moon. In the myth, they travelled deep below the earth to their Hades, a place they called Xibalba. Like a lot of ancient races, the Mayan myths were thought to have been handed down from even earlier populations. What if the legend of the brothers wasn’t all myth? What if it was one of those stories that was passed down over the millennia and was never a myth at all but the documentation of an actual journey below ground by these two warriors.”

Matt was breathing heavily, and he sucked in a deep breath before continuing. “Aimee, you asked where they all vanished to. I’ve been thinking about that as well. This could be another population disappearance. These Aztlans could have sent out parties to all corners of the globe—that would explain how their writing style was seeded everywhere from the Egyptians to the Mayans. But the rest seem to have just disappeared. The disappearances and the name
Qwotoan
—I’ve been racking my brain about it; I knew I’d heard something like it before. The first English attempt of settlement at Roanoke in 1587. Over a hundred people disappeared without a trace, and the only clue to their fate was the word
Croatoan
carved into a tree. Do you see the similarity—
Croatoan
, and
Qwotoan
? It could be the same word, but expressed in different languages. If there is one thing that will cross time, geography and races, it’s a warning.”

The look on Matt’s face was as if he had just been handed two stone tablets from the top of the mountain. However, with Tom missing, Aimee was in no mood to hear about inexplicable disappearances. The scientist in her leaped at the vague but fantastical inferences he was drawing from the little data he had to work with.

“Matt, everything you have mentioned has, or will have, a scientific explanation.” Aimee saw Matt open his mouth and raise his finger to interject, but whether to
apologise or debate she never knew as Takeda interrupted them both.

“Please. They’ve found something, you must all hurry.”

Alex kneeled down beside Tank who was examining something on the cave floor. “It’s Johnson’s gun. No rounds fired. No blood either, just a lot of skirmish marks and more dragging.” Tank looked at Alex with more anger than fear—it was a natural reaction; the team was as close as family. They all knew it was a deadly business they were in, but rated themselves as the best and looked forward to going head-to-head with any opponent. Johnson was one of their finest. So how did he get ambushed, disarmed and carried off? And how the hell did he get across the chasm by himself?

Tank went to hand the gun to Alex, but it stuck for a second. He held the barrel to his nose then offered it to Alex. He didn’t need to; Alex could smell it from ten paces back. “Phew, ammonia and it’s slimy,” Tank said more to himself than to Alex while wiping his hand on his leg.

Alex looked up at Tank’s brother. “Mike, go a hundred feet down the cave and hold your position. Report in when you get there and do not engage with anyone or anything.” Mike nodded, snapped off a quick “roger that,” and was gone.

The entire team had now crowded around Alex and Tank. Alex handed the gun to Aimee. “Dr. Weir, your opinion please.”

Aimee touched the substance with her gloved finger, held it up to her nose and sniffed. She also tested its consistency between her thumb and forefinger. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure being away from the lab, but I’d say this is ammonium chloride. But there’s something else—some sort of biological binder making it sticky that I can’t identify
without further analysis. Dr. Silex . . .” Aimee held out the gun to Silex but he made no attempt to accept it.

“I’d say it’s probably an introduced contaminant. Maybe something the soldier brought with him and spilled.”

Alex ignored the scientist and turned to Monica Jennings. “Could this be a naturally occurring substance down here?”

Monica tilted her head. “Maybe, but unlikely. In deep caves, ammonium chloride can occur naturally, but usually in active volcanic regions, and usually near fume-releasing vents. But even then it dissolves quickly. This area doesn’t seem active enough to me and that looks fresh. It shouldn’t be here.”

“Secretion,” Alex said softly to himself, remembering the last communication received from Dr. Tom Hendsen and the organic substance he had found but couldn’t identify. Alex’s comm unit pinged once. “Mike, go ahead.”

“I got another drop-off. About a hundred feet straight down to what looks like a plateau with multiple exits leading off from the cave floor down there. At the lip here there’s significant ground disturbance and then the tracks seem to end. The Hendsen party seems to have launched themselves off the edge, but I can’t see any bodies or debris down below.”

“OK, Mike. Look for a way down or signs they could have descended themselves. Stay alert, we’re on our way.”

Borshov and his agents sped through the dark labyrinth. Like three black wolves closing in on their prey, they travelled lightly and in complete silence. Borshov pushed his men hard; he knew they still had ground to cover before they caught up with the American team, but he was confident there would be no ambush, no hidden detonations or trip-wires just yet. They were not expecting unwelcome
company and besides, they still thought they had a man at rear cover.

Borshov stopped his men with a raised hand and, as he had done every thirty minutes since they had set off down into the tunnel depths, withdrew a small box which he pressed down onto the cold ground. A wire trailing from the back of the device ended in an earpiece which he pushed into his ear. The device was a miniaturised seismic resonator. It listened to solid surfaces and amplified vibrations so they could be clearly read. The small LCD screen on the back gave two readings: the distance of the loudest vibration and the direction. The Russian invention was created purely for use by its anti-terrorism units for “listening” though solid walls—a terrorist could be pinpointed simply by taking a single soft footstep.

From the last reading Borshov had taken, the Americans had been just over three miles in the lead, but at their current speed he expected to catch them quickly. He listened again for their footfalls and looked down at the small box for its directional readings. Good, they were still closing, now just over two miles between them. South-south-east with a slightly increasing descent—they must be climbing down at some sections. As Borshov was about to pull his device free from the stone it began to reset before his eyes. It had found another source of resonance. The figures increased rapidly until they stopped at numbers indicating a distance of about two miles, but nearly ninety degrees straight down, and shifting. Borshov closed his eyes to concentrate on the sounds; significant mass, liquid, moving. He pulled the device free. Underground river, he thought.

He gave a short sharp whistle to his agents and sped on again into the dark.

Monica was walking lightly beside Matt, alert to her surroundings, but from time to time dropping deeply into her
own thoughts. Be careful, be silent, touch nothing, leave nothing behind; her caving experience made it all automatic now. She used to like nothing more than entering a pitch black cave for the first time, turning out her light and just standing there in the dark, opening her arms wide and just feeling. She would use all her senses other than sight to draw in all the smells, the minute sounds, and feel the weight of the stone around her. She’d done it dozens of times so why now did the thought of switching off her light in this cave give her a knotted, uncomfortable feeling deep in her stomach.

Matt turned towards her and could see the troubled look on her face. “Penny for them.”

“It’s nothing,” Monica said softly.

“Come on, tell Uncle Matt.”

“OK, remember how I said that caves were like people?”

“Hmm, yeah, some are easy, some are bitches; sounded like a few girls I knew in high school.”

“And some are secretive, that’s right. Well, this one is more than secretive; it’s hiding something and for the first time in my life I don’t feel comfortable in the dark.” Matt smiled at her and put his arm around her shoulders.

“Monica, if you’re ever looking for an excuse to get me to put my arm around you just ask, OK?”

“You oaf,” Monica said through a little smile, but didn’t push his arm away.

Alex was the first to catch up to Mike. “What’ve we got?” he asked while looking down over the lip of the drop-off.

“Only this.” Mike stepped to the side and indicated a building-sized stalagmite. About waist high on the column there seemed to be some discolouration about ten feet into the centre of the gigantic mineralised pillar. There were also faint signs that something had led away from the column to the edge of the drop.

“What was that . . . rope?” Alex tried to pick some up but it fell to dust in his hands. “Dr. Kerns, we need you here please.”

Matt trotted forward and dropped to his knees. “Wow. This looks like it was once an ancient type of Indian maguey fibre-rope. It’s made from a plant like the agave, and look at this.” Matt indicated the rope trail from the column to the edge and then over. “It was once wound around that stalagmite, and became embedded, fossilised within the mineral build-up. No idea how old it is though.”

Aimee shone her torch on the stalagmite then crouched down beside him, her own scientific interest sparked. “We can get an estimate of its age by judging how deep the rope is embedded within the stalagmite. Looks to be about nine to ten feet in; these things grow at about two millimetres per year, so I reckon that took around ten to twelve thousand years to build up.”

“That sounds about right; there haven’t been any plants like the agave or any of its ancestors here for over ten thousand years,” Matt said, nodding to Aimee. “It could be the brothers again. They could have used the rope to climb down.”

“What brothers? Would you like to share your theories with us, Dr. Kerns?” snorted Silex from the rear of the group.

Matt got to his feet and wiped the dust from his hands. Using both his helmet and hand torch he scanned the near walls; soon enough he found what he was looking for—the seal of the warrior brothers. He turned to Silex. “From what I’ve been able to translate, it seems long ago there was some kind of civilisation here. Before the ice covered everything up it might have been the father and mother of all our civilisations. I think it was being plagued or attacked by something they called the
Qwotoan
, which meant the deceiver or devourer or something like that.
The ruler of this civilisation sent two warriors, a pair of brothers, to take an army and go and battle the
Qwotoan
—I think we’ve been following in their footsteps. The army was totally destroyed and only the brothers remained. I also think their adventure became a Mayan legend, and by looking at this rope I’d say they hadn’t given up on their quest and I reckon they went that way.” While keeping his eyes on Silex, Matt pointed with his thumb over the rim to the lower cave floor. Silex gave Matt a look like he had just smelled something bad and turned his back on the young archaeologist.

“Captain. Captain.” Silex was clicking his fingers in the air as though calling a waiter to his table. “Captain Hunter, it’s like trying to read Swiss cheese from up here. You are going to have to get us down lower so we can obtain better readings. Thank you, Captain, that’s all.” Tank snorted and Mike looked at his brother and winked.

Alex ignored Silex and walked past him a few paces into the darkness. Alex could sense them now; several of them were coming fast the way they had just come. If not Benson, then who? He closed his eyes and tried to picture the tunnels in his mind.

When Alex had been talking to Hammerson about his strange new abilities the Hammer had given him a copy of a secret naval report titled “Anomalous Cognition in Marine Mammals.” The navy had been using dolphins for all manner of experiments since the 1950s due to their uncanny ability to predict or sense danger. The scientific basis was that their unique brains could pick up everything from electromagnetic disturbances to sensitive seismic vibrations long before other animals. Hammerson’s inference was clear; he believed Alex was developing this ability. Alex opened his eyes; there they were. Their presence became clearer—four of them, no three, but one of them large. Alex made a decision.