Beneath the Dark Ice (30 page)

“Looks like basketball to me,” Alex said.

The others had squeezed through quickly; no one wanted to be left more than a body length behind. Matt now shone his torch around the walls and ceiling. “The early Mesoamericans used to play a game that was part basketball and part football nearly five thousand years ago. This might be one of their Great Ball Courts. If these Aztlans were the forefathers of the Olmecs, Aztecs and Mayans, then we should be able to assume that they had similar or in some cases identical cultures.”

Matt stopped again to study one of the carvings. “The games look very similar. In most of these races the arenas were of significance to the people and their gods. The courts were considered to be portals to the Mayan underworld and were built in low-lying areas or at the foot of great vertical constructions. In fact, Mayan legend has it that the mythological Hunahpu and Xbalanque played a ball game with the lords of the underworld. I’d say that this tunnel will probably lead us to one of their open-air courts.”

“Open air? I like the sound of that. Hey, be careful!” Monica grabbed Matt as he was about to put his foot in a hole cut into the floor.

“What is that? Is that for drainage?” Alex had noticed that the holes were cut in the floor near the wall every hundred feet or so.

“Probably, a culture this well established and advanced would have had some form of drainage and sewerage system constructed. Most likely it’s gravity based, so it could be flushed downhill. There’s probably all sorts of sewerage tunnels underneath us as well.”

Alex groaned to himself. This was likely how the creature managed to get into the city after the Aztlans sealed the deep sacrificial chamber, and there was a good chance it was also how it planned to ambush them again now. “Let’s move on, quickly now.”

The tunnel was becoming more ornate and the architecture more magnificent. Large trapezoidal stones fitted together, forming a perfect seal. Jutting stone corbels of fierce creatures interspaced with large oval stone heads with benevolent stares looked out at the small group as it hurried along the tunnel. Smaller side doors gaped open and these offered little more than black holes into unknown passages of the Aztlan city. Their breath steamed in the torchlight and for the first time, ice crystals crunched under foot.

“We must be close to the outside, or at least where the outside used to be before it iced over.” Alex felt they were in a race now, he mentally checked off his armoury—his rifle was gone but he still had his blades, and a single grenade. His propane cylinder was out and Aimee had lost her gun a long way back. Not much if it came to a stand and fight; but if it came to that in this enclosed space, he didn’t think they would last very long no matter what armaments they had. Best if the lights went out before that happened.

The tunnel terminated in another stone door, this one also of the magnificent red granite and polished to a glass-like finish. At one time the door probably slid open as silently and smoothly as any modern-day palace door; now it was locked. Not by stone or steel, but by a rim of blue ice crystals surrounding the entire perimeter.

“This is it. At least we will be out from the stone and we can get a proper reading of depth. I might even be able to get a signal out to home base.” Alex had reached around into his backpack and withdrew his small sonar device in readiness.

“How are we going to open it?” Monica was running her hand over the blue ice.

Alex could hear the suppressed excitement in Monica’s
voice and took a step up to the door to test its weight and thickness and whether there was any give in the edges. It must have weighed several tons and without something to melt the surrounding ice was not going to move any time soon. Even combining his great strength with that of all the others he doubted they’d be able to do more than get red faces. The only option was to use his last grenade.

“Here’re the options. One, we can find another way to the ice. Means we’re going to have to double back, and we don’t know how far. It’s a pretty good bet to assume the creature hasn’t given up yet so we may run into it again. Also, I reckon all the exits will be as iced up as this one. Second option is we use the last grenade to blow the door. It will get the door out of the way, but not the ice. Further, it will alert anything in these caves as to exactly where we are. It also means we will have exhausted our last major defensive ordnance.”

Alex expected them to think over the option for a minute or two. However, Monica jumped right in.

“Blow it up. I’m not going to go back down into those black holes again.”

Alex recognised the panic in her eyes. Even if they escaped, it might be a long time, if ever, before Monica wanted to go caving again.

Aimee looked across to Alex. “Blow it.”

Matt nodded. “Yep, bombs away; blow it.”

Alex smiled. “OK then, let’s make some noise.” He removed the small grenade from his belt pouch and wedged it into the corner of the door frame. Most of the explosion would be thrown back into their chamber, but there was nothing available for him to use to concentrate the blast towards the door—it had to work the first time as it was. Alex instructed them to move back down the chamber and take cover in the side tunnels, to brace themselves and
cover their ears. Alex set the timer for thirty seconds and ran down the corridor, dived into a side tunnel and covered up.

The blast was deafening even with their hands over their ears. The hot whoosh rushed past them down the corridor, followed by the sound of bouncing debris of various sizes. Alex was the first back to the doorway—the grenade had worked spectacularly. The door was gone completely and their first sighting of the Aztlan city surface was before them.

The smoke was clearing and all four of them stood bathed in a blue glow. In front of them the thick stone door had fallen away to reveal a solid wall of ice now barring the doorway. Its clarity was almost magical as it allowed them to see a blue world beyond and at least fifty feet out into the city courtyard.

“It’s like being underwater.” Aimee put her hand on the ice; it was slick from the heat of the explosion, but other than that untouched.

Monica was now also running her hand over the surface and shaking her head. “Oh, no. We should have expected this, it’s prehistoric ice; extremely old and usually occurs when snow falls and is compressed over a long period of time. The more it’s compressed the more the air is squeezed out and the larger the ice crystals become; then it becomes very transparent at depths.” She stood back and looked like she was about to cry. Then, in a voice like a small child she said, “I thought for a moment it was the sky.”

Matt put his arm around her again and asked, “Why is it blue?”

Aimee answered this time. “For two reasons. The ice is blue for the same reason water is blue. It’s a form of reflection, but also at this depth it is the result of a molecular stretch in the water which absorbs light at the red end of the visible spectrum.”

Alex looked at Aimee. “I’m no expert, but I’ve heard it’s rock hard, is that right?”

It wasn’t really a question. Alex knew the differing densities of ice as it related to his training for warfare in frozen oceans. A blue iceberg could tear a ship’s steel hull like paper.

“Yes, like iron.”

Alex pointed his sonar up at an angle from the bottom of the doorway, as close to vertical as he could get it. In a few seconds he was able to read his depth from the surface.

“Very good. Only about a hundred feet.”

Alex removed a short, wicked-looking black blade from a hidden sheath on his thigh. The knife was one of several that he carried as standard equipment in the field. It was a modified K-bar, shortened and strengthened from its normal seven-inch length but still with the recognisable bowie features that U.S. Marines had carried into battle for generations.

He crouched down for a moment, looking up at an angle towards the outer rim of the door frame and then swung his arm. The blade connected with a squealing crunch and dug in about two inches. Alex could feel the juddering impact all the way up his arm. Hard as iron was right, he thought; a blow that powerful should have sunk the blade to the hilt. Like a machine he kept swinging his arm, occasionally changing hands to balance the impact and also share the fatigue across his shoulders. After twenty minutes he had a hole dug into the centre of the door frame ice approximately a foot in depth and diameter.

“How long to get us to the surface?” Aimee had her arms folded and was looking at him with a worried look on her face.

“Can I help?” Matt had also decided that one man, even one with superior strength, was going to take a very
long time to get to the surface digging through a hundred feet of iron-hard blue ice.

Alex sat back for a moment and drew some deep breaths. He smiled at the three of them. “I estimate it would take me about twelve days to dig us up and out to the surface. If I had a dozen grenades it would definitely speed things up a bit. But no, I definitely do not plan to spend nearly the next two weeks digging through ice. I only need to get a hole dug so we are out from under the stone lintel. Then hopefully my comm unit headset can get a signal out. It doesn’t have a very long range, but I’m betting my superiors won’t have given up the search for us yet and if there are military choppers in the vicinity they will be carrying some armaments that can cut through the ice. And yes, Dr. Kerns, I would be delighted if you could take over for a few minutes.”

Alex saw Monica slumped against the wall and Aimee resting her hands on her knees, watching him with a puzzled expression. She was at the point of collapsing from exhaustion and he could tell she wondered how he kept going.

“Phew, I’m tired,” he said, more for her benefit. He didn’t need the break but wanted to check down the tunnels as a feeling of disquiet had been growing within him. By now the creature would have an idea where they were and was probably working out how it could get to them. He needed to take a little walk back down into the dark and listen for a while.

The sudden explosion caused the creature to stop its forward movement. There was little it feared; however, without its shell it was vulnerable, and a cave-in could trap or crush it. After a few minutes when no further shaking occurred it continued sliding ahead, the rhythmic sound of the digging drawing it on. The tunnels were much smaller
now and even compressing its boneless form to a third of its size it was impossible to use the tunnels as they were. The creature flexed its body and tested its enclosure—the roof above it lifted slightly. It paused. One of the small warm bloods approached; it was the dangerous one.

The creature coiled itself up and prepared for an almighty flex.

Alex walked back down the tunnel and began opening his senses to the stone, the walls and the floor. He could still hear Matt continuing with the digging, but knew he’d be lucky to be able to keep it up for more than a minute. Aimee and Monica stood on either side of him, either advising and commenting on his digging prowess or trying to take the knife off him so they could take a turn. Alex felt sorry for him; he knew how hard that ice was. Blue ice was not like normal ice where you could find a fault line or air bubble and cause a large chunk to crack and shear off. You literally had to dig it out chip by chip. It was a good thing Matt had a sense of humour.

A hundred feet farther down the tunnel, Alex stopped and stood silently in the dark. He blanked out the sounds of the digging and slowed his breathing until it almost seemed to stop. He was fully opening all of his extraordinary senses to his surroundings. He was listening, feeling, sensing for movement or a presence other than their own.

There. He felt it. It was close, too damn close. It was right here now. Like a bolt of electricity, Alex’s body came alive once again as super-charged adrenaline surged through his body. He sprinted back down the tunnel.

Aimee felt the small tremor run through the floor and hoped it was nothing more than some minor geological activity. She was about to comment on it when Alex reappeared. Behind him the floor started to lift like a wave.
Giant stones that had been knitted in place for thousands of years were tossed aside like a small child’s building blocks. The sound of crushing rock was ear-splitting.

Lieutenant Owen would wait another few hours. He wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard from the HAWCs yet and he hadn’t expected to be kept in the loop. When those guys were involved, the brass knew the details and everyone else just did their job or got out of the way.