The Swords of Babylon (Matt Drake 6) (14 page)

“This could be the fight of our lives
,” Mai Kitano commented.

Drake
crawled through the desert, ignoring the morning sun that beat down hard on his back, weapons ready. Their packs were comprehensively packed, even to the tools they might need for entering the dreaded pit. But, for now, Drake’s eyes were fixed firmly on the prize ahead.

The three large
camouflaged tents that belonged to the ragtag group of Razin’s men pillaging the ancient pit of Babylon and, if they survived that, the Devil’s Tower, the Tower of Babel, where Zanko and Razin hunted for ancient treasure.

“Nah, no worse than the battle around the coffee machine first thing every morning.”

Alicia crawled at their sides, equally tooled up. “I’ve had harder times pulling my bike leathers on.”

Mai eyed her. “But not so many taking them off, I bet.”

Hayden, Dahl and Kinimaka approached from another angle, the two groups connected by a hardy communications system. Their objective – acquire all the swords at all costs. Ominous events were afoot in the world, and this was the team’s only viable link to them.

The Russian perimeter was loose, made complacent by weeks of indolence. Judging by their careful surveillance
, it seemed the Russians had a complement of around a dozen men, including two bosses – a man and a woman, neither of whom were Zanko or Razin.

They will have stationed themselves
at the Devil’s Tower,
Patterson had guessed.
Whilst their men acquire the remaining swords.
Patterson, Akerman and Yorgi had been left back at the all-terrain vehicles for this little jaunt. The civilians would only cause distraction.

Alicia blew a gust of sand out of her mouth. “
Oh yeah, I’m lovin’ this.”

Drake surveyed the tented area through a pair of high-powered binoculars, identifying t
he positions of the guards. “Aye, it’s bloody hot out here. Could be worse though. At least we haven’t come across one of those mental camel spiders yet.”

Alicia swiveled her entire body. “What?”

“Y’know. Six, seven inches. Move at ten miles an hour. Jaws like a croc. Those camel spiders.”

“So I
’m lying here up to my tits in sand, and
now
you mention them. Thanks.” She cast around as if expecting one of the beasts to pop up out of the dunes.

“The scorpions are worse
.” Kinimaka’s voice came over the comms. “I just crawled over one. Luckily, I squashed it, I think. They might survive a nuclear strike, but there ain’t no surviving the mighty Mano.”

“Let
’s just go.” Alicia started to crawl again. “I’m starting to like the look of these Russians.”

Drake kept pace,
crawling with his elbows, nose an inch off the jagged, dusty terrain. The early morning sun was already beating down. A steady breeze billowed the overlarge tents ahead and stirred mini dust devils. The trio topped the last little rise and waited.

Hayden
’s voice came over the comms. “Go.”

They rushed the perimeter. Drake
’s weapon spat. A guard fell instantly. Others followed suit around the rough circle. The team’s rush ate up the ground between them and the enclosures. Within seconds, they were amongst the utility vehicles, packing crates and diesel drums. The tent flaps burst open and a swarm of badly dressed men flew out, weapons held high or still strapped to their backs. One still held on to a half-empty bottle of Southern Cross vodka.

Their shouts of pain stung the morning air.

Two more figures burst out of the tent. “Victoriyah!” one of them yelled. “Call Nikolai!”

The woman
, black-haired and half-dressed like the men, and sporting a confident, superior expression, threw her own vodka bottle in the direction of Hayden’s team. “Of course, Maxim. I have little else to do.”

Maxim
discharged a stream of bullets into packing crates. Drake ducked as one nicked off the frame by his head. More bullets thudded into the crates as Maxim’s men caught up with the situation. Mai leaned out and picked one off with a perfect head shot, sending him flying back into his boss’s legs, crumpling him.

“Idiot!”
Maxim yelled, scrambling to his feet and kicking at the corpse, face a livid red. “Victoriyah! Hurry up!”

“Suck it, Maxim.”

Drake turned an almost amused look toward the women. “Sounds like those two are practically married.”

Alicia peered out
, and almost got her head blown off. Splinters of wood cascaded across her hair. “Bollocks.”

More shots rang out.
Hayden’s team advanced, drawing the fire. Drake climbed on to the lip of a badly stacked crate and peered over. In the two seconds he had spare, he put a bullet through someone’s throat and saw the through-and-through pass tantalizingly close to Victoriyah’s skull.

“
We’re thinning them out and they know it,” he said. “Let’s move.”

The trio burst from behind the crates, passing close to three haphazardly parked trucks
, and out into the open. Only forty feet separated them now, and the pit of Babylon lay off to the left like a festering, exposed sore.

Drake focused on Maxim, but the Russian hit the dirt fast. Vi
ctoriyah threw herself alongside him, throwing the cell phone at his head.

“Dumb fucking thing doesn
’t work.”

“No, Vi
ctoriyah. It’s the dumb fucking thing trying to work it!”

Drake
fired as Maxim rose, his shot whizzing by the Russian’s head. By then it was too late to do anything about the object clasped in the man’s other hand – a grenade.

Maxim threw the pineapple shaped explosive. Drake
hurled himself to the right and rolled. Mai and Alicia were an instant behind. Plumes of dust and sand rose around them. In three more seconds the grenade exploded, sending shrapnel shards spinning every which way.

The ground shook. Alicia
let out a sharp cry. Mai struck Drake’s bottom half, still rolling. Drake heard the terrible death-filled fizz of deadly objects passing by him at killing speed. The ground rumbled again.

At last he stopped, fully alert, bringing his gun up and looking to the tents.
Dust clouds obscured his view. Beside him, Mai reached out for Alicia, pulling the Englishwoman into her.

“Are you hit?”

“No. But I think I saw one of those fucking spider things.”

Drake peered through the clouds. Hayden
’s voice shouted in his earpiece, “Come in. Are you okay?”

“We
’re good. Just—”

A
nd then their entire world shifted. The very ground they were lying on began to subside, to crack. Narrow fissures ran from the site of the grenade explosion all the way to the pit of Babylon.

Drake saw what was about to happen.
“Uh, oh.”

The earth collapsed beneath them.

Drake tumbled forward, cla
wing at anything that might arrest his fall, but the rocky earth fell away in a steep cascade, taking all three of them with it. Evidently, the cave-in wasn’t confined to their area, but extended all the way to the tents, as Victoriyah’s echoing voice berated Maxim for his insanity.

Time stopped as Drake fell. Their lives hung in the balance. This could be an endless fall down a bottomless pit or a sharp plunge down a steep slope. He tucked his body as it bounced off the sides, drew his head down as shale and stones poured all around it. At last
, he hit the bottom, plainly a narrow space, since he immediately rolled a short way up the opposite side.

And that meant
. . .

He dragged himself to his knees, head spinning,
limbs howling with pain. He steadied himself by staring at the ground and bringing a pile of rocks into focus, then looked up.

A Russian
’s top half protruded from rubble further up the slope, partly buried, but still miraculously holding his gun and staring wild-eyed at his situation. Two more guards groaned and crawled through the debris that had collected at the bottom. Beyond them, Drake saw Maxim and Victoriyah sprawled across each other, struggling hard.

Rivers and streams of rock continued to run down both slopes.

Far above, Drake saw one of the tents leaning over the new crevice, balanced precariously and slowly slipping.

Crap!
He pulled at Mai and cast about for a weapon. Their guns were nowhere to be seen. Alicia ran past him then, leaping nimbly from pile to pile, drawing her Army-issue knife as she closed the gap on the fallen Russians. Drake followed her. Alicia slammed the hilt of her weapon under the first man’s chin, giving him no chance to react. The second struck out at her, glancing a blow off her shoulder. Alicia caught the arm and broke the wrist as Drake drove his own knife through the man’s throat. Only Maxim and Victoriyah remained.

Then
a bullet blasted into the rubble nearby, raising a mini explosion of shale.
Damn, how the hell were they going to cancel out that bastard?

The Russian half-buried up the slope was laughing, making a point of taking careful aim. There was nothing they could do to stop him.
“Hold still!” he cried. “I want to take your stupid heads off.”

“Wing them,”
came Maxim’s authoritative command. “We can bury them down here. A fitting end, I say.”

“Get your fucking arse off me!” Vi
ctoriyah shouted.

Alicia, never a girl to stay put and take it, exploded into action, sprinting through the debris and shrieking like a banshee.
Drake ran in her wake, feeling the itch as crosshairs lined up on his exposed back.

Mai screamed from behind them
, “Drop—”

Then
the cry of Torsten Dahl crashed down like thunder and the big Swede came feet first, slipping and sliding down the crumbling slope, torrents of rock streaming around him, smashing into the half-buried Russian and almost breaking him in two. Both men plummeted to the bottom, the Russian bent and shattered, the Swede brushing himself off and seeking out his next target.

Alicia hit Maxim hard, tackling him around the waist. Drake came up against Vi
ctoriyah, thrusting with his knife, but thrown off balance by the shifting mounds of debris. When he realized he was falling, he threw his body hard against the slope. Victoriyah laughed at him.

“What
’s this? You want to play?”

Drake crouched as she came at
him, almost wincing at the sight of her shapely bare legs bloodied and scraped by the headlong tumble. He caught her lunge by dropping a shoulder, and heaved her aside. As he turned he noticed, beyond Mai, that the far edge of the fissure was slowly collapsing into the pit of Babylon.

And the drop-off point was running fast back toward Mai!

“Run!” he yelled. At that point, a thick rope slithered down from above, anchored by Kinimaka, Hayden and, Drake momentarily saw, Yorgi.

The little Russian thief must have disobeyed him. Thank God.

He launched his body on top of Victoriyah and took a blow to the ribs, but brought his weight to bear and lowered the knife. Her hands came up, stopping the tip of the blade an inch before the bridge of her nose.

Drake bore down harder. The Russian woman spat and thrashed about, screaming expletives. Alicia
beat Maxim down hard, turning his face into pulp before ending his misery with a thrust to the brain pan. Mai outran the crevice’s collapse, leaped for the rope and held a hand down to Alicia. “Hurry!”

Drake
removed one hand from the blade, then brought it crashing down on top of the hilt, beating at it as a hammer beats a nail. The tip sliced through skin.

Vi
ctoriyah glared coldly into his eyes. “Fuck you all to hell,” she said and let go of Drake’s wrist.

The knife, unimpeded, drove
down through her forehead. Drake left it in place and grabbed the flapping end of the rope, planting his feet against the slope and leaning back, right beneath Alicia. They all started to walk upward.

Dahl ran hard up the collapsing slope at a sharp angle, his course planned to intersect the rope just above Mai.

Kinimaka and the others took the full strain. The Hawaiian’s voice could be heard clearly through the sudden stillness. “I’ve pulled many pigs out of many pits back home before, guys, but this takes the trophy.”

“Hurry, Mano
,” Hayden urged. “This is far from over. We can’t let Razin get away with those other swords.”

Alicia peered over her shoulder
and down at Drake. “Enjoying the view?”

Drake sent her a smirk. “I
dunno, love. It’s just not quite the same when you’ve seen it all before.”