Gorgon: An Alex Hunter Novel (26 page)

He pointed to the deeper center of the pool. ‘One story has it that the cave god of Crete was a mother goddess who rested upon hills of gold and gave birth each season to a son who was made of stone.’

Tony lit a cigarette. ‘Hills of gold, you say?’

‘Put that out,’ Rebecca said. ‘There’s a chance we could open a cave filled with methane. One spark and you’ll kill us all.’

Tony dragged hard on the cigarette, unmoved. Rebecca sighed and went and added her torch beam to Matt’s.

‘This is a good place to start,’ she said. ‘This cave flooded in the early 1800s after some dynamiting on the surface – it collapsed some of the deeper caves, and also allowed rain water to pour in during ensuing rainy seasons. The artifacts that Professor Myres found were believed to have washed out from smaller caves. We need to find out which ones.’

‘So, what are we looking for?’ Thompson was moving his light over the surface of the lake.

‘The earth leaves us clues,’ Matt said. ‘The rock formations down here grow incredibly slowly – about a third of an inch in ten years.’ He shone his light on an enormous column reaching from floor to ceiling. ‘That started off as a single drip of water loaded with calcium carbonate and other minerals. A stalactite forms on the ceiling, a stalagmite on the floor, and over hundreds of thousands of years they grow toward each other, touch and then combine. So we’re looking for new growths or scars on the rock, above and below water. Anything indicating fresh action that began in the last few hundred years.’ He turned to Thompson and pointed with his thumb at the lake. ‘And that means pool time, I’m afraid.’

He stood with Thompson, looking down into the water. It looked about two feet deep, but the clarity was deceptive – it could have been ten. Tumbled boulders were visible below the surface, with occasional snaggle-tooth islands lifting calcium carbonate and mineral spires toward corresponding stalactites on the cavern roof above. As they watched, a small sprat-type creature wriggled from one shard of stone to another.

‘There are things living in there,’ Thompson said.

Matt nodded. ‘Could be blind eels, blind fish, blind shrimp – you name it. Could be all kinds of things, but all blind.’

Thompson stepped into the water – up to his waist. Clouds of silt billowed around his ankles.

‘Try not to disturb the layer of slime and silt on the bottom, if possible. The water will end up like soup.’

Thompson nodded and lifted his feet, floating in the water. ‘It’s warmer than I expected.’

‘Really?’ Matt frowned and placed his hand into the water. ‘Hmm, might be thermal vents.’ He straightened. ‘Well, lucky you. Remember, you’re looking for rockfalls, scraped stone, tunnels below the surface, anything like that.’

Thompson pulled the mask over his face, gave Matt a thumbs-up, then rolled over. The small tank he wore only carried about twenty minutes of breathing time, so he used his snorkel, and the sound of his breathing through the tube was loud in the echoing cavern.

Matt went to supervise their three Greek minders, who were looking for treasure, while Rebecca edged along the waterline, bending now and then to examine small imperfections in the melted-candle-like cave formations.

After thirty minutes or so, the Greeks gave up their search and leaned against a metal guard rail, smoking and laughing. Reece Thompson had swum away into the darker recesses of the cave, his headlamp creating a glowing circle around him in the immaculate water. Matt and Rebecca were exploring different corners of the cave.

Matt found a small grotto and poked his head inside, noticing a glint of something pressed into the far wall. He leaned in further and extended his arm, straining toward it.
Could it be?
He couldn’t reach past some stalagmites that were like teeth in a bottom jaw, creating bars over the opening. He stared at them, trying to find an angle he could squeeze through.

Rebecca came and kneeled beside him. ‘Got something?’

‘Maybe … if I can work out how to get it.’

He eased in against one of the stone columns.

‘Oh, please,’ Rebecca said.

She grabbed the calcium carbonate pillars and tugged. One – as thick as an arm – broke off. Matt looked at her horrified.

She snorted. ‘What? We came down here to blow a hole in these caves if need be, remember?’

He grimaced, knowing she was right. ‘Thanks.’

He leaned in again, using his flashlight to extend his arm another foot to scrape at the object. It broke off and tumbled down the wall, rolling toward him. He grabbed it and turned it over, his excitement abating.

Rebecca crowded in close. ‘What is it?’

He held it out. ‘Pretty jewel for a pretty lady?’

It was a crystal pressed into some glittering pyrite, perfectly formed like the end of a large diamond.

She sighed. ‘Nice, but no cigar.’

In another half-hour they had exhausted all the obvious caves, nooks, and crannies. Most had been well and truly turned over by archeologists over the centuries.

Matt rested on his haunches as he sipped from his canteen. ‘We’re not looking at this right.’

Rebecca glanced around. ‘We should have expected that any new passages would be hidden. We could do with some stratigraphic sonars to penetrate the rock.’

‘Yep.’ He nodded slowly, staring toward the dark end of the cave where Thompson had disappeared. ‘I’m guessing it’s a bit late to ask Vangelis, so … let’s think laterally. Imagine we’re here a few thousands years ago, the only technology we have is burning torches. We’ve scaled down here in the darkness, using ropes and clambering along slippery walls. This place would be as scary as hell – in fact, a lot of early cultures thought these passages
were
a path to hell.’

She nodded, following his train of thought. ‘Go on.’

‘We know there were probably other paths into the cave, which have since collapsed or been flooded. We also know the early inhabitants of the island were good fishermen and not afraid of water. If you wanted to keep something hidden, or stay hidden yourself, the best place would be somewhere that’s difficult to get to …’ Matt shone his light toward Thompson, now a hundred feet away in the enormous lake. ‘When Reece entered the pool, he stirred up mud, and I immediately told him not to do that to keep the water clear. What if the clues we need to find are below the mud?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s possible – it’s the only thing left that makes sense.’

Matt waved their Greek minder over. ‘Tony, we need to search under the mud. Anything that might indicate another cave.’

Tony didn’t look keen. ‘Like what? A door handle or something?’ He frowned in confusion.

Matt shrugged. ‘At this point, just anything that shouldn’t be there naturally. We’re still looking for fresh gouges, or tumbled rocks, but man-made.’

Tony grunted in understanding, and turned, whistling sharply. ‘Petro, Andronus, in the water, now.’

A rapid-fire conversation in Greek took place for a few moments, with Tony raising his voice at his men. Eventually, with a lot of cursing and grumbling, the two Greeks pulled goggles down over their faces and sloshed into the water. There was no need to tell them not to worry about stirring up the mud. In a second, the water was like milky coffee.

Matt pointed to the lake, then half-bowed to Rebecca. ‘After you.’

She pulled her goggles down, put the snorkel in her mouth, switched on her headlamp and fell forward into the water.

Matt stayed standing, watching them paddle off in different directions. The once pristine pond now resembled a hotel swimming pool in summer. He chose a different direction to others, waded into the water and swam out.

All he could hear now was the sound of his breathing. Silt swirled around him, and even though the shallows were only a few feet deep, he had to feel his way along the bottom by hand, stopping from time to time to bring his flashlight in close to examine a raised surface or indentation. As he went deeper, the water cleared and he saw stalagmites rising up from the depths, like terracotta warriors standing guard in a sunken city.

Matt felt a chill run up his spine. He hated caves, hated the dark, and especially hated black water. He had witnessed men and women die horribly in caves. One man had been eaten from the inside out by a tiny carnivorous worm. Matt felt his groin contract at the thought of something swimming inside his wetsuit and into an open part of his body. He reached up and tugged the neck of his wetsuit tighter at his throat.
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it
, he repeated over and over.

He trod water for a few seconds, pushed the snorkel away from his mouth, and lifted the scuba tank mouthpiece to his lips. He sucked the dry and metallic-tasting air into his lungs, then floated again, sighting down into the depths for a moment, before diving ten feet.

Deeper, the water felt even more ominous. His lights were the only illumination in a world of dark liquid. He could hear the faint splashing of his fellow searchers, but his breathing was louder, and there was a faint pounding in his ears caused by his racing heartbeat.

Matt allowed himself to drift lower into a depression in the lake floor. He paused to repressurize his ears, and found himself hanging weightless between a pair of stalagmites. The giant columns would have originally formed on the dry cave floor, but flooding had submerged them long ago. He swam toward a wall made of large boulders covered in mosses, with silt piled against one side. A school of tiny fish shot past him to disappear into cracks between the boulders. As he watched, he saw some strands of lichen bend as if in a breeze.
Promising
, he thought, and drifted lower.

He bent forward to sweep his hand over the silt, a layer about six inches thick. Immediately it clouded his vision. He brought his face closer, ignoring the sliminess of the particles, and ran his hand over the cave floor beneath the silt. It was smooth. It could be flowstone, or calcium carbonate that had run like melted wax over the eons – or it could be something more. He carefully pushed more of the sludge out of the way, wishing he had an industrial underwater vacuum cleaner that could have sucked up a ton of muck in minutes.

He brought his flashlight around. A glimpse of something white … He waved his hand in the water, trying to create a current to drag the silt away from where he was working. In another few seconds, he saw it again – the flash of white.

Matt felt his heartbeat kick up a gear, and he waved furiously at the water now, clearing more silt away. He could see tiles, small mosaics all fitted together, each no more than an inch square. They formed a structure, a floor. Other colors started to show too …

Matt turned, grabbed onto a column, and used his flippers to create a huge torrent that billowed the debris into huge clouds. His thighs burned, but he kept at it, eventually displaying a tiled section half a dozen feet wide – and long. He was wrong; it wasn’t a floor, but a path, and many of the newly exposed tiles were still vivid, protected by the oxygen-poor silt at the bottom of the deep pool.

A face showed at the center of the path. It didn’t belong to a dark-haired Minoan beauty, or a bull-jumping athlete with bronzed muscles and aquiline nose. Instead, it was something designed to strike fear, or perhaps awe, into whoever saw it: the screaming face of the Gorgon, with writhing hair and the red-slitted eyes of a snake.

Got you
, Matt thought, as he let himself descend to the cave bottom.

He used his hands like a snowplow, following the edge of the path until it met the wall. A huge column rose from the floor, blocking his way, but he could see a light current moving around its sides. He guessed the wall had probably collapsed many years before the cave flooded, and the column had grown up over its entrance. He looked upward, following the column to where it breached the water’s surface – about ten feet around. Doing a quick calculation, he estimated the column to be about 5000 years old, which made the time scale right.

Matt let go of the column and drifted to the surface, immediately bumping his head on stone. The roof here was low; it was no wonder this end of the cave hadn’t been fully explored.

He dragged his mask from his face and spat out the mouthpiece. ‘Rebecca! Found it!’

Gerry Harris’ team were watching footage of the entity forming up on Crete’s coast. It became larger, coalescing and solidifying, before flowing away from the shoreline. The new software allowed them to see the figure at the center of the mist.

One of the technicians leaned back in his chair. ‘Major Harris, it’s beginning to pick up speed.’

‘Direction?’ Harris came and leaned on the man’s desk.

The man watched for another moment. ‘So far, heading south – seems to be making for the Psychro Caves, as expected. Speed, twenty miles per hour, but moving up and down the scale – sometimes stopping, sometimes moving at over fifty.’

Harris pushed away from the desk. ‘I better let Hammerson know his team’s about to have company.’

*

Alex waved his team into cover, and walked alone to the dark cave mouth. The iron gate swung open. He slowly turned to take in the surrounding ridges, rocky outcrops, and stands of trees. He signaled to Franks, and pointed to two trucks pulled in behind a stand of trees. The HAWC moved fast and low to the vehicles.

Alex waved the others in as he returned to the cave mouth, and stood staring into its depths. Franks rejoined the team and they formed up around Alex.

‘We’re not far behind,’ Franks said. ‘The Land Rover smells like Rebecca’s deodorant. The flatbed has some diving and excavation equipment on the back, but nothing to indicate who drove it here. One thing’s for sure: it wasn’t Borshov. The guy stinks like a vodka-soaked grizzly.’

Sam motioned to the cave entrance. ‘Boss, anything?’

Alex nodded. ’They’re already down there – Matt, Rebecca, and Thompson. Also another group of men, large, but not Special Forces.’

He continued to stare into the cave, his eyes narrowing. He could sense hopelessness, fear, and a thousand captive souls swirling about in the stygian darkness. He thought about the last time he’d entered a cave, the horrors he’d seen, the people who’d died …

‘You okay?’ Sam asked.

‘Ghosts,’ Alex said, ‘thousands of them … all trapped down there.’

Sam snorted, but his face changed when he saw Alex’s expression. ‘Seriously?’

Alex nodded. ‘This is the place Magera came from.’ He slapped the big HAWC on the shoulder, feeling the mechanical frame. ‘But we don’t believe in ghosts, right? So, let’s join the party.’

He turned to Jackson, and jerked a thumb at the truck. ‘Grab anything you think we might need.’

The SAS soldier and the HAWCs checked their weapons, and secured everything else in close to their bodies – rigging for tight quarters.

Alex pointed to a lip of stone over the entrance. ‘Rogers, give me a peep.’

Rogers reached into a pocket for a silver dollar-sized black disc with a single lens at its center. He twisted it and stuck it to the stone. The motion-sensor lens would activate on movement and send images to Rogers’ visor screen. They now had eyes on their front door.

‘Stay tight. Fast and quiet. On me,’ Alex said, and waved them forward into the darkness.

*

Colonel Jack Hammerson listened to Harris’ report, thanked him, and hung up. His eyes narrowed as he thought through the options.

He grunted and walked to his own screen to replay the relayed data feeds and view the GPS map. Current estimates gave Alex and the team about an hour before Magera arrived.

There was now a no-fly zone over all of the Mediterranean, and communications had become useless the moment the HAWCs went deep below ground. There was nothing Hammerson could do now except trust his team were up to the task.

‘Storm coming your way fast, Arcadian. Good luck.’

*

Matt sat on the rocks close to the walkway railing, mask pushed up onto his forehead. Rebecca and Reece Thompson squatted beside him as he explained what he’d found. The three Greeks stood nearby, listening in.

‘I don’t think we can get to it to plant charges,’ he said. ‘We might need to blow the stalagmites and columns first.’

Thompson shook his head. ‘Not a great idea to be setting off multiple charges in an area that’s structurally compromised. This place has already collapsed once in the last few centuries.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘It only flooded 200 years ago. The pool was little more than a pond in Minoan times. There was also reference to a current after heavy rain.’

‘A current?’ Matt’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Maybe a river ran through here once – now sealed off.’

Tony flicked a cigarette butt into the pool. It hissed once before going out. Matt compressed his lips as he watched it bob on the surface, releasing minute amounts of ash into the pristine water.

Tony shrugged. ‘We blow it. That’s what we came here for. What else we gonna do – go home with our fucking dicks in our hands?’ He winked at Rebecca.

‘I so want to marry a man like that one day,’ she said under her breath to Matt, and pretended to gag.

Thompson looked out over the water. ‘Risky.’

Matt nodded. ‘I agree. We need to think about it.’

Tony snorted. ‘Petro is good at demolition work – cars, buildings … people.’

He saluted Petro, who returned the gesture with a small bow.

Thompson got to his feet. ‘Fine. We’ll wait outside while you bury yourselves alive.’

Tony laughed and held up his hands, palms up. ‘Sorry, sorry … I mean
you
blow it.’ He grinned. ‘Happy now, fucking Prince Charlie?’

Thompson squared his stance. ‘Ain’t gonna happen unless the professor says so. And if he says it’s too dangerous, then we work another option.’

Matt saw that Andronus and Petro suddenly had guns hanging loosely in their hands. They didn’t look directly at Thompson, but stood side-on. Matt knew what they were doing – presenting a small target just in case things went bad.

‘What? The professor is a demolition expert now?’ Tony sneered. ‘I suggest
you
get down there and have a look, Mr. Soldier. You are here for one reason, to fucking blow things up. Why don’t you stick with Plan A until it’s been proved wrong?’

Thompson half-turned to Matt and said quietly, ‘Get ready to jump. I can take one or two, but if they’re quick they might get lucky.’

Matt knew what that meant. If they got lucky, it meant Matt, Rebecca, and Thompson would get
unlucky
and take a hit. Matt felt light-headed at how fast things were spinning out of control.

He got slowly to his feet and held up his hands, calming things down. He knew they didn’t have time for a stand-off. ‘Let’s just everyone take a breath. Maybe Tony’s right. I’m no demolition expert. So maybe we should have another look.’

Tony scoffed. ‘Maybe we just forget about this partnership. You got your C-4, and you showed us where the entrance to the secret cave is. Deal’s over. You are right – we will blow it ourselves, and you can go home.’ He grinned at his comrades. ‘Go home, go to hell – we don’t care.’

‘You’re dead first.’ Thompson’s expression was dark as he stared at Tony, then he paused, as if listening, and began to smile.

Tony’s gun barrel was suddenly pointing at Rebecca’s chest. ‘One gun against three – not good odds for you. Put down your weapon, or the girl is dead …
first
.’

Matt wondered why Thompson was smiling, then saw that several figures had appeared high on the steps behind the three Greeks, as silent as ghosts. One shape broke away, moving so fast it seemed to disappear momentarily then reappear right behind the three gunmen. Matt’s spirits soared – there would be no stand-off, after all.

‘Put your guns down,’ Alex told the Greeks.

Petro spun and, either reflexively or through shock, brought his gun up. Alex’s hand shot out, taking the weapon so quickly that Petro was left blinking at his empty hand. Andronus staggered back, his arms pin-wheeling, and fell over the railing into the water.

Tony cursed, went to aim, then thought better of it. Alex grabbed him, dragging him close so their faces were only a few inches apart.

The Greek slowly turned his head to Matt. ‘Tell him we are friends, okay?’

‘Friends?’ Matt said. ‘You were about to shoot us.’

Alex lifted Tony off his feet one-handed. He screamed, his voice bouncing around in the cave, his legs kicking uselessly in the air.

 ‘It’s okay, we’ll need them,’ Matt said.

Alex lowered him, his eyes burning into the Greek’s. Tony looked away.

Alex pushed him out of the way and leaped over the rail to join Matt, Thompson, and Rebecca. ‘Making friends with the locals, I see,’ he said.

Sam and Barclay Jackson came down to stand behind Petro, while Franks pulled Andronus out of the water. The big newcomers dwarfed the Greeks.

Thompson saluted, and Alex returned the gesture, followed by a bump of the knuckles.

‘Took your time,’ Thompson said with a half-smile. ‘Heard you ran into some nasty shit in Turkey.’

Alex nodded. ‘Lost a good man. And now that nasty shit is on its way to Crete. We need to stop it, pronto.’ He motioned to the water. ‘Find anything?’

‘Yes, but we’ve got a problem,’ Matt said. ‘I think we’ve found Magera’s lair, but we can’t get close enough to it. And we’re worried too many underwater explosions will weaken the cave structure.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘We might be able to get away with one, but …’ He shrugged.

Alex squatted at the water’s edge, peering into its depths. He dipped a hand in and ran it up the pool’s edge. ‘This used to be shallower. Is it filling?’

‘It was probably ten feet lower 200 years ago,’ Rebecca said. ‘It’s filled from rain seepage. Back in the early 1800s they used explosives to open up some areas and caused some fissuring. Rainwater seeps in now, but can’t get out. Seems they also managed to block up the outflow areas.’

Alex stood. ‘And where are they?’

‘What?’ Matt frowned.

‘The outflow areas.’ Alex looked up and down the cave.

Matt sucked in a breath, thinking. ‘My guess …’ He looked around for a second or two, then pointed. ‘Probably down there … it’s the side where the river comes out from under the ground on the lower slopes.’

Alex shrugged the equipment off his back, grabbed Matt’s goggles off his head, and walked into the water. ‘I’ll take a look. Give me five minutes.’

Alex stroked hard to the end of the cave and then dived beneath the water. Matt turned to Rebecca, who raised her eyebrows. ‘We have a new plan?’

He grinned. ‘Maybe.’

In a few minutes, Alex surfaced and pushed his goggles up. He breast-stroked back to the pool’s edge. ‘I think we might have something. Big boulder against the wall – like a cork. If we can move it, we might be able to restart the flow – maybe even drain this bathtub.’

‘Empty the pool? Is there any other …’ Matt stopped and grimaced at the thought of what they were about to do, what they
had to do
, to the Psychro Cave pool. He sighed. ‘Okay, but how?’

‘Well, if we can’t use explosives,’ Alex looked across at Sam, ‘we use a forklift.’ He stood up. ‘Okay, Uncle, you and me are up. We got some rocks to move … and I’m dying to see what that full MECH suit can do.’

Sam snorted and dropped his kit, then took off his shirt.

‘Oh my god.’ Matt’s mouth fell open. Sam looked like something from either the future or a torture chamber. There were pipes, pistons and tubing covering his combat-hardened physique, with spots of blood showing where the needles had penetrated his nervous system.

Thompson handed Sam a breathing tank and some goggles, then looked him over. ‘Bad … pure bad.’

Sam grinned. ‘Time to see if it’s waterproof.’

*

Alex watched as Sam walked into the water, sinking lower and lower. There was no way he was going to float while carrying several hundred pounds of technology.

Alex swam toward the dark area of the lake where Matt had found the mosaic. He peered down into the pristine water and saw the tumbled boulders, some the size of cars, some as small as loaves of bread. All were coated in slime and fine mineral sand that sparkled in his headlamp.

He heard Sam coming up behind him and swiveled to see the amazing sight of his big lieutenant walking along the bottom of the lake, as if taking a Sunday stroll.

Sam saluted, and Alex dived down to join him. He ran his hands over one of the rocks, roughly about five feet long and four high, and easily many tons. Even though Alex had enormous strength, the boulder had been wedged in place for several centuries and the rocks around it had bonded together.

He pointed to the large rock and then to Sam, indicating he would take one end and Sam the other. The big man nodded and moved into place. They looked at each other, and Alex nodded … one, two, three.

He strained, and felt the blood rush in a thumping torrent throughout his system. Above the pulse in his ears, he heard the whine of Sam’s suit and his grunt as he used the MECH technology and his own muscles together. Despite their combined efforts, nothing happened. There wasn’t enough room to get a good purchase on the huge stone.

Alex held up five fingers to Sam, then swam back to the surface. He quick-stroked to the edge of the pool and stood, waist-deep in the water. He pointed to the pile of equipment. ‘Franks, toss me the spike.’

Franks lifted the inch-thick, six-foot metal rod with a single sharpened end. It looked like a brutal javelin. She hefted it to her shoulder, nodding appreciatively. ‘Heads-up.’

She threw it like a spear, and Alex caught it out of the air, instantly feeling its weight.
Perfect
, he thought, and sank once more below the surface.

He smiled around his breathing tube as he saw Sam sitting casually on the huge rock ten feet down. Sam gave Alex the thumbs-up, and once again took his position on one side of the boulder. He dug his fingers deep into the crack between the boulders, and Alex lifted the spike and, with all his strength, stabbed down, wedging the sharpened end between the stones. He looked to Sam and counted down once more.

There was a grinding sound, and rock fragments swirled in the water, but even with their boosted power, the stone refused to budge.

Alex motioned Sam closer and together they worked on just one end. Alex withdrew the spike and jammed it back in at a different spot. This time it slid in deep between the stones. The sparkling mineral sand swirled, and sludge lifted from the bottom of the pool to mix with it around their legs. A basketball-sized rock tumbled down from higher up the wall.