King's Crusade (Seventeen) (36 page)

They covered the remaining ground carefully, their progress hampered by their search for more hidden sensors. They had travelled another two thousand feet when Carrington picked out the flare of a cigarette in the darkness. They froze behind the trees and studied the camouflaged watchtower on the slope to their left.

A pair of figures stood at the top of the wood and metal structure. The low mutter of conversation floated down toward them. Ten seconds passed before one of the Crovir Hunters spotted the second tower to the right.

‘Should we eliminate them?’ the immortal murmured.

‘No,’ replied Alexa. She stared at the armed guards atop the structure. ‘They might sound an alarm. We should use the element of surprise to our advantage as long as we possibly can.’

The land grew more barren the deeper they ventured into the valley. The grassy slopes and trees were soon replaced by loose rocks and towering boulders. The river became a stream. Eighty minutes after leaving the four-by-fours, they finally arrived at the head of the gorge.

The tree line ended abruptly some three hundred feet from the base of a giant cliff. Water gleamed against the dark surface as it rushed down from the peaks above to form a shallow creek.

They stopped in the shadows under a copse and studied the terrain. Irregular protrusions rose from the snow-covered ground in front of the elevation. Alexa stared at the tree stumps. Whatever vegetation had survived the harsh conditions of the mountains had been deliberately felled to expose the ground.

She stared at the south face of the mountain. To the untrained eye, the rail tracks appeared to run straight into the rock. It took but a few seconds for her to make out the outline of a cleverly disguised tunnel in the cliff face. The giant, gray metal doors under the camouflage netting looked large enough to admit a freight train.

Another pair of watchtowers stood under the bluff at the extremities of the canyon.

‘They’ll have security cameras covering this area,’ said Alexa in a low voice.

‘How can you be so sure?’ asked the team leader of the Hunters. He glanced at her with a frown. ‘I can’t see anything through the IR goggles.’

‘Because I would have them,’ she replied curtly.

‘I agree,’ muttered Reznak.

‘Eva, can you see anything that resembles manhole covers or ventilation shafts close to our position?’ said Alexa into the microphone transmitter.

‘There is a small segment of ground close to the cliff wall on your left that has a slightly enhanced heat signal from the rest of the land,’ the AI replied after several seconds. ‘I can detect three more similar areas within a four-hundred-foot radius of the mountain face.’

‘Good. Let the other Crovir Hunters know their locations,’ said Alexa.

‘I will,’ said Eva. As they turned to head toward the sector the AI had indicated, she came back on the line. ‘Alexa, I am detecting movement behind you.’

They dropped to the ground behind the cover of the trees, weapons in hand.

‘I’ve just received a communication from Banks,’ said Eva in her ear. ‘It’s Frank Schmidt. He said he was bringing some friends.’

Alexa slowly rose to her feet. Shapes shifted in the shadows under the branches. She took the night vision goggles off and stared at the tall figure climbing the incline toward her.

The man stopped a few feet away and pulled down the ski mask covering his lower face.

‘Hi, Alexa,’ said Schmidt. He acknowledged the Hunters next to her with a nod.

They looked as surprised at his presence as she felt.

Carrington stared at the group of ten men behind the immortal. ‘Hey, what the hell is this, a freaking picnic?’ he muttered to Schmidt.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Reznak coolly. ‘Did the Council send you with the other Hunters?’

‘No,’ said Alexa before Schmidt could reply. She studied the silent figures behind the immortal. Her gaze shifted to the Crovir Hunter’s face. ‘You brought the Freemasons with you.’

Schmidt nodded as shocked gasps rose around them. ‘I helped them negotiate an agreement with our First Council. In exchange for not causing a stink about the incident in London, they have been allowed in on this mission.’ He shrugged. ‘Since one of their most prized possessions is currently in the hands of this sect, they wanted in on the action.’

‘Are you here in your capacity as a Crovir Hunter or a Freemason?’ Reznak asked, his tone still guarded.

Schmidt smiled wryly. ‘Since this directive doesn’t cause any conflict between my two roles, I’ve come as both.’ He peered closely at Alexa. ‘What happened to you?’

‘It’s a long story,’ she said.

They spent a minute coordinating their next move with the rest of the Crovir Hunters and the second team of Freemasons heading up the valley, before proceeding toward the area that Eva had pointed out.

Alexa used the butt of a Sig to tap the snow-covered ground gently. A dull metallic ring erupted from under the gun seconds later.

They dug at the frozen soil and loose gravel with their gloved hands until they uncovered a square metal plate.

She glanced at Carrington. He nodded. Reznak, Schmidt, and the other men raised their guns to cover them as they carefully lifted the hatch.

An unlit well appeared below. Metal rungs descended into the gloom.

Alexa took the lead and headed down into the darkness.

Chapter Thirty

T
wenty-five feet below ground, she
stepped carefully onto the floor of a narrow tunnel. She aimed the Sigs at the empty ends of the passage while the men joined her.

A low ceiling rose above them. Dim wall lights shed a muted glow on bare concrete. Alexa studied the thin accumulation of dead plant debris and water on the ground at her feet thoughtfully.

‘Is this a storm drain?’ asked Carrington in a low voice.

‘No,’ said Alexa. ‘It’s an emergency exit.’ She turned and headed north along the tunnel.

A junction appeared after a hundred and fifty feet. The tunnel split into two branches, the first continuing north, the other veering east. She took Schmidt and a group of Hunters and Freemasons along the second channel. Reznak continued down the first one with Carrington and the rest of the men.

A minute later, the passage began to rise. Alexa moved cautiously up the shallow incline. A low din gradually grew in the distance. Occasional shouts punctuated the solid rumble of background noise. The shadows ahead faded as another source of light entered the tunnel. The slope leveled out.

Alexa stopped abruptly and pulled back into the shadows. The men flattened themselves against the wall behind her. Schmidt peered over her head.

An opening lay ten feet in front of her. Beyond it was a wide platform that looked down on a set of rail tracks; the freight train that had departed Perm several hours ago stood on them.

A pair of dark-clad figures armed with guns moved hurriedly past the mouth of the passage. A forklift trundled slowly behind them, lights flashing above its cabin and an audible alarm sounding from a speaker box; two of the crates Kronos had loaded onto the train sat on its forks.

Alexa stripped out of her snow gear, checked the suppressors on the ends of the Sigs, and adjusted the body holster holding her sais and the ammunition belts around her waist and thighs. Schmidt stared at the bandages across her abdomen with a grimace before removing his own snowsuit.

She wrapped the end of her discarded parka around her fist and quietly smashed one of the lights on the wall. The tunnel grew darker, almost doubling their cover.

Alexa inched to the edge of the opening and looked out. She froze when she got her first full view of the space around the platform.

The tunnel that carried the tracks through the cliff lay on her right. A hundred feet after passing the metal doors that concealed its entrance from the outside world, it entered a cavernous space inside the mountain. The chamber was about the width of a football field and twice the length. Floodlights dotted a vaulted, rock ceiling thirty feet above the ground. A second platform rose on the other side of the tracks and joined with the first one at the north end of the cavern, where the walls opened up to accommodate a large staging area packed high with pallets of crates and containers. A second tunnel lined with concrete walls opened at the north face of the cave, its distant end curving around and down a shallow slope.

Alexa could see other openings in the walls of the cavern. Guards armed with submachine guns dotted the platforms.

‘What’s with all those boxes?’ muttered Schmidt in her ear, his gaze fixed on the extensive stockpile on the staging area. ‘What the hell are they planning?’

‘The end of the world,’ she said in a low voice.

Alexa’s gaze returned to the livestock wagon that had held the tombs. She scanned the platform quickly, darted to the tracks, and dropped into the narrow gap underneath the train. She started to move toward the damaged carriage.

Schmidt landed behind her a second later, followed by half of the Hunters and Freemasons. ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed.

‘I need to check something,’ she replied.

She reached the wagon, moved under the metal coupling, and peered over the edge of a jagged piece of singed timber. Half of the carriage’s east wall was missing; the bomb had completely destroyed the stall she had been in. She stared at the opposite wall and breathed a small sigh of relief. The second stall stood relatively intact.

The chains that had secured the tombs inside the wagon lay coiled on the empty floor.

‘What happened here?’ whispered Schmidt. His eyes widened and he glanced at the bandages at her midriff. ‘Is
that
how you got hurt?’

Alexa did not reply. She was staring at the mouth of a tunnel on the east wall of the cavern, directly opposite the damaged carriage. A familiar shape had just flashed past in the passage beyond.

Two guards approached from the north end of the cave. She sank into the shadows beneath the train. The pair walked past, oblivious to their presence a few feet away.

Alexa climbed onto the platform and raced low over the ground to the opening across the way. Schmidt and the others followed in her footsteps.

An intersection appeared some twenty feet inside the concrete tunnel. Seconds before she reached it, a dark figure came into view around the corner from the left.

Alexa shot the man before he could shout out a warning. The bullet struck him between the eyes with a muffled thud. As he slumped against the wall, a second figure appeared behind him. She shifted her arm to fire again. Her finger froze on the trigger when he suddenly collapsed.

She stared at the apparition who had administered the blow to the now unconscious man. ‘Yonten,’ she said in acknowledgement.

The monk grinned. He had changed out of the snowsuit and held the bō staff in his hands.

‘Where’s Jackson?’ she asked, her tone hardening.

He turned and beckoned them to follow him just as the rest of the Hunters and Freemasons rushed inside the passage behind them.

‘Please don’t do that again,’ said the team leader of the Crovirs with a heavy frown. He stared at the monk. ‘And who is this?’

‘A friend,’ said Alexa.

They had barely travelled thirty feet along the next tunnel when an alarm suddenly tore through the underground complex. Gunfire sounded in the distance.

‘Dimitri!’ she said sharply in the microphone transmitter on her collar, breaking the strict radio silence they had kept since entering the facility.

Reznak’s voice came over the receiver. ‘We’re okay,’ he said in a low voice. ‘One of the other teams must have triggered a security sensor. Looks like the game’s up.’

‘Yonten’s taking us to Jackson,’ said Alexa as she headed briskly after the running monk. ‘The tombs have been moved from the train.’

Footsteps sounded ahead of them. Four armed sect members appeared from a side passage eighteen feet from their position. The man in the lead shouted a warning to his companions before raising the Shipka submachine gun in his hands.

Alexa, Schmidt, and four of the Hunters returned fire as bullets pelted past them. The other Crovirs and the Freemasons turned to face the second group of guards who had materialized at the opposite end of the corridor.

‘This way!’ said Yonten. He opened a metal hatch in the floor and disappeared from view.

Alexa followed him and dropped down the rails of a vertical ladder into a tunnel below. Her boots and cross training gloves squeaked against the metal poles as she suddenly broke her fall. She came to an abrupt halt a foot from the monk’s head.

Yonten had stopped on a rung three feet above the ground. The staff spun in his right hand as he kicked and jabbed at the two armed guards below him.

Alexa jumped down on the shoulders of the man on the right, brought him to the floor, and punched him in the face. He went limp beneath her. She rose smoothly, turned, and fired at the armed figures racing toward them from the south end of the corridor.

The edge of Yonten’s foot collided with the neck of the remaining guard. The man crumpled to the ground.

Schmidt landed beside them with the rest of their team; of the ten men who had been with them, only seven remained. A hail of shots followed their passage down the ladder.

They maintained steady gunfire cover at their backs as they followed the monk down the passage. Moments later, they emerged from the sidewall of a huge tunnel that spiraled gently down into the earth to their right.

It was the concrete borehole that opened up at the north end of the massive cavern directly beneath the mountain. Alexa registered this in the same second that her gaze fell on the fifteen sect members occupying the tunnel floor.

The Sigs sang in her hands as she discharged them with deadly accuracy into the bodies of the armed men. Schmidt fired the Beretta pistol next to her. A Hunter and a Freemason fell under the enemy’s bullets.

Yonten darted across the angled floor, the bō staff blurring around his body while his feet moved in a flawless dance. His strikes and kicks incapacitated four guards in as many seconds.

‘This way!’ he shouted. He turned and raced down the slope. They headed after him just as another wave of guards appeared at the top of the incline.

Bullets slammed into the wall next to Alexa, raising chips of concrete. She twisted and fired one of the Sigs behind her while she sprinted after the monk. The gunfire eased off when they turned the corner of the borehole. Fifty feet later, the ground leveled out and the ceiling dropped. Concrete was replaced by solid rock.

The artificial glare of floodlights faded behind them and was superseded by the glow of flames from torches sitting in iron brackets on the walls. Fat, stone pillars surfaced from the gloom, rising out of the limestone bed to support the roof of the tunnel. Archways materialized on either side of them.

In the wavering, yellow light, Alexa caught glimpses of other corridors and rooms.

More sect members appeared in their path and succumbed swiftly under their bullets. Two more Freemasons and another Hunter fell at their sides. All the while, the alarm echoed shrilly through the rock around them.

Yonten suddenly swerved into a passage to the left and disappeared down a steep, winding staircase. Alexa went after him, Schmidt and the remaining men hot on her heels.

They were soon inside a honeycomb of tunnels and caves deep beneath the ground. She recalled what Eva had said about the complex. The structure looked very old. It reminded her of the ancient, underground cities in Turkey, built before the Byzantine era.