The Gates of Hell (Matt Drake 3) (24 page)

Time to rock.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Drake leaped up onto the gigantic sculpture, scrambling for purchase and grabbing the carved food to pull himself up. The sculpture felt cold, rough and foreign beneath his fingers, like touching the egg of an alien. He held his breath as he pulled hard to maintain his balance, but the fruit and loaves and haunches of pork held.

Below him and to the right lay the body of a man who hadn’t been quite so lucky.

Bullets zinged around him. Komodo and another member of the Delta team laid down covering fire.

Without more than a wasted second, Drake leapt across the main body of the molded shape and scrambled down the other side. As his feet hit the rock floor, he turned and gave a thumbs-up to the next man in line.

And then he, too, opened fire, picking off one of the Blood King’s men with his first shot. The man tumbled down the cliff face, landing near the body of his already dead comrade with a horrible crunch.

The second man in line made it.

Ben came next.

*****

Five minutes later and the entire team crouched safely in the shadow of Gluttony. Only one item of food had been crushed. Drake had watched as a puff of powder seeped into the air, spiraling like the body of a deadly, charmed snake, but it had evaporated after a few seconds not even touching the guilty man’s fleeing boots.

“The ledge.”

Drake led the way double-time to the short incline that formed the beginning of the ledge. From this vantage point, they saw it curved gracefully up the wall before giving out onto the rock plateau.

The Blood King’s men withdrew. It was a race against time.

Up they pounded, single file. The ledge was wide enough to forgive a few mistakes. Drake fired as he ran, picking off another of Kovalenko’s men as they vanished through the next exit archway. When they reached the top of the ledge and saw the vast expanse of the rocky shelf Drake saw something else too, lying in wait.

“Grenade!”

In full flight, he flung himself headlong to the floor, using his momentum to twist his body as it slid across the smooth rock and booted the grenade away.

It fell off the plateau, exploding a few seconds later. The blast rocked the chamber.

Komodo helped him up. “Could use you on our soccer team, dude.”

“Yanks can’t play soccer.” Drake started running toward the balcony, eager to see what lay beyond and get after Kovalenko. “No offense.”

“Hmm. I don’t see the English team bringing home many trophies.”

“We’ll bring home the gold.” Drake put the American right. “At the Olympics. Beckham will make the difference.”

Ben had caught them up. “He’s right. The team will play for him. The crowd will rise for him.”

Karin let out an exasperated cry from behind. “Is there
nowhere
where a man won’t talk about bloody football!”

Drake reached the balcony and placed his hand on the low, broken stone wall. The sight that greeted him made his legs turn weak, made him stagger, made him forget all his woes and wonder again just what manner of creature had actually
built
this awe-inspiring place.

The view they beheld struck both awe and fear into their hearts.

The balcony stood about a quarter of the way up a truly gargantuan cavern. Without doubt, the biggest any of them had ever seen. The light came from the countless deep amber flares the Blood King’s men had fired before they embarked on the sixth level. Even then much of the cavern and its dangers still lay in murk and shadow.

To their left and leading from the exit archway, what appeared to be a covered, zigzag staircase led down about a hundred feet. From deep inside this staircase, Drake and his team now heard a heavy rolling sound followed by screams that made fists of dread clutch at their hearts.

Ben took a breath. “Man, do I
not
like the sound of that.”

“Yeah. Sounds like the opening to one of your songs.” Drake tried to keep the spirits from falling too far, but it was still hard to drag his jaw up from the ground.

The staircase gave out into a narrow ledge. Beyond this ledge, the cavern opened into enormity. He could see a narrow, snaking path clinging to the right hand wall, running a short way into the cavern above infinite depths, and a similar one that then continued over to the left, but no bridge or any other means to connect them across a massive gap.

At the farthest end of the cavern rose an enormous black, jagged rock face. When Drake squinted, he thought he might just be able to make out a shape about half way up that rock face, something big, but distance and darkness thwarted him.

For now.

“One last push,” he said, hoping it was true. “Follow me.”

Once a soldier always a soldier
. That’s what Alyson had said to him. Right before she left him. Right before she…

He brushed the memories away. He couldn’t contend with them now. But she had been right. Scarily right. If she had lived, things might be different, but pumping through him now was the blood of a soldier, a warrior; the true mettle had never left him.

Into the narrow passage they walked: two civilians, six Delta soldiers, and Matt Drake. At first, the tunnel differed little from the previous ones, but then, in the light of the amber flares they kept firing ahead, Drake saw the passageway suddenly divide and expand to a two-car width and noticed that a channel had been delved into the rock floor.

A guidance channel?

“Look out for ankle-breakers.” Drake noticed a wicked little hole ahead positioned just where a man might place his foot. “Shouldn’t be too hard to avoid at this pace.”

“No!” Ben cried, without humor. “You’re a friggin’ soldier. You should know better than to say things like that.”

As if in affirmation, there came a mighty
boom
and the ground shook beneath them. It sounded like something big and heavy had dropped into the passage that divided the one they had walked down. They could turn back and be blocked or—

“Run!” Drake shouted. “Just bloody run!”

A deep thunder began to fill the passage as though something heavy was heading toward them. They took flight, Drake firing flares as he ran and hoping to hell that neither Ben nor Karin stepped in one of the nasty trap-holes.

At this speed…

The roar grew louder.

They kept running, not daring to look back, keeping to the right of the wide channel and hoping Drake didn’t run out of flares. After a minute they heard a
second
ominous grumble coming from up ahead.

“Jesus!”

Drake didn’t slow down. If he did, they were dead. He raced past a wide opening in the wall to their right. The noise was coming from up there. He risked a quick glance.

NO!

Blakey had been right, the crazy little geek. Rolling stones were rumbling toward them, and not the Dinorock type. These were large spherical balls of rock, let loose by ancient mechanisms and guided by obvious and hidden channels. The one to their right ploughed at Drake.

He put on a huge burst of speed.
“Run!”
He spun, screaming. “Oh, god.”

Ben joined him. Two Delta soldiers, Karin and Komodo rushed by the opening with an inch to spare. Two more soldiers squeezed by, falling over their own feet and crashing into Komodo and Karin, ending up in a groaning tangle.

But the last Delta man was not so lucky. Without a sound, he disappeared as the huge ball came out of the cross-passage, impacted him with the force of a Mack truck and smashed resoundingly into the side of the tunnel. There was another boom as the ball that had been following them smashed into the one that had dissected their escape.

Komodo’s face said it all. “If we’re quick,” he growled, “we might be able to beat the rest of the traps before they reset.”

They took off again. They passed three more intersections where the grumbling machinations of immense machinery cracked and boomed. The Delta leader had been right. Drake listened hard, but heard no sound of Kovalenko or his men up ahead.

Then, they came up against the blockage he had been dreading. One of the immense stones stood ahead, impeding the way forward. They bunched together, wondering if perhaps the thing was about to start resetting.

“Maybe it’s broken,” Ben said. “The trap, I mean.”

“Or maybe…” Karin fell to her knees and crawled forward a few feet. “Maybe it’s meant to be here.”

Drake fell beside her. There, beneath the huge stone was a small crawlspace. There was just enough room for a man to squeeze underneath.

“Not good.” Komodo squatted down as well. “I’ve lost one man already to this bullshit trap. Find another way, Drake.”

“If I’m right,” Drake said, looking back over his shoulder, “once those traps reset, they’ll trigger again. They must work on the same kind of pressure pad system as the others. We’ll be trapped here.” He met Komodo’s eyes with a hard stare. “We don’t have a choice.”

Without waiting for a reply, he shimmied his way under the ball. The rest of the team crowded in after him, not wanting to be last in line, but the Delta men held their discipline and placed themselves where their team leader indicated. Drake felt the familiar urge rise inside his chest, that urge to say,
Don’t worry, trust me. I’ll get you through this,
but he knew he would never say that again.

Not after Kennedy’s senseless death.

After a moment of wriggling, he found himself sliding headfirst down a sharp incline and immediately heard the rest following. The bottom wasn’t far, but gave him enough room to stand upright beneath the massive stone ball. Everyone else crowded in behind him. Thinking hard, he didn’t dare move a muscle. If this thing dropped, he wanted everyone on level ground.

But then the familiar groaning sound of grating machinery shook the silence and the ball shifted. Drake took off like a bat out of hell, shouting at everyone to follow. He slowed and helped Ben along, sensing that even the young student had fitness limits and lacked the endurance training of a soldier. He knew Komodo would be helping Karin, though with her being a martial arts expert, her fitness might well be on a par with the men.

As a group they sprinted along the hewn out passage
beneath
the deadly rolling ball, trying to take advantage of its sluggish start because, up ahead, they might be faced with a tough incline to get them back up in front of it.

Drake spotted an ankle-breaker and yelled out a warning. He leapt over the fiendishly placed hole, almost dragging Ben bodily with him. Then he hit the incline.

It was sharp. He dug in, head down, legs pounding, right arm locked around Ben’s waist, heaving with every step. In the end, he beat the ball by some distance, but then he had to give everyone behind him a chance.

He didn’t let up, just shifted forward to give the others some room and fired more flares ahead.

They bounced off a solid rock wall!

The immense stone rumbled toward them. The entire team had beaten it, but now faced a dead-end. Literally.

Drake’s eyes made out a deeper blackness between the bright flares “There’s a hole. A hole in the ground.”

Quickly, feet tripping and nerves frayed by desperation, they raced over to the hole. It was small, man-size, and completely black inside.

“A leap of faith,” Karin said. “Kind of like believing in a god.”

The heavy rumble of the ball of stone grew louder. It was within a minute of crushing them.

“Glow stick,” Komodo said, voice tight with tension.

“No time.” Drake cracked a glow stick and leapt down the hole in one swift movement. The drop seemed interminable. Blackness flickered, seeming to reach out with twisted fingers. Within a few seconds, he hit rock bottom, allowed his legs to fold and hit his head hard on solid stone. Stars swam before his eyes. Blood seeped across his brow. Conscious of those who had to follow he left the glow stick in place and crawled out of range.

Someone else landed with a crash. Then Ben was beside him. “Matt. Matt! You alright?”

“Oh aye, I’m fuckin’ peachy.” He sat up, holding his temples. “Got an aspirin?”

“They’ll rot your gut.”

“Polynesian Mai Tai? Hawaiian Lava Flow?”

“Geez, don’t mention the ‘L’ word down here, mate.”

“How about another stupid joke?”

“Never run out of those. Hold still.”

Ben checked his gash. By now the rest of the team had landed safely and were crowding around. Drake shrugged the young lad off and rose to his feet. Everything seemed to be in working order. Komodo fired off a couple of flares that struck the roof and bounced down a steep incline.

And tumbled over and over until they exited through an archway at the bottom.

“That’s it,” Drake said. “I think that’s the final level.”

CHAPTER FORTY

Drake and the Delta team came out of the tunnel firing hard. There was no choice. If they were going to stop Kovalenko, then speed was vital. Immediately, Drake looked to his right, recalling the layout of the cavern, and saw the Blood King’s men had leaped over to the first S-shaped ledge and were congregated around its farthest point. The start of the second S-shaped ledge began a few steps in front of them, but over on the other side of the gargantuan cavern, a yawning chasm of unknown depth separating them. Now that he was closer, and since the Blood King’s men seemed to have fired off several more amber flares, he finally got a good look at the far end of the cavern.

A great rock plateau jutted out from the back wall, on the same level as both of the S-ledges. Cut into the back wall itself was a steep staircase, seeming so close to vertical it would give even Maverick vertigo.

At the top of the staircase, the big black shape protruded. Drake only had a second, a glimpse, but. . .was that a colossal chair made of rock? An implausible, extraordinary throne maybe?

Bullets peppered the air. Drake fell to one knee, picking off a man and hearing his terrible scream as he plummeted into the abyss. They ran for the only cover they could see, a broken mass of boulders that had probably crumbled from the balcony above. As they watched one of Kovalenko’s men fired a loud weapon, a weapon that expelled something that looked like a bulky, steel dart across the gap. It hit the far wall with a loud crack and lodged into the rock.