The Gates of Hell (Matt Drake 3) (26 page)

Drake feigned a rush attack, waited for the Blood King to react and instantly caught the man’s right hand between his own. A quick downward twist and Kovalenko’s wrist snapped. Again the Russian only hissed.

Around them, Komodo and Karin and Ben and the remaining Delta soldier watched.

The Blood King glared at them. “You can’t kill me. All of you. You can’t kill me. I am a god!”

Komodo snarled. “We can’t kill you, asshole. You got a fuck load of squealin’ to do. But I sure am looking forward to helping choose which hellhole you spend the rest of your life in.”

“Prison.”
The Blood King spat. “No prison will hold me. I will
own
it within a week.”

Komodo’s mouth broadened into a smile. “Some prisons,” he said quietly. “Don’t even exist.”

Kovalenko looked momentarily surprised, but then the arrogant veil cloaked his face again and he turned back to Drake. “And you?” he said. “You might as well be dead without me to chase half way around the world.”

“Dead?” Drake echoed. “There are different kinds of dead. You should know that.”

Drake kicked him over his cold, dead heart. Kovalenko staggered. Blood leaked from his mouth. With a pathetic cry he fell to his knees. A shameful end for the Blood King.

Drake laughed at him. “He’s done. Tie his hands and let’s go.”

Ben spoke up. “I recorded his speech patterns.” He said softly, raising his phone. “We can use special software to reproduce his voice. Matt, we don’t actually
need
him alive.”

The moment was as loaded as the last second before an explosion. Drake’s face changed from resignation to pure hate. Komodo hesitated to intervene, not through fear but through hard-earned respect—the only respect a soldier will acknowledge. Karin went wide-eyed with horror.

Drake raised his rifle and tapped the hard steel against Kovalenko’s forehead.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. I saw her die. I was there. He ordered terrorist attacks against
Hawaii.
” Ben looked around the chamber. “Even Hell will spit him out.”

“This is where you belong.” Drake’s smile was cold and dark, like the Blood King’s soul. “Beyond the Gates of Hell. This is where you should stay and this is where you should die.”

Kovalenko’s jaw set hard with forty years of death and hardship and bloody decadence behind it. “You will never scare me.”

Drake studied the fallen man. He was right. Death wouldn’t hurt him. There wasn’t a thing on earth that would scare this man.

But there was one thing that would
break
him.

“So we tie you up down here.” He lowered the rifle, much to Komodo’s relief. “And
we
go on to claim the treasure. It was your life’s quest and you’ll never know what it was. But remember my words, Kovalenko,
I will.
”

“No!” The Russian’s yelp was instantaneous. “
Your
claim? No! Never. It is mine. It always has been mine.”

With a desperate roar, the Blood King made a last despairing lunge. Pain racked his face. Blood flew from his face and hands. He rose and threw every ounce of will and a life of hate and murder into his leap.

Drake’s eyes glowered, his face set hard as granite. He allowed the Blood King to strike him, stood firm as the frantic Russian expended every last ounce of energy in a dozen blows, at first hard, but weakening rapidly.

Then Drake laughed, a sound beyond bleak, a sound both loveless and lost and caught halfway between purgatory and hell. When the last of the Blood King’s energy was spent, Drake pushed him over with a palm and stood on his chest.

“It was all for nothing, Kovalenko. You lost.”

Komodo rushed over and trussed the Russian up before Drake could change his mind. Karin helped divert him by pointing up at the near-vertical staircase and the mind-boggling sight of the black throne jutting out. From here it was even more staggering. The thing was enormous and perfectly sculpted, poised a hundred feet above their heads.

“After you.”

Drake appraised the next hurdle. The staircase ran upwards at a slight angle for about a hundred feet. The underside of the throne was lost in deepest black, despite the numerous amber flares scattered around.

“I should go first,” Komodo said. “I have a little rock climbing experience. We should climb a few lengths at a time, inserting carabiners as we go, and then thread a safety line to our team.”

Drake let him lead. The fury was still strong in his brain, almost overwhelming. His finger still felt good around the M16’s trigger. But to kill Kovalenko now would blight his soul forever, implant a darkness that would never lift.

As Ben Blake might say—it would
turn him to the dark side.

He started up the wall after Komodo, needing the distraction as the incessant cravings for vengeance rose and tried to take control of him. The sharp climb instantly focused his mind. The Blood King’s wails and moans faded away as the throne grew closer and the staircase trickier.

Up they went, Komodo leading the way, carefully placing each carabiner before testing its weight and then threading the safety rope and dropping it to his team below. The higher they went, the darker it became. Each tread of the staircase had been hewn and shaped out of the living rock. Drake began to get a sense of awe as he climbed. Some incredible treasure awaited them; he could feel it in his bones.

But a throne?

With a sheer void at his back he stopped, braced himself, and looked down. Ben was struggling, eyes wide and scared. Drake felt a rush of sympathy and love for his young friend, something absent ever since Kennedy had died. He saw the remaining Delta soldier trying to help Karin and smiled when she waved him away. He extended a helping hand toward Ben.

“Stop tossing it off, Blakey. Come on.”

Ben looked up at him and it was as if a firework went off in his brain. Something in Drake’s eyes or in his tone of voice stirred him and a hopeful look fastened onto his face.

“Thank God you’re back.”

With Drake’s help, Ben climbed faster. The deadly void at their back was forgotten and each step became a step toward discovery rather than peril. The underside of the throne grew closer and closer until it was within touching distance.

Komodo climbed cautiously off the staircase and onto the throne itself.

After a minute, his American drawl caught their attention. “Oh my God, guys, you aren’t gonna believe this.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Drake swung across a small gap and landed squarely on the wide block of stone that formed the foot of the throne. He waited for Ben and Karin and the last Delta soldier to arrive before looking up at Komodo.

“What you got up there?”

The Delta team leader had climbed onto the seat of the throne. Now he moved to the edge and stared down at them

“Whoever built this throne included a not-so-secret passage. There’s a back door behind the back of the throne up here. And it was open.”

“Don’t go near it,” Drake said quickly, thinking of the trap systems they had passed. “For all we know it flicks a switch that sends this throne straight down.”

Komodo looked guilty. “Good call. Problem is—I already have. Good news is…” He grinned. “No traps.”

Drake extended a hand. “Help me up.”

One by one they climbed up onto the seat of the obsidian throne. Drake took a moment to turn around and take in the view over the abyss.

Directly opposite, across the massive chasm, he saw the same stone balcony they had occupied earlier. The balcony where Captain Cook had quit. The balcony where the Blood King had most likely lost any last remaining thread of sanity he had possessed. It seemed like a step away but it was a deceiving mile.

Drake made a face. “This throne,” he said quietly. “It was built for—”

Ben’s shout interrupted him. “Matt! Bloody hell. You won’t believe this.”

It was not the shock in his friends voice that sent fear shooting through Drake’s nerve endings but the foreboding. The apprehension.

“What is it?”

He turned. He saw what Ben saw.

“Fuck me.”

Karin crowded them out. “What is it?” Then she saw it too. “No way.”

They were looking at the rear part of the throne, the tall upright that someone might rest against, and the part that formed the rear door.

It was covered by the now familiar whorls— the beyond-ancient symbols that appeared to be some form of writing—and the same symbols that were inscribed upon both the time displacement devices and also on the great archway under Diamond Head that Cook had called the Gates of Hell.

The very same symbols Torsten Dahl had recently discovered in the tomb of the gods, far away in Iceland.

Drake closed his eyes. “How can this be happening? Ever since we first heard about the nine bloody pieces of Odin, I feel like I’ve been living a dream. Or a nightmare.”

“I bet we’re not done with the nine pieces yet,” Ben said. “This has got to be manipulation. Of the highest order. It’s like we’ve been chosen or something.”

“More like cursed.” Drake growled. “And quit with the Star Wars crap.”

“I was thinking a bit less Skywalker, a bit more Chuck Bartowski,” Ben said with a little smile. “Since we’re geeks and all that.”

Komodo was regarding the hidden door with impatience. “Shall we continue? My men gave their lives to help get us this far. All we can do in return is find an end to this hellhole.”

“Komodo,” Drake said. “This
is
the end. Has to be.”

He pushed past the big team leader into a giant passageway. The space was already larger than the door that led into it and, if it was possible, Drake sensed the passage widening, the walls and the ceiling withdrawing further and further until—

A cold, stiff breeze caressed his face.

He stopped and dropped a glow stick. By the faint light he fired off an amber flare. It flew up, up, up, then down and down without finding purchase. Without finding a ceiling, a ledge or even a floor.

He fired a second flare, this one more to the right. Again the amber infusion vanished without trace. He snapped a few glow sticks and threw them ahead to illuminate their way.

A sheer cliff edge dropped off six feet in front of them.

Drake felt intense vertigo, but forced himself to continue. A few more steps and he faced the void.

“Can’t see a thing. Bollocks.”

“We
can’t
have come all this way to be thwarted by the bloody dark.” Karin voiced everyone’s thoughts. “Try again, Drake.”

He sent a third flare into the void. As it flew this one picked out some faint highlights. There
was
something on the other side of the chasm. An enormous structure.

“What was that?” Ben breathed in awe.

The flare plummeted quickly, a brief spark of life lost forever to the darkness. 

“Wait there,” the last remaining Delta soldier, a man with the call-sign Merlin said. “How many amber flares do we have left?”

Drake checked his webbing and his pack. Komodo did the same. The number they came up with was about thirty.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Komodo said. “Fireworks display, right?”

“One time,” Merlin, the team’s weapons expert, said grimly. “Find out what we’re dealing with and then hump it back to a place where we can call in support.”

Drake nodded. “Agreed.” He set aside a dozen flares for the way back and then readied himself. Komodo and Merlin came up to stand beside him at the edge.

“Ready?”

One by one, in rapid succession, they fired flare after flare high into the air. The amber light blazed brightly at its highest point and threw out a brilliant glow that shattered the dark.

Daylight came to the eternal blackness for the first time in history.

The pyrotechnical display began to have an effect. As flare after flare continued to shoot up and explode before drifting slowly downward, the great structure at the other end of the gigantic cavern became illuminated.

Ben gasped. Karin laughed. “Brilliant.”

As they gazed in wonder, the pitch black was set on fire and a stunning construction began to appear. First, a series or arches cut into the rear wall, then a second series beneath that. Then it became apparent that the arches were in fact small rooms—niches.

Below the second row, they saw a third and then a fourth and then rows upon rows as the dazzling lights drifted down the great wall. And in each niche great glinting treasures reflected back the brief glory of the drifting amber inferno.

Ben was stunned. “It’s… it’s…”

Drake and the Delta team continued to fire flare after flare. They made the massive chamber appear to burst into flames. The magnificent conflagration flashed and raged before their eyes.

At last, Drake fired the final flare. Then he took a moment to appraise the mind-numbing revelation.

Ben was stammering. “It’s huge… it’s—”

“Another tomb of the gods.” Drake finished with more worry in his voice than wonder. “At least three times the size of the one in Iceland. Jesus Christ, Ben,
what the hell is going on?”

*****

The journey back, though still fraught with danger, took half the time and half the effort. The only major obstacle was the big chasm where they had to rig another zip-wire to travel back across, although the chamber of Lust was always going to be a problem for the guys, as Karin pointed out with a wry glance at Komodo.

Once back through the archway, Cook’s Gates of Hell, they hoofed it back through the lava tube and out onto the surface.

Drake broke a long silence. “Wow, that’s the best smell in the world, right now. Fresh air at last.”

Mano Kinimaka’s voice came out of the surrounding dark. “Make that
Hawaiian
fresh air, man, and you’d be nearer the mark.”

People and faces drifted out of the semi-dark. A generator was fired up, lighting a hastily-erected set of string lights. A field-table was being erected. Komodo had called in their position as soon as they started up the lava tube. Ben’s signal returned and his mobile bleeped on four separate occasions with voicemail. Karin’s did the same. The parents had been allowed to call.