Temple of the Gods

36




The mountain’s entire upper half disintegrated in a single burst of unimaginable violence, a shockwave racing outwards. Behind it followed a colossal cloud of searing ash and superheated steam, pulverised rock and globs of red-hot lava churning within like a lethal blizzard. The explosion would be heard hundreds of miles away, and shake buildings in Dubti.

The helicopter was much closer.

There was a strange silence after Nina and Eddie witnessed the obliteration of the volcano’s summit, light outpacing sound – then the blast wave caught up with them. It was as if the AW101 had been rammed from behind. Nina screamed, but couldn’t even hear it over the earth’s uncorked fury. The chopper swung round, loose items flying through the cabin. Eddie was thrown backwards, grabbing the harness straps on a seat just in time to stop himself from following the dead pilot out of the open rear ramp.

Senses reeling, Larry struggled with the controls. The helicopter spiralled towards the desert plain. The altimeter needle whirled down towards zero with terrifying speed. He applied full throttle and pulled up the collective for maximum lift, but the AW101 was still spinning, still falling.

Eddie dragged himself upright. The landscape blurred past beyond the windows. ‘Dad! Stop the f*cking thing!’

‘I don’t know how!’ Larry yelled. Below four thousand feet, and dropping—

‘Turn it!’ Nina cried. ‘We’re spinning counter-clockwise – turn the other way!’

In the turmoil, Larry’s feet had come off the rudder pedals. He found them again, and jammed one foot down to apply full power to the tail rotor. The helicopter rocked sharply, throwing more unsecured objects around its interior. Nina shrieked as an emergency kit rebounded off the console in front of her and broke open, showering her with its contents.

Three thousand feet – but the spin was slowing. Teeth bared, Larry gradually eased his foot up as the aircraft came back under control. ‘Jesus!’ he gasped. ‘I think I’ve got it.’

The chopper straightened out, pointing almost directly back at the ruined mountain. Eddie caught his breath, then returned to the cockpit to look over his father’s shoulder. ‘We don’t want to be going this way, though.’ He pointed at the compass. ‘Go south-southeast, about one-sixty degrees. That’ll take us back to the town we came from.’ A pause, then: ‘Nice work, Dad.’

‘Glad I finally did something you approve of,’ said Larry with a shaky grin.

Nina stared at the volcano. ‘Look at that . . .’ she said breathlessly. Though the initial shockwave had passed, a second destructive front was still advancing as a heavy, corpse-grey cloud swept outwards. A pyroclastic flow, hot gas and pulverised rock scouring and sterilising the earth beneath it. ‘We need to get back into the sky before it reaches us.’

‘I think I can do that,’ said Larry. He brought the AW101 around to the bearing Eddie had given him, then increased power to climb and gain speed. The desert rolled past below.

Eddie looked back. Through the open ramp, the pursuing cloud was visible, but it fell away as the helicopter ascended. Even as it retreated, though, the volcano’s roar still rattled the fuselage. ‘Christ! I know we’ve got away from some big bangs before, but that’s got to be the biggest. A f*cking erupting volcano! Don’t know how we’re going to top that one.’

‘I kinda hope we don’t have to,’ said Nina earnestly. ‘We deserve a vacation.’ She looked away from the frightening sight to Eddie’s leg. Though his jeans were covered with dark dust, the torn holes made by the trident’s prongs were glistening; he was still bleeding. ‘Eddie, sit down so I can clean you up. Those wounds might get infected.’

‘In a minute – I’ll close the ramp first.’ He limped down the aisle, using the seats for support.

‘Don’t fall out,’ she cautioned jokingly. The contents of the emergency case were strewn around the cockpit; she started to search for first-aid equipment.

‘How far away is this town?’ asked Larry.

Nina picked up various items from the footwell, putting a cylindrical flare down on the console between the two pilots’ seats before examining a package of sterile dressings and a tube of antibiotic ointment. ‘About seventy miles, maybe?’

He checked the airspeed indicator. ‘It shouldn’t take too long to get there, then. Although I’ll remind you that I don’t have a clue how to land this thing.’

‘You did okay with the takeoff. I think you’ll manage the landing too.’

‘I’ll try to keep it below terminal velocity.’

Nina smiled, then looked round. Eddie still hadn’t reached the rear of the cabin. ‘Hurry up, honey! There’s a draught!’

‘You try walking with holes in your leg,’ he called back.

‘I have done. It sucked!’

He grinned, then turned back to the ramp. Some of the equipment stowed behind the seats had been hurled out of the aircraft during its spin, one of the tarps flapping furiously in the wind. A couple of the parachutes had also gone, but there were still enough left to allow himself, Nina and Larry to bail out if the worst came to the worst. Holding a ceiling strap, he peered at the ground. They were at about seven thousand feet, and still climbing. Nothing below but sand and rock.

He straightened, looking for the ramp controls. There was a control box mounted on one wall. He hobbled towards it—

Something smashed against the back of his head.

Eddie crashed to the deck, stars going supernova in his vision. An intense, sickening pain oozed through his body. He tried to get up, but his limbs refused to cooperate, as weak and limp as a baby’s.

‘Hello, Eddie,’ said Sophia with a triumphant snarl.

She had been hiding beneath the other tarpaulin. The Land Rover had been empty, set to roll away to deny anyone else its use for escape. She stood over her former husband, letting the large wrench she had used as a weapon clang to the floor as she pulled the Jericho out of his jacket. The tool slid down the ramp and spun away in the AW101’s slipstream.

Nina jumped from her seat, but froze as Sophia aimed the gun at her. ‘Well, look at this!’ the Englishwoman shouted over the wind. ‘A family reunion. How sweet.’

‘Let him go, Sophia!’ Nina demanded, surreptitiously scanning the floor for the dead pilot’s gun – but where it had ended up, she had no idea.

‘Oh, I absolutely intend to. But without one of these.’ She revealed the pack of a parachute on her back. ‘I could just shoot him, but that seems like rather poor payback for everything he’s done to me.’ She kicked the helpless man at her feet, producing a groan. ‘I’m going to shoot you, though. After you watch him die.’

‘You f*cking bitch,’ Nina spat.

‘Oh, come on, Nina. An educated woman like you can do better than that, surely?’ Sophia braced herself against the seats and used a foot to shove Eddie closer to the ramp. ‘But then, as I’ve always said, one can’t expect class from an American.’

Larry whispered to Nina from the side of his mouth. ‘I could shake the controls, make her fall out.’

‘Eddie’d fall out too,’ she replied in kind, still desperately searching for a weapon. No gun. Was there anything else she could use?

Maybe – if she could reach it without being shot.

Twisting awkwardly to keep the gun trained on Nina, Sophia kept pushing Eddie nearer to the ramp. ‘I think it’ll take about thirty seconds for him to hit the ground from this height,’ she said. ‘I’m going to watch, just to make sure. Eddie does have the annoying habit of popping up when he’s supposed to be dead, but not this time. This is the end. For both of you.’ Eddie was now almost fully on the ramp. ‘As soon as I see that little Wile E Coyote puff of dirt, it’s your turn.’

A final thrust of her leg – and Eddie slithered down the ramp.

‘No!’ Nina screamed, but there was nothing she could do—

Eddie’s eyes opened – and he grabbed a cargo ring set into the metal surface just as his legs went over the edge.

Straining to hold on as the wind and rotor downwash tore at him, he looked up. The infuriated Sophia towered over him, stepping to the ramp’s top and holding on to its frame with her left hand as she leaned out. ‘Why,’ she shouted, trying to jab at his fingers with her outstretched boot heel, ‘can’t you just –’ another strike fell millimetres short – ‘die?’

The final blow caught his knuckles. Eddie yelled in pain—

And lost his grip.

The gale snatched him backwards, whipping him over the edge of the ramp.

‘Yes!’ Sophia cried, the exclamation of victory bursting out of her almost orgasmically. She glanced round at Nina—

A dazzling light shot down the length of the cabin and struck her hard in the back.

Sophia reeled as the flare that Nina had fired spun past, spraying her clothing with sparks and fire. She clutched the frame for support . . . but the two stiff prosthetic fingers prevented her from getting a firm grip. Her gloved hand slipped from the metal – and she followed Eddie down the ramp with a horrified shriek, tumbling away into the empty sky.

Nina dropped the flare’s tube and ran down the aisle. ‘Come and get us!’ she yelled to the stunned Larry. Determination driving out doubts, she passed the last row of seats, snatching a parachute off the rack—

And threw herself out of the back of the helicopter.

The slipstream pummelled her as she sailed into open air, the desert spreading out eight thousand feet below. The noise of the chopper’s engines faded, but the wind’s roar in her ears only grew louder as she picked up speed in free fall.

Parallax revealed two dark shapes against the landscape. Sophia – and Eddie. She forced back her fear, fixing her gaze on him as she grappled with the parachute’s harness. Working her arms through the flapping loops, she strained to fasten the buckle across her chest. It clicked shut – but only then did she realise that there was another set of straps through which she was meant to put her legs. When she pulled the ripcord, the sudden force of braking could tear the parachute right off her body.

But there was no time to remove it and try again. All or nothing . . .

Eddie had been slammed back to full awareness by a massive adrenalin surge – one driven by pure fear. His military training had taught him how to try to recover in the event of a parachute failure . . . but this time he had no parachute. And there was nothing below that might save him either – no bodies of water, no tall trees, just flat, hard desert in every direction.

Even so, he rolled face-down and spread his arms and legs. The increased drag would slow his fall – slightly. He would still hit the ground at over a hundred miles per hour.

He was going to die.

He turned his head, trying to find the helicopter in the hope that Larry had at least tipped his killer out of the back . . . and was shocked to see two figures plunging through the sky after him. The nearer was Sophia.

The other could only be Nina.

An awful, nauseating realisation of defeat rolled over him. Sophia had got what she wanted – she had killed them both. And as he watched, a parachute blossomed above his ex-wife. Not only had she killed them, but she would live to gloat about it.

Sophia gasped as the slam of deceleration yanked her harness straps tight. She took hold of the steering lines – then flinched as something shot past her.

Nina! The American had been at the far end of the cabin – which meant she hadn’t fallen out, but deliberately jumped. She was trying to save Eddie.

Sophia almost laughed at the futility of the gesture. It couldn’t possibly succeed. And now she would have a grandstand view of both her enemies smashing down on the desert floor . . .

Something was wrong.

She could feel heat on one side of her head, but it wasn’t from sunlight. She looked round—

And screamed.

Her parachute’s pack was aflame, ignited by the flare. The wind-fanned fire was rising rapidly up the nylon webbing risers connecting her harness and the cords of the chute itself. She desperately tried to swat out the flames, but they were too big, too hungry, greedily consuming fabric and line.

A twang as one of the cords snapped. The parachute’s edge rippled and flapped. A second line gave way, then another and another . . .

Sophia’s cry of utter terror was lost in the wind as the chute collapsed and she plummeted towards the ground, trailing smoke as the blaze spread to her clothes and hair.

Body tilted down, arms held back at her sides, Nina was rapidly catching up with Eddie. Steering herself in free fall had proved to be an almost instinctual matter of twisting her body and limbs to direct the airflow; what she would do when she reached her husband was another matter entirely.

He rolled over on to his back, waving his arms. The signal was clear: leave me! She ignored it, guiding herself at him like a missile and arching her back to lift her head and slow down. Her body began to see-saw; she almost panicked before managing to stabilise herself by bringing out her arms and raising her knees.

Eddie was right below her, still gesturing for her to abandon him.

Not a chance—

The collision was like a tackle. They both spun and tumbled before Eddie brought them under control. Nina clutched his jacket, screaming into the wind. ‘Grab on to me!’

He tried to push her away. ‘It’ll kill us both!’

‘No! You and me! Always and for ever!’

Their eyes were locked for a precious moment before he relented. ‘You’ve put this on wrong!’ he cried as he hooked his right arm into one of her chute’s loose leg straps and wound it tight.

‘I was kinda rushed!’

He forced his left arm through her shoulder harness and bent his elbow to trap it, then strained to bring his hands together. A momentary glance down; they were well below two thousand feet, only seconds left before they hit the ground. His fingers interlocked; he gripped as hard as he could. ‘This is gonna hurt, but – pull it!’

Nina yanked the ripcord.

The spring-loaded pilot chute popped out of the pack, snapping open in the airstream – and snatched the main chute out after it with a whump of billowing fabric.

The sudden drag as the parachute deployed wrenched the harness upwards. Nina screamed as it cut deeply into her shoulders, almost slipping loose on one side. Eddie cried out too as the jolt almost ripped his arms from their sockets, but he clung on, holding the backpack in place by sheer force of muscle.

The wind dropped. He looked up. The chute was fully inflated, slowing their fall, but it was designed to carry the weight of only one person, not two. No matter what, they were going to have a painful landing.

A shadow crossed the thin nylon, something falling towards it—

A burning meteor streaked past, missing the parachute by less than a foot as it hurtled towards the ground in a trail of fire. ‘What the hell was that?’ Nina yelled.

It wasn’t part of the helicopter, so that only left— ‘Sophia!’

Despite the flames gnawing at her skin, Sophia was still alive, still conscious, still screaming as she fell.

Something whipped through her pain-racked vision – a parachute, two forms dangling from its lines.

Nina had caught Eddie. They were going to survive.

‘You . . . bastards!’ she managed to shriek—

The wet thump of her impact on the stony ground was mixed with the horrible crack of shattering bones.

The parachute’s aerofoil design meant Eddie and Nina were now traversing the landscape rather than merely plunging straight at it, but they were still descending too quickly. A hundred feet remained, ninety—

Eddie unclasped his fingers. ‘What’re you doing?’ Nina demanded.

‘Making you lighter,’ he said, painfully slipping his arms out of the harness straps to hang from them by his hands. ‘Just before you land, turn side-on and let it drag you – try to kind of crumple from your feet upwards when you hit. And for Christ’s sake, bend your legs or you’ll break ’em both.’

Fifty feet. ‘What about you?’

‘I haven’t turned forty yet – there might just be a little bit of bounce left in me!’

Thirty. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘You’re the one who jumped from a f*cking chopper!’

Twenty—

Eddie let go. Even with his legs bent to absorb the impact, he hit hard, rolling uncontrollably before bouncing to a stop in a cloud of dust.

Nina whisked past overhead, wailing ‘Oh shiiiiiit!’ as she was carried helplessly down. At the last moment, she remembered what Eddie had said and twisted sideways. Her feet scraped through the sand – then she slammed down like a toppling tree. The parachute flopped on top of her like a shroud.

Groaning, Eddie slowly tried to get up, discovering numerous new sources of pain throughout his body. No bones seemed to be broken, to his relief, although his already injured leg now hurt worse than ever. Wobbling, he stood and dizzily surveyed his surroundings. The black plume from the volcano rose into the sky on the northwestern horizon; much closer was another, smaller column of smoke.

He knew what it marked, resolving to investigate, but completed his turn. The helicopter was about half a mile away to the west, slowly heading towards him. On the ground, the parachute wobbled in the wind like a beached jellyfish. He limped towards it. ‘Nina? Nina! Are you okay?’

‘No, I’m dead,’ came the weak reply. He pulled the entangling sheet and cords aside to find Nina sprawled face-down in the sand. ‘I must be dead. We couldn’t have survived that. Could we?’

‘Well, I’m alive, more or less – and like you said, we stay together, so you must be too.’ He quickly checked her for obvious signs of injury, finding nothing beyond plentiful cuts and grazes.

She sat up and blew sand off her face, giving him a pained smile. ‘Wow. So we actually made it.’

‘Yeah, we did.’ He kissed her – then they both recoiled.

‘Ow,’ said Nina, putting a hand to her face and finding it bruised and swollen. ‘My lips hurt.’

‘My everything hurts,’ Eddie complained. ‘Think you can stand?’

‘I’ll try.’ Grunting, he helped her up. Nina winced at a sharp pain in her ankles; her touchdown had been far from soft. ‘Oh, crap.’

‘What?’

‘I just realised, we’re still sixty miles from town in the middle of a desert. And I’m really not up to walking all that way.’

Eddie jerked a thumb towards the approaching helicopter. ‘We’ve still got a ride.’

Nina regarded it in relief. ‘I guess Larry’s okay, then – shit!’ She looked round in alarm. ‘What about Sophia?’

He indicated the nearby smoke. ‘I know where she is. Let’s take a gander.’ Supporting each other as best they could, they hobbled towards it.

A little impact crater came into view, the smouldering line rising from the charred remains of a parachute backpack atop a broken, huddled shape within. Jagged spikes of broken bone jutted out from ruptured flesh. Splashed across the surrounding sand was an oozing starburst of dark red. ‘Well,’ said Nina after a long silence. ‘I guess she’s finally dead.’

Eddie had been through the experience of believing his ex-wife to be deceased twice before; this time, he was almost out of sympathy. Almost. He moved closer, pulling what remained of the parachute over the mangled body. ‘Goodbye, Soph,’ he said, then paused for a moment before reaching down.

Nina cringed in revulsion as he picked something up from amongst the viscera. ‘Eddie, what the hell?’

‘Thought we should take care of this,’ he said, limping back to her. In his hand was the piece of meteorite Sophia had taken from the Temple of the Gods. ‘What do you want to do with it?’

Nina considered the question. The chunk of purple stone contained within it the secrets of earth energy, the untold history of all life on the planet, and potentially more besides. But . . .

She still didn’t believe that there were things man was not meant to know. But there were things man was not meant to have. This was one of them. ‘Get rid of it,’ she finally said.

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah.’ She watched as he turned and threw the stone with all his remaining strength into the empty wilderness. It landed with a puff of dust amongst other nondescript rocks, half buried already; in time, it would be completely lost.

‘So that’s it?’ Eddie asked.

She nodded. ‘Earth energy, the meteorite, the Group, Stikes, Sophia . . . they’re all gone. Finished.’

‘Thank f*ck for that. Now we can take a break.’ He gave her an exhausted smile and put his arms round her.

The noise of the helicopter made them turn. Larry had brought the AW101 into an unsteady hover a few hundred yards away, gradually descending into a cyclone of sand. Eddie watched – then stiffened. ‘Shit, that’s not good!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘That wobble, something’s wrong – Dad!’ He released Nina and waved his arms, frantically signalling for his father to ascend again. ‘Dad, go back up, it’s not gonna—’

Too late.

The tremendous downwash from the main rotor was bouncing back up off the desert floor as Larry lowered the helicopter, drastically affecting the aircraft’s handling. With a completely inexperienced pilot at the controls, the results were inevitable. The AW101 rocked like a toy boat, veering sideways. Larry tried to level out, but overcompensated – and the chopper lurched back, losing height.

Its landing gear dug into the ground, tipping the fuselage over—

The rotor blades carved into the desert with great sprays of sand, shearing off from the hub and flinging broken pieces high into the air. Torque twisted the aircraft’s body round, crunching its nose into the dirt before it fell back down on its belly with a shrilling crash of torn metal.

‘Dad!’ Eddie cried, breaking into a staggering run. Nina caught up, and they hurried towards the wreck. Its engines cut out, leaving an eerie silence punctured only by the thumps of debris returning to earth. By the time they reached it, the stubs of the rotor blades had come to a halt.

The front windows were broken. Through them, Eddie saw Larry slumped over the central console. ‘Dad! Shit, Dad, are you all right?’ No answer. No movement. He opened the side hatch and climbed inside, going to the cockpit. ‘Dad!’

For a moment, he thought his father was dead – then Larry coughed and took in a shuddering breath. ‘Eddie?’ he gasped.

‘Yeah, I’m here, Dad.’ Eddie carefully lifted him off the console. A line of blood ran down his cheek where he had hit a sharp protrusion on the instrument panel. ‘How bad are you hurt?’

‘Not too bad . . . I think.’ Larry opened his eyes, squinting in the sunlight as he tried to regain focus. ‘Tell you something, though.’

‘What?’

‘I definitely need more flying lessons.’ A faint laugh.

Eddie joined in. ‘Yeah, one or two. You’ve just wrecked a twenty-million-dollar helicopter!’

‘Like father, like son,’ said Nina with a grin as she recovered a first-aid kit.

They patched up their various wounds as best they could, then took stock of the situation. Some of the Group’s supplies were still secured at the cabin’s rear, giving them a supply of water, and while the helicopter itself was a complete write-off, the radio was still functioning. Eddie sent out a Mayday. The eruption of the volcano had already roused official attention; while the Ethiopian authorities were surprised that anybody had been near the isolated mountain, they nevertheless assured him that help was on the way, though the lack of precise GPS coordinates meant it might take a while to arrive.

He climbed out of the chopper and joined Nina and Larry, sitting nearby. ‘So,’ said Larry, mopping the blood off his cheek, ‘this is what you do for a living, then?’

‘It’s not all like this,’ Nina told him. ‘Sometimes there’s actual archaeology involved.’

‘All the same, I’m impressed. Still quivering with terror, but impressed. I can’t believe the things I’ve seen today. Floating rocks, exploding volcanoes . . .’ He shook his head. ‘My daughter-in-law throwing herself out of a helicopter at eight thousand feet . . .’

Eddie gave him a mock shrug. ‘Meh. You get used to this stuff after a while.’

‘Speak for yourself!’ Nina cried. ‘You know, before I met you I’d never once had anyone shoot at me. Or been in a car chase. Or a plane crash, or jumped a Humvee over a canyon, or been attacked by tigers and hippos and crocodiles—’

‘They were caimans, not crocs,’ Eddie corrected. ‘But if you hadn’t met me, you wouldn’t have found Atlantis either, would you? Or the Tomb of Hercules, or Excalibur, or the Garden of Eden . . .’

‘The what?’ said Larry. ‘Did you just say . . .’

Nina nodded. ‘Uh-huh. But . . . yeah, you’re right, Eddie.’ She signalled for him to sit beside her. He did so, and she leaned against him. ‘I’m glad we met.’

‘So am I,’ Eddie replied. This time, bruises weren’t enough to stop them from kissing.

Larry waited for them to finish before speaking again. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’d like to hear about some of these adventures of yours.’ He was addressing them both . . . but looking at his son with a smile that held more than just the hope of hearing a story.

Eddie smiled back. ‘Sure, Dad. We’ve got time.’