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  I swung out of the cab, ignoring the stabbing and throbbing in my leg, ran to the back of the truck and hauled out the rucksack. Njal snapped, “I take it. Your leg will slow you down…”

  I went to pass it to him, but outside there was a shout. We looked and against the huge, dancing flames of the site office, we saw the two dozen stenciled forms of the guards running back toward us, shouting. Njal stared hard into my eyes.

  “OK, it is now,” he said. “Go! I hold them. Go!”

  I pulled the rocket launcher from the truck, fitted a clip and threw it to him. Then I turned and ran toward a twenty foot square hole in the floor, over on my right, that I knew from the map Njal had shown me was the access to the maze of tunnels and rooms that lay beneath the surface. Behind me, as I ran, I heard the spit and hiss of rockets, and moments later the quadruple explosion of the TEAs, and immediately after that, the spit and stutter of the Heckler and Koch.

  I pulled the night vision goggles down over my eyes and plunged into the black hole that was the ramp leading down into the bowels of the pyramid. The floor was raw concrete covered in dust and grit. My feet slid from under me and I fell, sprawling and rolling twenty feet to the floor below. Shafts of pain stabbed through my leg. I staggered to my feet. My brain was numbed and dulled by the pain, but I struggled to focus and searched the eerie, black and green subterranean world. Tall columns towered above me, supporting the ceiling and the floor above. Fifty feet away I saw what I needed: the cargo elevator that would take me deep down, eight hundred feet into the bowels of the desert, to the chamber where I was to leave the rucksack, the bomb that would destroy this place forever, and with it Omega.

  And probably me, too.

  I half ran, half limped across the fifty feet of raw cement, hearing the stutter of fire up above. It was good to hear because it meant that Njal was still alive, but I wondered how long he could last, how long he could hold out before they overwhelmed him by sheer force of numbers.

  I arrived at the elevator, punched the button and the large, steel doors hissed open. Then I was struck by a ton of bricks and hurled to the ground. My leg kicked in spasms of agony. I struggled to get to my feet, but the hundred and ten pounds of backpack held me pinned to the ground.

  A hand wrenched the goggles from my head. I covered my face with my forearms and felt two powerful fists slam into my arms. Before a third could land, I reached up with my right and grabbed a handful of his face, searching with my fingers for his eyes. I found one with my thumb and he screamed, backing up and pulling away from me. I rolled, pulled the Sig and fired blindly in his general direction, then struggled to my feet, searching the floor with my hands for the goggles. My fingers closed on them and I backed away toward where the elevator was, pulling them down, over my face.

  Again the eerie world of inky black and green. I scanned the vast hall of arches and pillars, but could not find my attacker. Upstairs, the shooting had become sporadic. I heard the engine of the Land Rover roar, then the screech of brakes. I checked the elevator. He was not there. I stepped in and hit the red button. The doors slid closed and we began to descend.

  I had not killed my attacker. I had heard no scream when I opened fire, and I was pretty sure I had not seriously hurt him either. There was no doubt in my mind that he had figured out what I was trying to do and had retreated because he planned to attack when I reached the bottom of the shaft. The car rocked and rattled as it sped down, the cabled clanged and clattered, and I tried to foresee in my mind’s eye how he would attack. There was another cargo elevator, I knew that. Was he going down ahead of me? Did he already have men waiting for me down there? If he knew I was coming and knew what I was going to do, why had he been alone? Why had there not been a whole squad of them, armed with rifles?

  I felt the car begin to slow, un-slung the rucksack from my back and flattened myself against the wall beside the door. It slowed to a halt and stopped with a jolt. The doors hissed open, I dropped to my belly and sprayed the empty blackness with fire and an RPG for good measure.

  I lay, listening to the violent echoes reverberate and die away among the blackness, until there was only ringing silence. Then I scrambled painfully to my feet, grabbed the backpack and hobbled out of the cage to lose myself in the shadows outside.

  The only light was what little spilled from the elevator. I fitted my goggles and leaned against the side of the elevator shaft. My leg was trembling and the pain was making me faint. I slid down the wall till I was sitting, scanned the area and tried to regain my strength.

  The ceiling was high, maybe fifteen or twenty feet. There were massive columns supporting it, and roughly thirty feet away, there was a steel door which I knew led down to the chamber which was my final destination, and probably my grave, too. Aside from that, the place was featureless. There was no sign of my attacker, but he could be hiding behind any one of the sixteen columns I could see. I slipped off the backpack, got to my feet and crept to the back of the elevator shaft to peer back toward the other side of the space. It was much the same, except that, fifty or sixty feet away, it contained another elevator shaft. Aside from that, there was nothing. I returned, heaved the rucksack onto my back and limped to the nearest pillar. I didn’t get shot and nothing happened. I gathered my strength again and half-ran to the next, and then the next. One more and I was a short run from the steel door. Something like hope was beginning to smolder in my gut. I pulled my Sig from my waistband and made the last run, turned my back to the locked entrance and scanned the room behind me. There was nothing, no one. I was alone. I turned and blew the lock out of the door.

  Inside, a staircase descended to the left, but the blackness was total and not even the night vision goggles could penetrate it. I unhooked my flashlight from my belt and descended, following the dancing beam. After nine steps, the flight turned left for three steps, then left again and another nine steps down. The space was narrow and smothering. I am not claustrophobic, but I could feel the first writhings of panic twisting in my belly as I went deeper. I could feel the vast weight of the edifice above me, of the nine hundred feet of earth and rock above me, of the enormous depth to which I had descended and of the tiny space into which I was compressed.

  At the bottom of the second flight, there was another door. Again I blew the lock and the report, and the clang of lead on steel, was deafening in the tight, cramped space.

  The door swung open and I played the beam of the flashlight through the opening. Another short flight of nine steps, straight down, with no banisters or rails, into a room that was square, supported on four massive pillars. In the center of the room a cube: a slab of rock, four feet by four by four.

  I descended the stairs, feeling I would collapse and fall from them before I reached the bottom, and staggered the last few steps to the rock. It had the appearance of highly polished granite and was featureless but for a large circle engraved into the center, enclosing the omega symbol: omicron enclosing omega. No doubt it had some powerful philosophical meaning.

  I heaved the rucksack on top of it and opened it, exposing the digital pad that was the timer and the start button. I knew I would not get out—could not get out. I knew my fate, as Njal would call it, was to die here, in this vast, anonymous tomb, vaporized nine hundred feet below the surface of the planet. Still, you don’t stop fighting until you’re dead, do you? So I took a moment to try and calculate how long I needed to get out, to get back up to the surface. I had no idea, so in honor of Jim and Njal, and Odin, I punched in nine minutes and my finger hovered over the ignition button.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  I knew the voice. I went cold all over and my hair prickled. I turned and shone the flashlight toward the stairs. He was sitting on the third step from the bottom. I couldn’t see his face because he was wearing a hoodie, but I knew who it was.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “I am going to vaporize the last residue of your sick organization.”

  “You are doing more than that
, Lacklan. You are fulfilling the prophecy engraved on that stone. This pyramid is omicron. Your bomb is omega. Omicron is the seed, omega is the life that erupts from it. You, the instrument of your world and your society, try to suppress us, but we are the life that explodes from your repression. You have no idea who you are, Lacklan Walker, but you are the instrument of destiny. You are fated to enable Omega.”

  “You’re full of shit. How are you here, anyway? I killed you.”

  “You broke my heart, brother.”

  I turned back to the bomb.

  His voice continued. “It’s the same bomb, you know. The one you disarmed at the United Nations.”

  I began to laugh. “Hoist with your own petard, huh?” I pressed the button and the hundredths of a second began to race. I turned back to the stairs. He was gone and somewhere in my mind, I realized I must have been hallucinating. Ben was dead.

  I dragged my trembling, useless leg toward the stairs. I felt suddenly very cold and sleepy. The stairs looked steep and narrow, and with no banisters to hold onto, I knew I could not make it. I knew I would not make it to the top, but I had to try. I had to try because you don’t stop fighting till you’re dead.

  One at a time, feeling vertigo as I climbed, hearing my breathing loud in my own ears, feeling the sweat running on my face, I crawled through the door and looked up the next flight. I had not left myself enough time, and it was too late now to go back and change it. I stood and dragged myself, achingly slow, up the next nine steps. The pain in my leg was a piercing, ripping, stabbing in my brain that made it impossible to think of anything else. Through it, somehow, I climbed one more step, turned the corner and started all over again, one step after another, impossibly slow, with the timer spinning at the speed of light beneath me.

  I wondered why I should struggle. It would be easy to lie down, go to sleep. I would not even notice the explosion. No more fighting, no more killing, only eternal stillness in a vaporizing flash.

  I smiled as I dragged myself up one more step; only five to go. That had always been the problem. I had never known how to lie down. Lying down was a skill I had never learned. I slept awake, listening for the demons who came in the night. I began to laugh. I had killed so many demons that they had learned to fear me. Lacklan Walker, the demon killer.

  I pushed through the door and pulled down the goggles over my eyes. The green and black world rocked sickeningly and I fell hard on the concrete floor. I got up on my hands and knees, then to my feet. I wondered how many minutes I had wasted. In my mind, I saw myself running to the elevator, and then, for agonizing seconds, did not know what was my imagination and what was real. I looked around, saw three ink-black columns between me and the elevator shaft, and dragged my leaden, half-paralyzed leg toward it. My breath was loud, like a bellows in my ears.

  Then I was at the elevator. I stood on the threshold. The buttons were a long way away. I reached for them and fell again, hard. My whole world was pain: severe. A serious voice in my head told me, “This is serious.” Nausea overwhelmed me. “This is where you give up, pal. You’ve done what you came to do. Now lie down.”

  I curled, reached up, sat, fought to stand.

  “Lie down.”

  He was in the doorway, tall, narrow, lanky, inky black; his arm was outstretched, pointing at me. I laughed. “Plenty of time to lie down when I’m dead.”

  I gripped the rail and pulled myself to my feet. The pain was a tearing of live tissues in my leg and I may have screamed. I pounded the red button with my fist and the elevator began to rise. But I knew it was too late. I knew the fireball would be chasing me up the shaft, reaching up to burn me, to enfold me, to consume me and drag me down where I belonged: in Hell.

  EIGHTEEN

  I had stopped moving. There was a noise. It was a noise I knew well. It was the noise that had defined my life for over a decade. It was the spit and stutter of automatic fire, and the thud and whine of rounds impacting and ricocheting off rocks and walls. The sound was distant, then close: the sound of answering fire.

  I lay, knowing I had to stand, but not sure how. I rolled on my side, one hand on the floor of the elevator, pushing, but not moving. My eyes closed. I wanted so badly to sleep.

  Plenty of time for sleep when you are dead. Perhaps now was the time. Time to die, time to sleep.

  Then the roar of a Heckler and Koch. My heart surged and I pushed, struggled to a kneeling position. A voice in my mind roared, Lacklan Walker does not kneel! I roared and, my leg screaming with the pain, rose to my feet. The elevator door was open and a tall, inky, lanky figure stood staring at me. I thrust the Sig out in front of me with both hands and stared into Njal’s face.

  He squinted into my eyes, ducked into my gut and lifted me over his shoulder. Then turned and ran. Hot lead rained on us like a hail storm. Njal’s voice, roaring incoherently, filled the caverns of the building. Then we stopped and I was hurled into the back of a Land Rover. The door slammed. The glass in the windows shattered around me. The driver’s door slammed. The engine roared and the wheels screamed, Then we were hurtling, lurching and bouncing into glaring light.

  Adrenaline pumped, burning in my gut. We cornered and I rolled on my belly, then dragged myself toward the front seats. Swearing and cussing at Njal for throwing me in the back, I somehow dragged my useless leg with me and clambered into the passenger seat, shouting with pain and trying to see where we were.

  We were hurtling across sand toward the gap we had blown in the perimeter fence, and there was a Jeep on either side of us and a Toyota truck behind us.

  Njal looked at me, handed me his 416 and grinned. “You are one hard son of a bitch. We gonna die tonight, my friend! Tonight we go to Valhalla!” Then his face flushed, his eyes went crazy and he bellowed like a crazed demon, “Odin! Odin!” He spun the wheel, drifted on the sand and careened toward the Jeep that had been on our right wing. I began to laugh like a maniac. I could see their faces in luminous relief, their eyes wide, their mouths gaping and shouting. I knew what Njal was going to do and put the 416 to my shoulder. He spun the wheel again and we passed them within maybe a foot. I didn’t give a damn if they killed us or not. I was with him. Today was a good day to die, and if we went down, we’d do it in a way to make the Valkyries hot and wet.

  I opened up and sprayed the Jeep with three hundred rounds in two seconds. It was a storm of fire and lead that shattered windows and windshield, ripped open chests, exploded skulls and destroyed the four men in the vehicle.

  Next thing, we had come around and the second Jeep was ahead of us. I blew out the windshield of the Land Rover and opened up again into the back of the Cherokee, seven short bursts of four rounds through the back window. The car swerved, fishtailed and rolled over.

  Then we were hurtling for the gap in the perimeter fence. The Toyota had fallen back behind us. We exploded through the fence and out into the dark.

  Njal was headed for the track along which we had arrived, but I pointed straight ahead. “Make for the river.”

  “What?”

  “Change of plan. We are flying out of here!”

  “You can fly?”

  “Of course I can fly! Head for the river and let’s get the hell out of here!”

  He veered and hurtled crazily toward the mass of sugar cane that masked the river. I knew he remembered, as I did, that on the other side there was a track and then the water. What neither of us knew was that before the track there was also a ditch. A ditch almost three feet deep, out of which the cane was growing. We hit it at forty miles an hour and smashed to a juddering halt. The impact sent both of us crashing through what was left of the windshield, sprawling, dazed and winded on the path.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at the mantle of stars above. All kinds of pain were throbbing and piercing my body, my entire being. I could hear water, and feel it lapping at my face and my head. In that moment I truly wanted to die, just to stop the pain.

  Somewhere I could hear a diesel straining, and voices s
houting. Then Njal, wide-eyed and panting, blocked out the stars above. He reached down with his long, lanky arms and dragged me to my feet. “Run!” he snarled.

  I couldn’t remember how to run, but I did my best, and in a couple of strides, I was wading knee-deep in water with sludge sucking on my feet. Then the darkness was flooded with light. Ahead, forty or fifty feet away, I saw the plane. I recognized it as a King Air 350. I saw Njal dive and sink beneath the water. For some reason, instead of doing the same, I turned and stared, and for a timeless second, everything froze.

  Then the world shook. I staggered and fell to my knees, struggled to stand again but failed. The water splashed and rose in waves. There was a deep thunder, and the earth seemed to groan. Away in the compound, I heard the massive crash and rumble of the vast construction collapsing in on itself, and in the darkness I saw an immense, billowing cloud rise up above the sugarcane, shrouding everything, under-lit by the spotlights at the site.

  At the bank of the river, there was a red Toyota truck. Above the cab there was a bank of spotlights that were glaring and half-blinding me. Behind the spots, I could just make out two men in silhouette, and a fifty cal. mounted machine gun. The men was gazing up at the cloud, clinging to the sides of the truck. There were armed men standing beside the truck, too: three on my right, two on my left, and they also were staring up at the billowing black mushroom.

  But in front of the truck there was one man, and he was staring at me. I could see him with clarity, though his face was in shadow. He was tall, six two, in his early thirties and dressed in khaki; and he was pointing at me, screaming, “Kill him! Kill him!”