Matt Reilly Stories by Matthew Reilly
Chase saw the soldier get rammed up against the bars, saw his K-Bar knife on his belt. She reached through the bars, grabbed the knife, then used it to slit her and Kenny's rope and flexcuffs. She also saw something else dangling from the soldier's belt and grabbed it, too.
'Come on,' she said. 'We've got an obstacle course to run if we want to get out of this place.'
BRESLIN
For a 52-year-old billionaire, Leonard Breslin could run pretty fast.
He entered the cage-dropping tunnel on the fly, the two Delta men with him firing their guns at the horde of hairy monsters behind them.
Breslin saw Chase and the others at the far end of the tunnel, about to head up the spiraling ramp.
'Come on!' he yelled.
UP THE RAMP
Up ahead, Chase, Kenny and their surviving Delta man dashed the moss-covered spiraling ramp.
But the Delta guy slipped and fell, hitting the sloping floor hard-and abruptly the section of floor beneath him dropped a fraction.
A trigger stone, Chase realised.
It must have just been stuck with age. All it had needed was a bit of extra weight to set it off.
But nothing happened.
Strange…
The Delta man scrambled to his feet, and now alongside Chase and Kenny, hurried with them up the ramp.
Then, suddenly, Chase heard it.
Boom…
Boom…
Boom…
Getting faster.
Boom… boom… boom…
Faster.
Boom-boom-boom…
And then she saw it--saw the huge seven-foot statue carved in the shape of a head that had been at the top of the ramp--come bouncing down the curving slope toward them!
The statue thundered down the curved ramp, consuming nearly half the width of the tunnel.
'Left!' Chase yelled, and they all dived away as the statue thundered past them.
The statue continued on its rampaging run down the ramp, reaching the base just as Breslin and his two Delta men arrived there.
They scattered instantly, avoiding the oncoming statue by inches.
A snarling rodent that arrived there right behind them wasn't so lucky.
The spiked statue hit the animal with tremendous force, pinning it against the opposite wall.
The rodent just exploded under the enormous weight--splattering everywhere in a star-shaped blast of blood and gore.
The statue itself didn't last much longer. When it hit the wall, it shattered into pieces--pieces that looked just like the large chunks of rock that already littered the floor at the base of the ramp.
Breslin clambered to his feet, charged up the ramp with one of the Delta men.
The other soldier never made it. As he made to stand, a hairy black claw grabbed his ankle and sucked him--screaming--back into the tunnel.
THE PASSAGEWAY OF ANIMALS
Chase, Kenny and their Delta man came to the ultra-narrow passageway, the one with the carved animal heads protruding from its close stone walls.
They leapt over its floor panel and hurried in single-file down the passageway's tight fifteen-yard length.
They were almost through when it happened.
The floor just dropped away beneath them .
Suddenly.
Without warning.
The Delta man fell fast, and-- shluck! --was impaled on the wooden stakes positioned ten feet below the false floor.
Chase and Kenny had had better reflexes.
When the floor had dropped, they'd both lunged at the nearest carvings. Now Kenny clung to the carved stone head of a woolly mammoth, clutching it in a full hands-and-feet bear-hug, while Chase--ironically--hung from the carving of the giant rat head.
It was then that she saw Leonard Breslin, standing at the inner end of the passageway, his foot next to the trigger panel that had activated the floor.
Then Breslin hit the floor panel again and the passageway's floor swung back up into place.
OF RATS AND MEN
Breslin and the last Delta man charged down the ultra-narrow passageway-the Delta man with his gun up, Breslin with the Visitor's Stone tucked under his arm.
'Don't move,' Breslin said as he and the Delta man squeezed past them, the gun trained on their noses. 'If you follow us, you will be shot.' The two men then disappeared out the far end of the passageway.
Chase and Kenny released their grips on their carved stone heads.
'Great,' Kenny said. 'Now we're stuck between two sets of rats. What do we--'
A sniffing sound made them turn.
They spun to see one of the creatures step slowly and menacingly into the passageway from the other end, thirteen yards away.
'At least we have a chance against Breslin,' Chase said.
'I agree,' Kenny said. 'Run!'
THE RACE
Chase and Kenny ran--ran for all they were worth.
They came to the long stone with the rodents close behind them, jumped over it like hurdlers.
The knotted rope still dangled from the well-shaft.
Chase and Kenny grabbed the rope and started climbing. A second later, they heard the resounding bang! of the piledriving mechanism.
The rodents had discovered the long stone.
Chase could see Breslin and his Delta bodyguard halfway up the well-shaft, climbing the rope.
The bodyguard fired down at them one-handed--but after a single shot, his gun went dry.
He'd used up his bullets downstairs.
But they still had the upper hand.
Breslin would almost certainly cut the rope once he was safely at the top of the well, letting Chase and Kenny drop back--There came a sudden tug on the rope.
Chase looked down.
The creatures were climbing the rope!
'Hey, Miss Former Gymnast,' Kenny said. 'Think you can climb this rope in record time?'
'Right…' Chase said grimly.
And she started climbing-- fast--hand over hand, gymnast-style, all arms, no feet.
THE MINE ENTRANCE
Leonard Breslin stepped out of the well-shaft-still holding the Visitor's Stone-closely followed by his Delta bodyguard.
'Cut the rope,' he ordered.
The Delta man unsheathed his knife, brought it to the edge of the well-shaft----just as a female hand reached up out of the hole, grabbed his wrist, and yanked him down into the well!
The Delta man wailed all the way down, just missing Kenny as he sailed past him.
Up in the small mine entrance, Breslin tried to make a break for the airlock door, but Chase was too fast. She swung herself up out of the well-shaft and dived at his legs, tackling him rugby league style.
The two of them hit the floor hard, just outside the squat stone entrance to the mine. The Visitor's Stone tumbled to the floor.
Kenny emerged from the well-shaft shouting, 'They're coming! '
As the first creature's claws appeared on the rim of the well-shaft, Breslin clambered for the Stone, crawling through the dirt.
Chase and Kenny just ran for the airlock's doorway.
Breslin grabbed the Stone, and he smiled--just as he was sucked violently back across the floor by one of the creatures!
'No!' he shouted as he was yanked back inside the dark mine entrance, the Visitor's Stone dropping from his grasp.
Kenny dashed through the airlock's Lexan doorway. Chase, however, paused in it.
'Jessica, come on,' Kenny urged.
Chase was gazing at the Visitor's Stone on the ground in the entryway to the mine.
'There's one more thing to do,' she said, as she pulled from her pocket the second object she had taken from the mauled Delta man down in the cage-dropping tunnel.
It was a grenade.
She pulled the pin and tossed the grenade toward the mine entrance. It rolled to a stop next to the Visitor's Stone, right in the doorway to the mine.
Chase then ducked through the airlock doorway and sealed it shut behind
The grenade detonated.
The cube-shaped airlock spontaneously filled with rapidly-expanding smoke as the mine entrance was blasted into a thousand pieces.
Chunks of rock slammed into the superstrong Lexan-glass, while clouds of dust billowed up against its clear-glass walls.
When the dust eventually settled, there was no longer any mine entrance--just a pile of rubble, packed solid, completely covering the well-shaft.
The Visitor's Stone--so close to the grenade blast--had been completely destroyed.
DEPARTURE
The hangar complex was now deserted.
It had been three hours since Chase and Kenny had arrived and Breslin's corporate jet had long since departed. The medics and the wounded men in the infirmary were also gone.
Chase and Kenny emerged from the hangar into brilliant desert sunshine. The complex around them looked old and decrepit--deliberately made to look disused.
The dull-brown Nevada landscape stretched away from them in every direction.
They walked for several miles down a pitted dirt road until they came to a gate. Beyond that they found a highway where they thumbed a ride.
As she sat in the back of a pick-up truck, swaying with every jolt, Chase reflected on the past few hours.
The tablets--the booby traps--the subterranean pyramid--the Visitor's Stone--and of course, the rampaging hairy creatures.
She snuffed a laugh.
The creatures. How had they survived for so long inside the subterranean pyramid?
Haynes and Breslin had never known, just as they would never know if the Visitor's Stone could do all it was claimed.
But Chase knew.
Because of what she had seen during her brief glimpse of the interior of the pyramid, when she had seen the Stone on its pedestal.
For in that moment, she had also seen something else.
She'd seen a trickle of condensation dripping down from the ceiling of the dark stone room, a steady drip-drip that had been landing right on the Visitor's Stone and which had formed a puddle on the floor around its pedestal.
A puddle that any animal would drink from.
THE END
For now...
________________
A BAD DAY AT FORT BRAGG
___________________________
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
27 December
The taxi-cab lurched to a halt in front of the reinforced gates of Fort Bragg.
It was sunset and the giant military complex lay bathed in the glow of a thousand halogen lights.
Mitch Raleigh stepped out of the cab, eyes wide. To write about this sort of stuff was one thing.
To see it up close was something else entirely.
A young Army captain was waiting for him at the gatehouse.
‘Mr Raleigh? Mr Mitchell Raleigh. The author?’
‘That’s me. You must be Captain Daniels.’
‘That’s correct, sir. And if I may say so, sir, it is a pleasure to have you here at Bragg. Let me take your bag.’
THE WRITER
Raleigh was a novelist from Australia, in the US on a book tour promoting his latest thriller.
Modestly successful, he specialised in geopolitical thrillers that competed pretty well with Tom Clancy.
It was his third book, Detachment-5, that had brought him to Fort Bragg.
Set in the Afghan mountains, it had featured a covert battle between three heroic members of the famed Delta Detachment fighting against their American compatriots, a rogue band of US Army Rangers who had been bribed by some Afghan drug-runners into escorting a truckload of pure heroin out of Afghanistan.
The book had been Raleigh’s biggest hit.
It had also, however, seen him receive many emails—most of them complimentary. Of course, some nasty ones came, too. It was always a danger when one wrote about the military: some hardcore soldiers were very sensitive to their depiction as villains in works of fiction.
One of the nicer emails, however, had come from a Captain Dwight Daniels, a member of the Delta detachment based at Fort Bragg who had so loved Detachment-5 that he had invited Raleigh to visit the base and see some of the D-boys in action.
It wasn’t every day a novelist got invited to see the inner workings of Fort Bragg, so Raleigh had gladly accepted.
Security, naturally, had been tight.
As requested, Raleigh had travelled to North Carolina by bus from D.C. under a false name and told no-one he had been given such prized access. Even his publisher in New York didn’t know he was taking this side trip from his book tour.
INTO THE JUNGLE
Once through the gatehouse, Daniels and Raleigh climbed into a lowslung Light Strike Vehicle—a small dune buggy that appeared to be made entirely of roll-bars.
They whistled through the largely deserted compound.
‘Some of the guys are doing a night-jumping exercise over at Camp MacKall tonight,’ Captain Daniels said. ‘Should be a sight. Thought you might like to see it.’
Within minutes, the LSV had left the weatherboard buildings of the Main Post behind and had entered a strange kind of wilderness.
Sandhills to the left; tree-covered slopes straight ahead; and a wide, swampy river bordering the right-hand side of the road.
‘This is all brand new,’ Daniels explained. ‘The sandhills, the jungle, even the river. Landscaped to match actual fighting conditions around the world.’
Raleigh nodded. ‘Impressive.’
On the opposite bank of the river, he saw some barracks houses with their porch-lights on. Some men wearing straw cowboy hats lounged on the verandah.
‘The Delta barracks,’ Daniels said. ‘That’s where we live when we’re on the base. We’ll stop there on the way back.’
‘Excellent,’ Raleigh said.
They took a fork to the left, headed for the sandhills. The Light Strike Vehicle handled the sandy terrain with ease, winding through several dune valleys before it arrived at a flat dirt clearing in front of a rocky hill.
Buried into the base of the rocky hill was a squat concrete structure: a tunnel entrance.
‘It’s for cave-fighting practice,’ Daniels said, seeing the look on Raleigh’s face. ‘1.6 miles of underground tunnels. Based on actual tunnel systems we’ve found in the mountains of Afghanistan.’
Raleigh frowned. ‘Don’t your men get used to the layout, seeing it over and over again?’
‘Several key walls are set on hinges. You rotate a few of them, and it becomes a whole new tunnel system. Fuse boxes for the lights are also moveable, so they’re always placed in a different position.
No man ever sees the system in the same configuration twice.’
There came a loud throbbing noise from somewhere nearby.
Raleigh looked up.
And saw a Black Hawk helicopter swoop in low overhead, banking hard, zeroing in on the clearing.
‘Here they come,’ Daniels said. ‘Quickly, this way.’
SUBTERRANEAN
The interior of the tunnel system was dark and cool, and composed almost entirely of concrete.
Daniels led Raleigh to a viewing balcony overlooking a large concrete-walled cavern inside the system. No less than five separate tunnels intersected at this one gigantic cavern. A cave junction.
‘Here,’ Daniels gave Raleigh a pair of NVGs—Night Vision Goggles. ‘You’ll need them when they blow the lights. Right then. Excuse me a moment, sir. I’ll just go see where they are.’
Daniels left the alcove.
Raleigh stood there, alone, holding his NVGs.
LIVE FIRE
Silence.
A minute passed. Raleigh fingered his NVGs, waiting in tense anticipation for what was to come.
Excited.
Waiting…
He noticed a master light lever on the wall to his right—for use no doubt when the exercise was over. Plus a wind-up wall-phone for communication with—
Bang!
Without any warning whatsoever, every single light in the cave system abruptly went out.
Guess they found the fuse box, Raleigh thought.
He whipped on his Night Vision Goggles…
…and the world changed. He saw the cave junction once again, only now it was bathed in ghostly green-and-black.
It was then that Raleigh saw the first wraith-like figure enter the cave, gun up. Raleigh recognized it as an Heckler & Koch MP-5. The man wore black fatigues, black webbing, black ski mask and mantis-like NVGs.
The soldier gave the signal…
…and suddenly the whole cave junction was alive with muzzle flashes as a dozen D-boys charged in from each of the cavern’s five entrances, guns blazing.
Cardboard cut-outs of Afghan terrorists popped up from slits in the floor and the D-boys razed them with brutal efficiency.
Raleigh coudn’t believe his luck.
This was a live fire exercise.
The only people in the world who had seen this were other D-boys, high-ranking Special Forces officers, and now-dead bad guys.
The bullet-noise petered out. Acrid gunsmoke filled the junction. Then voices:
‘Fire Team One! Clear!’
‘Fire Team Two! Clear!’
It was then that Raleigh saw one of the mantis-like Delta men emerge from the haze and look directly up at him…
Raleigh smiled, nodded.
The man responded by raising his MP-5 sub-machine gun and firing it right at Raleigh’s head.
TEACH YOU A LESSON
Raleigh ducked.
The concrete wall above him was shredded to crumbs.
What the…?
And suddenly, Raleigh heard a voice.
Captain Daniels’ voice, coming in over the cave’s PA system.
‘Welcome to the kill zone, Mister Raleigh. You think you know the military, you candy-ass pussy? It’s time you learned the difference between book smarts and battle smarts. We’re gonna teach you a lesson.’