The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake 4) by David Leadbeater Page A

Drake swapped his mag for a fresh one. A head count confirmed what they all already knew—three of their number had fallen. Both of Mai’s agents and one of Gates’s. Sam was still human and frosty enough to give Drake a look as Mai led the SAS team forward. The regiment leader seemed in awe. Oh no, Drake thought. Not another.
    Through another room where tapestries and paintings had been torn off the walls and flung to the floor. Cayman must have been looking for something. Maybe something explained by the whorls—the ancient language they had found in the other tombs. Drake wondered if Dahl’s language expert had been trying to contact them.
    At last, they tore through the open doorway of a grand state room, throwing flash-bangs before them. Mai had heard the voices of whispering guards from two rooms away. Once the guards were taken out, they finally arrived at the blasted hole in the wall—a wide, ragged void through which a frigid, keening breath of wind blasted in intermittent gusts.
    Drake paused for a moment and looked at Dahl. “One more time, mate?”
    “Let’s hope so.” The Swede’s serious face spoke pessimistic volumes.
    Ben’s small voice spoke up from the back of the group. “Can you tell why they chose this place to break through? Any clues are good right about now.”
    Drake lifted his eyes to the demolished wall for the first time. The far edges and some of the top blocks were intact. A picture of some kind had been carved into the wall. Hard to decipher at first, but then Torsten Dahl’s eagle eyes figured it out. “Look at both edges of the wall, and the base, where part of the wall remains. You have the base and far side of a triangle. This—” he said.
    “Was a carving of Odin’s symbol, the Valknott .” Ben finished. “A symbol of death.”
    “And there.” Karin moved closer to the wall. “The whorls again. The language of the gods. Odin, it seems, really was the father of the gods.”
    “He sacrificed his eyes for wisdom.” Ben recalled their search for the first tomb. “For future knowledge. He knew what was going to happen.”
    “In that case,” Hayden said, “his eight pieces—the ones that seemed redundant after we found the first tomb—might be more important than we thought.”
    Mai and Alicia were itching to move forward. “We’ll learn nothing stood around up here,” Mai said softly and Alicia grunted.
    Drake and the other soldiers agreed. The enemy shouldn’t be allowed any more time to prepare.
    Mano Kinimaka eyed the hole and the narrowing passageway beyond. “I’m not even sure I can fit down there.”
    “But the gods are waiting,” Hayden said carefully. “And so is Cayman. Sir—” She half turned toward Gates.
    “Screw it, Jaye. I’m coming.”
    The darkness beckoned them, a darkness that crawled with the presence of evil gods, evil contraptions and evil men.
     
     

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     
    The four-man SAS squad took point with Mai Kitano, closely followed by Hayden and Kinimaka. Drake shadowed the big Hawaiian closely, impressed by the big man’s agile moves as the passage started to descend quite steeply. The walls turned from smooth clad stone to ragged earth and then to roughhewn rock as they moved down. The breeze died for a while and then began to sweep past them again, carrying with it the stench of ages, the reek of old things gone bad.
    They heard whisperings on the wind. Faint voices that tugged at their ears, that caught their attention like the suggestions of a malicious temptress. Down and down the passage ran. Their feet crunched through ancient debris, their heads brushing against bruising rock and stone. The way was already lit, but the SAS team left nothing to chance, stopping the team regularly whilst they scouted ahead.
    Everyone knew they were heading into a trap. There could be no other outcome. It was simply a matter of when and if they could identify and counteract it.
    Time slipped by. The real world fell away. There