David Golemon - Ancients

Jack hit the temple steps just as large chips of marble started flying. He rolled until he was safe behind one of the thick pillars.

Everett was stunned at what had just happened. Jack had caught even him off guard. He had thrown the transmitter as far as he was able to, giving them hope that they could survive what was coming. Carl fired five rounds into the swirling mist of the falls and hit three of the men.

Ryan and Mendenhall added their fire to Everett's and together they kept the Coalition mercenaries moving and ducking. Jack looked for Dahlia and finally saw her crouching low beside the fire trough. She was directing something behind her. Jack looked up the slope and saw a man place a tube to his upper shoulder.

"Get down!" he cried.

The LAWs rocket was old, but effective. It streaked out of its launch tube and struck a pillar at the front of the temple, smashing it, bringing some of the marble roof down with it.

Jack took careful aim and fired. The man holding the tube in the shadows across the way crumpled as the bullet hit the thickest part of his body; the stomach.

Dahlia saw the man lean forward and slide down the slope. She shook her head in anger, then stood and fired her own pistol at the temple.

Collins saw his chance, lined her up, and pulled the trigger, nothing. He cursed and ejected the spent clip and inserted another. He brought up the Beretta, but Dahlia had lowered her frame once more.

The aircraft was a B-1B bomber. In its belly was just one large egg it needed to drop--the bunker buster. It was there just as a last ditch effort in stopping the Coalition from obtaining the diamond just in case it had not been recovered by Major Dutton and Professor Leekie. Niles knew that it was a last-resort type of mission and called for only if there was no other way. So, naturally, when the air force informed him of the bomb drop, he lowered his head, thinking the worse.

"We have a painted target," said the pilot as he pickled his load off.

The bomb-bay doors opened automatically and the thousand-pound weapon fell free.

"We have a clean drop and designator is receiving target information."

"I hope someone down there knows how to duck," the copilot said as the B-1B bomber turned for home at Diego Garcia.

Dahlia waved forward more men with LAWs rockets. As the volume of Coalition fire increased, she knew she was close to ending the luck of this Colonel Collins. Her embarrassment would be erased and she would be able to look at herself once more without the shame of Collins around her neck.

She smiled, as the pitiful return fire was so ineffective that her men were starting to take chances by standing and taking better aim, pinning Collins and his few men down. It was now only a matter of time. Dahlia saw the men above her on the slope arming the rockets, and when she looked back down the incline she saw one of her men kick something along the ground. It was just dumb luck that she had seen it at all. The black case gleamed in the firelight flickering onto the slope as it skidded to a stop not five feet from her position.

Her eyes widened when she recognized the transmitter. Dahlia knew it was a geo-positioning transmitter, the sort used as a portable ground-penetrating lasing system.

"That crazy bastard is trying to kill us and himself!" she screamed indignantly as she broke free of her safe position and ran down the slope toward the return fire of Collins and his people.

The signal of the laser beacon was weakened by the topsoil and sand above it, but it was enough for the seeker head located in the nose of the bomb to lock on to. Small fins fore and aft maneuvered the fat weapon onto its glide path. This particular smart bomb was the largest in the U.S. inventory capable of guided flight. Falling from a height of thirty thousand feet, it had little trouble penetrating the thickness of the earth.

The world above and in front of them came crashing down. The bomb exploded off-target two hundred feet behind where the slope started in the natural portion of the cave. The fireball killed every man on his feet and buried the rest. The pillars of the temple cracked and started falling as Jack and the others broke for the water below them. They felt the heat burn their skin as they dived just as the earthen roof came cascading down.

Collins was the last to dive into the water and it was he who saw Dahlia as she was catapulted forward, cartwheeling through the air. She landed in the rushing torrent of water and immediately disappeared. Collins dived in and grabbed a handful of hair. He pulled her to the surface just as they shot into the mouthlike cave, and then the world around them went dark.

Jack held on to Dahlia as he tried to relax his body and allow the current to take them where it wanted. His only struggle was to keep the unconscious woman's head above water. At certain points, he found, the harsh current went far beneath the underground roof of the ancient river as it sped along. He saw momentary flashes of light ahead and heard the shouting of the others above the din of the rushing Blue Nile. Bright mineral deposits gleamed wetly as they screamed passed.

Jack's shoulder struck a stalactite and he careened into the smooth, age-worn wall, then a rip current pulled him and Dahlia under. Collins thought that this was where the river disappeared far below the desert and would not rise again until its waters mixed with those of the surface Nile far from where they were.

The roar of the river was growing even louder as Jack came close to passing out for lack of air. Suddenly the dark world filled with light and the waters warmed by twenty degrees as Jack kicked upward. The great current died out as he broke the surface into bright daylight. As he took in great gulps of air, he was never so glad to see the sun as it set low over the western horizon.

As he placed his arm around Dahlia's neck and started kicking, he felt hands and arms around him, pulling him through the water until his feet started dragging in the mud. He was pulled onto the hot sand lining the river. He heard Dahlia coughing and throwing up water next to him and he angrily shoved her body away from his own.

"Damn, Jack, you caught the biggest fish in this damn river," Everett said as he leaned down and made sure that the woman wasn't going to choke to death. "Freshwater piranha, I believe."

Collins coughed up water and rolled onto his stomach. Then he turned and looked at Everett.

"Next time we stay and shoot it out. That was not fun," he said as he looked beyond Carl. "We lose anyone?"

"All accounted for. Will broke his nose, Professor Leekie is crying about losing the temple, and Ryan is bitching that he lost his wallet, but it looks like we'll all live."

Jack pushed himself into a sitting position and looked from Carl to the blond woman lying on her stomach.

"We better find a phone and pass on the bad news."

"Think she'll talk?"

Collins stood on shaky feet, trying to clear his head. Then he looked down at the woman, who was just coming to.

"Yeah, she'll talk, or she may find herself being left in a country where people disappear all the time."

Jack, Carl, Mendenhall, and Ryan were standing behind the two-way glass looking into the interview room. Virginia, feeling sick after her supersonic flight from Nellis onboard an F-15 Eagle, was to handle the interview with Lorraine Matheson--Coalition code name Dahlia--who was presently sitting in a straight-back chair with her hands cuffed to its armrests.