David Sakmyster - The Mongol Objective

Back to the party on the shore, away from the frozen warriors, who watched them with resigned indifference.

Qara stood up, fury in her eyes. But Phoebe pushed past Renee and Chang and threw her arms around Orlando’s neck. She pulled back, looked into his eyes and gave him a big kiss before pulling away and slapping his cheek. “Don’t ever do that again!”

“What?”

“Risk your life on an unsupported vision. You want to be part of the Morpheus Initiative, you’d better wise up.”

Orlando’s grin was unwavering. “It was worth it. For that kiss.”

“I’d rather drink that mercury water,” said Renee, “than listen to any more of this crap. Let’s get moving.” She moved behind them and pointed her gun at their backs. “Let’s go. Down into the tunnel.”

“Don’t move, kid!”

Montross tightened his hold on the Emerald Tablet. The giant warriors on the wall were bent over, crossbows aimed to take out anyone on the shore. “Not a muscle. Do… not… move.” He glanced back. “Nina? Options?”

She thought quickly, looking to the large duffel bag at her feet. “RPG?”

Thinking for a moment, Montross nodded. “I’m sure, given enough time, we could RV this moment, try to figure out what the builders had in mind, how to bypass this trap and get that gate open.”

“But time is something we don’t have,” Nina said, unzipping the bag. She put her Beretta away and reached inside the bag for the rocket launcher and one of three missiles. She screwed it in and stood, raising the rifle butt to her shoulder, flipping over the reticule and peering through it.

“Aim for the ledge between the second and third warrior,” Montross said. “Right, Colonel? Would that be your advice?”

Hiltmeyer, his face ashen, his flashlight trembling, only murmured his assent. He kept staring at the body of his last soldier, staked into the ground, back arched at an awkward angle, head swiveled with dead eyes locked on him.

Nina aimed. “Duck, Alexander. Now! ”

She fired. Just as Alexander’s movement triggered something and the second archer swiveled four degrees, lining up a shot with the boy’s location.

The missile struck, exploding the entire rampart under the statue warriors, blowing two of them into chunks and sending debris in all directions. Alexander tucked himself into a ball, wincing as a few smaller pieces struck his back and a powdery dust swirled in the flashlight beams. He rubbed his ears, amazed that anything could produce such a tremendous sound, then waved away the smoke and stood, not sure which direction was which.

“Wait,” Montross cautioned.

He and Nina led Colonel Hiltmeyer out as the smoke cleared and they looked up. The statues were gone, all but the lower torso and crouched legs of the left-most warrior, standing on a cracked edge over the gap. “Nice work,” Montross said. He pointed to the gate and said to Nina, “Now kindly open that door.”

“Wait!” Alexander said, shaking his head. “I see something.” He closed his eyes, after ripping off his gas mask and taking in deep breaths. The air was clearer now, smelling of something fresh and pure blowing over the walls. “Water,” he said. “A lot of it, just past the gate.”

“A ‘sunless sea,’” Montross whispered. “Coleridge.” He glanced back. “It couldn’t have been the river he was talking about, and it surely wasn’t anything topside. But beyond these walls…”

“A sea,” Alexander repeated. “And I think it’s fresh, not like that river.”

Montross nodded. “You’re right. Genghis created an underground Venice. His city, his mausoleum. It’s half-submerged. Instead of a moat on the outside of his castle-city, he built the moat on the inside, an enormous lake, enclosed by forty-foot-high walls.”

Nina scanned the area above the wall where now she could just make out a series of glowing lights, and as her eyes adjusted, shapes appeared: towers and domes, long spires and lonely minarets. She pointed. “I think Caleb’s team made it to the other side at least. Look. Flares.”

“So what happens,” Hiltmeyer asked, “if you blow open the gate?”

Montross scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Out comes the sea?” He glanced left and right, shining his flashlight. High walls in either direction beyond the tunnel from which they’d just arrived. Walls that met other walls of Genghis’s city.

“We drown,” Alexander guessed. “That’s what happens.”

“Back in the boat,” Montross said. “We’ll latch ourselves down.”

“Wait, I’ve got a better idea,” Nina said. She dug into the supplies and pulled out a coil of rope and a grappling hook. “Why not just go over the wall?”

They chose a section of the wall unguarded at the top and Montross climbed up first, followed by Hiltmeyer. Alexander went next, hauled up by Hiltmeyer as Montross supervised.

When he got to the top and clambered over, standing on the five-foot-wide precipice, he felt like he was standing on China’s Great Wall, gazing out into the gloom over an ancient city. His eyes followed a pathway below, bathed in a flickering radiance, a bridge over the sea, winding in a serpentine fashion and branching out into smaller avenues, connecting the various palaces and halls, reaching distant temples and monasteries, which in turn had tributaries joining other domed buildings and structures whose purpose eluded any guesses he could come up with. All around these silent buildings lay the darkness of the subterranean sea. Placid, motionless. Reflecting the towers and domes in the faint light of the scarlet flares burning high above.

In the flickering light, Alexander could only shake his head in wonder. And then he let his roaming eyes focus and follow the length of the wall as it stretched into the shadows and circled around the great city. Across the dismal sea, he could picture his father somewhere on the opposite wall, staring out over the vast gulf of crimson-tinted shadows, over the final resting place of the great Khan, and across to Alexander.

Just hold on, Dad. We’re coming. I’ll find you.

“There,” said Nina, pointing down over the wall. “We can lower ourselves to the walkway.”

“I don’t like the looks of that,” Hiltmeyer said, squinting. Extending from about half-way up on the gate’s interior below, the walkway-thoroughfare was made up of a series of great blocks, connected to each other by short arched bridges. “I’m not psychic like you guys, but I suspect those blocks might fall into the sea when we step on them.”

“And,” voiced Alexander meekly, “maybe there are piranhas in there. Or sharks. I hate sharks.”

Montross shone his light down on the first section, then over the bridge. “If it’s a trap, I don’t see what can be done to avoid it.”

“Unless,” said Nina, “we’re meant to swim.”

Alexander shuddered. “With the piranhas?”

“Or,” she continued, “we bring up the boat, then drop it on this side and just row over to his mausoleum.”

“And just where is this mausoleum supposed to be?” asked Hiltmeyer.

Montross unzipped his pack and reached in for the Emerald Tablet. Took it out and held it up. “Turn off the lights for a second. I want to try something.”

They did, and the bridge went dark while Nina shifted her aim, watching the colonel stiffen in the green radiance.

Alexander’s eyes adjusted, and then he saw something strange. Like a reflection of the tablet itself, something flickering in the distance. It came from a large rounded structure surrounded by immense pillars and defended on all sides by water, except for a lone pathway from the center avenue.

The light-actually a pair of lights-came from a window in the upper reaches of the dome.