Russell Blake: The Goddess Legacy

The men exchanged glances, and Mehta anticipated their objection. “Don’t worry. I have separate quarters for myself and my guests. You might have seen the buildings up top. They are comfortable, if small.” Mehta understood that the men wouldn’t be enthusiastic about the prospect of spending the night underground, in the stinking slave camp, and he’d already made arrangements to have the mobile buildings prepared for them. “And if you require, I can arrange for pleasant company to divert you while you are our honored guests.”

The visitor shook his head. “That will not be necessary. But your offer of sleeping quarters is generous. We would like to take you up on that.”

“Very well. We will also have dinner together, then. My private chef travels with me. Let me know what you would like and I will have him prepare it for you. Anything at all — he’s an expert in all types of cuisine. Gifted.”

The men seemed startled at the idea of a private chef cooking for them, and had a hushed discussion before requesting a simple meal of traditional Pakistani fare. Mehta nodded as though they’d made a wise choice, secretly contemptuous of the men — here they were given the opportunity to have anything they could imagine, and the best they could manage was food fit for a goatherd.

“Suri, will you convey our guests’ wishes?” Mehta said.

“Of course, sir.”

Suri left the chamber and Mehta closed the suitcase and hefted it. “It has been a pleasure doing business with you. I’m hopeful that if you have any further requirements, you’ll come to me first,” he said, eyeing the men.

“Likewise. You are in an enviable position and have earned our trust. We will do more transactions, no question.”

Mehta snapped his fingers and his bookkeeper stepped forward. “Take this to the usual spot, and stay with it. Guard it with your life.”

“As always,” the bookkeeper said. “It shall never leave my sight.”

One of the three men leaned forward, his hands folded on the table in front of him. “We heard gunfire earlier.”

“It was nothing. Every so often the men go out for target practice.” Mehta paused. “It is useful to remind the workers that the weapons are loaded and that the guards are ready to use them.”

Everyone smiled at that. They were accustomed to the rule of the iron fist, where justice was dispensed at the barrel of a gun, and the visitors respected those willing to use their authority decisively. Schooled in a philosophy that was as strict as it was oppressive, violence was often the punishment for even the slightest infraction, and death never far from the path trodden by the devout. The men didn’t question the presence of a slave camp, nor the existence of the unfortunates whose lot in life was to dig radioactive material from the earth until they died early from related diseases. They lived in a world where such things were commonplace, and the strong ruled over the weak without mercy. It wasn’t their affair, and if the Indian operated a concentration camp, it was his business.

They only were interested in one thing, and he’d provided it: over a hundred kilograms of enriched uranium, suitable for use in a dirty bomb, which nobody else on the planet was willing to sell to them. Whether he was a despot or an angel was no matter — that he had access to the material and could process the ore into yellowcake deep in the belly of the mountain, and then arrange for further refinement outside of official channels — that was the only thing they cared about.

The visitors stood and offered Mehta a small bow of gratitude. “We will go to the surface now and call our mullah. He will be anxious for a report.”

“Certainly. But for your own peace of mind, wait for Suri to return, and he will guide you. In the meantime, I will have my men bring the material to your sleeping quarters so you’ll have it nearby at all times.”

The leader smiled. “You have a Geiger counter we can use to verify there is no leakage from the container?”

“Absolutely,” Mehta assured them. “That will be our first project before we dine.”

The ruins were pitch black by the time Drake and Allie were herded back to the clearing, the moon now blocked by a layer of high clouds, and only a pair of torches borne by their captors lit the way. The cult killers made no sound as they directed them down the loose gravel path, and neither Drake nor Allie had any hope of communicating with them, much less convincing them to free them.

When they reached the outer section of the ruined temple, two of the cultists led them to the pole. Drake struggled as the third made to secure his wrists to Allie’s using a length of rope, binding them both together to the pole, and earned a vicious blow to the side of the head from the base of a torch for his trouble. Dazed and bleeding, he was supported by one of the men while another finished the tie job, preventing his knees from buckling until the pole did so.

Once Drake and Allie were secured, the men retreated and tossed their torches into a nearby fire pit before vanishing into the darkness. The wood in the pit was slow to ignite, and the torches had almost burned out before the smallest kindling caught and flames licked from the center of the pile.

“Are you all right?” Allie whispered to Drake.

“Yeah. Move your wrists up a little so I can work on the knots with my fingers.”

“Like this?” she asked.

“Little more.”

She frowned from the effort. “That’s as high as I can go.”

“Then that’s perfect.”

Drake tore at the binding with numb fingers, his heart in his throat as he struggled to loosen the rope, knowing as he did that the chances of them getting free in time were slim. The fire popped and cracked as more of the wood caught, loud as firecrackers in the quiet night, and the flames glowed orange in the periphery of their vision.

“Anything?” Allie asked.

“I think one’s starting to loosen,” Drake lied, hating himself for peddling false hope. “Allie, if we don’t get out of this…”

“We will,” she said, her voice strained.

A rhythmic pounding from beyond the fire pit drifted on the breeze, spurring Drake to redouble his efforts. Allie’s gaze swept the clearing frantically and then locked on the first figure approaching from the gloom.

“Drake—”

“I hear it.”

The drumming increased in tempo, and then the chanting reached them, the name of Kali echoing off the long-destroyed temple stones like the baying of demented animals. Drake fumbled with the knots in desperation, cursing the predicament he’d gotten them into, their lives about to be forfeited in the name of a monstrous cause.

The column of dark figures shambled closer, stretching endlessly into the shadows, and then the figure at the head of the procession stood before Allie, whose eyes were riveted on his mangled features and bloodshot eyes. He inspected her curiously, touching her cheek with a grime-crusted finger as she recoiled, and then he slowly circled around to look at Drake, who noted that the cult high priest’s sharpened teeth were discolored to the same gray as the ash that covered his hair and skin.

Drake turned his head away, the stench rising from the man so toxic that bile burned in his throat, and then the cult priest turned from him and held a curved dagger in the air. The cult chanted its perversion faster at the sight of the blade, anticipation palpable in the crescendo of maimed utterings.

Drake’s voice sounded stronger than he’d feared it would when he spoke the words he’d been saving for a time that now would never come. “Allie, I lo—”

The boom of automatic rifle fire from nearby filled the clearing, and the cult priest’s chest exploded with red blossoms. He screamed in pain and lunged for Drake with the dagger, and then more rounds pounded into him and he tumbled sideways. The knife bounced harmlessly off the stones at their feet as the man crumpled in a heap. More shooting deafened them as Spencer stepped from the darkness, wielding his AKM with mechanical precision.