“Who are you?” Yang asked.
“The Arcadian.” Casey smile-sneered at the Chinese captain. “And unless you want your head ripped off, I’d do as he says.”
“Arcadian? Captain Alex Hunter.” Familiarity momentarily crossed the captain’s features, his eyes going from Alex to Aimee, before closing down.
“You know me.” Alex stepped closer to the man. He could sense that Yang knew both him and Aimee. He was holding something back from them.
Yang smirked, but turned to speak softly to his men, and then they each pulled the rounded explosives from their pouches and walked forward to drop them into Alex’s hand. The same for the walkie talkies. Alex quickly checked the grenades and then slid them all into his own pockets and pouches. He looked at the three walkie talkies.
“Hiyunton Model H280s. They’ll do.” Alex turned to give one to Aimee. He gave one back to Yang, and kept the other himself. “Now, we’re all one big happy connected family.”
Yang took the single device, his expression implacable. Alex stared back hard for a moment. “Good choice.” He turned away. “Everyone, fall in.”
The HAWCs and McMurdo soldiers approached. Alex looked over their heads and pointed at Yang, also to Soong and Shenjung. “You too. This affects us all.”
The group crowded around. There was a sense of relief and optimistic anticipation, probably just because of his arrival. At this point Alex knew it was probably misplaced.
“Equipment and weapons check. What have we got left?”
The soldiers checked pockets and pouches. Yang and his team stood waiting.
Casey spoke first. “Got a flashlight, and one small Ka-bar.” She turned to stab a finger at Yang. “The rest is fucking piled out in the clearing where these guys stripped it from us.” She glared.
“Same,” said Rinofsky, then Blake.
“Nothing left,” said Ben Jackson and Jennifer Hartigan. Aimee also shook her head. Cate had a knife, a small flashlight and some water.
“Worse than I thought.” Alex looked to Yang’s weapon pile. “You’ve got a handgun and two rifles. Keep the handgun, but hand over the rifles.”
Yang’s eyes bulged. “You leave us with nothing.”
“You have a handgun, knives, and your experience. Now, pick up your weapons; we will all need to fight before this day is done.”
Cursing, the Chinese soldiers snatched up their knives. Alex turned away. “Franks, Rinofsky, take the rest.”
His two HAWCs eagerly grabbed the Chinese weapons and then checked them.
“Okay, me, I’ve got knives, a signal locator, and now, grenades.” He tossed one of the grenades to Casey, and the signal locator to Rhino. “We have flashlights, which is good, but we’ll need to conserve battery life. We don’t have food and water, but if need be we can find that in a jungle… if we have to go back outside.” He motioned to the rifles. “But, this is not enough to survive down here for long.”
“Boss.” Rhino shook his head, his face lit by the small screen of the locator. “Just fired this thing up. That signal is right around here.” He looked up. “I mean, it’s here; right in here, somewhere.”
Alex nodded, looking around. “And there’s something else in here. I don’t think we’re alone. That creature was either scared of, or called off by, something or someone.”
Silence stretched as the group looked around in the dark cave-like tunnel. Every crack or corner now took on more menace.
Alex held up a hand, raising his voice only slightly. “Listen, right now, we have some urgent priorities if we’re to survive. Two scouting teams. Jackson, Rhino, Yang are team one. Blake, take the two PLA soldiers. Scout ahead, see what we’ve got coming up. Keep your eyes open.” He turned. “Franks, on rear guard. The rest, gather your strength before we follow them in.”
Alex edged to the corner and looked back to the entrance. The blue glow had returned, and the creature was gone — for now.
CHAPTER 50
Aimee lifted her flashlight to examine their surroundings, joining the other small glowing circles that danced around within the tunnel. The tiles beneath her feet were worn, but at the edges were hints of the original colors. Blue, green, and flashing reflective mica sparkled in their flashlights. The walls had magnificent carved frescoes leaning out at them with smiling, leering, and tongue-lolling faces in the broad style Aimee recognized too well. Above her, corbelled archways of fierce creatures interspaced with large oval stone heads with benevolent stares watched over them.
She let her beam momentarily trail towards Alex, before quickly moving it away. But her eyes remained.
The man made anger burn inside her. After all these years, the first thing he did was to scold her? How dare he! She bristled the more she dwelled on it. She continued to watch him. Her head held onto the indignation, but in her core, there was still a feeling of attraction and familiarity that was as intoxicating as it had ever been. She wanted to scream at him, curse him, and make him say sorry for lying to her, and all that sat uneasily beside a deep desire to rekindle something she had only felt in her dreams for many years. She pushed her thoughts away and focused on the tiles.
“This is unbelievable.”
“Jesus.” Aimee jerked her light around, directly onto the woman’s face.
The woman squinted, smiled, and held out her hand. “Hi, Cate Canning, Dr. Cate Canning, evolutionary biologist and team leader on Project Ellsworth. It’s, ah, a government funded study of the buried lake.” She pointed at the ceiling. “From somewhere wa-aay up there. I hitched a ride…” She half smiled, shrugging. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Dr. Aimee Weir, petrobiologist and suicidal fool.” She shook Cate’s hand. “Still think it was a good idea?”
“Ask me again, when we’re topside,” Cate said, panning her light over the flooring, and then raising it higher. She turned to smile again at Aimee. “If… I mean, if we get out.”
“We’ll get out,” Aimee projected more confidence than she felt.
Cate turned her light towards Alex, who noticed them looking and nodded. “Well, if anyone can get us out, it’ll be that guy.” Her eyes slid to Aimee. “Saw you watching him before. You should see him with his shirt off.”
Aimee turned a little too quickly. “What?”
Cate momentarily pulled back at Aimee’s reaction, and Aimee immediately regretted it.
“Uh oh, you two know each other, huh?”
“No, yes, forget it… long time ago.” Aimee waved it away.
“Good.” Cate’s eyebrows flicked up momentarily and she grinned.
Aimee sighed, feeling a twinge of something inside that she hated. You are not jealous, she told herself.
Cate wandered further into the dark tunnel and Aimee followed her. “Amazing,” Cate said, her light moving up and down. “Just, damned, amazing.”
Aimee knew what she was experiencing; she had felt the same sense of wonder when they first found the buried city. And here, even after countless centuries, the architecture was still striking. Interspaced Doric columns and large trapezoidal stones fitted together without a hair’s breadth between them. Vestiges of color clung to some of the images, and even the mosses and mineralized waters now staining them in all manner of rainbow hues couldn’t fully mask their magnificence.
“It’s just like Tikal, the Mayan temple ruins… and just as old, I’d say.” Cate turned. “I’ve been there. It’s called the Temple of the Two Headed Snake, built by King Yaxkin Caan Chac in 470AD.”