On the table in the middle of the room, where once there had been two cases, one holding the real Moon Mask and one containing the fake, there was now only one.
They had the mask!
She spun again and bounded up the steps to the main deck and burst out through the doors, stepping onto the metal. Her feet slipped out from under her and she slammed down hard. The wind exploded from her lungs, preventing her from screaming as she looked into the lifeless eyes of Murray. The top of his head had been blown clean off, splattering brains and gore across the deck. It was his blood upon which she had slipped.
Ten feet away lay another body. For an instant she feared it was Nadia but then realised it was the marine Gibbs had ordered to remain on board as cover.
But, it was who was crouched next to the bloodied body and pulling on a harness lowered from the hovering helicopter that caught her attention.
“No.”
The shark lunged at Raine’s head, jaws agape, teeth bared.
He spun on reflex and slammed his fist into the nightmarish creature’s nose. Despite the resistance of the water, the blow was powerful and the hammerhead whipped around and raced away.
But there were more.
Many more.
And they were coming right for him.
“Benny, get the goddamn mask!” he practically screamed at his partner as he un-holstered the underwater rifle he had been issued.
King spun around in an urgent three-sixty pirouette, taking in the scene unfolding around him. More and more sharks poured into the temple from the opening above and slinked their way through the jungle of columns, all of them homing in on Raine.
Had he been injured? Tank had warned them that hammerheads only usually attacked humans when they were attracted to their blood, but he could see no cut on Raine’s body.
He didn’t have time to consider that any further. Lit by Raine’s light stick, the entire temple was now exposed in all its magnificent glory. To the far side was what looked like a tunnel descending into the bedrock itself, possibly the original entrance which he guess led to some other area of the Monument or the surrounding structures. But to the other side, raised from the floor on a plinth, stood an altar, carved from the red metal core of the meteorite and similarly covered in pictographs and glyphs.
He twisted his body and, like Icarus descending to earth, he kicked his way quickly down to the altar.
A face in the gloom!
Not just a face, but a mask.
Worked into an intricately carved façade which had been fashioned around it, the missing piece of the Moon Mask gazed back at him.
A hand reaching out to him!
He stretched out his arm and grasped the mask.
Sunlight pierced the temple, blazing down through holes in the ceiling!
The shafts of light grew narrower, refining to a single laser-like beam until that too was gone.
Darkness.
Such utter darkness.
Then noise.
The roaring of a beast that could never be stopped.
It echoed all around, it pounded against the temple walls, it began to break through.
Then he saw it.
Such a hideous creature. Terrifying and all consuming.
It charged at him, gallons of it bursting through the tunnel at the far end. The defences had been breached. Even from the sealed wells above, geysers of seawater poured into the temple as the ocean rose up to swallow the land.
Just as the High Priest had known it would.
Just as the mask had shown him.
“Nate, I’ve got the mask!” he shouted into his radio. He spun around to see Raine fighting a pitched battle with dozens of hammerhead sharks. They were relentless, driven into a frenzy, hunger and instinct overtaking them.
Raine had backed up to one of the pillars so that none of the sharks could sneak up on him. He fired his submersible rifle and the hydrodynamic bullet slammed into the skull of one of his attackers. Blood clouded around it and instantly attracted the attention of the attacking sharks who tore into their dead brethren, snapping at one another. Chunks of flesh were torn apart, bones stripped bare in moments as the grotesque image of dozens of hammerheads battled with one another to get in on the feast.
Raine pushed away from the pillar and sank towards King even as King ascended towards him.
“Behind you!” King called.
Like Superman flying through the heavens, Raine used his own weightlessness to pirouette onto his back and face the charging shark. He fired again but this time was shot wasn’t true. The bullet grazed the beast’s flank but did not stop it. Instead, Raine turned his rifle into a club and swung it at the shark’s head, smacking it once, twice, then a third time. It finally surrendered its attack and powered away but more kept on coming towards him.
“Why the hell do they want to eat me?” Raine demanded of no-one in particular. “I’m sure you’re just as tasty!”
From below the soldier, looking up at his back, King found the answer.
“This is why,” he said and wrenched a bloodied glove out from where it had been stashed under Raine’s buoyancy vest.
Their eyes locked in dreadful realisation and they both uttered the same name.
“Nadia?”
Sid looked across the deck at her friend as she strapped herself into the harness lowered from the waiting helicopter. In one hand she carried the metal case containing the Moon Mask. In the other was a gun.
She aimed it at Sid’s chest.
“Nadia?” she stammered, feeling a tremble of fear blend with the heat of fury. “Why?”
“I am sorry Sid,” the Russian said. Sid picked up on the twinge of genuine sadness and regret in her voice but it only made her even angrier. She noticed Murray’s handgun lying in a pool of blood only a foot away.
Nadia pulled the final strap of her harness over her shoulders and fastened it over her bosom. The thunder of the helicopter’s rotors drowned out all other noises and whipped the women’s hair around their faces.
“I won’t let you take the mask!” Sid warned.
Nadia’s eyes flicked to the gun on the deck. “Don’t do anything stupid, Sid. You’re my friend. I don’t want to hurt you.” She gestured to the winch man above and her feet lifted up from the deck. She swung in her harness, temporarily taking her eyes off of Sid.
“You’re not my friend!” Sid launched herself at the gun, rolled through Murray’s blood, grasped the angular metal, twisted and aimed at Nadia. She squeezed the trigger!
The blast was deafening.
The pain was excruciating.
“Sid!” King exclaimed, realising the danger she was in.
Nadia had betrayed them and, if she had set Raine up like this, then it meant she was making her move now.
He kicked his legs hard and swam upwards quickly, straight towards the hole. Below him, Raine discarded the glove, throwing it into the fray of sharks. The scent of Nadia’s blood which had pulled them like a zipper through water towards him now redirected their attention away from them and Raine finned after King.
“Gibbs, get to the surface! Nadia’s taking the mask!” he warned.
King burst out through the hole and physically shouldered into a shark that had been about to enter it. Dazed, it swam away but it did not slow him down. He raced up past the stunned SOG team who hastily began their own emergency ascent. Raine shot out behind him, powerful legs kicking, and they broke the surface together, just in time to see the feminine shape disappear into the side door of a helicopter.