King stepped away from him, closed and sealed the rucksack. The tachyon emissions instantly dropped.
“We’d better get out of here though. If we’re out of contact with them and these ceilings come down on us or something, we’re screwed. Give me the case, I’ll go up first then help to pull you up.” He reached for the case but King pulled away.
“No!” he snapped.
“What the hell?” A sudden flash of anger twisted Raine’s face. His treachery revealed, quick as a flash he whipped out his gun and fired!
40:
Follow the Arrows
“You’ve got to listen to me,” Nadia demanded. She ignored the fact that there were three guns pointing squarely at her head. It seemed that Sid’s life wasn’t worth all that much to these soldiers as one squeeze of her trigger and the young woman would be dead. But that wasn’t Nadia’s intention.
“Listen to me,” she pleaded, struggling to keep Sid in her grasp. “Ben is in danger.”
“What?” Sid whispered.
Nadia glanced at the three soldiers. “Now that I have your attention, I am going to lower my gun,” she told them clearly. “Then you can arrest me again, or shoot me or whatever it is you intend to do to me. But first you must hear me out.”
Sure to her word, the Russian woman slowly stepped away from Sid, releasing her while lowering her gun.
“Put it on the ground,” Gibbs ordered and she obeyed, crouching to place the weapon delicately on the grass. On the laptop screen set up on the edge of the mine shaft, she noticed the video feed, which displayed Raine and King inside a chamber filled with gold, while overhead a display team from Saudi Arabia in propeller planes twisted and spun through the summer haze.
“Take her,” Gibbs ordered and instantly O’Rourke and Lake were upon her. She did not resist.
“Wait,” Sid snapped at the soldiers. She stepped up close to Nadia, even as her hands were bound by O’Rourke. “What do you mean, Ben’s in danger?”
Nadia studied her friend closely, sorrow in her eyes. “I know I have no evidence at present to prove my innocence,” she said. “So very well. Treat me as guilty. But do not let that blind you, for I am not guilty.” She glanced at Gibbs, beseeching reason from the man of action. “Consider this. I am safely in your custody, unable to do any harm. But my concern right now is not for my name, my reputation or my freedom. It is for the safety of Doctor King and the success of this mission. I am not the traitor,” she looked again at her friend and she could see she was getting through. “Which means the real traitor is still among us. It could be anyone. Anyone except you and Ben.”
Sid’s earlier concerns over Nathan Raine suddenly resurfaced. She looked again at the laptop screen, saw Ben talking to Raine even though the audio was cut, and then—
As if on cue, static erupted on the laptop screen, cutting the image of her fiancée. “What’s going on?” she demanded of no one in particular.
“Raine, King, come in,” Gibbs called into his radio. Nadia looked on, still clamped in O’Rourke’s arms, her mind running through the scenario, analysing—
It hit her like a blow to the face. Something so obvious that none of them had noticed.
“Where’s West?”
King was a split second faster than Raine!
He swung the heavy case on its straps, planting it with a dull thud against the other man’s gun arm. The force of the impact sent Raine’s shot wide, the bullet ricocheting loudly through the chamber and the gun flying out of his hand. He landed on the floor, but the swing of the heavy case spun King off balance also and he fell too, hitting the ground hard.
If he hadn’t, he would have been dead.
Raine had seen it only a split second before, just as he was about to agree to let King take the case if he really wanted to. He was only trying to be helpful by offering to carry it after all! But from the corner of his eye he had seen the outline of the man sneaking through the murky darkness of the mine, Heckler and Koch HK416 raised, trigger finger tightening.
But Raine had been faster. He’d whipped his M1911 handgun out of the holster attached to his hip, lined up a definite kill shot, and fired.
Just as, for some crazy reason, King had slammed the full weight of the lead-line rucksack into him, knocking him to the ground and sending his gun skittering across the muddy floor, the shot going wide. The attacker’s shot whistled through the air above King just as he fell down behind the cover of Imhotep’s sarcophagus.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Raine demanded angrily. He pushed King off of him but the archaeologist pushed back, slamming him down. He threw a punch at Raine’s head but the ex-soldier blocked it. “Ben!” he shouted.
“You’re working for the Russians, you bastard! You sold us out!” King rose to wrench his hand free and tried to deliver another blow. Evidently, he hadn’t realised there was a shooter in the tunnel and Raine quickly grasped the other man’s helmet and yanked him sharply down just as a volley of automatic gunfire strafed the side of the sarcophagus, whistling over the top of it.
“I’m not the traitor, you idiot!” Raine snarled, just as a face appeared over the lip of the golden coffin. “He is!”
King turned in his bulky suit and peered up at West.
“Oh.”
“Gibbs!” Alexander Langley barked down the satellite phone. On the computer screen in front of him the video stream from Raine’s helmet had been replaced with static. “I have some information which you may find of interest.”
“Oh yeah?” Gibbs’ voice replied. He sounded slightly out of breath.
“I believe you should relieve West of his duties temporarily. I’ve uncovered evidence which suggests a link to Moscow—”
“That’s great,” Gibbs replied with a slather of sarcasm dripping off his tone.
“Unfortunately, it’s about thirty seconds too late,” Gibbs snapped as he completed the abseil down the mine shaft to the tunnels beneath.
“Too late?” Langley’s voice repeated in his radio. Unlike Raine and King, Gibbs, O’Rourke and Lake weren’t kitted up in NBC suits and so were able to move more quickly down the slanted tunnel, moving deeper into the bowls of the earth. Above them, outside the sinkhole, a group of five Royal Marines had been sent by the base commander to watch over Nadia Yashina who, in Gibbs’ mind anyway, was still a suspect.
“We’ve lost contact with Raine and King. The video’s been jammed and so have all comms. And West is missing.” He regulated his breathing as he ran quickly alongside his team mates. The air down in the mine was thin and without hazmat suits, they could be breathing in any number of deadly gases.
“What do you mean, he’s missing?” Langley demanded.
“The base commander has initiated a base-wide search,” Gibbs’ voice replied. “We were distracted by the Russian woman.”
“Nadia?”
“She escaped custody and attacked us.” Gibbs was on the defensive. He could hear it in his voice. “Once the situation was under control again, West had vanished.”
“He’s going after the Moon Mask,” Langley said needlessly.
“That’s our theory.”