Langley felt a slither of anger erupt. He slammed his palm on his desk, not for the first time feeling insignificant being trapped in his prison of bureaucracy rather than being out in the field with the team. He felt like dressing Gibbs down like a raw recruit for his incompetence but knew that now wasn’t the time.
“Are Raine and King armed?” he asked instead. There was a longer than necessary pause. “Gibbs? Are they armed?”
“Raine has a handgun.”
“A handgun?” he repeated incredulously. “That’s all you sent him down there with?”
“With respect, sir,” Gibbs replied. Langley could hear the exertion in his voice. “I didn’t foresee any need for more armament.”
“Damn you, Gibbs!” he cursed. “You know what’s at stake here. Raine was our insurance policy, to provide protection where your team can’t go. How’s he supposed to do that with nothing more than a handgun?”
Whatever Gibbs’ response was going to be, he ultimately decided to simply ignore the politician’s statement. “We’re in pursuit of West now.”
“You better damn well hope that you can stop him, Gibbs. If the Russians get their hands on the mask—”
“There’s only one way West can get out of here, and that’s coming back through us. We’ll stop him.”
There was nothing more to say. Langley leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his face, rubbing his tired eyes. But Gibbs’ last comment remained in his mind, bouncing around for a few moments as though it was a petulant child seeking attention.
Surely West knew that the moment he vanished, he’d become a suspect, even if Langley hadn’t uncovered his links to Moscow. That information had come at the last possible moment, a favour pulled in with Jack Harman at the CIA. Convinced of Raine’s innocence, and Nadia’s for that matter, he had focussed his attention on the SOG team and Harman had discovered large deposits of money being dropped into an off-shore bank account in West’s name. The deposits had all been made in the last few days and had all originated from Moscow.
West was being paid a lot of money to betray his country and deliver the Moon Mask to the Russians. Which meant, he had to have a plan in place to escape.
He picked up his cell phone and punched in his pre-saved contact number for Jack Harman.
“Jack?” he said when his old friend answered. “I need another favour.”
“I can’t believe you actually thought I was the traitor!” Raine hissed at King. They both looked up at West whose semi-automatic was trained on Raine’s head.
It made sense, of course, Raine realised belatedly. As the team’s communications specialist, West had access to all the team’s computers and com equipment, allowing him to jam the video feed and the radio signals. More importantly, Raine guessed that he had rigged the laptop which Nadia had been using to collate and transmit everything the team had discovered and recorded as a data-burst, perhaps whenever she was logged in. Who better to implicate as a Russian mole than the only Russian member of the team?
“Sorry,” King replied through gritted teeth. “You were acting suspiciously—”
“Suspiciously?”
“I hate to break up this little domestic,” West cut in. “But, Doctor King, if you wouldn’t mind handing me the case, that would be terrific.”
“How much are they paying you, West?” Raine asked. “To betray your country?”
“You don’t lecture me on loyalty, Raine,” the man snapped, his Brooklyn accent strong.
Raine took a moment to study the man. “Actually, I think I’m the perfect person to lecture you,” he replied softly. West wasn’t wearing an NBC suit and Raine could see beads of perspiration running down his face and neck. “I know what it’s like to be branded a traitor. To be a fugitive. Living your life in exile. Always looking over your shoulder, wondering when they’re going to catch up with you. Running. Always running. And just when you get settled, when you think you’ve got it made and you can put what you’ve done behind you, something spooks you. Someone snooping around, asking too many questions about your past, who you are. And then you’re on the run again. Always running.”
A flash of indecisiveness flickered in West’s eyes. Then his face set again and twisted into a snarl. “I got legs,” he replied. “Running ain’t a problem.”
Raine laughed bitterly. “You don’t just know how to run,” he said. “It’s something you’ve got to learn.”
“Just give me the fucking case!” West shouted, erupting in anger.
Anger was a soldier’s worst enemy. It was a distraction, and Raine used that distraction to his advantage.
He moved, fast as lightning and knocked the gun barrel aside just as West opened fire. Bullets strafed along the walls behind them, banging and pinging from the golden treasures of the chamber.
“Ben, run!” Raine shouted.
West reached with his other hand to grasp King but he pulled away from him and darted towards the rope still dangling from the ceiling.
“No!” West screamed and tried to angle the rifle towards him. The bullets spewed out in a crescendo of deafening explosions. King dived out of their path, down into the tunnel from which West had appeared.
Raine dragged West forward, pulling him over the sarcophagus, disturbing the remains of Imhotep, and then head-butted him in the nose. Cartilage crunched under the impact and an explosion of blood spewed out. He grasped the gun and wrenched it out of West’s hands—
Just as a mass of solid gold slammed into his head with agonising force, throwing him backwards. Despite the protection from his helmet, the blow from the baboon-shaped death mask of Imhotep knocked him out cold.
West didn’t waste any time to finish off his opponent. Instead he wrenched his rifle free and spun around in pursuit of King.
Langley watched the satellite feed which Jack Harman had linked him into. It hadn’t been easy getting him to give him access to the CIA’s network of spy satellites which didn’t actually exist, or so was the official line. But Langley knew about them from his days as a Special Operations Group operative. Nevertheless, admitting that they had satellites spying on British military establishments, despite the two nations’ special relationship, wasn’t something either country would take lightly.
Regardless, Langley now looked at the satellite imagery on his computer screen taken around ten minutes ago. Clearly visible was the sinkhole and five people crowded around the command base they’d set up. Two minutes into the feed, however, as four of the humans — Gibbs, O’Rourke, Lake and Siddiqa — had been crowded around the computer watching the feed from Raine’s helmet, the fifth person — West — broke off from the group.
Langley watched him run quickly to the shelter of one of the nearby hangers where he slid around the back and then, quite by surprise, removed a manhole cover.
“Damn,” Langley whispered to himself.
He shut down the satellite image and quickly tapped away at the controls on his computer. Eventually he found what he was looking for in the CIA database. Schematics of the sewer system which ran beneath RNAS Culdrose.
King ran down the tunnel, virtually blind. The darkness of the mine was overwhelming, the torch beam on his helmet cutting only meters into the inky blackness. His breath, coming out rapidly, misted up the faceplate of his helmet and the internal filters weren’t designed to keep up with the exertion. His boots slipped on the wet ground and the walls and ceilings seemed closer than ever.