Dahl turned haunted eyes on Drake. “We have to stop it,” he said beseechingly. “For… for my children.”
Drake had no answer other than to nod. Of course. He followed the SGG Commander, carefully skirting the swinging Sarcophagus that passed above them, their grinning enemies safely on top and his companions following its trajectory from the other side.
Covered by the weapon and the whim of a maniac.
Drake reached the rent in the rock floor. The steam was a scalding, writhing tower. Untouchable. Drake closed in as far as he could before turning around to watch their enemies’ progress.
Hayden had stayed flat out on the ground, feigning unconsciousness. Now she sat up and shrugged out of the straps that secured Odin’s Shield to her back. “What can I do?”
Drake gave her a momentary glance. “The CIA got any contingency plans to shut down a Supervolcano?”
The pretty ‘secretary’ looked momentarily abashed before shaking her head. “Only the obvious. Stick a German down the vent pipe.” She flung off the Shield with a cry of relief. All three of them watched it roll on its rim like a noisy coin.
Had they failed?
The pressure escaping from the pipe increased as the volcano gathered force. “Once the chain reaction starts,” Dahl said. “We won’t be able to shut it down. We have to do this now!”
Drake’s eyes were momentarily drawn to the Shield as it flipped noisily around its rim. Its rim. The words leapt out at him as if they’d been written in fire.
Heaven and Hell are but a temporary ignorance,
It is the Immortal Soul that sways towards Right or Wrong.
“Plan B,” he said. “Remember Odin’s curse? Didn’t seem relevant did it? Nowhere to fit it in, right? Well, maybe it’s this.”
“Odin’s curse is a way to save the world?” Dahl questioned.
“Or damn it,” Drake said. “Depending on who’s deciding. That’s the answer. The person who places the Shield must have a pure soul. It’s the trap of traps. We’re already ignorant because we removed the Tomb. If we fail, the world dies.”
“How did the curse go?” Hayden, looking none the worse for wear for her rough stint in enemy hands, stared at the steam vent as if might eat her alive.
Drake recited the curse as he picked up the Shield and held it out before him. Dahl stood and watched him as he walked towards the hissing vent. “The moment you touch that steam with that Shield it’s going to get ripped right out of your hands.”
Then, with a sound like a herd of animals trapped in a burning forest, another steam vent spewed forth from below, the piercing shriek of its eruption almost deafening. A sulphuric stench was now beginning to thicken the air, turning it into a toxic miasma. The mountain’s faint rumblings, for so long their constant companion, had become more like thunder now. To Drake it seemed like the very walls were shaking.
“Newsflash, Dahl. Plan B is in effect. For future reference that means I don’t know what the hell else to do.”
“No future for you,” Dahl took the other side of the Shield. “Or me.”
Together they shuffled up to the steam vent. Shale began sliding down the rock-face beside them. A shriek and a roar like nothing Drake had ever heard crashed up from the endless depths of the abyss.
“The Supervolcano’s coming!” Hayden shouted. “Shut it off!”
Unseen by Drake or Dahl or even Abel Frey, the famous Icelandic mountain called Eyjafjallajokul — until now content to emit gentle grey plumes and terrorise air traffic — suddenly exploded around its rim. It would soon be seen on Sky News, and on the BBC, and later on You Tube by stunned millions — the fiery tongues of a thousand dragons igniting a firestorm in the sky. At the same time two other Icelandic volcanoes detonated, their tops blowing off like champagne corks under pressure. It was reported, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that Armageddon had come.
Only the chosen few knew how close it really was.
Unseen, and never to be known, the heroes battled in the dark depths of the mountain. Drake and Dahl attacked the discharging steam vent with the Shield, using the round object to deflect the steam into the nearby void as they positioned it directly above the hole left by the removal of Odin’s Tomb.
“Hurry!” Dahl struggled to hold the Shield in place. Drake felt his arms shaking with the effort of pushing against the primordial strength of the mountain. “I just wanna know what in hell this thing’s made of!”
“Whatever!” Hayden tried to steady them by anchoring their legs and pushing with all her might. “Just shove the fucker inside!”
Dahl lunged, launching himself atop the hole. If the Shield had missed, or moved even slightly, he would have been instantly evaporated, but their aim was true and the principal Piece slotted neatly in the man-made gap beneath the Tomb of Odin.
An elaborate trap, devised hundreds and thousands of centuries ago. By Gods.
The Trap of Traps!
“The greatest ancient trap the modern world has even known.” Dahl fell to his knees. “The one that could end it.”
Drake watched as the Shield seemed to thin out as it absorbed the great pressure shooting up from below. It flattened and moulded itself around the edges of the gap and took on an obsidian composition. Permanent. Never to be removed.
“Thank God.”
Job done, he took a moment before returning his attention back to Frey. Horror filled his heart beyond anything he could imagine, even now.
The chopper was rising, straining to hold the weight of Odin’s coffin which swung gently beneath it. Both Frey and Alicia sat atop the coffin, hands wrapped firmly around the harness that secured it to the helicopter.
But Ben, Kennedy, and Professor Parnevik were hanging from three of the other rappel lines dangling beneath the chopper, no doubt coerced there at gun point whilst Drake struggled to save the planet.
They were hanging over the void, swaying as the helicopter rose, being kidnapped right from under Drake’s nose.
“Nooooo!”
And, incredibly, he ran — a lone man, sprinting with an energy born of rage and loss and love — a man who launched himself out over the bottomless pit and into black space, shouting for what was being taken away from him and grasping desperately for one of the swinging lines as he fell.
FORTY
Drake’s world stopped with his leap in the dark — endless void above, bottomless pit below — three inches of swinging rope his only saviour. His mind was serene; he was doing this for his friends. For no other reason but to save them.
Selfless.
His fingers brushed the rope and failed to close!
His body, at last affected by gravity, began to plummet. At the last second his flailing left hand closed over a rope that was longer than the rest and gripped with reflexive venom.
His fall arrested, he brought both hands around to grip it and closed his eyes to still his rapidly beating heart. From somewhere above came raucous applause. Alicia venting her sarcasm.
“That what Wells used to mean by show your mettle? Always wondered what that crazy fossil meant!”#
Drake looked up, acutely aware of the pit beckoning below, feeling vertigo like never before. But his muscles were fired by new-found strength and adrenalin, and most of the old fire was back in him now, dying to be unleashed.