“Shit!”
Hayden pulled it away, wincing. Blood leaked from half a dozen small wounds. The Hawaiian forgot about it and returned to battle. Hayden emptied her Glock and then reloaded, happy to see their own soldiers joining the fray. Flurries of sand sprayed her face. Indeterminate piles made a hazard of her footing, and even they remained in motion, always drifting. Sunshine pierced the murk intermittently and often — a startling kaleidoscope of color that confused the brain. Hayden saw a soldier go down, and moved on the merc who’d clashed with him. He batted her away with a metal plated arm which she felt all the way to her toes. Both the fallen soldier and Hayden fired on the guy at the same time, sending him spinning off the cliff, then helped each other up.
They nodded, comrades in arms.
Drake faced a huge brute with a loaded RPG resting across one shoulder. In the blink of an eye he tackled the man around the waist, but the grenade went off as they fell, shooting straight up into the sky. Drake panicked. Straight up, straight down! He rolled off, ready to shout a warning, but the rocket fell and detonated off to the south, a conflagration that sent flames, sand and chunks of bark and rock flashing around the battleground. More than one man went down. Drake’s own world was then blotted out by the panoramic vision that rose before it.
That’s gonna hurt. Again.
The massive merc dropped down onto his chest, knees first, clearly enjoying himself by the split-lipped grin that marred his otherwise ugly face. Drake bore it, experiencing hurt upon hurt and bruise upon bruise and wondering just how many weeks or months it might take him to recover. The merc enjoyed himself too much, grinding with his knees and leaving the rest of his body wide open. Drake sat straight up, chopped to the throat, nose and eye sockets, leaving him choking and blinded. A hammer-like fist swung at Drake’s head, which he caught between his thighs as he rose, twisted and broke. The merc groaned into the sand.
All around the enemy was devastated, giving up. Dahl stood at the edge of the valley as, quite suddenly, the storm began to abate. Sunlight shone through the sand and the wind levels took a slight drop. The Swede stared down at the waiting galleon with hungry eyes — an alpha predator eyeing up its next happy meal.
Drake joined him. “The count?”
“On deck? No more than eight. Below deck — no idea.”
“So what the hell are we waiting for?”
Drake played to the Swede’s mad side even as Hayden shouted at them to wait, to be prudent.
“Oh, I see.” Dahl’s grin was infectious as he understood. “It’s that time again.”
“Be careful!” Hayden cried. “No!”
Dahl threw himself over the edge feet first, Drake a split second after. Alicia shouted, “For Kevin Bacon!” and launched herself after them. Kinimaka stepped up eagerly but Hayden whacked him back. Smyth would have none of it, ignoring her frown and leaping into mid-air, his face breaking out into a rare grin.
Drake and Dahl raced down the sandy slope, picking up speed as they went. Sand furrowed from either side of their boots as they slid. The slope was sharp enough so that they caught air-time, bouncing back to earth with groans. The landscape flashed past at inconceivable speed. Drake concentrated as much on edging out Dahl as where he was going. The galleon’s deck grew large beneath them, a wide, unstable landing pad. An overhang sent them several feet into the air, eliciting cheers and allowing Dahl an extra moment to calmly extract his handgun from its holster. They crashed back down and were then hitting the ship’s deck and its pliant timbers, rolling to lose momentum. Drake slammed right into the ship’s far railing, heart stuck firmly in mouth. Dahl snagged a mercenary and used him as a piton. Alicia bowled them both over.
Smyth landed perfectly, feet first, and shot two mercs on impact. Another drew a bead on him. There was no time, not even to duck. Then the merc shot backward, hit by a bullet fired from above and Smyth thanked his lucky stars for the unknown backup.
Alicia hammered at the merc Dahl had used to stay his fall, but in the end Dahl simply rose, picked him up and threw him over the rail. Drake fired at the four remaining mercs, forcing them into hiding. One of them came sprinting around a bulkhead and launched his body straight at Alicia. She held the force of his momentum though, fighting back. Together, atop the ship’s deck and close to the rails they traded blows, two warriors battling over a drop that could send them two hundred feet straight down. On the edge they punched and blocked and stepped. Alicia caught a kick on her thigh, deflected a heavy blow, and stepped inside. Her opponent stumbled, swung again. She evaded it and then hit as hard as she could, his solar plexus taking the brunt. Her blows were so hard, so packed with force and power that he flew straight against the rails and then crashed right through, screaming as he tumbled to his death.
Beneath them the ship’s deck groaned, the entire side trembling. It was entirely possible that this buried ship could split in half and take them all with it. But this was no time to dwell on the mind-blowing discovery they had made nor its final incredible location. Drake saw a head pop up from below and gave it a side-vent. There were other routes down to the lower decks. Dahl crept around a bulkhead whilst Smyth stole in the other direction. Bullets slammed off molded woodwork close to their heads.
“Careful!” Drake shouted. “Don’t want to upset the ghosts now, do we?”
A man rose, bellowing back. Alicia’s bullet took him down. Drake kept a careful eye, but then it happened. The moment that beggared belief.
Looping up from the galleon’s stern, high and proud, came a black hand grenade, its thrower chuckling even as he lobbed it. A true madman then, a courter of death. Drake dropped his gun as the grenade came down, trusting Alicia to cover his sudden desperate sprint out into the open, then flung himself headlong, hand outstretched in imitation of a fielder trying to catch a ball. The grenade came down, spinning, about to strike deck when Drake’s hand slid underneath it, closed around it and then flung it over the nearest rail. Even then it exploded almost immediately, the force of its blast taking a chunk out of the cliff side and sending shattered wood spinning around like spears. Dahl and Smyth stormed the stern as Drake lay breathing hard, his energy spent for a moment.
Alicia crawled over. “You okay? Nice fielding, Ian.”
“Ian?”
“Botham.”
“Ian Botham was a bowler and a batter.” Drake knew little about the game of cricket. “I think a goalkeeping reference would be more appropriate.”
“Bollocks to your sports and, for that matter, your cars. I have no time for either of them.”
“Yeah, and that’s gonna have to change too.”
Alicia’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, is it?”
“Yep. Taking you and Dahl on a track day as soon as we’ve brushed this bloody battle off and showered.”
Alicia looked prepared to argue, but Dahl and Smyth came rushing up. “Job done,” Smyth said. “What’s next?”
Drake gazed around. “Below decks,” he said. “Where the real ghosts of this entire adventure lie.”
“Gold,” Smyth said. “You mean gold.”
“Do I?”
Smyth and Dahl watched two entrances to the galleon’s innards as Drake and Alicia searched for another. The obvious ones were probably on the side buried into the cliff wall, but Alicia soon found a third. By that time those above had unfurled a rope ladder that almost touched the deck. Soon, Kinimaka stepped gingerly down as if expecting his clumsiness to fatally dislodge the ship from its ancient resting place.
Dahl grunted. “Careful there,” he said. “Might have to jump the last two feet.”