“Not he,” Charlie said, checking his mag and pulling the slide back on his SIG. “They… look!” He pointed into the crack of sky ahead of them and the silhouettes of at least three men were visible along the top of the cliffs.
“Christ almighty!” Decker said. “Madan has the whole river covered!”
“We’re sitting ducks!” Selena said.
Riley spun around. “Who’s shitting ducks?”
Selena rolled her eyes. “I’ll give you one thing, Carr — you really are hard to keep down.”
“Which is funny,” the Australian said with a grin. “Because that’s what all the babes say.”
“Oh for fu—” A bullet ended her sentence midway, ripping through the bow’s grab rope and pinging off the rub strake. “Holy crap, that was close!” she said, visibly shaken up.
Decker spun the wheel again and sent a high arc of river water spraying up into the air on their starboard side as he strained to dodge the incoming fire. The small outboard motor revved wildly as they swerved from side to side to evade bullets one second and razor-sharp rocks in the river bed the next.
“Get the damned Remington!” the American yelled.
“I like your thinking, mate,” Riley said, reaching forward into the bag and pulling out the enormous shotgun. As the boat raced from side to side, the Australian struggled to load the twelve gauge cartridges into the weapon, but after a few tries he turned to the others with his famous smile. “Loaded and ready to go.”
Without another word he lifted the gun and fired it into the air at one of the men high above them. A direct hit, the man tumbled down off the cliff and smacked into a small island of rocks in the middle of the river.
“Christ, Riley,” Selena said, rubbing her ear. “You could have let me know you were going to fire it.”
“I didn’t load it just so I could scratch my arse with the barrel.”
“Still…”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Foras admonitio, Lena… foras admonitio.”
“Huh?” said Decker.
“Without warning, mate,” Riley said. “Motto of my old commando regiment before I went into the SAS.”
More gunfire rained down from the men in Madan’s defensive perimeter as Johar fired at a man on their portside, hiding up in some scraggy shrubs along the western ridgeline.
Charlie also returned fire now, rapid bursts of three. The spent casings fired out of the ejector port at a rate of knots and disappeared into the rushing rapids that were flashing past their boat. On target, he emptied the magazine and took out another of the men.
With both the chamber and the magazine now empty, the pistol slide locked open so Charlie pushed in a new magazine. This automatically chambered the first round of the mag and he was ready to go, once again lifting the gun into the aim and firing on the shooters ahead of them.
“There’s so many of the bastards!” Riley said.
“Madan must have ordered them to form a perimeter all the way around the location,” Decker yelled forward from the stern.
“At least we know we’re in the right place,” Riley said.
Diana gave him a look. “We didn’t need this to tell us that, Riley! My translations are always good and Stanhope’s coordinates were perfectly clear.”
“Sorry, ba… sorry, Diana.”
She gave him a smile. “Forget it.”
“I just hope they don’t know where the Avalon is,” Decker said, shaking his head. “That plane gets shot up and we’re trapped here.”
“Shot up?” Charlie said. “If they find it they’ll blow it up, never mind shooting it.”
“They certainly will,” Johar added.
Decker glared at them, looking more panicked now than when they realized they were being hunted by snipers. “Huh? You think they’d do that?”
Riley reloaded the shotgun. “Are you crazy, mate? Of course they fuckin’ would!”
“You guys live like this every day?” the American said with a shake of his head.
“Not every day,” Selena said.
“All I want is a quiet cargo business… a few nice, gentle flights every week… a steady income… and now this.”
“Ah, fuck off, mate!” Riley said, slapping his hand down on the American’s shoulder. “You love it!”
“Wrong,” Decker said wearily. “You love it because you’re a kid. I do not love it because I’m…”
“Just an old fart?”
“I was going to say in comfortable middle age,” Decker said. He lowered his voice so his words were masked by the sound of the chase, “…asshole.”
“And I’m no kid,” Riley said. “Five years in the commando regiment and four in the SAS. A kid went in but he didn’t come out, believe me.”
Decker nodded his head. He hadn’t meant to insult him, but the truth was he had at least fifteen years on the Australian and he was starting to feel old around the much younger, stronger man.
But Riley was clearly not bothered, as he was now firing the Remington into the air at the snipers, and between him and Charlie they were taking out the last of them.
With the last man down, the Australian turned and put the shotgun over his broad shoulder. “Not really the weapon for it, but it felt like a duck hunt, so that’s all cool.”
Selena shook her head but kissed him on the cheek all the same. Like the others she was glad it was over but they were much further now, and the sunlight was dimmer this deep into the gorge. This could only mean more trouble from Madan and his small army of thugs.
“Thank God that’s over,” Decker said with a sigh. “I hate boats.”
“You think we got all the bastards?” Riley said, scanning the cliff tops as Decker reduced power to the throttle and slowed the RIB.
“Must have,” Diana said. “No one’s shot at us for several minutes now.”
“Fuckers lulling us into a false sense of security maybe?” Charlie said.
“No, I don’t think that’s it,” Selena said. She raised her hand and pointed at a dark recess in the side of the gorge a few hundred yards ahead of them off their port bow. “We’re here.”
“She’s right,” Decker said. “We’re through Madan’s outer perimeter — take a look up ahead.”
They looked along the river and saw two helicopters parked up on the side of the river.
“This is the place then,” Charlie said.
“So now we just have to go inside and get the goodies, right?” Riley said.
“Something tells me it’s going to be a little more complicated that that,” said Charlie.
“Me too,” Selena said, shouldering her backpack and tying her hair up.
Decker cut the engine and steered the boat up into a small bay of fine gravel a hundred yards south of Madan’s choppers sitting incongruously on the river bank. They climbed out of the boat, paranoid about more snipers as they unloaded their weapons and prepared to go inside the canyon.
“You really think Shambhala is in there?” Diana said.
Selena shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Hope so, mate,” Riley said, throwing the Remington over one shoulder and some ammo belts over the other. “Otherwise we’ve come a long fuckin’ way for nothing.”
Decker listened to the banter but made no reply. The comments about the Avalon getting blown up were still bothering him and now he was walking into a Tibetan canyon with a load of strangers who were searching for a mythical kingdom.
Somewhere, sometime, his life seemed to have taken a distinctly wrong turn. He was shaken from his thoughts by Riley Carr who was now standing on a boulder at the cave’s entrance a few yards ahead of him.