“How can you tell?” Ryan said.
“Forensic track analysis isn’t rocket science,” the former French Legionnaire said as he crouched down and pointed at the tracks. “Look here and you see they are deeper and further apart and also at a slightly odd angle. The fact that there are two tracks parallel to each other with these features suggests that two men were carrying something from the boat all the way into the cave.”
“There’s been an explosion here recently too,” Hawke said, running his hands over freshly blasted rock at the mouth of the tunnel. “Kruger widened this entrance.”
“So, what now?” Ryan said, peering inside the gloom.
“Now, we go pot-holing,” Hawke said.
As they were expecting, the temperature dropped rapidly when they ventured inside the mesa and suddenly the atmosphere changed from casual banter to one of imminent danger. There was so sign of Kruger or Korać and his army yet — not even a trace of a glow stick, which meant they were probably using some pretty chunky Maglites to light their way inside the mesa caverns.
Hawke did the same thing and switched on his flashlight. “Looks like we’re going up this time,” he said with surprise as he shone his flashlight up an incline.
“Great, more sodding climbing,” Ryan said.
Reaper joined Hawke at the front while Chabat and his men took up the rear and they began to climb the incline inside the mesa. After nearly thirty minutes of twists and turns they found their first evidence of Kruger — and more evidence as to why whatever was hidden here had remained untouched for so long. Ahead of them, another part of the tunnel had been blown out with explosives and what had been solid sandstone was now a few piles of shattered rocks and gravelly dust lying around at the newly-formed entrance to a second tunnel.
They shifted inside and noticed yet another drop in temperature as they went deeper into the mesa, only this time part of it that had been off limits to the rest of humanity for countless centuries.
They continued on their way, each of them thinking about the dangers ahead but never considering failure, and then they found a shaft which descended from a rock ledge. They gathered around it, and Hawke was the first to spot the gentle glow of artificial light as the silver Maglite beams of Kruger’s team bobbed about down at the bottom of the shaft.
He hushed the team and got down on his stomach to listen and instantly recognized the voices of Kruger and Korać. He felt a surge of hope as he realized he had another chance to redeem himself after his failure in Serbia.
He jumped back up to his feet and lowered his voice to a gentle murmur. “Looks like the whole Groovy Gang is down there.”
“So what now?” Chabat asked.
“We go down, of course,” Hawke said, and with that he jammed the Maglite in his belt and started to climb down into the shaft.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
From his new vantage point inside the shaft, Hawke saw it wasn’t as deep as he’d initially thought and that explained how Kruger and his men had managed to descend it without the use of abseil lines, but he could see scratch marks where they had lowered down a serious quantity of explosives.
He used brute force to hold himself level in the narrow tunnel as he moved himself down, and then after listening carefully to make sure the coast was clear he lowered himself out of the shaft and dropped gently to the sandy floor, instantly retreating against the wall and gripping the Maglite in his hand like a club in case Kruger had left guards behind.
He levelled his flashlight and scanned the cavern. It was not a large space and, as it happened, the place was empty. Most of it was nothing more than hollowed-out bedrock, but intricate, carved columns stood like silent sentinels every few yards. Kruger had obviously decided the chances of anyone being clever enough to follow him were so unlikely he hadn’t left any men behind to guard his way back out. Not guarding your logistics trail was a cardinal error in warfare, and this only showed what an unpredictable amateur Dirk Kruger was, but the fact Korać had made the same mistake surprised him.
He gave the rest of the team a signal with his Maglite and they followed him down the shaft and soon they were all gathered together in the new cavern.
“The lights I saw have long gone,” Hawke said, pointing down a long twisting tunnel. “But they must have gone down there because it’s the only route.”
They followed the tunnel but it wasn’t long before they started to find more evidence of Kruger and his team by way of angry shouting and then more lights bobbing about up ahead. Moving forward along the final stretch, it didn’t take long before they had caught up with the enemy who were now gathering in a much larger chamber, clearly built to strike awe into anyone trying to approach whatever awaited them.
Kruger was running his hands over what at first looked like a flat stone wall until their flashlights uncovered the faintest of slits running directly down the center. Both sides of the stone door were covered in the same peculiar symbols they had seen in Mictlan.
“This is the entrance!” Kruger yelled over his shoulder.
Van Zyl whistled in amazement and shook his head. “Must be fifty tons of rock here.”
“Which is why we brought the drill and the explosives,” Kruger said, and then turned and gave Korać his instructions.
Chabat and his team finally joined Hawke, rifles gripped in their hands and anxious expressions on their faces. Hawke guessed crawling through ancient tunnels not seen by man for countless millennia wasn’t part of basic training for the Royal Moroccan Army.
“I do not like this place,” Chabat said, glancing over at the ghostly glow of Kruger’s flashlights up ahead. He passed a hand over his sweaty forehead and swallowed. “How many did you say there were?”
“We thought around twenty,” Camacho replied.
Hawke nodded. “And judging from the jet boats out on the river I’d say there couldn’t be much more than that.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Scarlet said. “The quicker we get this over and done with the quicker I get a smoke.”
Kruger stood beside the giant rocky entrance while Korać ordered his men to assemble the rock drill and ready the C4 explosives. Moments later the hidden ECHO team heard grunts and heavy lifting as the men rigged up the drill and then Kruger gave the order. When they fired up the enormous rock drill, the cavern was filled with the deafening sound of drilling.
“They’re drilling holes for the explosives,” Hawke said over the shrill noise. Another sequence of drilling was followed by yet more grunting as they hauled the drill out of the way.
“They’re not going to blow up the entrance?” Ryan asked, hurriedly pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “They’re not going to rub through it with tea towels, are they?”
“But what about the symbols?” he replied with genuine concern on his face. “They’re an invaluable archaeological find just by themselves, not to mention they could contain any amount of information leading to hidden knowledge.”
“I think that ship has sailed,” Camacho said. “They’re pushing the C4 inside the drilled-out holes… jamming it in good as well.”
Hawke carefully watched the men as they prepped the door for the detonation. “They’re not taking any chances, that’s for sure.”
“So you’ll just have to suck it up, in other words,” Scarlet said.
“Those symbols could also lead to treasure…”
Scarlet stared at him. “Hang on a minute — we can’t let this wanton destruction of priceless archaeological petroglyphs go on!”
“Your conscience is thirty seconds too late, Cairo,” Lea said.
Scarlet’s eyes narrowed. “Eh?”