The Messiah Secret - James Becker [116]
‘Right,’ he snapped, his voice low and urgent. ‘Keep down, and keep quiet. I know the wind’s blowing real hard, but you’d be amazed how far sound can travel at times like this.’
‘What’s happening?’
Masters explained what he’d seen. ‘If they stay in that cave for another ten minutes, I’m giving the go signal.’
Donovan nodded agreement. His instructions to Masters had been very specific – let Bronson and Lewis find the relic, but on no account let them touch it.
‘Do you think they’ve got it?’ he asked, his heart pounding with anxiety.
‘I don’t know,’ Masters said. ‘But we’re sure as hell going to stop them if they have.’
60
Back in Karu, Killian and Tembla stared intently at the video screen. Through the data-link from the Searcher UAV they’d watched two tiny figures look at the ruined monastery building, walk deeper into the valley, and enter another small structure, from which they’d reappeared almost immediately. But now they’d vanished completely.
‘They’ve found a cave,’ Killian muttered.
‘There are lots of caves in that valley,’ Tembla pointed out. ‘Let’s see if they come out again.’
Five minutes later there was still no sign of the two figures.
‘They’ve found something,’ Killian said, standing up. ‘We must leave.’
Tembla leaned over to the serviceman who was piloting the UAV and issued a series of orders. Immediately, the image widened as the man switched from the telephoto lens to a wide-angle view that covered the valley walls as well as the floor. Then he began to zoom in on one particular area.
‘What are you doing?’ Killian asked.
‘Checking on the opposition.’ As the picture tightened, Tembla pointed at a number of slow-moving dots that were just coming into focus. ‘There are the men Donovan recruited. Including Donovan, there are six of them in the valley, the four you can see there and two others who are still watching from the valley wall. There are a couple of others we spotted driving a four-by-four, but they’re some distance away, and we don’t yet know if they’re also a part of the group. And you’re right – from the way they move, they are mercenaries. They’re also carrying assault rifles, which is good for us.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it gives us the perfect excuse to eliminate them. You know what we’re looking at here, but I’ll make sure that all the pictures from the Searcher will just show a group of heavily armed men who’ve almost certainly entered India illegally. We are entirely within our rights to engage them. Using the Hind might be considered to be overkill, but I’ll argue about that later.’
Tembla issued a further instruction and the image changed again, to the view of the rocks where Bronson and Lewis had vanished.
‘They’re inside the cave,’ Tembla said. ‘Mark that spot and pass the coordinates to the chopper pilots. Right, Father. It’s time we got airborne.’
* * *
Inside the cave Bronson was dragging away the rocks and bits of wood. In a few minutes he’d cleared away most of the debris from a small area, and all that was left underneath it was a thick layer of dust and dirt.
‘Look at this,’ he said to Angela. He took a knife from his belt – one of the various items of camping equipment he’d bought back in Leh – and pressed the blade into the soil. The tip penetrated no more than a quarter of an inch. Then he moved the blade a few inches away and repeated the operation. This time, the blade slid into the dirt for about six inches. He withdrew the knife blade, moved it even further, and again the tip hit solid rock within less than half an inch.
‘You see,’ he said. ‘There’s a groove that runs from the edge of the rock wall across towards the right-hand side of the cave. It’s directly below those two lines on the roof.’ He paused and looked at Angela. ‘In fact, what you’re looking at up there isn’t a pair of parallel lines at all – it’s actually a groove