Read The Curse of the Dragon God Online
Authors: Geoffrey Knight
Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay
The Curse of the Dragon God (29 page)
“Will do.” Richard sighed, clipping the end off his chosen cigar. “Once I’m through with this Cuban. Seems a shame to waste it, don’t you think?”
Sen shook his head impatiently, then stopped in the doorway of the car and looked outside. From the higher vantage point he took in the sight of the mines—the source of his family’s fortune for generations—one last time.
Mya had already entered the shedlike, snow-covered generator room located just beyond the circular turntable, and with a loud
Puumph
several dozen stadium-style lights ignited, drenching the area in bright white light.
Puumph
several dozen stadium-style lights ignited, drenching the area in bright white light.
To the right of the small circular rail yard Sen looked upon the main entrance to the mines, a massive opening carved into the mountain, at least six stories high. The round man-made entrance was constructed from cement and steel, but several meters inside the tunnel the cement work stopped. Beyond that the walls and ceiling of the mine were blasted rock and earth, supported at regular intervals by metal beams. A single track for mine cars was laid into the floor of the tunnel, with spotlights on either side like a nighttime runway. It disappeared into a luminous glow deep inside the mountain.
To the left, a quarry road led down to a second mine entrance that had been abandoned since the diamonds had all but dried up. The second mine was nothing but a halfexcavated entryway that led directly to a deep and treacherous vertical shaft—a bottomless sinkhole that had opened up when the digging had begun. The sinkhole had now been cordoned off with planking and warning signs, while the Conrad Construction vehicles that had been used to unearth the mine were left scattered throughout the quarry.
A temporary portable office still remained at one end of the quarry, sitting on stacks of bricks, ready to be packed up, picked up, and shipped away at a moment’s notice. Because the facade of an operational mine was the one thing Sen, Chad, Mya, and Richard had wanted to maintain this entire time, the office remained. To keep their lies—and plans—a secret.
Sen looked at all this now, as well as the others:
He saw Xi holding the zidium device;
Chad and Mya each holding their guns;
Will and Bradley half naked and shivering, holding up the Professor.
Then with a great sense of peace, of accomplishment, he said: “Let’s get richer!”
Jake blinked coal dust out of his eyes and cautiously lifted his head out of the heap. Beside him, Shane did the same, sending several chunks of coal rolling away. Beneath the bright, humming glow of the industrial lights they saw Will, Bradley, and the Professor being escorted toward the massive mine entrance. Without exchanging a word, both men knew that the chances of their friends returning from the mines were slim. But as Shane began to dig his way out of the black heap, Jake quickly caught his arm once again. “Someone’s missing,” he told Shane, counting heads. “Richard. Richard Conrad’s still here somewhere.”
On cue, the British billionaire jumped down from the master carriage, a satisfied smile on his face as he puffed on his Cuban. Shane hastily dropped back into the heap and half buried himself, staying low as he and Jake watched Richard strut across the circular turntable platform toward the generator shed.
As Richard opened the door to the small shed, several lumps of coal next to Shane’s shivering, scantily clad ass rolled loose, clattering and bouncing down the heap and setting off a small avalanche that clanged loudly against the steel-sided coal car.
Richard heard the noise. He stopped and turned, slightly, eyes scanning the brightly lit yard, the embers of his cigar glowing. He did not linger. He already knew he wasn’t alone. He remained composed and entered the shed—knowing there was a rifle inside.
As soon as Richard disappeared into the shed, Jake and Shane quickly scrambled, pulling themselves out of the coal and climbing down the side of the car.
Inside the shed, Richard took hold of the turntable controller that hung from the ceiling. It was a rectangular device, a brick with a key and two large punch buttons on it, one green, one red. He twisted the key to unlock the control and thumbed the green button. Then he reached for the cabinet where the rifle was stowed, a security measure to keep away wolves and other predators. Or in this case, intruders.
The ground outside hissed and groaned and the enormous turntable rumbled to life, slowly spinning counterclockwise, turning the train 180 degrees to face the way it had come, ready to deliver untold destruction to the people of Beijing.
As Jake and Shane jumped down from the coal car the ground beneath them began to move. But that proved to be the least of their problems. Between the twisting platform on which they stood and the main entrance to the mine was the generator shed. Or more accurately, Richard, standing outside the generator shed, holding a rifle.
BLAM!
Jake and Shane dropped as a bullet shell put a two-inch dent in the side of the coal car behind them, ricocheted, then rattled across the ground, quivering on the rumbling, turning platform where it lay.
“Shit!” Jake immediately scrambled under the coal car, followed by Shane.
From where he stood outside the stationary shed, Richard laughed and fired off another shot, missing Shane’s scurrying bare ass by inches.
Hurriedly, Jake got behind one of the wheels and sat against it, pressing his back hard up to it, using it as a shield. Shane did the same with the wheel at the far end of the car. He peered around the rim of it, trying to gauge the growing distance between themselves and Richard as the platform turned, trying to guess the speed of rotation, when suddenly another bullet
ding
ed against the outer side of the wheel next to his head.
ding
ed against the outer side of the wheel next to his head.
“Can you see him?” Jake called to Shane over the rumbling of the rotating turntable.
“Not without getting my damn head blown off!”
“Well, we can’t stay here. We’re just spinning around in one place.”
“We could make a break for the mine?” Shane said it with a shrug. It was more a question than a suggestion.
Jake didn’t have an answer. He peered around the curve of the wheel behind him and tried to cock his head enough to see the shed. It was gone from view. He turned and looked the other way, to the left of the car, to see if the shed was coming into view there as they continued to rotate. No sign of it.
“We’re at ninety degrees,” Shane said as the realization dawned.
“Which means?”
“Which means if Richard stayed where he was, it’s impossible for us to see where he is. Unless of course—”
At precisely the same time, Shane and Jake both looked down the length of the undercarriages, all the way down the track, to see a smiling Richard come into view at the end of the train, squatting low, with his rifle in hand.
“Hello, Jake,” he called down the length of the train. “What a surprise to see you here.” Then, with cigar clenched between his teeth, he pumped off one, two, three shots straight down the barrel.
Sparks flew as the bullets scraped and pinged their way down the narrow course between the tracks and the undercarriages. Shane bolted left, springing out from under the train. Jake launched himself right, somersaulting backward into the bright light. He leapt to his feet and saw the mine entrance in the distance.
Suddenly another bullet exploded in a starburst on the side of the coal car, just behind his head. “Jake!” he heard Shane shout from the other side of the car.
Jake glanced down toward the tail of the train and saw Richard emptying spent cartridges and reloading. He looked ahead of him, at the mine entrance, and knew he’d never make it.
The turntable was still rumbling, rotating. The mine was slipping away.
“Jake, get out of there! Now!”
Another blast from Richard’s rifle was all Jake needed. He threw himself back under the coal car and scrambled to the other side, kicking his way free. Shane’s hands had him by the shirt, dragging him out as fast as he could. “This way, hurry!”
As Jake pitched and stumbled to his feet the two of them sprinted for the far side of the yard, heading not for the mine entrance but in the opposite direction, their only escape—the quarry.
With a loud thud the rotating platform jolted to a halt. The train was now facing back toward Beijing. Jake and Shane stumbled away, disappearing quickly down the icy road that descended into the quarry.
At the rear of the train, Richard saw them vanish down the slope. The daredevil tycoon threw his rifle and Cuban away, grinning at the thought of a much more fun challenge in the pit below.
Against all expectation, the tunnel didn’t slope downward into the mine but rather
ascended
into the heart of the mountain on a gentle gradient. The group followed the mine car tracks along the well-lit upward slope.
ascended
into the heart of the mountain on a gentle gradient. The group followed the mine car tracks along the well-lit upward slope.
Carrying the Professor on either side were Will and Bradley. As they made their way toward the end of the tunnel, the old man wheezed and coughed and a thin line of blood ran from his lips. Will lovingly wiped it away with his thumb and fingers.
“Just make sure he doesn’t die before he gets to the bottom,” Chad muttered, observing the blood. “Otherwise you two will be carrying the dead weight.”
The bottom, Will assumed, was at the base of the elevator shaft he could now see at the end of the tunnel. A large square mine car stood stationary at the end of the tracks that led them to the shaft, its sides dented and scraped by the millions of rocks it had carted back and forth over the years. Beyond that was a large elevator cage suspended above the vertical shaft.
Burning white bulbs fixed into the wall of the shaft illuminated the drop, which disappeared into a well of light.
Mya hauled open the cage door while Chad pushed Will, Bradley, and the Professor onto the steel grate of the elevator platform. Sen followed behind with Doctor Cyclops, who giggled as he clicked his shears in the air, and Xi, cradling the zidium device in his arms.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go of that bomb,” Chad warned Xi, triggering a button on the control box on one wall of the cage. With an ear-piercing whir and the grinding of winch gears the elevator sank clunkily down into the shaft.
Jake and Shane laced their way swiftly around the abandoned quarry machinery, scanning the area, looking for another way into the mines, all the while glancing behind them for any sign of Richard and his rifle.
Shane stopped Jake and pointed. “Over there.”
Jake looked to see the massive, roughly excavated entry to the sinkhole, boarded up with planks and warning signs. “I don’t like the look of that. What about there?” he said, gesturing to the small portable office perched on bricks at the opposite end of the quarry. “There must be blueprints or some kinda map to the mines inside. Come on.”
The two hurriedly weaved their way through the vast array of machines and found the portable office unlocked. They slipped inside, Jake glancing back once more before closing the door and locking it behind him.
Inside, Shane closed the horizontal blinds and clicked on a small desk lamp. Jake had been right, the place was covered in blueprints and maps spread across several desks, along with mountains of construction equipment strewn across the floor. Back in Texas, cartography had been Shane’s forte. He knew he could find a way into the mines if he could just get his hands on the right map. He started at a desk at one end of the small office and began rifling quickly through large sheets of paper. “Jake, help me here.”
Jake, however, was at the other end of the office, peering suspiciously through the thin horizontal blinds, scanning for Richard in the dormant equipment outside. “Where the hell did he go?”
Shane didn’t have an answer. He was too busy sliding sheets left and right, looking for a master blueprint. Then he found it. He turned to Jake excitedly.
But Jake was still staring through the blinds, eyes suddenly wide with horror.
Shane heard a rumble outside.
All Jake had time to do was turn and say, “Shane, hold on to something. Now!”
But before Shane could so much as move, the head of one of the excavators smashed through the side of the office with a deafening blow.
The entire office lurched. Shane was thrown to one end of the building, Jake to the other, as the excavator’s teeth shredded the thin aluminum wall, smashed the windows apart, and pulverized a desk in the middle of the office. The head reared left, taking out the entire wall and ripping through several filing cabinets, then pulled itself out of the wreckage before coming in for another swing, even harder than the first. This time its jaws clamped down on the roof and got hold of the small building, lifting it clear off its bricks and hurling it into the air.
The office twirled slowly as it sailed, then landed with an almighty crash that split it clean in two, sending each half rolling and spinning into pieces, spitting chairs, desks, tables, and Shane and Jake in different directions.
Shane hit the ground, bounced, then landed facedown. Instantly he felt the vibrations of an oncoming vehicle sending tremors through his torso, now pressed against the earth. He heard the grind and squeal of the excavator’s caterpillar tracks grow louder and louder. He opened his eyes and leapt out of the way seconds before the churning tracks of the excavator had a chance to mince him into the ground.
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