The Curse of the Dragon God (30 page)
Read The Curse of the Dragon God Online
Authors: Geoffrey Knight
Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay
Stumbling and slipping through the snow, Shane caught sight of a laughing Richard Conrad in the cab of the excavator. Richard rotated the cab now to face Shane, before sliding the machine into a turn and lining the cowboy up in his sights once more.
Shane looked around desperately. He knew he was no match for the excavator rumbling toward him at top speed, its neck craning high, open jaws ready to swoop. He needed a hiding place. Or better still—a beast of his own.
Ahead of him was a bulldozer, stout and built for defense. He made a bolt for it.
Jumping into the cab, he saw the key in the ignition. He turned it, and the bulldozer chugged into life just as the entire vehicle jolted. Shane shielded himself from the glass as the cab’s windshield exploded inward. The head of Richard’s excavator tried to claw at him through the broken opening, but the cab’s frame was too narrow for the excavator’s jaws.
Shane grabbed the nearest gearshift and yanked the bulldozer into reverse. At the same time he pulled hard on the blade lever. The bulldozer’s front blade plate swung upward, knocking the excavator’s head away from the smashed windshield and up into the air.
The excavator groaned, the front of its caterpillar tracks leaving the ground momentarily. It landed with a heavy thump, instantly regaining its sturdy, powerful stance.
The bulldozer retreated so rapidly Shane didn’t see the drill rig behind him until it was too late. He backed into it, crumpling and fracturing the rear of his bulldozer until it became twisted in the thick hydraulic cables and chains of the vertical drill shaft.
Shane lowered the blade and saw the excavator coming for him once more. He ripped through the gears, trying to pull free of the drill rig. The bulldozer’s mighty engine revved and whined, tracks spinning in the muddy snow. But the beast was locked in the web of the drill lines, now taut and straining.
Richard’s excavator was tearing across the quarry toward Shane now, jaws snapping hungrily.
The bulldozer’s gears began to burn, smoke billowing from its undercarriage as it tried to free itself. But it was a sitting duck. Shane tried to raise the blade again in an attempt to defend himself, but sparks burst from the blade lever as the vehicle’s hydraulics blew under the strain.
The excavator had a clear run for its target. Richard cranked into top speed, sending two massive jets of mud soaring into the air behind the excavator’s churning caterpillar tracks. Nothing would stop him from destroying Shane and the bulldozer now.
Nothing but the second excavator he couldn’t see that attacked from the side—
—the one driven by Jake, smashing headlong into the side of Richard’s excavator, crashing into it with all its force and knocking it off course, seconds before it could plow into Shane’s bulldozer.
The two excavators slid and skidded through the icy sludge, pirouetting together through the dancing snow before they sailed apart and slid to a halt, facing one another.
Richard shook the dizziness from his head, a cut on his temple. He dabbed at it with the palm of his hand.
In the second excavator Jake eyeballed him. Through their cracked windshields their eyes locked. “Let’s play,” Jake challenged over the roar of their rumbling beasts.
Richard simply smiled. “Winner takes all.”
Their hands gripped their gears and levers, and the two mechanical dinosaurs roared into life.
The temperature dropped as the elevator descended deeper and deeper into the mines. Will and Bradley shivered, but the chill they felt was nothing compared with that of the Professor, whose loss of blood had turned him a deathly pale. Will and Bradley held him close and tight between them, trying to share what little body heat they had left.
As the elevator continued to rattle and clang its way downward, the shaft opened out to reveal a vast excavated cavern lit by brightly burning floodlights generated from the mine’s power grid.
The Professor’s teeth chattered as he feebly lifted his head. “Sen, don’t do this. You still have time to stop it. You still have a chance to do what’s right.”
“Don’t lecture me on what’s right, Max. At least I’m not under the delusion that I’m a good person.”
“But you are. At least you were.”
“And you changed all that. How ironic that the day you lost your sight was the day I found my vision. My dream. I’m a different man now.”
“You’re a terrorist, that’s what you are,” Will interjected angrily.
Sen shook his head. “Terrorists do things for stupid reasons. For religion. For politics. Me? I’m doing it for the money. In today’s world that makes me a businessman. An entrepreneur. A futurist!”
Suddenly the elevator thumped to a halt at the foot of the shaft.
Mya pulled open the cage door and Sen gestured to the vast cavern. “Welcome to the heart of the Zhang diamond mines. And your final resting place.”
“From this location, the blast from the bomb will bring down every tunnel in the entire network,” Chad added, motioning Will, Bradley, and the Professor out of the elevator with a flick of his gun. “This section of the mountain will literally vanish. By which time we’ll be on our way back to Beijing to deliver the second bomb.”
Sen saw Will shoot a wary look backward over his right shoulder at the device in Xi’s arms. He couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Hunter, you won’t feel a thing. When the device detonates you’ll already be dead, lying here on the ground with a bullet in the head. Except of course you, Max. We’re taking your head with us. Just to be sure. Loose ends make for bad beginnings.”
Doctor Cyclops giggled deliriously.
Chad marched the captives toward the far end of the cavern. With a hard shove from behind the Professor grimaced in pain, his frail knees struggling. Will and Bradley did their best to prop him up.
“You’ll be okay, Professor,” Will assured him. “We’ll get you outta here.”
Mya’s gloss-red lips shimmered in a smirk. “And how exactly do you plan on doing that?”
“With a bang” was Will’s short, sharp answer.
Suddenly he left Bradley holding the Professor and spun quickly to face a startled Xi head on. He reached down with both hands. He ripped the pins from two of the small cylindrical grenades tucked into Xi’s belt, one on his left, one on his right.
Xi gasped, still holding the zidium device in his arms.
Chad fired a hasty shot at Will and missed completely.
Mya pointed her pistol but couldn’t get a clear shot with Chad in the way.
Doctor Cyclops screamed, dropped his shears, and ran as fast as he could in the other direction—toward the elevator.
Sen’s eyes bulged with panic as he tried to stumble away from Xi. He ran forward, crashing straight into Bradley, who, still holding up the wounded Professor, lost his balance. All three men crashed to the floor of the cavern.
In the midst of the chaos, all Xi could do was drop the bomb. Literally. The zidium device fell from his arms like a payload falling from the bomb bay of a plane. Only instead of dropping 10,000 feet to its intended target, this shiny round payload fell a mere four feet from Xi’s arms to the rocky floor of the cavern.
It hit the ground with a
clunk
and bounced.
clunk
and bounced.
With a beep, red digits appeared in the bomb’s small display panel.
10:00:00
Ten minutes.
With another beep, the fail-safe mechanism kicked in, irreversibly.
The seconds began to tick away.
And the first of the two zidium devices began its countdown to disaster.
The excavators collided head on and bounced off each other, the thunder of the clash echoing through the quarry. Jake rocked in his seat. Chunks of metal were flung through the air. Snapped cables hissed.
Suddenly the cab of Richard’s excavator twirled around, followed by the powerful swing of the beast’s head. It slammed into the neck of Jake’s excavator, knocking the entire machine into a spin across the muddy ice.
Jake pushed through the gears—forward, reverse—trying desperately to find some traction in the snow. But as his machine spun helplessly, Richard’s monster attacked once more, its head swooping down from above. It sank its huge teeth deep into the top of the driver’s cab as Jake’s out-of-control machine continued to spin, and Richard’s beast ripped the roof right off the cab like a giant can opener.
Just then, the tracks on Jake’s excavator took hold, gripping the earth and churning up snow. But it was too late.
The head of Richard’s machine came plunging down through the ripped-open roof of the cab, jaws chomping and thrashing. The upper jaw smashed against Jake’s shoulder, breaking the bone. Jake screamed in pain as the head pinned him low against the back of the driver’s seat. His arm was wrenched away from the gears and control levers, which vibrated just out of reach.
Richard snapped the beast’s jaws again, trying to bite Jake in half. He missed by mere inches, the space inside the cab too small and the angle of the head unable to snag Jake’s lowlying body.
Through his cracked windshield Richard watched and laughed. He looked beyond Jake’s excavator then to see the boarded entrance to the bottomless sinkhole 50 or so feet away, directly behind Jake’s machine. “Time to finish this,” he said determinedly. He jerked the gears and his machine shoved forward, pushing Jake’s machine backward, toward the sinkhole.
As the jaws continued to open wide and clamp shut above him, Jake pressed himself lower into the driver’s seat. The fingertips of his uninjured arm reached desperately for the control lever. They brushed the top of it, but he couldn’t get a grip.
Snap! Snap!
He felt the air rush through his hair with every chomp of the ravenous jaws.
He felt the air rush through his hair with every chomp of the ravenous jaws.
Push!
Richard’s machine forced Jake’s excavator another 10 feet toward the abandoned shaft, the tracks of his machine turning up gray sludge like a snowplow.
Richard’s machine forced Jake’s excavator another 10 feet toward the abandoned shaft, the tracks of his machine turning up gray sludge like a snowplow.
Jake managed to lift his head a fraction, enough to see through the broken rear panel of the cab; enough to see he was being nudged toward the boarded sinkhole entrance.
He grimaced with the pain. “Oh, this is not good.”
The countdown had begun.
As the timer on the zidium device activated itself, Xi reached desperately for the two unpinned grenades in his belt.
His left hand snatched one of the explosives as though he was a gunfighter in a quick draw. He flicked the live grenade across the cavern floor, straight toward the fallen heap that was Sen, Bradley, and the Professor.
Will watched it scuttle across the ground toward them. He launched himself into a dive, sliding painfully across the rocky ground, far enough to give the grenade a backhanded hit that knocked it a few feet further away.
Xi fumbled for the second grenade, juggling it loose and hurtling it into the air before joining Mya, Chad, and Doctor Cyclops in the sprint for the elevator.
The second grenade landed square in Bradley’s lap as he sat up from the fall.
“Oh, shit!” He scooped it out recklessly with both hands.
It sailed through the air—
—hit the still-bouncing zidium device—
—then ricocheted straight back at them.
“Get down!” Will shouted, not thinking about the fact that they already were down. He covered Bradley and the Professor, one arm shielding each of them.
Tink-tink-tink!
The grenade hit the ground and trickled toward them, then—
Boom!
Followed closely by—
KA-Boom!
The first grenade exploded, followed instantly by the second.
The cavern trembled. Rock, rubble, and dust blasted into the air.
Mya, Chad, Xi, and Cyclops bent down and covered their heads momentarily before continuing their desperate dash for the elevator, none of them looking back.
As Will tried to shake the ringing out of his ears, he slowly lifted his head and peered through his eyelids a fraction, trying to look through the veil of dust. A split second later his eyes shot open in panic.
“Get up!”
He tried to pull Bradley and the Professor to their feet, but he was too late. The two grenades had set off two miniquakes, one on either side of the men, each opening up a crevasse that quickly ate its way in a wide arc, encircling them until the entire crust of earth beneath them fell away like a giant china plate falling to the floor.
Into the darkness below.
Taking Will, Bradley, Sen, the Professor, and the zidium bomb with it.
Cruuuuunnch!
The ice and snow continued to compact against the tracks of Jake’s excavator with another long heave from Richard’s machine.
Chomp!
The huge steel teeth of the machine clanged sharply together, trying to get to Jake.
The huge steel teeth of the machine clanged sharply together, trying to get to Jake.
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