As they neared the pool’s edge, Mac tested a theory. He swept his leg through the oil and cast a black swell toward the closest crab. The wave fell thickly over the creature, and immediately doused its golden flames. It scrabbled a final oily path—then stopped moving.
John looked at him.
It was something, but how could this knowledge help them? The remaining distance was too far to splash a safe passage through them. Maybe they could roll in the oil as a repellant. But did they dare take that risk?
The decision was taken away from them with the deafening blasts of a rifle. Mac ducked low as rounds pelted into the oil and ricocheted off the walls. John gasped as a red burn bloomed across his cheek from a graze. Mac felt a tug on his left arm. Goose down fluttered from a hole blasted through his parka. Nelson’s head cracked hard against the side of Mac’s skull. Mac felt the wash of hot blood, the sting of shattered bone.
With horror, he turned and saw that half his friend’s face was gone.
Still, he cradled the body and dropped flat into the oil.
John did the same.
Mac turned toward the stern as more gunmen flowed inside and spread out. John twisted, trying to raise his shotgun.
“Don’t,” Mac warned.
The rifle blasts had been far louder than Nelson’s earlier scream—and triggered a more profound reaction. All around, pots shook with deadly potency, then one after the other, they shattered, releasing the monsters inside.
The mass scrambled furiously on their jointed legs toward the new arrivals. Green ichor flared into golden flames. Panicked at the sight, the gunmen fired at the bronze horde—which only attracted them more. They raced across every surface, scurrying over one another in their haste to reach their targets.
They’re drawn by noise . . .
Mac realized now that the bronze crabs had no eyes. Blind, they clearly responded to sound. He looked back toward the captain’s cabin. The creatures there had also heard the commotion and set off in fiery golden streams across the walls and rafters, aiming for the gun blasts and screams. One lost its footing above and tumbled into the pool. Its flames snuffed out as it struck the oil.
Mac finally released Nelson’s body with a grimace of guilt and sorrow. He nudged John toward the dark cabin. This was their only chance to reach that refuge. The two men rose from the oil and ran low toward the cabin door.
Mac reached it first and waved John inside and retrieved his flashlight. He looked back across the hold, now lit by a hellish glow, punctuated by spats of gunfire. Those who had entered the ship thrashed and screamed. Their bodies covered in clawing, digging bronze. Their flesh burning, smoking; their blood boiling inside them.
Aghast, Mac retreated into the cold, dark cabin. He pulled the door closed behind him, but not before a huge pot to his left—twice the size of the others—cracked open and something massive shouldered into view. His brain struggled to comprehend those moving plates of bronze, the razored maw full of flames, the piston of its legs.
Then John drew him back and closed the door on the unholy sight. He shifted a bronze bar in place, closing them in, locking the monsters out.
No, not monsters.
John met his eyes and named them. “Tuurngaq.”
Mac nodded, knowing it to be true.
Demons.
11:40 A.M.
Elena huddled on the rubberized bottom of the Zodiac. The pontoon boat had retreated from shore and hovered in the meltwater current. As she stared back, she shivered with far more than the cold.
Across the way, the ancient dhow burned. Smoke choked the view as flames danced deeper in the darkness. Closer at hand, thin ribbons of golden fire flowed from the ruins of the ship and drained into the meltwater stream. There they formed flaming rafts along the banks and spread fiery fingers toward them.
The woman at the bow barked to the helmsman. He nodded and swung the Zodiac away. They dared not risk those flames. Even now the intense heat was melting the ice overhead. Ancient glacial waters showered down, but rather than dousing the flames, the rainfall seemed to stoke the fire below.
By now, Helheim Glacier responded to the acid burning at its heart. Ice cracked and popped all around them. Perhaps knowing the tunnel could implode at any moment, the helmsman sped the Zodiac faster.
Elena stared back toward the dhow as their boat skidded around a bend. Before she lost sight of the ancient ship, something pushed through the smoke. She prayed it was Mac, somehow miraculously still alive. But what appeared instead, shrouded in a pall of smoke, was a massively shouldered beast, its ruddy bulk glowing with an inner fire. She caught a glimpse of horns—then the sight vanished as the Zodiac rounded the bend.
She settled back around and hugged her knees to her chest.
She felt leaden, in shock after the horrors of the past few minutes.
Moments ago, as the map had been loaded aboard the boat, she had heard Nelson scream. All eyes had turned to the eerie glow emanating from the hold of the ship. The team leader had silently pointed to the boat, and the assault team rushed through the crack in the hull. Once inside, gunfire chattered hollowly.
Elena had covered her ears, picturing Mac, Nelson, John.
Then came the screams.
Even her palms could not block the terror and blood in those cries. One of the gunmen reappeared, crashing blindly to his knees outside the crack in the hull. He looked like he had donned a suit of fiery bronze armor, but these plates shifted and clawed at his body, ripping through neoprene and skin. Blood boiled from the tears. His body arched back savagely, cracking spine and bone—then exploded in a ruin of blackened flesh and bright flames.
The team leader’s hulking bodyguard grabbed his charge by the shoulder and drew her and the remaining men to the Zodiac. The woman resisted at first, even taking a step toward the dhow, but by then the ship was burning, flames spreading. She scowled, turned her back, and waved them all into the boat and out into the meltwater channel.
The woman was not taking any chances at losing the hard-fought treasure, even if the map wasn’t intact. As the Zodiac sped along the icy river, dark eyes found Elena. As the woman silently stared, she used two fingers to pull back the neoprene hood of her wetsuit and shake out a fall of hair as black as a raven’s wing. Elena saw gears turning behind that hard, calculating gaze, clearly contemplating what to do with her prisoner.
The woman finally turned away as the Zodiac shot free of the glacier and into open air. Winds immediately assaulted them. Whitecaps ridged the waters of the fjord. A fog still clung to the sea, but its thick cloak had shredded apart.
A storm was coming.
As the Zodiac bounced through the chop, the destination came into view through the scraps of fog. A black conning tower stuck out of the blue sea. As the Zodiac rushed toward it, the submarine rose enough to expose a deck sluicing with seawater. The helmsman drove the Zodiac’s bow onto that wet deck, lodging it there.
The leader hopped out and gave swift orders. Two men hauled the heavy map box, while the giant came for Elena. She avoided his touch, shrugging away from his hand, and climbed out on her own.
With everyone offloaded, the helmsman abandoned the Zodiac and kicked it out to sea. Then he raised an assault rifle and strafed the pontoons, causing it to start slipping beneath the waves. As it spun away, Elena felt the rising rumble of the sub’s engines through the deck plates. It seemed the team was not wasting any time evacuating the area.
Except to attend to one last task.