'Good to go,' Camel reported. 'Pa.s.s the line up.'

The sand-coloured armoured flex cable hung in long loops from Hazo's crooked elbow. The slight-statured Kurd pa.s.sed Camel the business end of the line - a shielded optical lens tip. The cable's other end connected to a toaster-sized portable command unit that was mostly lithium battery.

Camel began threading the Snake through the PVC.

'Clear?' Jason asked.

'Yeah, it's going through,' Camel said. 'Smooth as a colonoscopy. Keep it coming, Hazo.'

Meanwhile, Meat flipped back the device's lid, which doubled as the LCD viewing screen, and powered on the unit. The setup was similar to a compact laptop: full-size keyboard, touchpad mouse, some simple controls. From the carrying case, he retrieved what looked like a videogame joystick, plugged it into a port on the unit's rear panel. With the touch of a b.u.t.ton, the halogen floodlight mounted on the Snake's tip lit up. The streaming video came through bright and clear.

'We have eyes,' Meat reported. He reached into the case again, grabbed the unit's headphones and put them on. Then he adjusted the audio level on the integrated microphone.

Jason came over and crouched beside him to get a look at the images coming back from inside the cave.

As Camel pushed more flex cable through the pipe, the camera advanced further down the b.u.mpy slope of rocks until it found gravel.

'Hold it there,' Meat said. He pulled back on the joystick while pressing his thumb on the control b.u.t.ton. Like a charmed cobra, the cable curled at the tip (an integrated hydraulic balance kept the camera level). The first clear pictures immediately shone bright and clear.

'We're in,' Meat said. Just behind the blocked entry, smooth parallel walls set roughly two metres apart tapered off into the darkness. 'Not your typical cave.'

'No, it certainly isn't.' Jason studied the image, saw no sign of activity. 'All right, Camel, keep it moving ... slow and steady.'

'Hear anything yet?' Jason asked.

'Nothing,' he reported. 'It's quiet in there. Really quiet.'

Jam jumped off the pile and helped Hazo feed more loops to Camel.

A few metres in, Meat spotted something on the walls. 'Hey, see that?'

'Hold up,' Jason called up to Camel. The picture steadied. 'What is it?' he asked Meat.

'Something on the left wall,' he replied, squinting tight at the screen. He toggled the joystick to get a better angle, then zoomed out for a wide shot.

When the picture came into focus, Jason was amazed at what he was seeing: the entire left wall was filled with narrative scenes carved in pristine bas-relief. The central figure depicted in the scenes was a shapely woman holding a cylindrical object that emanated wavy lines. a.s.sembled around her were men and women presenting gifts and food. There was even a group genuflecting as if in worship. Beneath her feet was a repeating pattern of nautilus-shaped swirls. 'Whoa,' Meat said. 'That's weird.' He panned side to side. 'Looks like a mural or something.'

'Sure does,' Jason agreed. 'Hazo, come take a look at this.'

The Kurd pa.s.sed the coiled cable to Jam and joined them.

'What do you make of that?'

Hazo's brow rumpled. After ten seconds, he shook his head. 'I don't know this ... ah ... but this rosette here?' He pointed to a bracelet on the woman's wrist. 'This means she is like a G.o.d, or how you say ... ?' He fished for the word.

'Divine?' Jason surmised.

'Yes, divinity. This says divinity.'

'So she's a G.o.ddess. Some kind of religious image.'

'I think so. But not Christian. And Muslims would never allow these pictures. Very blasphemous.'

Pointing to the swirls on the image, Jason asked, 'Is this supposed to be a river?'

'Um, yes. I'd agree with that.'

'And what's this in her hands?'

Hazo shook his head. 'A large fruit ... um, no ... maybe a container. These lines ...' Hazo said, tilting his head sideways to ascertain a meaning. 'Maybe a light?'

'Or something radiating from it.'

Meat gave Jason a surprised look. 'What, like magic?'

He shrugged. 'All right, let's doc.u.ment everything. Meat, take some still shots, then keep the camera moving along this wall.'

'Got it,' Meat said.

For the next ten minutes, Camel worked more cable through the pipe to push the camera deeper and deeper into the pa.s.sage. The images on the left wall had become progressively disturbing. The swirls rose with each 'frame', and Hazo's early guess that this portrayed rising flood waters proved correct, when later images showed bodies and animals being swept 'downstream' in elongated swirls.

Most disturbing, however, was how the story's depiction of the woman progressed. Her devotees from frame one had obviously had a change of heart, because the final frames showed men binding her, then leading her away with spears to the mountains. The final frame depicted the woman's gruesome beheading.

'She must've gotten too lippy with them,' Meat joked as he saved the image as a pix file.

Jason shook his head. 'Not funny.'

At the end of the storyboard, the wall was covered top to bottom in wedge-shaped hashes laid out in neat rows. Jason asked Hazo to take a gander at what it might mean.

This time Hazo was quick to respond: 'That looks like a very ancient alphabet. Maybe from Sumer.'

'Sumer?' Meat asked.

'The southern region of ancient Iraq,' Jason told him.

'Yes,' Hazo concurred. 'Sumerian.'

'So what is this place?' Meat asked. 'One of Saddam's old bunkers? He liked all this ancient stuff, right? Thought he was the reincarnation of a Babylonian king or something ...'

'Correct,' Hazo said. 'King Nebuchadnezzar.'

Jason shook his head. 'We've seen plenty of bunkers. Nothing like this.' He rubbed his neck while glancing over at what remained of the optical cable. 'Let's push the camera in as far as we can. See if we can spot anything else.'

With the camera reoriented straight, the hewn pa.s.sage walls abruptly transitioned to rough, uncut stone. Three metres deeper, the camera approached a split.

'Which way?' Meat asked Jason.

'Left.'

'Keep it moving ... steady push,' Meat called up to Camel. Working the joystick, he commanded the flex cable to bend along the turn.

'How far in do you think we are right now?' Jason asked.

Meat looked over at what little flex cable remained. 'Eighteen, twenty metres maybe.'

The light stripped the shadows off the tunnel's crenulated outcroppings.

'Wait ...' Meat said to Jason, pressing an index finger against the headphone speaker. 'I hear something.' He punched a b.u.t.ton on the keyboard and the audio feed played over the unit's built-in speakers. Sliding the headphones off, he raised the volume some more and listened intently. Jason and Hazo crowded in beside him.

First came the distinct chatter of voices, the dialect unmistakably Arabic. Two, maybe three different men, Jason guessed. The exchange was forceful, argumentative. To him, this was an encouraging development. The Arabs had yet to find a way out. Maybe this tunnel wasn't so extensive after all.

'They see the light,' Hazo whispered, translating the exchange. 'They don't know what to do.'

The next sounds were metallic bolts sliding and clicking - weapons being readied.

'Maybe we should pull the camera-' Meat started.

On the screen, a glossy shape poked out from around the corner and winked in the light.

'Is that a mirror?' Jason said.

'I think so,' Meat said. 'We should pull the camera out.'

'Good idea,' Jason said. 'All right, Camel,' he loudly called out, 'let's pull it back.'

But before Camel could react, the tiny flicker dropped off the unit's screen just before one of the Arabs popped into view and stormed towards the camera. His rifle was safely slung over his shoulder, but between his hands was a melon-sized rock. His dirt-smeared face twisted into a snarl as he raised the rock up high over his head and lunged at the camera. The last image was a clear shot of the man's grungy sandals. The last sound was a resounding thwack thwack that rattled the unit's speakers. Then the image snapped offline and turned to snow. that rattled the unit's speakers. Then the image snapped offline and turned to snow.

'That's not good,' Hazo said.

'Ouch,' Meat said, cringing.

Camel began pulling out the flex cable in fathoms and Jam coiled the line back into neat loops. A minute later, the flattened tip popped out from the conduit, smoking and crackling.

'Sorry buddy,' Camel said to Meat in mock apology as he a.s.sessed the damage. 'That thing's toast.' He tossed it to Jam.

'At least we know they're still in there, Sarge,' Jam said.

'I was thinking the same thing.'

'Guys,' Camel said, peering off in the distance. He spit a gob of chewing tobacco on to the ground and pointed out along the flatland. They all turned in unison.

Three kilometres out, a military convoy whipped a billowing dust cloud up into the blazing orange sunset. A UH-60 Blackhawk was flying random crisscrosses above it to scout the terrain.

'Cavalry's here,' Camel grunted.

8.

LAS VEGAS.

Once the muted thumping inside the vault stopped, Randall Stokes sauntered to the wet bar, pulled a tumbler off the shelf, and poured two fingers of very expensive single-malt Scotch, neat. He withdrew a plastic pillbox from his jacket pocket, popped open the lid, and pinched out a pure white Zoloft tablet.

Putting the pill on his tongue, he raised the gla.s.s towards the vault door.

'Cheers, Frank.'

He nipped at the Scotch and swilled down the dose of tranquillity. Then he went and sat behind the desk.

It hurt when good men - loyal men - were sacrificed for the greater good. Military life had a way of hammering into one's head the notion that brotherhood always came first. Survival could be a singular effort, but lasting victory could never be. Fighters are made, not born. And that was certainly true with Frank Roselli.

Roselli was an extremely valuable a.s.set. He'd perfectly coordinated the project in Iraq, which, given the mission's complex logistics and broad scope, was no easy task. Though it was Stokes's brainchild, Roselli had tackled recruiting the multi-disciplined talent who took the project from concept to reality. From around the globe, he'd a.s.sembled a team of renowned archaeologists and anthropologists and brought them into the middle of a war zone to unlock the greatest discovery in human history. It was Roselli who'd designed the ingenious security protocols and eliminated redundancies so that each scientist working on site knew only a piece of the cave's intricate puzzle. Most impressive was Roselli's brilliant handling of high-ranking members of Congress, the FBI and the armed forces, to bring together the funding and technological know-how. And as far as the stakeholders were concerned, it was all an anonymous debit against the defence budget in the name of national security. So thorough was the mission's cover that even the president's eagle-eyed Cabinet members would give the appropriations a mere cursory glance.

Stokes and Roselli had been together since the beginning: through twelve weeks of boot camp at Parris Island and the gruelling fifty-four-hour Crucible march; side by side at the Emblem Ceremony, receiving their eagle, globe and anchor pins; at Marine Special Operations School learning the tactical art of irregular warfare.

Best friends.

Brothers.

Staring out the window, Stokes lost himself in the muddled reflections that danced across the cathedral's reflective gla.s.s dome. The colours pinwheeled and shifted like a kaleidoscope. Entranced, his mind's eye brought him back to the Kuwaiti desert: distant oil fields burning like torches against a night sky as black as oil; the paradoxical bitter cold of a sunless desert set ablaze. He could still feel the sixty-five-pound field pack weighing on his back, the ice-cold fifteen-pound M40A1 sniper rifle biting into his hands; the sand creeping down into his combat boots (despite three wraps of duct tape around the boot top). Even the choking stench of smouldering crude seemed fresh in his nostrils.

And there beside him, equally vivid, he could still see Roselli - forty pounds lighter, all muscle - the runt of the litter who had the p.i.s.s and vinegar of a man twice his size. He'd witnessed Roselli beat a six-foot-two recruit unconscious with a boot for calling him Napoleon. Roselli was one tough mother who never gave up the fight. He'd even saved Stokes's life by bayoneting an Iraqi soldier who tried to attack Stokes with a knife.

Now Stokes had repaid the deed by locking Roselli in an airless room, using the only viable weapon he could - one that stabbed much deeper than the bayonet: deception. Nothing n.o.ble about that, Stokes lamented.

He drained the Scotch.

Pushing down a welling sense of self-loathing, Stokes reminded himself that nothing could deter the mission's success. So much was at stake. There was a new battlefront now - a new killing field. The last generation of fanatics was mostly desperate, idealistic kids blinded by radical religious teachings with no regard for any human life - infidels and innocents alike. But the leaders now operating behind the scenes to manipulate these malleable foot soldiers were by far the most dangerous enemy he'd ever encountered - a societal cancer that strove to destroy civilization. An enemy that wasn't a country, didn't wear uniform, had no generals or central power structure, and was fuelled by an ingrained hatred that no army could ever remedy. The industrialized world lacked the resources and mettle to effect any meaningful change in the Middle East. Left to conventional tactics, this modern war could last decades, perhaps generations. When Stokes had worked as a counter-terrorist operative, he'd seen little proof that anyone knew a viable long-term solution. One thing, however, was certain: in the end, only one side would remain standing.

'It's for the best,' a soothing voice said from behind.

Startled, Stokes spun around in his chair.

There was no one in the room.

When would He present Himself?

'Yes, it is is for the best,' Stokes agreed. 'Frank's work was vital ... but he didn't understand the grand design to which we aspire.' for the best,' Stokes agreed. 'Frank's work was vital ... but he didn't understand the grand design to which we aspire.'

'Few do, my son.'

Stokes's eyes darted back and forth, searching for an apparition. 'They found the cave. You know that, of course. Will this jeopardize our work?'

'Have faith. All is in accordance.'