The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel by Matthew Reilly

Author:Matthew Reilly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, End of the world, General, Fiction - General, Popular American Fiction, Suspense, Adventure fiction, Thrillers, Suspense fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9781416577577
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-01-04T02:00:00+00:00

The first tower vomited a bubbling mass of glowing-hot lava from its chimney-like peak, lava that immediately began to ooze down the zig-zagging channels carved into its sides.

‘Go!’ Wolf yelled to Rapier.

Rapier, Astro and the other three CIEF men took off, bolting out across the stepping stone and ascending a narrow stairway that gave access to the first tower.

Astro charged up the stairs behind Rapier, breathing hard and fast.

‘Rapier! Go right and down!’ one of the spotters called in his ear.

They went right and down, skirting the lower half of the tower. Looking up as he ran, Astro glimpsed the oozing red lava trickling down the channels of the upper half, travelling slowly downward. Where he couldn’t actually see it, the telltale yellow glow of the superheated liquid told him where it was.

Guided by their two elevated spotters, the five-man team did a full circuit of the tower, clambering up and down its stairways— and Astro quickly realised that without the guides’ instructions, they would have got hopelessly lost very quickly.

He also noticed something else—something that you could see only when you encountered the tower’s walls up close.

The walls of the tower were not made of sheer stone. Rather the surface of the wall was comprised of a superfine mesh of tiny upwardly-pointed spikes. Touching the micro-spikes, Astro found they were viciously sharp. Just brushing your hand against them drew blood.

Then, abruptly, his group rounded a corner and arrived at the long stone bridge that led to the second tower.

They dashed out across it, Astro running close behind Rapier. As he ran, he saw that a bubbling body of lava was now oozing from the peak of the second tower.

They were being set off in sequence—giving you a chance to reach the summit, but also giving the lava four chances to catch you on the way back.

A spotter called, ‘Okay, cross the bridge and take the stairway leading—shwap!-shwap!’

Standing out on the bridge, Astro spun to look back up at the gateway just in time to see both of his spotters snap backwards, their heads vanishing in matching bursts of red, their bodies tumbling off their perch and freefalling all the way down to the tar lake.

‘What the—?’ the CIEF man behind Astro said a split second before he too was shot and hurled off the narrow bridge. He landed in the tar lake, emitting a half-scream before the simmering black goo melted the skin off his face and sucked him under.

Slit-fzzzzzz!

Astro ducked as a bullet intended for his head nicked his sleeve and fizzed away. He caught a glimpse of muzzle-flash—maybe two muzzle-flashes—high up near the gateway on the opposite side of the crater.

Two more Japanese snipers.

Snipers who had waited for them to get this far before opening fire.

‘We’re under fire!’ Rapier yelled into his throat mike. ‘We need cover! Give us some goddamn cover!’

Down on the path at lake-level, Jack stood and watched in horror as the tower team walked right into the trap.

The full extent of their situation unfolded in his mind:

The Japanese had more people in here.

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