The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel Read online

  This book is dedicated to

  all the men and women

  who serve in the

  Australian Defence Force

  The Five Greatest Warriors

  Matthew Reilly

  THE FIRST

  SHALL BE THE NOBLEST, SCHOLAR AND SOLDIER BOTH.

  THE SECOND

  A NATURAL LEADER OF MEN,

  NONE SHALL ACHIEVE GREATER FAME THAN HE.

  THE THIRD

  SHALL BE THE GREATEST WARLORD KNOWN TO HISTORY.

  THE FOURTH

  IS THE GREAT OBSESSOR, SEEKING ONLY GLORY,

  BUT GLORY IS A LIE.

  THE FIFTH

  SHALL FACE THE GREATEST TEST AND DECIDE IF

  ALL SHALL LIVE OR DIE.

  5,000 YEAR OLD INSCRIPTION FOUND ON

  THE SPHINX STELE, GIZA, EGYPT KNOWN

  AS THE RHYME OF THE WARRIORS.

  A MORTAL BATTLE,

  BETWEEN FATHER AND SON.

  ONE FIGHTS FOR ALL,

  AND THE OTHER FOR ONE.

  3,OOO YEAR OLD INSCRPTON FOUND ON A

  CHINESE SHRINE IN THE WU GORGE, CENTRAL CHINA.

  THE STORY SO FAR.

  The Five Greatest Warriors is the third part of the story begun with Seven Ancient Wonders and continued in The Six Sacred Stones.

  In Seven Ancient Wonders, an intrepid international team led by CAPTAIN JACK WEST JR found the fabled Capstone of the Great Pyramid at Giza among the (widely scattered) remains of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

  After rescuing and raising a young girl named LILY—who along with her brother, ALEXANDER, was the latest in a long line of gifted Oracles from Siwa in Egypt—Jack managed to set the Capstone in place on the summit of the Great Pyramid before the occurrence of a rare solar event known as the Tartarus Rotation.

  Jack’s multi-national team was made up of soldiers from several of the world’s smaller nations. It included: ZOE KISSANE, from Ireland; Sergeant Zahir al Anzar al Abbas from the United Arab Emirates who was renamed POOH BEAR by Lily; Lieutenant Benjamin Cohen from Israel, now known as STRETCH; a crazy pilot from New Zealand named SKY MONSTER; and a rogue American submariner named J.J. Wickham, a.k.a. the SEA RANGER.

  Providing the team with research and expert knowledge was Jack’s long-time mentor and friend, Professor Max T. Epper, call-sign WIZARD, and two young Scottish grad students, the red headed twins LACHLAN and JULIUS ADAMSON (call-sign: the Cowboys).

  As it happened, the Tartarus Rotation was actually the precursor to a far larger celestial event, the return of a ‘Dark Star’—the opposite of our Sun, its dark twin. Known as a zero-point field, this Dark Star is a moving body of negative energy that will destroy all life on Earth when it returns to the edge of our solar system in March 2008.

  In The Six Sacred Stones, it was discovered that this Dark Star was indeed returning to the outer reaches of our solar system. It was further discovered that a device built by a mysterious ancient civilisation and known as THE MACHINE exists on our planet and which, if rebuilt, will repel the negative energy of the Dark Star and save the world.

  Rebuilding the Machine, however meant first finding six magnificent underground ‘temple-shrines’ scattered around the Earth, each built in the shape of an inverted bronze pyramid and known as a VERTEX.

  At each Vertex, a long-lost PILLAR—a dazzling rectangular diamond the size of a brick—must be set in place: the First Pillar at tile First Vertex, the Second at the Second Vertex and so on. The locations of the six lost Pillars was another mystery that had to be solved.

  It was this mission, the mission to rebuild the Machine, that was begun in The Six Sacred Stones.

  During that quest, it was discovered that other parties were also seeking to rebuild the Machine: a powerful triple alliance of the Caldwell Group from America, China and Saudi Arabia.

  The American side of this alliance was led by Jack’s father, JACK WEST SR (known as WOLF), the Chinese by COLONEL MAO GONGLI and the Saudis by a Saudi spy named VULTURE who had worked for a time with Jack’s team, only to betray them. Aiding Vulture was SCIMITAR, Pooh Bear’s older brother, who joined Vulture in his betrayal of the team.

  Through the influence of the shadowy Caldwell Group—a military-industrial organisation that had once held sway over the American president—Wolf still commanded a special forces branch of the US military, the Commander-in-Chief’s In Extremis Force, or THE CIEF, which he used as his own private army.

  Jack and his father had long been estranged, and at one point in the adventure, in a mysterious mine in Ethiopia, Wolf ruthlessly tried to kill Jack, but failed.

  A further group aiding Wolf was a coalition of three European royal houses, those of Britain, Denmark and Russia. They were represented by the beautiful IOLANTHE COMPTON-JONES of the British Royal Family.

  Finally, a sinister brotherhood of Japanese nationals, humiliated by Japan’s defeat in World War II, entered the fray, only with a different agenda: they did not want to see the Machine rebuilt at all. Led by Wizard’s one-time colleague TANK TANAKA, this Blood Brotherhood wanted to see the world destroyed by the Dark Star, to avenge their defeat in World War II. To achieve this end, they managed to infiltrate Wolf’s team with one of their own men, a Japanese—American Marine codenamed SWITCHBLADE.

  After many adventures, Jack ultimately managed to plant the First and Second Pillars at the First and Second Vertices (at Abu Simbel and Cape Town respectively), but not without loss, for The Six Sacred Stones ended with tile team in desperate straits.

  One of their number, Stretch, having been captured by Wolf, was taken back to Israel to face his angry former masters at the Mossad. Pooh Bear was last seen heading off to rescue his friend.

  Zoe, Wizard and Lily—having survived a terrifying ordeal at the hands of the Neetha tribe in the jungles of the Congo—dashed to southern Africa in Jack’s plane, the Halicarnassus, to help Jack at the Second Vertex.

  They brought with them DIANE CASSIDY, an American archaeologist whom they had rescued from the Neetha. Unfortunately, before they could help Jack, they were forced to flee southern Africa in the Halicarnassus, with enemy fighters on their tail.

  One unexpected witness to Jack’s astonishing success at the Second Vertex was Lily’s best friend, 12-year-old ALBY CALVIN, who had been brought there by Wolf as his captive. After Jack had laid the Pillar, Wolf left young Alby to die in the dark cavern containing the Second Vertex.

  As for Jack himself, after laying the Second Pillar—and foiling Switchblade’s plan—he was last seen falling into the fathomless abyss beneath the Second Vertex alongside the furious Switchblade.

  The fates of Jack, Stretch, Pooh Bear, Lily and their team, and the search for the final four Vertices and the laying of the last four Pillars are the subject of The Five Greatest Warriors.

  THE SECOND VERTEX

  BENEATH THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

  SOUTH AFRICA

  17 DECEMBER, 2007, 0325 HOURS

  Jack West fell.

  Fast.

  Down into the black abyss beneath the inverted pyramid that was the Second Vertex.

  As he plummeted into the darkness, Jack looked up to see the gigantic pyramid receding into the distance, getting smaller and smaller, the jagged walls of the abyss crowding in around it.

  Falling through the air beside him was Switchblade, the Japanese— American US Marine who moments earlier had betrayed Wolf and almost derailed his plan to insert the Second Pillar in its rightful place at the peak of the pyramid. It turned out that Switchblade’s Japanese blood was more important to him than his American upbringing.

  But after a last-ditch swing from Jack and a desperate struggle above the aby
ss, Jack had jammed the Pillar in place just as the two of them had dropped from the upside-down peak and commenced their fall into the bottomless darkness.

  The rocky walls of the abyss rushed past Jack in a blur of speed.

  He fell with Switchblade in a tumbling ungainly way, their limbs still awkwardly entwined.

  As they plummeted, Switchblade punched and scratched and lashed out at Jack, before grabbing his shirt and glaring at him with baleful eyes, screaming above the wind, ‘You! You did this! At least I know you’ll die with me!’

  Jack parried away the crazed Marine’s blows as they fell.

  ‘No, I won’t . . . ’ he said grimly as he suddenly kicked Switchblade square in the chest, pushing himself away from the suicidal Marine—at the same time, grabbing something from a holster on Switchblade’s back, something that every Force Recon Marine carried.

  His Maghook.

  Switchblade saw the device in Jack’s hands and his eyes widened in horror. He tried to grab it, but now Jack was out of his reach.

  ‘No! No!!’

  Still falling, Jack pivoted in the air, turning his back on Switchblade to face the wall of the abyss.

  He fired the Maghook.

  Whump!

  The high-tech grappling hook flew out from its gun-like launcher, its metal claws snapping outward as it did so, its 150-foot-long reinforced nylon cable wobbling like a tail behind it.

  The grappling hook’s claws hit the wall of the abyss, scraped against it, searching for a purchase before—whack!—they found an uneven section of rock and caught—and instantly Jack’s cable went taut—and his fall was abruptly and violently arrested and it took all his might to keep a grip on the Maghook’s launcher.

  But hold on he did and as he swung in toward the vertical wall of the abyss, the last thing he saw behind him was the shocked, furious, powerless, horrified and beaten look on Switchblade’s face as he fell into black nothingness, his evil mission a failure—a failure that was multiplied a hundredfold by the realisation that Jack West had got the better of him with one of his own weapons and that he was now going to die alone.

  Jack swung into the wall of the abyss with a colossal thump that almost dislocated his left shoulder.

  Silence.

  For a moment, Jack hung there from the cable of Switchblade’s Maghook, dangling from the rocky vertical wall of the great abyss, high above the centre of the world and at least a thousand feet below the upside-down bronze pyramid of the Vertex. Despite its immense size, it now looked positively tiny.

  Closing his eyes, Jack exhaled the biggest sigh of relief of his life. ‘What the hell were you thinking, Jack?’ he whispered to himself, catching his breath, letting the adrenalin rush subside.

  A flutter of feathers made him spin and suddenly a small brown peregrine falcon alighted on his shoulder.

  Horus.

  His faithful bird pecked affectionately at his ear, nuzzling him.

  Jack smiled wearily. ‘Thanks, bird. I’m glad I survived, too.’

  Distant shouts from up in the Vertex made him look upward— Wolf’s people must have noticed that the Pillar had been set in place and were now sending men to get it.

  Jack sighed. He could never hope to climb back up in time to catch them, let alone stop them. He might have saved the world and their lives and killed the traitor in their midst, but now the bad guys were going to get the booty: the Second Pillar’s reward, the mysterious concept known only as heat.

  But there was nothing Jack could do about that now.

  He turned to Horus. ‘You coming?’

  And with that, he gazed up at the pyramid high above him and after a deep breath, reeled in the Maghook, grabbed a handhold on the rough surface of the abyss’s wall, and began the long climb upward.

  It took Jack almost an hour to scale the wall of the abyss—by firing the Maghook up it and then climbing up the hook’s cable one hundred and fifty feet at a time.

  It was slow going, since the rocky wall was largely sheer and slick, and sometimes the grappling hook found no purchase at all and just fell back down towards Jack.

  But after about fifty minutes of such climbing, Jack slid over the edge of a stone rail and lay on his back on the precipice, his chest heaving, sucking in air. Horus landed lightly beside him.

  When Jack sat up, he saw the magnificent underground city constructed in supplication to the inverted pyramid, with its hollow towers, its streets of inky black liquid and, through the forest of bridges and towers, the massive ziggurat rising in its centre; the whole scene lit by Wolf’s dying amber flares.

  Of course, the entire supercavern was now deserted, Wolf’s force having long since departed.

  Also gone, Jack noted sadly, were his companions, the Adamson twins and the Sea Ranger. Jack imagined that, thinking him dead, they had rightly hurried down the long underwater passageway that led back to the open ocean in the Sea Ranger’s submarine—

  Movement.

  Jack spun, his eyes focusing on the summit of the ziggurat, just visible between all the towers.

  ‘Oh my God . . . ’ he breathed, registering who it was.

  There, sitting totally alone on top of the mighty ziggurat, his head bowed, one of his arms in a sling, was a small boy, his daughter’s best friend, Alby Calvin.

  ***

  Left alone in this enormous space, with his wounded shoulder aching, and with Jack West Jr’s battered EDNY fireman’s helmet sitting in his lap, Alby had given up all hope of escape and was waiting for the last flares to fizzle out, when he heard the shouting voice.

  ‘Alby! Albeeee!’

  He snapped to look up—fresh tears still running down his cheeks—to see a tiny figure over by the edge of the abyss waving his arms.

  Jack.

  Alby’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

  Jack negotiated his way across the underground mini-metropolis, over to the central ziggurat, using Wolf’s plank bridges where he could and swinging across the wider thoroughfares with the Maghook where he had to.

  The black ooze that filled the city’s streets appeared to be a thick mud-like substance—semi-liquid and goopy. If you fell into it, you didn’t get out.

  As he traversed the avenues, he tried his radio. ‘Sea Ranger, come in? Do you read me?’

  No reply.

  His small handheld radio didn’t have the signal strength to reach the Sea Ranger in his submarine.

  Moving in his unorthodox way, Jack hurried across the underground city.

  At last, he came to the base of the ziggurat and bounded up its stairs, arriving at the roof, where he slid to Alby’s side and embraced him as if he were his own son.

  Likewise, Alby hurled his good arm around Jack, closing his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  ‘I thought I was going to die here, by myself in the dark . . . ’ he whimpered.

  ‘I wouldn’t let that happen, Alby.’ Jack released the boy from his bearhug. ‘You’re too good a friend to Lily . . . and to me. Plus, your mother would absolutely kill me.’

  Alby stared at him. ‘You just fell into a chasm with a guy who was trying to kill everyone in the whole world and you’re afraid of my mom?’

  ‘Hell yeah. When it comes to your well-being, your mom’s scary.

  Alby smiled at that. Then he lifted Jack’s fireman’s helmet from his lap and offered it to Jack. ‘I think this belongs to you.’

  Jack took it, and placed it on his head, pulling the chin-strap tight. Just putting it on made him look and feel whole again.

  ‘Thanks. I’ve been missing that.’

  He nodded at Alby’s sling. ‘So what happened to you?’

  ‘I got shot.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, your morn’s really gonna kill me. By who?’

  ‘By that guy who fell into the chasm with you. Back in Africa, in the Neetha kingdom.’

  ‘Maybe there is justice in the world,’ Jack said. ‘Come on, little buddy, this ain’t over yet, we gotta move. We have to ca
tch up with the Sea Ranger and the twins.’ He hefted Alby to his feet.

  ‘How are we going to do that?’ Alby asked.