Armageddon - By James Patterson Page 0,46
it for a long, long time.
“I meant how you dealt with that SEAL, son. You met his anger with restraint.”
“Thanks. I guess meeting Xanthos has mellowed me.”
My father smiled. “ ‘Do not give sway to the negative way.’ Good advice.”
“Yeah.”
“Giving you a little extra advice is why I’m here, son. I’ll be joining you from time to time on this mission, but strictly in an advisory capacity.”
“Outstanding. I’ll take all the advice you’ve got to give.”
We moved closer to the mouth of the abandoned coal mine.
“I figured this would be as good a place as any to start searching for Mel and Abbadon,” I said. “I think it leads to what Number 2 calls the underworld.”
“It does,” said my father. “But be on guard as you descend into Number 2’s domain, son. You are about to enter a realm few have ever journeyed into. Fewer still have come back to talk about it.”
My father vanished and I set up a homing beacon to guide in the fleet of helicopters.
As the landing skids slid across the windswept weeds of an open field and the heavily armed troops jostled out of the choppers, I materialized my four friends.
“So, Daniel, is this where you took out Attila?” Willy asked, surveying the scene.
“Yeah.”
“Hey,” said Joe. “The grease stain on that tree over there—is that him?”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“Gross, Daniel,” said Emma.
Joe kept going. “And what about that oily splotch on that rock, and that chunky stuff dangling off that shrub, and that bony bit stuck in the mud?”
“Okay,” said Dana, “that’s just disgusting, Joe.”
“I know! This guy Attila was all over the place. This must be what they mean when they say you’re spreading yourself too thin.”
Agent Judge came jogging over to join us, followed by his 150-member strike force, all of them outfitted with serious alien weaponry clattering and clanking against their backs. My father wasn’t there to greet his old friend, Agent Judge. In his role as special advisor to the team leader, he would be visible to and advising only me.
“So this is the place?” said Agent Judge, gazing down into the dark tunnel.
“Yes, sir. It was the initial rally point for Abbadon and his minions, right before they launched their attack on D.C. This mineshaft leads down to a cavernous chamber. That room could very well be an entrance to his underworld empire.”
Agent Judge nodded and mumbled, “ ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ ”
He was quoting Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, an epic poem widely considered to be the preeminent work of Italian literature, about a previous descent into the devil’s lair—what Dante called “The Inferno.” That “abandon all hope” quote? According to Dante, it’s the inscription right outside the front door to hell, which, if my hunch was right, was where we were currently standing.
“Lock and load,” I shouted to the troops. They racked rounds into their weapons and charged up their whining blasters. I raised my hand and chopped it dead ahead at the entrance to the coal mine. It was time to begin our slow march into hell.
After about twenty yards, the sharply raked angle of the downward slope cut off all the daylight that had been streaming in through the squat entryway. We were plunged into total blackness. I blinked hard and switched my ocular nerves to their night-vision mode.
I could make out faint green blobs maybe another twenty yards in front of us. I closed my eyes so I could switch back to regular vision and shouted, “Light up your headlamps.”
I didn’t want my team stumbling around in the dark. I also didn’t want to go blind when they all switched on the light gear strapped to their helmets.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw 150 shafts of tungsten light shooting through the misty gloom.
I also saw bats.
Thousands and thousands of bats. Startled from their roosts by the light beams, they flooded up the mineshaft.
“Take them out!” shouted Willy.
But before the strike force could squeeze off a single round, the bat swarm washed over us like a leaf-choked stream rushing down a sewer drain during a downpour.
“Hold your fire!” I shouted. We were completely swallowed up by a dense cloud of squealing, flying rodents. I could feel their fuzzy bodies and rubbery wings brushing across my face, arms, neck, legs—every inch of my body. Claws became tangled in my hair. This was no place for weapon fire. If we started blasting the bats, we’d be simultaneously blasting one another.
The swarm of flying rodents