Armageddon - By James Patterson Page 0,49

rained down frozen boulders.

The avalanche swept six of our brave warriors off the face of the mountain.

I stood staring down in horror at their crumpled bodies, scattered across the glacial plane more than fifty meters below.

“We press on,” said Lieutenant Russell, who had been the last man to safely cross before the rockslide, grimly. “It’s what they would want us to do. It’s for the salvation of our world.” He gave one last look to the fallen, as if paying his last respects.

And then we did as he said and pressed on, shaken to the core by the horrible loss.

Hours later, twenty-four of us reached the summit, but there were no cheers of elation. A blinding blizzard immediately swept in and attacked us—a whiteout with winds that whipped our hard-shell climbing jackets like tent flaps in a tornado.

“Hang on!” I shouted.

The mountain rangers struggled to find hand- and footholds in the rocks.

“It’s a fast-moving storm,” Joe said, consulting the high-tech weather-radar app in his handheld unit. “It should blow through in a minute or two.”

I just prayed it didn’t blow away any more of our crew.

Ninety seconds later, just as Joe had predicted, the snow tapered off.

And moments after that, I felt water dribbling down both sides of my face.

Because all the ice that had accumulated on my goggles and climbing helmet was thawing, fast. So, too, was the snowcapped peak of the summit.

Like a freezer set to Defrost, the roof of the underworld was melting.

“What’s the temperature, Joe?” I shouted across the roar of ice floes rapidly splitting apart.

“Ninety-eight. And rising!”

Chunks of ice and rock sloughed down the sides of the mountain, burying the passes we had taken on our climb to the summit.

We would not be going out the way we had come in.

Chapter 67

ON THE OTHER side of the mountain, an extremely flat and crackled plateau stretched out in front of us for miles. On the far horizon, I could make out a faint dotted line of black-shrouded henchbeasts marching toward the brightly burning sun.

“Um, what’s the sun doing down here?” asked Dana.

“I think it’s Abbadon’s doing,” I suggested.

“How?” said Dana.

“I don’t know. Maybe the same way he magically dissipated my supposedly impenetrable protective dome.”

“True,” said Joe. “The smooth dude always seems to be one step ahead of you, Daniel.”

“Two steps,” Dana corrected. “Maybe three.”

“Gee, thanks for the pep talk, you guys. Come on. We need to find his hidey-hole.”

Willy, the best drill sergeant you could hope for, turned to the nineteen military men who were still with us. “Gentlemen, you were awesome climbing that mountain. How do you feel about crossing a desert wasteland?”

“An outstanding idea,” Lieutenant Russell said, working his way out of his harness and climbing gear. “Desert conditions don’t require nearly as much equipment.”

“Hoo-ah!” shouted the rest of the squad as they started shedding their heavy climbing paraphernalia and winter parkas.

“We push on?” Willy asked.

“We push on,” acknowledged Lieutenant Russell.

With Willy and me in the lead, my diminished squad began its long journey across the barren, parched plateau, which was crawling with giant scorpions, rattlesnakes, and poisonous spiders. The ground was riddled with cracks and fissures from baking beneath the withering heat of Abbadon’s underground sun—which, by the way, never budged. Joe pegged the temperature at 110 and holding steady.

After hours of hiking, we noticed that the blazing ball was still holding its high-noon position in the sky. The strike force team members put on their military-issue wraparound shades and fashioned sweatbands out of fabric torn from their uniforms.

Fortunately, I was able to keep everyone’s canteens filled with water just by imagining them full. But all the cool, refreshing water in the world couldn’t stave off the exhaustion brought on by the unrelenting sun.

Eight hours into the desert trek, my lips were as dry and crackled as the ground we were crossing.

You are being tested, Daniel, I heard my father say as he slowly faded into view beside me. This is all part of the game.

You call this a game? I lost six troops back there, and a half dozen more are ready to drop.

That may be true, but this is still the game that’s been played since the beginning of time.

I remembered the games my friends and I used to play. The fun we had jetting around on high-performance motorcycles. Playing with the elephants on Alpar Nok. Our round of extreme horseshoes, right before Abbadon’s henchbeasts slipped through my defensive shield. What I wouldn’t give to go back to Agent Judge’s farm