Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,121

and he glanced at her.

“Now I know how Butch and Sundance felt,” she whispered, but her smile was strained and her eyes were damp with unshed tears.

“Do it,” Olivia said. “Kill—”

Massarsky shouted and backed away from the ravine, swinging his assault rifle around to aim at the edge.

“What the hell?” Garza yelled, and pulled the trigger.

All eyes turned toward the ravine as hooded men clutching metal claws dragged themselves onto the ledge, moving inhumanly fast. Garza’s bullets punched through one of them, sending blood spraying out into the gap, the body tumbling down onto the rocks below. Gunfire echoed off the walls of the ravine, mercenaries shouted, but the Protectors of the Hidden Word were silent as they attacked, killing and dying in equal measure.

One of them lunged at Drake, his blade whistling through the shadows in a wide arc, aimed for his throat.

22

The gunshot made Drake flinch even as he tried to dodge the killer’s knife. But the hooded man fell short, his lunge losing momentum, and he crashed to the rocky ledge at Drake’s feet and twitched once, then went still.

Jada stood behind him, gun in hand, looking like she might throw up. Her weapon was still holstered; she had managed to pick up his Glock. Amid the chaos of gunfire and voices, bloodshed and brutality, he darted forward and snatched the gun away from her. A hooded woman—one of the first females he’d seen among them—raced up, metal climbing claws like brass knuckles on her hands, ready to slash him to ribbons. Drake held his breath when he took aim and shot her in the chest.

They had no time for hesitation, but it would haunt him. Even in self-defense, killing haunted him. Almost always, he thought. Corelli might have been an exception.

With a glance around, he spotted Olivia up against the wall of the ravine, gun held out in front of her, firing at the hooded killers still swarming up from over the ledge. But Perkins and Garza were nearby, and they had firepower to spare. The semiautomatic weapons’ fire ripped at the air, the echoes punishingly loud.

Drake grabbed Jada’s hand and dragged her back into the tunnel that led back up to the torture chamber. For a moment, they were out of sight of both sets of killers. Drake turned to her, put a hand under her chin, and forced her to look up at him. Her gaze was far away, and he worried that she was in shock.

“Jada, listen to me.”

“I shot that man.”

“If you hadn’t, he’d have gutted me,” Drake said. “You saved my life. But we’re both on borrowed time here. Whoever wins out there, they’re going to kill us, so we’ve gotta run for it.”

She blinked as if coming awake. “If we try to go back, they’ll catch us. We’ll never make it to the surface.”

Drake shook his head. “No, no. I don’t want to go back.”

Jada glanced at the end of the tunnel and saw one of the hooded men straddling a mercenary on the ledge, slashing at the ex-soldier’s throat with a curved blade. Arterial blood sprayed in an arc.

“We can’t walk down the cliff paths. We’ll never get past them, and even if we did—”

“There isn’t time,” Drake said, his heart like a tiger trying to smash free of its cage. He thought his chest might burst, it was hammering so hard. “There’s only one way we’re surviving the next hundred seconds or so.”

One of the hooded men slipped into the tunnel, spotted them, and cocked back a hand in which he clutched a throwing knife. Drake shot him twice. Twelve shots left in the Glock’s magazine before he’d have to reload. The killer and his blade hit the rock floor at the same time. The man dragged himself to his knees, blood raining from his chest, and reached for the knife.

It was Jada who put the third bullet in him.

She had her own gun out now, the two of them staring at that opening, waiting for more of the killers to come for them. But through the opening, they could see the flashlight beams slashing the darkness, and enough of that light bounced off the walls that they could make out the dim outline of the tunnel across the ravine.

Jada stiffened and then spun toward him. “You can’t be serious. If we fall short, we’re dead.”

Drake holstered his gun. “We don’t jump for it, we die anyway.” He shoved his flashlight into his backpack, working fast, zipped it,