Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,122

and slipped it back on. “Sully’s waiting for us, kid.”

Jada swore, snapping her gun back into its holster. She kept swearing over and over again, the profanity like a mantra as she jammed her flashlight into her backpack and then turned to look at him defiantly.

“It’s gonna be—” he began.

Jada punched him in the arm. “Just shut up and run.”

Drake felt a strange, mad surrender then. Not to death but to fate. An old song floated into his mind, one Sully played from time to time: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. He’d never understood just how true that was until this moment. Free, exhilarated by his terror and hope, he took Jada’s hand, and they ran to the tunnel’s end and onto the ledge. Their hands unclasped just as they reached the edge, and then they launched themselves full speed across the twelve-foot gap.

For an eyeblink, Drake felt weightless, with the jagged rocks below and the slivers of moonlight high above. Then gravity took hold, and they began to fall. He windmilled his arms to keep balanced in the air, and then he slammed into the far wall, cracking his head against it. He slid to the ledge, then spun around and saw Jada land on her belly, legs hanging out over the yawning darkness below. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase and found none, and he knew she was going over, knew she would die broken and bloody.

He caught her wrist, throwing himself backward so he wouldn’t be pulled along with her. He slammed the heel of his boot against the remains of a support that once had held up this end of the missing bridge. The rocky ledge scraped his back and legs as he dragged her up on top of him, and for a moment they lay there, hearts racing together. Then a stray bullet struck the wall above them, sending tiny shards of rock flying, and they were in motion. Drake rolled Jada off him, and the two got to their knees and turned to look at the scene playing out across the ravine.

Half a dozen hooded men were still scaling the wall below the opposite ledge. Many lay dead, crumpled in bloody heaps around the mercenaries and protectors who were still trying desperately to murder one another. Olivia remained pinned against the wall, with Perkins putting himself between her and the hooded men. At least five of the mercenaries were down, wounded or dead—he figured probably the latter. The Protectors of the Hidden Word didn’t seem like the wounding kind.

Henriksen let out a primitive, furious roar and grabbed hold of the hooded man who’d been trying to cut him open. The big Norwegian, a blond silhouette captured in the illumination from someone else’s flashlight, slammed the hooded man against the wall twice, then a third time. The echo of cracking bone mixed with the sounds of death and battle, and then Henriksen hurled the man into the ravine.

Then he spun and stared right at Drake.

“He’s looking at—” Jada started.

“Us,” Drake agreed, standing up and waving. “Jump! It’s your only shot!”

“What are you doing?” Jada demanded.

But even as she spoke, Henriksen stooped and snatched the gun from a dead mercenary, slung it across his back, and retreated a couple of steps before sprinting for the edge.

Olivia screamed and pushed past Perkins, taking aim and firing while Henriksen was airborne.

The Norwegian crashed into the wall and almost fell backward into the ravine before Drake steadied him. Only then did Drake realize that Olivia had missed. Across the gap, she shrieked in anger and started shooting at the three of them. There were still hooded men trying to get to her, to cut her throat, but she was more concerned with trying to make sure they died first.

Perkins knocked her back against the wall, saving her from a blade that whistled through the air and would have caught her in the chest. But the action cost him, and as he turned to take aim, two of the hooded men descended on him, their blades rising and falling, blood spattering the lens of his flashlight so that its beam was darkened with spots of shadow that had been his life, now extinguished.

Still, the odds had changed. Assault rifles tended to have that effect. The last few hooded men came over the ledge and were shot before they could make it a handful of feet. The mercenaries were going to win this, but either way, Drake knew