Operation Syria

— 15 —

“Nope,” Banks said a few minutes later. Maggie had come to him with a tale of a new find that needed recording for posterity and she’d made a good case for herself but he couldn’t allow it. It was too risky. “Wiggo was right to keep you out. For one, we already know there’s spiders through there. It’s too dangerous.”

“The thought of new wonders never before seen, just out of reach, is something I’d never be able to live with. And besides, you said yourself you wanted intel about a possible escape route?”

“That was before I found out that fire works better than bullets against these buggers. We’ll burn our way out of here through the alleys if we have to.”

“Let me go through with Wiggins,” Maggie said. “Two minutes, tops, and I promise I’ll be careful. He can check for a possible way out, I take a few photies, and everybody gets what they want?”

Banks looked out over the courtyard, to where the exits were all closed off with thick web and to the black shapes lined up along the rooftops. The more he considered it, the more he thought that a backup plan was a good idea.

“Okay, then. But I won’t send Wiggins through. I’ll accompany you on your wee jaunt.”

“Thank you,” she replied and smiled. “Wiggins was going to cost me a curry anyway.”

“In that case, you owe me a pizza,” he replied. “Lead on.”

Wiggins raised an eyebrow when he saw that Banks had yielded to the woman but wisely kept his mouth shut.

“I’ll go first, you follow me, and Wiggo watches our backs,” Banks said to Maggie. “And any time I say enough, it’s enough and we get out of there. Understood?”

She looked up from where she’d been checking the batteries on a digital camera and gave him a mock salute.

“I should come too,” Kim said but the other woman hadn’t left her place sitting against the wall and Banks saw she’d said it but not meant it and a hint of relief showed in her face when he spoke.

“Nope. We’re pushing our luck as it is. A quick in and out is what’s needed here.”

“So the sarge’s wife tells me,” Wiggins replied with a grin.

“Game head on, Wiggo,” Banks replied. “Any eight-legged fucker shows up, put it down hard and fast.”

Banks handed Wiggins his rifle, hauled himself up and through the gap, getting oily ash over his palms for his sins, and got his weapon back before dropping down into the other side. He kicked aside the dead body of the spider, then stood with his back to the wall, switched on his gun light, and washed its beam across the room. He saw why Maggie was so interested. The room was some twenty feet square and lined from floor to eight feet tall ceiling in large panels of stone-carved and painted frescos. They didn’t look Roman. Banks was no archaeologist but these had a sense of an even greater age and if he had to hazard a guess, he might say Babylonian, given the epic beards on show in some of the carved men and the ancient weaponry on show in their hands. The spiders that were depicted in the carvings were the same though; large as chariots and emerging from holes in the ground to wreak havoc.

He was examining a scene of graphic dismemberment — men and spider — when Maggie pulled herself through to join him. She immediately set to taking pictures. He left her to it and stepped over to examine the only exit.

He knew before he reached the door that it was going to open into an even larger area beyond; he heard the echoes of his padded footsteps and felt a breeze on his face, cool and welcoming after the stifling heat out in the building through the hole.

More of the gray web hung around the door and when he shone his gun light out into the open area, there were steps leading down into a vast underground cavern. Web hung everywhere he looked, in thick mats across openings and stretched in cat’s cradles like rope bridges over the rocky roof. But apart from the dead one he’d kicked out the way, there was no sign of current spider activity.

There was a definite drag mark leading down the steps and off into the gloom beyond his light and at first, he was at a loss to explain it. Then he remembered: Reynolds must have been taken this way. He decided not to mention it to the woman behind him, at least not until they got back to the other side. All he heard was the soft whistle of wind as if coming from a distance and the click of the camera as Maggie took picture after picture.

He knew something was coming before he heard it; there had been a subtle change in the breeze, a hint of acridity and a shifting of the air.

“Time to go,” he said, taking Maggie by the arm and leading her towards the corner

“I’m nearly finished.”

“No, you are finished.”

Then they heard it, the now familiar rat-a-tat clacking of a spider, somewhere, not too far away, out in the larger chamber and definitely getting closer.

“Quickly now,” he said. “Get out of here.”

Maggie took several precious seconds to stow the camera safely away inside her shirt before scrambling up the wall to the hole, her feet not taking hold on stone that was slimy with the oily residue of dead spider. Banks had to turn away from the doorway to give her a boost, cupping a foot in his hands and lifting, hard, throwing her up through the gap in the wall.

The spider clacking was even louder now, right outside the doorway.

“Come on, cap,” Wiggins shouted.

Banks knew that if his own foot slipped the same way that Maggie’s had then he wouldn’t escape an attack.

“Fetch that gas canister, Wiggo,” he said. “Then cover me.”

He turned his back to the wall, weapon raised, light shining on the doorway. The rat-a-tat clacking went up a notch, frenzied now, and a shadow, a large one, moved in the larger chamber outside the door.

“Cap?” Wiggins said above him and he looked up, saw the canister in the corporal’s hand, and nodded.

“Drop it.”

He caught it smoothly, then had to lower his rifle to get at his lighter. As if aware that the weapon was no longer trained on it, the spider came into view. It wasn’t as large as the big ones he’d seen outside but it filled most of the doorway. It clacked its fangs together fast, as if in anticipation of an easy meal.

“Come and get it, fucker.”

Banks opened the valve on the canister, stepped forward, flicking the Zippo open and rolling the wheel at the same time. It took immediately and he applied it to the gas, sending a sheet of flame washing over the spider. The flame also took hold on the web around the doorway, which flared up yellow and green as it burned and dripped, viscously, like napalm, onto the spider’s body. The creature gave out one high squeal and retreated fast, patches of burning web stuck to it, still flaming.

Banks went to the doorway and saw the burning beast escape into the darkness. But the flames showed him something else; red eyes, reflecting yellow and green in the flames.

Scores of them.

If he’d turned and ran then, he knew he’d make an escape easily.

But that’ll leave this lot at my back.

He had a better idea.

Avoiding the already diminishing flames, he stepped out of the doorway, down three of four steps.

“Cap?” he heard Wiggins shout, worriedly.

“Be back in a sec,” he said.

The rat-a-tat clack of spiders in unison echoed around the chamber. They’d seen him and he heard the scratch of hooked feet on stone as they came forward.

He opened the valve of the canister to full, set the lighter flame to it, and threw the can into the largest mass of thick web he could reach. He was already turning back up the steps when it went up like a grenade at his back, sending a sheet of flame running all along the length of the chamber’s roof, dripping blobs of melting, burning web on the spiders below. They thrashed and squealed in frenzy, their attempts to escape only spreading more flame around. He waited long enough to see the flame take hold on the walls, then turned and ran for safety.

Banks was smiling as he let Wiggins help haul him up and out of the room.

Banks and Wiggins stood in the dig chamber, feeling a wave of hot air and an acrid tang in the air waft out from the hole, weapons ready should anything come their way. But all they got was the extra heat and smell and even that faded as the cooler breeze from earlier eventually reasserted itself.

“Was there a way out that way?” Wiggins asked.

“Hard to tell,” Banks replied. “But there was definitely a way in for the beasties. So maybe aye, maybe no but at least we should have given them pause for thought about coming this way again for a while.”