When Sly exited the cage-elevator with Ramirez the fighting was over.

  In the chamber, the few cultist dead were clustered in twos and threes, scattered here and there wherever they’d chosen to take a stand. Ramirez had chosen to use suppressors, believing the team might gain a modicum of surprise in the initial assault. Effective use of silencers needed low-grain ammunition, but they had enough subsonic ammo for the initial engagement.

  At close quarters slower rounds would do the job but stay in the bodies they hit, rather than marking the walls with unnecessary bullet-holes. That was an added benefit for what was supposed to be a covert mission. It wouldn’t do for the researchers to dig out bullets from the walls for the next six months, Sly thought.

  Sergeant Nguyen met Sly and his commanding officer.

  “How’d it go?” Sly said, his tone casual.

  “The fireteam took no casualties,” Nguyen said, “or captives. These weirdos either fell or ran. Mostly ran. This engagement was extremely bizarre.”

  “How so? Not that I’m disagreeing. Crossbows at the south pole are unusual.”

  Nguyen snorted his humour. “Sure, we were using subsonic ammo, but the rounds bounced off some of those jokers. Literally and no exaggeration – I saw bullets flash and fall to the floor. Although we targeted active shooters, we killed far fewer of them than I expected, given the rounds we fired. The dud ammo gave them time to run.”

  “What was your estimate of the cultists?” Ramirez asked.

  “Remarkably good,” said Nguyen without hesitation, turning to the officer. “They moved as a unit and retreated in good order. We’ll see trouble if they ever find guns.”

  Sly let Ramirez take the rest of Nguyen’s report and turned away to speak to Lieutenant Kim. She initially held a front line at the second elevator shaft, but the retreating cultists ran into caves and passageways at the rear of the cavern instead of fighting for control of the L4 elevator. Kim’s fireteam went after them into the dark, using infrared to follow the fading heat of warm hands on cold stone.

  “That’s when we found the steps,” Kim told him later.

  “What steps?” Sly was surprised. “The CU engineers made no steps.”

  “See it to believe it,” Kim said, face set in an unreadable expression.

  Sly followed her to the back of the chamber and into a roped off section of the caves, marked by multiple ‘danger’ signs. A minute of tromping over a well-worn path later, he saw the limestone balcony.

  He instantly knew these descending stairs weren’t made yesterday. Limestone wasn’t native to these volcanic caverns, and the fine work flaunted a master stonemason’s touch. A long and intricate frieze, the triumph of a conquering army, remained recognisable though eroded by water and time. It was odd, an unfamiliar Persian or Mesopotamian style perhaps, depicting a parade of short, bearded men with large shields, taller men on horseback with angular eyes, and tusked giants wearing ornate robes and crowned with haloes. On the stairs themselves, broad basalt treads were worn down from foot traffic, and its balustrades were shiny from countless hands rubbing the fine-grained native stone.

  Speechless, Sly studied the worn stone in the low light. On honeymoon he’d visited Rome’s Spanish Steps, connecting the Piazza di Spagna at the base to the Trinita dei Monti at the top. He’d noted how the limestone was eroded by three hundred years of foot traffic, from hobnails to stilettos.

  “They weren’t made yesterday,” Kim called at his back as he knelt on the steps. “They’re deeply worn, and that’s not soft stone. This is old, a century at least.”

  If these hard basalt steps were as worn as the softer Spanish Steps, they were older than that, he thought, disagreeing with the lieutenant. When were they last used? Had they been abandoned for hundreds of years? Or a thousand?

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The steps weren’t simply old, they were ancient.

  Sly’s head swam as he put more of the pieces together.

  John Ramirez found him sitting on the far edge of the cavern. Sly looked up. The captain looked bone tired and Sly didn’t feel much better.

  “C’mon, sit down,” Sly said. “Take a weight off.”

  The detachment commander sat. “The plan worked. We’ve retrieved the rappel ropes from the shaft, and it was a great idea to use the cage as a distraction.” He gave Sly a long look. “You don’t look happy, though. Give.”

  Sly gathered his thoughts, unsure what to say. After a long pause he began.

  “In the fifties and sixties, Area 51 in Nevada was associated with alien technology, among other stranger ideas. Conspiracy theories gained credibility because the US military was trying to cover up something else, the testing of top-secret aircraft systems. The more the government covered up, the more people thought they had something extraordinary to hide.”

  Ramirez snorted. “Where are you going with this?”

  The captain had lost all humour, his eyes red-rimmed.

  “I thought Area 71 was named for the association with aliens,” Sly explained. “Understandable, but untrue. It got the name because the site was subject to a government cover-up. Researchers found something strange under the ground here, and told the CIA, who declared it a national secret. A research base was a useful cover, as it’s difficult to visit Antarctica covertly. But this place wasn’t ever about rare earth minerals. That’s simply a useful fiction to keep whatever’s down here under wraps.”

  Ramirez stared at him. “I’m listening.”

  “The conspiracy is all about Level Four, John. There are steps that way,” Sly pointed with his thumb, “that the Romans might’ve made, or the Inca, or the Khmer Empire, or the Han. No way the researchers didn’t find it, no way the CIA didn’t know. No way their secret research team isn’t taking secret frickin’ rubbings.”

  Ramirez took stock of what he had heard. “You think the freaks we’re fighting are conspiracy theorists, making some kind of fringe protest about what, a secret civilization? That would be the most messed up thing I’ve heard in twenty years.”

  Sly shook his head.

  “There’s stuff here to attract a well-funded nutjob, and these guys show all the signs of being part of a well-funded, anti-establishment cult. And sure, an inquiry I set in motion before I left the States points toward a conspiracy. On the other hand, I don’t think these guys are a bunch of tinfoil-hat-wearing amateurs. Ghost – we can call him that? – I think he was military recon tasked with scouting the upper floors.”

  “Why? Other than to get his people out of here, which I fully understand. It’s been what, a month since Thorpe died?”

  “I think Thorpe’s death was the result of a deal gone wrong,” said Sly slowly. “The maintenance crew brought in a box of precious stones big enough to buy a yacht, and I’m not talking about a thirty foot dinghy. Why does anyone use diamonds to pay for anything? They were in the market to buy something they shouldn’t have. What was it? The hell if I know, but it takes an effort to get anything heavy into this place, and it would be hell to get anything heavy out. It must’ve been portable, like a book. Now the CIA want us to search the place for books or papers, even in the face of opposition. The opposition being this bunch of crazies. Maybe Ghost was hunting for the same thing.”

  “Maybe it’s simpler than that,” Ramirez said, being reasonable. “If I was locked down here, I’d be as pissed as Ghost, too, and maybe as desperate.”

  “I don’t think the researchers let the cultists in,” said Sly, shaking his head. “There’s no evidence that an unknown team flew in to or passed through Leviathan. It sounds crazy but I think there’s another way into the deep caves. Another way down to L4, the level the CIA doesn’t want us to see. If we want Ghost before he escapes out the back door, we need to go down there after him. But something else is down there, John. Yes, signs of an ancient civilization, but this is a cover up, a matter of national security, and an ancient ice-dwelling civilization isn’t a threat to the USA, despite the cultists. If we go down there, we’re sure to find something worse that we can’t unsee.”

  Ramirez glared at him. “I have one man down. O’Connor was my responsibility. The bastard who killed him is down there. I want the crazy sonofabitch, and I mean to have him. What else do you expect us to do?”

  “Know what you’re getting into,” Sly said, needing Ramirez to calm down. “We have a choice, to leave or to stay. Leave now and there’s no problem, you didn’t see a thing. Plausible deniability. But to catch Ghost we need to get down to L4 today, and if we do, we’ll all be in the rabbit hole up to our necks.”

  “What will you do?” Ramirez asked, with emphasis on the ‘you’.

  Sly had thought it through. The builders of the steps intrigued and excited the historian in him like nothing had in twenty years. He rarely did anything spontaneously, he wasn’t the kind of leader who jumped into a hell-pit shouting, ‘follow me!’ But, right now, it was all he could do to hold back.

  He kept it simple. “I want the rabbit hole.”

  The chill returned to the room as Captain John Ramirez looked at him, eyes like the tough volcanic stone under their feet, hard, cold and flat.

  “We’ll have a look around here,” said Ramirez with finality. “See what we can find. Then you’ll tell the team what you want them to know. When we’ve done all that, we’re going down there, with whoever wants to come. I’ve a job to do.”