Read Online Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear by Gabriel Hunt, Charles Ardai - Free Book Online

Zuka kneeling over Rashidi’s remains, seemed about to say something, then held himself back. He paced over to the still considerable heap of mud on the ground and kicked at it, sending a clod or two against the wall. There was a second metal pail where he’d picked up the first one, and he snagged its handle on the end of his sword. Without looking, he lifted it into the air and sent it flying behind him—in Gabriel’s direction.
    “You,” he said. “You’re not fat, at least. Why don’t you give it a try?”
    Gabriel caught the pail against his chest with the arm in which he held the torch; in the other, he still held the shovel and the rifle. The folds of the burnoose were wound around the bottom half of his face but Karoly, looking over, recognized him from outside. “Lajos, no,” he said in Hungarian, “this man’s clumsy as hell, he’ll be dead in no time.”
    “Well, if he is so clumsy,” DeGroet said, loudly, in English, “then his death will be no loss.” Without looking over at him, he snapped a command at Gabriel. “Fill it!”
    Gabriel hesitated a moment, his fist tightening on the rifle’s stock. He saw Karoly’s hand drop to the sidearm on his hip. With his own hands full like this, there was no way he could beat Karoly to the draw.
    He let the rifle down slowly, set it against the wall, then put the pail down beside the mud pile. He used the shovel to fill it, then set that aside, too. The pail was heavy when he lifted it, the metal of the handle cutting into his palm.
    He kept his face averted as he walked past DeGroet toward the far wall and its deadly tunnel.
    The hole loomed. What had Sheba called it? The portal. For nine men it had been a portal to the underworld, from this life to the next. What chance was there that it would be anything less for him?
    Nonsense, he said to himself. You’ve been in tighter spots. (Though measuring the tunnel’s narrow opening against his shoulders, he wasn’t so sure.) You’ve seen traps like this before and defeated them.
    Yes, replied a little voice in his head, but all the knowledge and experience in the world won’t stop a ten-ton boulder from snipping you in half if you’re lying beneath it.
    “Miss McCoy, have you got any advice for our newest volunteer?”
    Sheba looked up. She’d been leaning against the wall with her eyes closed, her chest heaving. It was one hell of a chest, and Gabriel had to admit that, if this had to be his last sight on earth, there were worse ones to have. With DeGroet behind him, he pulled the burnoose to one side, uncovering his face, and cocked a crooked smile at Sheba. “Do not cry, effendi, ” he said softly in Arabic, and recognition came all at once into her eyes. She started toward him but he shook his head minutely. With an enormous effort she restrained herself, but thelook in her eyes changed from momentary relief to terror, a mute pleading.
    “No,” she said to DeGroet, “no, this man can’t go, you can’t send him, he’ll die—”
    “We all must die sometime,” DeGroet said. “But if you are so concerned for his well-being, why don’t you tell him something that might help him once he’s in there?”
    “But I don’t know anything,” she said, and Gabriel could tell that she wished with all her heart that this wasn’t so. “A tribute,” she said rapidly, running through the text in her head, “an offering to Hathor, the river’s wealth, must deposit a heavy burden to make her heart light…that’s all it says. Please…please don’t send him.” Her eyes slid shut again and her voice got very small. “Send me. I’ll do it. Send me instead.”
    “Oh, don’t worry, my dear,” DeGroet said. “You’ll be next.”
    Gabriel felt the flat of DeGroet’s blade strike his calves.
    He handed the torch silently to Sheba, bent to set the pail down within the hole, and shoved it far enough in that he could squeeze in behind it. The tunnel walls just barely accommodated his shoulders