by Rob Jones
“This is it,” Lewis said. “At least, that’s what the map said.”
Jodie leaned in closer to the door and squinted. “Uh-oh.”
Amy looked at her. “What is it?”
“It’s a Weiser Smartkey door lock,” she said. “And a good one.”
“Can it be opened without a key?” Amy asked.
Jodie grinned. “Not by your average joe.”
“And what about you?”
“What do you think? I can get us in here.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “And I thought Hunter was arrogant.”
Jodie made no reply. She had already pulled a screwdriver from her bag and was working on the lock. As she popped off the metal faceplate behind the handle, Blanco and Lewis were standing guard behind her, guns in their hands.
With the cover off, she pulled another small metal tool from her bag.
“What the hell is that thing?” Hunter asked.
“It’s a blind hole beating puller,” she said, taking the puller and working its tip inside the handle. “I use it to locate the locking pawl and then voila, we’re in.”
“Work fast, Jodie,” Quinn said nervously.
“I always work fast,” she said.
Amy looked nervously down the corridor. “How fast?”
“Faster if I have quiet,” Jodie said, tinkering with the lock as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
“How are we going?” Amy asked, watching her young protégé. She was the picture of calm under pressure.
“I’m just dragging the tip across the actuator – you hear that click right there?”
“Not really. What does it mean?”
“It means we’re in.”
The lock popped open with a thin metallic clunk and Jodie pushed down on the handle and swung the door open. “Let’s find the statue!”
They stepped inside an enormous suite of such opulence that for a few seconds no one knew what to say. Amy found the words first. “Floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors, a private solarium, Italian master bathroom with its own luxury whirlpool and spa flotation tub. Whoa.”
“And a walk-in safe,” Jodie said. “Which could be trouble to break open.”
“Yeah… this place has everything.”
“It even puts the Oceanus to shame.” Hunter was referring to the large luxury vessel owned by Raul Vazquez, the Cuban antiquities collector who had taken them prisoner on board his ship during the Atlantis mission.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Amy said, recalling the time she and Hunter spent inside Vazquez’s brig.
“But this is one helluva floating penthouse suite,” Quinn said, tracing her hands through a silk voile. “And wow, by the way.”
They all heard the metallic clicking sound of a hammer being pulled back on a gun.
“When it’s on a ship it’s called a stateroom.”
They turned around and saw Kandarian standing behind them. He was alone and armed with what Hunter instantly recognized as a vintage single-action colt 38 revolver, complete with polished ivory handle. In his other hand, he was holding what could only be the one remaining statue created by John the Apostle, except this one was different. The statue of the man was holding a discolored papyrus scroll to his chest and gazing out on the world with a reproachful stare.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Hunter said. “Do you come here often?”
Kandarian said nothing. He looked surprised to see them in his inner sanctum and took a step forward with the gun raised in front of him. “Hands up and drops your weapons. Right now.”
Amy took a step away from the billionaire magnate. “I don’t think so.”
“Do as I say, or die.”
Hunter huffed out a weary laugh. “You and whose army?”
Kandarian paused. “You won’t get away with this,” he said. “Look at your situation. You are trapped on my yacht in the middle of the bay, surrounded by dozens of armed Brothers. You have only the most rudimentary knowledge of what you seek. Your search for a truth you can never possibly understand has come to an end. If you beg my forgiveness, I will make sure your deaths are quick and painless.”
“What was John the Apostle hiding when he made these four statues, Kandarian?” Amy said, ignoring his threat. “What is it you’re so desperate to keep from us… from the world?”
“You are not worthy of the knowledge,” he said coldly.
“Hand over the statue!” Hunter said.
Kandarian’s eyes narrowed “Aren’t you forgetting that I’m armed?”
Hunter stepped closer to the billionaire. “And aren’t you forgetting that so are we? On my last count, we have four guns to your one. And ours are all automatics with fifteen rounds in each mag while your very beautiful Peacemaker has a six shot cylinder. Classy, but not up to the fight tonight. Now, toss the gun on the floor and hand over the statue.”
Kandarian calculated the situation. Then, he dropped the Colt and handed the statue of the man over to Hunter, who pushed it in his bag and took a step back. “What now?”
“Now, you get in there,” Amy said, pointing to his giant walk-in safe.
“Yeah,” Jodie said. “There’s no safer place than a safe.”
Staring down the muzzles of automatic weapons, Kandarian walked into the safe. Amy slammed the door shut and spun the combination dial. “That should keep him quiet long enough for us to get the heck out of here.”
When they reached the deck, it was like walking into hell. Neverov’s Wolf Pack of former KGB men and Spetsnaz operatives had delivered the total carnage the HARPA team had expected. Much of the observation deck was alight and a gentle sea breeze was blowing the smoke from the burning teak deck in their faces. Up ahead nearer the bow, just below the burning bridge, they heard the chunky rattle of a GPMG.
“Who’s firing that?” Quinn asked.
“Not Neverov,” Hunter said, peering along the starboard deck to find the source of the noise. “It’s a Pecheneg – a Russian gas-operated monster and too heavy for his team to be carrying around in any of the packs I’ve seen them wearing. Must be Kandarian’s men.”
“Let them fight it out,” Amy said. “We have the statue so let’s get back to the fishing boat and get out of here.”
No one could argue with that. They followed Amy down a wooden spiral staircase and along the deck back down to the stern where they had moored the boat. “Almost there,” she said.
“We’re not safe until we’re back on shore,” Blanco said. “We’re still in danger.”
The sound of gunfire above their heads split the day. Hunter craned his neck up and saw a muzzle flashing in the sunlight. The Brotherhood had found them and were giving chase on the deck above them. Then, they heard a deep thump and watched helplessly as a rocket-propelled grenade ripped through the air and impacted with their fishing boat.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The explosion was wild. Stray pieces of wood burst out of the fireball and showered Tiamat’s stern. Hunter screamed for the team to take cover and rolled behind the gunwale as the lethal wood fragments ripped over his head and smashed into the yacht.
Rolling onto his back, he raised his gun into the aim and fired on the men above him through the hole at the top of the stairs. There were two of them, and he struck one in the head and watched him hit the deck but missed the man with the RPG launcher. The man now turned the launcher on him and prepared to fire.
“No!” Hunter yelled and tried to roll away, but then he saw bullets riddling his chest. The man dropped the RPG and tumbled over the side into the bay. The lucky Englishman scrambled to his feet and saw Jodie Priest standing beside him, smoking gun in hand.
“Don’t say I never do anything for you, Hunter.”
“I’ll try and remember.”
“How the hell are we going to get out of here now they blew up our boat?” Quinn asked.
“By air,” Hunter said. “This boat has two helicopters up top, remember. We’re going to borrow one of them
and fly right off this boat.”
More heavy automatic gunfire and the sound of a man screaming in Russian. Quinn turned to Amy, looking for some sanity. “Sounds even more dangerous up there than before.”
“We have no choice, Quinn,” Amy said. “We can do this.”
Hunter led them up the steps and over to the body of the man he had killed. Blanco took the RPG launcher from him and the one remaining grenade. Then, they ran back along the starboard side of yacht and took another two flights of steps and a ladder until they finally reached the helipads. Each one was hosting a helicopter – one was obviously Kandarian’s luxury Eurocopter and the other was Neverov’s Sikorsky.
Under heavy fire from the GPMG, Neverov was leading his men in a retreat and trying to get back to their chopper. Then, Hunter saw the old KGB colonel perform an act of heart-stopping bravery as he broke away from the Wolves and drew the Brotherhood’s fire onto himself.
“What is he doing?” Amy said. “He doesn’t stand a chance!”
“He’s letting his team get away,” Hunter said.
“Don’t ask me to do that for you,” Amy said, horrified. “It’s a suicide mission!”
Neverov sprinted away from the first helipad and vaulted over the rail running around the outside of it. The men behind the GPMG swivelled their gun on him and opened fire. Hunter watched with a strange mix of horror, disgust and admiration as the old Russian was blasted from the ship and tumbled down dead into the water.
“My God!” Amy said. “They killed him!”
“But it worked.” Blanco pointed to the Sikorsky. “The Wolves are on board and taking off!”
The black ex-military helicopter ascended into the air above the helipad and turned to fly away but it was too late. Neverov’s sacrifice had been in vain and the Brotherhood fired on the chopper. It rotated quickly away from the yacht making a shot on the tail boom too hard to make, so they fired on the control rods. Hunter saw what they were doing and knew it was the best way to bring it down in the circumstances. If they could blow one of them out the pilot would lose control of the main rotor.
Their rounds ripped into the control rods and blasted them into pieces, instantly breaking their connection to the swashplates and ending cyclic control. The response was predictable, and now he watched as the helicopter spun around wildly, its engine roaring and howling as the machine plummeted into the side of the yacht and exploded in a devastating fireball.
Hunter shielded his eyes from the flash. So did the others. Then, the wrecked chopper tipped over the edge of the deck and crashed into the bay.
Quinn arched an eyebrow. “And you wanted to steal a chopper?”
“Yeah,” Blanco said. “We’re going to need a diversion.”
“I think I already said I’m not doing what Neverov did, right?” Amy said.
“Not that sort of diversion.” Blanco loaded the grenade into the RPG and jogged back along the deck. “In a minute, you’re going to see a good chunk of what’s left of the bridge go up in flames. When that happens, all hell will break loose.”
“Memo to Sal,” Jodie said. “Hell is already loose.”
“Fine, but it’s going to get worse. Like when you poke a bees’ nest with a stick when you’re a kid. When that happens, I want you in that chopper. Max, fire that bird up and meet me at the stern. I’ll get on board and away we go.”
“Sounds insane,” Quinn said.
“Sounds risky,” said Lewis.
They heard men yelling in the Brotherhood’s strange language once again.
“Sounds like we have no other choice,” Amy said. “Do it.”
They watched Blanco sprint through the smoke and flames and then waited in the cover of the rear of the bridge house. Less than a minute later, they saw a flash and felt a deep thud and a roar and then a men screaming all over again. Submachine guns rattled and automatic pistols crackled in the Aegean heat.
“They’re shooting at Sal!” Jodie said.
“He knows what he’s doing,” said Amy. “Everyone into the chopper!”
They left their cover and sprinted across the rear helipad. Climbing inside, Hunter buckled himself in and instantly felt at home. Much of his life had been spent piloting helicopters for the British Army and he relished any opportunity to get back in the saddle. He checked everyone had their harnesses on and performed a speedy freedom of control test on the tail rotor pedals and then checked the collective and cyclic.
“When do we get into the air?” Jodie said.
“When we’ve done the pre-flight checks,” Hunter said. “Because if there’s anything wrong with this aircraft, you’ll be going into the sea rapidly after getting into the air, okay?”
“Jeez, it was just a question.”
The turboshaft engine roared and the rotorshaft began to turn. As the blades began to whir, Hunter was able to lift the chopper off the helipad and clear the yacht. He flew out wide on the ship’s portside and swooped down low almost to sea level. There, hanging off the back of the davit crane, Sal Blanco was waving at them. Hunter pulled in low and tight and the man from Brooklyn leapt into the sea and swam toward the Eurocopter’s starboard skid.
Back on the Tiamat, Belisarius was leading a team of armed men to the stern where they fanned out. Some opened fire on the man swimming away from them, others on the chopper. Bullets pocked the surface of the sea as Blanco grabbed the skid. “Go! Go, go go!”
Hunter rotated the chopper and raced away in a hail of speeding bullets, turning and diving and swooping and evading their fire until they were safely out of range.
“Bloody hell,” he said, finally relaxing. “That was close.”
“Close?” Blanco said. “Those crazies nearly blew my ass off!”
“But you got us out of there, Sal,” Amy said. “We all owe you our lives.”
“No way,” he said. “We got ourselves out of there, working as a team. No one here owes me anything.”
Amy smiled. “You can’t blame a girl for trying. Max – land this thing somewhere quiet until we can work out what the last statue has to tell us. That’s the plan.”
“We have a plan?” Hunter turned to her, a big toothy smile on his face. “I thought we were just making this up as we went along.”
“Just bring this thing down somewhere safe and drop the smartass attitude.”
Hunter spied one of the many small uninhabited Greek islands off to his right and pulled on the cyclic. “I’d like to come back at you with some witty repartee, Amy, but fear I might be digging myself even deeper into a hole.”
“You’re learning, Dr Hunter. Where are we landing?”
“See the small island over there? There’s nothing on it. We’ll be safe there.”
She arched an eyebrow. “It seems UNESCO’s loss was our gain, after all.”
Hunter said nothing, and gently set the helicopter down on a beach on the eastern side of the island. As the blades whirred to a stop, the team climbed out and breathed in the calm hot air for a few moments. Sitting on a rock with his legs dangling over the edge, Ben Lewis was already poring over the discolored papyrus scroll that they had found on the fourth and final statue.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Less than an hour later, the young historian joined the land of living again. Looking up from his rocky perch, he noticed for the first time that the tide had come in and he was now on his own personal island. Sliding off the rock, he waded through the warm, ankle-high water back to the beach.
“Good news?” Amy said.
He nodded. “Yes. I think I have something.”
“Great news,” she said. “What about you, Max – find anything on the actual statue?”
“Not yet,” he said. “The lettering is coded, as Kostas told us. I need more time.”
“Then it’s over to you, Ben.”
The team now gathered around in the shade of the helicopter. Lewis nodded to himself as if something made sense, and then started his briefing about what he had found on the
scroll. “First, I think I know roughly where we need to go.”
A sigh of relief from everyone. Amy smiled and encouraged him to go on.
“We were right all along. We’re searching for Revelation 23, an entire book of the Bible which he hid from the world because of something from the vision. Something he desperately wanted to keep from the world.”
“My God,” Amy said.
“Yeah,” continued Lewis. “And there’s more. John says Book 23 also contains something he calls the Tabula Dei.”
“Map of God?” said Hunter.
Lewis nodded. “Right.”
“Sounds scary,” Quinn said.
Lewis cleared his throat. “This scroll is littered with information. If you look here, you’ll see a drawing of who I believe to be the son of Domitian, the Roman emperor at the time John of Patmos was a very old man, nearing the end of his life. The child died in infancy and the emperor had him deified. The bit that interests us is right here, around the top of child.”
“The seven crosses?” Quinn asked.
Lewis shook his head. “They’re stars, not crosses. They’re a reference to one of the visions John of Patmos had concerning the Son of Man. As we know, he wrote about it in Revelation. In the vision, he saw Jesus risen from the dead with bright fiery eyes, hair as white as snow and wearing a robe held in place with a shining, golden girdle, or sash. John went further, claiming Jesus was standing in the midst of seven candlesticks and in his right hand were seven stars.”
“Hence the seven stars on the scroll?” Amy asked.
“Exactly, and for this reason Jesus was often portrayed with the seven stars, as were other deified individuals, like Domitian’s dead son. It’s a really important piece of writing because believe it or not, it’s the only description of what Jesus looks like throughout the entire Bible.”
“But what’s the significance of the seven stars?” Jodie asked. “ I still don’t get it.”
“It’s not hard when you know the full story,” Lewis replied. “In the vision, Jesus told John that he was alive for evermore and had the keys to hell and death and told John to write down all that he was seeing. He also told him that the seven candlesticks represented the seven churches, and the seven stars were the seven angels of the seven churches.”
