by Rob Jones
Scarlet winced as another burst of gunfire blasted the ceiling tiles above her head and the pieces rained down on her. “They look like they’re out of the bloody Matrix!”
“And they act like it too,” Hawke said, emptying the second mag and angrily tossing the gun behind him. He looked ahead and saw Lea just for a flash – the men who were holding her had dragged her to the front line.
“Drop your weapons or she’s dead.”
Hawke, Scarlet and Camacho exchanged a glance. The former SAS woman looked at Hawke for the next move, but she already knew what he was going to do. One look at the carbine jammed into Lea’s neck was enough.
Hawke got to his feet and raised his hands. He knew there was no way he could fight through this army. He was experienced enough as a soldier to know there were other ways to get what you wanted. The fact they had now decided to use Lea as leverage to force his hand sealed the deal.
“All right… I’m unarmed.”
“And the other two!”
Scarlet and Camacho followed his lead and stood up with their hands above their heads. “Easy darlings, don’t shoot what you can’t afford to replace.”
Two of the men padded over to them and raised their submachine guns into their faces. “The Oracle desires your company.”
“He wants to meet us before he kills us,” Lea said.
The man looked at her. “You’re already dead.”
*
Reaper’s mind was racing as he thundered along the top of the steel pipeline on his way back to the main platform. He was struggling to maintain his balance on the oily surface as he ducked and dodged incoming enemy fire, this time fired not by Korać or Kruger but by the men in black, the self-styled crazy cult who called themselves the Immortals.
He fired back, but thanks to his precarious position on the pipe his shots were all over the place. At least it would force them into cover, he thought. He reached the area where they had broken into two groups and made his way along the western perimeter. His plan was to catch up with Maria, help her finish Luk and Kamchatka if they hadn’t already done the job, and then regroup with Lexi and go topside to find Hawke and the others.
There were fewer Athanatoi on this stretch of the Seastead, and he was able to slow for a moment to reload and get his breath back. He watched his breath cloud out in front of him. Beyond was the startling dichotomy of two grays – paler in the sky and darker in the sea. He had almost forgotten they were in the middle of the ocean since the fighting started, and he had no idea how to win a battle like this.
His mind moved to Ryan, the youngest of the team and the least violent among them, who had leaped from the substructure’s scaffolding to stop that bastard Dirk Kruger from getting away and given his life in the process. It wasn’t right but he’d died a hero. How he would break the news to Maria, he didn’t know.
And then up ahead he heard a gunshot.
And then another.
He took a deep breath and began pounding toward the action as fast as he could.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The penthouse at the top of the Seastead was unlike anything they had seen before, with a level of opulence that would have embarrassed a Saudi prince. Lea could hardly believe what she was seeing. She had no idea that such wealth existed. The entire Seastead plus its lavish furnishings must have cost indescribable billions.
The men who had escorted them stepped back and exited the room, closing the doors behind them, and then a new, dark silence fell.
Her eyes lowered from the chandelier on the ceiling to an enormous mahogany desk at the far end of the room. Safely behind it, a man was sitting in a leather swivel chair. He was facing away from them, and all she could see was the top of his head. Above him was an antique Georgian mirror angled slightly downwards, but his face was still obscured. On the desk, set deliberately in view, was the idol the men had snatched from Kruger on the helipad.
“What’s the matter – can’t you face me?” Lea said.
Hawke, Scarlet and Camacho said nothing.
The man made no reply.
“I said, haven’t you got the bollocks to face me, you bastard?”
Outside they heard the chatter of submachine guns and random grenade explosions as Reaper and the rest of the team fought with the Athanatoi foot soldiers.
“I see you were appreciating my chandelier a moment ago. It’s the Givenchy Royal Hanover from Germany. Beautifully crafted from solid silver in 1736. I bought it a few weeks ago for seven million dollars.”
“Who are you?” Hawke said flatly.
“I am many men.” The voice was calm and the accent mildly foreign. Lea couldn’t quite place it but she thought she’d heard it before.
“You have no idea how much I want to shoot you through the back of that chair,” Lea said.
“I understand your anger, but fortunately you do not have a gun.”
“You understand nothing, you bastard. Why did you murder my father?”
The Oracle laughed, but it was a low, humorless chuckle. Lea felt the evil as it almost pulsed from his side of the room, flowing like poisoned wine spilled on a clean tablecloth. She had never felt a rage like this before. It was so great it had started to tarnish at the edges, and turn to fear and sadness.
She was standing with the man she loved and some of her closest friends, but inside her head her mind forced her to watch a never-ending motion picture of her childhood memories: her mother making a cake in the kitchen as the Irish sun pierced the mist outside; her brothers playing in the garden; her father showing her how to fit a lens to a camera.
Her father.
Simple childhood memories more important to her than all the gold and treasure in the world, and now the last remnants of a previous happiness were nothing more than dusty relics, destroyed by the monstrous animal on the other side of this room. A wave of revulsion crept over her like a cloth soaking up that poisoned wine.
“Give me what I want, you son of a bitch! Why won’t you just tell us what we want to know?” She took a step closer. “What happened to my father?”
“You want answers, I understand that… and you’re not alone. Your father was the same. He was digging too deep.”
Hawke saw the anger on Lea’s face and took a step forward. “You can start with who are the Athanatoi?”
“That cannot be answered. It’s like asking – who are humans?”
“I don’t understand.”
A long sigh from the man in the swivel chair. “You have caused me much trouble. I respect your courage, but you understand why I brought you here.”
“You’re full of shit,” the Irishwoman said, almost spitting out the words.
But the Oracle merely laughed.
And then he turned around.
Hawke, Lea, Scarlet and Camacho took a step back in shock. None of them could believe what they were seeing.
Lea spoke first. “I can’t believe it.”
“Better believe it,” Scarlet said in disgust. “We’ve been played like violins.”
“Otmar Wolff,” Hawke said coldly. “If that’s your real name.”
“It’s my real name… at least one of my real names.”
“You’re the Oracle?” Lea said.
He nodded once. “I’d shake your hands but we already did that back in Liechtenstein, plus you’re filthy and covered in blood.”
Hawke fixed his eyes on Wolff. “Bond got Hugo Drax and I get you – at least you’re wearing the Nehru jacket – nice touch, by the way!”
Wolff rose from behind his desk and walked to the window. It stretched three hundred and sixty degrees around his penthouse suite, with views over the Atlantic in every direction. Slipped his hands in his pockets casually. Sighed with irritation. “I brought you here to take the idol and kill you, and instead you destroy half my home.”
He picked up the idol and weighed it contemplatively for a few moments. “But I have her now, at least.”
Lea bristled with anger. “Why
ask us to get it, you son of a bitch?”
The reply was cool and measured. “Set a thief to catch a thief, and all that. After the desecration at Mictlan and the Mexican’s thieving of the idol, I decided you must all die, but I knew I needed that idol first. I have resources, but they are mostly political. On the other hand your team has proved itself to be rather, shall we say adept at locating ancient relics.”
“True story. We found you, after all,” Scarlet said.
Wolff ignored her. “My plan was simple – invite you to Liechtenstein, find out what you learned in Mictlan before the Mexican Government sealed it off again, and have you retrieve the idol for me. I must say it worked like a dream. The consummate wild goose chase.”
Hawke took a step closer. “It’s not over yet, Wolff.”
He laughed. “It was the ultimate revenge – turn you into puppets to do my bidding and then when you have served me by furnishing me with this idol, execute you – oh, and you might like to know I had your little Caribbean island annihilated today.” As he spoke he caressed the idol in his hands. “She’s mine now. That is all that matters.”
“Using us was a pretty cheap trick, Wolff,” Camacho said.
“Not at all. In fact it makes perfect strategic sense. I realized that setting a team of my own men against you in a race to find the idol was inefficient and would waste my time and resources. I asked myself: why not simply use the ECHO team as my puppets and have them find the idol for me?”
“Such a nice man,” Scarlet said.
Wolff ignored her. “You had already proved yourself extremely capable, and it would only cost me five million dollars as well. I made more than that playing on the commodities market before breakfast today so you were very cheap to buy. All I had to do was sit back and wait for you to bring the idol to me, but when you stumbled across Atlantis I knew I had to intervene. Sadly, I doubt there can be much left there now for future surveys.”
“How kind of you,” Lea said.
Wolff smiled and tipped his head to one side. He reminded Lea of a chameleon looking at a fly a second before firing its tongue out and catching it. “In many respects it’s lucky you didn’t die when I destroyed the Tomb of Eternity in Ethiopia or I wouldn’t have been able to use you now.”
Lea could hardly believe the words she was hearing. So he had also been responsible for the destruction of that mountain. Now she knew she was closer than ever to learning the truth about this man and his powers. “What’s the significance of Atlantis in all this?” she asked. “Why did you destroy it?”
“Atlantis is nothing,” he snarled. “A burned-out husk of a colony that was annihilated during the wars. My destruction of it today was nothing compared with what put it under the waves in the first place.”
“A colony?” Lea asked. “What does that mean? And what wars?”
Wolff laughed. “If you thought Atlantis was the greatest civilization of all time, just waiting to be discovered and plundered then surely you were sadly mistaken. Atlantis was nothing more than a failed religious order of traitors, and not even unique – just one of many, all created by them.” He let a sour, bitter laugh escape from his clay-colored lips. “Created by them just as if they were playing a game…”
“I don’t understand,” Lea said. “Who created Atlantis?”
Wolff stared at the young Irishwoman for several awkward seconds while drumming his fingers on the desk. The relentless tapping filled the tense silence as the old man clearly wrestled with his own thoughts. “The story of human civilization is not at all as you have been taught. Everything you think you know about humans and the world we live in is a lie, and worse than that, your rulers know it.”
“Liar.”
“What you see in your world today has all happened before, and I will destroy mankind before I let you shine a light on the truth.”
“Now I know who you are, you bastard,” Lea said, spitting the last word out, “I’m going to bring an end to all this shit.”
He laughed, mocking her. “This isn’t the end, Donovan – only the beginning.”
Far below a tremendous explosion ignited the refinery and rocked the entire Seastead. Wolff grabbed hold of the side of the desk to stop himself falling over, and for the first time Lea thought she sensed something other than cool control on his face.
“Looks like the tide is turning,” Hawke said.
“You cannot destroy me,” Wolff said, a malevolent smirk spreading on his face.
Before any of them had a chance to reply, a second tremendous blast knocked them off their feet and flung them through the air like confetti. Lea felt the full force as the shockwave struck her. It felt like a horse had kicked her in the stomach and she hit the deck like a rock, rolling over several times before she hit the wall and stopped dead. When she looked up the room was filling with smoke.
“Is everyone okay?” Hawke yelled.
“Fucking fantastic,” Scarlet said, coughing. “Thanks for asking.”
“He’s gone!” Lea said. The desperation in her voice was clear for all to hear.
Hawke looked through the smoke to the Oracle’s desk and saw she was right. He was gone.
He leaped to his feet and ran to the desk, smashing his fist down on top of it with frustration. “Damn it to hell!”
“Where did he go?” Scarlet asked, scanning the room.
Hawke sighed. “There’s an escape hatch.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Lea said.
“And he remembered to pack the idol before he went on vacation as well,” Scarlet said.
*
Maria Kurikova felt confident as she moved deeper into the fight. She knew that somewhere behind her Reaper and Ryan were advancing to the north in pursuit of Dirk Kruger, but her sights were set firmly on Luk and Kamchatka.
She struck out on the pipe, her boots slipping here and there on small streams of leaking oil, but it was the fastest way to get to the other side of the substructure. If she went all the way around the safety scaffolding she knew she would lose them.
Below her the raging black sea pounded and roared like a trapped bear and sprayed her with freezing saltwater as she made her way across to the other side.
And then she saw him.
Luk.
He was standing in the shadows of the scaffolding on the far western side of the substructure and he looked scared, which surprised her. All around them the battle raged and now somewhere above her from the main platform she heard a loud explosion and felt the vibration from the shockwave as it emanated into the substructure. Lexi got the refinery, she thought.
And then Luk pulled a knife from his belt and tossed it in the air so he was holding it by the blade… ready to throw it at me.
She flicked her eyes down at the violent sea and knew there was nothing down there but a terrible, lonely death.
She looked back up.
The next seconds went like lightning.
Luk pulled his arm back to throw the knife.
Maria fired her gun and dodged to the left to miss the knife.
She slipped on the pipe and tumbled over it.
Luk staggered backwards, his hands clutching the savage bullet wound in his stomach.
Maria grabbed hold of the pipe as she fell down, and just managed to grab hold of a riveted plate holding two segments of the pipe together. She was safe, for now, and had stopped herself plummeting into the sea, but it was only now that her hands were grasping the pipe’s metal that she realized it was hot – too hot to handle.
She cursed in pain as she hauled herself back up the pipe and then staggered to her feet. Not taking any more chances she made the last few yards of the pipe and stepped off onto the substructure’s platform a foot away from Luk.
“Please…” Luk murmured. “Make it fast.”
“You want it fast?” she said, her heavy Russian accent concealing only part of the utter contempt she felt for the man kneeling in front of her.
She raised her boot and
placed it on his chest. “Нет…No.”
And with that she booted him off the platform.
He screamed as he tumbled over the edge of the Seastead and crashed down into the Kort nozzle of the moored container ship below. Sucked down by the force of the enormous ducted propellers he was drawn helplessly toward the savage, whirring blades. The last thing she heard were Luk’s blood-curdling screams as his body was sucked inside the industrial cowling and minced by the vessel’s azimuth thruster. This was followed by a terrible noise that sounded like an industrial meat grinder. Seconds later the heaving Atlantic was bright red with blood and then it was all gone, washed away with the tide forever.
“Death by a thousand cuts, you bastard,” she said coolly, and slipped her gun back inside her holster.
And then saw the muzzle flash.
And heard the crack.
And felt the shot.
It felt like someone had run a hot poker through her heart.
She gasped, but felt no air fill her lungs, and then she dropped to her knees as the hot blood poured from her mouth.
She knew what had happened… or thought she knew, because now she was losing consciousness. Her blood pressure was dropping because of the nine mil hole in her heart and there was nothing she could do to save herself.
The battle seemed to move in slow-motion as she turned her head and saw Vincent Reno racing toward her with his gun raised. He was screaming Non! and then he fired three successive shots above her head to kill the assassin. She never knew if he got him because instead she chose to close her eyes and go to sleep.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“Who the hell has an escape hatch under his frigging desk?” Lea asked, sighing angrily.
