by Rob Jones
“They’re everywhere!”
Ryan flicked a panicked glance over his shoulder. “And they’re never going to stop until they have the sword back!”
Camacho reversed at high-speed in the underground car park, smoke spewing from the wheel arches as the rubber tires spun on the polished concrete. Spinning the steering wheel hard to the right, he flung the vehicle around in a tight arc, changed into drive and stamped on the gas.
The underground parking lot filled with the sound of tires squealing as Camacho weaved the SUV in between the support pillars and hit the exit ramp. Bullets chased them all the way outside and when they emerged from the subterranean parking area it was into a soft African twilight. The intense heat and glare of earlier in the day had dissipated now and night was rapidly approaching.
Camacho pushed the Merc as hard as it would go as he steered it around to the left and followed the signs for the helipad, praying there was a chopper there. They got there seconds later and found their prayers had been answered. A nice, new helicopter was sitting beside Blankov’s private jet. The jet offered a much faster way out of the nightmare but none of them knew how to fly it.
The former CIA man skidded the SUV to a halt a few meters from the chopper. “We’ll have to destroy the jet when we’re airborne. Everyone out!”
With the sword in the bag under Ryan’s arm, they clambered out of the SUV and jumped into the chopper. Camacho made some instant pre-flight checks and then fired up the engine. As the rotors started to whir, a team of Athanatoi and some of Kruger’s commandos appeared at the top of the car park ramp and opened fire on them.
Camacho lifted the chopper into the Transvaal dusk and rotated it to the side to allow Ryan and Kim to return fire on the enemy. They took cover behind a low concrete wall which marked the perimeter between the complex and the car park, giving Lea time to fire on the jet with the MP5.
With the chopper’s rotors noisily whirring overhead, she leaned out into the downdraft and swept the powerful machine pistol up and down the wings, puncturing the aluminum as if it were foil. The jet fuel sparked and ignited and blew the private plane into a terrifying ball of fire.
“Get us outta here, Jack!”
Camacho spun the chopper and increased speed, swooping low over the complex as he steered around to the south. “Goodbye, assholes.”
Lea twisted in her seat to see Blankov running out of the complex and staring at his aircraft, now no more than a black burning skeleton. The cloud of thick, choking smoke was the thickest she had ever seen. She high-fived Kim and Camacho set a course for home.
*
With the day long-gone, the exhausted four-strong team sat on the veranda running around the front of a large villa north of Pretoria. Set in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary owned by old friends of Danny Devlin from his South Africa days, they all agreed it was the safest place any of them could be right now.
The brother and sister owners of the property, Isaac and Lily Elsey, were away in France on business, but they had answered Danny’s call for help in a heartbeat and now the place was theirs for as long as they wanted it.
But that wouldn’t be long. Now, they cracked some beers, dressed their wounds and breathed a collective sigh of relief. Lea rubbed her temples and tried to force the stress away, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
In the notes containing Julius’s translation they had found references to an ancient shield that was made to match the sword. The Athanatoi scholar’s deciphering of the symbols on the sword described the shield in intimate detail and both Julius and Ryan had instantly recognized the item in question as being the Shield of Pridwen.
It was a relic from Camelot, much like they believed the Sword of Fire to be and both men knew where it was last seen: in the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens. Ryan was especially pleased.
He’d had time with the sword before when they found it in Wales, but not enough time to make a proper study of the symbols etched into it. This plus Julius’s hard work had yielded a fantastic result and they all felt like they were making real progress. It was a relief to all that the shield was in a museum and not at the end of a week-long treasure hunt.
But not all was great. They might have the information they needed about Athens, but so did Dirk Kruger and his psycho boss Ivan Blankov. It was true they had a good head-start on them, but there was still no sign of their puppet master, the Oracle. Lea felt the ominous signs of a migraine headache creeping around the sides of her skull.
Kim cut the call she was making and slipped her phone in her pocket. “I got some great news, guys – they got Lexi back!”
The relief was massive and they all shared a whoop of joy and a few high-fives on the veranda in the twilight. Lexi Zhang was not the closest member of the team, always keeping her emotional distance, but she was fiercely loyal and had risked her life many times to save them. The thought of her being tortured by the Zodiac assassins had given everyone a few sleepless nights and now it was over.
“Thank God,” Lea said.
Kim frowned.
“What is it?”
“But Alex just told me she was pretty badly messed up.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.
“She didn’t say, but I got the impression they screwed her up pretty bad before Joe and the others got to her.”
Camacho punched the side of the wall. “Sons of bitches!”
“What about the Zodiacs?” Ryan asked.
“They got Rat in custody and Pig and Zhou died in a helicopter crash.”
“Tiger and Monkey?” Lea asked.
“She said Lexi took Monkey out, but Tiger got away.”
“So four down, one to go, in other words,” Camacho said.
“Right,” said Kim. “Tiger is still out there.”
“And how do you go about catching a man like that?”
Camacho mulled it over. “You catch more flies with molasses than you do with vinegar, right?”
Ryan sank a beer and watched a crane heave itself up into the air over the dust-dry landscape. “You tell him about the Shield of Pridwen and Athens?”
She nodded. “They’re flying there right away.”
“Great,” Ryan said. “We’re closer than we’ve ever been guys.”
They toasted their success in retrieving the sword, but in her heart, Lea knew the fight hadn’t even started yet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hawke strolled along a side street in the center of Athens. The sun was setting over the Theater of Dionysus and couples walked together, hands clasped as they stole kisses in the twilight. It was a city he loved and after a long trip involving US Navy aircraft carriers and RAF transport planes he was glad to be here.
He thought back to his first mission with ECHO, before he even knew what that meant. They had come to the city in pursuit of a man named Demetriou. His ultimate betrayal of Hawke’s trust didn’t come close to spoiling this charming place for him.
Returning to his hotel, he crossed the lobby and spoke with the woman on the reception desk. Yes, the rest of his team had arrived from Pretoria around an hour ago and were waiting for him in their suite. He thanked them and made his way to the elevators, scanning all around him to check for anything out of place.
Old habits die hard.
And so did his pride, but tonight, die it would.
He owed Lea Donovan the mother of all apologies and now there was no getting out of it. She was upstairs with everyone else and his strategy of avoidance had worked about as well as he thought it might.
So get on with it and stop being such a bell-end…
Thanks, Cairo.
He opened the hotel door and there she was, right in front of him. She was on the bed, leaning up against the headboard and watching the TV with a bottle of water in her hand. She looked beautiful, as usual, if a little tired. He swallowed his pride and stepped over to the bed.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, feeling like a fool. “All right?”
“I might be.”
“You might be?”
“Sure,” she shrugged. “Depends on how sorry you are.”
Hawke realized every pair of eyes in the house was fixed firmly on him and he felt himself redden. Pulling his collar loose, he made a crack about it being hot in here and then asked Lea to step outside onto the balcony with him. When she agreed, a groan of disappointment filled the room. “Please no,” Scarlet said. “I’ve been waiting for ages to watch this.”
“Bugger off, Cairo,” Lea said.
Hawke closed the sliding door behind them and surreptitiously flashed Scarlet his middle finger as he did so.
Out here, on the balcony with Athens crumbling away beneath them, all lit amber and red in the setting sun, Hawke was stunned all over again by how beautiful she was. A gentle breeze lifted the ends of her long hair and trapped the sun in it, creating a halo effect. Her eyes, which ignored him and looked out over the bustling city, sparkled in the dying light. He waited for her lips to move, to signal that she was about to say something but they stayed still and silent and offered no hope of redemption for his sins.
The sun dipped below the skyline. He contemplated a gag. Humor was a device he had used to great effect many times in the past to get himself out of trouble. It was a defense mechanism that had saved his bacon on more occasions than he could count but the stony expression on her face told him it was a poor strategy, so he bit the bullet.
“I’m sorry, Lea.”
He heard the words as if someone else had said them and she was still ignoring him. Her eyes were tracing the path of a jet as it flew over the mountains to the west of them. While the rest of the ancient city was now fading into darkness, the plane’s high altitude meant it was still catching the sunlight and it shone like a pink diamond on a dark blue canvas.
“I said I…”
“I heard what you said.”
She turned now and faced him. He had missed this face. After London he had gone to ground. Enraged and humiliated, he had spent time dossing down with old SBS friends on England’s south coast before being recalled by Eden for the Beijing mission. By the time he’d got to the ECHO leader’s London HQ, Lea and the other team had already been dispatched to South Africa to retrieve the Sword of Fire. He hadn’t seen her since the bust-up and now she was just a few inches away from him. He reached out with his hands and held her shoulders. “I mean it. I was a total idiot.”
“Yes, you were. An arse, in fact.”
“Yes, I was an arse.”
“Was?”
“I am a total arse.”
She turned her face back to the city and smiled at a million strangers. “Better.”
He saw a glimpse of the old Lea and moved in for the kill. “Am I forgiven?”
“You’re around five percent there, Josiah,” she said with a sly smile. “Keep working on it.”
Before he could reply, she kissed him on the cheek and slid open the suite’s heavy glass doors. Stepping back inside the room, a sea of expectant faces turned to her. She glanced back at Hawke. “Oh, get inside, ya stupid eejit.”
*
Back to business, the mission could be going better. The rescue of Lexi Zhang from the heart of the Chinese military-industrial complex had rapidly turned from covert ingress into farce and back out the other side into the realms of serious diplomatic scandal. The British and American ambassadors in Beijing had both been summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain themselves and rumors of sanctions were swirling in the loftier circles of international government.
South Africa had gone better. They had retrieved the Sword of Fire and had the pleasure of annihilating one of Dirk Kruger’s major business ventures but it wasn’t all champagne and strawberries. The man himself, along with his business partner Mr Blankov and a small number of his men including Venter were still alive and knew about the Shield of Pridwen. Now they had to watch not only for the surviving member of the Zodiacs, Tiger and the Athanatoi, but a band of former South African commandos.
One of Eden’s diplomatic contacts in Westminster, Simon Underhill, could probably see off the Chinese and being on first-names terms with the sitting President of the United States would also help grease the wheels as well, but things were still dangerous.
On the other hand, they knew from the deciphered sword symbols that they were looking for its matching shield and only then would they have all the information they needed to locate the King’s Tomb.
“Early start everyone,” Hawke said.
Reaper stubbed out his cigarette. “Oui, and I must call my family in France.”
“And I must go and find some more ceegarettes,” Scarlet said in a French accent.
They split up and returned to their rooms, all except Hawke and Lea. She looked at him with a wicked sparkle in her eyes. “So, what number’s your room then?”
“Well, I…”
“You what?”
“I was hoping to stay in here tonight, with you.”
“That is hopeful, what with considering …
They embraced and kissed and as they fell onto the bed, Hawke reached out and killed the lights.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The next day, Athens was like a dream. Blazing sun, blue sky and the streets were busy and hot. Cars and mopeds sped through the arteries of the city like blood keeping the entire place thriving and energized. On the sidewalks outside cafés people argued and shared jokes and laughed and haggled. Tourists sauntered around snapping pictures on their phones and cameras. Hawke envied them, wishing he could kick back with a coffee and enjoy the city instead of fighting through whatever the day had in store for him and the rest of his team.
The Plaka district was heaving with activity and the air was thick with fumes from the heavy traffic. It mingled with the hot sunshine and exotic aromas drifting out of the restaurants, reminding Hawke that life went on and one day they might be able to have one of their own, to join the human race again and enjoy the simple pleasures on offer in a place like this.
Despite the pressures, the team seemed to be on good form. Kim and Camacho were talking about old times, Scarlet and Lexi were teasing Ryan about his latest tattoo and Lea and Devlin were sharing a joke. He had learned his lesson in that department and believed Lea when she had told him she loved him. He glanced at his watch, looked up at the café and sighed. “What the hell is he doing?”
Talk of the Devil, Hawke thought. Reaper stepped out of the nearby café with a Greek coffee and a lit rolled-up cigarette hanging off his lower lip. He winced when he sipped at the strong, black brew and then took a long drag on the cigarette. “I’m not alive until I do this,” he said, blinking hard in the daylight.
The team crossed the busy road at the lights and continued on their way to the National Archaeological Museum. Like the ancient city all around it, the impressive neoclassical building was an important part of ECHO’s world.
Inside, they fanned out and systematically searched through the ancient artefacts and relics until they found what they were looking for. Except, they never did. Hawke expanded the search to include objects from other cultures much further afield than what seemed likely, but still they came up with nothing.
He took a moment out, watching the team as they checked and double-checked for the shield. The idea that they had come this far only to fail in this way was totally unacceptable. Ryan had assured him that the shield described by Julius before his death was in this museum and he knew better than to doubt the young hacker. His mind was like a labyrinth of esoteria and facts and that combined with his eidetic memory made arguing with him a mistake.
Usually.
But what if this time he had screwed up? There was no sign of a shield matching the description given by Julius in the NAM website, after all. They had travelled all the way here from Pretoria purely on Ryan’s hunch, a faded memory he claimed he had about seeing the shield here.
Flying here from South Africa had cost them a lot
of time and resources. Keeping a Gulfstream in the air for that many hours wasn’t cheap, either. To think the whole thing had been a mistake wasn’t a thought he wanted to dwell on. But if Ryan had cocked up, it would give Scarlet at least another year’s worth of material to mock him with.
There was always that.
Ryan walked over to him, hands in pockets and a frown on his face. “I’m sure it was here. I know I saw it in a guidebook once.”
“Heads up,” Lea said. “Curator’s on the deck.”
The curator was a small man with diffused, thinning hair stretched over a tanned scalp in an impressive combover. He was wearing a neat, pale brown suit and polished shoes and fidgeted when he moved. Under his nose was a thick, black waxed moustache which curled up at the end and instantly reminded Hawke of Poirot. Looking across at Lea, he saw she had made the same observation. She stifled a chuckle and had to turn away from him to stop laughing.
After introducing himself as Panos Theodorakis, he said, “Can I help you, please?”
“I hope so,” Ryan said, describing the shield. “Do you have that here?”
“I’m impressed you are even aware of such an artefact,” he said. “The Shield of Pridwen has not been on display since 1941 and has never been included on our website. Its image was included in some of the earlier museum guidebooks printed before the war, but these were not very high-quality images and as far as I know there are very few of these publications left in print and they were only ever printed in Greek. Do you have one of these guides?”
Ryan shook his head.
“Then you must have an exceptional memory.”
“He does,” Lea said. “It’s actually quite terrifying, especially when you get into an argument with him. It’s like arguing with a computer database of uncomfortable facts.”
“You said that the shield hasn’t been on display since 1941,” Hawke said.
“That’s correct. As you may know, when the front finally fell and the Nazis invaded my country, we moved as many of our most precious artefacts to hiding places around Greece to stop the invaders getting their hands on them.”
