by Rob Jones
The F-16 was long-gone now, flying back into an attack formation with the other jet out on the horizon. Below, Devlin was suddenly aware for the first time of the screams of citizens and tourists panicking in the streets. Sirens filled the air and the red and blue lights of the emergency services flashed on the buildings far below as they raced toward the Acropolis.
“This situation is getting distinctly out of control,” Ryan said.
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Not going to let it get the better of you, are you boy?”
“Me? Never!”
“We need to get to the Parthenon,” Devlin said. “Better cover.”
They used the smoke for cover and made their way across to Hawke and the others who had tucked themselves down behind the northern side of the ancient temple. The carnage was even worse close up and they were forced to climb over the fallen pillars and blasted stonework of what had once been the world-famous Parthenon in order to reach the rest of the team.
“Kruger’s not screwing around anymore,” Camacho said. He was cradling Kim’s head in his arms and she was slowly coming back to life. “He’s going to pay for this.”
“He already is,” Lexi said. “Look!”
She pointed at the southern horizon where the AW101 was hovering above the city. One of the F-16s fired a surface-to-air missile which tore through the sky toward the chopper. The pilot spun around in a defensive manoeuvre which silently impressed the ECHO team and the missile blew past the side of it with a few feet to spare.
Two things happened at once. The missile slammed into the southern side of the Acropolis’s escarpment and blew a substantial quantity of sandstone and marl out of the side of the famous outcrop. It disappeared up into a cloud of filthy dust before coming back down to earth all over the streets of Plaka.
Then Kruger used the chopper’s new position sideways to the F-16 and fired the RPG-7 at it. The grenade scorched its way toward the fighter, its three hundred meters per second muzzle velocity making the short distance of one K in just three seconds flat and plowing into the bird’s starboard wing.
The explosion was savage, igniting the jet’s JP8 kerosene and blasting the fighter into a thousand pieces over the streets below. Kruger fired again and hit the second jet. It blew up into a fireball even bigger than the first. Both pilots had ejected with half a second to spare and were now drifting down to earth beneath the canopies of their escape chutes.
The merciless Kruger ordered the chopper to spin around and Venter filled the air force officers full of lead, killing them before they hit the ground. Then the chopper turned into the sun and disappeared into a mirage over the hills to the city’s east.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Dozing on the rear seat of the Suburban, Hawke tipped his head back and closed his eyes but stayed tuned to the conversation going on around him. It felt good to have the team working together like this, but they still had problems. Elysium had to be restored if they were going to have a proper center of operations again, but while the Oracle was alive there was little point in spending time and money on something he could so easily destroy.
And then there was his private life. Lea had forgiven him, but their break up had made him rethink the marriage proposal. He was still carrying the engagement ring in his gear bag, but he was no longer sure it was the best for the two of them. Still haunted by the memories of his wife’s murder and getting along so well with her without a ring on her finger, he started to think it was best to leave things as they were.
Lexi yawned. “How long till we get to Amphipolis?”
“One hour forty,” Ryan said without hesitation. “Just checked it out on the satnav.”
“Bummer the place doesn’t have an airport,” Scarlet sighed.
“Yes,” Ryan replied. “How ignorant the ancient Greeks were, not providing an airport for you to land your private jet in.”
She raised her middle finger. “Spin on it, Jemima.”
Hawke said, “Pull it together everyone. Thanks to Ryan deciphering the shield back in the tunnel we know where the tomb is located, but the Oracle knows too. We have the sword but he has the shield. All bets are off as to how this thing ends.”
Lea tied her hair back and blew out a deep breath. “And this is the Oracle we’re talking about. Remember that. This is a man who controls presidents and prime ministers. For all we know he’s already tracking us or something. Probably has an army of Athanatoi cultists waiting for us at the tomb.”
Kim gave a heavy sigh. “This is starting to feel like I don’t have a life anymore,” she said. “Before all this my life had structure. I had a career – the CIA and US Secret Service. I knew where I was from and where I was heading, but this is different. Maybe you Special Forces guys are used to all these crazy deployments and fights without rules, but I’m not sure I can handle it anymore and I miss my friends back in the States like crazy.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” Lea smiled, but then concern and sympathy twisted her lips. “But it’s not so great out there either.” She nodded with her head toward the car window. “We’re a family here and that’s something most of us just don’t have anywhere else in the world.”
“I get that, but don’t you ever get tired of this life?”
“Sure, but I can’t stop until I know what happened to my father and I’ve punished those responsible for his death. Until that day comes, I’ll never give up.”
A long silence passed and then Hawke spoke up. “So where are we on this tomb, Ryan?”
“Since we got the location of the tomb off the shield, I’ve been looking into the area in a lot of detail. It’s near a site called the Kasta Tomb. This was first discovered back in 2014 by archaeologists and it immediately raised eyebrows all over the world because of the hype surrounding the possibility of it being the location of Alexander the Great’s tomb. Since its initial discovery much more evidence has been found suggesting strong links between the tomb site and Alexander.”
“Such as?” Kim asked.
“Such as certain inscriptions which imply Hephaestion, one of Alexander’s top generals and advisors is buried there, for one thing. Another is the grandness of the place. There are two enormous sphinxes made of marble guarding the tomb’s main entrance and some archaeologists say there’s a good chance the entire complex was designed by King Alexander’s chief architect, a man named Dimocrates, sometimes known as Dinocrates of Rhodes. All of this means they think they might have found the tomb of Alexander the Great, but only we know it.”
“Thanks to the sword and shield,” Devlin said.
“Exactly,” said Ryan. “Now we know that they’re digging in roughly the right place, but not deep enough and slightly to the west of the actual site of his tomb. With the information we have now we should be able to locate the tomb precisely.”
“These little quests just keep dragging us deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole,” Lexi said quietly from the Chevy’s second row near the front. “Idols, maps, treasure hunts, immortal men, cults, secrets and lies. We’re so deep now we might never get out again.” Her tortured hand was hidden inside a leather glove which she tried to keep out of sight as much as possible.
Hawke considered her words as he let Camacho’s smooth driving whisk them around the northern shores of the Strymonian Gulf. Part of the Aegean Sea, it was a world of olive tree-covered peninsulas stretching into the sparkling turquoise water and cirrus cloud-streaked skies.
Deeper into the rabbit hole.
He nodded with the thought and found himself working his way through all the men and women he’d been forced to take out on this crazy journey. Hugo Zaugg and his depraved henchman, the one-eyed Baumann. Sheng Fang and his insane belief that he was the Thunder God. Maxim Vetrov and his crocodile pit. Klaus Kiefel’s masterplan to wipe out the United States with an ancient bio weapon. Álvaro Sala and his crazy pursuit of the elixir of life to the very ends of the world. Morton Wade and his Mexican coffee plantation full of slaves�
� It almost seemed like a dream now, unreal and impossible.
And yet it was real.
And so were Dirk Kruger and the sick and twisted man who pulled his strings, the Oracle. Thousands of years old, was he a man or a god? A demigod? This creature who had been tormenting them for so long could be either and it drove him mad just to think about it. He glanced forward to the next row where Lea was sleeping.
If it felt like he was losing his mind in all this, then he couldn’t imagine what it was doing to her. This man Wolff, the Oracle, had ordered the murder of her father and had him slaughtered right in front of her eyes. If anyone here deserved closure from this nightmare, then it was her and he was going to make damned sure she got it, no matter what it took.
He looked down at his watch and sighed when he saw the shattered face. He’d smashed it on the rocks back at the Parthenon and broken it. He took it off and slipped it into his bag down at the bottom near the engagement ring. It was a present his mother gave him on his pass out parade. A long time ago now, to be certain and he would get it repaired as soon as some degree of sanity returned to his turbulent life.
Beside him, Reaper pushed his window open and fired up a cigarette. Some of the smoke blew back into the SUV, but no one complained. They were all smokers or ex-smokers of one thing or another and they let him enjoy the thing in peace. It settled the nerves, he said and Scarlet lit one up to join him.
“Just imagine,” Devlin said quietly. “Finally finding the tomb of Alexander the Great after all this time…”
Ryan turned around in his seat and faced the back. “Tell me about it. Archaeologists and historians have been searching for the tomb of Alexander the Great for centuries, hoping to find not only artefacts and relics relating to his life and conquests but also the vast amount of treasure he’s generally supposed to be have been buried with.”
Lea opened her eyes and sighed. “We want the idols,” she said bitterly. “Just the idols.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jessica Clark padded around her kitchen as she talked. She was scrunching her neck up to hold the cell phone at her ear the way a violinist holds their instrument, waiting impatiently for someone to get back on the line. It was late and dark and the LED under-cabinet lighting gave a calm, arctic blue glow to the neat and ordered room.
“Garcetti?” she asked.
“Aaand I’m back.”
“You get the details I need, or what?”
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
“Give me the details, please.”
“You got a pen or something?”
She sighed and fought to control her temper. “You think people who do what I do write shit down? Why do you think I’m talking on a pre-paid cell phone?”
“Just asking… As I explained before, there’s a new international terrorist group on the scene.”
“You already said that.”
“Just listen up, Cougar. This is the official line and you need to know it. According to Pegasus, my contact in the CIA, they’re called the ECHO team. That’s Echo, Charlie, Hotel, Oscar and it stands for the Eden Covert History Organization.”
“Doesn’t sound like a bunch of terrorists to me.” She woke her laptop up and accessed the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists website.
“If Pegasus says they’re terrorists, they’re terrorists.”
“They’re not on the Most Wanted Terrorists list.” She slid a box of full metal jacket nine mil pistol cartridges off the kitchen table and started to push the primer-end of the bullets into the back of the fifteen-round magazine. As the tension on the spring increased she slotted her speed-loader onto the top of the magazine and finished filling it up.
“And we both know that’s the public Most Wanted list, Cougar. The list on my desk right now is the list of the real problem children.”
“What are my orders?” Pushing a box of Cheerios away to give her more room on the table, she put the full magazine into her bag alongside her Glocks and started to fill another one. The second one was much older with a weaker, used spring so she set the speed-loader down in the bag and filled it up manually.
“It’s the full package.”
The words made her stop in mid-flow. “The full package?”
“Uh-huh. ECHO’s members and everyone they know. All family and close friends are to be wiped.”
“You know how big a job like that is?”
“I don’t give a damn. You asked what your orders were. Now you know.”
“Names.”
Garcetti tried not to sound bored as he rattled off the names of everyone she was to terminate. There weren’t many. Just ECHO for now. She would work her way out to their friends and family as she went along.
“Where are they now?”
“They just arrived in Greece.”
“What, are they on vacation?”
“No, they’re not on vacation. They’re on a mission to obtain some relics they have no business trying to obtain.”
“You want me to fly to Greece to do it?”
“No, I want you to pour yourself a bath with some Shizumi luxury salts and let the stresses of the day melt away. Of course I want you to fly to Greece, but you’re only tracking them. You don’t take anyone out until I give the final execution order, but it will be soon, so be ready.”
Be ready. What an asshole. She was ready every minute of the day or night. That was how she stayed alive. “You’re the boss.”
“You got that right.”
She heard him again now. He was along the short corridor in his little bedroom, coughing in his bed. She put down her bag and walked toward him. “Wait a minute, Garcetti.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“Don’t you put the phone down, Cougar!”
She put the cell phone down on the hall table and opened the bedroom door. The ghostly glow from the kitchen lights shone onto the bed and lit up her son. Ten now, his young life had been spent fighting severe asthma.
“You okay, buddy?”
A thin, pale face emerged from the bedsheets and gave a solemn nod. “I guess.”
She hated seeing him like this. The attacks came and went, but they were getting worse. Sometimes when she heard him coughing and wheezing for breath she broke down and cried before going to comfort him.
“You’re going to be fine.”
Fine. Sure, but it was relative term. She had no insurance. Wasn’t even in the system. She was like a wraith, moving through the world the way a ghost drifts through a cemetery. No birth certificate, no ITIN number for tax, no nothing and yet look here – a young boy of ten who spent his life fighting to breathe.
There was a new operation they said could help. It had something to do with radio waves. She didn’t understand all that stuff, but she knew how much it cost. A chunky five figures and she couldn’t reach that high. That was why she was coming out of retirement, just one last time.
This goddam stinking pile-of-shit world wasn’t going to get any more kicks torturing Matthew Clark and that was for damned sure. She knew what she had to do to stop his pain.
He peered over the sheets and saw the time. “You’re going away again?”
“I have to, Matty. I’m so sorry, baby.”
He started to cry and she felt her heart breaking for the thousandth time. She reached out to him but he pulled away. “I hate it when you go away.”
“It’s all right, baby. It’s just a few days, that’s all.”
“You always say that.”
She ran a motherly hand over his forehead and swept his hair back. “I know and I hate it, but it’s what I have to do. I can’t buy you the help you need unless I get paid, you know? This is all I can do, baby.”
And it was. No one gave regular jobs to a ghost. All previous attempts had winded up working alongside illegal immigrant labor or plain old-fashioned stealing. This was all she could do, but most jobs paid only enough to cover the rent and pay for food and Matty�
��s medicine. This job sounded different. It might just be the one to end their nightmare and start living a real life.
She walked back out to the hall and snatched up her phone. Garcetti might be her handler, but there was a healthy respect people like him had for people like her. After all, she could live with breaking into his apartment and taking him out, but he couldn’t say the same about her. “How much?”
“Kind of you to join me again.”
“I asked how much.”
“One million.”
She gave a weary sigh and raised her eyes to heaven. Money well-spent, she guessed, but it would be more than enough for Matty’s operation plus plenty left over to get out of this apartment and start a new life down in Mexico. “Fine.”
“You will be paid on completion of the mission. Got it?”
She looked along the corridor at the shape of her son in his bed. Watching his thin body shaking as he coughed and wheezed, she knew there wasn’t a damned thing she wouldn’t do for him.
“Got it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Shouldering their weapons and gear without complaint, the ECHO team left the Suburban and set out for the top of the mountain. The day was already hot and the sun beat down on them as they made their way to the coordinates. Their destination was well away from any of the paths used by hikers and tourists in the area.
Over the last hour or so the terrain had become dry, dusty and rocky with scree. One misplaced foot could mean a fatal fall, especially considering how loaded up they all were with equipment, guns and ammo. Highlighting their isolation from the world, a black kite screeched in the blue sky high above them.
Hawke glanced up and saw several others join the bird of prey, circling on thermals and wheeling patiently in the sky as they waited for one of them to tumble in a ravine and die. He pulled his hood up over his head to protect it from the glare of sun. “No way those bastards are having me for dinner.”
He turned his gaze back to Lea, Scarlet, Reaper and Devlin who were now several hundred meters ahead of them up the slope. Looking at Lexi, he said, “When they reach that break on the ridge they should be able to see the rift further to the north. We’ve got some serious pounding ahead of us before we get to the coordinates though.”