by Rob Jones
“To the Helipad!” Lea yelled.
“No!” Hawke said. “That’s the next target.”
The chopper roared over the top of them now and spun around in a tight arc off the yacht’s starboard bow.
“Where then?”
“Take cover inside the bridge!” Hawke said.
Now Ryan pointed at the bird of war. Worse than a nightmare, its hideous angular body covered in rockets and guns beared down on them all over again. “They’re coming back for another run!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“There’s nowhere to go!” Lexi said.
Reaper pointed at the sky. “I see another chopper.”
“I can take it out!” Ryan said, raising his gun and walking to the door.
“Bugger me, Ryan, get back inside!” Hawke said sharply. “You couldn’t hit the floor if you fell on it!”
Ryan did as he was told and came back inside where Hawke now watched its progress. “Looks like a Kasatka, and he’s slowing up.”
“Kasatka?” Ryan asked.
“Russian-built military transport.”
The chopper pulled into a hover above the top deck. Rappel lines tumbled out of the doors and then things got interesting fast. Smoke grenades provided instant cover as half a dozen men in black combat fatigues and gas masks slid down the ropes and hit the deck.
Scarlet loaded her gun. “The gunship’s not here to destroy us but to provide a diversion while the Kasatka dumps its crap on us.”
“Russians?” Lea asked.
“Not necessarily,” said Hawke. “Looks like another Oracle purchase to me.”
Reaper watched the men fan out, submachine guns gripped in their leather gloved hands. “Kolya, are they Russians?”
“Hard to know, but I think not. They are better.”
“If it really is Athanatoi,” said Ryan, “how the hell did they know we were here?”
Hawke knew what they were all thinking. Someone was leaking information and all eyes swiveled to Nikolai. “We have no evidence.”
“I would never do such a thing,” Nikolai said. “And why would I put my own life at risk?”
Lexi frowned. “Kind of convenient that since you’re on the team these guys know where to find us, though.”
“We have no evidence,” Hawke repeated. “And no time to think about it. Our new friends are cutting through Mokrani’s security like a blowtorch through warm butter.”
“Where the hell is Hafez?” Lea said. “He has the ring!”
“He went inside,” Ryan said. “Once we have the ring we can try and get off this thing, but how?”
“The tender,” Hawke said. “If we can get down to the davit without getting our heads blown off.”
“So what do we do?” Scarlet asked. High above their heads on the top deck the fighting between Mokrani’s men and the invaders was intensifying.
“We get Hafez and the ring before they do!” Hawke said.
With sheer mayhem exploding all around them, they split into teams and started to search the boat for Hafez and the ring.
Leading the charge, Lea shot her way through the stern doors and was first inside the rear of the yacht’s main deck. Safely behind the thick marine windows, the chaos unfolding on the outside decks was muffled to her now. Hawke jumped in behind her, gun drawn and eyes dilated wide as the adrenaline pumped through his body.
“You see him?”
“Nope.”
“Hafez! Where are you?”
No reply.
The fighting increased. The men in combat fatigues had quickly eliminated Mokrani’s yacht security and were now charging down the stairs on both sides of the bridge as they headed toward the lower decks, also in search of the ring.
“Where is everyone?” Hawke said into his palm mic. “Report.”
Everyone called their locations in except Ryan.
“Ryan? Where are you mate?”
Silence.
Athantoi burst through an internal door at the other end of the galley and charged toward them with handguns raised. Behind them, Lea now caught sight of Ryan being bundled into what she guessed was an escape route, but the view was blocked when the men opened fire and she and Hawke dived for cover behind some of the galley cabinets.
“I have Ryan, Joe!” Lea yelled. “They’re taking him away, and they have Hafez too!”
Hawke spoke rapidly into his palm mic once again. “All teams, be advised they have Ryan and Hafez and the ring and they’re on the run back to the helipad.”
“Me and Reap are on it, Joe,” Scarlet said.
Hawke and Lea were still pinned down.
“These guys are good,” he said.
“Well, we sure as shite didn’t come this far to give up, Josiah!”
“No, we didn’t,” he called back, bobbing his head back down to protect his eyes from more flying splinters. The fruit bowl on the side exploded in a shower of glass crystal and shredded bananas and mangos flew into the air, raining down over their heads. “Umm, yummy!”
She rolled her eyes. “Still a total eejit, I see.”
“Always and forever.”
She blew him a kiss as she reloaded her gun. “It’s good to know some things in life don’t change.”
They both fired on the men again, this time with more success. Lea took out the man on the portside and Hawke killed the other man, blasting him out of the starboard door where he crashed over the rail and tumbled down to the deck below.
Two more charged them, but Hawke fired on them and killed them both, emptying his magazine into them without mercy and covering the galley wall with blood as the rounds tore through their bodies and ripped out of their backs.
But it wasn’t over yet.
A second later, Lea’s worst fears came into sharp focus in a hurry. Another squall of violence ignited like a tinderbox with more Athanatoi streaming out of every door and hatch in sight.
“We have to get out of here!” Hawke yelled. “Follow me!”
They crawled out of the galley and got outside. Hawke slammed his body against the starboard gunwale and got busy warning Reaper’s team about a number of men sprinting down the stainless steel staircase toward the foredeck. Beside him Lea reloaded her gun, her mind fixed on Ryan’s kidnapping.
The mercs stopped playing and the real fighting started. A man operating a pintle-mounted machine gun spun the weapon’s muzzle around and began laying serious fire down on Scarlet and Zeke as they attacked the starboard companionway toward the stern. Another team of mercs now bedded down near the starboard console battered them with a brutal fusillade and forced a retreat.
Zeke tripped in one of the scuppers and fell down flat on his face. His gun spun away along the deck, well out of reach. A sitting duck, Scarlet sprinted down the deck, raising her gun into the aim and firing on the men above them as she kicked the Texan’s weapon back down to him.
“Thanks, hun.”
“Less of the hun, Tex.”
“Got it!”
He grabbed the gun, flipped over onto his back and joined her in firing on the men on the top deck. With deadly accuracy in their aims they killed two of the mercs and forced the rest of them back inside the yacht, giving them just enough time to run for the cover of the saloon a few yards to their right.
Hawke and Lea took advantage of the break in firing and moved from their position towards the saloon. Scarlet and Zeke had cleared the room and were running up a series of carpeted steps on the far side of the room. Broken glass and blood and dead mercs were scattered behind the Englishwoman and the Texan, shocking evidence of how savage the fighting had been in this part of the yacht.
Then, solemn words delivered in the chaos by a thick southern French accent brought everyone to a standstill.
“It’s over, everyone.”
Reaper’s voice on the comms.
“Say again,” Lea said.
“It’s over, they killed Hafez, took the ring… and they have Ryan on board the transport chopper.”
Hawke and Lea stared at each other in disbelief. For a moment there was no movement or sound, just the two ECHO friends surrounded by the cooling corpses of Mokrani’s men and some of the snatch squad.
“I don’t believe it,” Lea said. “Not Ryan…”
Then they both saw movement and each spun around, guns raised.
One of the men in back combat fatigues was still alive, but barely. They moved over to him and took off his gas mask and riot helmet to reveal a man in his twenties. Hawke dragged him away from the dead bodied and out on to the deck where Reaper, Scarlet and Lexi had gathered with grim expressions on their faces.
“We have one still alive, hein?” Reaper said.
Lea frowned. “Only just.”
“What is your name?” Scarlet said.
No reply.
“Your friends are long gone, matey lad,” Hawke said.
As the Kasatka flew away with his comrades and Ryan and with the gunship nowhere in sight, the mysterious mercenary knew the game was up, and crashed back onto the deck visibly deflated. “Who do you work for?” Reaper said. “Is it the Oracle?”
The man tried to laugh, but his cackling quickly turned into a long coughing fit, and then he died right before their eyes.
“Dammit all to hell!” Lea said.
Then several of the team had the same thought at once. “Wait, didn’t Ryan have the rings?”
“No, thank God,” Lea said. “He gave them to me before we got on the tender.”
A sigh of partial, qualified relief. They had Ryan but not the rings.
“They took him for a reason,” Lea said. “They’re not going to kill him… yet.”
“When we find the Athanatoi, we find Ryan,” Hawke said. “And we all know that means getting to the Citadel as fast as possible… hang in there, mate.”
“So what now?” Zeke asked.
Hawke’s jaw tightened. “We need to get out of here and back to the hotel,” he said at last. “We’re no good to Ryan standing around a burning bloody boat.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
From their room on the fiftieth floor of the Burj Al Arab hotel in the Umm Suqeim district of Dubai, the breathtaking view of the sunset over the Persian Gulf had weaved a spell over the exhausted team and given them a few moments of peace to gather their thoughts. Losing Mokrani’s ring had laid them all low, but Ryan’s violent kidnapping had hit them much harder and now they were licking their wounds and trying to work out the best way forward.
If there was a way forward, thought Hawke. Maybe this time they were just up against too many people who wanted them dead. On this mission, their enemy had included not only the Athanatoi, but also Razak and his guerrillas, the Yakuza and Kozlov and his Russian mafia thugs in Vegas. Worse, they had lost valuable friends and teammates in Danny Devlin and Magnus Lund at the lethal hands of the mystery sniper. Maybe this time, he thought darkly, they were doomed to fail. It was all starting to get to him in a way like previous missions had never done.
“The priority is getting Ryan back,” he said, breaking the gloomy silence. “We’ve rescued friends before and we’ll do it again. The risk of kidnap and death is part of our lives and we all knew that from the start, including Ryan.”
“But we don’t even know for sure who took him.” Zeke scratched his neck and frowned.
“It was Athanatoi,” Nikolai said. “I’m certain of it.”
“And how could they know where we were?” Lexi asked.
“Just a coincidence.” Lea switched on the plasma screen and dialed Eden. “They’re researching the rings’ locations from their copy of the Codex and we got to Mokrani at the same time.”
Scarlet lifted her eyes from the floor to Nikolai and back to Lea. “A hell of a coincidence.”
“Enough speculation.” Hawke crocked his neck and pulled a beer from the fridge. “We can’t afford to waste the time. We have to look at what we have got, not what we haven’t got.”
“We still have five of the gods’ rings.” Eden’s face loomed above them on the giant plasma screen on the hotel wall. “Those, plus the eight idols locked in the Bank of England’s vaults still put us at a strong advantage over the Oracle. Remember he still only has two rings.”
“With two more to get,” Hawke said. “That gives us only seven of the rings even if we presume we’re successful finding the two remaining ones, and no Ryan to help decipher them.”
Eden nodded. “What are the chances of being able to use the seven rings to locate the Citadel? Anyone?”
“Ask Ryan,” Reaper said.
The words hung in the air. Lea said, “Not great, Rich. Seven rings isn’t even ninety percent of the puzzle… but you never know.”
“What about the sniper?” Scarlet changed the subject. “Any news on that?”
Eden shook his head. “Sorry, but no. I’ve made contact with several good sources of intelligence information in France, Germany, Israel and the United States. No one knows for sure. They only have theories.”
“And what are these theories?” Hawke asked. “Because whoever this bastard is they’ve taken two of our own and we don’t know when he’ll strike again.”
“So far, my Israeli colleague speculates that it could be Gideon Dayan, a former Mossad man gone rogue over a year ago, but he has his doubts due to the equipment being used. The French have a different theory.”
He paused for a second too long.
“And?” Hawke said.
“You’re not going to like this, Hawke, but Paris is telling me it could be the Spider.”
Hawke felt his blood turn to ice. The Spider was the Cuban hitman behind his wife’s murder in Vietnam, a man he had sworn to kill as soon as he had tracked him down. Finding out that he could be the killer behind the deaths of two more of his close friends and colleagues was a hammer blow, so he had to be sure. “You are talking about Alfredo Lazaro?”
“Yes, I am. They’re not one hundred percent on it but it’s possible. They can’t be sure about the attack in Miami, but they have good intel placing him in Athens during the exact hour Magnus was murdered outside the Theatre of Dionysus.”
“Bloody hell,” Lea said. “This is too much.”
“Just hang on,” said Hawke. “This is just speculation from the French, right?”
“Right,” Eden said.
“So let’s not get carried away. The sniper could still be anyone, and we’re making a massive mistake if we focus our attention on Lazaro.”
Lea was not persuaded. “But don’t you think that it’s a hell of a coincidence that the hitman who killed Liz was in Athens the exact same hour that we were?”
“A coincidence, maybe,” Hawke said. “Maybe the bastard is following me around again, maybe he wants me dead too. I want him dead, so that makes us equal, but we can’t make strategy based on speculation. Lazaro is a dead man one way or the other, and in the meantime, we go forward on the basis that the sniper is still unidentified.”
“A sound plan,” Eden said. “And I’ll continue shining my torch in the darkest corners from this end with a view to getting a firmer ID on the mystery man with his finger on the trigger.”
Hawke settled down again, but the sound of Lazaro’s codename had unsettled him. The Spider was a ruthless assassin raised in the back streets of Havana. He was a predator, a killer without conscience, and the man who had snuffed out his young wife’s life without a hint of mercy or regret.
Up till this moment, he’d always planned on tracking Lazaro down and avenging Liz’s murder the old-fashioned way, but now there was the possibility that the Spider was hunting him again. Is that why the team was being targeted? Could Lazaro have killed Danny and Magnus because of their association with him? The mere thought of it felt like a lead weight on his shoulders. Now, more than ever, he had to hunt the Spider down and end the threat.
“Moving on,” Scarlet said, sensing the anguish her old friend must be feeling, “What’s the skinny on the last two rings?”
Eden blew out a breath and smiled. He, too, was relieved to move away from Alfredo Lazaro. “Good news. Less than an hour ago I received a message from our old friend Ali al-Majid. He has kindly decided to accept our million dollars and in return has given us the locations of the two last rings. The first is what he believes to be the Ring of Romulus. He says it’s in the private possession of an academic. His name is Professor Qasim al-Hashimi and he works in the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad.”
“Sounds like we’re getting warmer,” Lea said.
“Not just warm but hot,” said Eden. “We’re almost there, team.”
A shocked silence fell over the team as they each processed what Eden had just said.
“Is he going to cooperate?” Hawke asked. “Or do we need another million?”
Eden gave a firm nod as a smile broke out on his face. “He is, but only on the condition that he can go with you on the journey to the Citadel.”
“I have no objections,” Lea said.
Lexi shrugged. “Nor me. He’s an archaeologist. He could be useful.”
“Wait a minute,” Hawke said. “What sort of man is he? Can we trust him? Is he fit enough to reach the Citadel?”
“Fit enough?” Zeke asked.
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “It’s not going to be just lying around with a red bow tied on it, Zeke. It’s going to be underground, or in a hidden mountain pass, or fuck knows how hard to find. If our Prof is a major league lardy then he could get seriously hurt, especially if someone’s shooting at us.”
“Major league lardy?” Zeke said. “That’s not very nice.”
She shrugged. “I’m not very nice.”
Hawke sucked his gut in. “If he wants in then fine, but we tell him the risks first.”
“Like Lex just said, he’s an archaeologist,” Lea said. “He’s going to be used to visiting excavations all over the world, right?”
“Right,” Eden said firmly.
“You said Ali had information about two rings?” Lea asked.
