by Rob Jones
“Did you get rid of it?”
“I did indeed,” he said as he turned around and slipped his hands back around her waist. “A shame really as I was enjoying the target practice, but some people just keep droning on.”
Lea turned her head. “For fuck’s sake, that’s terrible!”
“Look out!”
She turned back to see they were heading straight for a footbridge. Too late to change direction, she rammed the scooter up the steps, over the bridge and back down the other side at full speed. The thud thud thud of the stone steps came up through the suspension and banged on their backsides but Lea was more interested in the lake that was rapidly approaching them.
Catching the Sprinter in the corner of her eye, she steered the scooter hard to the left and skirted the artificial lake’s smooth shore. Cutting in and out of tourists enjoying the sunshine, she never took her eye off the fleeing van. She stamped her boot down and floored the accelerator, sending them both lurching backwards as the scooter surged ahead. The tires spun and a cloud of burned rubber smoke streaked out behind them like a jet plane contrail.
“Woo-hoo!” Lea yelled. “This is more like it.”
“Sometimes you’re even crazier than Cairo!”
“Thanks!”
“Where the hell did they go?”
They got their answer when the Sprinter’s nose emerged at speed from a side street and headed straight for them.
They had no need to speak. Hawke knew Lea would swing to the right and she knew he would be on it with the gun. As she steered away, he twisted to his left and raised the gun but it was too late. The impact was inevitable.
The Sprinter’s front fender made contact with the scooter’s rear tire and spun it around like a coin. Hawke clung onto Lea but the force of the impact was too great. He sailed through the air and crashed to the tarmac on the other lane. A dozen high-speed barrel-rolls later he came to a stop in the gutter in a cloud of dust and curses.
He sat up and raised his gun, refusing to be cowed by the electric pulsing he felt all over his battered body. Blood ran into his eye from a cut on his forehead and he realized his hands were trembling as adrenaline coursed through his system.
Everything was spinning – his head, the scooter and the Sprinter. After hitting them, the merc at the wheel had slammed on the brakes and steered hard to the right to avoid crashing into a line of cars parked on the side of the road. He was too slow to avoid his fate and now the Sprinter spun out of control and smashed into the cars side-on.
Turning to the right, he saw Lea was still spinning on the scooter. She steered into the spin and brought the machine under control, kicking down on the asphalt to keep her balance and then steering it back over to him.
She pulled up beside him and let the revs drop. “Talk about sitting down on the job.”
“Funny,” he said, staggering to his feet.
“How are our friends?”
“You tell me.”
The Sprinter was stationary now, steam coming from the radiator grille and the stench of burned rubber drifting around its rear. Lea climbed off the bike and they both approached the vehicle with their guns raised.
The stolen van suddenly burst to life. In a hail of spinning tires, rubber smoke and rattling tailpipes, it made a tight circle and headed back up the road. As it passed them the rear doors burst open to reveal several mercs with guns. They fired on them without mercy, spraying automatic gunfire all over the street and determined to kill them both.
“Cover!” Hawke yelled.
And then they were in the bullet-storm from hell.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They dived for cover behind the parked cars and returned fire on the rapidly disappearing Mercedes van.
“I think they’re still mad because you blew their little toy out of the sky,” Lea said.
“Now you’re just being silly.”
“Just saying it like it is.”
Hawke shook his head as he aimed at the rear tire. He stared straight down the sight and prepared to squeeze his finger when he saw a woman and a young child emerge from a side street further up the road. They were ahead of the Mercedes but hadn’t seen the mercs yet.
“Hold your fire! Civvies!”
The Merc raced on, spitting hellfire out of the rear doors regardless. The woman screamed and dragged the child out of sight but by then it was too late. The mercs spun the Sprinter around the next corner and into another street.
“Get after them!” Lea called out.
They charged down the road and when they turned the corner they saw the Sprinter parked up and doors wide open. Fifty yards ahead, Chumbu was carrying Jazmin into the Capital Circus of Budapest. An odd place to find a circus, but they had expected it thanks to Ryan’s in-flight briefing.
Unique in construction, it had stood on its present site in Városliget city park since the early 1970s and was the only circus in Europe inside a stone building. This allowed it to open in all seasons and entertain all year round and with a capacity of nearly 1500 people, and along with the zoo next to it, it was one of the city’s most popular attractions.
Today, Hawke considered, they were about to get a very different kind of show.
The Glock in his raised right hand provided the one hundred percent discount he needed to get through the turnstiles without any money. As the security guards called in for back-up, he and Lea weaved through the bustling crowd and pursued the mercs into the main ring.
They emerged into a fantasy world of trapeze artists and acrobats, all lit neon-blue by a serious rig of arc lights high above their heads. A woman in a sequin costume was sitting on the head of an elephant as it walked slowly around the outside of the ring and now a burst of applause filled the arena.
Lea turned to Hawke. “Well, this is different.”
“You see them?” Hawke said.
She scanned for any sign of Kashala’s men or Jazmin Benedek. “No, you?”
Bright yellow searchlights swung around and lit the two of them up like a couple of Christmas trees. “This is not good.”
As hundreds of confused faces turned away from the elephant and stared at them, the former SBS man had to agree. “Let’s try back there.”
They crossed the ring and headed for backstage. Pushing their way through one of the side doors, they found themselves in a holding area. A number of performers stared back at them, and standing at the front of the small group were two dressed as mimes. They spoke to them in Hungarian and pointed back at the door.
“I think they want us to go back the way we came,” Lea said.
Hawke pushed them out of the way. “Sorry, can’t oblige.”
Another round of applause emanated from behind then, and now a loud chorus of laughter and the sound of several clown horns.
“Where did they go?”
The mimes got more aggressive. The man stepped up to him, his face moving out of the shadow of one of the broad brass stanchions supporting the roof. He put a white-gloved hand on Hawke’s chest and spoke in stilted English. “No tourists in here.”
The Englishman heard the unmistakable roar of a big cat. Craning his neck to look around the mime he saw two large cages on wheels, each one holding an adult Bengal tiger.
“We’re not tourists,” he said. “We’re looking for our friend. She’s been kidnapped.”
“They’re going to torture her!” Lea said.
Torture.
The word echoed in Hawke’s mind and he had a sudden vision of Lexi in the Zodiac’s torture cell. Strapped down and having her fingernails wrenched out by the man they had called Pig. Once, a long time ago he had been much more than friends with the Chinese assassin. Is that what Jazmin Benedek now faced, simply for agreeing to help them with the lyre?
A series of screams came from somewhere beyond the backstage area. They heard the distinctive crackle of gunfire and then another roar of terrified people.
“Sounds like they’re trying to get people out of the wa
y,” Lea said.
The frustration rose in Hawke’s heart. “Damn it, where’s the rest of the team?”
“They’re doing their best, Joe!”
Gun gripped with both hands and muzzle pointed at the floor, Hawke looked once again at the performers. “Please, which way gets us to those screams?”
“It sounds like they are coming from the bandstand,” one of the mimes said in heavily accented English. “You go that way to reach it, past the tigers.”
They followed his pointing finger to the tigers, and neither of them looked very happy to be caged.
“Those cages are locked right?”
The mime shrugged. “Most of the time.”
“Absolutely fantastic, and thanks for your help.”
He pushed past them and they ran toward the cages. As they approached, one of the tigers snarled and swiped a set of razor-sharp claws in their direction.
“Aww,” Lea said. “He is cute.”
Hawke made a face but decided not to comment. Indicating a doorway to their right, he checked the coast was clear. “Come on!”
They sprinted through the bandstand and scanned the shifting crowd for the enemy. He saw an ocean of faces but not one of interest to him. Passing the general admissions stand he got what he was looking for – a glimpse of Kashala and his men as they dragged Jazmin out toward the zoo behind the big tent.
“Over there!” he said.
Reaper’s voice on the comms. “I see them. I’ll take my team around to the north.”
Lea gave Hawke a look of hope. “Reap? You’re here?”
“Oui, we borrowed one of the police cars called out to the mall.”
“Good work, Reap,” Hawke said. “We’ll trap them in a pincer movement.”
“Received.”
Bursting out into the day, they were dwarfed by the impressive turquoise domes of the zoo’s famous Elephant House. Seeing Reaper and his team making their way around the northern part of the botanic gardens, Hawke and Lea saw Kashala and his men heading for a massive artificial mountain in the center of the zoo.
“I see them,” he said over the comms. “They’re going into the mountain. What the hell is that place?”
“It’s called the Magic Mountain,” Ryan said into the comms. “You go inside it and they have an interactive zoological exhibition in there.”
“In other words, dark and full of tourists,” Lea said. “The perfect place to give us the slip.”
Tracking their pursuers with guns raised into the aim, they weaved among the terrified visitors and entered the Magic Mountain.
“This is just plan old-fashioned surreal,” Lea said.
“Eyes peeled,” said Hawke. “They could be anywhere.”
Inside, life-size models of sharks and other sea creatures hung from the ceiling and a gentle underlighting lit their faces an eerie arctic-blue. Hawke looked up and checked the ceiling space. An enormous blue whale hung above him.
With the tourists safely out of the way, a place of happy fun and learning had become a dark, cloying nightmare landscape. When something moved behind one of the animal skeletons, Hawke spun around and raised his gun into the aim in one fluid motion. Nothing. Maybe a shadow. He lowered the gun and turned to Lea.
“You see anything?”
“Not a thing. Maybe they left already.”
They continued through the exhibition until they heard the sound of a fire door bang open somewhere ahead of them. A woman screamed.
“Jazmin’s conscious!” Lea said. “And there’s another incoming chopper!”
They ran to the door and saw Kashala and his team tracking away from the Magic Mountain and heading out to a shallow pool in the middle of the botanic gardens. Chumbu was holding a twenty-inch tactical machete at Jazmin’s throat.
Hawke glanced at the knife held at her throat. Stricken with fear, she helplessly staggered along the path toward the chopper. Chumbu’s big hands gripped her easily as he dragged her along the path. When they reached the idling helicopter, the Congolese merc pushed her up inside and slid the door shut. Running around to the other side, he wedged the stock of his Kalashnikov into his hip and wildly sprayed the zoo with automatic fire.
“Down!” Hawke slammed his body to the ground and rolled through the dust and dirt until he reached the relative safety of an ice cream cart. Hurriedly smacking a fresh mag into the Glock’s grip, he sighted the weapon on the rising chopper. Aware of the number of terrified tourists in the vicinity, he delivered a short burst of controlled fire aimed at the side window.
Repeating his earlier success, the rounds punctured the glass and struck the pilot, killing him instantly. Chumbu was sitting in the co-pilot seat and he quickly took over, spinning the helicopter around until it was facing Hawke. Hell came in the form of dozens of twelve mil rounds spitting out of the muzzle of a Yak-B Gatling gun. At five thousand rounds a minute, the chin-mounted nightmare didn’t leave a lot of room for negotiation as it rapidly blasted the wooden ice cream cart into dust fragments.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Hawke scrambled to his feet and sprinted over to the boulders at the base of the Magic Mountain. As he ran, he raised his gun and fired blindly on the chopper. Diving behind the rocks he realized he was once again out of bullets and only one mag left.
“Where are the others?” Lea called out.
Reaper’s voice growled in the comms. “Mukendi and some of his friends are near the reflecting pool. I think they want to go home now.”
The chopper effortlessly flew over the top of the Elephant House and spun around until it once again had a clear line of sight of the Englishman. When they fired, bullets snaked across the ground and kicked up puffs of dirt as they raced closer to his position.
“You’re aiming too low, dickheads,” he shouted, and sprang to his feet to make the south side of the Elephant House. Peering around the corner, he saw the backs of Mukendi and Crombez and Demotte as they sprinted across the reflecting pool and climbed up inside the chopper.
Now would be the best time to bring the whole thing down as it was low enough for the passengers to survive the crash. Although he only cared about one of them – Jazmin. The problem was he was fresh out of rounds.
He heard Lea firing on the chopper now, but with the full complement of his men on board, Kashala ordered them to evacuate and seconds later the Mil-24 was two hundred feet in the air. It spun around, its camouflaged tail-boom flashing in the sun, and vanished over the top of the Elephant House. They were gone, and so was Jazmin Benedek.
Hawke cursed and punched the wall behind him. “Damn it!”
Lea walked over to him, sliding her gun in her shoulder holster and covering it over with her jacket. “We’ll get her back.”
“But what happens to her in the meantime? This is my fault. I should never have brought her into this.”
“We needed her, Joe! And Kashala would have found her anyway. We all knew that.”
He wasn’t convinced. “I could have done more. Not only is she in danger but now we have no way of deciphering the sodding lyre.”
“At least we still have the lyre, and Jazmin’s laptop and flashdrive. Let’s just see what magic Ryan can work first, yeah?”
He holstered his gun and blew out a long, frustrated breath. She was right, but he was so pumped up from the attack he was struggling to accept it. Behind the zoo, they both heard the sound of police sirens. Leaning into her and giving her a long kiss on the mouth, he squeezed her shoulder and smiled. “Okay, you’re right.”
“I knew you were trying to get on my good side.”
He rolled his eyes. “Let’s just get out of here before the cops turn up, agreed?”
“No argument from me there, Josiah.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Airspace
Never give in and never give up.
Isn’t that what Hawke always said? It was easy to say but harder to do, and right now Lea almost felt like throwing in the towel. Walking away from this crazy life on the
road forever. But she knew she couldn’t do it, and she never would do it.
But she was only human and she felt the same emotions as anyone else.
Now, in the gentle soft lighting of the Wizz Air A320 Neo, surrounded by relaxed, smiling people all looking forward to a few days in the Med, she finally let herself slow down and unwind. She felt the tension melt from her shoulders and considered calling one of the flight attendants for a beer. Craning her neck forward she saw Camacho on the other side of the aircraft, head lolled forward and fast asleep with a beer can in his hand.
Maybe leave it for now.
They were sitting at the very back of the aircraft and glancing around the cabin, she saw most of the team were also getting some shuteye. She turned and looked over the wing at an early evening sky stretching away to the horizon over a carpet of smooth pink clouds. It was hard to believe she was in the same world as the carnage she had witnessed back in Budapest.
Foremost in her mind was Jazmin Benedek. They had failed her and now her life was in grave danger. Never in her life had she seen anyone fight with the insane ferocity of the Blood Crew, and to think the young archaeologist was in their hands made her feel physically sick.
She glanced down the row of seats and saw Ryan and Scarlet talking together quietly. Looking at her ex-husband casually chatting with the former SAS captain, she felt a wave of pride. Mocking Ryan had become her favorite pastime, but the truth was he was essential to the team and a central part of every mission. It was thanks to him they were on this plane to Crete.
Earlier, back in the hotel room in Budapest, Ryan had carefully worked his way through half of the files on Jazmin Benedek’s flash drive. Thanks to what he had found, he had managed to translate more of the letters until he had deciphered most of what had turned out to be a lengthy and epic poem carved into the lyre’s soundbox.
With the usual tangents and digressions, he had explained to them all how at the end of his life, Orpheus had known he was dying and had requested that he spend his last days on Crete.
