Alicia myles 1 - Aztec Gold

by David Leadbeater

  The front of their dinghy smashed hard into the left rock wall, rebounding and losing momentum. Alicia staggered. Lex paddled hard to align their course. A bullet skimmed off the surrounding waters, skipping over the waves. Alicia decided enough was enough and returned fire, though the ever moving craft blew even her careful aim to bits. She began to think the best way to score a hit was to bounce a bullet off the damn canyon wall.

  Ahead, Crouch let out a warning cry. Alicia gave up the potshots to take a tight grip of the side straps as their dinghy plunged through a set of rapids. With the bows dropping at an alarming angle the team simply held on as their crafts fell and crashed through churning water, their back ends skimming to left and right. Alicia felt them being bounced from rock to rock, fizzing across rapids, controlled by the torrent. With a huge jolt they hit the bottom of the sudden drop and found themselves in calmer waters.

  Crouch used the reprieve to bark an order. “A little further up to the right,” he shouted, “is our second potential entry point. We need to use that now as an egress point and get back to that mountain!”

  Alicia fired once more as their pursuers hit the rapids, claiming a lucky shot as a bullet ripped apart a plummeting dinghy and spilled out all three of its men. Before she could utter a word their enemy’s first dinghy was upon them and Crouch was shouting about another, worse set of upcoming rapids.

  “Time to fight or die,” she told Lex. “And earn my respect, biker boy.”

  TWENTY EIGHT

  A crazy melee broke out on the waters of the Colorado River. A man leaped from his dinghy to Alicia’s and found her hands at his throat. Struggling to bring any skill to bear in the constantly shifting craft she bore down on the man, tripping him and holding his head under the water that swilled at the bottom of the boat. Sputtering, he punched out, catching her with a blow to the ribs. Lex smashed at his head with a paddle. The dinghy nosedived down another furious cascade and a second man scrambled up the side of their dinghy, scrabbling for purchase. Lex crabbed over to him just as the dinghy veered to the right through the fast-moving water, sending him onto his back. Their enemy’s dinghy was keeping up through the rapids, bumper to bumper, a third man inside now somehow standing upright and aiming his pistol.

  He vanished in a spray of blood, taken down by Russo in the next dinghy. Alicia held her assailant until he stopped moving, then looked up . . .

  Straight into the eyes of the second man, now climbing up over the side of the dinghy with a knife clasped between his teeth.

  Alicia glared. Then Lex barreled across her vision, striking the man and taking him over the side. At the last moment Alicia managed to grasp Lex’s trailing leg, then held on as his body was pummeled by the mini-waterfalls. The dinghy fell directionless, spinning around. Alicia felt its momentum finally arrested and looked up.

  Russo had a good hold and was pulling it after his own, toward the bank. Crouch and Caitlyn were already there, the former resting on one knee and using the solid ground to improve his aim.

  Alicia heard the screams as Crouch put an end to their pursuit.

  “Now,” he said. “Let’s go grab our treasure.”

  *

  The journey back was swift, a straight run across the already darkening flatlands. Crouch figured that the Paria Canyon lookout would have relocated by now, and if he hadn’t then the game was well and truly up. But it was all they had left—seven brothers in arms racing through the twilight to save one of the grandest treasures ever found.

  From shrub to shrub and boulder to boulder, from rocky terrace to rocky terrace; straight up treacherous slopes and across ridges that bordered on sheer drops, they gained the top of the mountain, tooled up and prepared for battle.

  It wasn’t difficult to find Coker’s operation. It wasn’t tough to spot his guards. The man had clearly gone ‘all in’, seeing the treasure as a way to some kind of freedom. Both choppers were on the ground, gently whirring, surrounded by a rough ring of armed men. These men smoked and talked and looked bored, as if they’d been there all day. Beyond them lay the hole in the ground, and out of this emerged more men, carrying a selection of gold and jewels. They were not laden down, nobody struggled; it was as if Coker had instructed them to take a cross-section of the loot.

  Crouch indicated they lie low. “In a way it’s good that Coker didn’t come well prepared. He can’t take all the treasure.”

  Cruz looked aghast in the shadows. “Whatever he takes it’s a shameless theft. The only people it belongs to are the Nahua.”

  Alicia placed a hand on his shoulder. “The world is full of arrogant, privileged men that believe they may take whatever they want. That’s why there’s people like Crouch and Russo and I to help permanently modify their thinking.”

  The team waited and watched as a slow trickle of mercenaries emerged from the hole in the ground, carrying various items toward one of the choppers. Alicia saw bags of gold coins, garnets and rubies; a small statue; carvings and tablets; a wealth of riches seeing freedom for the first and possibly last time in five hundred years. Darkness fell across the desert in all its heavy shrouds. Crouch checked his satphone for messages, saw none and made sure it was switched to silent. Plans swirled around his head, most of them pretty damn desperate.

  At last, Coker appeared, panting a little. Behind him, three men carried a heavy object between them, taking great care as if their lives depended on it, shuffling forward only half a step at a time. Even then Coker continually winced at them.

  “Careful. Bloody careful there.”

  Cruz drew an agonized breath. Alicia had to clamp a hand across his mouth to stem the outburst. Caitlyn spoke for them all.

  “Oh no. No. He has the Wheel of Gold.”

  The greatest treasure of treasures was being stolen beneath their very noses.

  Alicia made an instant decision. She turned toward Caitlyn. “Go. Now. All of you. Caitlyn, turn on your tracking system. If I can join you later, I will.”

  Healey’s eyes were wide. “What are you going to do?”

  “Whatever it takes.” Alicia said, checking her weapons by touch alone. “But I won’t let this thievery stand.”

  Crouch knew better than to question Alicia in her very element. He quickly turned and started to head down the mountain, every member of the team turning to stare at her one last time. Russo was the last to go.

  “Fight and stay free,” he said, touching her with his eyes alone.

  “Fight and stay free,” Alicia returned with a genuine smile. “Keep ‘em safe for me, Rob.”

  In the next moment she was running, eyes peeled ahead, scanning for targets. In her right hand she cradled her semi-automatic; in her left a small pistol. When the first man saw her she took him out then drifted wide of his position. The sudden tumult in the camp helped her cause. She fired at and felled another three. Coker was shouting, his men starting to panic. Those carrying the Wheel of Gold went absolutely still, acting like rabbits caught in the headlights. Alicia hit the ring of men hard, shouldering past one and elbow-striking another. Like a dark desert puma she raced, shooting to left and right, darting through one shadow-struck space to the next, until the guards almost shot each other in their confusion.

  It was shock and terror, it was a burst of awe-inspiring violence that she couldn’t hope to maintain but trusted she could keep up just long enough. Bullets flew everywhere, but not at the treasure helicopter and not near Coker and his carriers. Alicia sprinted in that direction, terrifying the men that couldn’t reach for weapons, making Coker’s face blanch under the stark lights offered by the chopper.

  “You’re weak, Coker. So fucking weak!”

  Surprisingly his face twisted into a snarl. “You have no idea. You don’t have a wife and child!”

  Alicia knocked him off his feet, confident now that she wouldn’t be shot in the back, and then broke toward the treasure chopper. A man had caught up to her and sought to clamp her throat, but Alicia broke his arm and left him groaning.
Another crossed in front of her. Alicia merely helped him on his way, adding enough momentum to send him sprawling. Without slowing for an instant she dropped and slid underneath the chopper, passing below its rounded black belly and clamping the tracker on as she glided past. Up and out the other side she again sprayed a hail of bullets at the guards, scattering their ranks.

  Rolling, scrambling, she vanished into the dark.

  Coker was screaming. “Load the gold! Load it, you arseholes. I have to get the fuck outta here! And find that bitch.”

  Alicia crouched down low, a restless spirit at nightfall, enfolded in shadow. Guns lay before her, a knife at her side. To chase her was to die and these men’s deaths would be anything but pretty. Breathing shallowly, she waited, listening to their very thoughts reflected in the lights of the chopper through their wary eyes. All emotion, all distraction, was beyond her now, a distant part of the galaxy. Only the battle existed and the opportunity to support her team.

  The men backed off, not able to see her in the dark but somehow sensing that their lives hung in the balance. They may be dumb, these men, but they were soldier enough to know a superior predator when they were up against one.

  “On! On!” Coker was supervising the Wheel’s loading, not paying an ounce of attention to anything else. When the gold was packed he clambered aboard. All the remaining men immediately jumped into the second chopper and loaded the wounded, some hanging off the skids, ready to chance a mid-air fall rather than Alicia Myles.

  Within moments the choppers lifted off, the monster from the dark now at their backs, her reputation enhanced to the nth degree.

  Alicia moved out, determined to catch up to her team. The chase wasn’t over yet.

  TWENTY NINE

  Crouch spurred the team through the darkness, their way lit only by the barren moon. Caitlyn tracked the choppers even as they thundered overhead. Crouch burrowed through his pack for his satphone, then contacted his best hope.

  “Armand? We’ve been fucked, my friend.”

  “Ah. If I had a silver dollar for every time I hear that . . .”

  “Who do you have in Vegas?”

  A pause and then, “It is all good. I have one or two assets as does almost everyone. It all depends on what you want them to do, eh? Tour guide? Traffic cop? Dancer? What do you want with them?”

  “I don’t want a party planner. I want . . .” he paused. What did he want? Even at this stage he wouldn’t risk an innocent’s life.

  “I need a spotter,” he said. “We can track a chopper from this end but when it lands I need somebody to follow it and whatever emerges.”

  “I have a girl who is not Interpol. Is that good? I have her available at a moment’s notice but where do you want her to go? Last time I checked, amico mio, Las Vegas was a big place.”

  “Truly, I have no idea, Armand. This is a last gasp scenario, but everything depends on this girl and you.”

  “Ah, another time honored phrase that I love. And ‘off book’, that is another of my favorites. The Americans won’t be pleased if they ever hear of my involvement, Michael.”

  “They won’t hear it from me. And besides, it is somebody in America that is trying to destroy everything we have worked for.”

  “Well then, in that case . . . leave it with me. Do you have battery enough to keep this line open?”

  Crouch checked. “I’ll ring you back in five. Oh, and try to find me a man in authority to help secure the rest of our treasure.”

  “Hmm. Make it ten.”

  Crouch urged them on, Paria Canyon showing them its multitude of colors even in the gloom, at length becoming the marvel known by the Aztecs as wave rocks. Beyond the canyon and time felt like it was speeding by, propelled by a desert storm. Alicia caught up with them but didn’t feel like talking. Her own urgency spurred them to even greater speed.

  Crouch shouted up as they ran for the cars. “We have Armand’s asset ready to go in Vegas. She’s stationed herself behind the Strip, pretty central I imagine. As soon as you get a fix, Caitlyn, let her know.” He passed her the phone.

  Caitlyn’s face was scrunched with the heavy responsibility of it all, her gaze never once lifting from the tablet screen she held rigidly in front of her. Crouch gunned his vehicle out of the parking lot and headed up the track toward a highway; this time nobody complained about the cramped conditions. As they sped, the landscape flashed past, the vault of the night now just another hindrance to their quest.

  Caitlyn kept them apprised. “Still on the same heading. Straight for Vegas.”

  “How far out are we?” Healey asked.

  “Too bloody far,” Crouch complained, coaxing the vehicle to even greater speeds.

  As the miles passed and the tension grew, Caitlyn watched the chopper inch ever nearer Las Vegas. Their asset—a woman called Kate Stanton—promised she was ready to go, her M V Augusta warmed up and her body encased in black leathers.

  Lex immediately perked up. “Damn. She’s hot.”

  Alicia opened her mouth to rebuke him, then thought about what had been said. “Actually yeah, she’s hot. When do we meet?”

  The critical time soon approached. Coker’s chopper winged its way over the mountains that surrounded the desert city, dropping fast. Caitlyn took a chance and told Kate Stanton to head immediately east. She reported that she was leaving South Valley View Boulevard and heading up West Flamingo to East Flamingo. Her progress was fast, too fast, as both she and the chopper passed like speeding wraiths in the night, one hurtling through the air and one racing across the ground, prompting Caitlyn’s screech of warning.

  “Go back!”

  Kate’s voice was muffled. “Back where?”

  “The way you came. The chopper’s starting to slow. It’s really close to the Strip.”

  “I can’t use the Strip. Too much traffic and too many idiots. Find me a clearer route.”

  “All right.” Caitlyn surveyed the helicopter’s wind speed and position even as Crouch found a long stretch of open road and stamped on the gas pedal.

  “Use Koval to Sands Avenue. Is that okay?”

  “It’ll do.” Kate grunted. The sound of her revving the bike’s powerful engine could be heard by everybody in the car. Lex’s face was split into a permanent grin.

  Speed dominated the moment. Three vehicles vied for the right to win, to take home the spoils of victory. Caitlyn reported on the helicopter’s flight, almost squealing as it slowed and began to lose altitude. Kate’s dulcet tones filled the car.

  “Give it to me, honey. I can’t follow those squeals to a destination.”

  Healey, leaning over Caitlyn’s shoulder shouted directions. “It’s the Venetian. D’you see? Treasure Island opposite, LAVO’s nightclub there.” He jabbed at the screen. “My best guess is they’re landing at a helipad, one reserved for guests.”

  Crouch swore. “Blood money wins again.”

  “They haven’t won yet,” Alicia growled, seeing the road dip ahead and a great bowl filled with glittering golden light appear. The city of Las Vegas, a flaming bastion against the dark.

  “Somebody will notice all those soldiers climbing out, surely,” Lex put in.

  “My guess is, they changed clothes,” Crouch said without even a hint of sarcasm. “Healey, tell her where the helipad is. Fast. Even narrowing it down to the Venetian means it’s still a bloody huge search area.”

  “Around the back,” he said. “The altimeter says they’re landing at ground level, so it’s not a roof. Is there a road that leads off Koval?”

  “On it.” Kate revved the Augusta, the result a melody of pure power and exquisite engineering.

  “Look to your right. The chopper’s down but only just.”

  “I’m seeing nothing. Shit! Nearly took out a goddamn tourist couple wandering across the road. Wait! I have them.”

  Silence filled the interior. Crouch jammed his foot hard to the floor. The car twitched in protest. “We’re twenty minutes out,” he said hopefully.
“If I can find a way to navigate the worst of the traffic. Make that forty.”

  “I can help,” Kate whispered back, no longer astride her bike. “I’m standing on the seat, watching over a wall. They don’t seem in a hurry. Nobody has surfaced yet. Oh wait, a Venetian security team is approaching them. Now, stay on 95 until you reach Tropicana. Head down there but don’t go all the way. Turn at South Maryland, don’t let McLeod tempt you—there’s a mess of roadworks up there.”

  As Crouch followed Kate’s directions, the rest of the team prepared. Ammo was low, they had a back-up stash in the car and reached for that now. Alicia took a moment to speak.

  “Coker and his men are the targets, guys, but be careful. The very people we’re sworn to protect will quite probably get in our way out there. Don’t hurt them. The damage to your soul and theirs, as well as their families just ain’t worth it.”

  Kate’s voice interrupted. “All right. Men dressed in jeans and t-shirts are climbing out. They’re all carrying backpacks, except for one man who’s pulling one of those suitcases on wheels. A big one. Sucker looks heavy too. He’s a big guy . . . and he’s puffing like a steam train. Identical. Strapping on and seem to be waiting for someone. Oh, hang on, here’s a dude now, kind of stressed looking, waving his arms and barking orders. Yup, they’re heading out.”

  “Where to?” Crouch swung into South Maryland. “We need to know where they’re going.”

  “Damn, this is gonna cost you extra,” Kate murmured with a slight grunt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Climbing over the friggin’ wall. What do you expect?”

  Alicia nodded in appreciation. Argento sure knew how to pick his assets.

  “Don’t get caught,” Lex said encouragingly.

  “Thanks dude. I really needed that.”

  Minutes passed. Crouch, following Kate’s earlier directions, cut down East Twain to Sands. As the rear of the enormous Venetian hotel and casino started to dominate the windshield he found a parking space and stopped.