by Rob Jones
“Kill them all!” Vetrov screamed hoarsely as his enraged eyes searched the destroyed enclosure for any signs of life.
Then the main doors blew off their hinges in a cloud of dust and splinters and a second later a man in a black Special Forces mask rushed into the room. He slung a shotgun over one shoulder and pulled a submachine gun off the other, firing in controlled, short bursts at the men in the room. His aim was lethally accurate, and he took out three of them with only six bullets in less than ten seconds.
He hit the reverse gear on the rigging and Alex began to rise back toward the shattered atrium as the fighting intensified. He directed the chain hoist to bring her back down outside the enclosure and she landed with a thud on the paving.
As the bullets flew over their heads, the masked man wordlessly ripped off her duct tape and freed her, but was then gone into the fray, stopping only to fire two rounds into a man running toward them. His bullets struck the man in the skull and sprayed high-velocity spatter all over wall behind him.
Alex took advantage of her new freedom and dragged herself away from the water with her arms in an attempt to hide behind Vetrov’s depraved viewing platform, but at that moment she watched with stomach-turning terror as the head of a crocodile emerged from the depths and headed in her direction, crawling through a hole in the enclosure fence made by one of the grenades.
Vetrov saw what was happening and smiled with a mixture of relief and amusement. “Sekhmet, my darling… kill her!”
She jumped with fear as the bullets traced over her head, the terror of her vulnerability coursing through her veins like never before. Back in the CIA, when she had been on active operations all over the world, she had known the feeling of adrenalin rushing through her system, and she had known gun fights where her own survival was at stake, but she had never seen anything like this. This was total war – an all-out, open fire-fight with dozens of machine guns and hand grenades. It was total chaos, far-removed from the world of covert intelligence and computer surveillance she had trained for. And now a crocodile was hunting her.
Other masked men stormed the room, rappelling down through the atrium and pushing deeper into the fight. They took out two more of Vetrov’s goons as the lead man drew closer to the panicking Russian. Alex was now beginning to wonder just who the hell this guy was, but her thoughts were disrupted by the sight of Darling Sekhmet crawling out of the water and moving slowly toward her.
She raised her weight up on the strength of her arms and started to pull herself back, dragging her powerless legs as fast as she could, cursing them for failing her as the crocodile’s jaws began to open and revealed dozens of hideous yellow teeth, much larger in reality than they had ever looked in the pictures she had seen.
Slowly it gained on her until it was a matter of inches from her legs. It stopped for a second and she looked deep into its reptilian eyes. It was looking back at her, studying her weaknesses, and then it lunged forward, its jaws opening faster than anything she had ever seen in her life. She screamed and instinctively shut her eyes tight as she prepared for the attack.
Then she heard three sharp cracks from her left, close by and deafening. She opened her eyes and saw the masked man had returned and fired three shotgun rounds into the crocodile’s head and exploded half its skull into oblivion. It now lay motionless and dead less than an inch from her legs. Slowly its jaws closed in response to the lethal attack.
The man wasted no time with pleasantries and shouldered the shotgun before snatching her up in a fireman’s lift and hurling her over his shoulder. With his arm wrapped tightly around her legs, he ran from the room. Her head hung down behind his back, and the last thing she saw from her new upside-down perspective was Maxim Vetrov ordering Kosma and the surviving men to retreat as another man in a black mask rappelled through the atrium room and descended into the chaos of the enclosure.
The masked man carried her along the same corridor Kosma has used to take her to the enclosure, only now she was being rescued instead of taken to her execution. Behind her, she heard the screams of dying men as the battle raged on. They turned a corner and went into what looked like a library, inside which were two people – an attractive woman with her hair tied back and a slightly younger man with messy hair and a Superman t-shirt.
“Take care of her,” screamed the man, and then he placed her down gently. “I’m going back to find Dempsey.”
The man slipped through the door and disappeared into the smoke.
“Hi,” the woman said. “I’m Lea, and this is Ryan.”
Ryan gave her the slightest nod and an awkward wave, but no smile.
“You must be Nightingale?” As she spoke, she and Ryan moved her to a soft chair and tried to make her comfortable.
“Er… sure, but you can call me Alex, I guess.”
“Sure thing, Alex. Good to meet you at last. Joe’s told me a lot about you.”
“Joe Hawke?”
Lea nodded. “Holds you in the highest of regards, he does.”
Alex’s head was still spinning from the action of five minutes ago. “That’s good to know. Is he here? When can I meet him?”
Ryan smiled and pushed some hair away from his face. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you just did.” He nodded at the door where Hawke had brought her into the room.
Alex watched their faces, and then glanced back over her shoulder at the door she had just come through. “Oh… got it.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Ryan said.
Lea raised an eyebrow. “Or not.”
“I’m sure I will, but I have to tell you something. It’s really important.”
Ryan sighed. “Most things seem to be these days.”
“Vetrov kidnapped me to get information – he wanted the name of someone I’ve been working with on the map – Dario Mazzarro. The thing is…” she looked down, ashamed. “I gave it to him. I was scared, I thought he was going to kill me. We have to get to Venice to warn Mazzarro before Vetrov gets to him.”
“We can do that,” Lea said.
“Hell yeah,” Ryan said. “I’ve always wanted to go to Venice.”
“There’s more than that, Vetrov also mentioned something about how he couldn’t fail like all the others because he knew the darkest truth of all.”
“Standard evil genius waffle,” Lea said. “Heard it all before.”
“No, he said he knew about the existence of a group called the athanatoi. I don’t know what that means but I have a feeling they’re behind all of this hell.”
Ryan jerked his head up and stared at Alex. “Say that again.”
“About the darkest truth?”
“No, the last thing you said – the people Vetrov said he knew existed.”
“The athanatoi.”
Ryan frowned.
“What’s the matter, Ry?” Lea was unsettled by the look of concern now crossing Ryan’s face like a shadow. “What does it mean?”
“It’s Greek – it means The Immortals.”
*
Scarlet, Karlsson and Lexi fired a ferocious volley of return fire at Kodiak, and forced the Russian to retreat behind a parked Nissan, but now the beating of the chopper’s rotor blades was louder than ever. A moment later it drifted into view above the towering Europa-Center building complex on the Breitscheidplatz just off Budapester Strasse where they were currently taking cover behind the thrashed BMW.
“That doesn’t look good,” Lexi said.
“Seconded,” Karlsson said.
“Thirded,” added Scarlet, craning her neck to look for an egress point. “Over there!”
She pointed to a large gatehouse complex on the other side of the street. It looked Chinese in its construction, and two large stone elephants stood silent guard either side of the gates. A large sign said Zoologischer Garten Berlin.
“You want to take us to the zoo?” Lexi said.
“Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Karlsson said, smiling. “Can I have an ice
cream when we get in there?”
The chopper came down into the center of Budapester Strasse and Kodiak clambered inside. As it rose up into the air, Scarlet saw at least three police cars racing up the street behind it in their direction, and then the chopper moved closer and made a ninety-degree turn so its side door was facing them.
“Incoming!” Karlsson shouted, and the three of them raced away from the BMW as an RPG tore through the air from the hovering Bell and hit their car, sending a gargantuan explosion of metal, glass shards and burning petrol into the air.
The police cars skidded all over the road, the confusion of their drivers obvious as they slammed on reverse and moved away from the carnage unfolding in the center of their capital city.
In the chaos, Scarlet Sloane and her sub-unit slipped away with the map into the Berlin Zoological Gardens, but behind them, the newly airborne Kodiak gave chase.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lea and Alex shared a concerned glance and looked back at Ryan. The London hacker dropout was starting to look increasingly anxious about things since Alex had mentioned the word athanatoi.
“The immortals?” Lea asked. “That sounds pretty ominous, Ry.”
“Thought you’d be used to all things immortal by now, Lea.”
“Sure, but what’s freaking me out is that it’s plural – how many of these people are we talking about?”
“Who said they were people?” Ryan said, smirking.
“Now you’re just freaking me out!”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!” Ryan said, and pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. A few rooms away the sound of machine gun fire and screams filled the air. He turned toward the noise for a second and then looked back at Lea. “I’m just telling you what athanatoi means, that’s all.”
“But what does the existence of such a group mean?” Alex said, flinching as another explosion went off in a nearby room.
Lea offered an empty sigh. “I’m guessing it means all of this damned mess goes a lot deeper than we thought.”
“I’ll say,” Ryan added. “I thought we ended this when we stopped Zaugg getting the trident, but now it looks like there’s some kind of secret group behind things. I think I just want to go home and get into bed.”
“Just calm down, Ryan,” Lea said. “It might not be as crazy as all that.”
“Only if our luck changes, Lea. I’m starting to wish you’d never called me, back when you wanted my help on that bloody trident mission.”
“Yeah… about that. The trident really is just the beginning of all this,” Alex said with a nervous smile.
Lea fixed her eyes on Alex. “I think you need to start talking, Agent Nightingale.”
Alex nodded and pulled her hair back. Outside in the corridor the sound of gunfire made her jump once again. “I hope Joe’s okay…”
“Joe’ll be just fine,” Lea said flatly. “Start talking – I think you need to start tying some loose ends up.”
“Sure… I’d used my Dad’s passwords to get into some pretty heavy stuff at the Pentagon, and it wasn't long before I started reading some very interesting information – but always very vague. After a few hours I got hold of a list of names – Gottardo Ricci, Anton Reichardt, Felix Hoffmann, Giovanni Mazzarro and Dario Mazzarro.”
Lea and Ryan shared a concerned glance.
“I’m guessing that’s not your Dad’s Christmas card list, right Alex?”
Alex flicked an anxious look at Lea. “You can say that again. All the names on this list were academics involved heavily in the search for the elixir.”
“I don’t recognize the last two names,” Lea replied.
“The Mazzarros? Italian Egyptologists – Giovanni was the father and Dario is the son. Giovanni, the father, disappeared while on a dig in Egypt many years ago, but he’d dedicated his life to finding what he called the white drops.”
Ryan pushed his glasses up his nose and blinked. “A common term used in ancient Egypt to describe what we today would call the elixir, or the water of life.”
“Right,” Alex said. “But like all the others he died before he discovered the truth.”
“And his son?”
“Dario Mazzarro. He took up where his father left off. You have to remember all of these men knew what’s at stake and tried to keep themselves totally under the radar. Their names only wound up on the DoD list because of an extensive hacking and tapping program by the CIA. But I got closer… I impressed Mazzarro with my research and I got to know him. Anyway, this was the research that Vetrov wanted from me, and I’m ashamed to say it, but I just handed it over to him. I gave him Mazzarro’s name.”
“Are you crazy?” Lea said, eyes wide with disbelief. “He was going to feed you alive to crocodiles! If he did that to me I’d do anything to play for time.”
“She’d even sell me out,” Ryan said.
Lea nodded. “I’d especially sell him out.”
“Maybe,” Alex said, sounding unconvinced. “But the CIA trained me better than that.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Ryan said.
“Either way,” Alex said with a deep, sad sigh. “Vetrov now has Mazzarro’s name, so now he’s in grave danger and we have to get to him before the Russians do.” Alex jumped yet again as a grenade went off in an adjoining room. “I can’t explain it all here, in this, but if we get out of here there’s a lot more you need to know.”
*
Scarlet, Karlsson and Lexi sprinted though the ornate gates and disappeared inside the zoo as fast as they could. It wasn’t easy to outrun a helicopter, but it wasn’t impossible, all you had to do was find a highly populated area and some cover. Unfortunately for Scarlet Sloane, the RPG attack on Budapester Strasse had changed the mood of the people visiting the zoo, and now they were all screaming and scattering for their lives.
They sprinted deep in the zoo and looked for somewhere to escape from the chopper, but the guns in their hands caused yet more mass panic and the fleeing crowds only highlighted their isolation as they ran in the opposite direction.
“This way!” Scarlet shouted. “We need to get out of sight somewhere.”
She pointed at some buildings a few hundred yards down a twisting path lined with monkey cages and lion enclosures.
“Is this shit actually happening?” Karlsson asked, incredulous.
“Yes it is, darling,” Scarlet said. “What’s the problem?”
“When I signed up I didn’t realize it would end with crazy English women and baboons.”
“But you’re a Seal, Bradley. You should feel at home in a zoo.”
Behind them, the chopper continued its deadly approach, and Kodiak fired at them once again with the assault rifle.
“He really does want this map!” Lexi shouted, as they drew nearer the safety of the buildings.
“What now?” Lexi screamed from the rear. “Those bastards are closing in fast.”
Above her head, Scarlet heard the familiar womp womp womp of the chopper’s rotors as it raced up behind them and prepared to attack again. She scanned the area for somewhere to hide and then she saw her answer.
Poking a little above the birch trees ahead of her was the strange wood and glass roofline of the bird house.
“There!” she shouted. “If we can get inside that building we can buy ourselves some time to think.”
“What? Like the A-Team?” Karlsson said sarcastically.
“Huh?” said Lexi.
“Forget about it, honey…”
They sprinted past a couple of bemused polar bears and entered the bird house just as the chopper reached them. It raised its nose and raced over the top of the giant aviary as it overshot its quarry, now hiding inside the building below.
“What now?” Lexi said with a sigh. “Collect some eggs for lunch?”
Scarlet gave a sarcastic eye roll. “Listen, we had nowhere to run, and they’re not going to waste ammo shooting blindly at us in here because…”
Before she could finish her sentence thousands of bullets drilled through the enormous glass roof of the bird house and sent millions of razor-sharp shards of splintered glass fragments showering over their heads.
“Run!” Scarlet said.
They ran along the twisting path of the bird house, flanked on either side by tall rubber plants and palms, now covered in the smashed crystal remnants of several tons’ worth of reinforced atrium glass. Hundreds of terrified birds squawked and flapped and disappeared up into the sky in a shower of feathers. The icy air from outside rushed into the warm bird house.
Lexi spun around and fired off two or three rapid shots at the chopper but it was useless – a fast moving target obscured by the wood and steel beams of the roof.
“You were saying something about them not firing blindly at us?” Karlsson shouted as they finally reached the safety of the reception area and its solid roof.
Scarlet gave him a look but didn’t rise to the bait. “There! I thought I heard submachine gunfire under the noise of Brad’s whiny voice.”
“From where?” Lexi said.
“Where we came in – down there.”
She was right. Several men were now running toward them down the main room, crunching on the broken glass all over the path, and releasing short bursts of fire from what looked like PP-2000s.
“We’re shit out of luck now,” Karlsson said without emotion.
Lexi glanced at her gun and shook her head. “This isn’t enough.”
Scarlet took a deep breath and shook her head. “We have to get out of here – this is getting a little too real even for me.”
Karlsson looked at her. “Do I need to remind you that there’s a maniac with a machine gun in a chopper out there, and he’s aiming for us.”
“We have no choice,” Scarlet said. “We can’t take out half a dozen goons armed with subs in an enclosed space with these.” She waved her pistol in the American’s face.
He nodded in grim agreement and the three of them sprinted from the reception and into the open air.
