by Roger Weston
“Be alert,” Chuck said.”It looks like somebody has been using this garage.”
“Yes, I see the tire tracks.”
The bay doors to the garage were open, so they walked inside.
One bay had an old classic car. Another bay had a modern truck that someone had been working on—recently.
Then a shooter opened fire on Chuck. A bullet skimmed his scalp. “Get down!” Chuck and Demetrius used classic cars for cover. The shooter was using a silenced weapon, just like the ones that Chuck and Demetrius had taken from the thugs they’d met in the church.
Suddenly, Chuck saw shadows flash across the front lot, and the barred curtains were pulled down, trapping them in the garage. Bullets pinged on the mesh.
Chuck saw Demetrius take cover in the truck.
Chuck got a screw-driver from his knapsack and took cover behind the wall next to the curtain. He tried to find a weak link along the edge. He tinkered with the links, rods, and mesh sections.
He could see that this approach was going to take a while, so he fiddled with the hold-down assemblies, dock springs, weather stripping, and rodent seals. These security curtains were well built. If one of the engineers had been present, Chuck would have been tempted to slap him around for doing such a good job.
He climbed in the back of a 1960s model vintage Borgward 230. He broke out the back window with the butt of his gun and then panned the streets with his sights. The enemy was well hidden in abandoned buildings across the street. A 1974 edition of Variety Magazine caught his attention because it was right next to him on the back seat. The headline read, “Elvis Battling Health Problems in Memphis.” On the same page he spotted a sidebar with 1974 Academy Award winners: Best Picture went to The Sting. Best Actor went to Jack Lemon. And Best Actress went to Glenda Jackson.
Silenced shots interrupted his attention as more bullets ricocheted off the metal curtain. Shooting in or out of the garage was a dangerous, ineffective activity. If they suddenly raised the security curtain, he would have a good shooting nest in the back seat of the Borgward —with 1974 entertainment news handy for any downtime.
But he wasn’t about to sit around here and wait to die. He would take action. But then something happened he didn’t expect.
A remote-controlled golf cart backed up to the garage’s security cage. A big screen television was mounted on the back of the golf cart. Chuck handed a screw driver to Demetrius and whispered something in his ear. Demetrius skulked into the back office while Chuck rolled a six-foot high tool box out from the wall and half stood behind it. From his cover, he had a clear view of the golf cart and big screen television mounted on the back of it.
When the television screen lit up, Chuck was shocked by what he saw.
CHAPTER 13
When Angela heard the truck engine, she ran fast and found cover in a ratted-out department store. It looked like panic had reigned here. Clothes had been trodden underfoot and chewed by rats. A mannequin under a leaking roof had tears of dried mud on its face. A cash register had been looted and destroyed.
Angela wandered toward the back of the store looking for an exit door, but she stopped five feet from the first door she saw. She struggled to even breathe.
A drop of blood!
It was on the floor by a closed door.
Her eyes widened. Her ribs vibrated to the hard pounding of her heart. She felt desperate for oxygen, but at the same time her breathing grew shallow because the sound of her breathing might interfere with her hearing, which had grown sharper than ever. She listened for the slightest sound—a voice, a creek, a moan, or even the hoarse breath of another human. Silence hung over her like a guillotine. Silence swirled around her like barbed wire. Silence was only broken by her own shallow breaths—and those breaths felt sinister for invading and contaminating the silence. Her ribs vibrated like drums. The pulse in her neck almost throbbed. Should she open the door? No, she must not dare. She must not even touch the door handle.
But she could not leave either, for the floorboards would squeak under her feet, shattering the silence, announcing her presence as definitely as a gunshot.
The other option was to open the door, which she was tempted to do. In fact, she had an itch to find out more…an itch in her brain and pulsing through her nerves. What was behind the door? She had to know. Was it a wounded child? A suffering victim of the Hood such as she herself had been? She had to know if she could help. She could not leave behind a soul to suffer the horrors that she had suffered.
But maybe boldness would be her downfall. Maybe to reach for that door handle was to overreach—to spring a deadly trap, to open Pandora’s Box, to alert the very devils of her presence in this forbidden place.
A quiet voice inside her told her to turn, to walk away—to run for her life. But something else told another tale. A tingle ran up her spine, the alluring attraction of danger. Vanity whispered in her ear that she had survived the Hood’s horrors; therefore, if anyone should risk opening that door, it was she. She had been through the valley of the shadow of death and come out on the other side. Why then should she not now risk opening the door? Someone might desperately need her help, someone at death’s door.
She forced herself to look directly at the drop of blood on the floor. She crept forward.
She reached for the door handle.
CHAPTER 14
Two hours, twenty minutes till shoot-down
Hiding in the garage behind a six-foot-high red tool chest, Chuck squinted and moved slightly for better look. The metal links of the garage’s security curtain were impeding his view.
The television screen lit up where it sat, mounted on the back of the golf cart just outside the garage. An image appeared—a hooded person with a mesh veil covering a shadowed face.
The person on the television spoke in a deep, masculine voice.
“Brandt… I can see you on video hiding from my sniper. Hiding will do you no good. We’re going to burn down the garage in a few minutes … But first, I have to give you a chance to surrender.”
“I’d rather die than surrender.”
“That can be arranged—in the next few minutes.”
“How can you live with yourself?” Chuck said. “By the way, how does it feel to be not only a murderer, but also a petty thief and scavenger?”
The mesh veil covering the face on the big screen shook just slightly. “I am no thief, Brandt. The riches of the Mediterranian are my own. My ancestors were deprived of our property by the Knights of Malta in the fifteenth century. The brave knights are long gone. The raiders of the scimitar are rising in vengeance on a bloody sunset of the dark past. I reclaim what is rightfully ours. Any man who stands in my way will die a bloody death.”
The Hood paused, and a couple of deep breaths could be heard over the television speakers. The mesh covering his face moved when he exhaled. Then he said, “Any wreck, any ruin, any ship is fair game for my raiders. From Somolia to Crete, from Ethiopia to Cypress, from Israel to Italy—my raiders plunder shipwrecks. In the waters off of Africa, they seize cargo ships and their vast hauls of booty.
“I have seized ships off Somalia then traded the cargo for half of the treasure of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. I have almost single-handedly supplied the world market for illicit antiquities. I have touched tens of thousands of objects of beauty with my own hands—and the power within them has transferred to me the power of genius and power of destruction. I have unlimited power, for all of history passes through my hands—glory and misery, thrills and devastation, victory and defeat. It all runs through my blood.
“I wear a mesh veil to cover my scars. That is my curse. The beauty of my youth was destroyed in the heat of turmoil like the streets of Romada, yet it was by my fall into darkness and despair that my vision came to me. I saw that what I had lost I would take back a thousand times over. I realized that I was entitled to anything and everything I wanted. All I had to do was take it.
“I am feared wherever I go—and fo
r good reason. My army of scorned fiends is a mighty force of dark power and unshakable will. They turn their backs from no horror or bloody crime. They are the devil’s army. They run with the devil and pillage with the Hood.
“I am half victory and half misery. A prize race horse is known by its pedigree. A rising terror springs from blood of a conqueror’s fore-fathers. I have accomplished what no man in history has ever accomplished. The history of the world has passed through my hands. Now I will rise to seize history by the reins and beat it into submission. First, I have to finish up an important matter. My men will incapacitate you with tear gas. Then they will open the gates and storm the garage. You will die in the street like a dog, Brandt—like a dog.”
Chuck aimed carefully and pulled the trigger. A perfect shot went through the mesh and shattered the television screen. The remote-controlled golf cart zoomed away.
Two sniper’s bullets ricocheted off the security curtain.
Chuck went into the manager’s office where Demetrius was trying to remove the security curtain covering the window. It was big messy office with junk piled around. “How’s it coming?”
“I’m making progress. These metal curtains are hard to deal with in a hurry.”
“We don’t have much time.”
With perfect timing, a clang of bouncing metal was heard.
“Tear gas,” Chuck said. “I’ll close the door.” He turned, but as he did, he heard the whine of an electric motor. A metal-linked security curtain rolled down, locking him in the office. The door was on the other side of the curtain.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. These people are very protective of their tools.”
“What now?”Demetrius said.
“Keep working. Tear gas is already filling the station. It will be here in just a minute.”
“There’s no way I can do this in a minute.”
“If you want to live, get it done.”
“Great,” Demetrius said.
“Hold on a second. I have a better idea.”
“Good.”
“Look at the wall under the window. It’s cinder block. We could break through that easier than the mesh curtain.”
“The hammers are in the garage, and we’re locked in here.”
Chuck looked around. Benches ran along both walls, covered with various car parts and tools. Then he saw a truck axel leaning against the wall in the corner.
He lifted up the heavy axel and began hammering the wall, chipping away at the cinderblock. Then the tear gas started to drift into the office. Chuck swung the axel harder, and the cinderblock broke away like fragile ceramic.
“I got it,” Chuck said. “You first.”
“What if there’s someone out there?”
“It’s an alley. Run into the door of the building on the other side.”
“Alright, sure, okay...”
“Never mind. I’ll go first. You follow me.”
Chuck squeezed through the hole. A man down at the end of the alley turned and shot at him. A silenced shot whizzed past his ear. Chuck answered with a single trigger pull. The shooter twisted and fell around the corner.
Chuck stepped over the to doorway across the ally. He stood just inside the door, looking left and right.
“Stay low,” he said, quietly.
As Demetrius climbed through the hole, another gunman swung his weapon around the corner and opened fire. All Chuck could see was the arm and the weapon. The man was taking wild shots while staying back around the corner for cover.
Chuck answered him with two single shots. The second shot tore through his forearm and blew out the elbow. The gun fell, the shooting stopped, and screams of agony filled the alley.
Then Chuck heard several silenced shots. They sounded like baseball bat hits against a wood fence post. Then the screaming stopped.
Demetrius dashed past Chuck into the building.
“They killed their own man,” Chuck said, as he took another look around the corner. Four men piled into view and assumed firing stances in clear view, but the first shots came from the other direction—lots of shots.
“Stay with me,” Chuck said. “We’ve got a dozen hunters on our trail.”
“A dozen!”
They ran through a decrepit hotel lobby, past pillars and curved stairwells, past dirty lounge chairs and a dusty front desk.
“They’re moving in for the kill,” Chuck said.
“We’re dead men.”
“Stay with me. I have a plan.”
CHAPTER 15
Chuck and Demetrius fled through the hotel as the twelve hunters closed in. Bullets pinged off a marble pillar just as Chuck ran past it and down a long hallway—too long. Halfway down, he looked back over his shoulder just in time to see a dozen men in loaded-down combat vests running after them. The leaders fired their assault rifles as they pursued their prey.
“Turn right,” Chuck yelled. They came to two French doors, but they were locked.
“Back up,” Chuck said. “Good…good. Now let’s get out of there!”
He raised his elbows in front of his face and smashed through the glass panes of a French door. With glass spilling off his arms and shoulders, he heard a crash as Demetrius burst through the second French door.
They stormed another wing of the hotel and sprinted down a hallway like gazelles chased by lions. Coming around the corner into a reception area by entry door into conference rooms, Chuck said, “Stop.”
They both came to a halt right in the center of the reception area. Chuck’s foot went through the floor. He looked up at the glass ceiling of the atrium roof. Just then a drop of water hit his forehead.
“The floor is soggy,” he said, pulling his foot out of the rotted floorboards. “It could collapse.” He thought for a second. “Go back to the corner and slow them down. Walk carefully.”
Demetrius didn’t ask questions. He backtracked to the corner and opened fire down the hallway. Return fire began hitting the wall nearby. All the shooting was silenced. But the smacking against the wall was crisp.
Chuck crept over to a cart that had been abandoned back in 1974. The luggage was still on the cart, untouched. Chuck removed his knapsack and opened the flap. From beneath a coiled rope, he removed a neat package, which he opened.
With due care and caution, he removed a block of TNT. The main charge was housed in a cardboard tube with a threaded receptacle on the end to hold the blasting cap. He quickly decided to use a common fuse, a bit more dangerous than an electrical blasting cap, but handy under the circumstances. Using his combination tool designed for demolitions work, he cut six inches off the end of the fuse and threw it aside. Now that he had a crisp end to work with, he cut a one-foot section of fuse.
He carefully removed a blasting cap from the storage box. He inspected the fuse for any foreign matter then gently slipped an inch of fuse into the open end and into contact with the ignition charge. He crimped the fuse to the cap with the crimper part of the tool. Then he gently inserted the cap into the priming well of the TNT block. He placed the block on the edge of the luggage trolley. He split the end of the fuse about half an inch, inserted a match head into the core, and struck it. The match ignited the black powder.
“Let’s go,” Chuck yelled.
Demetrius ran at first but slowed near the rotted area. Together, they walked cautiously across the lobby.
Then Chuck said, “Be ready.”
They walked backwards in case shooters piled around the corner, unleashing a storm of bullets. Chuck figured that would happen very soon.
But they backed around the corner.
“Now run.”
They jogged down a long hallway, lined with doors into hotel rooms.
A loud explosion rumbled. The floor vibrated under their feet.
Chuck stopped and turned around.
“Where are you going?” Demetrius said.
“Just wait here.”
He jogged back, but could not reenter the reception area. Cov
ering his mouth and nose with his hand, he groped though a thick cloud of dust. He came close enough to see that the welcome area was no longer there. The floor had collapsed. A huge crater loomed in the void. The death team was somewhere down in the rubble of the parking area below. Chuck saw five or six guys crawling among the rubble.
Coughing, Chuck hurried back down the dusty corridor.
“What happened to them?” Demetrius said.
“They dropped out.”
Happy to be alive, Chuck and Demetrius left the hotel, but as they came around a corner, Chuck put out his hand and stopped Demetrius.
“Get back.”
“What’s going on?”
“Another death team is headed this way.”
“You’re kidding me. This is a mess.”
Chuck stood at the corner, watching the team, which was three blocks down.
“It’s worse than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Turkish guards will have heard the explosion, too. That means we’re going to have more problems than just the Hood’s men.”
“Oh, my God. Why did you set of an explosion?”
“Just to save our lives. Don’t worry about it. You said your prayers, didn’t you? You’re believing the good report, right?”
“Yeah, but I was hoping to survive for my mother’s sake. She needs help. She’s all alone now in Argentina. If I don’t make it, Brandt, is there anything you can do for her?”
“I’ll do whatever I can.”
Demetrius put out his hand. “Then you’re my brother.”
Chuck shook his hand. “That’s an honor. Let’s watch each other’s backs and find the Vulcan Eye.”
The walkie-talkie that Chuck had taken off the Hood’s henchman crackled. A voice broke through the static.
“What was that noise?” It was the Hood’s deep, raspy voice.
“These old buildings are a problem,” Chuck said. “This whole area should be condemned.”
“What happened?”
“A floor collapsed. Some of your thugs took a dive for the cause.”
