A loud noise, like the sound of a very heavy book slamming down on a tabletop, startled the night watchman seated in the security office, in the main building. He laid his Sudoku puzzle on the desk and peered at the monitor, which showed the feeds from the security cameras distributed throughout the museum. Every few seconds, the display would change as the system cycled through the cameras, but nothing he saw accounted for the unusual noise in what was otherwise, at least as far as the guard was concerned, the deadest place on Earth.
He glanced at his wristwatch, then shrugged and stood up. He was just reaching for the antiquated security watch-clock when he glimpsed a figure standing on the other side of the security desk. He stared in disbelief for a moment, as if not quite believing his eyes.
He started to say something, but his voice was drowned out by the bark of a pistol. He was permanently silenced by the bullet that tore into his chest.
The man who now called himself Ace Diamonds looked down at the dead watchman to make sure that he wouldn’t be getting back up. Then he took aim with the handgun just in case he did. If Ace had been using overpressure rounds, like his counterparts in the Congo, there would have been no need to verify, but it was hard enough getting guns in the more security conscious European countries. The experimental depleted-uranium rounds were simply out of the question. Too bad though, he thought. He kind of liked the way those super-bullets made a weasel go pop.
He rounded the security desk to get a look at the monitor and watched the feed for a few seconds. Finally, he unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt and keyed the transmit button. “This is Ace D. Looks like we got here first. Diamonds, set up an outside perimeter so we’ll know if anyone’s coming. Spades, start a full sweep of the museum, just in case.”
There was a flurry of responses, though not as many as there would have been just a few hours earlier. The unknown duo that had hit the farm outside Dartford had practically driven a lawn mower through their ranks. When the dust had finally settled, the force of ESI mercenaries had been reduced nearly by half. Just eleven men remained, four from the Spades team, and seven from the Diamonds. Ace, who had previously been the fourth man on the Diamonds team, suddenly found himself the most senior operator still standing.
A search of the desk yielded a map of the complex, and he used it to find the archives, where the Red Queen had told him Mulamba would be going next. He pushed the talk button again. “Ace Spades, this is Ace Diamonds, send a two-man element to secure the structure on the east side. That’s the primary target. We’ll finish here and then move over to set up our welcoming committee.”
“Affirmative. Ace Spades, out.”
As he lowered the walkie-talkie, it occurred to Ace Diamonds that he might have been a little hasty in storming the museum. What if Mulamba didn’t show until morning? They couldn’t hold the museum all night long. It was only a matter of time before…
He let the thought trail off as he stared at the unchanging images on the video monitors. He had thought it particularly lucky that he had been able to blow the door with a small breaching charge, and then make his way to the security office without attracting the watchman’s notice. The cameras clearly showed the exterior. Ace would have been visible for several seconds during the time he set the charge. Stranger still, all the door indicator lights were green.
A malfunction?
He kept watching the cameras, certain that he was missing something, but the rotating shots of exhibition halls, labs and corridors showed no change. None whatsoever.
The cameras are on a loop, he realized with a start. Somebody disabled the security system before we got here.
With equal parts dread and anticipation, Ace Diamonds raised the walkie-talkie once more. “All units, converge on the Stanley Pavilion—the east building. They’re already here.”
28
The shot was barely audible. In fact, Queen didn’t even realize she had heard anything until Aleman said, “What was that? It sounded like a gun.”
Before she could reply, he answered his own question. “Nine mil. Single round.”
Aleman was a walking encyclopedia of firearms trivia, but she knew the only way he could have made that identification was by running the audio transmission through some kind of gun noise database.
“I’m dropping the video loop… Queen, get out of there! You’re not alone.”
Queen jolted into action. “Rook, lights!”
He knew without asking that something was wrong. He swept a hand across the light switch and then moved to Mulamba’s side, pulling the man down into a crouch. Although the room was plunged into instant darkness, Queen clearly saw Rook pluck the letter from Mulamba’s grasp and tuck it into the man’s inside jacket pocket. “We’ll read it later,” he whispered.
“I’ll recon,” Queen said. She turned and jogged out of the room. Her leg throbbed with each step, but she compartmentalized the pain and moved without even a limp. She’d experienced far, far worse, and she was reminded of it every time she saw the bright red brand on her forehead in a mirror.
Ghost images began appearing in her field of view. Aleman was integrating the security camera feed into the virtual environment. She saw, as if looking through the walls, two figures crowned with red dots, entering the building through the front door. “Two coming in,” she whispered to Rook. “Make your way to the fire exit, if you can. I’ll go meet the neighbors.”
“Be care… Ah, I mean, go get ‘em, tiger!”
She smiled in the darkness, then spun away running silently through the dark halls. The two men were creeping along, and as she neared the lobby, she could see the beams of flashlights bobbing. She also saw more red dots outside the Stanley Pavilion, closing in from all directions, moving to cut off all the exits.
Damn it.
“Aleman,” she whispered. “Can you call Rook’s phone? Let him know that the exit is a no go?”
“I’ll try. No guarantee he’ll pick up. They aren’t really ‘telephones’ in the literal sense, you know.”
“Busy now.” She waited until the flashlights were pointing into the corners of the big room, then dashed forward and ducked behind the nearest display case. She watched the lights a few seconds longer, fixing their pattern and dodging between displays until she was behind the two men. The nearest gunman, able to see only what was illuminated in the cone of his flashlight, looked right past her and kept going.
There was no time for subtlety. She sprang forward and punched the man in the throat. It sent him reeling back, gagging softly. As he staggered away, she wrestled the pistol from his grasp and turned it on the second man. The gun erupted in a flash of light and noise, and the man pitched backward into a display case. Whether it was the sudden weight of a human body or the bullet passing through, she could not say, but the glass shattered. The man’s bulk snapped the shelf apart, smashing and scattering the contents.
The ghost images of the men outside showed an immediate reaction to the noise of gunfire from inside the Stanley Pavilion. They continued their advance, but now they were in a defensive posture, ready to engage the unseen enemies within. Queen heard a crackle of static and then a voice.
“Three Spades, report.”
There was no answer and she realized the sound had come from a radio clipped to the belt of the first man she had taken out. She grabbed the radio and twisted its volume knob down so she could monitor their communications without giving her own position away. Then, she fell back toward the hallway that led deeper into the pavilion.
Another voice sounded, this time as if inside her head. “Queen, we’re cut off here. No way out except up. Déjà vu all over again.”
She turned, finding Rook’s icon in the virtual display. He was only about twenty-five yards away, on the other side of a wall, standing near the rear stairwell. “Go for it,” she said. “I’ll meet you on the roof.”
“The roof?”
There was another inquiry from the walkie-talkie, more urgent this time. Sh
e ignored it and addressed Rook’s question. “Aleman, what’s the ETA for Crescent?”
“ETA?” The tech genius sounded confused. “You mean to the rally point?”
The original plan had called for them to make their way into the Belgian countryside, where the stealth plane could land and take them on without attracting attention. The plane was invisible to radar and much quieter than a commercial jet, but when the thrust from its turbofans was directed earthward during a vertical landing, it sounded and felt like a gale force wind.
“Change of plans. We need a pick-up from the roof of this building. How long for that?”
It was an almost unthinkable request. Stealth plane or not, people would notice the angular black aircraft hovering above a building in the middle of the city. Aleman made a choking sound, but thankfully did not point out the obvious. “They’re over the channel. Thirteen minutes.”
Queen reached the open staircase opposite the entry doors and started up. “Tell them to kick in the afterburners. They need to be here in three.”
That too, was an extraordinary thing to request. Crescent’s sonic boom would advertise its presence to every military listening post in northern Europe, and without the protection of the US government, the only real question was which government would scramble its interceptors first.
In a small voice, Aleman answered. “I’ll tell them.”
She rounded the banister at the top of the stairs and looked back at the entry. One of the mercenaries eased through the doorway. She fired twice in his direction, missing but driving him back. She considered staying put, holding off their advance to buy a little more time, but it would make little difference. More men were congregating at the main entrance, and on the north side of the building, two more were forcing open the basement level door. She headed into a corridor, following Rook’s icon.
She caught up to Rook and Mulamba on the stairs leading up to the rooftop. “Our ride is on the way,” she said.
“I heard. Three minutes, huh? You think we can last that long?”
“I guess we’d better.”
There was a sloped trapdoor, secured with another padlock blocking the way, but a decisive kick from Rook splintered the hasp and removed that impediment. Queen ushered Mulamba through and ventured out onto the roof of the Stanley Pavilion.
The night was deceptively quiet and peaceful. Queen knew that wasn’t going to last long. “Find some cover.”
Rook guided Mulamba toward a blocky protrusion that looked like an old disused chimney, one of several that sprouted from the irregular roof. There was no shortage of places to hide, at least temporarily. Unfortunately, as Queen turned to face the trapdoor, she realized that the virtual environment was no longer updating.
“Aleman. Where did they go?”
“Sorry, Queen. There aren’t enough cameras inside that building to track their movements.”
“Wonderful.” She crouched and took aim at the black opening, waiting for the surprise moment when someone would pop out like a jack-in-the-box.
She didn’t have to wait long.
A head broke the plane and she pulled the trigger, but in the nanosecond it took for thought to become action, the mercenary ducked back down. Her bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the sloping roof above the opening. A moment later, a hand holding a pistol appeared and fired off several shots in a blind spread. Most of the rounds sailed harmlessly out into the night, but a few smacked into the chimney behind which she was concealed, spraying her with dust and stone chips. Knowing that this was just cover fire to allow another shooter onto the roof, she braved the barrage and lined up another shot.
A figure erupted through the doorway, rolling to the side and scrambling for cover as the bullets continued to fly. Queen squeezed off another shot, but couldn’t tell if she scored a hit. The man crabbed away from her and sought the refuge of another chimney.
Queen breathed a curse and drew back. The gun she’d taken was a beat-up looking Browning Hi-Power 9 mm. It was a military surplus gun, old school and not as sexy as a Glock or FN, but reliable and easy to find with the right connections. It had a thirteen round magazine, and she’d fired five times, which left eight shots, or possibly nine if the mercenary had kept one round in the chamber. She had to make every one of them count.
The volley from the doorway ceased, but the man behind the chimney took up the slack, providing cover fire for the other man to emerge. Queen didn’t allow herself to be distracted by the noise and fury, and when the mercenary made his move, she fired once and saw the man topple back through the opening.
That one counted, she thought. But there was no telling how many more shooters were lined up and waiting their turn.
“Queen,” Aleman said. “Crescent is thirty seconds out. You should see them coming in—”
The roar of a jet turbine drowned out the rest of his comment, and Queen saw the black shape of the stealth transport plane sliding across the sky above the museum grounds.
“Yes!”
The aircraft moved like something from a science-fiction movie, changing speed and direction without banking, in defiance of gravity. She knew that VTOL maneuvering was just about the most stressful activity in aviation, requiring constant and precise control of a dozen different systems, but the pilots made it look easy. The plane spun around and descended toward the rooftop, practically right on top of Rook and Mulamba, and as it did, a section of its belly lowered to form an access ramp.
The turbofans stirred up a tempest of grit, and amid the din, Queen thought she heard the sound of windows breaking.
In the corner of her eye, she saw the open ramp, its edge wavering slightly a few feet above the rooftop. Rook hoisted Mulamba up onto the ramp, who then turned and offered his hand. Rook frantically waved him back.
More shots rang out. Queen returned fire: a shot at the chimney where the gunman was hiding, another round into the open doorway and then she repeated the process to keep the mercenaries at bay until the others were aboard.
“Queen! Move!”
She did. Firing out the last of the magazine, she broke cover and sprinted for the ramp, diving up and onto it like an Olympic high jumper. She felt the hard metal beneath her and kept rolling deeper into the interior of the plane.
“I’m in!” she shouted. “Go!”
She could feel the aircraft moving beneath her, and she spread-eagled to avoid being tossed around the cabin by the acceleration. There was a loud whine of hydraulic motors as the ramp drew back into the fuselage, and then abruptly, the noise diminished to a low roar.
Queen lay panting on the deck for several seconds, letting the adrenaline drain away. She knew there would be hell to pay for bringing the stealth plane into a populated area, but that was a worry for another day. It was also the beauty of being an off-the-books operation. There would be an uproar about it, but it wouldn’t be directed at Chess Team or the Endgame organization, since they didn’t technically exist.
She rolled over to look for the others. “What’s our next—?”
What she saw hit her like a physical blow. Rook had his back to her and was hunched over an unmoving form, his arms bowed and trembling. She looked around for Mulamba, her brain not quite processing that she had already seen him.
Rook had both hands pressed against Mulamba’s chest, as if by so doing he might keep the man’s life from escaping through the hole there, but too much of it had already poured out. The deck was awash in blood, most of it oozing from the ragged exit wound.
“Stupid son of…” Rook was almost incoherent. “Damn it, Joe. Why the fuck didn’t you…? Damnit!”
Mulamba’s eyes were wide with pain or panic, but somehow his gaze found Queen. His lips moved, trying to form words even though there wasn’t enough breath left in him to make a sound.
He managed two words.
“Find it.”
Then he was gone.
29
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Ki
ng lifted his head out of the dark water and surveyed the shoreline. It was nearly midnight. Behind him, on the northern shore of the Congo, the city lights of Brazzaville glittered like jewels, but Brazzaville was in another country. Few lights were visible in Kinshasa.
At King’s direction, General Mabuki’s forces had shut down the power grid, plunging whole sections of Kinshasa into darkness. The army and many of the government buildings had gasoline powered generators, so the blackout was only a minor inconvenience, but King was counting on the darkness to conceal his approach to the Palais de la Nation.
He crept forward, feeling the marshy river bottom beneath this hands and knees, and crawled up onto the grassy bank, immediately seeking cover in the trees that overlooked the river. He gently shook the water from his borrowed AKS-74, and waited for Asya and the rest of the strike team to join him.
The six Republican Guardsmen had been hand-picked by General Mabuki, and all boasted that they had received special commando training. King was suspicious of the claim, but he didn’t have the luxury of being choosy. For their sake, he hoped they weren’t exaggerating their prowess.
“Stay close to me,” he whispered to his sister, reiterating what he had already told her several times.
A low fence ringed the palace property. Beyond it was a lot of open ground. Although the palace was dark, a few tiny pinpoints of light marked the location of soldiers patrolling the expansive courtyard. A lone helicopter—a Russian-made Mil Mi-8 transport helicopter, painted in a military camouflage pattern—sat idle in front of the pillared exterior of the palace. When the nearest patrol started moving away, King whispered the ‘go’ order, and then slipped over the fence.
The palace grounds were partitioned with hedge walls laid out in a geometric pattern around a large reflecting pool. King darted to the nearest of these and then ducked down, waiting for the others to catch up.
Savage (Jack Sigler / Chess Team) Page 17
