by Rob Jones
“Yeah, maybe we have a slight problem,” he called over to Reaper.
They were still hemmed in by the olives on their left, and the cliff-edge immediately to their right. Neither offered a realistic escape from their pursuers.
The passenger took a few moments to aim the RPG. He was clearly having trouble getting a fix on them because of the roughness of the terrain, and his reluctance to fire it made Hawke conclude he didn’t have an abundant supply of warheads with him in the Jeep.
Reaper called back to tell Hawke that a low, dry-stone wall had replaced the olives to their left, but before Hawke could reply there was a cloud of gray smoke from the rear of the RPG, and a bigger flash of white smoke from the front – the signature calling card of the RPG-7.
Hawke flinched as the lethal munition left the launcher, a second flash as the rocket inside the warhead fired up to propel it into their Jeep, screeching through the warm Greek day like one of the Trojan dragons sent by Poseidon to kill Laocoön.
“Then go left!” he screamed at Reaper, who instinctively swung the heavy 4x4 over to the left, sliding down a shallow embankment and striking the wall in a shower of white sparks. A terrific grinding sound filled the cab as the front wing of the Jeep scraped along the stones and slowed them down, flinging rubble behind them like gravel chips.
Reaper struggled to steer the vehicle away from the wall but keep out of the way of the warhead, which flashed past them and disappeared into the distance. A few seconds later they saw another puff of smoke and the crack of an explosion in the side of a hill a few hundred yards ahead of them.
With the danger past, for now, Reaper swung to the left and their Jeep scrambled up the rocky slope away from the wall, but in his zeal to escape he drastically oversteered and seconds later their Jeep almost drove straight off the coast path, forcing another correction on the part of Reaper to bring the vehicle under control.
Their hunter had gained on them significantly in the chaos of the RPG warhead, and Hawke saw they were preparing a second RPG.
He thought fast. Ahead of them the road was running out – they were now approaching the descent into Sami.
Another puff of gray and white smoke from the RPG.
“Go right!” screamed Hawke.
“Right! That’s the cliff.”
“Then get ready for a swim.”
Reaper swung the Jeep to the right, but more cautiously this time, as an error wouldn’t mean swimming, but certain death.
The Jeep skidded over to the right in a cloud of dust and gas fumes before running up on to the scraggy grass verge that precipitated the cliff edge. Reaper was on the left, so Hawke shot out the rear right passenger window and shifted across to get a better look.
“You have about an inch and we’re over,” he shouted, ducking instinctively as the second warhead raced past them, this time to the left, and ending its days in the same way as the first.
“Close,” Reaper said.
“Not as close as this,” said Hawke. He aimed the MP7 and fired another long burst of bullets at the Jeep. Closer now, their pursuers were an easier target, and the second volley tore across their Jeep from the top to the bottom, striking the driver several times in the head and chest.
He slumped forward and the Jeep spun out of control. Hawke saw the passenger trying to push the driver away from the wheel but it was too late. They flew off the side of the road, dust, grit and grass spraying in a wild arc behind them as they plunged behind the line of the cliff.
Seconds later Hawke heard a metallic crunching sound as the Jeep thudded into the rocks at the base of the cliff, and then an enormous explosion.
“Where did they go?” Reaper said, straining to see in the rear-view mirror while keeping the Jeep from sharing the same fate.
“They had to fly.” Hawke reloaded the MP7 with the ammo from the back of the Jeep and climbed into the front passenger seat.
“What about Zaugg?”
Hawke watched as Zaugg’s convoy trundled to the south of Sami on its way to the airfield. “We keep following them. I’ll call Hart and have her join us at the airport. I don’t want him leaving our sight.”
Hawke and Reaper kept their distance as they tailed Zaugg’s convoy to Kefalonia International Airport, and weren’t surprised to see them pull up alongside a white Boeing 767 idling on the apron. It had the words ZAUGG INDUSTRIES painted on the side in black letters.
“He doesn’t do things by half, I’ll give him that,” Hawke said.
“You think we can stop him?” Reaper asked.
“No. He’s obviously bought his way out of here – the customs guys aren’t even looking in those boxes. A pay-off, I guess. We just have to hope Hart and the others get here fast.”
*
Hart and the others arrived in an old Land Rover, courtesy of Sophie’s hotwiring skills, but it was too late to stop Zaugg.
“He flew out a quarter of an hour ago,” Reaper said, casually sucking on a cigarette.
“Did you manage to organize a plane?” Hawke asked Hart.
She shook her head. “Not enough time, sorry. Not even I am that amazing.”
“Then we’ll have to make other arrangements.”
After customs and security, it didn’t take Hawke long to persuade a cleaner to part with his clearance card and then they were airside and walking across to a line of private jets parked outside a hangar on the east side of the airport. Moments later they were inside one of the jets.
“Who the hell are you?” said an obese businessman. He spoke in a Central Russian dialect. He was surrounded by women.
“We’re your new flight crew.” Hawke powered a fist into the man’s face and knocked him unconscious to the floor in less than a second.
One of the women screamed hysterically. “Do you know who that was?”
“I couldn’t care less. Now sit down and shut up.”
“That was Yevgeny Gorokhov! Greatest glamour photographer in Russia.”
“Glamour photographer!” Scarlet said. “They’re porn models for God’s sake.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Reaper, arching an oddly appreciative eyebrow.
“They’re porn stars?!” Ryan said, a grin spreading across his face.
“We’re models,” said one of the women haughtily but not particularly convincingly. “Not porn stars. How dare you?!”
“Only you could hijack a plane full of porn stars, Joe,” said Hart.
“Hey! How could I have known what they were? We needed a plane and I got us one. You could be a little more grateful.”
“They’re not porn stars,” Ryan said. “They’re models. She just said so.”
“He’s right,” Reaper said. “She did just say that.”
“Please, guys,” said Ryan, never lifting his eyes from the women. “I think we need to get in the air. I feel a warm front coming on.”
“Oh, do shut up, Ryan,” Scarlet said. “And stop being so bloody sexist and pathetic, you little nerd. I cannot believe a woman like Lea married you. I guess she was young. That’s what it must have been, am I right? Young and stupid.”
Hawke laughed. “Ouch.”
“And you can shut up too.” Scarlet folded her arms and pursed her lips.
“Where are you flying tonight?” Hawke asked the women.
“We go back to Moscow. We had a photoshoot here.”
“A photoshoot,” Ryan said. “I love it. Where’s the camera?”
“We go to Moscow!”
“Not any more you’re not. We’re going to Switzerland and we need to get going right now, so everyone shut up and buckle up, in that order.”
In the air, Ryan busied himself serving the women drinks, and then brought Hawke and Scarlet some beers.
“Having fun, Ryan?” Hawke asked, smiling. He was starting to feel like his older brother.
“That one’s Tatjana,” Ryan said. “And the one in the boa is Liliya.”
“You can’t keep them, all right Ryan?”
Scarlet said.
Hawke resisted the temptation that had so easily devoured Ryan, and spent the flight considering tactical options and discussing the next phase of the attack with Hart. No matter how hard he tried to focus on the matter professionally, his mind kept wandering to Lea. He couldn’t let her die the way he had let Liz die back in Hanoi.
On the approach to Sion the Citation banked gracefully to the port side to reveal a stunning vista of the Swiss Alps, snow-capped and glistening a pink-white in the late afternoon sun.
The aircraft then swung back with a heavy forty degree turn to starboard to line up with Runway 07. Hawke watched the lights of Sion grow larger as the plane extended flaps and he heard the gear go down.
A few moments later they were racing along the runway, speed brakes activated and the powerful reverse thrusters deployed bringing the jet to taxi speed in seconds.
It was only a matter of time before he got his revenge on Hugo Zaugg.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Swiss Alps
The powerful Sikorsky swooped over the town of Sion and thundered through a narrow valley, flanked on either side by steep tree-lined mountainsides and rocky precipices.
Less than thirty minutes ago they had touched down at Sion International Airport in the 767, and they were now racing toward Zaugg’s stronghold in the mountain peaks to the south of the town.
Zaugg himself had been out of sight in his private cabin for the duration of the flight from Kefalonia, but now he was sitting opposite Lea Donovan in the luxury cabin of the helicopter, along with Dietmar Grobel and Heinrich Baumann.
After what he had done to her, she hated the sight of him, sitting there so close to her in the confined space of the helicopter. She wished she could push him out of the door and watch him fall to his death in the rocky valley below.
“How long until the men get the hoard to the mountain?” Zaugg asked.
“No more than an hour,” Grobel replied.
“Good.”
Lea saw the silhouette of Zaugg’s compound on the horizon. They drew nearer, and now she saw more detail below the helicopter – his private ski lodge was nearby, a stark postmodern black against the smooth white snow all around them. Elevated above the other buildings was a large building, constructed in glass and chrome in another modern architectural style – Zaugg’s mansion.
“We are here,” he said, peering through the window as the chopper descended to the helipad outside the enormous house.
Baumann pushed her out of the Sikorsky, but there was something about the way he touched her that made her flinch with revulsion. He had stroked her shoulder before nudging her forward at gunpoint.
Ahead of her, a short distance from the mansion and down a shallow snow-covered slope she saw what looked like some kind of cargo bay carved into the mountainside. A forklift was moving large metal containers from the back of a Mil Mi-26 transport helicopter into the gaping hole in the mountain, while a group of men carrying clipboards were issuing others with directions. They looked like they were waiting for something important to happen.
“Who are they?” she asked anxiously.
“Loyal employees,” Zaugg said.
Before she could ask anything else, someone grabbed her from behind and she felt a warm cloth over her mouth. Then she was out cold.
*
It didn’t take Lea long to realize where she was – she was slumped against a cold wall in a wine cellar. She rubbed her eyes and winced in pain at the headache – the chloroform had been given to her sloppily and in too strong a dose.
She was probably lucky to be alive. She tried to get up, but she was still dizzy, and she had to fight back a wave of nausea as she struggled to her feet and regained her balance.
The cellar was vast – smooth polished marble floors, and labyrinthine in its construction. She walked along a corridor – flanked on either side from floor to ceiling with wine bottles, carefully stored inside stone alcoves. A series of narrow striplights cast a ghostly silver light on everything.
She stopped at a crossroads to see just more wine-filled corridors stretching away into the distance, the far wall at the end of the corridor was perhaps over one hundred feet away. The sound of her shoes clicked loudly in the cool silence as she walked. Even her breathing seemed to echo off the walls.
“Now this is a wine collection,” she said, her voice unexpectedly loud in the enclosed space.
Before she had time to investigate her surroundings properly, or look for a way out, she heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming from behind her – somewhere outside the cellar she heard the unmistakable sound of Zaugg’s voice, only he was speaking in his native Schweizerdeutsch. It was followed moments later by the sound of Heinrich Baumann’s hideous chuckle.
The talking stopped. A moment of eerie silence was followed by the sound of heavy keys clunking on a metal hoop, and then one of the men was unlocking the door.
Only as the two men stepped into the cellar and confronted her did her fate begin to dawn on her. She wondered if Joe and Ryan and the others had survived the flooding of the tomb, knowing that if they hadn’t she had no options left, and that her time had almost run out.
“Guten abend,” Zaugg said.
“What the hell is this, Zaugg?” She knew what the hell it was, but she was asking in an effort to buy herself more time to think. She peered behind them to see what was outside the cellar but all she saw was a flight of stone steps receding out of view to the right.
“As you will recall, I have promised you to Baumann here, Miss Donovan, to calm one of his many mutinous rages. He is a loyal employee after all, and it would be churlish of me not to indulge his... fantasies from time to time. He is not exactly a gentle man, but what he lacks in tenderness he makes up for with creativity. My advice is not to struggle.”
Baumann chuckled again, almost uncontrollably, as he looked Lea up and down like a piece of meat in a market.
“I’m sorry I cannot stay but as you will appreciate, I have important work to do, and a very important map to locate which was not where it should have been. A real mystery, to be sure, but one I will certainly solve. As for you, your friends are all dead – their bodies trapped in the tomb, somewhat ironically, and you will soon wish you had died with them. Auf wiedersehen.”
Zaugg turned on his heel and closed the door behind him.
Baumann shuffled toward her, at first looking as though he were on an awkward first date. Then he grinned, and his good eye blinked. She looked at the long scar running down the other side of his face, the one that had cost him his eyesight and left his eye an opaque, milky egg staring at nothing.
Lea held her breath in fear and slowly stepped back from Baumann, never once taking her eyes off him. Up close he was even bigger than she had realized, his enormous bulk towering over her like a bear. His metal hand made a terrible scraping noise as he flexed its fingers, his one eye blinking in the half-light of the damp cellar.
Then he lunged at her.
Lea ran back from him, wrenching the arm of her sweater out of his meaty hand. She stumbled back a few paces and turned on her heel, running away for her life.
Baumann laughed loudly and pulled a long hunting knife from a holster on his belt. “This is going to be beautiful.” he said, in a grim, hoarse whisper. Then he started after her.
Her mind raced with fear. She knew Joe Hawke would know what to do, but she was out of her depth. She needed him, but she didn’t even know if he was dead or alive. The last time she saw him was back in the caves of Kefalonia when Zaugg had ordered Baumann to blow the wall of the tomb and drown them all.
Baumann smiled. He knew what she was thinking.
“If you’re waiting for your action-hero, he’s dead,” he said. “All of your friends are dead. They drowned like sewer rats. No one’s going to save you.”
Without warning, Baumann leapt forward and lunged at her again with the metal hand, catching one of the pockets of her jeans and tearing it off. The sh
red fell to the floor and Baumann giggled insanely.
Lea screamed and jumped back, hitting a wall of wine bottles. Panicking, she quickly searched for the fastest way out and decided to make a run for it along the corridor to her right. As she sprinted down the corridor into the darkness, she heard Baumann whooping with joy behind her and banging his hand on the steel frame of a wine rack with excitement.
“You can make this last all night, bitch!” he screamed.
Then he sprinted after her.
Lea was breathing hard, and terrified to stop, but an instant later she ran into a dead-end. Before she could back out of it Baumann rounded the corner. He smirked at her and made a fake sad face in mockery of her.
“Shall we have merlot or cabernet sauvignon?” he asked.
Without taking his eyes off her, he reached out and pulled a bottle of red wine from the wall, snapping its neck off with his metal hand. The shattered glass splinters fell to the concrete floor and he took a large gulp of the wine before wiping his wide mouth with the sleeve of his jacket.
“It’s time for our date,” he said, and padded toward her.
Lea struggled to concentrate, but she knew now was no time to lose her mind to panic and fear. He approached her, placing the wine on a shelf. Before she could think, Baumann was upon her, grabbing her shoulder with his metal hand.
She heard it contract and then something in her shoulder cracked. She screamed in pain, but he laughed loudly and powered his other hand, his human hand, hard into her stomach.
She doubled over in agony, gasping like a fish out of water and she strained to heave the air back into her winded lungs.
“As first dates go, bitch, I have been on worse.”
On her knees now, and struggling to breathe, she could sense the hideous man above her, and watched in horror as his steel toecapped boots shuffled closer toward her, now almost touching her thighs.
