by Alex Archer
* * *
GARIN KEPT BOTH EYES open as he followed the gunman’s trajectory down the rooftop through the scope of the M4A1 assault rifle. The instant Garin had found the man in his sights, he’d opened fire.
When the corpse reached the roof’s edge of the building across the street, it seemed to hang over the four-story drop for a moment. Then it plummeted onto a car parked at the side of the street. The vehicle’s roof crumpled under the impact, and glass blew out of the windows.
After making sure the man wasn’t getting back up, Garin lowered his weapon.
At his side, Sabre Race stared up at him. “You killed him!”
“Maybe it was the bullets or it could have been the fall,” Garin agreed. “He wasn’t one of yours, was he?”
“No. And what if it was?”
Garin shrugged. “He’d be just as dead. I gave orders that no one was to shoot until I gave approval.”
“He wasn’t shooting at us.”
“He was shooting.” At Annja. Garin forced himself not to think about Annja lying dead on the museum’s roof. She was better than that. Still, the sniper hadn’t been expected. He’d been caught off guard. She could have been taken just as easily.
“Shooting doesn’t mean you kill him.”
“It does today. When I give orders, I intend for them to be obeyed.” Garin turned his steely gaze on Sabre. “You called me in on this thing, and I’m helping because I choose to. I got you here because I know Annja Creed and the old man she runs with. If that doesn’t work for you, let me know.”
“And you’ll just back away?”
“No. I’m in this thing now. If you want to stay in with me, use the knowledge I have of these people, you do things my way.” Garin paused. “Decide now.”
Frowning, Sabre nodded. “Your way.”
The quick acquiescence was surprising. One of the reasons Garin had separated company from Sabre those years ago had been the younger man’s lack of cold-blooded efficiency.
“Good. Have one of your people find out who the dead man is. If that man doesn’t have any ID, get photographs to my tech support.” Garin took up shelter inside the arched doorway leading to the museum. There was less reason to go inside now. Annja was on the rooftop, either alive and running or dead. He tapped his comm.
“Inge, I need eyes in the air.”
“What I see, you’re going to see.” Inge Hundertwasser spoke in a soft contralto with an Austrian accent. She was tech support for the present operation.
Inge was a black-hat hacker. Garin had found the young woman outside Vienna in the Republic of Austria. She’d rifled some research-and-development files from one of his pharmacy holdings. In the beginning, he’d intended to kill her, but he’d been impressed by her skill and by her courage. Even when she’d realized Garin was there to kill her, she hadn’t shown any signs of weakness. Instead of leaving her corpse in her hidden lair, Garin had hired her to run sensitive operations for him. The relationship had been mutually beneficial.
“Eyes are away,” Inge announced.
One of the black SUVs parked in front of the museum opened a sunroof. Three spidery-looking aircraft with six propellers and four “feet” each took flight through the opening. All of them were less than eighteen inches across, and all of them had wireless video cameras and auditory pickups inside the Plexiglas bodies. For a moment, the drones hovered over the SUV, getting their bearings. Then they sped through the air with a quiet hiss.
Garin nodded to one of the men standing at the museum door. It was possible that Annja had returned to the building. And even if she was gone—or dead—it was possible she might have left a trail behind.
The man opened the door and a small group darted inside, taking up positions quickly with their weapons at their shoulders.
“I have eyes on her,” Inge reported over the comm. “I’m boosting the signal to your phone.”
Garin reached into his chest pouch and took out his smartphone. He tapped the drone app and opened the window, picking up the feeds Inge’s toys were pushing. Some of his apprehension uncoiled when he saw that Annja was still alive.
He tapped the small window that gave him the best view of Annja, expanding the panel to full size. On the small screen, Annja sailed through the space between the museum and the next building, and Garin knew from the way she started falling she wasn’t going to make the distance.
Desperately, Annja arched her body, not giving in, and managed to catch hold of the building’s roof. She slammed into the wall and her right hand slid free, leaving her dangling by her left hand.
Cursing, Garin ran toward the back of the building, hoping that Annja could hold on long enough for him to get there.
* * *
THE UTILITY TUNNEL opened up into the museum’s basement. Only weak security lights illuminated the cavernous room. The shifting of the men’s boots already in the room echoed around de Cerceau as he hauled himself up from the opening.
A moment later, he stood there with a dozen men. More had joined his first group as he’d traversed the underground route. He nodded to the leader. “All right, Orayyed. We’re inside the building.”
“The stairs are along the east wall. They’ll bring you up to the door near the main entrance.”
“Understood.” De Cerceau followed his team with the H&K MP5 cradled in his arms.
“The DragonTech people are breaching the entrance. One of our snipers is dead.” Orayyed spoke calmly, but then, he could afford to. He wasn’t on-site. No one was shooting at him.
“What happened to the sniper?” De Cerceau trotted up the steps. He’d cleared the sniper to take the shot when he’d realized Annja Creed was on the rooftop.
“DragonTech killed the sniper.”
“Do they know Creed is on the roof?”
“Affirmative. They’ve deployed drones to track her.”
“Give orders to take the drones down.” De Cerceau cursed the other mercenary team’s unexpected technological advantage, then saved his breath for the climb up the stairs. His men deployed across the exit, but hardly had they gotten into position when the DragonTech security people invaded the building.
De Cerceau couldn’t tell who had opened fire first, but in a moment, the ensuing gunfight turned the museum’s entranceway into a battlefield as the bullets flew.
* * *
CLINGING BY THE FINGERTIPS of her left hand, with the alley three floors below, Annja tried to suck in a slow breath. The impact with the wall had driven the breath from her lungs in a painful rush. Her head ached, as well, from slamming into the brick. She’d turned her head so she wouldn’t smash into the barrier face-first, but the collision had nearly knocked her senseless.
Spots danced in her vision, and for a moment, she thought she was going to pass out. Instinctively, she reached up with her right hand and grabbed the edge. She hung there briefly, making sure her hold was secure. Then she took a breath that cleared some of the cobwebs from her head and she focused on pulling herself up and over onto the roof.
The climb wasn’t pretty or elegant in any way. It was more like a frenzied crawl. When her hips drew even with the roof, she rolled over and lay on the backpack for a moment.
Another bullet dug into the roof’s edge and sprayed her with brick chips. She rolled to her right, got her hands under her and levered herself to her feet. Sprinting for all she was worth, she ran in a zigzag across the rooftop until she spotted the edge ahead of her.
Her stomach tightened when she realized this jump was at least as far as the last, but the next building was a story lower. Bullets dogged her heels and whistled through the air around her. At the edge, she launched herself into the air with everything she had, windmilling her arms to keep her balance.
When she landed on the next roof, scarcely a foot from the edg
e, she threw herself forward and rolled. Movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention. Fifteen feet away, an insectoid thing floated in the air and emitted a steady, high-pitched whine.
It took her a moment to recognize the hovering drone for what it was and to realize that someone was watching her. She suspected it was Garin. The man did like his toys. Two other drones flanked the first.
She gathered herself and sprinted across the roof. With the one-story difference from the other building, the snipers weren’t able to target her. Sporadic gunfire echoed behind her, sometimes buried by police sirens and bullhorn announcements.
At the far edge of the building, with her flying Peeping Toms in tow, Annja peered down and spotted a car parked in the alley between the building she was on and the next. She gripped the roof’s edge and lowered her body over the side, then hung there waiting for a second.
As she expected, the lead drone floated forward and appeared just above her. Before the operator at the other end of the connection could react, she reached up with her right hand and caught one of the drone’s legs. Not giving the operator a chance to power the vehicle away, if that was possible, Annja jerked the drone into the side of the building.
Propellers shattered and the Plexiglas bubble cracked. Leaving the drone no time to recover, Annja smashed it against the wall again and let the wreckage tumble to the ground. The device broke into dozens of pieces.
The other two drones hovered out of arm’s reach, watching Annja with camera lenses.
Growling in frustration, Annja released her hold on the roof and dropped. She landed on her feet fifteen feet below, her knees bent to absorb the shock.
The alley door of the building opened at almost the same time and a young man in slacks, a button-up and a tie stepped out. He offered Annja an inquisitive smile.
“Is this your car?” She spoke in Spanish and smiled, hoping that Basque wasn’t the only language the man was fluent in.
“Yes. That is my car.”
“I need you to move it.”
“Of course.” The man dug in his pants pocket and retrieved a set of keys with a silver fob. “I was only stopping for a moment. To make deliveries, you see.” His attention shifted to the drones floating only a few feet away.
While the man’s attention was occupied, Annja snatched the keys from his hand and raced for the car.
“Hey!” the man yelled when he realized she’d taken his keys. “Hey! Thief!”
The thief part hurt a little. Annja didn’t consider herself a thief. She was only going to borrow the car for a moment. Using the fob, she let herself into the sedan and slammed the door shut just as the man reached her. She locked the door as he reached for the handle. He banged at the glass and started calling her much worse names than thief.
“Sorry.” Annja mouthed the apology through the window.
Turning her attention back to the car, she inserted the key in the ignition and started the engine. She shifted into Reverse and pinned the accelerator to the floor. The car slid back at once, putting distance between it and its owner.
She backed out into the street with the drones hovering in hot pursuit. Narrowly avoiding locking bumpers with a passing truck, she skidded out onto the street and cut the wheels sharply, aligning the car away from the police cordon farther down the street.
The drones sped out of the alley in single file. A truck racing away from the gun battle drove into the lead drone, shattering it. Braking to a screeching halt, the truck driver stared through his cracked windshield at the mechanical parts spread across the hood of his vehicle. The remaining drone immediately gained altitude, rising up behind the stalled truck.
Annja shifted her borrowed car into gear and drove down the street. Her rearview mirrors revealed one of the police vehicles had pulled away from the cordon and was now dogging her. She focused on the street ahead and drove as fast as she dared.
San Sebastián was a long way off.
30
Taking cover in the museum’s alcove, Sabre Race traded shots with the men who had come up from the building’s basement. At least, to his way of thinking, there was no other place for them to have appeared from. Saadiya had confirmed the likelihood of that arrival after consulting the building’s blueprints. She had hacked into the building’s security system and checked the video logs, noting that the men hadn’t arrived through the entrances.
He tracked one of the gunmen and squeezed the trigger of his assault rifle. The short burst knocked the man to the floor and splayed him out in a loose-limbed sprawl that revealed at least one of the rounds had struck flesh, not Kevlar.
Another man went down and two of the other gunners fell back from their positions.
Crouching, Sabre slung the assault rifle over his shoulder and picked up the rectangular bulletproof shield he’d carried in. He drew one of his pistols and moved forward, intending to take advantage of their opponents’ retreat. He squeezed the first pistol dry in steady blasts, concentrating on laying down suppressive fire. Then he holstered the empty pistol in his shoulder rig and drew the one holstered at his thigh. As he’d known, he wasn’t alone in his approach.
Garin walked in tandem to him, somehow managing to hide his large frame behind one of the rectangular bulletproof shields, as well. He finished with one pistol and drew another. One of his shots caught an assailant in the face, knocking him back.
“Sabre,” Saadiya called over the comm. “I’ve identified the dead man outside. He’s one of de Cerceau’s mercenaries.”
That didn’t surprise Sabre. He thought he’d spotted the mercenary leader among the men who confronted them at the entrance, but he hadn’t seen him again. “Roger that. At least we know who we’re up against. Do you know how de Cerceau managed to follow Annja Creed here?”
If it hadn’t been for knowledge Garin had of the man Annja Creed had reached out to for assistance in leaving California, the trail would have gone cold on the hunt for the Merovingian treasure. Sabre still didn’t know where the Creed woman was going if she escaped them here, and he was sure this wasn’t the final destination. The treasure wouldn’t be in Spain. If she and her associates got away here, Sabre hoped Garin would know where to pick up the trail again.
“Negative,” Saadiya replied. “I’m skip-tracing de Cerceau’s movements now, but it looks like he and his team flew straight here only minutes after you took flight.”
The truth undermined Sabre’s confidence a little. “Then de Cerceau knows something we don’t.” The man had help or insight that they didn’t have in their possession.
Ahead of Sabre, Garin stepped toward the wounded man. The gunman raised his weapon and Garin shot him again. When the man relaxed back this time, there was no fight left in him. Sabre wasn’t surprised at the way Garin dealt so cold-bloodedly with the situation. That was one of the things that had eventually caused Sabre to leave DragonTech.
Stepping over the dead men, Garin trailed the retreating mercenaries into the stairway from the basement. One of the gunmen fired shots that smacked into the shield in Garin’s hand and caused it to jump. Without batting an eye, Garin raised his pistol and fired four shots. The action locked open as the mercenary stumbled backward.
“Reloading,” Garin bellowed, stepping back against the staircase wall.
Instinctively, following training he’d received while working with Garin, Sabre stepped forward and held up his shield, covering the two of them as best he could. He swapped the hands that held his shield and pistol so he could fire around the armor.
“Like old times, isn’t it?” Garin grinned as he emptied the spent magazines from his pistols and shoved fresh ones into place. The low-level lambent light hollowed the hard planes of his face.
Despite the desperate nature of their task here, Sabre returned the grin, feeling a shadow of the old excitement. “It is.�
��
When Garin was reloaded, he held up his shield and allowed Sabre to exchange his magazines, as well. Sabre’s internal clock, the one Garin had trained him to have, counted down the seconds lost while they were reequipping.
De Cerceau and his people had time to rearm and dig in. Taking the basement wasn’t going to be easy.
“Saadiya.” Sabre holstered one of the pistols, kept the other and picked up his shield.
“Yes.”
“There’s a utility tunnel under the museum. Find out where it goes.”
“I’m looking at the schematics now. If they’re right, and they may not be, because there has been considerable work done in this area, I see at least five different points of exfiltration for de Cerceau and his people to take.”
“We don’t have enough people to cover all five,” Garin said. “We should have brought more troops.”
Not shocked that Garin had hacked into his private team frequency, Sabre moved in step with the big man as they crept down the steps. Blood stood out on the stairs, indicating some of the men they were chasing had been wounded.
Sabre cursed the situation. They didn’t have enough people to cover all the tunnels. And those possibilities would only increase if de Cerceau and his mercenaries stayed in the tunnels leading away from the museum and chose other points of escape.
“Pick two of the most likely,” Sabre said, “and the one farthest away. We’ll roll the dice on this one.” There was no other choice.
“Roger that.”
At the landing at the bottom of the steps, Garin hesitated only a moment before stepping toward the next flight of stone steps. The tunnel was dark.
Sabre drew a pen flash from his vest and switched it on. He played the high-intensity beam around the tunnel and spotted black boxes about the size of a DVD case planted on the ceiling a few steps down. Red lights pulsed to life and started cycling faster.
“Get back!” Sabre dropped his pistol, then reached forward and caught Garin’s arm. He dragged the man back up the stairs. The big man tripped and went down. As they fell, Sabre lifted his shield over them.
