Once he found a stride that matched the spaces between the ties, he picked up his pace and started closing the gap. There was a platform at the rear of the car and just above it, through the large viewing window in the operator’s station, he saw Edward Hancock staring back at him coldly. Dane poured on a burst of speed and got close enough to throw himself onto the platform. The car jolted to a stop.
There was a rasping sound as the side door slid open and he caught a glimpse of Hancock reaching around with his left hand, taking aim with a pistol. Dane lashed out with his foot, slamming Hancock’s hand against the corner of the car. The gun fell from his grasp, clattering onto rails and disappearing, and Hancock pulled back.
Dane immediately scrambled up, swung around the corner and through the opening, driving Hancock back with a body blow that sent him careening down the stair-stepped center aisle. Dane got his feet under him and moved down to stand over the old man.
Hancock stared back at him, unbowed. “This isn’t over.”
“It is for you.”
“Templars never surrender.”
Before Dane could reply, a faint tremor shook the car. He looked back and saw Alex climbing inside through the open door.
She wasn’t alone. Behind her, his pistol pressed against the small of her back, was John Lee Ray.
Ray shoved Alex away, sending her stumbling down the aisle. Dane caught her and pulled her to the side, covering her with his body just in case Ray decided to shoot. There wasn’t much else he could do. Ray’s attention however was fixed on the old man.
“Where is it?” he raged, all trace of his Southern gentility gone. “What did you do with the treasure?”
“There is no treasure,” said Dane. “They sold it off ages ago. This is all just a sham.”
This revelation unexpectedly seemed to please Ray. “I knew it. It’s all true, isn’t it? The grand Templar conspiracy, controlling the world, building a New World Order. And now, at last, the truth will be revealed. The world will know.”
“What difference will it make if they do?” Dane challenged. “Half of the world already believes that everything is controlled by some Big Money conspiracy, and the rest don’t care. Don’t you get it? You’re killing people for something that doesn’t even matter anymore.”
“It matters to him,” snarled Ray. “And it matters to me.”
“You won’t live long enough to tell anyone,” said Hancock, still defiant.
“I’ll live longer than you.” Ray leveled his gun at the old man, and without any hesitation, pulled the trigger.
Hancock flinched as the bullet struck his chest. He coughed once, a stream of blood trickling from his mouth, but strangely he was still smiling. “Not much longer, I’ll wager.”
The old man raised his left hand and Dane saw that he had found another weapon, not a gun, but a small green spherical object about the size of a tennis ball. He opened his fingers slightly and a small spring-loaded metal lever handle flew away.
Ray let out a curse and fired again, but in the time it took for him to do so, Hancock hurled the object up the length of the car to where his murderer was standing. Even as Ray’s bullet plowed into the old man’s forehead, the grenade landed on the top step and rolled behind the mercenary.
Dane had just enough time to push Alex down again before the world exploded.
CHAPTER 24
The firefight in the empty treasure vault had been a war of attrition. Cowboy, the first man through the door had been the first to fall. Viper, who had been right behind him, just as quickly followed him into the hereafter.
The attack was completely unexpected, and for a moment, Scalpel wondered how Maddock had managed to procure weapons. It quickly became apparent however that the foe they faced was not Maddock, or at least not just Maddock and his two companions. For a few seconds, Ray, Scalpel and Paycheck had returned fire, taking down several of the gunmen, but each time they did so, they exposed themselves to the enemy guns. When Paycheck caught a round, Ray had signaled for Scalpel to stop firing.
It was not a surrender. Outgunned as they were, there was no way for just the two of them to win by staying on offense. But Scalpel knew Ray well enough to divine his meaning.
Play dead. Wait for them to come to us.
The ploy had worked. After a minute or so, two of the gunmen came to investigate. Ray and Scalpel waited until they were fully through the door then took them out. Capitalizing on the fact that the remaining enemies were holding their fire to avoid shooting their own men, Ray had used one of the dead men as a shield and bulldozed his way through the door, dropping the last two before they could get off a shot.
Despite their losses, Scalpel was savoring the victory, but Ray flew into a rage.
“Where in the hell is it?”
It took Scalpel a moment to realize what his employer was talking about. There was no treasure in the treasure vault.
There was also no sign of Maddock and the others, but Ray didn’t seem concerned with that. He snatched up something up from one of the dead men; a beret, adorned with a Templar Cross. He threw it to the ground with a disgusted snarl and shone his light around the room, catching motes of dust and whorls of smoke, until he found the back entrance. “That way. Hurry.”
Ray took off at a full sprint. Scalpel breathed a curse of his own, and struggled to keep up, but every step was an ordeal. He reached the doorway, saw the stairs, and groaned again.
Suddenly he was yanked backward. His flashlight and pistol went flying as he flailed his arms, but there was nothing to arrest his fall and he slammed backward onto the stone floor. An immense figured loomed out of the smoke and dust. In the ambient glow of scattered lights, he saw the Indian, Bonebrake, advancing toward him with murder in his eyes.
Scalpel crabbed away, scrambling back to his feet. His pain had vanished momentarily, overwhelmed by a surge of fight-or-flight endorphins, though for the veteran soldier, there was only one choice: fight. He whipped his combat knife from its sheath and reversed direction, charging Bones and slashing the blade ahead of him.
Bones ignored the attack, side-stepped a slash would otherwise have struck home, and planted a kick squarely in Scalpel’s chest. Scalpel was driven back, stumbling but not quite losing his footing this time. Before he could recover, Bones hit him again, harder.
Scalpel realized an instant too late that this last blow had not been designed merely to knock him down. Bones had lined him up like a billiard ball and knocked him squarely toward the main door to the vault. Scalpel stumbled over the fallen slab that once blocked the way, and landed in a tangle of dead bodies — fallen Templars and his own teammates.
Bones was on him again before he could recover. He plucked Scalpel up like a sack of dog food and heaved him away one final time. The hard landing Scalpel braced himself for didn’t happen immediately. Instead, he felt his body accelerating, his guts leaping up as he went into freefall.
Bones had thrown him off the stairs.
His next memory was of pain. His breath was gone, driven from his lungs by the impact with the floor. He lay there unmoving, unable to move, hardly able even to believe that he was still alive…but he was.
His breath caught and with that gasp came another jolt of pain. He knew he had broken something, maybe a lot of somethings. He could almost feel shards of bone slicing into his organs.
But…still…alive.
Maybe he wasn’t as badly injured as he thought. He saw a light at the top of the spiral staircase and tried to judge the distance of his fall… thirty feet? Forty at the most?
The light was moving. Winding around the corkscrew stairs, descending. Bones was still coming.