Treacle nodded. “Yeah, yeah, Tweacle, I remember. Did we fuck too?”
“If we did you would remember.”
“I dunno.” The blond head of hair shook. “I fuck a lot.”
Men spread out around the cars and the lay-by. Kenzie had noticed that the third vehicle still hadn’t emerged from the tunnel. Probably waiting on the other side as a precaution. Cars passed by slowly along the road, hopefully most of them missing the deadly exchange.
“You ready to deal?” she said.
“ ’Course I am. I’m a dealer aren’t I?”
“We have what you want. Do you have the information?”
“This Cyrano.” Treacle clearly wanted to slow it down. “Man’s a buyer too, yeah? Man found me, now thinks I owe him,” Laughter blasted from the offensive mouth. “Wanker… and why didn’t he want the vase?”
“He did. But we needed you.”
“ ’Course, ’course,” Treacle clearly knew he was important. “Makes sense. But why should I lower meself down to deal with a bint like you?”
“Because I have the relic.” Kenzie ignored the offensive word. She’d heard much worse. “And you want it.”
“I remember you.” Treacle moved closer, his men scrambling to move with him. “Right bitch you were. Angling to gazump me, you were. Bad all over and hot because of it. What happened?”
Kenzie shrugged.
Treacle included Dahl in his gaze for the first time. “Tweacle,” he acknowledged the Swede, then spoke to Kenzie. “This big boy bang the bad outta you?”
Not yet, Kenzie wanted to say. But I will keep trying. Instead she flexed her fingers and rolled a shoulder, drawing attention to the weapons. “We going to chat all day or deal? I have a roulette table just shouting my name out.”
“You and me both, Tweacle. You and me both. How ’bout you give us a flash? That’ll please the boys and speed things up.”
Kenzie drew her katana faster than a man could draw breath. “How about I chop their knackers into cutlets?”
Treacle coughed, wincing at the image. “Steady on, steady on. No need to be shirty. That’s a helluva a blade you got there, Tweacle. Makes me feel almost inadequate. Almost.” A sickly smile.
Kenzie made sure the tip of the sword pointed at the floor and was as shielded from passing traffic as was possible. “Who’s controlling the new thread of Inca artifacts? Where’s it coming from? Who’s involved? Now, or we walk.”
“You kiddin’? I’d love to watch you walk away.”
Treacle’s men guffawed. Kenzie waited.
“Tell you what, Tweacle.” He held up a thick file and flapped it at her. “I’ll make you a deal. You live, you get the information. You die, I’ll strip and defile your still warm body. Meet me at the Casino de Monte Carlo in an hour.”
The buyer’s self-confident grin twisted into a leer of hate. Dahl was fastest of all, drawing a Smith and Wesson and firing into two midriffs. Men twisted, falling. Kenzie swung the katana toward Treacle’s arm, but the man was fleet and danced away. Her upswing took a bodyguard across the abdomen, sent the gun he held clattering into the dirt. She continued her swing, allowing the momentum to turn her body and become a mad dash. The car doors were open. A bullet skimmed past her ass. Treacle cheered. Kenzie dived into the front seat as Dahl crouched alongside the wheel and took several pot shots.
“Get in!” Kenzie shouted. “Bastard wants to play, I’ll show him how the Mossad fucking play!”
Treacle disappeared into the back seat of his SUV, guards following. Dahl came around and jumped behind the driver’s seat. “What the hell is going on?”
“Foreplay,” Kenzie muttered. “Now make this bastard squeal.”
Dahl gunned the engine. “Which way?”
“Into Monaco, of course.”
Dahl scowled. “Where there’s a cop on every corner.”
Their car squealed as its tires spun in the dirt, spitting gravel out the back straight into the close-parked SUV’s rear end. They could hear the pepper-shot clatter even above the engines.
“That’ll knock a coat of paint off his insurance,” Kenzie joked with a grin.
“Shit, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Kenzie stroked the pommel of her katana. “What’s not to like?”
“How about near death?” Dahl loosed the car and squealed out into the road, cutting a fine arc and leaving a trail of rubber in his wake.
“Made friends with that asshole a decade ago. He doesn’t scare me.”
The entrance to the tunnel yawned ahead. Kenzie remembered the third SUV and told Dahl. Behind them, the other two SUVs made a great show of turning around.
“Y’know,” Kenzie said as they raced into the tunnel, darkness and then interior light replacing the sun. “All of a sudden, this doesn’t feel right.”
It was a short tunnel. Already they could see the end.
“You think they’re waiting at the other end?”
“No. I think—”
The enormous sound of an explosion and cracks appearing along the roof of the tunnel, the fireball and the flames, told her she hadn’t been thinking along the right lines at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Kenzie slapped a hand to her mouth in shock. No way was this tunnel going to collapse, but the force of the detonation was sending rubble smashing down from the roof and rolling down the sides. Lights flickered and died, the only illumination intensely bright from the end of the tunnel. Heaps of debris already blocked the way and more was falling down. She saw boulders the size of her head bouncing into the pile, their edges jagged and deadly. She saw an oncoming car swerve to avoid the wreckage, smash into the sidewall and come to a sudden halt, the front end smashed in. She saw the third black SUV parked in a lay-by far ahead.
“There’s the asshole who did this,” Dahl said at the same time. “Must have rigged some dynamite or something.”
More cars were pulling up ahead, people climbing out of their cars and pulling out phones. Kenzie opened her door and started to move.
“Wait!” Dahl launched himself across the front seats, grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back in. She felt the power, the sheer strength of the man and then ended up staring at his chest from less than an inch distant.
“What’s the issue?” she said in a muffled voice.
The sound of a hail of rocks smashing down onto the car roof and her door gave her a terrifying answer.
“Oh. It’s raining rocks. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Not part of Mossad training?” Dahl swung the door shut and climbed off her.
“Not whilst I was there.”
Another hail of rubble clattered down onto the roof. Kenzie saw the first indent appear — a V-shaped delve in the headliner.
“To be honest,” Dahl said mildly. “I was expecting more of a sexist comment.”
“Were you? From me? Well, Mr. Muscles, you’ll be happy to know I’ve decided to let you and Missus Muscles get back together. I guess you deserve another chance.”
Dahl took his eyes away from their dilemma for a moment. “This time… it will work.”
“I hope so. I’m no marriage breaker.”
A rock the size of her fist smashed against the windshield, causing the glass to give and a spider web tracery of cracks to race away from the epicenter.
Then she saw all four doors of the SUV open. Armed men wearing T-shirts jumped out, looking up at the shattered tunnel entrance. One of them spotted their car and pointed.
“We’re gonna have to risk it,” Dahl said. “These people up ahead are gonna get hurt.”
Kenzie kicked at her door, forcing a small pile of rubble to topple away. An errant stone fell from the roof and bounced off her shoulder, causing her to wince in pain. Just the shadow of what could have been. Dahl squeezed out the other side. Between them and the exit now stood a knee-height pile of rocks and a steadily pouring pebble-and-shale shower.