As the rider steered into the alley and fired, Nick dove down the passage straight ahead. A stream of bullets whizzed by, the shots muted down to a series of clacks by the weapon’s compact suppressor. But this series ended in a premature click.
Nick spun back into the T-intersection and rushed the oncoming headlight.
The rider accepted the challenge. He let his empty weapon hang at his side and bore down on the accelerator, racing toward Nick in a lopsided game of chicken. At the last millisecond, Nick reached his goal, a small alcove between them. He sprang left into the doorway and twisted, throwing all his body weight behind a left hook to the side of the rider’s helmet as he passed.
The assassin’s head bounced off the brick wall. His bike wobbled with increasing oscillation until the front tire cranked ninety degrees and he went flying over the bars, tumbling into a heap. The bike stayed wedged between the walls with the cracked headlight still on, reflecting off the copper-colored brick.
Nick climbed over the bike, trying to get to the assassin before he reloaded his gun, but the rider didn’t bother. He jumped to his feet, tore off his helmet, and squared off, drawing a long, curving knife from a sheath at his back.
Nick hesitated. Then he remembered the Hashashin knife he had carried since Istanbul. As soon as his feet hit the ground on the other side of the bike, he pulled it from his pocket and palmed the hilt. The two blades sang as they shot out. The Hashashin glanced down at the knife and then grinned. With a gloved hand, he beckoned Nick forward.
CHAPTER 48
At Nick’s first step, the wall beside him erupted in a cloud of dust and brick fragments, forcing him back into the broken bike. Blinding light shone from the alley to his right. Another engine revved.
There was a second assassin.
He let his blades retract and half-fell, half-clambered backward over the bike. In the scramble, he saw that the first rider had dropped his weapon. A Kriss Vector submachine gun hung from the handle bars. He snatched it up. The gun was empty, but there was no point in leaving it there for the assassin to recover.
Nick dodged left at an L-intersection and paused to get his bearings. The illumination from the headlamp of the broken bike became his reference point. What seemed an endless maze in the dark now proved to be just a few intersecting corridors, bounded on four sides by two short passages and two long. Somewhere along those border passages was the way out.
As he rounded the corner to the next long passage, Nick saw a flash of steel. The unhorsed assassin slashed at his head while the other rider approached at increasing speed from behind him. Nick ducked the knife and struck out with his own, unleashing the spring-loaded blades as he slashed at his attacker’s midsection. His knife cut easily through the leather riding jacket, but it scraped against something the tip could not penetrate. Kevlar. The assassin reversed his swing, slicing back down at Nick’s head, and Nick countered with an upward thrust of his own. He embedded his blade in the assassin’s forearm. No Kevlar there.
He jerked the blade, ripping muscle and nerves and forcing the assassin to drop his knife. With his other hand, Nick grabbed the man’s belt, and before the assassin could push away, he found what he needed — a pair of magazines. There was a shout from behind. The wounded assassin ducked. Nick spun back around the corner as more rounds pelted the wall behind him.
He backed down the short passage that capped the end of the maze. There were only two approaches to this position, from the main passages to the north and south. The faded light from the fallen bike illuminated the passage to the north. The bright light and the revving motor of the other filled the passage to the south.
“Nightmare One, you up?”
Nick couldn’t believe the timing. “Two? Where have you been?”
“You know. Wine, incense, beautiful Hashashin queen with a poison knife and a powerful comm jammer. Chaya tried to kill me.”
“Was she in her underwear when it went down?”
“Close.”
“Figures.”
“So what’s up with you?”
The other assassin kept revving his engine, but he did not breach the corner. Nick heard low voices in the same Turkic dialect he had heard in the catacombs. He wished he could understand the words. Then the voices stopped. “Two not-very-pretty and fully-clothed assassins are trying to carve me up with knives and Vector submachine guns,” he told Drake. “At least there’s no incense. Can you get to me?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing. I’m pinned down in Chaya’s neighborhood. Scotland Yard stormed the flat, and I had to bolt through the window. I might need a hot pickup.”
Nick heard the scuff of a boot from the intersection behind him. He turned and fired to the north and the attacker retreated. At the same time, he sensed a shift in the light from the south. One of the assassins had passed in front of the headlight of the other bike. He tensed. The move to the north was a distraction, meant to turn him away from the real threat, and it had worked.
He twisted and fell flat backward as a line of rounds passed above him. The first bullet parted his hair. In mid-fall, he zeroed in on the shooter and pulled the trigger.
The rider’s visor was probably Lexan — bullet-resistant — but he had lifted it to see better in the dark corridors. Nick put two rounds through his right eye. Then his back hit the ground, knocking the wind from his lungs.
The light wavered in the corridor with the stuck bike. The motor revved up. The other assassin had worked it free. The sound and the light retreated from the alley.
“You still there, Two?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m clear.”
“Great. Come and get me.”
“It’ll take a while. Find a good hiding spot and hunker down.” Nick struggled to his feet and kicked the dead assassin, just to make sure. Then he dragged him into an alcove and propped him up, working in the light from the remaining motorcycle. The man’s sleeve had crept up his forearm, revealing a tattoo. Nick recognized the design from the catacombs and from Drake’s chess pictures — one triangle overlapping another within a circle, a Hashashin knight.
“Lighthouse says we’ve been played,” said Nick, dropping the arm and unzipping the assassin’s jacket. “We’re at square one and Kattan is done with us. I’d say recent events support his theory. We’re vacating London before this gets any worse.”
“That’s why Chaya tried to kill me. Kattan used us, and now he’s tying up loose ends.”
Tying up loose ends. Nick stopped rifling through the assassin’s jacket and stood up. “Two, was Chaya standing there when I told you about Rami?”
Drake took a while to consider the question, then answered slowly, “Yeah, I think she was.”
“Then you’re going to have to wait a little longer.” Nick walked around the corner and gazed down at the idling motorcycle. “I have to go to Cambridge.”
CHAPTER 49
Nick sped past the Golden Hinde on the assassin’s motorcycle and kept on going. He wore the assassin’s gear — helmet, jacket, and gloves — to protect himself from the still-falling sleet. “Four, change of plan,” he said over the SATCOM.
Scott did not reply. Molly came up instead, from her station at Romeo Seven. “Nightmare One, this is Lighthouse. Four is off-line. We have the comms now. No changes. Your orders are to get to the airport.”