Bodie arrived and kicked Viktor in the ribs so hard that the cracks were audible. He saw Yasmine and then Cross and couldn’t comprehend it, not at first. Staying upright, though, was a risky move at best.
Bullets riddled the air.
Cassidy, Heidi, and Gunn knelt together, sheltered behind a lifeboat davit that kept getting speckled with gunfire. Lucie lay behind them, having somehow wedged her body beneath the huge piece of steel until she could no longer move. To their credit, the ship’s crew had surprised Viktor’s returning fighters and all but wiped them out in the first minute. Only two lone snipers remained. Cassidy worried for Jemma, but knew in her heart the girl would have found some good cover. It was just a matter now of waiting for the well-armed crew to flush the last of Viktor’s goons out.
Bodie knelt over Viktor and dealt him a hard blow to the head, making sure the mafia boss was at least bordering on comatose before checking on Cross and Yasmine.
Pure shock made mush of every bone in his body. He could barely stand. The deck rose up to strike his knees before he realized that he’d dropped down as if he’d been shot dead. Cross lay in front of him, bleeding out, eyes flitting to and fro and mouth moving, but no words coming out.
“Help!” Bodie screamed. “Oh God, help me!”
The knife moved as Cross tried to speak, but pain registered so badly in his eyes that Bodie almost turned away. In that moment he saw it, saw there was no help for his greatest friend, and simply reached out to take hold of the man’s hand.
“I’m here. I’m here for you.”
Yasmine laid a hand on Cross’s heaving chest. “Oh, Eli.”
Bodie leaned forward to whisper into Cross’s ear. “You know what we say — family is a sense of belonging. And nobody ever belonged more to my family… than you.”
Bodie registered the two grenades before he actually saw them. Two tumbling black objects that signaled mortal danger inside the deep, intuitive recesses of his mind. There wasn’t time to pick both objects up and throw them into the sea, but there was just enough time to roll Viktor’s broken body over them.
He grabbed the Bratva boss and threw him across the grenades.
Yasmine sensed the danger too, but with her eyes locked with Cross’s, she did not move a muscle, choosing to spend his and perhaps her last moments in the place where they should always have been.
“Please don’t leave me. I loved you so much,” she said, and then the bombs went off, two loud explosions. Bodie flung himself aside, traumatized to the core. Yasmine then laid her head over Cross’s chest and, teary-eyed, met Bodie’s gaze.
She wept. Bodie punched the ship’s deck in anger before crawling over and taking just a moment to watch as Viktor’s guards gave up their fight and came out with hands high and heads down. The crew surrounded them and bound them. Cassidy, Heidi, and Gunn were loping across the deck.
“Cross?” Cassidy asked first.
Bodie opened his mouth but the answer choked in his throat. He reached Cross’s inert body and saw the lifeless eyes.
“Oh my friend, what have you done?”
Yasmine reached for him and he held her hand. Cassidy was at his back, making strangled noises of misery. Heidi was on her knees and Gunn was trying to catch a breath. They stayed like that for some time, scoured by the sea breeze and rocked by the steady waves.
In time, Heidi answered a question Bodie could not bring himself to ask.
“Don’t worry, Jemma is safe, inside that small deck on top of the control room. Lucie is stuck beneath a lifeboat. I’ll help her out… eventually.”
Bodie slowly became aware of the cold breeze, the waning skies, and the uncontrollable thumping of his heart. “Did we win?”
“No.” Cassidy surveyed the dead. “But we are still alive.”
Bodie sensed a change in Yasmine’s ragged breathing and let go of her hand so that she could sit up. When he did, he stared in sorrow at Cross’s body and wondered aloud if they deserved his sacrifice.
“We can only try to live up to it,” he said. “Those who die are never truly gone unless we let their memories fade from our head and our hearts. I won’t let that happen, Eli. I’m sure none of us will. You were the best of friends, mate.”
“He sacrificed himself for you.” Cassidy was staring at Yasmine, a hard edge to her gaze.
“But I… I’m so, so sorry.”
A chopper approached from the rolling horizon. Bodie sighed as he saw it. “Now what?”
“Don’t worry.” Heidi held up her hands and shouted that everyone should stand down. “Don’t worry, it’s the CIA.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
A few days later, the team was on a plane, en route back to the United States with Yasmine on board, a protective detail around them, and a Lockheed Martin F-35 shadowing them through the skies.
“You really think we’re this vulnerable?” Bodie asked tiredly.
“No, buddy.” Heidi smiled briefly at him. “I think your story about the Bratva, their subsequent attack on Jack Pantera, and their latest threat is… what would you say… a load of bollocks?”
“And bollocks it is,” Bodie said. “They would never try something in the air.”
Heidi opened her mouth and then clamped it shut. In the end, she settled for a whisper. “And there I was thinking the news often reports mysterious plane crashes and disappearances.”
Bodie tuned it out. They were flying back to America at the end of their operation. Atlantis was discovered and being diplomatically revealed to hand-picked nations, although Bodie guessed the term “international waters” was about to become one of the most frequently used on the planet. Cross was with them, but his carefully wrapped body was a suppressing factor for the team, overpowering any thoughts they may have had of victory or satisfaction. It even overrode their need for escape, for now.
As they prepared to leave Morocco and return home, Heidi had gotten word that the Bratva had issued a worldwide kill-or-capture order not just for Bodie or Pantera but for the entire team. Including her. No doubt this was in reaction to the outcome of the battle for Atlantis, and because Bodie’s team had, again, bested them.
Which meant the Bratva just declared war on the CIA.
Not for the first time. Heidi had increased their fears by explaining that the Bratva were composed of over six thousand different groups, with over two hundred of those enjoying the resources of international reach.
Bodie accepted the glass of dark rum that she held out to him. “Thank you.”
Heidi eased herself into the empty leather seat to his right. “Don’t get used to it.”
“I won’t. I prefer it with cola.”
“And why do I need to know that?”
“For next time,” he said quickly, and then kicked himself. Instead of continuing the banter, he let her see his true feelings. “For Eli,” he said, holding the glass up. “The best friend and colleague a team could ever have.”
Heidi saluted the toast, as did everyone else. Long minutes of brooding, soul-searching silence followed.
“So, what’s next?” Bodie asked Heidi. The team had a right to know where they stood, especially in light of their most recent success and loss.
“What’s next? Slow down, dude, you’ll run out of relics to hunt.”
“I don’t mean that and you know it, Heidi. Are we free? Are we still owned by the CIA? I think you’ll find that’s two wins out of two.”
“Either way,” Yasmine said darkly from the rear of the plane, “we root out Lucien and cut short the rest of his days.”
Bodie nodded, but wasn’t sure they would get to the Frenchman who had betrayed Yasmine and Hakim. Not personally, at least.
“We’re thieves, not assassins,” Jemma said. “Or at least we were prior to joining the CIA.”