“And what does that involve?” Ben said, stalling for time. “Being tickled to death with a feather duster?”
The self-satisfied smirk dropped from Wade’s face. “Typical smart-ass Limey — always with the gags. If you have to know, Limey, those sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli were laid on a slab of stone and had their hearts ripped out while they were still alive.”
“So definitely no feather dusters then?”
Wade barked more orders in Spanish and the men began to chant and whoop. They lowered their guns and pulled strange wooden swords from their belts. Wade emptied a Glock pistol and put the magazine in his pocket. “Some of my men see themselves as Jaguar Knights, serving Tezcatlipoca, others as Eagle Knights serving Huitzilopochtli. They will fight you with their macuahuitl, a kind of sword made from obsidian. It makes a terrible wound… more than enough to incapacitate you for the ritual.”
“You’re out of your mind!” Ben said, his heart sinking when he saw Wade’s men dragging Alfie and Sasha out of the jungle. They threw them down in the clearing at gunpoint. They had found their hiding place.
Wade dismissed Ben’s sentiment with a casual wave of his hand and then ordered his men to kill Alfie and Sasha. Ben watched in horror as a hail of bullets drilled into the two former police officers and cut them to ribbons. Seconds later their bodies sank down into the undergrowth and the sound of the cicadas returned.
“You murdering piece of scum, Wade!”
Wade nodded as if he was in agreement, but then his face turned sour. “I’ll see you in the next life. Attack him!”
The men piled in on him, stabbing him all over as he tried to fight back with the butt of the empty, useless gun. He felt the jagged blades of the macuahuitls tearing into his flesh all over his body, and then the strong taste of blood rising in his mouth.
He tried to flee but collapsed to the ground, and now they pounced like animals. He felt their steel toecaps driving into his body and head, striking against his ribs and skull. He felt and heard the sound of his own bones cracking under the relentless pressure and screamed out in terrified agony as the vicious assault of Wade’s thugs beat him into a stupor.
In the final moments of his life, he was only dimly aware of Morton Wade as he approached him, muttering some dark incomprehensible incantation. Then he saw the Texan raise his obsidian blade above his head, the tip pointing at Ben’s chest and he screamed for him to stop.
But Morton Wade didn’t stop. Still mumbling the chant, he plunged the blade down.
CHAPTER TWO
Alex Reeve took one more look at the sunset and strolled slowly back along the jetty toward the HQ building. She felt safe here in the knowledge that no one even knew the island existed — being here meant dropping off the grid completely.
The evening was warm and humid as ever, but not oppressively so. The trade winds — what the original French inhabitants of the island had called les alizés — brought invigorating breezes across the sea from the northeast and kept the climate stable and pleasant. The occasional hurricane swept across the island from time to time, but the ECHO complex was designed to withstand them, and then normal tropical island paradise was resumed. Tonight was no exception.
Except for the shadow that was following them all around.
The Athanatoi, or Immortals.
None of them knew who they were, or what they wanted. All Alex knew was their medicine… their magic had helped her walk again after years in a wheelchair. But every time she felt the stabbing, electrical pain in her legs she wondered for how much longer. She knew the immortals’ black magic was wearing out and soon she would be back in that damned chair.
The agonized thought of it made her head swim, and yet she had kept the full extent of her concerns to herself, not wanting to burden the others at such a critical time. Instead, she threw herself into her own research, poring over Dr Henry Donovan’s mysterious files, and even testing and retesting the last precious drop of the sacred elixir, but so far she’d found nothing in Lea’s father’s research except the erratic scribblings of a man possessed… and nothing in the elixir itself except strange electrical properties that none of them had yet decoded.
As she meandered her way back to the shore, she saw Lexi Zhang walking out from the complex. The Chinese assassin waved her hand in the air to get her attention.
“What’s the matter, Lexi?” she asked, noticing the look in her eyes.
“It’s the old man — something big is going down.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but he wants everyone together in a hurry.”
Alex knew something was wrong by the look on Lexi’s face and followed her back to the compound. As they stepped into the main area, Scarlet Sloane and Vincent Reno were walking through from the kitchen.
“What’s all this about?” Scarlet asked. “Vincent here was just about to show me his andouillette.”
Alex looked at Vincent. “Is that what they call it in Marseille?”
Before Scarlet could answer, her eyes widened like saucers. “Ooh — I know! Is this about Captain Kidd?”
“The pirate?” Alex said, bemused.
Lexi rolled her eyes. “Please don’t get her started. All I’ve heard for days is pirates and sunken treasure.”
Scarlet nodded and smiled, failing to catch the sarcasm in the Chinese assassin’s voice. “Now that’s excitement!” she continued. “Fleeing from English men-of-war he stashed treasure all over the place, including Gardiner’s Island as he hid in Oyster Bay… but the real kicker is the treasure they never found.”
“Sure,” Alex said nodding. “His story is so notorious it inspired stories like Poe’s God-Bug and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.”
“So romantic,” Vincent said.
Scarlet gave him a sideways glance. “I was thinking more of the treasure, Reap — and that’s why I’ve been researching it.”
“Vraiment?” he raised his eyebrows with respect. “You and research are like chalk and peas, no?”
“Cheese.”
“Sorry, like cheese and peas.”
Scarlet let it slide. “Either way, I think there’s a lot more to his story than just gold — in fact it could have something to do with what we’ve been fighting. It’s a bloody trail leading all the way to Madagascar and some serious loot. I mentioned it to Rich the other day. Maybe I’ll get Bale on it after we finish cataloguing the Valhalla treasure — it’s worth our time, I know it.”
“Tell me more!” Alex said, officially interested. “I always wanted to go to Madagascar.”
“Captain Kidd was a privateer who…” But before Scarlet could finish, Sir Richard Eden descended the central stairs with a look of grave concern on his face. None of them had ever seen him like this before, not even the former SAS woman.
“It’s Ben Ridgeley,” Eden said distractedly.
Alex felt a wave of fear rush over her at the mention of Ben’s name. She didn’t know him well — since she’d joined the team he’d spent much of his time in Mexico tracking Morton Wade, but they’d shared some good times — not least the night they’d failed to stop Lexi from taking everyone out and reaching her mission objective of ‘assassinating’ Sir Richard.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
“He’s in trouble,” Eden continued. “Worse than that, Alfie Mills and Sasha Harding followed him into the jungle and now it looks like they’ve been rumbled by Wade. He must have dropped his phone and the camera’s sending a live feed.”