“Oh yeah,” Lea said. “I’m loving my safari vacation just great, thanks.”
“Hey,” Kim said sharply. “We did our best but it took a long time to find who had taken you, never mind where! These guys weren’t exactly advertising this place online, you know!”
“Sorry,” Lea said. “You wouldn’t believe what we’ve just seen, it just shook me up.”
“It’s going to be great when it opens to the public though,” Ryan said with a wink.
“You can tell us later,” Camacho said flatly. “We’ve got to get in there and take them out before they get away. They still have the sword, right?”
Lea nodded. “And they had its symbols translated as well.”
The sprint from the bakkie to the entrance was a hair-raising hundred meters as the Athanatoi and some of Kruger’s former commandos fired on them from an upper level of the complex. Bullets ripped into the sand at their feet as they sprinted over the distance as fast as they could.
They reached the entrance and immediately headed for a circular staircase that led up to the mezzanine level. This was where Kruger and his men had been firing on them moments earlier, but when they arrived it was empty.
“They already moved out!” Kim said.
“No, wait!” Camacho pointed to the far end of the mezzanine. “There’s someone there!”
“They’re firing!”
“Get down!”
They hit the deck as the bullets traced over them.
“There’s more downstairs on the lower level too!” Kim yelled.
“We need to split up,” Lea said. “Me and Ryan will go downstairs and you two stay up here.”
“Got it.”
Camacho and Kim gave some cover fire as Lea and Ryan ran down the circular staircase and disappeared beneath them. Kim was already moving forward, gun raised and firing in controlled bursts at Venter. For a second, the CIA man thought she’d gotten the guy but then another Athanatoi joined him and an intense firefight ensued.
Taking cover in a doorway, Kim quickly emptied her magazine.
“I need help, Jack!”
“I’m on my way!” Camacho shouted over at her and crouch-walked along the mezzanine, carefully avoiding the spent cartridge casings. He reached the corner section and pulled his MP5 up over the wall, firing on the men below as he prepared to make the final dash to where Kim was holding her empty gun to her chest.
Venter then surprised him by making a break from his cover and running up the spiral staircase leading to where Kim was hiding out.
He knows she’s out of ammo!
“Hurry up, Jack!”
“I’m almost there!” Behind him he heard Lea and Ryan engaging in what sounded like a heavy fire fight down by a waterfall in the lobby.
It was a race now, between him and Venter, to see who reached Kim first. They were both closing in on her at the same rate but Camacho had an advantage — all he needed to do was get close enough to throw a fresh magazine to his friend. When he reached that point, he pulled a new mag from his jacket pocket and threw it over to her. “Kim!”
She saw what he had done and leaped into the air to catch it. Instantly, Venter fired on her. In a hail of flying lead she grabbed the magazine and crashed back down onto the riveted floor of the deck. She smacked the mag into the grip of the SIG and sighed heavily with relief. Another five seconds and Venter would have peppered her with bullets and killed her right here.
Camacho had taken up a new position much closer to her now and joined her in firing on Venter. Kruger yelled at his man and Venter heard the warning and backed off. Kim watched him as he retreated back down the spiral staircase and then she crawled along the deck until she was beside Camacho. “You saved my life.”
“You’ve saved mine enough times,” he said with a smile. “Thought it was about time I repaid the favor.”
The moment was cut short by a volley of automatic fire ripping into the wall behind the deck. From such a low angle, Kruger and his men were unable to hit them direct and had decided to keep them pinned down while they made another assault on them. Chunks of plaster burst and split and rained down on them. They covered their eyes with their forearms and waited it out.
“Shit! This is getting real, Jack!”
The stream of automatic rounds raked into the wall at their backs and snaked up the spiral staircase, spitting sparks and ricocheting bullets all over the place. One traced past Camacho’s face and buried itself in the rubber plant at his side. “I’ll say it is,” he said, peering over the top of the wall. “Uh-oh…”
“What?”
“GPMG.”
“Oh, fuck!”
“Looks like a Vektor,” he said, starting to look worried. “We can expect a lot of fifty mil bottlenecked rounds heading our way in three, two, one…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The large-calibre rounds tore holes in the bottom of the mezzanine’s stainless-steel deck as if it were made of aluminum foil. A speechless Camacho and Kim watched the holes rapidly approaching where they were taking cover. “We’re outta here!”
They leaped to their feet and sprinted away from the carnage created by the Vektor, taking pot shots at the gunner behind the GPMG as they went. “Keep going!” Camacho yelled and leaned over the top of the wall to get a better shot at the gunner. He fired and hit him, ripping part of his skull away and spraying brain matter and blood all over the man feeding the ammo belt into the gun.
“Get on that weapon, man!” Venter yelled.
The man now covered in blood slipped behind the Vektor and immediately pulled the muzzle around until it was pointing directly at Jack Camacho. With a fury the American had rarely seen before, he started firing the powerful GPMG at him.
The bullets traced and whistled all around him as he and Kim sprinted for cover like the devil was on their tails. One of the rounds blew through the wooden handrail and blasted a cloud of splinters into his path. He felt several embed themselves in his face as he threw himself into a dive and rolled down into the other corner dropping down beside his old friend.
Kim looked at his face. “Cut yourself shaving?”
“Funny.”
“Seriously, you okay?”
He nodded. “Just a graze, but it was close.”
Peering through the gap between the wall and the handrail, they saw another man feeding a fresh ammo belt into the Vektor and the blood-soaked goon operating it looked angrier than ever. Another volley of automatic fire came from the far end of the deck. “Looks like they’re trying a pincer movement,” Kim said.
Camacho felt his jaw tighten with rage and fear. He’d been in a few scrapes in his time, both in the CIA and with ECHO, but things around here were hotting up much more than usual. They’d been fighting for nearly ten minutes now and they’d only advanced the length of the mezzanine. He had no idea if Lea and Ryan were still alive and no way of contacting them to find out. Venter was fighting as brutally as he had ever seen anyone fight before. He guessed that was what twenty years in the 4 Special Forces Regiment did to a man.
“Down the stairs!” he yelled. “I see Lea and Ryan!”
They sprinted down the spiral staircase and met up with their friends in the lobby. “Way too hot back there,” Kim said. “What about you guys?”
“See for yourself,” Lea said.
Tucked down behind the wall at the base of the artificial waterfall, Ryan grinned and opened his bag.
“Holy shit!” Kim said. “The Sword of Fire!”
Lea smiled. “We found it in Kruger’s study after a ten minute fire fight. We got the translation too.”
“Guess they’re not too happy about us having it, right?” Camacho said.