His head spun around again, and he stared at the oddly placed stone. Tommy stepped quickly out from the shelter of the tree and plodded through the soaked grass, leaves, and spruce needles to the foot of the small hill. The mound was only ten or so feet high. More so than the first one he’d investigated, this hill appeared to be man-made, like many of those he’d seen in America.
He reached the stone and ran his fingers along the wet surface while scanning it with his eyes. He blinked rapidly, trying to keep the rain out of his vision like wiper blades on hyperspeed. Nothing on the outward facing stone resembled anything helpful though.
Tommy sighed for a second; disappointed, frustrated, angry. He didn’t even know what he was looking for. Coming out here in the middle of a thunderstorm was idiotic. What else could he do though? His friends were in danger. Right now, they were in the Kronborg Castle somewhere, and they needed his help.
“Focus, Tommy,” he said to himself.
He searched the right edge of the stone first, looking closely at the surface as he ran a finger along it. When he found nothing, he moved to the left side and repeated the process. Still nothing.
Tommy wedged his foot on another nearby rock and pushed himself up enough to be able to see the top ledge of the flat, rectangular stone. He peered hard through the downpour, his eyes desperate for answers. What he found nearly caused his heart to stop.
A rune.
It was barely visible, no doubt helped by the rain changing the coloration of the stone enough to make the engraving easier to see. If it had been a dry day, he might not have noticed it. But there it was, definitely something carved by human hands. A single rune.
Tommy didn’t know what the rune meant in literal terms, but he knew it had to be the symbol that marked the grave of Holger Danske’s trusted friend, Asmund. Thunder rumbled through the sky again, chasing a flash of lightning out in the sound between Denmark and Sweden.
His attention went back to the castle. Sean and Adriana were somewhere inside, and he had to get to them.
A plan quickly formulated in his head as he started back toward the fortress entrance. He could find the group and offer to show them where Asmund’s grave was in exchange for his friends.
The idea soon became less attractive as Tommy ran through the chess match in his mind. He would make the offer, Dufort would threaten to kill either Tommy or Adriana, or perhaps torture them, unless he revealed the location. And after doing so, they would all be killed.
No, that plan wouldn’t work. He would have to take them back by force. But that put him back to square one where he was outnumbered and outgunned.
Perhaps there was another way. If he could catch one or two of the men off guard, take them out, one at a time, maybe he could even the odds.
Chapter 39
Emily reached the warehouse door and tried to turn the latch. It didn’t budge, locked tight by a key code access panel. Fortunately, she had planned on this.
“Packet,” she said to Number 10.
He stepped around the others as he pulled a small metal box out of a rucksack he had hanging from his shoulders. The device was only about the size of a fist, and had a single switch and a red button on the surface. He leaned down and placed the device flush against the doorway between the frame and the door, right where he knew the bolt would be that was keeping them from entering. He flipped the switch, activating a magnet inside the device, and then pressed the red button.
“You should step back,” he said casually.
He and the others tucked around the corner of the building, and ten seconds later a low searing sound accompanied by a fury of white sparks ensued, and then a pop. Emily checked around the corner to make sure the explosive device had finished its job. The door hung slightly ajar.
She waved with her hand. “All right, let's do it. Sweep the corners, and work your way down the sides of the building. Anyone inside would have seen that, so they’ll be waiting. Ten, throw in a few flash bangs to blind them for a second. That should buy us enough time to get inside and take the offensive.”
“Happy to.”
He hurried around the corner, pulling two small canisters out of his bag, and flung the door wide open. He pulled the pins and tossed in the flash bang grenades, one toward the middle of the room and one to the left. As he did, a flurry of gunfire erupted, sending hot rounds into and around the doorframe. He ducked out of the way, and a moment later someone yelled something in French, followed by a low-level bang. A bright light flashed through the cracks of the door.
“Go!” Emily ordered loudly.
She took off from her crouched position and lunged through the doorway, taking up a firing position and sweeping the left side with her weapon. Two men, about twenty feet away, with automatic HK MP5 submachine guns, were doubled over and rubbing their eyes. She fired two shots at each of them, dropping them in an instant.
Her barrel moved right as she continued to sweep the immediate area. Shots fired next to her as her agents began to swarm the room, sending a deadly barrage of rounds into the men guarding the warehouse. Two more in the center of the room were tucked behind heavy wooden crates, each receiving a bullet through the head as they fought the temporary blindness caused by the flash bangs. The guards on the far side of the room realized what was going on and took cover behind a stack of crates and spools of fabric.
A rapid succession of shots was fired from above, and Emily quickly took cover. A guard, high up on a catwalk that stretched from side to side and wrapped around the room, had been the first to recover from the searing light of the flash bangs and was unleashing a hail of metal at their position. The five agents dove behind a row of wooden boxes and checked their weapons.
Emily jabbed her gun around the corner of her box and squeezed off the remaining bullets in the direction of the gunman. The move caused him to duck slightly, but he had no cover other than the thin surface of metal rails in front of him.
“Weapons free,” she said to the other agents as she pressed the magazine release button to let the clip slide out and clack on the floor. A second later, she’d replaced it with a fresh one from her belt.
The blonde agent farthest from her popped up and swept the right side of the room. The other woman checked the center lower area, while the two men peeked over their cover and fired a barrage of rounds at the guard on the catwalk. Bullets ripped through his legs and chest. His body shivered for a second before toppling over the rail to the concrete below.
More reports popped from the right side of the room where three guards were holed up behind a stack of crates, two units high. Two were firing from the nearest edge with handguns, the other from the rear of the stack with the same.
“You two, keep them occupied. Fire on their position from here,” she ordered the two female agents. “You,” she said to the men, “come with me. We’re going to flank them.”
The female agents unleashed another volley, pounding the planks of the crates into splinters as they fired their rounds at the guards’ position.
Emily and the two men rushed around the edge of the boxes they’d been using for cover and hurried down the left side of the warehouse wall, each holding their weapons at the ready. She kept her eyes on the men on the far side of the room as they ducked and raised intermittently, continuing to fire on the warehouse entryway.