“You made the right choice.”
“If you tell me more about this terrible power you are searching for there.”
A grenade exploded in the yard outside. More men screamed as a cloud of dust and smoke blasted up the side of the castle’s keep.
“The truth is I don’t know. It’s just speculation based on the texts. All I can say is that it’s a terrible weapon. I believe that if it’s harnessed, it will be the most hideous, violent force ever unleashed on mankind.”
Kamala grinned. “Sounds more dangerous than the devil himself.”
Dimitrov licked his lips nervously. “Are you with me?”
“Yes.” Kashala turned to his men. “Whoever those assholes are, kill every last one. We have a date with the devil and I don’t want to be late.”
CHAPTER TEN
The ECHO team had pulled themselves up out of the grit and dirt below the moat and streamed through the smoldering gates. Leaving the burning gate posts behind them, they had sprinted across the castle’s inner courtyard and now broke into two units. Hawke, Lea, Ryan and Reaper headed for the castle’s keep where they had seen Dimitrov through the top floor window. Scarlet, Lexi, Camacho and Zeke made their way to Kashala’s trucks.
With no light but half a moon above their heads, Hawke now slipped unseen to the far side of the yard and quickly reached a doorway. Firing on the lock with his submachine gun, he blasted it to pieces and booted the door open. Across the yard, he heard Scarlet calling out to the other team as they moved on from the trucks and headed to the villas.
In reply, Dimitrov’s men streamed out of the building on all sides of the courtyard, rifles and pistols in their hands as they scanned the night for who had attacked and taken out most of the mafia men.
“They’re drawing their fire,” Lea said.
“Now!” Hawke yelled. “Inside!”
Reaper was already moving. “Allons-y!”
Hawke held the Glock tight in his hands, muzzle pointed down as he made his way up the staircase. Reaper was ahead of him and stepping onto the landing at the top of the stairs, gun raised into the aim and ready to fire. Behind him, Lea and Ryan were a step behind, guns drawn and a look of steely determination on their faces. This was about more than recovering ancient relics or treasures. This was about saving the lives of Alex, Jack and Brandon and clearing their names.
Without warning, there was a rush of action. The landing where Reaper was standing suddenly exploded in a flash of blinding white light. The force of the explosion blasted the Frenchman off his feet and smashed him into a wall. Stunned and dazed, he crashed to the floor and crawled to the cover of an ornamental wooden storage chest situated on the side of the corridor.
“Incoming!” Ryan yelled.
Men streamed out of the door Reaper had approached and one of them threw a second grenade at him, only this one was a proper fragmentation grenade. Still concussed by the impact of the explosion, he struggled to reach it before it detonated. With only a second to spare he grabbed hold of it and threw it back at the men where it exploded in their faces.
Hawke raised his gun and rushed up the stairs. “Must be Dimitrov’s goons,” he called out. “No one in the Blood Crew would set a stun grenade with such a long timer on it.”
Swinging into the doorway, he saw three men dead on the floor. The grenade explosion had inflicted terrible wounds on their faces and upper bodies. Turning, he saw Reaper staggering to his feet and dusting himself down. “You okay?”
A brief nod and a growled reply. “Oui.”
Hawke and the rest of the team advanced forward down the corridor to a heavy, closed oak door. He shoulder-barged it open and then the team surged into the room, guns raised and sweeping them from side to side to cover all eventualities.
Empty, but another door to the right.
Hawke keyed his mic and spoke to the other team. “Study is clear!”
“Received,” Scarlet’s voice. “No sign of the lyre in the trucks and the villas are clear too. Dimitrov’s going to need a recruitment drive. Must have taken out a dozen mafia men.”
“Good work, Cairo,” Hawke said, and kicked open the second door.
The narrow hallway took the team deeper inside the castle. Leading from the front, he counted the rest of his unit into the dank corridor and then slammed the door shut behind them, sliding the heavy bolts into the rusted strike plates in the door jamb. This was the castle’s nerve center, and Dimitrov’s inner sanctum.
He glanced at his faithful watch, now repaired since the damage it had sustained back at the Parthenon during their search for Alexander the Great’s tomb. What he saw didn’t fill him with joy. They were already several minutes behind schedule and still no sign of the lyre.
Kicking in the door to Dimitrov’s private apartment, he charged into the room and sprayed it with bullets. Lea and Reaper rushed in behind him and tripled the power of the assault by opening fire, but Hawke waved them to stop.
“They’re not here!”
“Damn it all,” Lea said.
Then Scarlet’s voice through the comms. “We have them, Joe. Dimitrov and Kashala and his men. They’ve exited the castle by another door and they’re heading to the trucks.”
“We’re on our way,” he replied into his shoulder mic. “Keep them busy, Cairo!”
“Like you had to ask.”
“We’ll be there in…” He was interrupted by the sound of Nikolai’s voice on the comms.
“What is it, Kolya?”
“Kashala is a diversion,” the Russian said. “If you look to the north you will see a man with the lyre,” he muttered.
“I see him!” Hawke said. “He’s wearing a suit — maybe he’s Dimitrov’s relics expert. He’s not alone, either.”
“So what do you want me to do?” Scarlet said.
“Keep Kashala and his men occupied. We’ll go after the lyre. Kolya, you and Kamala get down here and lend a hand. You’ve done all you can from up there.”
“We’re on our way.”
Hawke cut the radio and the four of them sprinted back down the stairs until they found an exit leading out to the north of the keep. Bursting out into the moonlit night, they found themselves in a reconstructed classical arcade. Marble pillars, and a central courtyard centred on an ornate fountain sculpture. Through a distant arch they saw the man with the lyre and the mercs heading toward a truck parked in the shadows of the northern perimeter wall.
“This way!”
Firing on the truck, the enemy’s response was brutal. They quickly pushed the man with the lyre down behind the truck’s rear wheel, took up good defensive positions including a machinegun nest in the back of the truck and returned fire.
Hawke counted five men — and this time they were both mafia and men from Kashala’s mercenary unit. At the front was a man so tall and gaunt it could only be Mukendi, and beside him he recognized the cold, hard face of Reaper’s old compadre Olivier Crombez.
When they opened fire, he remembered the words of his father, repeated like a mantra through a childhood of excitement and wonder — never give in and never give up. He said it himself now. The words fell quietly from his lips like a prayer as he reloaded his gun with calm, steady hands. He knew no other way of being. That was why he saw everything he ever did right through to the end no matter how hard or dangerous.
It didn’t matter what he was doing.
He never gave in, and he never gave up.
To do so would be to betray everything his father had taught him, everything the marines and the SBS had taught him.
It would also betray the memory of all his ECHO teammates who had made the ultimate sacrifice in this crazy adventure and lost their lives.
Mukendi renewed his assault on them. Lea and Reaper dived either side of the line of fire as the Kalashnikov’s muzzle began to spit fire and spray hot lead into the gravelled yard. The former French Legionnaire was first to hit the ground and return fire, successfully killing the mafia thug in the machinegun nest. Hawke and Ryan fired on the others and drove them back into cover, but they quickly regrouped and returned fire.