All around the crypt, the rest of the team were now engaged in their own fights for survival. As most of the team were engaged in a fire fight with the strange new force, Lea was brawling with Njuzi, Ryan was engaged with Kashala, and Reaper and Mukendi were going a few rounds nearer an arch at the rear of the crypt.
Lea’s training and experience melded into one now. Battle-hardened and shaper than ever, the enemy’s moves seemed almost predictable, almost slow-motion. Njuzi’s long blade sliced through the air inches from her head, each one carrying the grim promise to take her life, but she was one step ahead of the female merc. She dived behind the sarcophagus and took cover while Camacho fired on Njuzi and drove her back.
Hawke recovered from the pistol whipping just in time to stop a second helping. This time, his reactions were quicker, and he was able to grab the man’s wrist as he brought the gun down into his face once again. Squeezing the man’s own finger on the trigger, he pumped half a dozen rounds into his face at point blank range and blew the back of his skull off.
Pushing the corpse away, he spun around and fired on Mukendi. The Congolese merc was still engaged in a fist fight with Reaper, but the three bullets Hawke put in his head ended the brawl substantially in his old friend’s favor.
Seeing his best man dead, Kashala ordered Zhivkov to grab the device and retreat, but Hawke fired on them, emptying his magazine on Zhivkov as he reached out for the device.
“That’s for Matt Jagger, you bastard.”
Kashala paused, greedy eyes still dancing over the device and then Hawke’s gun.
“Go on, Kashala!” Hawke bluffed. “Make my millennium.”
The Congolese general looked at the device and then the gun. He licked his lips as fear and indecision tortured his mind. Then he turned tail and fled into the darkness of one of the archways. Crombez and Njuzi sprayed the room with automatic fire and sprinted after their boss.
“I’m on them!” Lea said. “Lex, you’re with me!”
On the other side of the crypt, the newcomers gained in number, muzzles fitted with flash suppressors. Wearing black riot helmets and covered in tactical vests, they were impossible to identify, but something told him he wasn’t looking at the Turkish police. As they streamed into the crypt, the man in the lead saw Hawke and ordered his men out of the tomb. As they streamed back out, a new, strange silence fell over the cold, damp crypt and the man began to remove his helmet.
Hawke got to his feet and the rest of the ECHO team gathered around him. Without taking his eyes off the man, Hawke turned to Reaper. “Go and help Lea and Lex, Reap. Kashala’s unarmed, but you never know.”
“Got it.”
Then the helmet came off, and Hawke could barely believe what he was seeing. Eddie Kosinski, the CIA man who had snatched so many of their treasures in the past, was standing right in front of him with a Glock in his right hand. Wearing a tactical vest and an open-collar shirt, he was as dishevelled and unshaven as ever.
“Fuck me.”
“That’s not tempting at all,” Kosinski said. “Besides, what would my wife say?”
“You’re a bastard, Kosinski.”
“I could say the same about you. In fact, I will. You’re a bastard, Hawke.”
“It’s like you’ve got a walk-on part in a novel,” Hawke said. “You’re the proverbial bad penny.”
Before Reaper could make the archway in the rear of the crypt, Lea and Lexi sprinted back through it. The two women were breathing hard and their faces red with anger.
“What happened?” Hawke asked.
Lexi holstered her weapon. “Kashala’s gone. So have Crombez and Njuzi.”
Lea cursed. “There was like a frigging portcullis in the tunnel and he slammed the damned thing down between us, blocking our way. He planned the shit out of this mission. Damn it all to hell! And another… Eddie Kosinski?”
“The one and only — hey, I heard you let Joseph Kashala escape. Great work.”
“Take a hike,” Lexi said.
Zeke crossed his arms and leaned up against a sarcophagus. “You know this asshole?”
“You could say that,” Ryan said. “We find relics, then he steals them from us.”
Kosinski ignored it. “Like I said, too bad Kashala got away.”
Hawke lifted the cannister out of the device. “But he hasn’t got this, so the mission was a success.”
“And he hasn’t got the Blood Crew anymore, either,” Scarlet said. “Because we killed all the bastards.”
“It won’t take him long to put another Blood Crew together,” Lea said. “And he still has Crombez and Njuzi.” As she spoke, she looked at Reaper, but then quickly moved her eyes away.
“CIA will be all over that,” said Kosinski. “Maybe. You never know. They’re just as likely to make an alliance with him.”
“Aren’t you going to arrest us?” Lea said.
What he said in response stunned them all.
“No. I’m on your side now.”
Hawke laughed. “Pull the other one.”
“No, I mean it. I’m with you guys,” he said, shocking them all further. “I’m hearing some dark stuff about President Faulkner and I want no part in it.”
Hawke regarded his nemesis with suspicion. “How do we know we can trust you?”
Kosinski gave a shrug. “No way to know, Hawke. Either you trust me and get away right now, or you’re in a CIA black site with a bag over your head before nightfall.”
Hawke and Lea exchanged a glance. “What else can we do?” she said.
He handed Kosinski the cannister. “Here it is, all one gram of it. If it’s detonated, it will take out everything within fifty square miles.”
The CIA man weighed it in his hands. “And yet the whole thing weighs less than a bag of sugar. Ain’t that cute?”
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “If you say so, darling.”
Lea was still in shock. “So, what happens now?”
“Now, you run like the devil,” Kosinski said. “And I’ll send my men in the opposite direction.”
Hawke extended his hand. “ECHO won’t forget this, Kosinski.”
The gruff CIA man studied the hand for a second and then shook it. “Now get the fuck outta here,” he growled. “And don’t call me — I’ll call you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Alex didn’t know how long she had been crying, but it felt like forever. When the guards had collected her from her cell she knew where she was going, and it wasn’t the chilled-out cocktail lounge atmosphere of Colonel Blanchard’s carpeted corner office.
The journey seemed to take forever as they wheeled her through the maze that was Tartarus, and when they finally arrived at their destination, she was surprised to see the base commander standing in the corridor with his arms crossed. “Alex Reeve, nice to see you again.”
“Drop dead.”
“Ouch, that’s not a nice way to talk to someone. Especially someone who has power of life and death over you. You ready to talk?”
“I’ll never testify against my father because he has done nothing wrong!”
“We talked about this in my office, remember?”
She kept silent.
“My office is a much nicer environment than Mr Mahoe’s office.”
More silence.
The commander looked at the guards. “Awaken the beast.”
One of the guards stepped up to the large steel door. He tapped in a keycode and waited. A deep clunk was followed by the door swinging open.