Scarlet poked him in the ribs. “So what does HQ say?”
“Alex is of the view that the key Kruger stole is supposed to unlock something to do with the Pillars of Hercules… I just knew this had something to do with Hercules!”
“Hercules?”
“Or Heracles — same dude so take your pick.”
With Chabat’s men guarding the tomb and waiting for backup, they were making their way down the track toward the river in the hope of meeting up with Hawke and the others. Instead, they saw something altogether different — a number of men flying through the sky toward them at speed.
“What the hell are they” Maria asked.
“Paragliders,” Camacho said, his tone indicating trouble ahead.
“Could just be tourists,” Scarlet said.
Camacho shook his head and took a closer look. “Tourists aren’t usually armed.”
Maria took a step forward and shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked into the sky. “What?”
“They’re carrying weapons of some kind,” Camacho said.
“And if they’re here on their way to us, then where the hell is Joe?” Ryan said.
“Just what I was thinking,” Maria said. “Maybe something happened to them.”
Scarlet slid the bolt-action on her gun and rolled her eyes. “All right, no need to turn into a bunch of big girls’ blouses,” she said sharply. “We have an enemy engaging with us so get into defensive positions.”
“You’re not the boss of me, lady,” Camacho said with a grin.
“You can’t possibly believe that, can you Camo?”
Now the enemy was close enough for them to hear the buzzing hum of the paramotors and then they saw the red dots of the laser sights.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” Ryan said as he watched the crimson-colored dot racing along the track toward them.
“Whatever they’ve got is laser-guided,” Camacho said.
“Which means our day just got really shit,” said Scarlet.
“And that little red dot is getting closer,” Maria said. “Only twenty meters.”
A puff of smoke from one of the paragliders and a cracking sound a second later was the opening shot of the attack.
“Run for cover!” Scarlet screamed, and they scattered over the side of the mesa as the laser-guided missile raced toward them at seven hundred miles per hour.
They took cover in the sagebrush as the paragliders deftly swung the airborne fighting machines away from the river and toward their enemy. The out-of-synch buzzing of the motors was now much louder as Kruger and his men approached rapidly from the east.
Ryan watched with unconcealed terror as the laser dots danced around on the ravine floor, snaking and hopping over the sandstone boulders as they closed in on them. “This is not good,” he mumbled, but no one else heard.
The red dots were closer now, flicking like fire through the canopies of the jujube trees and canary grass a few yards from their defensive position.
Ten meters to his right, he watched Scarlet Sloane take a calm, measured aim with her gun, and then there was a puff of smoke and a cracking sound. A second later one of the airborne goons was dead, slumped forward in his harness and his Pike tumbling out of his hands. It landed on the rocky slope with a metallic smack, followed a moment later by a handful of the small missiles.
“I’ve got to get that bastard weapon,” he heard Scarlet say.
“Why?” he called out to her. “Is it more effective or something?”
“Without a doubt,” she called back. “But I just want to play with it.”
And with that she was gone, kicking up dust as she scrambled through the juniper and esparto grass on her way to the weapon. Above her, the dead man in the paraglider was spinning around out of control as he lost altitude.
He raced toward the slope, his corpse still slumped in the harness, and rammed into the side of the canyon at speed. A terrible crunching sound echoed down the canyon as the paraglider dropped from the sky and smashed into the river’s rocky shore a hundred feet below.
Not fifty yards west, Scarlet was snatching up the weapon and turning to get back to cover. Camacho was firing with his pistol to keep the paragliders busy, but it wasn't enough, and now Scarlet was running with all her might as several little red dots chased her along the rocky shore.
Another goon fired, and a Pike rocket raced toward the former SAS woman faster than the speed of sound.
“Hurry up!” screamed Maria.
“Show us what you’re made of!” Camacho yelled.
“She’s made of vodka and bullets,” Ryan called back, shaking his in disbelief at the indescribable act of courage he was witnessing as Scarlet leaped into the air. She dived for the cover of a juniper pine just as the rocket slammed into the ground at her feet and exploded.
The force of the explosion propelled her through the hot, desert air and she crashed into a clump of acacia before cursing loudly and rolling into the cover of an almond tree a few yards away. A cloud of gritty dust blasted up into the hot Moroccan air and the desert breeze whirled it all around her. “Is that all you’ve got?” she screamed as she loaded the Pike and aimed it at the man who had shot at her. “Pathetic!”
She fired the laser-guided missile at the man and grinned as he struggled to manoeuvre the paraglider out of the way. Below in her defensive position, Scarlet Sloane casually kept the laser dot on his body as he twisted and turned in the harness in a desperate attempt to shake it off.
“What’s the matter?” she screamed up at him. “Want to cancel our date already?”
The man fumbled to unstrap himself from the harness, the idea presumably being to drop into the river which he could use for some kind of cover, but he couldn’t extricate himself from the harness anywhere quick enough, and a split second later the rocket blasted through him and detonated. The man, the paramotor and the rig above him were consumed by an enormous white-hot fireball and plummeted down through the blue sky into the river like a dead bird.
When the others saw Scarlet had secured one of the Pikes, they knew their advantage was gone, and quickly turned in the sky. They gained altitude and seconds later disappeared over the ridge line of the canyon high above. Scarlet and everyone else knew it would take half an hour to hike to the ridge, and accepted the enemy had gotten away.
She didn’t have much time to think about it because as soon as she got up from her cover and began dusting herself down Camacho noticed a beleaguered Joe Hawke and the others from the team marching in their direction along the south bank of the Dadès River.
“What the hell happened to you?” Ryan asked.
“You’ll never guess,” Lea said.
Ryan smiled. “Um — you were shot at by a bunch of psychopaths in paragliders holding laser-guided missiles?”
“Don’t tell me…” Hawke began.
“All right, we won’t,” Scarlet replied curtly. “We need to get out of here anyway, so there’s no time.”
“You mean you don’t want to brag about how you saved all our asses just now?” Camacho said, giving Scarlet a tight shoulder-squeeze.
“Perhaps later,” the Englishwoman said coolly. “When you’re all paying attention.”
Hawke rolled his eyes. He didn’t need to be told what had happened — he already knew just by knowing Cairo Sloane. They had obviously come under attack by the same men who had fired at them in the river, and Cairo had gone above and beyond to fight them off and save the day. It was a habit of hers and he was glad she was on his side.