Block thought back over the killers he had employed through the years. Cayman was probably the oddest, but there was one other he knew of — a woman, deeply embedded even now inside the British…
He paused with his line of thought. The critical call was coming in. He stared at the satellite phone, unable to believe the time had finally come.
From now on, it was the Shadow Elite versus the rest of the world. The battle of all battles.
“Yes?”
“Sir. All four cells are in position. One at Singen, one in Iceland, and two in Honolulu. We’re ready.”
Block’s heart started to pound with excitement, fear and anticipation. This was everything he had been waiting for. “Go to war.”
Cayman ignored the vibration of his cell phone as he peered through a canopy of overhanging branches into the heart of a clearing. Dangling from his left hand was the corpse of a rabbit he’d used a makeshift snare to trap within an hour of getting here. Blood dripped from the rabbit’s neck, the same blood Cayman had coated his lips and chin with. He just hadn’t been able to resist. Ah, the sweet, thick nectar of life. Spilled blood being the consummation of death.
But now, literally laid out before him, was quite a different prospect.
A young couple, hikers, enjoying the silence, the solitude and, perhaps, the unspoken thrill of being caught, to enjoy a different kind of consummation. Cayman watched intently. Once the couple had clearly lost all awareness of their surroundings, he crept silently forward until he stood directly behind the male, unseen, in their blind spot. He waited another minute and then simply bent over, jabbing the man several times in the ribs with his knife. Cayman leaned in and covered the man’s screaming mouth, then flung the writhing body aside. The woman’s shocked eyes stared into his own, glazed with ignorance, terror and denial until he fell upon her, ending her life with a single slice.
Her life force pumped into the ground, drawing Cayman’s eyes and attention. In another moment there was movement behind him and a man wearing camouflage fatigues stepped out of the underbrush, closely followed by many others, state-of-the-art weapons at the ready.
“The boss says answer your damn phone, Cayman,” the man hissed, holding out his own device. “Good job that phone he gave you holds a tracking chip.” He glared pointedly. “For your sake. Here, take this. Wipe off your damn hands and talk to the boss.”
Cayman sat back and pushed to his feet. The time for play had ended. It was time to go to work.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
The first of Block’s cells hit Iceland’s tomb like an arctic storm. With little to do for months, and orders for heightened vigilance having only just being issued, the defending force was more than a little unprepared for the professional team of crack mercenaries that attacked and overwhelmed them.
Shooting mercilessly, the dozen-strong team killed or incapacitated every guard, but made sure they took several civilian hostages, most in the form of scientists and archaeologists. Their boss had said they need hold out only for a day and a half — this seemed the most proficient way.
Leaving a few men to keep an eye out for the cavalry, the leader of the cell proceeded to secure the remainder of the tomb of the gods that had been found first.
Though not in direct contact, the Singen cell struck at exactly the same time. Their job would be more difficult at first, infiltrating the harder-to-reach tomb, but, after that, keeping the local forces at bay for the allotted time shouldn’t be a problem. They took Cayman with them — the man they would make absolutely, terribly sure would stand at the center of the tomb when ordered to by the boss — and lugged along his double holdall of bones. Their leader didn’t question a thing. Their payday would be nothing short of the stuff his dreams were made of.
In Hawaii, the first cell achieved a strike so precise it could have been sliced by a scalpel. Their initial incursion took them all the way to Odin’s daunting black throne, past defenses they had scrutinized for days, and caught an acceptable amount of scared civilian specialists in the process, some of them especially high up the local pecking chain. The leader was pleased, and only when the mission had ended did he experience an unusual stab of agitation.
Now his team would wait for the arrival of their boss.
The second Hawaiian cell positioned themselves where they might prove most useful, dormant for now, but prepared to move at a moment’s notice… if the boss demanded it.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Throughout that same day, the SPEAR team and their helpers sought to unravel the mystery surrounding the Swords of Babylon. Akerman read the inscriptions again and again, compared them to all current translations of the language of the gods, which were being stored online in a secret server very few people so far had access to, and lamented about the close relation of the symbols Alexander had chosen to use.
Patterson helped him, bringing all his archaeological expertise and knowledge of Alexander to bear. Dahl stayed with them for a while, but eventually lost interest and went to call his family. Drake and the rest of the team assembled in the kitchen quarters of the billet they had been temporarily assigned in Camp Babylon.
Hayden poured coffees. “Time for a sit rep, I think guys. We have Zoya’s address in Moscow. Zanko and Razin are on the run, their operations shut down. We have six of the seven swords, but not the leader of the pack. Hopefully—” she motioned next door. “The old boys will quit wasting time and crack the code.”
“Problem is.” Kinimaka accepted his mug with a smile. “Short of knowing that Cayman and co. have another way to activate the doomsday device, we’re not aware of his role in all this. I don’t normally dramatize but that’s—”
“A big problem,” Hayden finished.
Drake stared at them “You two should be a double act. You’ve definitely been working together too long.”
The couple looked affronted at exactly the same time. Mai laughed and pocketed her phone. Drake wanted to ask who she’d been texting, but knew this wasn’t the time. Her buried past had risen to haunt her and, as soon as this Babylon thing was out of the way, it would be time to exorcise that malevolent ghost.
“A trip to Moscow sounds good to me.” Dahl wandered in and stared out of the single sand-scoured window. Arid desert met his gaze, the earth already encroaching on the man-made camp, reclaiming its own. The sounds of men shouting and vehicles being driven over short distances hard and fast, the consistent clanging and booming of an Army base, gave life to the environment but it was still an arid, life-sucking landscape out there.
Drake was about to reply when they heard raised voices from the next room. Patterson had mentioned something and Akerman had praised him. Dahl raised an eyebrow. “That means one of two things. Either Patterson just gave Olle an idea or showed him a picture of my wife.”
They moved into the living quarters. Akerman was almost capering with glee. “Listen to this, ja? We mentioned that Alexander the Great embraced many religions in order to rule so many lands. He embraced many myths and local beliefs. He was a king, ja? A pharaoh. And do you remember what we initially said about the language of the gods?”
Drake tried to remember back a few months to when they had first encountered Olle. “We had just escaped tomb three at Singen when Dahl called you. Didn’t you say that the language was a complete syllabary?”