The chopper came down into the center of Budapester Strasse and Kodiak clambered inside. As it rose up into the air, Scarlet saw at least three police cars racing up the street behind it in their direction, and then the chopper moved closer and made a ninety-degree turn so its side door was facing them.
“Incoming!” Karlsson shouted, and the three of them raced away from the BMW as an RPG tore through the air from the hovering Bell and hit their car, sending a gargantuan explosion of metal, glass shards and burning petrol into the air.
The police cars skidded all over the road, the confusion of their drivers obvious as they slammed on reverse and moved away from the carnage unfolding in the center of their capital city.
In the chaos, Scarlet Sloane and her sub-unit slipped away with the map into the Berlin Zoological Gardens, but behind them, the newly airborne Kodiak gave chase.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lea and Alex shared a concerned glance and looked back at Ryan. The London hacker dropout was starting to look increasingly anxious about things since Alex had mentioned the word athanatoi.
“The immortals?” Lea asked. “That sounds pretty ominous, Ry.”
“Thought you’d be used to all things immortal by now, Lea.”
“Sure, but what’s freaking me out is that it’s plural — how many of these people are we talking about?”
“Who said they were people?” Ryan said, smirking.
“Now you’re just freaking me out!”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!” Ryan said, and pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. A few rooms away the sound of machine gun fire and screams filled the air. He turned toward the noise for a second and then looked back at Lea. “I’m just telling you what athanatoi means, that’s all.”
“But what does the existence of such a group mean?” Alex said, flinching as another explosion went off in a nearby room.
Lea offered an empty sigh. “I’m guessing it means all of this damned mess goes a lot deeper than we thought.”
“I’ll say,” Ryan added. “I thought we ended this when we stopped Zaugg getting the trident, but now it looks like there’s some kind of secret group behind things. I think I just want to go home and get into bed.”
“Just calm down, Ryan,” Lea said. “It might not be as crazy as all that.”
“Only if our luck changes, Lea. I’m starting to wish you’d never called me, back when you wanted my help on that bloody trident mission.”
“Yeah… about that. The trident really is just the beginning of all this,” Alex said with a nervous smile.
Lea fixed her eyes on Alex. “I think you need to start talking, Agent Nightingale.”
Alex nodded and pulled her hair back. Outside in the corridor the sound of gunfire made her jump once again. “I hope Joe’s okay…”
“Joe’ll be just fine,” Lea said flatly. “Start talking — I think you need to start tying some loose ends up.”
“Sure… I’d used my Dad’s passwords to get into some pretty heavy stuff at the Pentagon, and it wasn't long before I started reading some very interesting information — but always very vague. After a few hours I got hold of a list of names — Gottardo Ricci, Anton Reichardt, Felix Hoffmann, Giovanni Mazzarro and Dario Mazzarro.”
Lea and Ryan shared a concerned glance.
“I’m guessing that’s not your Dad’s Christmas card list, right Alex?”
Alex flicked an anxious look at Lea. “You can say that again. All the names on this list were academics involved heavily in the search for the elixir.”
“I don’t recognize the last two names,” Lea replied.
“The Mazzarros? Italian Egyptologists — Giovanni was the father and Dario is the son. Giovanni, the father, disappeared while on a dig in Egypt many years ago, but he’d dedicated his life to finding what he called the white drops.”
Ryan pushed his glasses up his nose and blinked. “A common term used in ancient Egypt to describe what we today would call the elixir, or the water of life.”
“Right,” Alex said. “But like all the others he died before he discovered the truth.”
“And his son?”
“Dario Mazzarro. He took up where his father left off. You have to remember all of these men knew what’s at stake and tried to keep themselves totally under the radar. Their names only wound up on the DoD list because of an extensive hacking and tapping program by the CIA. But I got closer… I impressed Mazzarro with my research and I got to know him. Anyway, this was the research that Vetrov wanted from me, and I’m ashamed to say it, but I just handed it over to him. I gave him Mazzarro’s name.”
“Are you crazy?” Lea said, eyes wide with disbelief. “He was going to feed you alive to crocodiles! If he did that to me I’d do anything to play for time.”
“She’d even sell me out,” Ryan said.
Lea nodded. “I’d especially sell him out.”
“Maybe,” Alex said, sounding unconvinced. “But the CIA trained me better than that.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Ryan said.
“Either way,” Alex said with a deep, sad sigh. “Vetrov now has Mazzarro’s name, so now he’s in grave danger and we have to get to him before the Russians do.” Alex jumped yet again as a grenade went off in an adjoining room. “I can’t explain it all here, in this, but if we get out of here there’s a lot more you need to know.”
Scarlet, Karlsson and Lexi sprinted though the ornate gates and disappeared inside the zoo as fast as they could. It wasn’t easy to outrun a helicopter, but it wasn’t impossible, all you had to do was find a highly populated area and some cover. Unfortunately for Scarlet Sloane, the RPG attack on Budapester Strasse had changed the mood of the people visiting the zoo, and now they were all screaming and scattering for their lives.
They sprinted deep in the zoo and looked for somewhere to escape from the chopper, but the guns in their hands caused yet more mass panic and the fleeing crowds only highlighted their isolation as they ran in the opposite direction.
“This way!” Scarlet shouted. “We need to get out of sight somewhere.”
She pointed at some buildings a few hundred yards down a twisting path lined with monkey cages and lion enclosures.
“Is this shit actually happening?” Karlsson asked, incredulous.
“Yes it is, darling,” Scarlet said. “What’s the problem?”
“When I signed up I didn’t realize it would end with crazy English women and baboons.”
“But you’re a Seal, Bradley. You should feel at home in a zoo.”
Behind them, the chopper continued its deadly approach, and Kodiak fired at them once again with the assault rifle.
“He really does want this map!” Lexi shouted, as they drew nearer the safety of the buildings.
“What now?” Lexi screamed from the rear. “Those bastards are closing in fast.”
Above her head, Scarlet heard the familiar womp womp womp of the chopper’s rotors as it raced up behind them and prepared to attack again. She scanned the area for somewhere to hide and then she saw her answer.
Poking a little above the birch trees ahead of her was the strange wood and glass roofline of the bird house.
“There!” she shouted. “If we can get inside that building we can buy ourselves some time to think.”
“What? Like the A-Team?” Karlsson said sarcastically.
“Huh?” said Lexi.
“Forget about it, honey…”
They sprinted past a couple of bemused polar bears and entered the bird house just as the chopper reached them. It raised its nose and raced over the top of the giant aviary as it overshot its quarry, now hiding inside the building below.