by Rob Jones
THE JOE HAWKE BOXSET 4
The King’s Tomb
Land of the Gods
The Orpheus Legacy
Rob Jones
Contents
The Joe Hawke Boxset 4
The King’s Tomb
Land of the Gods
The Orpheus Legacy
Other Books by Rob Jones
THE KING’S TOMB
(Joe Hawke #10)
Rob Jones
CHAPTER ONE
The street lights of Lugano fell away below the Jet Ranger’s windshield as the pilot raised the collective and flew toward the fir tree-lined slopes of Monte Brè. In the darkness of the chopper’s rear cabin, the man known as the Oracle was staring pensively through his window, weighed down with the baggage of his life’s mission.
No, pilgrimage. He tapped his chin with a withered forefinger while he gave the matter some thought. As the helicopter flew over the crest of the mountain and headed toward his compound on the eastern slopes, he concluded it was definitely more of a pilgrimage than a mission.
Thousands of years spent protecting the sources of eternal life had taken a heavy toll on him, but not as heavy as the search for the Citadel. In the black, hollow void he called a heart, he knew this hallowed place was more than a legend and yet no one had set eyes on its sparkling walls for millennia.
His eyes crawled over the dark waters of the Lago di Lugano and a jagged mountain ridgeline beyond it where Switzerland met the Italian province of Lombardy. He knew this landscape well. He knew every landscape well. There was only one place that still eluded him and that was the Citadel. It was out there somewhere, just where they had left it so long ago.
And he had to have it.
He was closer than ever before. Of the eight idols he needed to open the gateway, he had three of them – Tanit, Tinia and Viracocha – and his research had uncovered that another four were in the King’s Tomb. The rogue idol, Burí, was still in the possession of the ECHO team after their raid on Valhalla. He heaved in a long breath and sighed heavily in the gloom. He had to have these other idols and he would stop at nothing and spare no one to get his hands on them.
No one.
He turned his eyes away from the night and faced the small team of Athanatoi acolytes sitting with him in the chopper. Their faces were obscured, lit a ghostly blue by the subdued night-lighting in the rear cabin, but there was no mistaking the fear etched onto every one of them. They waited obediently for their leader to break the silence.
And then he did. “Have we heard from the arms dealer yet?” he asked in Italian.
A woman sitting opposite him looked briefly at the anxious faces of the others before responding. “He followed your instructions and returned to South Africa with the sword.”
“Has Julius made contact with him yet?”
Professor Julius Cronje was an Athanatoi cultist based in Johannesburg and one of their leading scholars.
“No. I think Julius is losing his nerve, and Kruger too. I think they want out.”
“That is unfortunate,” the Oracle purred. “Julius has been playing with treachery for many centuries. If he makes one wrong move then he will have to be terminated. As for Kruger, he has served me well, but he has more to give before he gets his reward. Much more. I cannot tolerate betrayal.”
“Betrayal?”
“He knows things about us, about me. He might be trying to cut a deal with ECHO or the authorities to save his own skin.” He turned to the man sitting beside him. He was tall and solid-built with a hard, square face and sad, black eyes. “You are my most loyal soldier, Blankov. I want you to go to South Africa and pull this scorpion out from under his rock. Persuade him that his fortune is best served by remaining as loyal to me as you are, or kill him.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said. A Slav from the northern Greek region of Macedonia, Ivan Blankov was a senior Athanatoi and one of the Oracle’s most loyal lieutenants and a keen scholar of the ancient world. The fierce warrior and skilled hand to hand combat specialist thought for a moment and then said, “And Julius?”
“Let Julius do his job and decipher the sword. If he is loyal he will live, if not…” his words trailed into the darkness before he spoke up again. “We will soon have the Sword of Fire deciphered and then we will know the location of the King’s Tomb. After that, there is nothing between me and the gateway.”
A plasma screen on the rear wall of the chopper flickered to life to reveal the face of Davis Faulkner, the Vice President of the United States. He looked pale and anxious.
The Oracle grinned. “Something on your mind, Mr Vice President?”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Good, and how are things Stateside?”
“Coming along well, sir. We’re just waiting for your orders.”
“Soon, Davis, soon. We have almost everything in place ready to make our move against President Brooke.”
“Yes, sir,” Faulkner said.
“Then I will control the United States as well.”
Faulkner wiped his brow. “I think the fall-out from this one’s going to take a long time to settle.”
The Oracle nodded at some silent thought he was enjoying. Things were going well, it was true. Not only would he have the remaining idols within the next few hours, but with Faulkner in the Oval Office he would control the executive branch of the world’s most powerful country.
Then the war could begin.
CHAPTER TWO
Diamond Falls Country Estate nestled peacefully in the eastern suburbs of Pretoria. It was a gated community, secure from the crime of the city and sprawling over one hundred acres of luscious South African landscape. Ten-room mansions hid away behind palm trees and electric fences, its inhabitants kept safe by closed-circuit cameras and biometric security systems.
Lea Donovan steadied the monocular by placing her elbows on the car’s roof and carefully studied one of the properties running along the northern perimeter. “So that’s where Dirk Kruger’s hiding out.”
“According to our intel, at least,” Camacho said.
“You think he’s got the sword in there, or somewhere else?”
Camacho shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
Ryan Bale raised his own monocular and swept it over the surrounding area. It was a vista of BMW X5s and Mercedes coupés parked on sweeping granite drives, sparkling swimming pools and plush tennis courts. “Eden didn’t say anything about laser sensors.”
Kim Taylor was leaning on the hood of their hired SUV and shaking her head. “A big bad guy like you can’t be scared of a few laser sensors, right?”
Ryan looked sheepish for a moment, then regained his cool. “I’ll get in there before you do, Agent Taylor.”
“That’s Special Agent Taylor, Ryan. Special Agent.”
“Is that because they had to make special rules to get you in?”
“No,” Kim said. “It’s like the way you’re a special person.”
“Hearty ha ha.”
Lea glanced at her watch. “Night soon.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark,” Ryan said.
The Irishwoman raised an eyebrow as she looked him up and down. “Afraid of the dork maybe, but not the dark.”
Ryan laughed. He could take a joke now. The fragile boy he had once been was dead and a stronger man stood in his place. He lifted the hem of his torn, sleeveless Megadeth t-shirt and wiped the sweat from his brow. Nestled in a valley enclosed by the Magaliesberg hills, the city was a giant heat trap in the summer when the winds blew into the Bushveld from the Kalahari desert. Tonight the heat was a bastard and it felt like it was crushing his head with a vice.
“Touché,” he said, letting the
damp hem drop back down. “You win, you both win. I’m a special dork, I get it.”
Kim smiled but made no reply. She was thinking about the tattoo of the snarling dragon she had just seen clawing its way around the young man’s torso. Only half-finished, the black and red ink creature had stared her down with a menacing eye that made her look away.
It was a damning indictment of the misery he had been through but it represented a reborn, tougher Ryan. As he pulled a cigarette from a crumpled pack in his jeans’ back pocket and fired it up, Kim declined his offer of a smoke. Like the others in the team, she quietly wondered where the young man’s transformation might end.
“Wait, I see something,” Lea said. She was tracking a Jeep Cherokee as it entered the community and drove in the direction of Kruger’s mansion. It pulled up at his property and the doors opened. “Looks like someone’s paying Dirk a visit.”
Four men climbed out of the Jeep and walked to the house. One of them was casually resting a pump-action shotgun on his shoulder. They all had gun holsters. A moment passed and then the door opened and they made their way inside, one of them stopping to spit in a potted palm at the side of the porch.
“Why the extra muscle?” Camacho said. “You think Kruger got word about our arrival in South Africa?”
“Maybe,” Lea said. “Remember, he’s a black-market arms trader. He spends his life with mercs and gunrunners. They could be anyone like that.” She changed the subject. “Everyone familiar with the schematics?”
They were. Alex Reeve over in Washington DC had easily located them online and everyone had studied the house’s blueprints inside out. The only question that remained was if their intel was good and whether or not Kruger really was storing the Sword of Fire in there.
“Things could get out of hand tonight,” Kim said, casting a big sister’s eye at Ryan. “We need to stay focused.”
“Why are you looking at me?”
“Because you’re the only one without any formal military training.”
He scoffed. “I’ve been through more than most soldiers.” He dragged on the end of the cigarette and casually flicked it to the ground. “These days I’m built for fighting.”
Lea laughed out loud.
Ryan looked momentarily hurt but pulled out of it before saying something he would regret. He had presumed his dramatic turnaround would buy him some more credit with his ex-wife, but all she could see was the geek she had first met all those years ago. He didn’t know what it would take for her to take him seriously and these days he didn’t much care. The smartass reply he thought of was already forgotten and the simple smile he gave her turned out to be much more devastating.
“I’m sorry, Ry. That was a stupid thing to say.”
“Forget it. We have work to do.”
Lea gave him a smile, and was pleased to be working with him again. Since reading the shocking truth about her family in the letter left to her in her grandmother’s box, she had been pensive and introspective and it felt good to get back out on a mission. The fact the letter had told her that her grandmother was in fact her sister, and her father had discovered a source of the elixir of life had rocked her world, and getting stuck into another op like this was what she needed more than anything to get her head straight again.
“Right.” Camacho checked his watch. “And on that, Hawke’s team should almost be in China by now.”
Lea huffed and rolled her eyes.
“What, Jack?”
Ryan leaned over to the former CIA man and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial hush, making sure to keep it just loud enough for everyone to hear. “They’re still not talking, old boy.”
“You’re like a couple of stupid teenagers,” Camacho said.
Lea opened her mouth to launch some kind of defense, but before she could utter a word, he spoke again.
“Okay, kids – let’s hit the road.” He took in the subtropical twilight, now rapidly fading into night. “It’ll be dark enough by the time we’re on site.”
“And I’m on point,” Lea said.
After putting on tactical raid vests and lightweight plate armor, they loaded up with HK MP5s, M4 carbines, spare magazines and stun grenades. Camacho slipped a chest rig over the top, fully laden with even more spare ammo and some CS gas canisters. Finally, he grabbed a Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun. Last on were the ballistic helmets and night vision goggles.
Camacho hit the gas and steered the Chevy TrailBlazer around the bends in the road leading down from the hills they had used to survey the property. Cruising into the luxury estate, he gained speed and aimed directly for Kruger’s perimeter fence.
The chunky grille of the two-ton vehicle smashed through the electric fence with ease and sent a shower of sparks into the hot, night air. The twisted, bent fence panels clattered to the ground behind them as he swerved the TrailBlazer around the pool and skidded to a halt a few meters from Kruger’s back door.
They all jumped out of the Chevy – the tactical assault on Kruger’s place was well-rehearsed and they were keen to get on with it. Their arrival had already been noticed by the men inside the house. A merc in an upstairs window leaned out and fired on them. He was using a Browning bolt-action shotgun with saboted slugs. They slammed against the wall as the sabots sprayed down on them and the rounds punctured the Chevy’s steel roof.
So far, the mission had taken forty seconds.
Camacho took the Mossberg 500 to the door, swiftly dispatching three rounds on the top, middle and lower hinges. He blasted the door to matchwood and then kicked it down inside the room with a heavy riot boot. “Go, go, go!”
Fifty seconds.
Lea, Ryan and Kim instantly entered the house under Camacho’s cover and fanned out into their attack positions. Two mercs charged into the kitchen with handguns raised. Camacho spun around the doorway and fired on them with the shotgun, blasting them to hell. One slumped down on a marble countertop with his head hanging in the sink and the other flew back over the island and crashed on top of a wheeled kitchen cart.
One minute.
The fighting intensified. Another merc took up a position behind an enormous Polar double-door refrigerator and starting playing games with a Beretta twelve-gauge Magnum shotgun, knocking chunks out of the ceiling and tearing the cabinetwork to shreds.
In a vicious hail of splinters and flying lead, Kim and Ryan looked at the cart and exchanged a smile. She swung around onto her back and kicked the cart with both boots as hard as she could. It raced off down the center of the expansive kitchen and Ryan rolled down into its cover, firing off a few rounds in the direction of the man with the twelve-bore.
Two minutes.
The young hacker from London took heavy fire and the shotgun made short work of the little pine cart, but Ryan already saw his destination: the basement stairs. The cart was almost gone now, with only one side and the framework left in place. He raised his MP5 and obliterated the basement door’s lock in seconds. Incoming gunfire from the shotgun flew either side of him and traced over his head as he leaped to the door and shoulder-barged his way through it.
Ryan lowered the night vision goggles into place and leaped over the banister, his riot boots slamming down hard on the polished concrete floor. Scanning the basement, he saw the fuse box exactly where Alex had told him he would. He sprinted across the concrete until he was in range and then raised the MP5. Much better suited to short-range work, the young man squeezed the trigger and let the lead fly.
Three minutes.
The shaft of light shining down from the kitchen above the stairs instantly died and plunged the basement into darkness. It didn’t last long and soon the subterranean space was lit up with the sudden, violent strobing of a muzzle flash from the far side of the basement. Someone was at the top of a second flight of stairs on the far side of the basement.
It happened as fast as lightning. The bullets chewed into the polished concrete floor and spat and pinged across to Ryan faster than he could take c
over. The muzzle flashed. Chaos reigned. Empty shells clattered to the floor like metal sleet. The bullets traced past his head with a stomach-churning crack crack crack and buried themselves in the plasterboard wall ahead of him.
Ryan dived for the cover of the furnace, thinking he had made it to safety, but then he felt the scratch and burn of a bullet rip across a small exposed section of his back at the edge of the tactical vest, just below his left shoulder. He screamed as a cloud of his own blood and muscle sprayed out over his head.
He was hit.
CHAPTER THREE
Ryan crashed down behind the furnace and slammed his back against the blower chamber as he hurriedly reached around and felt his shoulder for the wound. Rounds fired over him, drilling into the steel plate of the furnace. Ricochets showered him with sparks. Metal jackets clunked to the floor.
His heart beat like a double-bass drum on a thrash metal track and he clamped his teeth together to stifle an animal howl of pain. He felt a thick pulpy wound on the edge of his back where it curved around to his left-hand side. The hacker cursed under his breath. Half an inch to the right and the tactical vest would have stopped it. A wave of nausea washed over him as his mind flooded with the fear of a bullet wound.
Hawke had told him all about the dangers of lead intoxication from projectiles lodged inside the human body. The old cowboy joke about dying of lead poisoning wasn’t so funny and then there was the internal bleeding or vital organ damage to consider. Maybe Kim had been right to doubt his ability.
Sweating and desperately trying to control his breathing, Ryan searched with a trembling hand to see if the bullet had wedged itself in a bone… God, please no… but he felt nothing except a groove. Best guess was a round had torn through the skin and continued on its way to the far wall behind the furnace.
More firing.
He gathered his mind, reloaded his MP5 and took a breath. The wound was painful and bleeding but not fatal. He tried to remember what Hawke and the others had taught him about close-quarter combat and spun around and fired on the enemy before they had a chance to take up a new position.