by Rob Jones
Blankov spoke next. “Ever heard of Professor Julius Cronje?”
Ryan and Lea kept silent.
The Athanatoi man wasn’t to be baited. “He’s a leading authority on ancient languages, specializing in pictograms and symbolism. We invited him here to the safari park to help us with the symbols on the Sword of Fire.”
“You mean you kidnapped him?” Lea said.
“Yes and his son, too.”
“You bastard.”
Blankov waved a fly off his face. “Julius is one of us.”
“Athanatoi?” Lea asked.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And you kidnapped him?”
“He’s a traitor,” Kruger added.
Ryan said nothing. He was past the point of rage and knew what had to be done to this man. It was just a matter of staying alive long enough to kill him. He decided to let Lea do the talking.
“How is he a traitor?” Lea asked.
“After careful consultation with the professor, he decided that he didn’t want to help the Oracle after all,” Kruger said.
“Shame.”
“I’m not finished.”
“You will be soon.”
A shit-eating grin spread across the South African’s cracked, tanned face and revealed a set of uneven teeth. “As I was saying, Professor Cronje took exception to the hospitality I extended him here at the park and refused to give me the information I required, but it turned out he was much more agreeable after I threatened to throw his son to my lions.”
“You disgust me.”
Blankov spoke next. “You see, immortal or not, Julius has the same weaknesses as anyone else. Family is one of these weaknesses. Loving people is a weakness. It makes you vulnerable. Academic principles and ethics are one thing, but faced with watching lions tear your son apart and eat his guts, they go right out of the window. We soon agreed it was better that he told me the meaning of the symbols and in return his son would be allowed to live. I call it the art of compromise.”
Outside below the balcony they heard a heavy animal breathing hard and padding about in the dust. The smell of wild big cats floated up through the slits in the teak decking.
“But after translating half the symbols, the traitor tried to modify the terms of our agreement,’ Blankov said.
“What do you mean?” said Lea.
Kruger chuckled. “He means that Julius Cronje didn’t take my threat seriously and thought he could barter with me.”
Ryan gripped the arms of his chair until they almost snapped. In his head, he repeated the same mantra over and over again. Later… you’ll kill him later.
Lea brushed a mosquito away. “I don’t understand.”
“Have you ever thought about when terrorists take some people hostage and make their demands? How they say, we’ll kill the hostages if you don’t do this or that? Ever wondered why the authorities don’t simply spin it around and say, you’ll let the hostages go or we’ll kill you all and your families too? It’s because they’re weak and the terrorists know they won’t do it.”
Lea yawned and looked at her watch. “Is it nearly bedtime?”
Blankov offered a cold smile. “The traitor Julius Cronje thought his knowledge and my desire to access it was a more valuable commodity than the strength of my threat. He translated the first half of the symbols, and after proving himself he decided to make a counter offer. If I let his son go, he would translate the other half.”
Below, they heard a lion roaring and growling.
Kruger sipped his iced water and picked up his bush hat. “Julius tried to play fucking poker with me. With me! And you know why?” Before she could say anything, he said, “Because he didn’t take me or my threats seriously. He thought he was the one driving our little bargain, so I made sure he found out the hard way what happens when you try and play games with me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I killed his son.”
“Oh my God.”
Kruger said, “Needless to say we now have a full translation. What he wouldn’t do to save his own son’s life, he did to save his own.”
Lea felt deflated. They already knew what the symbols meant. “So you know where the King’s Tomb is located?”
“Yes,” Blankov said. “And now Julius must also pay for his treachery.”
Kruger set the hat on his head and his eyes disappeared into the brim’s shade. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. He turned and looked over the balcony. “How’s my baby?”
A man called up and told him the lion was in good form. “But a little hungry and restless, just as you ordered, boss.”
He turned to face Lea and Ryan. “Did you hear that? Just as I fucking ordered.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jessica Clark tightened her legs hard and flexed her hamstrings and quads. The Weston Gym in Downtown LA was quiet tonight, just the way she liked it. Outside in the street a police cruiser screeched past with sirens wailing and a news chopper was hovering over a building on the next block.
She stretched her calves now, pointed her feet to the ground and let go of the bars until she was hanging upside down. She brought her hands up to her face and started to crunch up until her face was parallel with her waist. Thirty reps was the usual, but today she was heading for fifty.
Thirty-five.
It hurt. The pain in her abdominal muscles was something else, but she knew better than to let it get to her.
Forty.
Burning around her torso as the lactic acid seeped into her muscles. Up she went, crunch and back down. The sweat ran from her forehead, trickling into her eyes on the way down and running into her ears and mouth when she crunched up.
Forty-five.
Crunch and back down.
That pussy Garcetti used to mock her for only being able to complete fifteen reps of these upside-down crunches. If he were here now she’d make him eat his shorts.
Fifty and she stopped, suspended upside down like a vampire bat. The blood rushed to her head and she glanced over at her zip hoodie and cell phone. She left it on silent in the gym, but she could see it was buzzing. Someone was ringing.
She reached up – the fifty-first crunch – and grabbed the bars. Slipping her legs out of the top of the bar she spun the right way up and her training shoes hit the gym’s carpet tiles with a gentle thud.
“Hello?”
“I didn’t realize you were into heavy breathing, Agent Cougar.”
“Fuck off, Garcetti.”
“And I thought you loved me.”
“You’ve got the personality of a sweat sock, why would I love you?”
“My manly physique?”
She laughed. “Garcetti, you have to unhook your top pants button before you sit down or your gut will make it fly off like a champagne cork and put someone’s eye out.”
She heard a wistful sigh. “So how many crunches you up to?”
“Seventy.” What was the harm?
“That’s impressive stuff, Jess.”
“Why are you bothering me, Tony?”
“I have a job for you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Any details?”
“There’s an international team of assholes running around the globe, hunting for treasure and ancient relics and generally poking their snouts in where they do not belong and the boss wants them deleted from the program, so to speak.”
“When you say boss, you mean who exactly?”
“The VP.”
“Got it.”
“Yeah,” she heard a cigarette light up. “Thing is, these assholes are causing problems and it’s time they got taken out. Faulkner was very clear about offering you total carte blanche in order for you to get rid of them. You can do whatever you want and there’ll be no questions asked.” He chuckled. “Hell, you might even get the Medal of Honor.”
“Only the President can award that decoration, pinhead.”
; “Oops, my bad. I was getting ahead of myself. Anyway, that’s your head’s up, so get yourself ready or whatever the hell it is you do. I’ll call when I have more details, maybe even with a kill order.”
When Garcetti hung up on her, Jessica gave the phone a look of disgust and slipped it into her pocket. She showered and picked up her gym bag. Walked out to her car. It was dark and she was parked in a side street to dodge the fee.
Three men stepped out of the shadows.
She scanned them for all the usual stuff – who was the boss, who was the strongest, the weakest, the fastest, the slowest.
Then the top dog pulled out a .38 Special. “Gimme your wallet.”
She sighed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Hand it over, cupcake.”
Jessica sighed inwardly and glanced at the TAG Heuer Aquaracer on her wrist. She was already late and now this. She dropped her gym bag on the sidewalk and cussed.
He laughed. “What, am I inconveniencing you? Hand your fucking shit over.”
She pulled her purse from the bag and stepped into the man’s shadow. Handing it over to him, he moved almost sideways to keep the gun on her but out of her reach and then stretched his hand out to take the money.
She struck like a bolt of lightning.
Flicking the purse into his face, she darted her right hand forward and grabbed his wrist. Twisting it around hard so the thumb side rotated around clockwise until his palm was facing skyward. That was as far as the joint went without breaking, which she made happen next with ruthless force.
The wrist bones shattered and split. He screamed out in pain, but she was only on the starter course. The main meal was yet to be had and now she was hungry. In the confusion, she reached out and grabbed the gun by the silencer, pushing it up into his hand until the grip slipped out of his palm.
She went with the momentum of the disarming action and swiped the gun up away from his hand and into his face where the top of the barrel collided with his nose and smashed the upper lateral cartilage into a mushy pulp.
The other two guys flicked a look at one another and ran into the fight.
Jessica was already three moves ahead. She swivelled around on her right ankle and struck one of the men in the balls with a powerful flying side kick. He went down like a dead moose and cracked the back of his skull on the side of a garbage can.
The top dog spat a wad of blood and lunged toward her, working with the other remaining guy like a tag team.
Jessica rotated back toward top dog, lifting her right leg up and driving a hefty crescent kick into the side of his head. She heard his jaw break and thought she saw it dislocate a little in the direction of the blow. He was down and out, but she finished him with a chin strike and knocked him back into the pile of garbage cans where the other guy was still out cold.
The third guy raised his palms and started to step away from her, a tire iron in his right hand. “I’m sorry, okay? I don’t want any trouble.”
“I guess that’s too bad, huh?” She glowered at him, her eyes turning icy cold and brimming over with pure hate. “’Cause you got it.”
He ran for it, but she was faster. She hunted him down before he made the end of the street. Hooking his legs out from under him she brought him crashing down into the slime of the gutter. His face slammed down in the grime as he tried to scramble away from her. He got to his feet and gripped the tire iron hard. This was it. The bitch wasn’t going to let him go so he had to take her out.
He swung the steel lever at her and she stepped not away but into the arc of the swing. Opening her hand, she brought her arm up and moved it in the iron’s direction of travel. She gripped the lower end of the weapon near the man’s hand and rotated her arm around until the elbow landed in his face and broke his nose.
He grunted and fell away from her. She seized the moment and yanked the tire iron from his hand, disarming him of the weapon in less than five seconds from his initial attack on her. She spun around and brought the steel rod down on the top of his skull and then twisted around until she was able to smash him in the face with the back of her other hand.
It struck him like iron and blasted his head back allowing her to land a punch on his left temple. He stopped fighting now and seemed to hang in mid-air for a few seconds until he started to sway on the spot like the town drunk. It was not an impressive effort, she thought and landed the final blow.
She extended the tire iron to the full reach of her arm and spun around at her waist one-eighty to maximize the momentum of the steel bar. It landed on his jaw and shattered the teeth on the left-hand side of his mouth. He fell down and landed face-first in the gutter slime, a Whopper box cushioning the final impact.
She dusted her hands off, picked up her purse, walked over to her gym bag and blipped open the doors to her RAM 1500. Climbing inside, she tossed the gym bag on the passenger seat and fired up the engine. “Three minutes,” she said with a frown. “That’s a full minute per asshole. I have to sharpen up.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hawke took in the darkness of the National Museum of China’s enormous main entrance hall. The size of the place was breathtaking. Its smooth marble floors stretched out like a football pitch and its glass and steel windows towered a hundred feet up to the ceiling. He estimated it was easily big enough to accommodate a full-size passenger jetliner.
Breaking in through a skylight had been easy enough, but they all knew it only got harder from here. In the darkness, they crossed the expansive floor and headed toward a series of shallow marble steps leading up to three colossal double door arches. Sixteen Chinese characters on a bright red sign hung above the door. Hawke nor anyone else could read them but they knew from the schematics it was the entrance to the museum’s Level 1.
“That’s right, yeah?”
Alex’s voice crackled over the comms in everyone’s ears. “Sure is, Joe. I’ll make a linguist of you yet.”
He smiled. “That’s more Ryan’s field of expertise.”
“Wonder how the boy’s getting on?” Scarlet said, her boots clipping on the polished marble steps.
“They haven’t called in yet,” Alex said.
“Are we worried?” Reaper said.
“Not yet,” Hawke said. “They know what they’re doing.”
They moved through the doors and stepped inside the Ancient China section on Level 1. A special exhibition on the Silk Road had been attracting a large crowd of interested people and a series of stone sculptures from the Song Dynasty also seemed to be a big hit, but tonight all was silent and dark. And he was interested in only one thing – finding the access point to the utility tunnel Alex Reeve had located on the museum’s schematics.
As he scanned the space for the fire door, he felt good, but anxious. Earlier that morning he’d gone for a long run around the eastern shore of Kunming Lake. It was a good way to burn off some adrenaline and stay calm before an op like the one they were going to execute tonight.
It had been busier than he’d expected, with people everywhere he looked. Some were Beijingers, walking dogs or jogging or just making their way to the office. Others were tourists greedily snapping pictures of the Summer Palace which rose majestically above the northern edge of the lake.
He’d beaten his personal best and returned to the hotel feeling pretty good about himself. After a shower and something to eat during their briefing they’d stepped out onto Chang’an Avenue and made the short walk from the hotel to the museum.
They slipped through a fire door and found themselves behind the scenes of the giant museum. “It should be down here.”
“I think that’s it,” Reaper said.
On the door was a warning in Mandarin. Scarlet looked on her phone at an image Alex had sent her. They corresponded. “This is it.”
The door was locked, but not for long. Reaper’s delivery of a hefty riot boot almost smashed it off its hinges and then they were in.
The utilidor was a long passage constructed deep b
eneath the museum whose main function was to accommodate the vast building’s utility lines. These included electrical cables, steam pipes and fiber optics among others. It was an eerie world of damp walls and echoes and smaller conduits receding away into total darkness.
Reaper gave the place an unforgiving glance. “At least it’s not a sewer pipe, hein?”
“That fun comes later,” Scarlet said.
“Alex said it was disused,” said Hawke.
They followed the corridor for several hundred meters until they reached a maintenance office. The door was locked, but Reaper’s famous shoulder-barge soon had it on the deck and then they were in. Stepping inside, they found themselves in a small room full of clutter and junk.
Hawke saw it first. “I’m looking at the floor, Alex. I see the disused sewage pipe you’re talking about and it’s got a steel grate fixed on it just as you said.”
“Which is what the C4 is for,” Scarlet said.
“Right,” Alex said, “but don’t use all the explosives. You’ll need some at the other end when you reach the Torture House.”
Hawke packed a small quantity of explosives around the grate. “All right, we’re go,” he said at last.
Reaper detonated the C4 and blew the ironwork clean off the pipe’s entrance. The explosion was small and contained and thanks to their underground location it went totally unnoticed. When the smoke cleared, they left their cover and made their way over to the hole in the floor.
“So we’re really going inside that horrible little sewage pipe?” Devlin said.
“Look on the bright side,” Scarlet said.
“There’s a bright side?”
“Of course not,” she said deadpan. “Get in the fucking pipe.”
“Once again, it’s disused, Danny,” Hawke said.
They lowered their packs inside the pipe and jumped down after them, crouching down on all fours and crawling into the gloom.