by Rob Jones
Hawke scratched his head. “Just one problem though. We need the Codex to locate the seven other rings, and Wolff has the Codex.”
“And that could be anywhere,” Lexi said.
Eden spoke up. “It could be anywhere, but it’s also somewhere, and we know where that specific somewhere is.”
Hawke looked across at Lea. Catching her eye, he returned her smile with a conspiratorial wink.
“Well, where is it?” Scarlet said.
“Meteora, in the monastery.”
Ryan was confused. “You mean the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, as in that amazing old building perched on the massive stack of rock in the Aegean Sea?”
“I do, or at least the former Monastery of the Holy Trinity. For some months Wolff has been in the process of acquiring it from the Orthodox Catholic Church. He closed the deal a few weeks ago and set up his new headquarters there. All our intel points to the Codex being kept in the monastery’s vaults.”
Reaper raised his eyebrows. “Sounds exciting.”
“I should bloody well say so!” Ryan said. “That’s where they filmed the final sequence of For Your Eyes Only!”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “How many times, Ryan. You’re not James Bond.”
Ryan’s shoulders visibly sloped. “I know, dammit.”
Lund seemed to relax. “Getting the location of Wolff’s new HQ wasn’t easy. It cost the life of a good man in the Greek National Intelligence Service, but it gave us a serious break. As far as we know, Wolff and the rest of his cult are under the impression Meteora has not been compromised. This gives us a real opportunity for a surprise raid, and the sooner we do it the better. We can only surmise, but my best guess is when he deciphers the Codex and has the information he needs about the other rings, he’ll move out and probably for good.”
Hawke found Lund’s optimism troubling. Given how hard the mission had been to this point, he saw no reason why the Oracle wouldn’t fight harder than ever to protect the Codex, and after translating it they could expect a savage assault aimed at retrieving the idols.
Hawke started to ask Lund a question, but his phone rang. The Dane took the call and wandered around the outside of the theatre with his umbrella.
“Where are the idols right now?” he asked Eden.
“All eight of them are in the secret gold vaults of the Bank of England,” Eden told him. “And that’s where they’re staying until we have the other rings and know where the Citadel is. Then they’ll be transported under heavy military guard to the location of the gateway. After that, it’s anyone’s guess what’s on the cards.”
Hawke looked around the theatre at his friends. After the devastating death of Danny Devlin in Miami Beach they were more dedicated than ever to taking the Oracle out of action and discovering the Citadel.
“When do we start?” Lea asked.
Lund walked back over to them and slid the phone back into his suit pocket. “That was Nikos Katrivanos, the Greek Minister of the Interior,” he said. “And he says you have permission to fly to Meteora and make an assault on the monastery.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Hawke said. “We never do anything unless we get permission first.”
Eden gave him a wry smile. “All right, thank you.”
Lund missed the sarcasm. “And he added that it would be ever so nice if you could try and minimize the damage to the building itself, please. It was built in 1475 and he doesn’t want a repeat of the Parthenon if that’s okay with you.”
They all turned and looked up at the scaffolding on the ancient temple perched above high them.
“What?” Lea said. “Us?”
“Yes,” he said with emphasis. “You.”
“Okay, let’s make this happen,” Hawke said. “It’s high-time we took Wolff out of the equation for good.”
“There’s something else,” Eden said. “Something you all need to know about Danny’s death.”
The silence that followed his words echoed the deep sadness they all felt about their old friend’s brutal murder.
“What do we need to know?” Lea said.
Eden seemed hesitant. “He was killed with a marked bullet, one that literally had his name on it. We’ve run tests on the round and I can say it was a .408 bottlenecked cartridge, solid bullet with a non-lead core. Copper nickel alloy round. The conclusion of the ballistics report is that it was fired on a CheyTac M200 Intervention.”
“Holy shit,” Lea said. “That’s pretty much the most powerful sniper rifle in the world.”
“You’re saying this is some kind of vendetta?” Hawke asked.
Eden’s answer was now without hesitation. “In my view his death was a professional hit carried out by an extremely skilled sniper, probably ex-military. As for who ordered it, the best guess has to be the Oracle, but all bets are now off. Worse, there was a threat implying that the rest of us are also in danger.”
“We’re all targets?” Lea said, shocked.
“Looks that way.”
“So there’s a psycho sniper out there with the world’s most lethal rifle and a hit list full of our names?” Ryan said. “You always think it’s going to happen to someone else.”
Lea rolled her eyes. “This is serious, Ry.”
“Lea’s right,” Hawke said. “Until we find the killer, literally none of us is safe. The shooter could be anywhere.”
“We’re in the open now,” Scarlet said, glancing around the area.
“We can’t spend our lives hiding in a basement,” Lexi said. “We have to find the bastard and take him out, but not before finding out who hired him.”
By the time they all heard the crack of the shot, Magnus Lund had already been struck and knocked to the ground. As blood spilled out of the dead man’s head, the team scattered to anywhere they saw cover, shocked to the core at the timing of the murder.
Hawke studied the way Lund had fallen and twisted his head around to the top of the theatre. “Over there,” he called out. “No sign of the shooter but that’s where the round was fired. I’m going up.”
“Are you insane?” Lea said.
“He won’t fire twice,” he said. “Now it’s about escape and evasion until the next time.”
Hawke scrambled up the stone terraces of the theatre, stumbling here and there as he made his way up to the top. He heard the sound of a Vespa two-stroke receding into the distance, and by the time he crested the rise at the top of the theatre and reached the base of the Acropolis it was in time to see nothing but a trail of dust twisting up from an empty road leading back down into the city.
He cursed and kicked at a pile of gravel out into the road. With a sense of mounting fury, he padded back down to the rest of his team and gave them the bad news while Lea called an ambulance. They knew it was too late, but there was nothing else they could do.
“I can’t believe it!” Lexi said. “I can’t believe they killed Magnus.”
Once again shattered by the violence of another sniper’s round, the team rapidly pulled themselves together as the sound of sirens approached from the south.
“How fast can we get to this monastery?” Hawke asked.
“As fast as a chopper can fly,” Eden replied.
Scarlet flicked her cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it under her heel. “And where do we rendezvous?”
“I’ve got a little boat in the Med,” Eden said.
“Then let’s get on with it – not just for Danny, but for Magnus because at this rate there might not be any of us left to fight anyone pretty soon.”
CHAPTER THREE
Disregarding the charged political atmosphere surrounding her, Alex Reeve pushed her wheelchair slowly along a corridor outside the Cabinet Room. It seemed like forever since her father had become President of the United States but she would never get used to living in this place. It was nothing like in the movies, but a mostly quiet, boring place of work populated by straight-faced bureaucrats and steely Secret Service agents.
She
was heading for the Oval Office to see her father when Agent Brandon McGee called out to her from behind. She turned and smiled, but there was no reciprocation. He looked concerned and anxious as he walked over to her.
“Hey, Brandon.”
“Alex, hi. We need to talk.”
She twisted her head as her eyes narrowed. “What about?”
“In private.”
“We can go to my apartment in the Residence.”
He thought about it, then shook his head. “I think we need to go for a drive.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “What’s going on, Brandon?”
He leaned over, flicked the brake off her wheelchair and moved around behind her to grab hold of the push handles. “We’ll talk when we’re on the road.”
He wheeled her along the corridor, each second getting closer to the Office of the Vice President. “Are we going to see Faulkner?”
A pause.
“No, no we’re not. Besides, he’s not here. He’s at his private residence. I checked with his Secret Service detail less than an hour ago.”
He steered her to the right and headed toward the main entrance to the West Wing.
“Why would you do that?”
“On the road, Alex. We’ll talk on the road.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
He showed his pass to the door security and they stepped outside. Parked up on the circular drive was a black Secret Service Escalade. A light drizzle fell as McGee pushed down the brakes on the chair and opened the passenger door. Lifting Alex into the vehicle he paused to scan the building for something and then hopped into the driver’s seat and fired it up.
He accelerated around the sweeping drive and headed to the northeast gate. Passing another layer of security he pulled out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and headed west to the river. The traffic was heavy and progress was slow, and inside the Escalade the atmosphere was sombre as the windshield wipers moved across the rain-streaked glass.
“Why the cloak and dagger, Brandon?”
“Your room could be bugged.”
“Huh?”
“You room, back in the Residence.” He shot her a serious glance. “There’s a good chance it’s bugged.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“I am serious. I swept this car just before getting you so I know it’s safe.”
“But my room?”
“Sorry.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
Brandon sighed.
“Not my father?”
“No, not your father. President Brooke is a good man.”
She frowned. Her heart started to quicken in her chest. She wondered if she was having a minor panic response. They’d gotten worse since she was back in the chair. “Then who?”
The word fell from McGee’s lips like an anvil hitting a concrete floor. “Faulkner.”
For a few seconds, she didn’t know what to say. When she’d had the time to process the information, she still couldn’t bring herself to believe it. “You can’t possibly mean Vice President Davis Faulkner?”
“I mean precisely him,” he said in his rounded baritone voice.
“Holy shit. I’d heard vague rumors about a plot but nothing was confirmed.”
“It is now.”
“That’s against the law, Brandon.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, steering the Escalade neatly around the roundabout at Washington Circle. “Big time.”
Now the confusion and fear was giving way to anger. “What the goddam hell for?”
“This is difficult, but it looks like he’s trying to move against your father.”
She opened her mouth to speak but no words came.
“I know what that must sound like, but I just had to tell you, and now before things get out of control.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
McGee cruised the Escalade past the Swedish Embassy and Bangkok Joe’s, signaling to take the exit ramp down to Canal Road. Checking his mirror, he narrowed his eyes. Was that Chevy Suburban following them? He drove for another minute or two and then pulled off at the Abner Cloud House. Sweeping around in the gravel car park, he watched the Suburban cruse past them to the west. He pulled into a parking space with a view of the Potomac River, killed the engine and sighed deeply.
“I mean Faulkner’s planning to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and remove your father from office.”
In the enclosed space of the SUV, his words sounded ridiculous. “What the fuck?”
“I know what it sounds like, but my intel is good.”
“Who?”
“One of Muston’s security detail. I’ve known him since we were in the army together.”
Muston was Faulkner’s Chief of Staff. “This just gets worse… so he’s in on it too?”
McGee nodded. “Looks that way, yeah.”
Alex ran her hands over her face and into her hair. She was struggling to make sense of it all and had a million questions pulsing in her brain and giving her a migraine headache. “But why?”
“That’s the part we don’t know. We all thought Faulkner was a dog with no teeth, but now we know different. Kusumoto thinks it’s part of a wider conspiracy.”
“Kusumoto?”
“She’s my army buddy on Muston’s detail. Suzie Kusumoto. She comes from Chicago just like me. That’s why we got to be buddies in the army.”
Alex tightened her hands into iron fists and smashed one down onto her dead legs. “A wider fucking conspiracy? Jesus fucking Christ, Brandon!”
The big man shook his head in sympathy at the shock she must be feeling. “I know, Alex. I know.”
“What else do you know?”
“Not much. Suzie says she thinks Faulkner’s either working with someone else or even working for someone else.”
“The Vice President of the United States works for the American people and my goddam father, Brandon!”
“Not on this occasion.”
“And who is this mysterious third party?”
“We don’t know. Suzie’s vague because Muston is a very careful man. Some of these guys talk when their security’s in the room and some don’t. Muston’s the sort who doesn’t, so she’s only got this information through overhearing tiny fragments of conversation and observing his behavior.”
Now she rubbed her temples. She realized she’d been staring at the rain sliding down the windshield for several minutes without blinking. “This is just nuts. Does my dad know?”
“Not yet.”
She turned to him and wrinkled her face up. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Brandon, but why the fuck not?”
“Apart from you and the President, I don’t know who I can trust and I decided to talk to you about it first. Remember, your father isn’t in any mortal danger. This isn’t a threat to the life of the President. This is a political move against him.” He turned to her and twisted his lips in uncertainty. “In other words, way above my pay grade.”
“But invoking the Twenty-Fifth?” She looked puzzled. “He hasn’t done anything to merit that. No way can that son of a bitch use the Constitution to get into the Oval Office. No frigging way.”
McGee checked the mirror. A big black Cadillac CT6 pulled into the car park and crunched on the gravel as it pulled up beside them. Tinted windows. He checked his weapon in the holster but said nothing to Alex.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said. “Suzie thinks this is the real deal and there’s a good chance it’s going to happen soon, as in the next day or two. That’s why I came to you now.”
She felt dizzy. She had to control her breathing to stop hyperventilating. She did what she always did, forming her lips into a small oval and blowing the breath out in long controlled bursts with her eyes closed. When the dizziness had subsided, she opened her eyes again and noticed that her cheeks were flushed. She had to fight the panic.
“We have to tell my Dad right away,” she said, fighting to control her breathin
g. “And I need to tell Joe Hawke, too!”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Today we fight.”
Hawke scanned the faces of his team. They had fought many battles together, and many good friends had fallen on the way. The war against the Oracle and his Athanatoi cult had ground them down, stripping them of everything except their hope. Their team had been shattered, their home had been destroyed and any innocence they had left was crushed out of existence.
“And we fight hard,” he turned from the team to the enormous rock formation looming over his shoulder. The Monastery that the Oracle and the Athanatoi high command had appropriated was nestled at the very top of this place. On the center of this island in the Aegean Sea he had built his inner sanctum atop a towering column of rock nearly two thousand feet high.
“Do we fight any other way?” Scarlet dragged on the last of her cigarette and flicked the butt into the shore’s shallow waters. “I mean, Ryan fights like a girl, but it’s unwise to fuck with the rest of us, right?”
Ryan slowly extended his middle finger. “Spin baby, spin.”
“You know what, boy?”
“What?”
“Since your balls dropped I’m starting to like you.”
He blew her a kiss. “Maybe one day I can say the same of you.”
“Ouch,” Lexi said. “With an ego like yours, Cairo, that’s gotta hurt.”
Scarlet smirked. “At least since they dropped I finally have something to kick.”
“Fifteen all,” Hawke said. “Now back to business.”
Scarlet smacked a magazine into her machine pistol. “Forty-thirty actually… to me.”
Hawke gave her a weary look and shook his head. “Right, gather round. We all know what’s at stake here. At the top of this cliff is the ancient monastery which Wolff has converted into his latest headquarters. He’s using it because of the inaccessibility, but that’s not going to stop us. We go up silent and we then we go in hard.”
“Stop it, Joe,” Lexi said. “No one wants to hear about our night in Zambia together.”
Hawke opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again, speechless.