“Under the desk,” he hissed at Duggan.
“Under the desk? That’s the first place they’ll—”
“Do it.”
Crouch took cover at the side of the big desk as the door handle rattled. A moment later someone kicked out. The frame shuddered. Another kick and the frame splintered. It took three kicks to crash through the door. Men wearing black helmets and oversized black jackets that covered Kevlar vests approached. They looked the part, but Crouch’s experienced eyes saw otherwise. The weapons they carried were outdated; they shouted at each other in different languages; they moved against each other rather than flowing fluidly into the room.
Sirens split the night.
Crouch’s heart lifted. Nevertheless, he had no idea what these men wanted. Did they wish to kill him, talk to him, abduct him? With that in mind he fired a shot high into the ceiling.
“Don’t come any closer. We’re armed and the police are already here.”
Three mercenaries stood in the doorway. They all ducked at the sound of gunfire. One returned fire and was screamed at by one of his colleagues.
Crouch took that as a good sign. “What do you want?”
The apparent leader waved a hand. “Get him.”
Crouch saw the hesitation in the men gathered around the leader. This was a shoddy crew, but even a shoddy crew could be tough to beat. They were more than likely to have been around death and mayhem their entire lives. When two men started forward, Crouch rose and shot them both in their vests. The men went down, crying out. Crouch ducked back down. As he did so, two more mercs sprinted straight at him.
Crouch rose fast, firing as he rose above the desk. He tagged the first merc, sending him sprawling headlong. The other kept coming, jumping over his colleague’s falling figure and landing right before Crouch.
He fired the gun, but the man grabbed his wrist first and jerked it to the right. The bullet flew wide, taking out an old novel and part of a wooden shelf. Crouch was livid. He jabbed stiffened fingers into the man’s throat, going for debilitating moves for more than one reason.
First, he didn’t have time to mess around. Second, he was in his fifties. Fighting mercs didn’t come as easy to him now as it used to, SAS training or not.
The man staggered away, gasping. Crouch now saw four more enter the room, all with weapons trained on him. He was in position to fire and ran the options through his mind. The sirens were right outside. Could he hang on long enough? Did these men have a clever exit strategy?
He needed to play for time. He didn’t drop the gun but trained it on the man he thought of as the leader. “What do you want?”
“Put the gun down.” The voice was guttural with an English accent.
“I’ll shoot you first.”
Without having to be told the man’s accomplices started creeping forward. There was eight feet between them all now. Crouch understood his impossible position.
“The cops are here,” he tried again.
“We have men keeping them busy.”
Crouch cursed to himself. Duggan was staying quiet under the table. A snap decision had to be made.
“Stay back. I will shoot you.”
The leader’s patience ran out. He took up a firing stance, left leg in front of the right, sighted on Crouch and pulled his trigger. Crouch, shocked, felt the bullet impact his right shoulder. The pain exploded through him like countless lightning bolts. He dropped the Glock and staggered, gripping his right shoulder where blood was flowing.
The mercs swarmed him, kicking his gun away and punching him to the ground. Crouch groaned in agony. Other mercs skirted him and reached under the desk to drag a dumbstruck Duggan out into the open.
“That him?” a merc asked.
“Yeah,” the leader said. “Bring him.”
Crouch, even in his pain, was shocked into silence. From the beginning he’d assumed the mercs were here for him. Not for Hugh Duggan.
What the fuck is going on?
As if in answer, the lead merc bent down before him until their eyes met—Crouch’s wide and blue, the merc’s black and hard behind the helmet.
“The bullet’s a through and through. You’ll be fine. We’re taking your friend. Wait for our call. If you don’t act on it, we’ll start chopping him up, bit by bit. Got it?”
Crouch struggled to speak, fighting pain and surprise. The only thing he ended up doing was blinking at a rapid pace.
“Got it?” The leader grabbed his shirt, hauled on it, and shook him hard.
Crouch gritted his teeth as more pain exploded through his body. “Yes,” he grated. “Yes, I got it.”
The leader nodded and signaled to his men who started a fast withdrawal from the room. The leader lingered a few seconds, eyeballing Crouch.
“Wait for our call,” he repeated. “Tell no one.” And then he was gone.
Crouch reached for his cellphone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A few hours later the entire Gold Team had reassembled.
Crouch paced the room in front of three incredibly different people. First, there was Caitlyn Nash, a bit of an introvert, haunted by the abuse her father had dealt out to her mother that ended in death; frazzled and fried and trying her best to remain in touch with a world that had never cared for her.
Next, was Rob Russo, a man-mountain of an ex-soldier, an experienced operator with a tough exterior. Crouch often imagined bullets would deflect off Russo’s big bones and he’d take him any time in a charge against a rhino. Russo was a character that had seen the worst the world could offer, but you’d never know it. He didn’t talk about the bad times, nor the good times. When the rage took him, several times now, he had turned into a berserker, unable to control it, and when he first met Alicia Myles, he had taken an instant dislike.
After several missions together they had formed a mutual respect, but the pair were far from buddies.
Crouch bit his lip now, studying the final person in the room. She had arrived last, flying in from Europe following a long debrief after her latest mission with her own Strike Force Special Forces team. Crouch understood it to be something to do with Somali pirates and an old Russian informant. Alicia must have fared well. She looked healthy and happy apart from a slightly offset nose which she’d broken during the last mission. Her blond hair was cut short, her mouth fixed in that sarcastic expression he was familiar with just before she cut someone in half with her caustic wit. He noticed how she sat easily, ready to work. It wasn’t too long since she had seemed ready and able to destroy half the world to overcome her problems.
“I’m gonna assume everyone’s okay,” Crouch said. “We don’t have time for pleasantries or catching up. You’re all here and that’s enough.” He went on to describe the attack on his home and the kidnapping of Hugh Duggan.
“They shot you?” Alicia asked with a raise of the eyebrows.
“Not sure it counts,” Crouch said. “The slug went right through.”
“Nah,” Alicia said. “You can barely claim that as a scratch.”
Crouch nodded. The bloody wound hurt like hell, but he was used to hiding aches and pains in the middle of an operation.
“I have no idea why they took Hugh, but have to assume it’s got something to do with our latest mission.”
That made them sit forward. The promise of a new mission always caught their attention. Crouch went on to describe Sally Hope’s request and the mystery that surrounded it.
“Hugh and I were just getting into it when the mercs stormed the place.”
“You think they had something to do with the theft?” Russo growled.
“It’s possible. They looked capable, but not even close to Special Forces’ level. Weapons were old, probably secondhand. Their leader didn’t seem in total control.”
“The weapons can be explained,” Caitlyn said. “If the merc team is based outside the UK, which by what you’ve told us it seems they are, the weapons would have had to be purchased here, around London.”
Crouch nodded. “Well, they came for Hugh, a bloody Oxford professor. Not me. What do you make of that?”
“What’s his specialty?”
“English.” Crouch had to laugh. “Plain old English. You don’t kidnap a man for that.”
“Why did you contact him?” Caitlyn asked with an astute turn of thought.
“Like me, he dabbles in archaeological investigation in his spare time. He’s a font of information and a world-class researcher.”
Caitlyn spread her hands. “Sounds like a connection to me. If the mercs, or whomever they’re working for, stole the treasures, they may need some expertise to identify them.”
Crouch saw the sense in that, but other events didn’t quite fit. How had they known Duggan was here? Crouch hadn’t thought about the professor in years before Sally called him. Could they have followed him from the uni? If so, then why had they come well-armed? And how had they known the layout to Crouch’s home?
“More importantly,” he said aloud. “Why tell me to wait on their call?”
“That is the big question,” Russo said and then started looking around. “Shouldn’t you guys be researching or something? If we’re going after these mercs and treasure thieves we’re gonna need information.”
Crouch nodded at Caitlyn. “He’s right.”
The ex-MI6 analyst plucked her laptop from its case by her feet and placed it across her knees. “Starting now. Any preferences?”
“Treasures lost in Manila galleon sinkings,” Crouch said. “With a view to items that might not have been on the manifests.”
Caitlyn tapped her screen. “That’s a year’s worth of work right there.”
“I know. But I’ll give you a day.”
“Not a lot for us to do,” Alicia said, crossing her legs and pointing at Russo. “Except sit here and look good.”
Russo glared at her. Alicia pouted at him. “Wanna get a room, Robster? Kill ten minutes?”
“Not if you were the last woman on earth.”
“Can’t handle all this?”
“Don’t want it. Not my type.”
“What is your type? I’ve never seen you with a woman.”
Russo looked away. “None of your business.”
Crouch saw a brief sadness cross Russo’s eyes and quickly stepped in. “Alicia, I need to talk to you about one of your recent missions. The Fabergé heist. Did they really locate all the lost eggs?”
It was a question he’d been saving up for her, but it helped do the trick. Alicia left Russo alone and walked over to him. She perched herself on the edge of his desk and opened her mouth to answer but then Crouch’s landline rang.
Instant adrenalin flooded his system. “That could be them. Get ready.”
Russo, Caitlyn and Alicia walked over to the desk. Crouch reached out and jabbed the speakerphone.
“Hello? This is Crouch.”
“Can you hear your friend, Michael Crouch?”
The harsh words were succeeded by a wail of agony. Crouch recognized Duggan’s tone and said so.
“Leave him alone and tell me what you want.”
You didn’t play with people like these; you got to the nitty gritty of it straight away.
“Good. You sound invested. Let me be clear. I understand that you have no clue what is happening right now. That said, if you don’t get up to speed, your friend is gonna lose some digits live on air. We don’t need his digits. We can type any messages for him. Are we on the same page?”
Crouch considered the straight-talking, clipped tones of the caller. He sounded educated, harsh, and cold-blooded. Death meant nothing to him. Murder came easy. He spoke good English, but sounded East-European. He was the boss. Crouch knew that by the way he spoke—assuming power, confident that his orders would be obeyed.
“We are,” he said. “What should I call you?”
“Akhon,” was the immediate reply. “Now, to save your friend and some assorted body parts, I want you to find four people.”
There was a pause. Crouch frowned at the others in further confusion. Nothing about this mission was making any sense at all.
“Find four people?” he repeated. “Honestly, I’m at a loss.”
“I understand, because you don’t know the truth about the lost treasure of the Santa Azalea. I do. Are you ready to listen?”
“I doubt that I have a choice.” Crouch couldn’t stop the words escaping his mouth, though he knew it was the wrong thing to say.
“Don’t you want to know?”
Crouch admitted silently that he did. It was like searching for a long-forgotten artifact and knowing you were close. The itch was real.
“Go on.”
Akhon laughed. “Are you tracing this call?”
“No.”
“Good. It is being bounced off seventy towers replicated all over the world. You will not locate me. And if you try, I will know.”
“Understood.”
“Good. Then listen to the crazy tale I am about to tell you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Four people masterminded the theft of the Santa Azalea treasures right from under the noses of the crew that discovered it. These four came to my attention months ago, when they were purchasing items from underground criminal enterprises that I own. Before you ask, no I don’t keep track of everything I sell indirectly. But when certain interesting items pop up—I tend to take note.”
“Interesting items?”
“Combinations of items. Material that you can buy on the level, but don’t want to because it will leave a trace. First, they required special outboards to retrofit a boat. Then heavy lifting gear, the quietest on the market. Fast underwater propulsion scooters. And hardware. Some of the best handguns on the market. A military-level comms system. All this, and more, caught my attention.”
Crouch read far more into that. “Because, like all criminals, you saw an opportunity to double-cross them after the job was done?”
“You are a fast study, which is good. Yes. To cut a very long story short, I saw an opportunity to put a tail on these four, find out what they were planning and, potentially, take them after they had gotten the goods.”
“Classy,” Alicia said.
“I thought so too. But they bought their gear through my contacts, giving me the means and opportunity to steal everything they stole. No honor among thieves, as you know.”
Crouch listened as Akhon bragged some more, every word clinical and lacking emotion. Already, he feared what this man would do to Hugh Duggan even if they did as he asked.
“And now to the four people I want you to find. I will email you all the information I have on them, which will help. For almost two months now I have been scouring the world for them, searching every nook and cranny. But I have failed to find them, and my network, as you can probably imagine, is vast and quite rightly, feared. These four people are expert thieves and expert ghosts. I have not been able to find them.”
Crouch took a guess as to what happened. “So they stole the treasure not only out from under the salvage crew’s noses but from under your noses too? Oh, that’s clever.”
“I am glad you think so. We watched them night and day. We couldn’t get too close because, of course, we knew their reps by then and didn’t want to tip our hand. My best men were on the job. On the night of the theft we were watching them over the Pacific, using fishing boats and drones, but somehow they got wind of us. They ran with the treasure. Then... they concealed it somewhere and went into hiding.”
“How do you know they stashed it?”
“They only brought up a few crates, but that shit was heavy. There’s not a chance in hell they could have gotten far carrying it.”
Crouch went through it all in his mind. The whole Santa Azalea escapade made more sense now. Specialist thieves had taken the rich pickings. But they hadn’t escaped with it. They themselves were on the run now, and the treasure had vanished once again.
“Shit, that’s a mess,” Alici
a said.
“Again, I agree with Alicia.”
Crouch sent a hard, surprised glance around the room. “You know us?”
“Yes, and I know how good you are at finding things. Treasure. People. Gold. You can now find people for me.”
“We don’t hunt people.”
“That’s not true anymore.”
Crouch realized he would get precisely nowhere with Akhon. The truth was, he and Caitlyn were good at treasure hunting. Russo and Alicia were the streetwise soldiers with military resources. To be blunt, Akhon was right. Crouch did have the ability to track not only the four people, but the treasure itself.
“What is your answer?” Akhon asked.
Crouch sighed. “I really have no choice, do I?”
“That depends on whether you want your friend to keep breathing.”
“How do I know you will keep your word?”
“A tough one for you.”
Akhon offered no other answer. Crouch shook his head. The deadly size and scope of this mission was beyond unreasonable.
“We’re gonna need some time.”
“I have been searching for them for two months. I give you one week. Every day after that, your friend loses a digit.”
“You really are desperate to start chopping.” Alicia hissed. “Why don’t you just start with your own worthless fucking tongue?”
“When we meet you will pay dearly for that.”
Akhon ended the call. Crouch frowned, wondering at that final comment, but then compartmentalized it and started forming a plan.
“Caitlyn and I,” he said, “will start on the treasure—what it is and where it might be. Russo and Alicia—I need you to track these four expert criminals down. Use all resources. Don’t rest. Hugh Duggan is my friend and I do feel responsible. Please... we’re doing this for him and for Sally. Her father was also my friend.”
Alicia was already on her feet. “Don’t worry,” she said with uncharacteristic softness. “We’ll find Duggan and bring him back in one piece.”
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