by Rick Jones
As Mr. Archimedes was lifted and carried off his feet and to a distant part of the lobby, Mr. Michelangelo raced for cover only to have a round strike him in the left side. As he lay on the floor sensing the encroaching wave of numbness and shock, he looked at his wounded side. It was horrific. It appeared as though a shark had taken a clean bite with the radius a perfect half-circle.
Then as he looked at the enemy within the shadows beyond the gates, he saw the shape cast aside his weapon that had gone dry, then run to the cable-car.
Finding incredible reserve in what Mr. Michelangelo knew would be his final act, the man raised himself to his feet, held a hand to his wound, and in a gait that was half-jogging, half-stumbling, gave chase.
* * *
Elias Caspari never felt such power at the point of his fingertips as he sprayed round after round into the lobby. Bullets smashed uncontested into stone and marble, the minigun an unstoppable force. Then as he moved the weapon from right to left, he saw one of his enemies being ripped apart from the impacts. Blood gouts and gore erupted, the man dead before he hit the floor, and then he continued with his cross action to strike the second man until the weapon clicked empty, though the barrels continued to rotate with a metallic sound.
Removing the harness that held the weapon to his person, Elias Caspari tossed the minigun aside and ran for the cable-car.
Getting inside and closing the door behind him, he opened a panel and manually enabled the battery source. As the lights kicked on and the engine whirred towards full power, Caspari depressed the green button with the pad of his thumb. After a hitch, the cable-car started to descend toward the platform across the gorge.
Because Caspari was approximately a mile away from freedom, he couldn’t help his smile because he knew he had beaten the odds. More so, he had beaten the Consortium.
The cable-car continued its descent.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Salt.
With his shock-white hair against a blood-red face and stark pale eyes, he was the perfect picture of madness as he scrambled upward along the skinny and winding staircase to reach topside.
His world was becoming unglued, unhitched, the chaos of his surroundings about to get greater.
While he was descending to the topside level, he heard the battery of machinegun fire.
Then as he stood and waited in darkness for it to subside, it finally did so twenty seconds later.
And then silence.
Twenty seconds later, Salt continued his climb towards freedom.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Mr. Spartan’s climb was exhaustive. He had discovered the doorway Salt had used as his escape route with the stairway behind it thin and winding, which would no doubt contest Spartan’s bad knee on his climb.
Taking the staircase, Mr. Spartan clenched his teeth against the gruesome and burgeoning pain, which always seemed to explode with every step taken. He hitched in his stride and forced his pace, despite the white-hot agony as Salt drew distance between them.
He thought of his wife, her smile, and the face of his daughter, a pretty girl who would have blossomed into a beautiful woman who would have provided him with grandchildren. But Salt had stolen that from him by taking away his future, his lineage. And now with darkness and pain in his heart, with indescribable misery he had endured over the years, he would do the same to Salt. Even as stars exploded before his eyes with every step taken, he would not be denied. So, with the heart of a warrior and the soul of a man possessed, Mr. Spartan continued the chase.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Mr. Plato’s life had been mapped out on the day he was born. Like all members of the Consortium, membership is by hereditary peerage only. He had been raised to believe that most people who never wielded a weapon were basically good of heart. But until all people were like them, then there would always be a need for the Consortium, who would need to keep their swords ready against the Elias Casparis of the world.
Granted, these techs had operated for misguided reasons which were often for financial gain. But that alone did not disbar people like Mr. Plato from doing his job as a member of the Consortium. These technicians wielded great minds that seemed to aid Elias Caspari in his venture, all employers who were hellbent on tearing the world apart. Still, they deserved their consequences to be mandated by members of The Hague, which was a court of justice. Not a judgment of death.
Mr. Plato hustled the group to the southernmost position of the mountain, which was quite a distance from the armory stations. Still, with the Semtex charges posted at the most desirable positions closer to the north face of the mountain’s horn, there was no guarantee they would survive the aftermath. However, with thick stone walls to hide behind, there was still a chance greater than zero.
Staring at the frightened faces around him, Mr. Plato wondered if this mountain was to become his final resting place, his tomb.
Then he looked at his watch.
. . . 07:45 . . .
. . . 07:44 . . .
. . . 07:43 . . .
In just under eight minutes, Mr. Plato would get his answer.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Mr. Michelangelo made it to the precipice before falling to his knees. He was losing a massive amount of blood, which caused the edges of his eyes to darken and close in.
From where he knelt, he could see the cable car descending to the valley across the gorge. In a few minutes, if he didn’t respond appropriately, Elias Caspari would make his way to the streets of Lucerne and eventually find his way off the grid.
Mr. Michelangelo took in a series of deep and regulated breaths, hoping that this would fight off the sensation of losing consciousness. Seeing the cable-car draw further away, he whispered, “Not on my watch.” Then he labored to his feet with a hand to his side, while blood spilled amply through the gaps of his clenching fingers.
Mr. Michelangelo, having made his way to the gun turret, stared upward. The rungs of the ladder leading to the overhead platform seemed to be endless, the climb heavenward. Then with a strong constitution and will, he began his upward hike.
Ascending with a hand so slick with blood that he nearly lost his grip on a couple of occasions, he was able to reach the top. The high-caliber cannon sitting on its pivoting platform looked like a throne to him, something wonderful. Staggering to his feet, he quickly realized that trying to maintain his consciousness was a fight he was eventually going to lose—probably sooner than later—so he took the seat behind the weapon.
Using the keypad to maneuver the cannon into position, the platform began to rotate until the twin barrels of the weapon were positioned directly over the gorge. The moving cable-car was now in sight. Positioning the barrels to draw a bead on the moving target, Mr. Michelangelo set the scope, put the gondola within the night-vision sight, and set off a wondrous barrage of gunfire that filled the night sky with dashes of moving light.
* * *
Elias Caspari heard the multiple pops of gunfire. Confused, he looked out the rear windows of the cable-car to glimpse the precipice of Deep Mountain. At first, he saw sparks of light and brief flashes, only to realize that they were tracer rounds being fired in his direction from the turret gun.
With his mouth becoming a perfect O that worked in mute protest, these tracer rounds approached with incredible speed and velocity, then smashed their way through metal and glass. As Caspari fell to the floor and covered his head, openings the size of cantaloupes magically appeared against the walls of the cab. The vehicle began to rock heavily against the overhead wires as the rounds continued to pelt the gondola in a wave of strikes. Heavy-caliber rounds continued to shred the vehicle as if its walls were fashioned from rice paper, thin and fragile. Glass continued to shatter and break. And rounds continued to assault the arm that connected the cable-car to the wire.
As the gondola continued to rock heavily from side to side, heavy rounds ricocheted off the arm, the wheels, smashing and
denting them, then warping them until they became nonfunctional and useless.
The car continued to swing like a pendulum, back and forth with reckless abandon.
Elias Caspari was screaming, begging for it to stop.
But bullets continued to tear at the car and at its supporting arm and wheels that drove the vehicle, until they could no longer sustain its weight. As the arm bent slowly downward in its weakened state, as the cab began to drop from the cord, the gondola system finally gave way and the car dropped to the valley below. Elias Caspari, having been tossed from the remains of the vehicle, cried until his screams eventually fell silent.
Witnessing this from his seat high on the mountain, Mr. Michelangelo leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and cleansed his lungs with a final and departing breath.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
. . . 06:32 . . .
. . . 06:31 . . .
. . . 06:30 . . .
Kimball Hayden climbed the final ten feet of the shaft to the lobby above. After parting the doors, he was greeted by a cold and blistering wind. The entire front entry was nothing but a vast opening to the precipice. Shattered glass and twisted framework lay on a broken marble floor that had been riddled by gunfire. Lying on the floor in the lobby’s central area was Mr. Archimedes, whose body was in ruins. Mr. Michelangelo was nowhere to be seen.
Running through the compromised area of the facility, Kimball Hayden quickly found himself on the landing with a cold wind washing over his face to give him an immediate fresh-scrubbed look. The chilling effect also braced him for the coming challenge of rappelling down the cliffside. Then as he stepped into the buffeting wind, he noticed by the helipad the pared back doors to a subterranean lift. What had emerged from them was something he could only wonder about.
Hayden quickly examined the area to his left and then his right. There was nothing but surrounding darkness as a howling gust continued to wind its way along the landing.
Then he saw the cable-car station and noticed that the line was down, the gondola having been rendered ineffective for escape.
Feeling the rod and crucible affixed to his back, Kimball Hayden, who felt like Atlas who carried the world upon his shoulders, ran for the south face of the mountain.
With athletic agility and running prowess, it didn’t take long for him to reach the rim of the south-face side of the mountain. Once there, he checked his watch.
. . . 4:32 . . .
. . . 4:31 . . .
. . . 4:30 . . .
Looking over the edge and seeing nothing but a maelstrom of swirling snow and darkness, Kimball grabbed one of the duffel bags and emptied the contents on the snow-laden ground. What he was looking for was an NVG headset to see him through the downward journey. After grabbing the piton gun and tossing it aside, that’s when he found the NVG unit. Just as he was about to fit the unit over his head, a shape stood over him.
Its face was raven dark, yet its eyes were in stark contrast to its features, white against black. As the wind kicked up, the shock-white hairs along the shape’s head began to dance and undulate like a Medusa crown.
Salt!
If nothing else, Hayden thought, the man was resilient, if not unstoppable.
Salt extended a hand towards Hayden. “Give me the Eye of Moses,” he said with renowned and even measure.
Hayden got to his feet and stepped away from the edge. “No.”
“Give me the Eye of Moses.”
“No.”
Salt dropped his arm. “Are you going to make me kill you for it?” Salt asked him plainly. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
But Hayden dismissed Salt as a deceiver who would do anything to keep his secrets guarded from any possible chance of being compromised. Salt had every intention of killing him.
“It’s over, Salt,” Hayden said. Then he winced at this knowing that it sounded like a scripted line from a bad movie. But he didn’t know what else to say.
But Salt did. “For you it surely is. That I will admit.” Then he began to move on Hayden.
Hayden ground his feet against the surface and waited.
“I can kill you a dozen different ways,” Salt stated calmly as he slowly closed the gap between them. “But I choose to throw you off the cliffside. I want you to experience the long fall, to feel your heart beat its last few terrifying moments. And I want your mind to race with the fear of knowing that you are about to die on impact.” He took another step closer. “Then I will rappel to the bottom and simply take from your broken body the staff once belonging to Aaron, as well as the crucible. And, of course, the Eye of Moses . . . It’ll be that easy.”
“You know something,” Kimball told him. “You think too much of yourself.”
“You think so? You don’t believe that I can be your equal? Perhaps even better?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Kimball told him. “Since I don’t think you are, I’ll give you the opportunity to prove me wrong.”
That was when Salt charged him.
The two men grappled with Kimball Hayden relying on the techniques taught to him by the masters in the trade long ago—masters who were the elites when Kimball was a novice, a student. But Salt must have shared the same classes, learned from the same courses. Whenever Hayden made a move, Salt would make a simple maneuver to top Hayden. Nevertheless, Kimball maintained his own until Salt began to push him towards the mountain’s edge.
Kimball Hayden began to throw punches, straight jabs and roundhouses, only for Salt to deflect the blows and to force Hayden closer to the falloff.
Punches, blows, and kicks from Kimball Hayden had little effect, the Vatican Knight realizing that Salt was equal in scale in regard to combat. No one had such skill since Ezekiel, someone who he had trained in the past and a Vatican Knight who had gone rogue, the man eventually becoming the Professor Moriaty to his Sherlock Holmes. Here, on this mountaintop, was Kimball’s equal and a man with a superior skillset.
As the edge neared, as frenzied snow swirled in the darkness below, Kimball Hayden thought about his Shari and wondered if she would be all right after he was gone.
Then there was muffled sound, a pop.
The point of a piton shot through Salt’s leg with the tip of the dagger glistening with blood. Salt, backing away, took to a knee in great suffering.
Mr. Spartan, who appeared weak and feeble and barely able to stand, held the piton gun in his hand. He was breathing with difficulty as though he had just walked a historic distance beneath a glaring desert sun. Then to Hayden, he said: “Get those relics to where they need to be.”
“What about you?”
“To hell with me!” Mr. Spartan returned sharply. Then he turned to look at a wounded Salt. “I have my own agenda to deal with.”
Without hesitation, Kimball Hayden, after setting the NVG goggles, set the wire properly around him for a quick and safe rappel, looked up to see Mr. Spartan close on Salt with the piton gun in his hand, and began his descent. At the rate he was going, Hayden knew that he would hit the floor within ten minutes.
* * *
As Mr. Spartan struggled across the snow-covered surface to reach his quarry, he could see that there was nothing benign in the way Salt looked at him. Trying to get to his feet but failing, Salt lashed out with his right hand, the move so swift that Mr. Spartan failed to recognize the motion that knocked the piton gun from his grip.
“You are a suicidal one, aren’t you?” Salt asked with malice. “I guess it’s time for you to join your wife and daughter.”
“Not yet!” cried Mr. Spartan, who had to yell over the howling wind. “Not until I sit back and watch as your life slips away and descends into hell.”
“Yeah, well, you first!” Salt threw a punch to Mr. Spartan’s wounded knee and at the point of his weakness, which dropped the man to the snow. That was when Salt noticed the timer of his watch counting down.
. . . 1:16 . . .
. . . 1:15
. . .
. . . 1:14 . . .
If there was one thing that was a constant to Salt, a countdown in this business was never a good thing.
“What’s this mean?” Salt asked him as he shook Mr. Spartan’s wrist. “What?”
“It means that you have about a minute to live.”
Salt reared back and stared at Mr. Spartan with an incredulous look. Then: “You set charges.”
Mr. Spartan did not respond.
“You’re a dead man anyway,” Salt told him. “You’re not worth my time.” Struggling to get to the second of the two rappelling lines and then looking over the edge, he was able to see Kimball Hayden slip out of sight and into the swirling maelstrom. Then he pulled on the second wire. A titanium cord, strong and durable.
After attaching himself to the line properly for a safe downward climb, Salt, wounded leg and all, began to descend along the south face in an attempt to catch up with Kimball Hayden.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
. . . 00:46 . . .
. . . 00:45 . . .
. . . 00:44 . . .
Hayden was about 200 feet from topside when he noticed Salt rappelling on the second line.
You’ve got to be kidding me!
The man looked as if he had practiced the maneuver his entire life.
Then Hayden started to rappel by taking longer, and less safe, jumps from the wall with thirty-foot leaps from point to point.
Salt, however, was less cautious, or perhaps overly confident, in his maneuvers as he descended upon Hayden’s position along the wall. By Kimball’s estimate, Salt would be by his side approximately two hundred feet above the valley floor.
They continued to skip off the south face with the two plunging at an incredible rate of speed, with safety no longer a considered factor in this game of cat and mouse.