‘Well, that seemed to do the trick,’ said Carrington with a relieved expression. He wiped sweat from his brow. ‘Now, let’s get the hell out of—’
The boom of an explosion somewhere above rocked the foundations of the building. The clock shifted on the pressure plate. Carrington’s eyes widened in horror.
Before he could reach out to stop it, the clock tilted forward and smashed onto the marble floor. A piercing alarm tore through the underground vault as small springs and coils cartwheeled around them.
‘Oh shit,’ said the Crovir.
Chapter Twenty
The steel doors rumbled into life on the other side of the chamber. They raced for the closing exit.
Jackson stumbled several feet from the opening, the tablet held firmly in his arms. A snarl of irritation left Alexa’s lips. She grabbed the artifact from his grasp and pushed him toward the doorway. He darted through with a couple of feet to spare on either side and skidded around to watch her in wide-eyed horror. She gritted her teeth.
She was not going to make it.
From the other side of the doors, Yonten threw his jō staff into the closing gap.
Alexa clasped the tablet to her chest, dropped on her side, and slid under the weapon as it bowed and shattered above her, slowing the steel panels by a mere fraction of a second. She felt the whisper of air from the closing portal on the back of her head as she slipped through the exit.
She glided to a stop in front of Jackson, sprang to her feet, and dropped the stone tablet in his hands.
‘Don’t let go of it,’ she instructed curtly before handing him her bag.
He nodded, his expression hardening. He placed the artifact inside the backpack and slung it on his shoulders.
Red emergency lights guided their path to the stairs that led to the Grand Temple. Further explosions sounded in the distance above them. The slab of stone hiding the secret opening retracted with a ponderous groan seconds before they reached it. Schmidt went through first, Beretta in hand. Alexa drew the Sigs and followed a heartbeat behind him.
A cloud of smoke and plaster dust accompanied three Freemason sentries as they staggered through a door on the left. Tears streamed down their faces and they coughed and gasped hoarsely. More guards poured into the galleries above. Some of the men had bleeding wounds on their heads and hands. Their angry shouts punctuated the shrill alarm blasting through the building.
The Freemasons’ attention remained focused on the double doors that guarded the entrance to their Grand Temple.
Alexa stared at the thick bronze panels; they had buckled under the force of a significant impact. Chunks of plaster and brick littered the polished floor inside the chamber. A second later, the doors swung open in a gray billow of smoke. A squad of twenty black-clad men fitted with gas masks, machine guns, and pistols stormed inside the room.
‘Looks like you were right about that sect,’ said Schmidt grimly, glancing at Alexa.
Carrington looked pointedly at Yonten. ‘I thought you said everything would be all right,’ he said accusingly. The monk shrugged, the cryptic smile back on his lips.
One of the guards finally noticed their presence near the ceremonial chair. He shouted a warning to his comrades. Confusion dawned on the faces of the sentries as they stared from the small group by the gilded frame to the armed strangers marching across the floor of the temple.
The black-clad men slowed just beyond the end of the checkerboard floor and spread out around the dais. The two figures in the lead lifted their masks from their faces.
A muscle twitched in Alexa’s cheek.
It was the fair-skinned man with the pale blue eyes she had killed in Istanbul. The other immortal she had shot in the head stood beside him. Jackson inhaled sharply next to her.
‘Don’t kill the Freemasons,’ Alexa ordered, her muscles tightening in anticipation of the upcoming battle. She holstered her right Sig and slipped a sai out of its sheath.
Carrington grunted. ‘That might prove to be a tad difficult,’ he said, looking at the guards approaching cautiously from the periphery of the chamber.
‘Try hard,’ she snapped.
About a dozen armed sentries now stood inside the temple. More slipped through the bronze doors behind the sect members and the openings on either side of the organ loft.
Although the Freemasons seemed unsure as to whom their enemy was, Alexa sensed they would not hesitate to engage them for much longer. She knew they would be willing to fight to the death to protect the relics held within their sacred grounds. She would have to be careful not to inflict any fatal blows.
‘The authorities have already been alerted!’ shouted a bulky Freemason with red hair. His gaze shifted from the silent sect members to Alexa and the four men. ‘Put your weapons on the floor and get down on your knees!’ The barrel of his gun swung between the two groups.
‘No can do,’ said Schmidt with an unhappy shake of his head. Remorse clouded his face as he stared at his fellow Freemasons.
Alexa moved at the same time that Yonten opened his lips to shout out a warning. She raised the Sig and fired at the blue-eyed immortal just as he turned to shoot the red haired guard. His bullet thudded into the Freemason’s arm. The wounded man swore and clutched at his limb, the gun clattering out of his hand.
The immortal staggered back a step before staring at the hole over his heart. He looked up slowly, his eyes gleaming with savage zeal. His lips curled back in a grin.
‘Flak jackets?’ muttered Schmidt.
‘Looks like it,’ said Carrington grimly. ‘Inconsiderate bastards.’
Gunfire erupted inside the temple as the Freemasons started to shoot at the Rose Croix sect. Half of the black-clad men returned fire; the others charged up the steps toward the ceremonial chair.
Alexa ducked below the fist aimed at her head, punched the snarling blue-eyed immortal in the flank, and twisted to deliver a back-kick to his companion. She felt a rib snap under the heel of her boot and smiled ferociously.
She blocked a strike to her side, trapped the barrel of the blue-eyed immortal’s gun with the prongs of the sai, and pushed the weapon down. He pulled the trigger reflexively. The bullet whistled past her hip and struck the second immortal in the thigh.
A growl of rage left the blue-eyed man’s throat. It turned into a gurgle when she raised the Sig and shot him in the neck. He brought his hands to his throat, panic flashing in his eyes as blood spurted past his fingers. Alexa kicked him in the chest and sent him stumbling into a pair of sect members.
Heat streaked across her left shoulder as a bullet scorched a gash in her flesh. Scowling, she dropped to avoid a second shot from the other immortal and brought him down with a scissor kick. Her elbow slammed into his groin and she back-fisted him in the face. Satisfaction coursed through her when his nose broke under her blow.
A Freemason appeared on her right. She jumped to her feet, slipped out of the way of his punch, and head-butted him in the chin. He crumpled to the ground, unconscious. She deflected blows from three more sect members and looked around.
Schmidt and Carrington were fighting their way toward the exit on the left. About twenty feet to her right and a shorter distance still from another door, Jackson weaved and bobbed to avoid strikes to his head and body. Encumbered by the bag on his back and the precious tablet he was trying to protect, he could not avoid all the blows; blood already smeared his lips and left eyebrow, where his skin had split. His counter-punches landed on the Freemason guards around him with deadly accuracy.
Yonten stood close to Jackson and glided through a combination of martial art moves while he tackled four sect members, evading their fists, kicks, and shots with practiced ease.
Alarm flashed through Alexa when she saw a fresh wave of Freemasons charge toward the two men from the main chambe
r floor.
She leaned out of the way of the barrel of a submachine gun and took out the sect members in her path with a reverse roundhouse kick, before grabbing the three-sectional bō staff from inside her jacket. Shouting the monk’s name, she threw the weapon toward him.
Yonten kicked up against a guard’s chest, jumped, and caught the staff smoothly in midair. He had it open and delivered two swift strikes before his feet touched the ground.
Alexa looked to the left. Schmidt and Carrington had made it through the exit. She flicked the sai in her grip and darted across the floor, the blade moving in a series of fluid blocks and thrusts that rapidly incapacitated the guards in her way. The Sig sang in her other hand as she fired at the Rose Croix sect.
She reached Jackson and the monk in seconds and shouted ‘Let’s go!’ sharply as she raced past them toward the other door.
They darted through a curtained vestibule and entered a smoke-wreathed hallway outside the Grand Temple. Yonten and Jackson turned and closed the doors on the guards behind them. Alexa broke the leg of a nearby console table with a kick, grabbed the makeshift bolt, and jammed it inside the handles. Angry shouts erupted from inside the temple as the Freemasons surged against the blocked exit. The bar held.
A metallic noise suddenly reached her ears. Alexa whipped her head around. A line of armed Freemasons appeared through the clearing smoke on the right. She frowned when she saw the automatic weapons in their hands. One of men had just clicked the safety catch off his submachine gun.
Footsteps rose from the opposite end of the hallway. A group of men in assault vests rushed down the passage and stopped abruptly about twenty feet away.
Alexa recognized the uniforms of the London Metropolitan Police specialist firearms unit. Above the alarm that still clamored through the Freemasons’ Hall, she discerned the sirens of squad cars outside the building.
The first line of Met officers dropped to their knees and raised the MP5 submachine guns in their hands. Their team leader barked ‘Stop!’ before leveling his Glock 17 at Alexa and the two men.
Shadows suddenly shifted at the end of the hallway on the right. A second squad of Rose Croix sect members had materialized behind the Freemasons. The Met officer shouted a warning. The Freemason sentries looked over their shoulders.
Alexa sheathed the sai and slipped the second Sig from her body holster.
‘Stay back,’ she ordered, glancing at Jackson and the monk over her shoulder. Yonten bowed, grabbed a startled Jackson by the bag on his back, and yanked him inside the shelter of a shallow alcove next to the doors.
Adrenaline buzzed through her as she raised the Sigs toward each end of the hallway. The excitement of the fight brought a savage, fearless smile to her lips. She saw the Met officer’s eyes widen. Still grinning, Alexa squeezed the triggers of both guns and ran at the wall in front of her.
Bullets whined through the air as both groups of men fired.
She pushed up against a marble pillar, used the momentum of her leap to climb toward the ceiling, kicked off the edge of a sculptured coving, and spun head down in the air toward the middle of the hall, the Sigs still singing in her grip.
Her shots riddled the fixtures of two chandeliers. She flipped backwards and landed smoothly on her feet just as the towers of sparkling prisms crashed onto the marble floor, causing the Met officers and the Freemasons to jump back to avoid the deadly debris.
‘This way!’ she shouted. She reloaded the guns and darted straight for the scattered line of Freemasons, Jackson and Yonten on her heels.
Yells erupted behind them as the Met officers started to give chase. Several of the Freemasons raised their weapons.
Alexa jumped into a flying roundhouse kick as they charged through the fractured group. Four sentries fell to the ground. Yonten dropped in a low sweep that took out another three. He whirled the bō staff in a circle of strikes as he rose. Machine guns clattered to the floor around them.
They were past the Freemasons a heartbeat later.
Alexa raised both Sigs and fired at the Rose Croix sect a second before they pulled the triggers on their automatic guns. She was careful to aim anywhere but at their chests.
A blur flashed by her as Yonten twirled the bō in figure-of-eight spins, the staff connecting with flesh and metal with his every strike and block.
One of the black-clad men suddenly snatched at the bag on Jackson’s back. The Harvard professor wheeled around, swung an uppercut at his jaw, kneed him in the stomach, and carried on running.
Shots pelted the tiles at Alexa’s heels as they raced down the rubble-strewn passage toward the rear of the building. A bullet slashed a tear in the fabric over her right hip. She twisted, dropped to one knee, and skidded backward across the floor while she fired a barrage of warning shots at the pursuing Met officers. She rose and sprinted after Jackson and the monk.
They reached a junction and turned left. A door at the end opened into a large room. Alexa caught a glimpse of bookcases and display cabinets as they charged across a polished parquet floor.
‘Oh shit, not the Museum!’ cried Jackson, his eyes widening in alarm. He raised his arms and covered his head when the glass cases next to him shattered under a storm of bullets. Lethal fragments of glassware and porcelain streaked through the air. A stray shard slashed across the back of Alexa’s hand.
She reloaded the Sigs, jumped on a low cabinet, dropped on her back into a spinning slide across the smooth surface, and fired at the Freemasons in the galleries above them. She leapt off the edge of the glass table and raced for the exit through which Jackson and the monk had just disappeared.
They came to a bolted door. The two men stood back while Alexa shot at the padlock. She yanked the shattered metal aside and kicked open the exit. They emerged onto a road at the side of the building.
Snow fell thick and fast from the overcast sky. The lights from a cluster of squad cars and tactical intervention vehicles flashed across the street thirty feet or so from their position. A shout erupted from one of the policemen gathered in front of the Freemasons’ Hall. Alexa saw him lower the radio in his hand and point in their direction.
A bullet zinged through the doorway behind them and punched a hole in the bag on Jackson’s back.
‘Let’s go!’ snapped Alexa. She turned and took off down the street, the two men close on her heels.
Clusters of curious bystanders from neighboring bars and restaurants dotted the pavements around the Freemason building. A scream rose above the blast of the alarm still rending through the Hall and the blaring sirens of the police vehicles. Someone had spotted the guns in her hands. The crowd scattered.
The roar of an engine firing up rose behind them. Alexa glanced over her shoulder and saw the tires on one of the squad cars spin on the icy asphalt as it started to give chase. Yonten skidded to a stop in the middle of the road and turned to face the oncoming vehicle.
‘You go. I’ll stay,’ he said over his shoulder. His teeth gleamed in the night as he flashed a smile at her.
Jackson stumbled to a halt. ‘No!’ he said vehemently. ‘We’re not leaving you!’
Alexa stared into the monk’s limpid eyes with the faintest of misgivings. She nodded once, grabbed Jackson’s arm, and forcibly pulled him after her.
‘Wait!’ he yelled, struggling in her grip.
‘He’ll be fine,’ she said firmly.
Jackson’s jaw clenched. He stopped fighting her, swallowed another protest, and followed in her footsteps as she started to run.
Alexa looked back when they approached the corner of the street. She saw the monk face down the approaching police car, an impish grin on his lips. He looked like he was having fun.
The snow and sleet sweeping across the city helped them disappear in the crowd. It was several minutes before Alexa felt confident
that they had lost all traces of their pursuers.
An hour after their escape from the Freemasons’ Hall, they stopped in front of an exclusive apartment block overlooking the Thames. Though the winter storm had abated slightly, an icy wind still blew off the waters and caused their breath to mist in the night air.
‘Where are we?’ asked Jackson. He looked around curiously while she typed a code in the security keypad outside the glass doors; his lips had taken on a slightly purplish hue, and shivers racked his body.
It was the first time he had spoken to her since they left Yonten. Alexa sensed he was still upset at having abandoned the monk. ‘It’s a Crovir safe house,’ she said quietly.
The doors slid open and they entered the building. Jackson followed her across a wide lobby to a bank of elevators. A blast of warm air washed over them when they entered the lift. He shuddered, a low groan escaping his throat. She entered a second code into the interior control panel and pressed her hand against a biometric sensor.
‘How many of these safe houses do you guys have?’ He stared at the changing numbers in the electronic display next to her.
‘Six in London,’ she replied.
The lift stopped at the penthouse level of the building. The doors opened soundlessly to reveal a cavernous, dark space. The lights of the city cast a dim glow through the glass wall on the other side of an expansive floor.
Alexa stepped out onto the heated marble tiles and said, ‘Lights on’ in a loud, clear voice.
Jackson blinked when brightness flared into life around them. He walked out of the elevator and came to an abrupt halt. The metal doors closed behind him with a soft ping.
Given the external appearance of the building, she suspected he had been expecting a sleek and modern décor. Alexa could tell he was pleasantly shocked by the rich colors and elegant lines of the priceless antique furnishings that adorned the luxurious suite.
King's Crusade (Seventeen) Page 21