by James Becker
Bronson’s pulse began to race. The two stones obviously formed a kind of safe, and whatever was hidden inside the cavity had been secreted away from the elements for two millennia. That made sense. It wasn’t just the bodies themselves that were important: it was whatever had been buried with them.
He took a couple of pictures of the two stones, then tried lifting off the upper slab. It was stuck fast. He’d need to increase his leverage if he was going to be able to move the stone lid.
Bronson crawled back to the mouth of the cave and called out to Angela.
“I’ve found something else,” he said, “but I need the crowbar to get inside it.”
“Hang on a minute.”
For a few seconds there was silence, then Bronson heard the clatter of steel on rock and the end of the tool appeared in the narrow entrance to the chamber.
“Thanks.” He crawled back to the far end of the cave and slid the end of the crowbar into the sealing wax. But the wax, or whatever it was, was a lot tougher than it looked. He tried again, this time ramming the tool firmly between the two slabs, then tried to lever off the upper stone.
It remained obstinately in place. He was going to have to break the wax seal around most of the edge of the stone before he would be able to move it. He guessed that the seal was airtight, which at least meant that whatever was inside the stone “safe”
would probably be in good condition. Bronson jammed the crowbar into the wax again, wrestled it sideways and then pulled it out.
There was a sudden rush of air from inside the object, almost like an exhaled breath, the sound of a faint sigh, and Bronson leaned back in alarm. Then he shook himself.
It was just trapped air, obviously.
He began repeating the process all the way around the edge of the stone.
“There’s another one,” the pilot shouted, and again Mandino stared through the windshield in the direction the man was pointing.
Close to a rock face a couple of miles away was the unmistakable shape of an off-road vehicle. It was the third they’d seen, and Mandino was beginning to wonder if he’d overestimated Bronson. Maybe he’d hired the Toyota in preparation for the search, but hadn’t yet identified the location where he was going to start.
“Check it out,” Mandino ordered, and the pilot turned the helicopter toward the distant vehicle and began descending.
Bronson had cracked the seal around most of the stone, and again inserted the crowbar under the front edge of it and pressed down. This time the stone shifted very slightly. He increased the pressure on the crowbar gently. With a sudden crack, the wax seal finally surrendered its grip and the stone lid moved sideways and tumbled to the floor of the cave.
Bronson reached into the shallow recess. He pulled out two wooden tablets about the size and shape of modern paperback books, and a very small scroll. The latter was remarkably similar in appearance to the one they’d recovered from the skyphos, but he’d never seen anything like the tablets before. Each consisted of two flat pieces of wood, one of the long sides secured with a strip of what looked like a kind of wire as a rudimentary hinge. Small holes had been driven through the other three edges, and pieces of thread were looped through these, apparently as a means of preventing the object from being opened. All three relics appeared to be in excellent condition.
He took out his digital camera, checked that he still had plenty of space on the data card, and took several more pictures.
Outside the cave, Angela was leaning against a rock, her face upturned toward the sun.
She suddenly became aware of an unmistakable throbbing sound and peered around the rock. Still some distance away, but undoubtedly heading straight toward them, was a helicopter.
She scrambled down to the cave entrance and yelled inside.
“Chris! There’s a chopper heading straight for us.”
“There’s someone moving down by those rocks,” the pilot said, “next to the jeep. It looked like a woman.”
“Excellent,” Mandino muttered. “Now we’ve got them.” He turned in his seat and nodded to Rogan. “Get ready,” he ordered.
Bronson grabbed the two booklike objects and the scroll, and backed away hurriedly. At the entrance, he passed them to Angela, then wriggled out as quickly as he could. As he emerged into the daylight, he could see the helicopter flaring as it prepared to land about fifty yards away.
“Get in the car,” he yelled.
They ran across to the Toyota and climbed inside. Angela reached over to the backseat, grabbed a towel she’d brought along and carefully wrapped the relics in it, then put the bundle in the glove box in front of her. Bronson started the engine, slammed the gear lever into first and powered the big vehicle across the plateau and away from the cave.
“For Christ’s sake, land this thing,” Mandino shouted, as he watched the Toyota roar away from the rock face.
He wasn’t worried that Bronson had already driven off—he knew that the paved road was more than a mile away and that the chopper could easily catch up with the fleeing vehicle long before it got there. His first priority was to see what the Englishman had found.
“I can’t,” the pilot said. “The ground’s so uneven I can’t risk putting it down. There are rocks everywhere. The best I can do is bring it to a low hover so you and your men can jump out.”
“Don’t explain it to me, you idiot! Just do it.”
The pilot lowered the collective lever until the right-hand skid touched the ground, then kept the aircraft level in a hover.
Mandino ripped off his headset and climbed out, followed by Rogan and the two picciotti. The four men ran across to the exposed cave entrance.
“ ‘Hic Vanidici Latitant,’ ” Mandino said, staring at the three letters carved above the mouth of the chamber. If they’d frightened Bronson off before he’d managed to search the cave thoroughly, that would be the end of the matter. If the Englishman had taken anything away from the site, they’d have to stop him. And they’d have to do it before he got off the hillside. “You,” he ordered, pointing at the smaller of his two men, “get inside and find out what’s in there.”
Obediently, the man stripped off his jacket and shoulder holster. Rogan handed him a flashlight, and he wriggled inside the cave.
Less than thirty seconds later, his head popped out again.
“There are only two skeletons in here,” he called out. “Very old.”
“Forget them,” Mandino ordered. “I know all about them. What you’re looking for are books or scrolls, anything like that.”
The man vanished back inside the cave, but reappeared after a few minutes.
“There’s nothing like that in there,” he said, “but in the far corner there’s a kind of stone box, just a hollowed-out rock with another flat stone used as a lid. It’s empty, and there’re some marks in the dust inside it. I think there was definitely something in it, but it’s been taken out.”
Mandino cursed. “Right, back to the chopper,” he ordered. “We’ve got to stop Bronson, no matter what it takes.”
24
Angela was strapped in tight, but had turned around in her seat to check behind them.
“Any sign of them?” Bronson yelled, over the roar of the engine and the crashing of the suspension as the Toyota bounced over the rutted and uneven ground.
“Nothing yet,” she shouted back. “How far to the main road?”
“Too bloody far. That chopper’ll overtake us any time now.”
The helicopter lifted off the moment the four men belted themselves in, and turned immediately to the west, heading toward the edge of the plateau and the route Mandino knew Bronson must have taken to get back to the main road.
He turned around in his seat. “We must stop them before they reach the road,” he said, and pointed to the man sitting beside Rogan. “You’re the best shot. When we get in front of them, use your Kalashnikov, and try to disable the jeep. Aim for the tires and the engine if you can. If it won’t stop, then hit
the cab, but I’d prefer the two of them alive if possible.”
The man took his AK-47 assault rifle, removed the curved magazine and cleared the round from the breech. He checked that the cartridges were loaded properly, slammed the magazine back home and cocked the weapon.
“I’m ready,” he said.
The other man reached over, slid the side door of the helicopter backward and locked it in the open position.
In the front seat, Mandino leaned forward, searching the terrain below the helicopter for the fleeing off-road vehicle. Then he pointed ahead, at a plume of dust rising from the rough and barely visible track that snaked down the side of the hill in front of them.
“There it is,” he yelled.
The pilot nodded, pitched the nose of the helicopter farther down and accelerated, heading toward a point lower on the hillside.
Bronson was driving harder than he’d ever done in his life. He had no doubt who was in the helicopter. And he was equally certain exactly what would happen to them if they didn’t get away.
Angela grabbed at Bronson’s arm and pointed out to the left, where the helicopter was passing alongside, about fifty yards away at low level, effortlessly overtaking them.
“There it is,” she shouted.
Bronson took his eyes off the road for a bare second. The chopper was close enough for him to see that one of the men was holding an assault rifle.
“Shit, they’ve got a Kalashnikov,” he yelled. “Hold on tight.”
The helicopter descended in front of them, dropping out of sight behind a clump of trees.
“Are they landing?” Angela asked, frantically.
“Probably not. The pilot will try to position the chopper to block the track down to the road, so that the man with the Kalashnikov can shoot out our engine.”
“So what can we do?”
Bronson slammed the brakes hard, then swung the wheel to the left. “We get off the track,” he said.
He steered the vehicle well away from the rutted pathway, picking the best route he could between the trees and bushes, all the time keeping the jeep heading down the hill toward the road.
Bronson’s guess had been right. The helicopter pilot had dropped the aircraft down almost to the ground, and it was straddling the track, its right side and the open door facing up the hill, the man with the Kalashnikov watching for his target.
But after a couple of minutes the Toyota still hadn’t appeared.
“He must have turned off the track,” Mandino said. “Lift off again and find him.
This time don’t lose sight of him when you descend.”
In a few seconds the pilot spotted the jeep again. The Toyota was following an erratic and unpredictable course down the hill. The vehicle was swerving from side to side as Bronson drove around trees and other obstacles on the hillside.
“Drop down over there,” Mandino ordered, pointing toward the base of the hill, where trees grew thickly and the track snaked through a gap between them. Bronson would have to drive through there if he was to get down to the road.
“Do you want me to land?” the pilot asked.
“No. Just get into a low hover and stabilize the aircraft. My man will need a steady platform to give him the best chance of hitting the target.”
As the Toyota careered down the hill toward them, the helicopter swooped down.
The Toyota was less than a hundred yards away when the man with the Kalashnikov began to fire single shots.
“Showtime,” Bronson muttered as he saw the muzzle flashes. He swerved the Toyota even more violently to make it as difficult a target as possible. Then he took his hand off the steering wheel just long enough to pass Angela the Beretta pistol he’d taken from Mandino’s bodyguard. It was smaller than the Browning and he thought it would be easier for her to manage.
“Hold it in your right hand,” he shouted over the noise of the engine, “but keep your finger off the trigger.” He glanced sideways quickly. “Now take hold of the top of the pistol, that bit that’s serrated, pull it straight back and then let go.”
There was a distinctive metallic clicking sound as Angela pulled back the slide and released it, feeding a cartridge into the chamber of the Beretta.
“Now look at the back of the pistol,” Bronson continued, still weaving the Toyota unpredictably across the rough ground. “Is the hammer cocked?”
“There’s a little metal bit here pointing backward,” she said, looking at the weapon.
“That’s it. Now, holding it in your right hand, move your thumb up until you find a lever on the side.”
“Got it.”
“That’s the safety catch,” Bronson said. “When you want to fire the pistol, click that down. And keep it pointing out of the window all the time, please,” he added, as Angela moved the weapon slightly in his direction.
“God, I’ve never fired a gun before.”
“It’s easy. Just keep pulling the trigger until you’ve emptied the magazine.”
When they were about fifty yards from the helicopter, Bronson lowered the window on Angela’s side of the Toyota.
“Start shooting,” he yelled.
Angela aimed the Beretta at the helicopter and flinched as she pulled the trigger.
Bronson knew it would be an absolute miracle if she hit the chopper. Firing a relatively inaccurate weapon from a vehicle traveling at speed over a plowed field was hardly conducive to accurate shooting. But helicopters are comparatively fragile, and if they could make the pilot think there was a possibility of a bullet damaging his craft, he might lift off and out of danger. In the circumstances, it was the best they could hope for.
As Angela fired her first shot, a bullet smashed through the windshield and passed directly between them and out through the Toyota’s tailgate.
The shattering glass unnerved them both. Bronson swerved hard to the left, then right again, the Toyota barely staying upright.
Angela screamed and dropped the pistol. The weapon fell into the gap between her seat and the door. She scrambled to grab it, but couldn’t reach.
“Christ, sorry,” she shouted. “I’ll have to open the door to get it.”
“Don’t. It’s too late now. Brace yourself.”
They had no options left. Bronson accelerated the Toyota directly toward the helicopter.
Mandino was shouting at the man with the Kalashnikov who, despite the closeness of his target, was still finding it difficult to hit it.
The gunman fired two more shots at the rapidly approaching vehicle, and then the action locked open on the AK-47 as he fired the last round. He pressed the release to disengage the empty magazine, grabbed another one and slammed it home, but in those few seconds the Toyota had covered another ten yards, and actually seemed to be accelerating. He cycled the action to chamber a round, selected full auto and brought the sights to bear again. At that range—now probably less than twenty yards—he simply couldn’t miss.
The pilot watched the approaching jeep with increasing alarm. He lost his nerve when the Toyota got within about fifteen yards. He hauled back on the collective lever, gave the engines full power and the chopper leapt into the air.
At precisely the same moment, in the back of the aircraft, the gunman squeezed the trigger and sent a stream of 7.62-millimeter bullets screaming directly at the jeep. His aim was good, but the helicopter’s lurch into the air took him by surprise and the shells plowed harmlessly into the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mandino screamed at the pilot.
“Saving your life, that’s what. If that jeep had hit us, we’d all be dead.”
“He was playing chicken. He’d have swerved at the last moment.”
“I wasn’t going to take that chance. I’ve seen what’s left after helicopter crashes,” the pilot snapped, as he turned the chopper toward the main road, again following the plume of dust kicked up by the Toyota.
As the Toyota roared underneath the helicopter, Bronson accelerated even harder and tu
rned back onto the rough track.
“Jesus Christ,” Angela muttered. “I really thought you were going to hit it.”
“It was close,” Bronson conceded. “If he hadn’t pulled up, I was going to try to swerve around the front of him.”
“Why not the back?” Angela asked. “There was more room behind him.”
“Not a good idea. There’s a tail rotor there. If you hit that, you end up looking like sliced salami. By the way,” he added jokingly, “I hope you chose the fully comprehensive insurance option when you hired this. There seem to be a few holes in it now.”
Angela smiled briefly at him, then peered behind them. “The helicopter’s heading straight for us again.”
“I see it,” Bronson said, looking in the external rearview mirror. “But now we’re only a couple of hundred yards from the road.”
“And we’ll be safe then?” Angela didn’t sound convinced.
“I don’t know, but I hope so. The last thing these guys need is publicity, and shooting up a car on a public road from a helicopter is a pretty good way of guaranteeing plenty of media interest. I’m hoping they’ll just follow us and try to take us down when we finally stop. In any case, there’s nowhere else we can go.”
At the end of the track, Bronson glanced both ways, then swung the Toyota onto the road and floored the accelerator pedal. The diesel engine roared as the turbo kicked in and the big jeep hurtled down the road toward Piglio.
Mandino was hoarse from shouting instructions.
“Thanks to your total incompetence,” he yelled at the pilot, “they’ve reached the road.”
“I can take them there,” the gunman said. “They’ll have to drive in a straight line, and they’ll be an easy target.”
“This is supposed to be a covert operation,” Mandino snapped. “We can’t start blasting away with automatic weapons at a vehicle on the public roads.” He tapped the pilot on the arm. “How much fuel have you got?”
The man checked his instruments. “Enough for about another ninety minutes in the air,” he said.