by Alex Archer
Tessanne smiled in delight as she took the proffered card. “You do magic, as well.”
“Small things. I lack the skills that you have.” Sabre’s smartphone rang. Only important calls came through to that phone, so he took it out of his jacket pocket and glanced at the screen.
STEVEN KRAUZER CODE RED
I’M OUT FRONT
“Is there a problem?” Tessanne asked.
“A pressing matter,” he replied as he put the phone back inside his jacket. He stood and tapped the business card she was still holding. It held only his name and his private cell. “Not everyone has that number. Call me.”
“I will.”
Sabre nodded and headed for the door, sweeping effortlessly between the club clientele and the servers.
Out on the street, Lajos Meszoly sat at the wheel of a black Mercedes G-Class SUV. Sabre sprinted through the valet lines, dodging new arrivals, departing guests and parking attendants. When he reached the vehicle, he slid into the passenger seat. Meszoly punched the accelerator and sped through the traffic.
“What have we got?” Sabre shucked off his suit and tossed the clothes into the back, where two other armed men sat. He pulled on the combat suit that hung at the ready in the vehicle. Tucking the black pants inside calf-high military boots, he tugged a fitted black sweatshirt over his head. He straped on the Molle tactical gear.
“Krauzer says he’s trapped inside USC campus,” Meszoly replied calmly as he blared his horn and rolled through an intersection on a red light. Traffic on both sides of the intersection halted and honked back at him.
“College?”
“Yeah.” Meszoly was a thickset man in his early thirties. He and Sabre had been together for the past six years, both of them having been contractors in Afghanistan before starting up the protection business in Hollywood. Meszoly’s head was shaved and he kept his face clean, as well. Except for his size, he was instantly forgettable, and he knew how to dress that down, too. That skill made him valuable in close-cover situations. This night he was outfitted with body armor and weaponry.
“Wouldn’t have figured Krauzer for college,” Sabre said. “Is he shooting there?”
“He didn’t say. What he did say was that guys with guns were chasing him down. Him and his elf-witch crystal.”
Sabre shoved an FN Five-seveN pistol into the holster at his hip. “Elf-witch crystal?”
Meszoly shrugged and said, “Hold on,” right before he performed a rubber-shredding left turn. “I don’t think he’s being chased by elf witches.”
“Good, because I forgot my fairy dust.” Sabre glanced at the GPS screen at the center of the console. “Did he mention who was chasing him?”
“Says he doesn’t know.”
“Krauzer is there alone?”
“He has two people with him. A professor and a woman named Creed.”
“Should I know her?” Sabre made an effort to keep up with rising stars in the city, but that was difficult.
“She does cable television.”
“How many people are on-site?”
“The way Krauzer tells it, a small army.”
“Right.”
“Krauzer had a run-in with a biker earlier in the day,” Dyson spoke up from the back.
Sabre glanced into the mirror on the back of the sun visor in front of him. Dyson was one of the young guys, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan.
“The guys hunting Krauzer are bikers?”
“I don’t know. I caught the story on the internet. Krauzer didn’t call, so I didn’t follow up. He usually only has us out when he’s got a new release.”
“And this is over an elf-witch crystal.” Sabre shook his head.
“Krauzer also mentioned something about Merovingian kings,” Meszoly said, “but that got garbled up in gunfire, so maybe I’m wrong about that.”
The mention of the Merovingians sent a jolt of electricity through Sabre. All of the old stories his father had told him came pouring out of his memory, the stories that had been handed down for generations.
Bottling his excitement with the professionalism he’d learned over the years, Sabre looked at the GPS screen again and the red line to USC that had gotten drastically shorter. “How far out are we?”
“Two minutes.”
“Other teams are en route?”
“Two other cars. Eight more guys. If we pull any more, we’ll be leaning out other ops. Want me to do that?”
“No. Twelve of us are a small army.” Sabre reached to the back of the vehicle and Dyson slid an M4A1 into his hands.
How could Krauzer have gotten involved in the Merovingian legends?
8
“Give me an update.” Ligier de Cerceau skidded to a stop at the doorway to the stairwell his quarry had entered. One of his men lay across the doorway threshold, holding the door partially open. Bullet holes showed in the glass viewing section and shards lay scattered in the hallway, telling him at once the bullets had come from within.
“We don’t have access to the security cameras, Colonel,” Gerard Malouel said. He’d remained with the vehicle out in the parking lot so he could monitor the insertion and capture. “I’ve got two helicopters in the air.”
As he leaned against the wall near the stairwell doorway, de Cerceau heard the drumbeat of one of the helicopters’ rotors overhead.
“They’re searching the building, lighting it up with spotlights,” Gerard went on. “One of them is switching over to thermographic systems. We should know more in another minute or two.”
“Have the police been alerted?” De Cerceau hadn’t detected any alarms that had been set off inside the building, but there could be a silent warning system.
“Affirmative. They’re en route.”
De Cerceau cursed, knowing they were running out of time. “If we’re not done here soon, we’ll need to slow them down.”
“We’re already preparing for that. This is going to get messy.” Gerard’s tone remained neutral, but he was unhappy. He wouldn’t have mentioned the potential problem if he hadn’t been disconcerted.
De Cerceau gazed down at the dead man in the doorway. “It’s already gotten messy. We’ve got four dead and one wounded. Almost half the team down.” Because of one lone woman. That was something he couldn’t believe. The first man might have been careless in approaching the people they were after, and perhaps even the second man. But there was no way this many would have been lost through carelessness. Reading the combat situations they’d been engaged in, de Cerceau knew that someone with Krauzer was used to military operations. He cursed.
“Yes, sir.”
Two men closed on de Cerceau’s position, stepped into position against the wall and waited for his orders. The remaining three gunmen held the other end of the building and were advancing up the stairwell there.
Holding the machine pistol tight against his shoulder and aiming it up the stairs, de Cerceau stepped across the dead man and into the stairwell. The enclosed space trapped the stench of death and cordite. He held his position and listened.
Farther up the stairwell, footsteps and quiet voices echoed for just a moment. Then a closing door shut them away. De Cerceau headed up the stairs with the machine pistol leading the way. The dead man behind him had been caught unaware. De Cerceau didn’t intend for that to happen to him. He took the stairs two at a time, his forefinger resting on his weapon’s trigger.
* * *
AS SOON AS he stepped through the stairwell doorway, Krauzer took off down the hallway to the left. The lights came on just behind him as the automatic systems cut in, making him look as if he was leading the charge against the darkness.
Annja kept pace with Orta. “What rooms are this way?” She slid a fresh magazine into the machine pistol.
&nbs
p; “Classrooms.” Orta sounded out of breath. He was in good shape, but adrenaline had to be wreaking havoc on him. “Alcoves for the graduate assistants. A research archive. The graduate dean’s office.”
“The research archive sounds big enough to hide in.” She matched Orta stride for stride as they followed Krauzer down the hallway. Glancing at the windows, she realized that the lights reflected from the large windows along the hallway made seeing outside difficult.
Still, she was able to spot the helicopter’s red running lights as it dropped to hover just outside the building. Shoving a leg out, Annja tripped Orta and grabbed his shirtsleeve, pulling him to the ground hard and falling on top of him. As they skidded along the marble tiles, a burst of heavy machine-gun fire chewed through the windows in a ragged line.
Annja threw her arm over her head to protect herself. The helicopter’s whirling rotor noise suddenly rose to a deafening roar inside the hallway.
“Stay down,” she told Orta as she slithered along the hallway through the spray of broken glass. Once she was past the line of destruction, she rose to her knees, pointed the machine pistol at the helicopter’s nose and pulled the trigger.
Bullets tore through the window, blowing shards outside the building. The light made it impossible for her to see where the rounds struck the helicopter, but she thought she saw a jagged line stitched along the pilot’s door.
The helicopter fell away, dodging to put distance between itself and the building. The machine gunner in the cargo area fired, trying to vector in on Annja’s position, but the helicopter’s sudden movement jerked the gunman’s aim off and tracers stabbed into the night.
Shaking the broken glass from her clothes as best as she could, Annja rose to a crouched position and returned to Orta’s side. “Let’s go.”
He pushed himself up on trembling arms and looked at her.
“The archives,” Annja reminded him. “Let’s go there.”
Numbly, Orta nodded, pointed down the hallway and stumbled in that direction.
Annja followed him and only then realized she’d lost track of Krauzer. She struggled to make sense of the sheer magnitude of the assault made by their attackers and what they thought they had to gain by their efforts. She had no answers.
* * *
SABRE STARED UP at the two helicopters circling the USC campus like buzzards eyeing roadkill. “Are those birds ours?”
“Negative.” Gerard pulled on the wheel and guided them over the low curb separating the parking area from the street. The Mercedes’s large wheels climbed the curb easily and the high-tuned suspension smoothed out the bump.
Green machine-gun tracers flitted from the helicopter closest to the building while the second craft circled at a wider radius.
“Who are these people?” Sabre asked.
“Professionals.” Gerard scowled through the windshield. “Messy professionals. This isn’t how you contain a situation. Law enforcement agencies are going to be all over this. The clock’s working against us now.”
Sabre silently agreed but knew that was both a positive and a negative. Police were doubtless on their way now, which took away time from whoever was after Krauzer, but that knowledge was going to make those men tracking Krauzer take even bigger risks.
“Police.” Dyson leaned forward and pointed to the right. “On our two o’clock.”
Glancing to the right, Sabre watched as a black-and-white patrol car, light bar flashing red and blue, pulled into the campus parking area. While it was still in motion, a rocket streaked across seventy yards and impacted against the patrol car’s grille.
The warhead exploded and knocked the patrol car’s front end up like a boxer taking an uppercut to the chin. The engine hood sprang open and a ball of fire engulfed the vehicle, spreading quickly.
Sabre doubted the driver had survived the immediate detonation, and when the flames leaped into the patrol car’s interior and the officer didn’t try to escape, he was certain of it.
Meszoly cursed and launched into evasive action, yanking on the steering wheel, almost avoiding the second rocket that sped toward them. Instead of catching the SUV dead center as the shooter had intended, the warhead slammed into the Mercedes’s right rear quarter panel.
Flames wreathed the rear of the SUV and the force knocked the vehicle over onto its left side. Heat filled the interior at once as Sabre jerked helplessly in the five-contact seat belt harness. The air bag blew out and slammed into his chest like a giant fist. The stench of cordite filled the air, and the detonation rang against his ears and stole part of his hearing. He tasted blood in his mouth.
“This is Black Legion One,” Sabre called over his headset. “We need assistance. Our vehicle has been disabled.” He slipped a combat knife from his vest, flicked the blade open and sawed through the seat belt. “Does anyone copy?”
“Copy, Black Legion One. Ten is on your six.”
Through the cracked windshield, Sabre watched as another SUV pulled in front of the one he was in, providing partial cover. The men in that vehicle deployed in two two-man groups and laid down suppressive fire.
Sabre gave up on trying to open his door. He drew his pistol and slammed the butt into the window, shattering the safety glass so he could pull it out. “Do you see the shooters?”
The radio crackled in response. “We have the shooters, One. Two of them at eleven o’clock. One of them is down. The other is running.”
“Get me some ID on these people if you can.”
“Roger.”
“These people are in heavier than expected.” Sabre pulled himself through the window and crouched, leathering his weapon and then extending his hand down to Meszoly. “Watch yourselves.”
“Copy that.”
Meszoly grabbed Sabre’s hand and allowed himself to be helped as he clambered up from the overturned vehicle. “This can’t be about Krauzer,” he said, then wiped blood from his split lips with the back of his hand. “That man is more self-indulgent than important. This is about something else.”
The Merovingian kings, Sabre thought. That’s what this is about. Still, so many years had passed since those days and the time of Matthias Corvinus. Something that had been lost for so long couldn’t just reappear. And who would be so interested in finding it?
Dyson broke through the rear passenger window as the heat of the burning vehicle swirled over them. Blood ran from two cuts on the side of his face and dripped from his chin. Still, he seemed steady enough as he reached back inside the SUV and hauled out the man he’d been seated with. Sabre helped Dyson because the other man was unconscious. Together, they hauled the man’s deadweight from the stricken vehicle just before the gas tank exploded and knocked them to the ground.
Rising again, Sabre told Dyson to stay with the unconscious man. Then he and Meszoly headed toward the target building, taking cover where they could. One of the men who’d wielded a rocket launcher lay bleeding on the ground and managed to pull his sidearm. Sabre shot the man in the face and leaped over the corpse. Behind him, two other police cars pulled into the parking lot, sirens howling. They rolled to a stop on either side of the burning patrol car.
“Black Legion Nine.” Sabre reached the next clearing and peered across the open area separating him from the next building. The helicopters continued circling above, but their attention was split between their mission goal and the arrival of Sabre’s people and the police. “This is Black Legion One.”
“Go, One. Nine copies.” Saadiya Bhattacharjee’s British accent sounded unflappable. She’d been born to a Sikh family in Telangana, India, and had finished her education in crisis communication at Oxford. Sabre had hired her immediately when their paths crossed three years ago, headhunting her from other corporations by promising her a more exciting career than patching political careers and spin-doctoring bad products put out by c
orporations.
“I need you to interface with the local police,” Sabre said. “Let them know we’re on the job.”
“Copy that.”
“And don’t get shot.”
Saadiya laughed, then said, “Ta.”
Taking his smartphone from his tactical vest, Sabre pulled up the GPS locator he had that connected him to Krauzer’s position inside the building. All of his clients were programmed into his locator systems. He and Meszoly were only 179 meters out and closing fast. He broke into a run with Meszoly following behind and to the right so they’d both have established fields of fire.
* * *
ANNJA HEARD KRAUZER before she saw him. Orta followed in her wake, crouched as she was. When she reached the door, she stood and peered through the small window beside the closed entrance. Inside, the soft glow of a cell phone revealed where Krauzer was.
The director knelt under a computer desk in a dark room and spoke in a hoarse whisper that carried. “Sabre! Where are you? I’m in trouble!”
Annja tried the door but it was locked.
“Allow me.” Orta stepped forward. “Most of the classrooms on this floor open with the same key to facilitate matters.”
She stepped back and allowed the professor access to the door. He took a set of keys from his pocket and started sorting through them.
Keeping calm in spite of the tension that filled her, Annja divided her focus between the hallway and the shattered wall of windows. She’d noted the second helicopter circling the building, as well, and kept expecting one or the other to sweep in. She still didn’t know what the explosions outside the building had been about.
After succeeding in unlocking the door, Orta opened it and entered. The yellow rectangle of the hallway lights fell into the dark room. He started to reach for the lights but caught himself before Annja pointed out that wouldn’t be a good idea.
“What are you doing?” Krauzer glared up at them. “Get out of here! This is my hiding spot!”