by A D Davies
Then, out toward the exit, Amir spun on his heels, finger in the air. All he was missing was a light bulb over his head. “A proposal.”
“Yes?” Toby sounded excited.
“You stay here. As our guests. Research this with us. Instead of buying the Ruby Rock from us, let us explore it together.”
Two security guards stood close by as if they had been summoned by a silent signal to accompany them out. Probably in case they caused trouble after Amir declined their offer.
“What do you think?” Amir asked hopefully. “Please say yes. Is win for you and for me. For Mongolia.”
“We will have to think about it, sir.” Toby held out his hand again.
Amir shook it. “Excellent. I hope you will make the wise choice.”
The handshake ended, and Amir moved on to offer Bridget the same when a massive crack echoed through the reception hall. One of the guards flopped to the ground, blood streaming from a bullet’s exit wound in his chest. Another loud report. The second guard dropped.
Jules pulled Bridget behind him, and Toby spun around, eyeing the exits. Amir simply cringed.
Four masked men with submachine guns flowed in through the main doors while a team of two cut off the passage behind the reception desk. Another set of footsteps and shouting heralded a unit farther within the museum.
Then they opened fire, and more people began to die.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dan abandoned his surveillance within seconds, ordering Harpal to meet him at the prearranged spot by the statue of a horse one street away.
Damn it, they’d swept everything. No one watching the place, no one suspicious. Now this. In Dan’s defense, there was no way he could have predicted that an assault would be led by helicopter.
Once again, comms were jammed, but as he tried to contact those inside, he heard static and squeaks and squawks, meaning it wasn’t a total blackout. Frequency modulation rather than an outright cutoff.
Old tech.
Assuming Valerio was behind this, all the intel painted him as a shrewd manipulator who used sleight of hand to achieve his aims, such as wounding the cops in Prague and switching out the manuscript with the hostage in Rome. Although more than capable of murdering people, he rarely did so, and on those occasions, it was to cover his tracks.
This reminded Dan of the kinds of raids he saw when on active duty, predominantly Islamist terror groups storming hotels, bars, beaches. Gunfire from within the Mongolian Natural History Museum also suggested a kind of slaughter Valerio had never enacted before.
That we know of.
The two Russian military choppers had touched down in wide-open spaces around the building, scattering local traders and civilians, engines muffled so it would be unlikely those inside the thick-walled museum would hear more than a harsh wind beating. Then two columns of masked gunmen hit the place with speed, one winding around the side. Once they got in, the shooting commenced.
If Valerio could engineer the theft of Saint Thomas’s manuscript from beneath Windsor Castle, surely he could manage a subtler approach here?
Harpal was already waiting, his jacket pulled tight against the cold, concealing the black-market Ruger pistol they’d managed to arrange. Dan carried an identical model. Not the most efficient weapons, but they had come well oiled, with three extra magazines apiece. Both would have preferred something in the submachine category, but they’d coped with worse.
Dan relayed what he’d seen.
“Mercs again?” Harpal said.
“Seems to be Valerio’s MO. If this is him, he’s escalating.”
“Isn’t that always the way?”
Dan checked his weapon, and Harpal copied him. “We should’ve got suppressors. I’m not sure how to do this once we’re in.”
“We’re going in?”
“Yeah. Those guys aren’t messing around, and we can’t rely on Jules to go all Die Hard on ’em.”
The term “aikido” means “the way of harmony of ki,” which translates further to “the way of unifying with life energy,” or even “the way of harmonious spirit.” The master Jules studied under between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one spoke of its similarity to a doctor’s Hippocratic oath of “do no harm.” That’s why many of the techniques involve using an opponent’s strength and momentum against them, unifying the victim’s life energy and syncing it with the aggressor’s.
When Jules was in full flow, he morphed into a magician, or so people had told him, seemingly levitating opponents and twisting them around as if they weighed nothing; what appeared to be little more than a gentle slap could floor a man twice his size. It was a martial art which, unlike many skills when committed to his computerlike brain, he needed to practice for many years.
Yes, he’d accepted and even embraced the fact that everything he concentrated on, practiced, and committed to, he absorbed and retained, like the physics and trivia around firearms and gravity that was pretty much a constant, but aikido… Of all the philosophies he’d studied, from Christianity to Taoism, aikido was what brought him the most peace, the highest sense of accomplishment.
Today, though, as he ran ten scenarios through his mind in less than five seconds, he could not see a way to survive without breaking his key tenet of “do no harm.” So—engaging the surgically logical side of his decision making—he amended it to “do no lasting harm... unless it couldn’t be helped.”
Having ushered Bridget, Toby, and Amir behind a freestanding display case as soon as the shooting started, he tuned out the ear-splitting clatter and stepped from the path leading into the museum’s main body. The rendering of Genghis Khan partially hid him from those who shot the two security guards and now fired upon the receptionists, killing them instantly.
So much death.
So much pointless death.
Jules darted out and yelled, “Hey,” then sprinted back through the open area, toward the other shots blasting from within.
He darted into one of the side rooms containing artwork as the semiautos roared his way. As hoped, his escape had prompted a pursuit.
The room had no exit except for a window high up near the ceiling, but that didn’t bother him. The gabled doorframe would suffice.
He leaped onto a radiator, then pushed from there onto the doorframe, which gave him two inches of purchase, his hands braced against the roof.
The two gunmen entered, weapons at their shoulders, each taking a direction to cover two corners apiece. Standard counterinsurgency tactics.
Jules dropped between them, too close for either to swing and draw down on him. He grabbed one gun on the top, away from the bullet case ejection port, but the second stepped away for more room. Jules levered the submachine gun down, jumped past the man’s shoulder, wrapping the strap around his neck, and kicked his feet out, which threw the man forward.
The tangled gunman hit his buddy, which made him fire a burst of three into the floor.
Jules didn’t hesitate, using the first guy as a ramp, he slammed his knee into the second one’s temple. The gunman’s eyes died behind the mask and rolled back, and by the time his unconscious body keeled to the floor, Jules had wrapped his legs around the other’s neck and pulled him down where he held him in place, knees and ankles locked, choking him, until he, too, passed out.
It was more Krav Maga than aikido, a fighting art designed to do as much harm as quickly as possible.
Less than half a minute had passed since he left the reception area.
Jules then risked another fifteen seconds to break down the semiautos and toss the firing pins into a trash can, one of their sidearms in another. He kept a Beretta and two magazines plus their knives, which he strapped around his waist, and pocketed a radio. Then he shot them both twice, once in each thigh. They groaned but did not wake.
No lasting damage.
Bridget wondered whether people ever got used to this. While she was determined to pull her weight outside the lab and the office, she could barely mov
e when gunfire commenced. Her fight-or-flight response was most definitely geared toward flight, but that wasn’t in the cards right now; hide was the only action her body would allow. Toby and Amir, on the other hand, appeared frightened but calm.
Either she needed more experience or she should give up this notion.
Fieldwork usually entailed talk, surveillance, lots of walking... being sneaky. None of this violence.
From what she’d seen, the gunmen shot a total of four security personnel, the two receptionists, and three tour guides along with two visitors. This was less a robbery, more a mass murder.
She literally wanted to vomit.
No one had seen Toby and Amir nip behind the wide display case, though. Originally focused on the runner—Jules—they were now systematically roaming amid the exhibits. This cabinet would only hide them so long.
“Bridget,” Toby hissed. “That door.”
He indicated another “Staff Only” room.
“Sometimes is locked,” Amir said. “Sometimes not.”
Bridget tried to ask a question, but her throat was too tight. If she uttered a sound, she would burst into tears.
Toby said, “What are the odds?”
“No odds,” Amir said. “Is locked or is not locked.”
“So fifty-fifty.” Toby held both Bridget’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I should have been stronger. Made you stay behind.”
Bridget shook her head and unclenched her jaw. Still trembling, she said, “Let’s try.”
The two men silently agreed and readied themselves for a dash.
Bridget forced herself to look through the glass display, located the men searching for stragglers. When they explored a section shielded from them, she pointed—go!
The three ran, crouched. At the door, Amir turned the knob.
Locked.
“Hey!” The voice came from a hundred yards across the other side of the museum floor. One of the invaders raced toward them, raising his submachine gun.
Some days, Harpal wished he didn’t get such a rush from this job. He long ago stopped caring about taking the lives of professional mercenaries when they obviously knew their actions were wrong, so he was able to concentrate on keeping himself alive. And although this was crazy, he’d have gone for it even if his friends were not in danger.
Opposite him, Dan snapped off the other latch on the skylight high above the museum’s hall and flipped it open. Harpal opened his own.
“Dan?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You were right to bring the ropes.”
“I know.”
Dan went first, dropping his line in and pitching himself through after it. Harpal did likewise.
His speed was faster than it should have been, but they only had the Rugers up against H&K MP7s and AK-74s—the modern equivalent of the famous AK-47—so speed was essential.
In motion, Harpal squeezed off two shots at a running gunman, dropping him and smearing the floor. Another man cornered Bridget, Toby, and what Harpal assumed was a museum employee, probably Amir Fong. Harpal tightened the clasp on his line so he ceased falling, drew down, and as the guy was about to fire, Harpal took him in the head.
That left two bad guys to fire at them as they dropped. And they were completely exposed.
Jules had seen the shadows up above and was 90 percent certain they belonged to Dan and Harpal. He was about to fire a bullet into the leg of the man approaching the trio fleeing for the back door, but as soon as the two above commenced their breach, he figured they had the situation under control. Dan killed the backup while Harpal blew away a section of the main threat’s skull.
It’s not for me, but you go ahead—such a lame thing to feel about the lives of fellow humans.
Jules wished he could do more, but this was no time for evangelizing. What they were doing was faster, safer, more efficient than if Jules were doing the work.
But the two macho men dwelled on their victory a split second too long, and the last of the raiders had them cold. Jules saw no other choice.
He sprang out and aimed carefully, squeezing off two shots—one in a shoulder of each gunman. He still refused to kill, but it gave Dan and Harpal time to land and find a better position.
With LORI almost back in control, Jules ran away from the entrance hall, through the prehistoric mammal section, aware of every sound in the vicinity, watchful for the last of the killers.
While the gun battle fizzled out in the other room, Jules located the Mary bangle. No one had attempted to gain access, which meant the raiders did not know its exact location.
Jules raised the Beretta and fired at the case. The bullet ricocheted across the room, the glass barely scorched. Other than the gunshot, the loudest noise was now the alarm triggering, a warbling jangle of bells repeating like a giant, panicking animal.
The case wasn’t just glass.
Bulletproof polymer.
There was no such thing as completely bulletproof. Not really. Anything will give if enough force is applied. This particular glass, though, would stand up under three mags of 9 mm slugs. He’d need a series of .50-caliber shots to make so much as a crack in it.
And he still had no idea where the final gunmen were.
Shifting his attention away from the glass itself, he fired into the wall at one corner. Plaster spat from the brickwork, but the pane extended farther into the facade. He shot away another section and found the edge two inches into the wall. Careful to angle the bullet in case of another ricochet, he shot several times to create a deep groove, then swapped out the mag and blasted fifteen more. It left him with a whole side exposed and a groove thick enough for his fingers.
He pulled at the edge, but it wouldn’t budge. He just wasn’t strong enough.
He strained to listen for threats. The firefight in the entrance hall continued, although it was hard to keep up with over the alarm’s din.
He risked another ten rounds from the final magazine, chipping away more plaster to hopefully give him less resistance.
No. Didn’t work.
He had to get this bangle. Ransoming it for his mom’s was starting to look like his best hope of resuming his life. Of starting his life.
Was it even worth it?
Of course it was. He wasn’t about to waste all that training, all that effort, just to give up now.
He placed the gun down and moved to the five-foot-tall flint warrior they saw on the way in. It weighed a ton, but by tipping the mass into both arms and carrying it as he would a baby, he could transport it to the display case.
“Hard stone, really tough,” Jules said, and swung it into the side of the exposed pane.
The whole sheet of glass shunted half an inch.
“Nice.”
No more gunfire emanated from the other direction. They’d be coming. Who “they” were was debatable. If Dan was as good as he thought he was, it should be LORI.
Jules swung the five-hundred-year-old statue again, trying not to feel too bad as both the statue and the wall lost fragments to his assault. Still, the glass held. The gap between the pane and the brickwork was wider, though. He jammed the statue in the gap and used it as a jimmy, levering his way in.
The jangling alarm sounded more like a countdown clock than ever.
Sweating, straining, pushing, the cement rectangle cracked and split, and the polymer sheet crashed out, exposing the display.
Jules breathed deeply three times, wiped his face, and reached for the bangle. Again, it crackled and spat until he held it firmly, then he slipped it on his wrist to wear like an accessory. With the outer stone out of contact with his skin, the lights faded, and he paused to make a choice: proceed to the only escape route he dared use or delve back into the museum to check on LORI.
Overhead, a helicopter hovered low, not even trying to hide, and as soon as Jules jogged in the direction of the people he, logically, should not be risking his life over, an explosion shook the building and silenced the alarm.
Was there no end to these people? They were like cockroaches.
When Dan and Harpal saved them, she’d made a dash for the next sturdy-looking display table and cowered there while the bullets flew. She thought she saw Jules joining in, but then he was gone.
In what could only have been fantastic timing, two other gunmen ushered a team of what were clearly staff into the hall, four in lab coats, six in the uniforms of guides, and the new armed men sought to suppress LORI, not kill. They fired over Dan’s and Harpal’s heads, corralling them into a nook so they were trapped, but didn’t pursue them.
Once the pair were subdued, two men with Russian accents rounded the case full of trinkets and arrowheads behind which Toby and Amir had joined Bridget.
The trio lowered themselves to their knees, hands on their heads.
This situation was different from before. They were controlling the scene with precision, not slaughtering en mass.
Predictably, the huge beast of a masked gunman stalked toward them, removing his balaclava to reveal that he was indeed Horse. “Damn. I hate being right. You’re not dead.”
Somewhat less predictably, Valerio Conchin himself strutted through the front doors and skipped on past reception and the dead bodies of his men and their victims. No mask, no disguise. Simply a light suit, a blue oxford shirt, and the smile of an inmate just released from prison.
He clocked Amir, Toby, and Bridget. “My, oh my, what have we here? You look surprised. Now, let’s talk about that little rock.” He turned a full circle as a dancer might, pointing and winking at the now-captured Dan and Harpal. “Oh, full house! No matter. Mr. Fong, please stand.”