by Rob Jones
“You did it again, Max.” His dark eyes were shaded by the rim of his favorite pinched-front safari hat. “Selflessly working for the betterment of my career. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I suppose a kiss is out of the question?”
McCabe’s lip curled, but before he could speak, a woman stepped into the flashlight beam.
“Klara Steiner,” Hunter said.
“We meet again, Dr Hunter.”
“It was her all along, Max!” Amy said. “She was the one communicating with the Creed from inside the Rorschach Foundation, not Oskar.”
“Silence!” Klara yelled, slapping Amy hard across the face.
Enraged by the brutality of the assault, Hunter surged forward to defend her. Steiner snapped her fingers and a man brought him down with a pistol whipping. His face hit the floor and when he opened his eyes he saw two more disciples hauling Julian Walters into the cache. His face was beaten hard, with swollen purple eyes above cheekbones covered in cuts and bruises. When they let go of him, he slumped down into the dust not far from Hunter.
Walters spat out blood and dust. “You always were trouble, Max.”
“I’m doing just great, thanks. How are you?”
“Having the time of my life, thanks to you.”
“I take it you found something of note down in the hole?” Steiner said.
“Why not slither down and take look?” Hunter said. “A snake could get down there much easier than I did.”
She kicked him in the stomach. It was enough to knock the wind from his lungs and make him cough hoarsely into the dust as she strolled around him in a circle. “Pick up Walters and take him down into the map room. He has five minutes to decipher the location of Atlantis, and the weapons arsenal there, or I start shooting his friends, starting with Professor Omar Salem.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Disciples grabbed Hunter, pulled him to his feet and pushed him over to the wall where the rest of the team was standing. Blanco was up on his feet again and looked calm and in control, like Omar and Jehan. So did Amy and Lewis but Quinn and Jodie were scared. He saw it in their eyes. A wave of guilt rippled over him. This was all his fault.
“I’m sorry, guys. I shouldn’t have brought Julian in. He was the weak link.”
“Relax,” Blanco said. “No one’s shouldering any blame here.”
“That’s right,” Jodie said. “Except you, Hunter, because this is all your fault.”
Hunter looked from Jodie to Blanco. “Is she being serious?”
“It’s possible.”
“What do you want with Atlantis?” Hunter asked Steiner. “What was that about a weapons arsenal?”
“Nothing to concern you.”
Hunter laughed. “You’re the sort of person who always concerns me.”
“Let it go, Dr Hunter. To say we are powerful would be to risk a considerable understatement. Suffice it to say, the Magus keeps the leaders of many nations in his pocket, and uses them like loose change. Rubbing you out would be nothing at all.”
“The Magus?”
“Our leader,” she said. “The leader of the Creed. Anyone steps out of line and he’ll pull the plug on the money. He can drain a national economy in a day and ensure no one else ever invests there again.”
“Charming.”
Steiner spoke to a disciple and ordered him over to the hole in the map room ceiling. When he was there, he got down on his knees and called down to McCabe. “You have two more minutes and then Salem’s dead.”
“I can’t work like this!”
They all heard the desperation in Walters’s voice.
“Clock’s counting down,” the disciple said.
“Maybe…” Walters said.
“What is it?” said McCabe. “You have something?”
“I’m not sure – I need time.”
Steiner looked at her watch. “No time. Kill him!”
One of the disciples obeyed without question, firing on Omar and killing him in cold blood. Amy stared with disbelief as the blood-soaked corpse crashed down onto the cache floor. When Jehan saw her dead husband, she cried out in anguish and rushed toward him. “Omar!”
“Get back or I will have you shot!” Steiner’s voice was as cold as steel.
Jehan froze on the spot, her chest heaving up and down as she sobbed with grief.
Blanco stepped forward and put his arms around her, wheeling her back toward the main group. “Don’t give her any excuse to kill you, Jehan.”
“And she’ll do it,” Hunter said. “Believe me.”
“What’s happening up there?” Walters said. “Did someone get hurt because of me?”
“Not because of you,” Hunter said, looking at Steiner in disgust. “But someone got killed. Omar.”
“My God.”
“Shut up and keep working!” McCabe screamed.
“Four more minutes and his wife dies,” Steiner said. “Hurry up, Professor Walters, because all of this blood is on your hands.”
No response, but when they saw Walters’s face appear in the hole, crumpled with fear and guilt, they all knew Steiner had what she needed. He had deciphered the glyphs. “I have the information you want. I know where the Gate of the Gods is.”
“Good work, Professor,” Steiner said. “I do hope you’re telling me the truth when you say you have translated the glyphs.”
“Yes,” he said sullenly.
“Then, come here and tell me,” she said. “And only me.”
McCabe walked him over to her and the old man whispered in her ear. They all saw the smile on her face.
“Destroy the map room,” she said.
Hunter lunged forward but was stopped by a disciple. “No!”
Another disciple dropped a grenade into the map room. A deep thud was followed by a thick column of smoke pouring out of the hole.
Steiner smirked. “Good.”
“That was a terrible crime,” Hunter said.
“You’ll get over it in time.”
“Please, don’t kill any more of these people.” Walters said.
Steiner passed a silent message to McCabe, eye to eye. “Sorry, but no can do.”
McCabe drew a gun and fired it through Walters’s back. The bullet punched a bloody exit hole the size of a fist in his chest and he collapsed down dead onto the floor, surprised terror etched onto his bloody face.
Quinn screamed, and she and Jodie reached for each other. Powered by an uncontrollable rage, Hunter charged McCabe. He reached him just as his gun exploded with a dazzling flash in the darkness of the cache.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Smacking McCabe’s arm to the side, the bullet went wide and buried itself in the cache wall. Hunter crashed down on top of his old nemesis and belted the gun from his hands.
“You son of a bitch!” he yelled. “I’ll kill you for that.”
McCabe struggled beneath the more powerful man’s weight as Hunter wrapped a hand around his neck and squeezed. “Die, you bastard!”
Another gunshot exploded in the cache. Hunter froze and heard Steiner screaming at him to release McCabe. Surrounded by armed disciples, he leaned in close to his ear and lowered his voice. “You’re mine, McCabe. That one was over the line.”
Both men got to their feet. McCabe looked panicked, but composed himself enough to power a punch into Hunter’s stomach and send him to the deck, doubled over and coughing hard. “No one threatens me, Max. Least of all you.”
“Enough,” Steiner said. “The Apostle awaits us at Black Rock.” She turned to McCabe and threw him back his gun. “Kill them all and meet me on the surface. We’re flying immediately. Bring her,” she pointed at Amy. “We need some insurance.”
She walked past Hunter with a face of cold stone, stopping only to blow a mock kiss at him. She vanished into the tunnel, flanked by disciples who were dragging a kicking and screaming Amy Fox out of the cache behind them.
“We’ll get you back, Amy,” Blanco said. “Count on it.”
“I know, Sal…”
“Shut up!”
When their shadows had receded in the tunnel, Hunter looked on his old friend with contempt. “You heard her, Brodie. Kill us all.”
Standing between two disciples, McCabe raised his gun and pointed the barrel at Hunter.
“I’m going to enjoy this more than sex.”
“But wouldn’t you have had to have sex to make that statement?” Jodie said.
They saw his fading smile. “Goodbye, Max Hunter and friends. So near and yet so far.”
He pulled the hammer back and Hunter dived behind the sarcophagus. McCabe spun around and tracked him across the cache, firing a sustained burst of rounds at him as he flew through the air. Still using the momentum of the dive, Hunter rolled over to Omar’s corpse and pulled back his jacket. As he had expected, his old friend was carrying his usual pocket pistol.
He fired back, urging his friends to take cover while he pinned McCabe and the two disciples down. One of the disciples ran toward the sarcophagus under the cover fire of his two colleagues, but Hunter fired back.
The weapon kicked back in his hands when he unloaded the mag on the approaching men; the army was in his deep past now, but nothing ever rubbed out the feeling of firing a gun. The smell of the smoke, the sound of the spent cases spitting out of the ejector port, the firm dunk of the recoil. Bullet weight, caliber, velocity, the thoughts came rushing back to him and then the magazine was empty.
The disciple vaulted over the sarcophagus and chaos exploded in the cache. Blanco and Lewis charged the other disciple and disarmed him, forcing McCabe to take cover behind one of the giant treasure chests and fire on them. They scrambled behind the other end of the sarcophagus and returned fire as Hunter ran hard at the man attacking him.
He tackled him around the waist and forced him to the cache floor before he could pull his weapon. They landed with a heavy thump in a cloud of ancient dust and Hunter got the first strike in, cracking the man’s jaw with a feisty jab.
Jodie leapt into the air, not knowing what the hell was going on. Falling out of the leap, she extended her right foot and fired a hook kick into a disciple’s chest, blasting him back into the wall. He struck his skull on the smooth carved rock and grunted in pain, tumbling onto his knees, dizzy and disoriented.
Reaching down to his belt, he grabbed at the handle of a spear-point knife and flicked it across the chamber at her. Blanco’s reaction was like lightning, tackling Jodie to the ground just as the knife ripped past through the air and smacked against the rock on the other side of the chamber. The disciple leapt to his feet, his boots scuffing on the dusty tiles and made a move toward Blanco and Jodie who were still on the floor on top of each other.
Down in the dirt, Jodie huffed out a rare laugh. “Really, Sal, this is hardly the time.”
The Brooklynite had no time to react. Rolling his hefty frame off of her, he found himself on his back as the disciple snatched up the knife and ran toward them with it raised in his clenched fist, blade-down.
Behind them, McCabe screamed and fired his gun as he worked his way around to the cache entrance. Across the other side of the chamber, Hunter landed another punch on the other man’s face, striking his head back into the enormous carved flagstones and knocking him out. Rolling off his unconscious body, the Londoner scrambled to his feet but wasn't up for long. Another disciple rushed him from behind and struck him on the side of the head with a swift haymaker.
If Hunter had seen it coming, he would have rolled with it, but it was a surprise attack and it knocked him over like a sack of potatoes. He hit the deck and fought like hell to stay conscious as the man padded over to him and drew a knife from his belt.
“I’m going to make you beg for this to end.”
“Stop, please. You sound like my ex.”
“I see you cannot even take your own death seriously.”
“Y’know, I’m starting to get the impression you don’t like me very much.”
He heard the sharp report of a gun and blood poured out of the man’s mouth. He slumped to the side, freeing Hunter and revealing Blanco standing behind him. He held a smoking gun in his hand. “All good?”
Through the smoke and dust, he looked at the man from Brooklyn. “All good, Sal, and thanks. What’s going on?”
“McCabe appears to have slipped out in the chaos,” Jodie said.
“But all the disciples who stayed behind are dead,” said Lewis.
Blanco looked grim. “And we have to get after Amy in a hurry, Max. Her life is at risk and we have no idea where they’re taking her or the location of Atlantis.”
“And we have none of the winged statues,” Quinn said.
They headed out of the cache and sprinted back along the tunnel, passing through the sphinx’s jaws and heading up to the surface. Emerging into a bright, hot day, they scrambled through rubble and scree on the ridge above the newly made entrance on the mountainside, trying to keep as low as possible to stay out of sight.
Blanco spoke first. “Jeeps! Three of them driving east in the valley.”
“They’re already on their way,” Lewis said.
Hunter squinted as he watched the Jeeps traverse a gradient at the base of the Valley of the Queens and head east toward the main road leading through the Valley of the Kings and then back to Luxor. Instead of turning onto the main road, they pulled up at the side and waited in the sun.
“What are they doing?” Jodie asked.
“Hear it?” Hunter said.
“Hear what?”
“The intoxicating sound of a General Electric CT7 turboshaft.”
“Huh?”
“It’s an engine,” he said. “And it belongs to a Bell Relentless, a medium-lift chopper capable of transporting nineteen passengers.”
Blanco cursed and kicked a rock. “And one hostage. We have to save her.”
“It’s number one on my list, Sal.”
“Steiner said they were going to the Black Rock,” Lewis said. “That’s all we have.”
Blanco wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand and followed the helicopter fly away over the desert to the west. “Wrong. We also have Quinn Mosley.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The one hour drive to the castle was made in an old-school Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV, a serious vehicle which combined solid V8 engine power with no-nonsense off-road capabilities. Sal Blanco was at the wheel, driving with the radio tuned to a local station determined not to leave the nineteen-eighties, but he seemed to like it well enough.
Using passwords created by Amy in her undercover roll as Dr Kirsten Anderson, Quinn was able to break into the Rorschach Foundation network. From there she was able to search for references to the new information they had. Black Rock turned out to be the name of a castle in Germany’s Black Forest owned by an international shareholder consortium headed by a man named Karl Adler. Quinn’s work yielded nothing on Adler or the consortium and the team drew their own conclusions, deciding he must be the notorious Apostle.
Driving southwest toward the castle was quiet and uneventful. Gates had arranged for them to pull into a CIA safehouse in Stuttgart and collect some weapons. Loading bullets into the magazines had concentrated the minds of Hunter, Blanco and Lewis, the three military-trained members of the team. They all knew what was likely if they wanted to rescue Amy and prise the location of Atlantis from Adler and his lieutenants.
Halfway into the ninety-kilometer journey, they started driving up into mountains along roads flanked with rows of endless black pine trees.
“I can see why they call this place the Black Forest,” Lewis said, peering into the snowy woods.
“Yup,” Quinn muttered. She had been researching the castle on the drive and now she shut up her laptop and dropped it into her bag. “Not much gets by you.”
“I think maybe they were leaning more to pragmatism than the romantic when they came up with that one,” he said. “What else have you got?”
“I might not be able to find out about the consortium or Herr Adler, but I now know more about Black Rock Castle than anyone else on earth.”
Hunter leaned down and put the loaded gun into the bag between his feet, then settled back in his chair. “All right, let me have it.”
She explained what she had learned, her voice soft and level against the hum of the new car on the autobahn. Every now and then someone would interrupt with a question and after twenty minutes they knew what she did.
Blanco turned in his seat. “That’s what I call a briefing.”
Quinn went on. “Anyway, that’s the history and even some information about the layout, but unfortunately the place is too old for anything like planning documents or schematics.”
“You did your best,” Lewis said.
Hunter’s eyes were closed and the gentle motion of the car had almost pushed him to sleep, but he had listened attentively to the briefing. “Yeah, good job, Quinn.”
Quinn looked genuinely surprised. “Really? I thought it lacked anything of real use.”
“No way,” Hunter said. “It was useful, especially the images you found. At least we know the best way into the place.”
Another silence fell over the car. Hunter thought about how much he had come through in the last few days. His narrow escape in McCabe’s desert camp to meeting Amy and Rorschach in Switzerland. The assault on Vazquez’s private liner and the discovery of the Cuban’s brutal slaying at the hands of the Creed in El Salvador. The death of his mentor in Egypt and Omar’s brutal murder. How would poor Jehan ever get over his death? He already felt sick when he thought about it.
And beneath it all, a lethal undertow waiting to destroy them all.