by Rob Jones
London was racing toward him at over one hundred miles per hour so he had to operate the reserve chute and pray to all that was holy that it was packed right. He was too low now to fix another problem, and as he reached for the reserve parachute’s cord he remembered and old Paras joke Eden had told him over drinks one night.
Never worry about it if anything goes wrong with your parachute – you’ve got the rest of your life to sort it out.
He smiled and pulled the cord.
The pilot chute deployed and the speeding air stream around him caught hold of it and pulled the sleeve and main canopy from the packtray.
As the suspension lines tightened up he watched the reserve chute flare out into the blue sky above him.
He was safe.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
London
Hawke made a hook-turn and carefully guided the parachute with the steering lines as he descended down into London. He’d passed a thousand feet by the time he got the chute on his back and now as he drifted over the capital city he remembered the earpiece and palm mic he’d stuffed into his pocket back at Horak’s place. He pulled it out of his pocket and shoved it in his ear.
“Anyone around?”
After a few seconds he heard it crackle to life.
“Earth calling Joe Hawke. Everything all right, darling?”
Hawke grinned as he heard Scarlet’s voice. “Not too bad, thanks.”
“What about the Agusta, Joe?” she asked. “Can you see where it went down?”
Hawke scanned the horizon and saw a column of smoke spiralling up from the ground. “Looks like it crashed in Hyde Park.”
“Thank God,” she said.
“And where are you?” he asked.
“Monsieur Reno landed our chopper in Trafalgar Square. Can you see us yet?”
“I can’t see you, no, but I can see your ego.”
“Touché, Josiah. What happened to Vermaak?”
“I’m sorry to say that we fell out with each other – permanently.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “Why don't you give this lark up and head over to the Comedy Store?”
“I might just do that.”
“Talk about taking idiotic risks,” she said.
“I think on my feet, Cairo. You know that.”
“Fucking good job you watch James Bond films is all I can say, Hawke.”
“Hey! Less of that! I just like to complete missions with a certain élan, that’s all.”
She laughed and he saw them now. They were standing around the bottom of Nelson’s Column a few yards from a parked up Eurocopter. He saw Lea’s parachute but there was no sign of her or Devlin. He glided the parachute down into the square, and executed a perfect landing right in front of Scarlet and the rest of the team. As he unfastened the parachute he realized that dozens of tourists were now forming a circle around him and filming him on various devices.
“You always did like to make an entrance, darling,” Scarlet said.
The rest of the team joined them, and Hawke gave her a withering look, but then his face grew more serious. “Kruger got away with the sword.”
“You’re kidding?” Kim said, taking a step back and looking him up and down. “You mean you haven’t got the sword stuffed down your pants?”
“No,” Hawke said. “And its trousers. We’re in London.”
She winked at him. “No, I meant pants in the English sense.”
“Ah,” Hawke said mischievously. “In that case then yes, I do have a powerful sword stuffed in my pa-.”
“Do not finish that sentence,” Ryan said. “I’m trying to eat a hot dog.”
“When we get back to Elysium,” Scarlet drawled sarcastically. “Can we please call this Operation Fuckup?”
Mack gave a wheezy chortle. “I like that. You always could make me laugh, Sloane.”
“Hey, what happened to Bruno?” Hawke said.
Scarlet shrugged her shoulders. “Ryan, any idea?”
Ryan shoved his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “None at all.”
“Maybe he’s still out there,” Kim said.
Reaper lit one of his roll-ups, totally ignoring the banter. “Tell me, Joe – what happened to Kruger?”
Hawke sighed. “He jumped out somewhere over West London. He’ll be long gone by now.”
“Either way,” Scarlet said. “I’m glad you’re safe.” She kissed him on the cheek.
“Steady on, girl.”
“Twat. By the way – great news.”
“You finally worked out how to use a corkscrew?”
“No.”
“You’ve figured out why the wave function collapses when you measure it?” Ryan said.
Scarlet cocked her head and gave them a scowl. “Funnily enough – no to both of those asinine comments. Rich is out of his coma. The hospital just called Lea when you were playing Roger Moore’s stunt double a few seconds ago.”
He peered over her shoulder and saw Lea and Danny embracing each other on the other side of the square. “What’s going on there?” he asked.
Scarlet bit her lip and looked away for a moment. “Joe... Lea just told Danny about the letter...”
But he had gone. He was storming toward them with the blood pounding in his ears. The adrenalin from the mid-air fight and the parachute jump was still pulsing through his veins. He knew he was being irrational but he was powerless to stop himself.
He pulled Devlin away from Lea and landed a punch on his jaw, knocking him over onto the ground. The Irishman crumpled under the hefty blow but managed to stagger back to his feet in time to save his pride.
“Joe!” Lea yelled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“He’s been asking for it since the start of the mission – all over you, laughing, joking, taking the piss, taking stupid risks!”
Lea looked genuinely confused, tears still in her eyes. “What? What are you blathering about? Danny’s an old friend and he was just trying to calm me down because I was upset.”
“Upset?”
Devlin rubbed his grazed jaw. “After reading the letter up there in the chopper, you fool.”
“But still...” Hawke stopped mid-sentence, already knowing he had gone too far.
Lea looked distraught. “I can’t believe you’d do something like this.”
“And I can’t believe you’d tell him about the letter before me. I still don’t know what it says!”
Lea sighed and pulled her hair back behind her ears. “I was upset and he asked me why I was crying. I’ve known Danny longer than anyone here, Joe – including you!”
“But still...” He felt the adrenalin from the jump still coursing through his veins.
“But still nothing!” Lea cried. “Why would you do this, Joe?”
“I thought...”
“You thought what?”
“He thought we were enthralled in a mad passionate embrace,” Devlin said sarcastically.
Hawke jabbed a finger at him. “You keep out of it. You’ve been pushing me since the start of the mission.”
With tears in her eyes, Lea raised her hands to her face and turned in a circle of desperation. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”
Hawke felt the ring box in his pocket. It had been there since Washington when he picked Alex up from the hospital, awkward, out of place. He felt the anger rise in him.
“If you don’t trust me then we can’t be together,” she said, her eyes flashing with defiance.
“If you didn’t give me a reason to doubt you then there wouldn’t be any reason not to trust you.”
She gasped. “So you don’t trust me? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“And what about you,” Lea said, lowering her voice and trying to mimic Hawke back on the Aurora in Italy. “I thought you were reminiscing about our little romance in Zambia...for fuck’s sake!”
“Eh? That was just me and Lex pissing
about.”
“But you still don’t trust me,” she said sadly.
“I...”
“In that case, maybe we should just go on a break!” Lea cried out, loud enough for all to hear.
“Maybe we should!” Hawke knew he couldn’t back down now, but he also knew Lea well enough to know she wouldn’t either. It turned out they were the immovable object and the irresistable force of relationships.
“If that’s what you want, ya stupid eejit!”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Come on, Danny,” Lea said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Hawke watched Lea and Danny walk across the square and after a few seconds they were gone, melted into the bustling London crowd. He carried on staring long after they had slipped out of sight, almost unable to believe what had just happened: he had lost not only the Tinia idol to the Oracle, but now Kruger would hand him the Sword of Fire too and he would use them in his quest for the mysterious king’s tomb.
And now he had lost Lea Donovan, the person he cared about more than anyone else on the world. The woman he loved and wanted to marry.
He saw a group of tourists watching him now, and some even had their phones out to film him, but he turned his back on them all. He saw the rest of the ECHO team across the other side of the square watching him, but he turned his back on them too. His heart was racing and he was consumed with anger and confusion as his mind processed what to do next. All he knew was that he needed to be alone.
He turned on on his heel and started to walk in the opposite direction Lea had taken with Danny. Ahead of him was his hometown, but he was just a stranger here now.
“What’s happening, Joe?”
It was Scarlet’s voice in his earpiece.
“Joe, are you there?”
He knew the rest of the ECHO team wanted to know what had happened, but he couldn’t face them – not after this. His mind was in turmoil as he tried to get a grip on what had just happened. He tore out the earpiece, tossed it on the filthy ground and walked away until he was lost in the crowd.
*
Lexi Zhang took the elevator to her parents’ apartment. So this was it. Maybe her father would pull through, but that wasn’t what it had sounded like when she spoke with her mother. This was probably the last time she would ever see her father alive, and she felt shame wash over her when she thought about all the times she had decided to call him, and then lowered the phone down. Life had a way of punishing things like that, and she knew this was punishment time.
The elevator hit the tenth floor and she heard the same, sad metallic ping that had marked so much of her childhood. The door slid open and she saw the dimly lit hall where she had played as a child, lonely and full of dreams.
Mr Liu was playing his music too loud in No. 3 again. Some things never got old. Maybe later she would go around and tell him his fortune, but now it was time to see her father. She hoped her mother was holding things together, at least. She was a very capable and strong woman and right now they needed each other more than ever.
She fumbled through her bag for the key and then slid it into the lock.
Nothing happened.
She tried it again and realized something was jamming it, so she rang the intercom and called out to her mother.
“Mama?”
No response.
“It’s Xiaoli.”
She heard her mother fumbling with the lock. She imagined her frail hands struggling with the thing, her mind distracted by her dying husband. A wave of sadness came over her. She was not expecting it to feel like this and worked hard to control herself.
The door clicked open an inch, but stayed ajar.
“Mama?” Lexi pushed the door open halfway and peered down into the unlit hall. This was strange. Her mother always kept the hall light on at this time of night. Then again, these were very different times, she considered with a sad shrug.
“Mama?”
She stepped inside, and she saw it a second too late to react.
The man was somehow above the door, holding himself in place with the sheer power of his arm and leg muscles.
He powered an aggressive leopard punch into her throat and then a split second later he delivered a savage thunderclap strike to her right hear. The first blow nearly crushed her windpipe and the second one knocked her off her feet and ruptured the tympanic membrane in her ear. She was confused, disoriented and now struggling to breathe and unable to main her balance.
Lexi Zhang collapsed to the floor in her parent’s hall and looked up just in time to see Monkey leap down from the position he had wedged himself in above the door. He landed beside her with the agility and terrifying power of a panther, and then cocked his head as he leaned in to deliver a Shaolin horn punch that slammed her into a cold, silent darkness.
EPILOGUE
Dirk Kruger couldn’t help noticing how the bravado he had felt back in Horak’s mansion when he’d lectured Hawke about the Oracle seemed much harder to muster when standing right in front of the man himself. Now, in the study of one of Wolff’s opulent residences his main impulse was to crawl away into a hole and never share his company again.
“You got the sword, Dirk. Very good.”
Kruger started to relax as he watched Wolff caressing the long, ancient blade; his face now reflecting the deep, blue glow that emanated from its hardened steel. “Yes, sir. It was a piece of cake.”
The Oracle had a file marked KRUGER on his desk. He thumbed through some of the pages, but the effort was perfunctory; only a fool would presume he hadn’t already studied the man standing opposite him. “I was impressed with you when you found the Lost City, and you have certainly shown me that you are able to deal with the ECHO team as well. This plus your successful retrieval of the Tinia idol has pleased me greatly. I have decided to keep you alive.”
Kruger swallowed hard and took a step away from the desk. He hadn’t realized the price of failure on this mission would have been his life, and now he hardly knew what to say, except: “Thank you, sir.”
Wolff nodded casually, but he had returned his obsessive gaze back to the sword. “You know what this sword means to me?”
“You said it would open a gateway?” Something about the way Wolff was staring at the blade had upset Kruger. He was an arms dealer – a thug at heart – and now his insatiable greed had led him into the service of this depraved monster. He thought of Faust with a shudder and started to wonder what he had done.
“You pay attention to my words. Also very good.”
A long silence followed, and Kruger worked hard to stay calm and keep his breathing soft and level.
“The Sword of Fire... Dyrnwyn, Excalibur – they’re all the same thing. This blade in my hands did not come from the western lands where you found it. Originally it came from the east. Did you know that?”
“No I did not, Mr Wolff.”
“You address me as Oracle, or sir.”
“Yes, Oracle.”
“That is, if you want to be part of all this.”
“Of course, Oracle.”
“This blade in my hands, arms dealer,” he said these last two words with contempt, “has the power I need to locate and open the gateway to the king’s tomb. Inside that tomb is something very critical to me and my mission... this pilgrimage I am on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very critical indeed...”
The Oracle stared at the Tanit idol on the shelf behind his desk. Beside it were two new additions – Tinia and then Viracocha, the primordial deity of the Incan culture. Kruger recognised the idol of Viracocha. He had found it in the treasure haul he had stolen from Paititi back in Peru while Saqqal was obsessing over his Utopia plague. The second he saw it he’d known who to go to for a quick sale.
“I see, sir.”
He let out a long, satisfied sigh. “Oh, these idols! If you only knew what they meant, you would break down and cry right now, down on your knees like a man humbled before the very pre
sence of the divine.”
“What do they mean, sir? Gold? Treasure?”
The Oracle laughed, but it quickly turned sour. “Treasure? You sad little man, is that all you can think of?”
“I’m sorry, Oracle.”
“You’re forgetting yourself, arms dealer.”
“Yes, sir – but why are the idols so important?”
The Oracle studied Kruger’s face for a few moments, and the South African wasn’t sure if asking him that question had angered him or pleased him. “The idols are not just golden likenesses of gods and goddesses, arms dealer. The idols are a pathway to a brand new future for mankind, but they will also unlock something terrible that will shake this world to its core.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“No, I know you don’t, and I doubt you have the intellectual capacity to process what I am talking about.”
Kruger felt a wave of anger rise in him. How dare this man talk to him like that? But then, was he a man? Before he could formulate something to say that might save face, the Oracle spoke again.
“You will use the Sword of Fire to locate and open the king’s tomb. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you will work with athanatoi, is that understood?”
Kruger didn’t know what to say. He was used to working with his own men – former soldiers, armes dealers, mercenaries and thugs. Now, Otmar Wolff was ordering him to complete a difficult mission with a bunch of idiot cultists who all thought they were Mr Anderson from the Matrix.
“Well?” The Oracle’s tone was severe.
Kruger knew immediately what to say in response. “Of course, sir.”
“Good... good.” The Oracle’s voice sounded as dry as dead wood on a salt flat as he turned the word over in his mouth. “A mighty battle is racing toward humanity, Arms Dealer. The fog of war will choke every last person in this world when the fighting starts, and it’s going to start soon. Very soon.”
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE