Gates Of Hades

Chapter Twenty-eight

Silanus, Sardinia

Three hours later

Jason had insisted everyone gather up whatever few possessions they had brought to the cave and be ready for a speedy departure.

"Y' tellin' us the cavalry's gonna come chargin' o'er yon hill?" Adrian had asked, only half joking.

"Something like that," Jason had replied enigmatically.

"Exactly what will happen?" Maria wanted to know.

"I'm not sure," Jason confessed. "I just know we're gonna have to move in a-"

He was interrupted by a flash of light. Half a second later, a sound like a thunder reached the cave. All four peered out of the entrance to see smoke rising from a patch of ground near the house. Fifty feet away, a second burst was followed by the same roar and dense smoke.

Adrian was chuckling. "Practice bombs! Little noise, lots of smoke to show where the thing hit. 'Less a man knew, he'd think he was being assaulted by ground forces."

Against the billowing smoke, additional flickers silhouetted men running in every direction, firing at imagined attackers. One or two bullets whined off the rock at the entrance to the cave.

"We'll never have a better shot at it," Jason said, rolling out onto the rocky ground. "Let's go!"

With his hand on Maria's elbow, Jason dashed up the hill, followed by Adrian and Clare.

It must have been the loose pebbles and scree that cascaded from each hurried step that drew the attention of the ecoterrorists below. First one shot, then two, then a fusillade split the air above their heads.

Maria moaned in fear.

"Bloody sods dinna know where we are, just shooting at th' sound," Adrian puffed.

Maria ducked her head as though she might be able to dodge a stray bullet. "They do not have to know if they hit us."

As they crested the edge of the gully where the car was hidden, Adrian took the lead. He seemed to know their position from memory rather than whatever he could see with the nightscope. The steep hills blocked all but the stars directly overhead. It seemed to Jason they had been on this trek for hours, although his watch told him they had left the safety of the cave only minutes before.

Behind them, the sound of both rifle fire and practice bombs had stopped. Apparently, Eglov and company had realized they were not under any serious attack.

A glimmer of light on metal told Jason they had arrived at the place they had left the Volvo.

Adrian opened the driver's door and swiftly disabled the interior light. "Briskly, now."

The whine of a nearby rifle shot suggested they had not been quick enough.

"Somebody saw the courtesy light," Jason surmised, piling into the backseat just as the rear windshield became a spiderweb of cracked glass.

"Never mind," Adrian said, pulling his wife in beside him. "We'll be outta here…"

The sentence died with the empty clicking of the car's solenoid and the thump of two more rounds hitting sheet metal.

"Jesus wept!" Adrian was back out of the car, handing the Sten to Jason through an open window. "Spiteful ol' bitch! She picks a hell of a time to demand attention!"

Jason was considerably more interested in getting the Volvo going than attributing malevolent intent to it. He was using the butt of the machine gun to clear the remaining glass from the back window so he could see to shoot if necessary. "If you can't get her started, now's the time to run for it. They don't see us yet, but that interior light gave somebody the general location."

As if to verify the observation, a bullet kicked up pebbles as Adrian slammed the hood down. "Give 'er a try, Mother!"

Clare leaned across the seat and tried the key. The feminine touch was no more successful.

Jason opened his door. "Hey, you saved over a hundred euros, remember?"

"An' where's Antonio when you need him?" grunted Adrian.

"Not exactly the time to play mechanic, Adrian. We need to make a run for it."

"I dinna think so. In th' dark you'd na' be able to follow me. You'd be lost in five minutes, left to the tender mercies of our friends back there once the sun came up."

"So, what the hell do you suggest?"

Adrian leaned against the post of the open driver's door. "I suggest you bloody push on t' other side. There's a steep swale a few yards away an' we might be able to jump 'er off."

There was no time for argument. Jason put his shoulder against the car door, his feet scrabbling in the loose, rocky soil. The car didn't budge, and he saw one, two muzzle flashes as their opponents drew closer. Fortunately, the shots were still wild.

They wouldn't be much longer.

"Give 'er a shove, now." Adrian gasped. "On th' count o' three. One, two…"

The Volvo seemed to move forward a few inches before rolling back, but at least a ton or so of inertia had been overcome.

Jason ducked as a bullet sang by, too close for his liking. Ignoring a second, he heaved again.

This time the car began moving ahead, tires grinding at glacial speed against loose dirt and rocks.

"Should we get out?" Clare wanted to know.

"Nah. We get this thin' goin', there'll be na' time to stop for you," Adrian puffed.

If we get it going.

The Volvo was picking up speed, reaching the pace of a steady walk. A bullet buzzed past Jason's ear like an angry bee.

"Any chance that lot has access to night-vision equipment?" Adrian panted.

Jason was thinking the same thing. "Who knows?"

The automobile was now moving at the velocity of an octogenarian's brisk walk as four more shots sprayed Jason with biting, stinging dirt. "But I'd say it's a definite possibility. We're not in accurate range of the AK-47s they carry."

"When will we be?" Maria's voice asked from the floor of the backseat.

"No time soon, I hope, lassie. Jason, jump in."

This was going to be it. Either the balky Volvo cranked when Adrian popped the clutch or they had lost valuable time trying to escape. At least they had the chance, Jason thought. Had the Volvo an automatic transmission, there would have been no possibility of using the car's own motion to replace the starter motor.

The Volvo shuddered and jerked, its tires skidding on the dirt, then stopped.

Nothing.

"Not fast enough yet. We'll give 'er a go again," Adrian said with unwarranted optimism. "Jason, kin ye fend those lads off a bit?"

The Sten wasn't known for its accuracy at any sort of range, and Jason would have cheerfully exchanged the silencer for a flash suppressor. A shot would be hard to trace by sound in these hills, but the fire from the muzzle would pinpoint their location.

Jason rested the machine gun on the roof of the automobile and flicked the selector to single fire. "Soon's there's a chance of hittin' anything. How 'bout you get this buggy going?"

His answer was another shuddering jerk as Adrian popped the clutch again. This time the effort was rewarded with the sound of the engine. The Volvo fishtailed with the sudden application of power, steadied, then lurched forward. Jason fired two or three rounds behind them before jumping into the rear seat. Unlikely he would hit anyone, but it served notice to their pursuers to keep their distance.

"There's a paved road coupla kilometers on," Adrian announced. "We get there-"

The Volvo hit a bank, lifting the right wheels.

"If you dinna turn on the headlights, we'll na' make it to the paved road," Clare observed. "Easy to run right inta the edge o' the' combe w'out seein' it."

"She's right," Jason observed. "We're at the edge of their range, anyway. More chance of us crashing into something or running over a cliff than getting hit."

The road in front of them was suddenly visible in the car's lights. Jason marveled that they had not smashed the radiator against one of the boulders lining the rocky trail like irregularly spaced sentries. Or hit the unforgiving rock that, in several spots, towered above the path. This would have been difficult four-wheel-drive territory. That the Volvo had not left its oil pan or transmission housing along the way had to be the sheerest of luck.

"'Ere we be." Adrian was turning onto what at first looked like a continuation of the uneven path they had followed. Closer observation revealed dirt-colored pavement, cement or asphalt, Jason couldn't be sure. Whatever the material, it served to join a series of tooth-loosening potholes.

At least here there was small chance of unexpectedly hitting a stone larger than the car. As it was, the road was carved from the hills that formed the spine of the island, a serpentine, narrow two-lane that looked barely wide enough for two medium-size vehicles to pass.

Over Adrian's shoulder, Jason could see the speedometer wavering around eighty-five kilometers, less than fifty miles an hour. Even so, he nearly hit the headliner with each bounce.

He tightened his seat belt to the limit, noticing Maria doing the same.

Through teeth clenched for fear of biting his tongue, Jason asked, "Where're we going?"

"Cagliari," Adrian answered, not taking his eyes off the road.

"Where?"

"Cagliari," Maria said. "Provencal capital. Italian naval base."

"Only town of any real size on the island," Adrian added. "Figgered you could head to wherever you were goin' and I could drop Mother off, send her home to visit with the wee grandchildren back in Scotland until all this blows over."

"You need to figger again," Clare said. "I'll not be shipped off like some mail-order parcel, not after th' years I spent waitin' for you while you were in the service, waitin' to see if you came home upright or in a box." "But y' kenna come along," Adrian argued. "There's people back there mean us all harm."

"I'm no more in danger than th' lass," she said, referring to Maria.

Swell.

Barely escaped from Eglov's killers and Jason was listening to a domestic argument that sounded like which child would get to use the sole ticket to the county fair.

He was about to speak up, thank Adrian for his implicit offer to help, and decline, when the interior of the Volvo was filled with light from behind.

"Jesus wept!" Adrian grunted. "You'd think this was the bleedin' M4. Somebody's drivin' way too fast."

It didn't take a clairvoyant to guess who.

Jason guessed Eglov and his men had reconnoitred the area well enough to know the paved road was the likely, if not only, escape route. They had also obtained a car with a lot more power than the aging Volvo. It was gaining quickly, already well within range of the AK-47s.

"Anywhere we could turn off, maybe lose them?" Jason asked.

"Na' but winding road for the next ten kilometers," came the reply.

A burst of gunfire, this time close enough to hear, came from the right front of the pursuing car and went wide right.

Jason involuntarily ducked.

The swaying, bucking motion of fast travel made any sort of accurate shooting unlikely. Whether the silver- bullet-firing six-guns from Silver's back by the Lone Ranger or a Walther PPK from a speeding Aston Martin driven by James Bond, a hit was the result of far more luck than skill. The sudden shifts in wind, direction, and elevation all made a moving gunfight more spectacular than deadly.

Nonetheless, Jason felt compelled to fire a few shots in return, with equal lack of result.

"They'll be right up beside us in minutes, Jason observed. "Got any ideas?"

Adrian nodded. "Aye. In a moment we'll reach a wee straight. Remember the bootleg?"

Jason did.

He sat back down in the seat to cinch his seat belt tighter. "Ladies, I'd make sure your seat harness is supersecure."

"Jesus!"

The sudden expletive made Jason forget his seat belt.

The edge of the headlights was reflecting from a truck pulled across both lanes of the narrow road.

The Eco men must have had a backup crew farther down the road, one that could commandeer the truck now effectively hemming the Volvo in. They also could not have picked a better spot: to the right was sheer wall, to the left the abyss.

Adrian slowed as though to surrender. Jason knew what was coming and hoped Clare and Maria had followed his suggestions to make themselves secure.

"We have enough room?" Jason asked, instantly wishing he had kept his concern to himself.

"Na' matter," Adrian said, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror as the car behind closed the gap. "Goin' over th' edge's better 'n what those sods have in mind for us."

At a point no more than fifty feet from the truck, Adrian hit the gas, momentarily gaining on the surprised driver of the pursuing car. Just as the gap started to close again, Adrian stood violently on the brake, at the same time snatching the wheel toward the emptiness of the road's outer edge.

The snap of the steering mechanism broke any adhesion between rubber tire and paved road. At the same time, centrifugal force threw the automobile's rear end outward, causing a spin.

"Chicago! Al Capone!" Adrian chortled. "Elliot Ness!"

The maneuver had its origins in Prohibition bootleggers' moonshine-filled cars dodging pursuing revenue agents, one of a number of driving tactics taught in commando training worldwide, perhaps the only one with truly American roots. Although Jason suspected the trick was more at home on the winding dirt roads of Appalachia than the streets of Al Capone's Chicago, he had to admit Adrian executed it perfectly.

At the exact moment the car was facing the opposite direction, Adrian hit the accelerator, regaining traction, and the Volvo leaped like a springing cat in the direction from which it just come. Jason had only an instant to see astonished faces as they whizzed past the chasing vehicle.

Unable to stop or turn so unexpectedly, the car that had been behind-it looked like an older Mercedes as it flashed past-skidded into a sideways drift. For an instant the two left wheels pawed empty air, and Jason thought it might roll over.

But there was no time for a roll. Instead, Mercedes met truck with a crash of splintering glass and tearing sheet metal.

"Hold it; stop!" Jason yelled.

Before the Volvo was entirely still, Jason bolted from the rear, dashing toward the mass of metal that was hissing and steaming like the death throes of some mythical dragon.

Jason sprayed the carnage with nine-millimeter bullets until the Sten's firing pin clicked on an empty chamber and the barrel burned his hand through the canvas cover.

Slamming another clip into the weapon, he took two steps forward before he was restrained by Adrian's hand on his shoulder.

"No time to put a bullet in each of 'em, laddie. We canna ken if there's more about. Best we make our way while we can."

Jason reluctantly agreed with the wisdom of the observation, if not the sentiment. He would prefer not to chance facing any survivors later, survivors who would be less than appreciative of his bounty in letting them live.