Land of the Gods

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

As the ECHO jet raced away from Hawaii and across the Pacific sky on its way to the United States, the reunited team were all crashed out in their seats. Scarlet was nursing a chilled vodka and trying to forget about the last few hours. Like everyone else, they felt exhausted, battle-worn and shell-shocked.

When she told the Hawaii team that she had narrowly avoided being killed by the Yakuza on the bullet train, the battle-worn former SAS officer reminded them all of just how perilous their lives really were. Then, when they discovered Hawke’s team had secured the Ring of Akhenaten, they breathed a sigh of relief and shared a moment of celebration before leaving Tokyo.

The joy was brought to a swift end when they heard that Kim and Camacho had landed safely in Washington DC and were on their way to the White House. This shook them all back to the reality of what was happening in the American capital and raised a lot of worrying questions about Alex Reeve and her father, President Brooke.

Having access to the highest levels of US Government was not something they took for granted, but along with Eden’s Westminster contacts it sure as hell made life a lot easier, plus Jack Brooke was a friend as well as a president. So was Alex. If Faulkner was moving against them with some kind of insane plan to take over the Executive Branch, they could both be in a lot of danger.

And so could ECHO.

With an enemy in the Oval Office things could get very difficult for them, if not impossible. There was no way they could engage in a firefight on US territory like they had done tonight at the cane plantation and later the airport without the support of the president himself. If the man sitting behind the Resolute Desk wasn’t their friend things would be very different. Not only would they not be able to get away with it, Hawke was certain they would quickly be arrested, separated and locked away somewhere.

She sighed with the stress of it all but closed her eyes and thought of her island. A fantasy now, but long sought after and one day a reality. Her daydream was broken by a bustling of excitement in the cabin. When she opened her eyes, she saw the grim face of Sir Richard Eden on the partition wall’s plasma screen.

“Good work on the rings.” Straight to business, but the former Paras officer was tired and he looked it. “It’s great news that we now have the third and fourth rings. Now we have four of them and that makes half the map.”

“I’m sensing that something’s on your mind.” Lea said.

Eden sighed. “The Oracle and the Athanatoi were in Hawaii because they’ve read the Codex. They know what we know about the rings and they’re working out the locations. This puts us on a collision course with them on this mission.”

“We can handle a bunch of idiots that look like undertakers,” Scarlet said.

Now Hawke spoke up. “True, but it puts us on an elevated threat warning for the entire mission, plus the emergency in Washington has taken two of our team members away so we’re weaker than usual.”

Eden nodded. “There’s nothing to be done about any of that, Hawke. You just have to get through it and secure the eight rings.”

“A piece of piss.” In old style, Scarlet cracked a miniature bottle of chilled vodka and downed it in one. “That’s much better.”

Ryan shook his head. “Now she’s cooking with gas.”

“Burn, baby…burn,” she said. “It’s four in the morning and I just spent today riding an external elevator in a thunderstorm and almost got killed by a Yakuza torturer on a speeding train. If I want a drink, I’ll have one.” She turned to him, glowering. “Unless of course you want to try and stop me?”

Ryan shifted uneasily in his seat. “No, you’re all right.”

“Thought as much.”

Lexi opened up her sandwich and took a big bite. “I’m so hungry.”

After passing food around, Scarlet asked the obvious question. “So where are flying? We’ve been on board the plane an hour and I haven’t even asked where we’re going.”

“Las Vegas,” Eden said bluntly.

“Woo-hoo!” she said. “It’s party time, baby.”

“It is not party time,” he said with a smirk.

She slumped. “More bloody work then?”

“Afraid so, yes. My research has come up with a man named George Kozlov as the owner of the Ring of Ramesses the Great.”

Zeke’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard that name.”

“He was the third pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty and the mightiest of all the New Kingdom rulers.”

Zeke was confused. “Huh? No, the other dude.”

“Kozlov?” Eden said.

“That’s the fella.”

“George Kozlov is one of the most famous gambling tycoons in the world. He owns the Castillo.”

“That’s the biggest casino in Vegas,” Scarlet said.

They all turned to her.

“What? Me and Jack go there all the time.”

Eden raised an eyebrow. “I hope you and Mr Camacho make these junkets on your own dime?”

Scarlet sniffed. “Well…”

“What else do we know about this Kozlov?” Lea asked.

“As Cairo rightly says, he owns the Castillo. It’s the largest casino and hotel complex in Las Vegas situated right bang smack in the heart of the city on Las Vegas Boulevard. He has a certain reputation for protecting himself and his assets, and he is also well-known for dealing with his enemies with, how shall I put it… extreme prejudice.”

Nikolai sniffed. “I cannot wait to meet this man.”

“I think I read about this guy,” Ryan said. “They tried to put him on trial about a million times but he has so much money he just buys his way out of it every time.”

“That’s him,” Eden said. “The last occasion was for massive tax fraud and salting millions away offshore, and the time before that was the Big M.”

Lexi’s eyes widened. “Murder?”

“No,” Scarlet said sarcastically. “He refused to pay for a Big Mac.”

“Very funny.”

“Murder, yes,” Eden said. “One of his poker buddies was a man named Cash Lombard and although details are sketchy, it’s thought he’d racked up a big gambling debt with Kozlov and then refused to pay it back. I can’t speak for the rest of him but they found his head and hands in a storm drain.”

“Yikes,” Zeke said.

Nikolai lowered his eyes and shook his head.

Lexi put her sandwich on the seat next to her. “Maybe I’ll finish that later.”

“So what makes an animal like that have an interest in ancient jewellery?” Lea asked.

“He doesn’t,” Eden said. “But he has a very big interest in money, and according to our research here, he bought the ring at an auction in New York City twenty years ago along with a whole heap of other ancient relics, mostly gold, and mostly from a treasure trove excavated in Upper Egypt. He’s had all of it, including the ring, ever since.”

“Good work, Rich.”

“Thanks.”

“Where does he keep the ring?” Hawke asked.

Eden grimaced. “This is where it gets tricky. As I already said, George Kozlov owns the Castillo, and along with owning it and managing it he also calls it home. The entire top floor is his private residence.”

“Ah.”

“It’s top floor time!” Lexi said.

“Right,” Eden said. “If you want a quick way to think of it, then visualize a sort of private military compound with its own security force of heavily armed men, mostly former Special Forces. Accessed by key-code activated executive lifts and guarded twenty-four-seven, the inner sanctum of Mr Kozlov is probably one of the most secure locations in the United States.”

“Excellent news,” Ryan said. “At least we all know now how and when we’re all going to die.”

Lexi play slapped his shoulder and smiled. “Idiot.”

“I aim to please.”

“You said it’s the entire top floor,” Lea said. “Helipad?”

Eden nodded. “Not one but two, one at either end of the roof. Both guarded around the clock by former Green Berets.”

“This joker doesn’t take any chances,” Hawke said. “But do we know where exactly he keeps the ring?”

“We certainly do,” Eden said. “The same place he’s kept it since the day he bought it — on his ring finger.”

Hawke exchanged a look with the rest of the team and saw they were all thinking the same thing he was. “I think when I speak for everyone when I say, oh bugger.”

“Exactly.”

“Just like Jojima,” Zeke said.

Hawke watched the faces of the other team members. They looked tired and the usual energy that crackled in any room they filled seemed weaker now. They were closer than ever to their goal of finding the Citadel, but they all knew that a man like Kozlov was hardly going to roll over and hand them the ring.

And worse than that, they didn’t even know where the other rings were.

The Rings of Romulus, Remus and King Sudas in India were still out there somewhere.

Even if they got the ring from Kozlov, the Oracle could be securing them right now. It was a difficult time full of uncertainty for the team but they had no choice but to keep on keeping on. Never give up, never give in. He repeated the words to himself, muttering them under his breath like a mantra.

Never give up, never give in.

If he showed weakness now the whole team could crumble.

Since Eden’s injury they had all started to look up to him more and more as their leader. He had leadership experience in both the Royal Marines as an officer and later as a sergeant in the SBS so he knew what was expected of him, but this was different. ECHO was different — it was more like a family than anything he had ever known.

Lea was his fiancée now, for one thing and Eden had become a sort of father figure sitting at the top of the family tree. Ryan sometimes felt like a son to him, or at the very least a wayward younger brother. And if Ryan was the younger brother then Reaper was like an older brother, gnarled and cynical but with a heart of pure gold. He’d slept with both Scarlet and Lexi but there was no awkwardness — both women were too strong and confident for anything like that. Maybe one day even Zeke and Nikolai would feel like family — if they chose to stick around after all this craziness.

And if they survived the terrible bloodshed he knew was racing toward them all.

“All right,” he said firmly. “We put together a plan and we get the ring from Kozlov.”

He stretched his neck and looked out the porthole. Bright sunshine glittered on the endless Pacific and to the east, Sin City beckoned them like the most dangerous, sexiest siren in the whole damned and jaded world.

The Oracle did not know how long he had been staring at the flame. Beneath a tendril of gray smoke, its iridescent curves bent and twisted in the otherwise darkened room. When the door opened and Salazar stepped into the inner sanctum, the flame flickered for a few seconds, fighting for its life against the breeze from the hall.

A deep breath in, and a longer, slower exhalation. Count to ten. Never let the rage rise.

“What do you want, my loyal servant?”

“They got the ring.”

He felt his eyes close. “Which one?”

“The one in Hawaii.”

Never let the rage rise.

“So now they have four of the rings and we have none?”

Salazar swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”

They both heard the attempt to quell the rage in the Oracle’s long, heavy sigh. “How did this happen?”

“He climbed on board a moving aircraft as it rolled down the runway, opened the door with the emergency external lever and then shot his way inside the cockpit during its take-off.”

“And by he,” he growled, “you mean Josiah Hawke?”

“Of course. Benedict, Stefanus and Boaz are all dead.”

He opened his eyes and turned his wrinkled face to the nervous acolyte at his side. “Maybe I should induct him into the Order and get rid of the rest of you useless fools?”

“With all respect, sir…”

Everyone in the Order knew what the raised hand of the Oracle meant, and it meant immediate silence. To challenge the command would be suicide and both men in the room knew it.

“I like you Salazar. You are a good acolyte, a good, loyal servant. My loyal apprentice.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But don’t bring me any more news of failure or I will be forced to reconsider my evaluation of you.”

“Yes sir. I’m arranging more acolytes to pursue the rings as we speak.”

“Who?”

“Ignatius.”

“And his number two?”

“Absalom.”

“A good choice. Yin and yang, black and white. The ruthless, surgical cruelty and depraved genius of Ignatius, and the wild animal madness of Absalom. I am certain this combined force cannot fail me again.”

“No, sir. I am confident they will secure the location of the Citadel.”

The flame burned hard, now more than halfway through the thick, black candle on the desk. The old man felt his shoulders tighten a little as the tension in his muscles increased.

“Your words do not fill me with confidence, considering how poor your men have been at locating and securing the rings for us so far.”

“I will not fail you again, Oracle.”

“If you do, it will be your last failure.”

Salazar felt the temperature in the room drop as his leader delivered the icy reprimand. His skin crawled and his mouth dried up like dead wood as he fought to contain the terrible fear so easily struck into his heart by the monstrous man whose eyes he was avoiding at all costs.

The Oracle was not concerned by the prosaic concerns of his underling. Rising to his level in the Order came with many rewards, but also with many risks and upsetting the boss was chief among them.

He blew out the candle and the room plunged into semi-darkness with only a streak of moonlight on the far wall for illumination.

“This is my destiny, Salazar.”

“Closer than ever, sir.”

“Closer than ever, indeed. Those our people worshipped as gods lived in the Citadel for millennia and it is in that place that we will find our destiny. Their knowledge, their technology, their weapons… All so far ahead of us today it would look like black magic to the greatest scientists of our time.”

“I have waited an entire lifetime to witness it, sir.”

“As have I, Salazar,” the old man croaked. “Many, many years.”