Raiders

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Thirty-eight thousand feet over the Swiss Alps, the Raiders, plus Eva Starling and Ben Speers were watching the worried face of Ezra Haven on a plasma screen on the partition wall. The American former NSA man dropped down into his seat and rubbed his neck. He looked troubled and tired. “It’s great news that you know the Nectanebo Codex is in the Vatican, but I just got some bad news.”

“What bad news?” Caleb asked his old friend.

Ezra passed a hand over his red eyes and sighed. “I was worried something like this might happen.”

“What’s the deal, Ez?”

“Titanfort is picking up some chatter about a terror attack somewhere in North Africa or the Middle East.”

Caleb frowned. “ISIS?”

Ezra sighed and gave his head a weary shake. “No, OM.”

“I thought they were focussed on finding the Book of Spells?” Mason asked.

“They are,” Ezra replied. “But they’re an enormous operation, Jed.”

Milo said, “You mean they can rub their tummies and pat their heads at the same time, right?”

“Right,” Ezra said. “They can easily run multiple missions all over the world at the same time, and often do so just to create extra confusion. Titanfort is suggesting the terror attack is a diversion designed to break our team and stretch our resources at this critical time in the mission.”

“And they’d be right,” Mason said, bringing his hand down on the table with a hefty smack. “We’re already running on empty, Ezra. We can’t afford to split the team and send half on some wild good chase all over bugger-knows-where while the rest of us secure some crazy Egyptian Book of the Dead.”

Zara sidled up to Milo with a mischievous smile on her face. “Aww,” she said.

“What?”

“You call them tummies.”

“Just take it easy,” Ezra said to Mason. “All we know at the moment is that there’s increased chatter connected with the Hidden Hand with regards to some kind of terror attack. At this time, the location is unspecified and the time is unspecified. We’re not splitting the team up based on that.”

“But be ready all the same, right?” Caleb said.

“Be ready all the same,” said Ezra. “The stuff we’re picking up looks like they’re working with the Spider crew again. After their success in snatching Eva it seems OM has found a solid crew of dogsbodies who will work for peanuts, doing the dirty work while the big boys focus on the grand prize.”

“Linus is a busy boy,” Ella said. “A few hours ago he was trying to hunt down one of our assets, and now this.”

“Maybe the failure to secure that asset is what drove them back to OM,” Ezra suggested.

“This is just insane,” Mason said. “Tell me again why the US Government isn’t going after these guys? Why isn’t the CIA all over this, Ezra? Why us?”

Ezra rubbed his eyes then raised his head to face the Londoner. “I already told you, Jed. I already told all of you. The US Government, along with just about every other government is infiltrated at all levels by members of the OM secret order. There’s no way to know who we can trust, and who we cannot trust. Titanfort was established by a private consortium, a select few — a small circle of good men and women who want to purge the Hidden Hand and bring daylight back to the world.” He paused a beat while everyone soaked up the lecture. “That is why we can’t call 911 and ask the nice people in the CIA to fight the bogeymen for us.”

Caleb broke the silence. “You trust the source on this terror attack? This is our lives, Ezra.”

“I wouldn’t be passing the information to you if I didn’t.”

“Do I know him?” Caleb said.

“Yes, and it’s a she. For now, we focus on getting the codex out of the Vatican and securing the Book of Thoth. In the meantime I’ll have my people here at Titanfort try and get more details about the attack.” Ezra leaned forward in his chair. “As soon as you land in Rome, you need to move faster than you ever went before, and I hope you realize that. These people are not your average internet conspiracy. These guys are serious business. Make no mistake,” he said firmly. “This will be the biggest, hardest fight of your lives.”

“You got that right,” Zara said.

“Damn right,” Ben said.

The team shared a mutual look of concern. Ezra was first to break the silence, his voice sounding thin in the cabin’s speakers. “All right, Milo — what did you get on Napoleon’s cassone?”

“I’ve got its rough location,” Milo said. “So when we get there we should be able to move things along without too much delay. Hunting stuff down is where things start to slow down. I’ve been searching through some of the floor plans available on the Vatican tourists sites, but there’s nothing for the Secret Archives, obviously.”

“You are kidding me, right?” Zara said.

“Not at all, stuff like that doesn’t really… ah — I see what you did there.”

Zara winked at him and gave his hair a playful tussle. “When you grow up you’ll be all right, kid.”

“Thanks, wait — when I grow up? I’m the same age you are.”

She fixed an eye on him and a smile crept across her lips. “What’s age got to do with growing up, Milo?”

“Point taken.”

Mason looked at the screen and fixed desperate eyes on Ezra. “Please tell me your Titanfort guys have got us into the Vatican?”

“No dice, I’m sorry. The authorities in the Vatican played hardball and we got nowhere,” Ezra said. “They are not cooperating at all and we have no contacts there similar to Gaston in Paris. They rejected my requests to enter the archive outright, and when I spoke to some of my old bosses in the NSA and tried to get some strings pulled, they dug their heels in and started to get suspicious. There’s nothing else for it — we’re going to have to go in the hard way.”

Mason sighed and shook his head. “Fine. No problem.”

“I want a detailed plan before that aircraft touches down in Rome, and I mean infiltration, asset recovery and exit strategy planned to the second. When you hit a place like the Vatican you upset some very serious and powerful people. We’re going to need to get in and out with the asset in double-quick time and without raising an alarm or we’re not going to get as far as the airport on the way out, never mind the country.”

“Fine.”

“And no guns,” Ezra said. “We’re not getting into a situation where there’s live rounds firing in the air in the Vatican and Swiss Guards getting killed on duty. You have to do this without firearms, is that clear?”

“We prefer to leave the shooting irons back at the ranch whenever we can, Ez,” Zara said. “So that’s fine with me.”

Ezra gave a nod. “And the rest of you?”

“There are no problems with my team working without guns,” Mason said. “Like Zara just said, we try and work without them whenever we can. They have a nasty habit of going off and killing people, and a lot of our jobs involve rescuing innocent and scared people, often children. Going in tooled up with automatic weapons can often make a job harder.”

“Good. You proved you know how to handle weapons in Frankfurt, but this is not one of those jobs. Taking one of the Spiders out of the game is one thing, but killing a member of the Vatican Security forces is quite another, not to mention the chance of a senior member of the church getting killed in the crossfire if things get out of control.”

“So that’s settled,” Mason said. “No guns.”

He cut the call and Mason stood in front of the plasma screen. He looked at his watch. “We’re running out of time.”

“Wait just a minute,” Eva said. “You’re not seriously going to break into the Vatican Secret Archives?”

“Sure, why not?” Caleb asked.

“Because nothing like that has ever happened before! It would be the break-in of the century.”

Zara looked unfazed. “Still not getting your point.”

“All right — enough of this,” Mason said. “Virgil and Milo: I want a plan to break into the Vatican Secret Archives and I want it before this aircraft touches down in Rome. We just entered Italian airspace, so you have forty-five minutes.”