The Atlantis Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Heading downstairs, they ran through the house, staying quiet but making no extra effort to mask their movements. The car was minutes away, then the twisting road back to the airfield.

Cassidy urged the others ahead, disturbed by what she had seen coming down from the loft — a force of men, eight strong, lithe as Olympic athletes, and bristling with lethal armaments. Their faces were covered, their bodies clad in black. She heard not a single murmur between them but noticed a perfect communication through hand signals. She studied the way they moved and carried themselves. The discipline. The competence.

And she backed away quickly. These were not men she wished to cross. The sensation was an odd one for her, but something she recognized from a distant past and respected. Beating a hasty retreat, she rejoined the team, casting a worried glance at Carl Kirke as she passed him.

“I don’t think much of his chances.”

Bodie, ahead, answered, “Did they see you?”

“No.”

“You leave them a surprise?”

“There wasn’t time.”

“Kirke will be fine. We’re thieves, not bloody government agents sworn to serve and protect.”

Cassidy kept her own counsel. The slim chance Kirke had was that his soon-to-be questioners were masked, concealing their identities, and would find him asleep. She watched out for her team as they fled headlong toward the front door. Bodie wasted no time unlocking three separate bolts and then slipping it open. Cassidy saw him slide a handgun from a holster at his back and then step outside. It was no small risk, but the coast looked clear.

“Go.”

The path was dusted with snow, a mild breeze stirring the soft flakes. Cassidy ran for ten meters and then stopped and turned to appraise the bulk of the house behind them.

The first faceless man stared down at her from the top floor, hands gripping the rail of the balcony he had just walked onto; a second dark figure studied her from an adjacent window. And judging by several shadows crossing other windows, Carl Kirke had been awakened to the fright of his life. Cassidy saw a shadow fall, then shook her head as it was dragged back up again. Through the open door she heard a faint scream.

“Wait,” she said. “These men are hurting Kirke.”

Bodie slowed. “Can you see a way back to him?”

Cassidy eyed the faceless, motionless watchers and remembered their firepower. “Sure, I can do anything.”

“That’s a negative,” Heidi broke in. “The op will maintain its priority. Get that compass here now.”

“I could meet you at the airfield.” Cassidy rated her chances pretty low but hated to see an innocent man left behind. She also hated being told what to do by the CIA.

“Kirke is a criminal.” Heidi appeared to read her mind. “Didn’t you wonder why we were able to locate him so easily? Shit, the man’s been sticking our noses in it for years. Boasting about acquisitions in certain circles where he knew word would eventually reach us but always a step removed, always out of reach. Don’t waste this hard work on him.”

Cassidy tore herself away, vowing to find out if Heidi was telling the truth about Kirke, and to take it out of her hide if she wasn’t. She ran decisively, turning one more time to look back at the house.

Nothing. No men standing on the balcony. No sounds. The visage was as empty as a ghost’s face and now just as haunted.

Bodie started the car. The team piled inside. The engine roared as he swung it around in the direction they’d originally come. A beam of sunlight pierced the distant horizon, illuminating the side of a mountain and slowly burnishing the length and breadth of the skies.

“I remember cursing the sunrise a few times before,” Cassidy said as she buckled up. “But not as intensely as this.”

“I’ve never seen you with your knickers in such a twist, Cass,” Bodie said.

“My what? Forget it, just step on the gas.”

He drove urgently. Cassidy stared back through the rear window, her edgy mood soon infecting the rest of the team. Gunn was at her side, searching the roads with frightened eyes, and a worried Jemma sat next to him. But when Cassidy saw what terrifying wickedness chased them she quickly reached for her gun.

“Load up, people,” she said. “We’re about to become roadkill.”

The midnight-black Toyota 4Runner tore up the road, barely slowing for the twisting bends that climbed higher and higher. Alpine passes and towering peaks stood all around, snow-capped, emerging faster as the sun rose higher. Sweeping through the skies in pursuit came three motorized paragliders, large chutes filled with air, each one carrying two men in the buggy-like frame that hung beneath. Cassidy saw front and side wheels and a tubular framework, but most of all, she saw the occupants leaning out, leaning down, semiautomatics aimed.

Gunfire rang out. Cassidy saw Bodie turn the wheel involuntarily, sending the tires bouncing from the tarmac onto the hard-packed soil at the side of the road. He corrected immediately and everyone saw a line of bullets make a suture across an upcoming bend in the road.

Cassidy used the grab handle to steady herself. Bodie gunned the car’s engine, now seeing a straightaway leading to an apex. The paragliders came lower, three abreast and weighed down with firepower.

Bodie hit the crest of the hill just as the paragliders opened fire again. Deadly lead slammed into the road behind their rear tires, bombarding the paintwork with fragments. Bodie kept it straight even as all four tires caught air. The body bounced down an instant later, jostling Gunn right out of his seat and into the footwell.

“Stay there,” Cassidy growled.

Gunn struggled. Cassidy pressed the button to lower the back windows, then leaned out, sighted up toward the eastern skies and the rising sun. The glare was blinding and she fired off a couple of shots. Bodie swung the car hard right, and she found her cheek mashed against the window frame.

“Call it out!” she cried.

Cross took the command to heart. “Straight, sixty feet,” he cried. “Then easy right.”

Cassidy steadied herself. At that moment the lead paraglider swooped and crossed over to the other side of the car. The second descended, firing relentlessly. A bullet clanged off the nearby framework and another penetrated the lower skin. Cassidy loosed a shot that broke one of the paraglider’s upright struts, rendering it unstable but nothing worse. The masked occupants didn’t flinch, drifting lower and lower.

Bullets raked the other side of the car. Gunn cried out. Jemma leapt away. The window next to her head imploded, showering everyone with glass. Bodie swung the wheel and the paraglider shot overhead, looping and spinning around to come back at them. Cassidy saw only one behind them now, and watched it carefully line them up in its sights.

“Hard right, thirty feet,” Cross called.

She fired two shots. The paraglider shifted unhappily as the pilot flinched, losing line of sight. Her third shot winged the passenger, sent his weapon hurtling away and spinning to the ground.

The man hung on with grim determination.

Now Bodie turned the wheel again, and the other two paragliders shot right over them, bullets flying from their weapons and passing harmlessly to the right. Cross swore and then shouted, “Switchbacks coming up! A dozen of them!”

Cassidy turned in disbelief, thinking Cross might finally be losing his mind. From their vantage point, at an elevation above the road below, she saw a twisting ribbon, a crazed snake of hairpin bends and switchbacks, flowing sharply down to the valley floor below.

To her right ran a chaotic row of small concrete posts, the only barrier preventing them from flipping end over end down a thousand feet.

“We came up here in the dark?” Jemma asked, voice unsteady.

“Yeah, aren’t you glad we did, though?”

Cassidy waited for the car to slow, then used the first hairpin to sight on one of the paragliders. Bullets sprayed from both parties, but none came close. The second bend replayed in much the same way, tires squealing as Bodie struggled to keep control around the tight curve. Cassidy reloaded on the straightaway, giving Jemma a long look as she slammed in the spare mag.

“Would work better with backup.”

Jemma breathed deeply and then nodded. The rest of the team, except her and Gunn, was proficient with firearms. This was way outside her comfort zone.

“Don’t worry, girl,” Cassidy emboldened her. “Just point and squeeze. Whatever you hit in the sky, it’s good.”

Jemma inched her way out of the open window, as ungainly as a newborn gazelle on a treadmill. Cassidy tried something new as they hit their fifth hairpin, now about a third down the mountain. Cold wind blew between open windows, scouring the inside of the car. Cassidy leaned out, farther this time, using one hand to take firm hold of the grab strap and the other to steady the gun.

Hanging out of the car that way, she waited until Bodie straightened and let the lead paraglider drift into her sights. There! She squeezed the trigger three times. The first bullet flew high, but the second took the pilot right between the eyes. The man’s head jerked back, blood spraying the passenger, and then the machine took a nose dive. Cassidy saw he had become entangled in the guiding rope, placing pressure in multiple places. The glider became unruly, shifting this way and that. The dead man hung over the front, dragging it down. The passenger tried to climb over him and cut him away, lost his balance, and plummeted to the ground. Cassidy watched and held on, keeping her aim steady in case either of the remaining two paragliders came into view.

Jemma fired from her side of the car. Bodie jumped on the brakes and twisted the wheel, hearing return fire from the paragliders. Bullets strafed in front of the car, blew pieces from one of the concrete posts. Bodie evaded them, scraped the front left side on the next post and saw the yawning drop beyond.

“That is not smooth and fucking sweet,” Cassidy heard him mutter. “That is not.”

She angled her body even farther out. The car fishtailed one way around a corner and the paragliders shot across the other, the three machines level for one second and then roaring apart. As they switched back, Cassidy saw their fallen enemy’s body on the road below, limbs bent at terrible angles. She took a moment to gauge how far there was to go.

Four more hairpins to the valley floor. Then…

Well, then they’d be sitting ducks. The paragliders would know that. Having lost one comrade, they would surely wait for an easier kill.

But one swooped down, coming in behind the SUV. Bullets streaked from its sides, fired by both the pilot and the passenger. Cassidy heard Bodie shouting into the comms, ordering Heidi to get the plane running and prepare some cover for them. She then blocked it all out, concentrated on the paraglider that pursued them as it started to pull up toward the clouds. She fired at the same time as Jemma, and the results were spectacular.

Bodies jerked sideways and backward, lolling lifelessly. The glider’s engine stopped, and the machine lurched in midair. It then took a nose dive, which developed into a roll, end over end until it made contact with the road in a loud and shocking crunch of metal. Cassidy levered herself back into the car, right hip on fire from resting on the narrow ledge for so long. Quickly, she slipped in another mag and looked at Jemma.

“Ready?”

The dark-haired girl nodded, the tight bun at the back of her head barely moving. Cassidy knew Jemma, careful and with scrupulous morals, would be reeling inside — this would disrupt her normally faultless thought process — and tried to divert her attention.

“They’re shooting at you too, Jem. You see it now. Remember it. No excuses.”

“No argument here.”

Gunn again tried to pull himself out of the footwell, but Cassidy planted a boot on his head and pushed him back down. “Stay there. It’s safer.”

“Under your boot?”

“Best place for you.”

An unexpected hairpin sent Cassidy sprawling. She regained her composure and got back to the window. The remaining paraglider hovered to their right, and its occupants seemed to be taking their time as they aimed weapons. Both vehicles were running at the same level and the difficulty factor was far less.

“Shit, that’s not good.”

They opened fire. Bodie’s window smashed, the influx of glass blinding him for a moment. Another bullet wedged into the car’s central pillar, right behind Bodie’s head and in front of Cassidy’s nose. A third plowed through the thin door metal, grazing Jemma’s knee and drawing the thinnest line of blood. The cat burglar screamed in a startled reaction, dropping her gun and staring at her leg as if it might fall off.

The paraglider passengers didn’t let up, emptying their mags at the SUV. Buffeting winds and speed spoiled their aim, but still bullets grazed and punctured the car. Cassidy knew it was another desperate moment for the team, turned and fired through the open window, fired constantly and at anything — everything — in an effort to upset their attackers’ aim.

Then Cassidy had no more time. Bodie had lost control of the car. It swerved violently to the other side of the road. He caught the wheel and twisted it back. Too far. The SUV tipped, went up on two wheels, then smashed back down and gained instant traction. Bodie jammed his foot on the brakes, but too late. Cassidy saw what was coming and grabbed the seat back with both hands.

Shit, poor Gunn. He’s gonna feel like a pinball in that footwell.

The car crashed brutally through the nearest barrier, bouncing through the gap and heading straight down the side of the mountain.