The Atlantis Cipher

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The control room exploded. Gouts of fire surged through broken windows as glass shattered onto the deck in a lethal, glittering rain. A moment later, a hail of gunfire rang out, bullets hammering into the deck’s machinery and railings. This was followed by a second explosion on the other side of the ship, behind the control room, that again sent up an eruption of flame and smashed mechanical parts.

Bodie had hoped the new Bratva arrivals would react instinctively rather than with forethought, which is exactly what happened. Viktor spun and screamed an order. Men peeled away, heading to the sources of the fresh trouble. Bodie waited for a clear deck in front and then made his move.

He ran straight for the captives with Cassidy at his side. At first, their appearance was lost in the general upheaval. Bodie caught Heidi’s eye. The CIA agent reacted instantly, berating the guards and drawing their attention. Bodie ran into one, elbow first, sending him tumbling, and grabbed his weapon. Cassidy felled another, and then Heidi was up and grappling with a third. Bodie turned the gun on more guards and then went down to one knee as the captured Bratva fighters surged to life. Cross, he saw, had started moving toward Yasmine, probably intent on her safety over all else.

Viktor stared in pure anger, seemingly unable to believe his speech and executions had been interrupted. Bodie saw his lips move but couldn’t read the words. The half-dozen men guarding him raised their weapons as the freed Moroccans attacked.

Bodie fired, felling one of the guards. Viktor ignored it all, turning his back with disdain and concentrating once again on Yasmine. Viktor’s five remaining guards took on the Moroccans, bullets flying and then bodies crunching as the dead littered the deck.

Cassidy rolled with her opponent, smashing him on the side of the head until he went limp. She saw Cross relentlessly beat down one of Davydov’s men, then immediately look toward Yasmine.

“I won’t let you die!”

A blow landed on the older man’s right side, one he hadn’t seen coming. Cross was going to die unless he focused on things besides Yasmine. Cassidy saved him, then gave him a punch of her own.

“Get with it, granddad!”

She rose, evaluating her surroundings. She’d counted eight men rushing off to deal with the distractions Jemma had set, and figured they had maybe a minute before at least some of those would return. The surviving rebel Bratva were fighting a losing battle against Viktor’s guards, but now the ship’s crew were running to aid them.

Bodie grabbed the captain. “Arm your men.” He threw the man a weapon. “Watch our backs when the others return. We’re going after Viktor!”

The remaining crew hesitantly grabbed weapons, but the captain fought to rally them, pointing out that fighting and winning was the only way they’d ever see their families again. Some scrambled for cover. Others knelt, aimed, and waited. Bodie felt sure Jemma would be okay since they’d told her to find somewhere safe to hide.

Viktor raged at Yasmine and Hakim. His cracked, frenzied voice brought Cross’s head up quickly, snatching his attention.

“Eat my food, drink my wine, try my drugs!” The gun came up, leveled at Hakim. “This is my answer to you!”

“No!” Cross yelled, his face twisted with pain.

Viktor squeezed the trigger, and the bullet tore through Hakim’s chest. Yasmine screamed in distress. Cross, still too far away, scrambled across two dead bodies to stop what was happening. Bodie saw Hakim spinning away from Viktor, blood gushing from his wound. Viktor fired once more, the second bullet ending the bald man’s life. He raised his gun.

“And one more traitor must die.”

Too slow. They were all too slow.

Viktor realigned the pistol, leveled it at Yasmine’s throat, and pulled the trigger.

Cross threw himself at Viktor. Bodie fired but Viktor was no longer there. It took him a moment to realize that the Bratva boss had been distracted by Cross’s attack, sent staggering sideways but managing to shrug the thief away. Yasmine still lived, swinging slightly, screaming, spattered with Hakim’s blood, and losing some of her own where Viktor’s askew bullet had torn a ragged wound in her left arm.

Viktor bludgeoned Cross with the empty weapon, striking him around the temple and ear. Cross slumped and Viktor wriggled away, leaving the thief to crawl desperately after him. Viktor ran right up to Yasmine, drawing a wicked blade as he came close.

Cassidy went down to one knee, sighted Yasmine herself, and then elevated the barrel one meter higher. Two shots severed the chains and sent her figure crashing to the ground. In his haste, Viktor stumbled over her torso, sprawling headfirst.

Bodie nodded his satisfaction as he dashed in, but Viktor was faster than he could have imagined. Still holding the knife, he slashed at Yasmine’s unprotected throat.

She couldn’t move, muscles spent from hanging upright for so long. Bodie heard an outburst of gunfire behind as he moved in. The first wave of guards had returned.

It was Cross who saved Yasmine, coming just close enough to drag Viktor away by the leg and deflect the Bratva boss’s swing. Even so, the knife nicked Yasmine, causing her eyes to open wide and a burst of adrenaline to fire her veins. She folded in on herself, bleeding from two wounds. Viktor leapt in again, landing on her and furiously gripping her arms as he tried to avenge her betrayal.

In a chaotic second, he raised the knife. It flashed down at her throat, but Cross was there, intervening in the only way possible, striking Viktor from the side and grabbing the descending wrist to wrench it upward. Viktor rolled off Yasmine and pulled Cross over her, their two bodies together again at last, their eyes meeting briefly and poignantly.

Then Viktor thrust the knife back toward Yasmine, turning at the last instant and plunging the blade up to the hilt into the side of Cross’s neck.

Yasmine screamed, a torn, desperate sound that resounded through the chaos of the battle.

Bodie arrived and kicked Viktor in the ribs so hard that the cracks were audible. He saw Yasmine and then Cross and couldn’t comprehend it, not at first. Staying upright, though, was a risky move at best.

Bullets riddled the air.

Cassidy, Heidi, and Gunn knelt together, sheltered behind a lifeboat davit that kept getting speckled with gunfire. Lucie lay behind them, having somehow wedged her body beneath the huge piece of steel until she could no longer move. To their credit, the ship’s crew had surprised Viktor’s returning fighters and all but wiped them out in the first minute. Only two lone snipers remained. Cassidy worried for Jemma, but knew in her heart the girl would have found some good cover. It was just a matter now of waiting for the well-armed crew to flush the last of Viktor’s goons out.

Bodie knelt over Viktor and dealt him a hard blow to the head, making sure the mafia boss was at least bordering on comatose before checking on Cross and Yasmine.

Pure shock made mush of every bone in his body. He could barely stand. The deck rose up to strike his knees before he realized that he’d dropped down as if he’d been shot dead. Cross lay in front of him, bleeding out, eyes flitting to and fro and mouth moving, but no words coming out.

“Help!” Bodie screamed. “Oh God, help me!”

The knife moved as Cross tried to speak, but pain registered so badly in his eyes that Bodie almost turned away. In that moment he saw it, saw there was no help for his greatest friend, and simply reached out to take hold of the man’s hand.

“I’m here. I’m here for you.”

Yasmine laid a hand on Cross’s heaving chest. “Oh, Eli.”

Bodie leaned forward to whisper into Cross’s ear. “You know what we say — family is a sense of belonging. And nobody ever belonged more to my family… than you.”

Bodie registered the two grenades before he actually saw them. Two tumbling black objects that signaled mortal danger inside the deep, intuitive recesses of his mind. There wasn’t time to pick both objects up and throw them into the sea, but there was just enough time to roll Viktor’s broken body over them.

He grabbed the Bratva boss and threw him across the grenades.

Yasmine sensed the danger too, but with her eyes locked with Cross’s, she did not move a muscle, choosing to spend his and perhaps her last moments in the place where they should always have been.

“Please don’t leave me. I loved you so much,” she said, and then the bombs went off, two loud explosions. Bodie flung himself aside, traumatized to the core. Yasmine then laid her head over Cross’s chest and, teary-eyed, met Bodie’s gaze.

She wept. Bodie punched the ship’s deck in anger before crawling over and taking just a moment to watch as Viktor’s guards gave up their fight and came out with hands high and heads down. The crew surrounded them and bound them. Cassidy, Heidi, and Gunn were loping across the deck.

“Cross?” Cassidy asked first.

Bodie opened his mouth but the answer choked in his throat. He reached Cross’s inert body and saw the lifeless eyes.

“Oh my friend, what have you done?”

Yasmine reached for him and he held her hand. Cassidy was at his back, making strangled noises of misery. Heidi was on her knees and Gunn was trying to catch a breath. They stayed like that for some time, scoured by the sea breeze and rocked by the steady waves.

In time, Heidi answered a question Bodie could not bring himself to ask.

“Don’t worry, Jemma is safe, inside that small deck on top of the control room. Lucie is stuck beneath a lifeboat. I’ll help her out… eventually.”

Bodie slowly became aware of the cold breeze, the waning skies, and the uncontrollable thumping of his heart. “Did we win?”

“No.” Cassidy surveyed the dead. “But we are still alive.”

Bodie sensed a change in Yasmine’s ragged breathing and let go of her hand so that she could sit up. When he did, he stared in sorrow at Cross’s body and wondered aloud if they deserved his sacrifice.

“We can only try to live up to it,” he said. “Those who die are never truly gone unless we let their memories fade from our head and our hearts. I won’t let that happen, Eli. I’m sure none of us will. You were the best of friends, mate.”

“He sacrificed himself for you.” Cassidy was staring at Yasmine, a hard edge to her gaze.

“But I… I’m so, so sorry.”

A chopper approached from the rolling horizon. Bodie sighed as he saw it. “Now what?”

“Don’t worry.” Heidi held up her hands and shouted that everyone should stand down. “Don’t worry, it’s the CIA.”