The King's Tomb

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

As Kruger and his men opened fire on them and fled the tunnel, Devlin hit the floor and landed on a sea of empty shell cases. Bullets traced over his head and splintered through the rock in the tunnel wall. Kruger had surprised all of them with the speed and ruthlessness of his attack. The Parthenon was in view now and so was the chunky AugustaWestland AW101 powering up behind it. Kruger and his men were on the brink of escaping with the shield.

He snatched his weapon from his holster and scrambled to his feet. Up ahead, Hawke and Reaper had sprinted over to the cover of the east side of the Temple of Venus while Lexi and Ryan were providing cover fire from the south side of the Temple of Rome. Over by the gateway to the Acropolis on the outcrop’s western edge, the chopper’s four massive rotors were powering up and starting to whir faster with every second.

Images of his life flashed in his mind like a badly edited movie. His childhood in South Africa, his life in the Irish Army, his relationship with Lea and now his adventures with ECHO. He reached the top of the steps and found himself entirely without cover. He scanned the rocky escarpment and saw Scarlet. She was closest to him, having taken up an offensive position in what had once been the Altar of Athena.

She saw him and rolled her eyes. “Get your arse over here, you fool! You’re standing out like a dick on a wedding cake!”

Devlin sprinted across to her, chased all the way by a line of automatic fire from Venter’s MP5. The lethal rounds bit into the dust and dirt at his feet as he charged toward the cover of the ruins, skidding into safety with seconds to spare. Venter’s bullets slammed into the altar’s stonework and ricocheted into the dusk.

“You want to get killed or something?” Scarlet said.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I was thinking about my life… I totally lost it, Cairo.”

“You lost it a long time ago, Danny. Just stop whining and start shooting.”

Devlin managed to give her a grin and nod in response. “Thanks, I needed that.”

“I’m not your therapist, Danny. Just shoot!”

Behind them, Camacho and Lea were dragging an unconscious Kim up the stone steps out of the tunnel’s mouth.

“What happened?” Scarlet called over.

“Hit her head diving for cover,” Lea said.

Kim was still unconscious as Camacho hauled her up onto his shoulders in a fireman’s lift and pounded through the dust and gunfire to the cover of the Temple of Rome. They were all out of the tunnel complex now, but with Kim still knocked out they were a man down and now Kruger was climbing into the chopper. Blankov was already buckling up in his seat. Venter walked backwards as he fired his MP5 from the hip.

The former South African commando leaped inside the chopper and the mighty machine powered up and lifted off the ground. It hovered for a few moments while the pilot slowly turned to port and then they all saw it at once.

Venter was sitting behind a M134 Gatling gun mounted in the side door.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Scarlet cried out.

Venter laughed as he opened fire on the team who were struggling to maintain their cover in the ruins. The pilot casually flew the helicopter higher into the air and off the southern edge of the rocky outcrop. Spinning in the air like a bird of prey, he swooped down over the top of them as Venter let rip with the Gatling gun again.

Devlin and Scarlet clambered over the top of the ruins and sprinted for the more substantial cover of the Erectheion on the northern edge of the Acropolis. The ancient temple had once contained the most holy relics in the city, but today it was a skeleton of broken rocks and crumbling pillars. Whatever. Those pillars provided the cover they needed while they reloaded. They had to draw fire from Venter in the chopper to give Hawke and Reaper a chance to escape from the Temple of Venus and get to the Parthenon.

Above them, Venter was a new god of death, raining down fire and brimstone on them from the sky. The rounds blasted into the pillars and blew chunks of the ancient, priceless ruins into the sky.

Chank chank chank!

Devlin cursed. “I don’t think they like us very much, Cairo!”

“I don’t think they like the Acropolis very much either!”

The six-barrel rotary machine gun in Venter’s hands continued to fire on them at six thousand rounds per minute. The muzzle flashed white and orange in the dying light and one of the commando’s men was helping to feed the ammo belt into the weapon. Both men lurched to the side as the chopper tipped to the side and headed over to the other side of the Acropolis.

Devlin followed its path. “They’re after Hawke!”

Hawke and Reaper were halfway along the open ground between the Temple of Venus and the Parthenon. The AW101 speeded above them and spun around to starboard on a dime, Venter firing all the time. The powerful rotary breech raining 50 mil rounds down on them wherever they tried to go to escape the savage fusillade.

Devlin and Scarlet fired on the chopper from the Erectheion but their handguns were almost useless. Lexi and Ryan provided a second front, firing on them from the north side of the Temple of Rome, but the pilot responded by gaining some altitude and turning the machine in the air to expose the door on the other side. Kruger’s face appeared from the shadows inside the helicopter’s interior.

“Holy shit!” Devlin cried out. “RPG!”

Kruger squinted as he shouldered the RPG-7 and looked down the optical sight. He fired and the rocket-propelled grenade burst out of the front of the weapon. Smoke fired out the back of the launcher and dissipated out of the other door where Venter was still firing the Gatling gun. The missile streaked forward with a trail of smoke twisting behind it.

“Take cover!” Scarlet yelled.

Lexi and Ryan ran for their lives as the speeding warhead struck the north side of the Temple of Rome and detonated, blowing half of it into the sky in a cloud of smoke and flames. Lexi reached the cover of some olive trees and Ryan skidded down into a pile of rubble between the temple and the Acropolis’s eastern perimeter wall, cursing loudly as he came to stop in the dust and dirt.

Camacho had used the attack on Lexi and Ryan to pound across the open ground with Kim on his shoulders. Lea was at his side, firing up at Venter, but now the chopper was heading their way. He saw Hawke and Reaper ahead, also providing cover fire as they peppered the chopper’s front windows with lead in the hope of taking out the pilots.

“You can do it, Jack!” Reaper said.

Devlin watched with his heart in his mouth as the chopper swooped down behind them until it was almost ground level and spun around to give Kruger the shot he so badly craved. If he got lucky now he could take out Hawke, Lea, Reaper, Camacho and Kim and a good chunk of the Parthenon into the bargain.

“This is chaos!” he shouted.

The sound of fighter jets.

Devlin looked into the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun. In the sky to the north, flying through the dazzling blue sky were two F-16 Fighting Falcons.

Ryan and Lexi had regrouped and were running around the length of the perimeter wall until they slammed into the cover of the Erectheion beside Scarlet and Devlin.

“You see the planes?” Devlin said.

“It’s the Hellenic Air Force!” said Ryan.

“Stupid bastard could have gotten away,” Lexi said. “But his obsession with killing us has cost him this time.”

Hawke and Reaper were still firing on the chopper, but then Kruger fired the RPG again. The grenade ripped away from the launcher and sliced through the air on its way toward Camacho, Lea and Kim.

“Incoming!” Reaper yelled.

They made the Parthenon’s eastern side and scrambled up the stone steps. Hawke and Reaper continued firing as Camacho and Lea ran into the interior of the ancient temple. The CIA man slipped Kim from his shoulders as the grenade piled into the outer layer of pillars and detonated.

They watched in disbelief as the Parthenon’s entire eastern section exploded in a giant fireball and filled the sky with a terrifying mushroom cloud of flames and black smoke. One of the F-16s screeched overhead as the pilot made a recce of the situation and counted the guns.

Chunks of two and a half thousand-year-old masonry smashed down all around them, crumbling on impact and rolling away down the steps back to ground level. Camacho shielded the unconscious Kim with his body as the rocks and debris rained down from the fiery sky above their heads.

Kruger’s chopper gained some more elevation and swooped away from the carnage, partially obscured now by the enormous mushroom cloud rising from the ashes of the Parthenon.

The F-16 was long-gone now, flying back into an attack formation with the other jet out on the horizon. Below, Devlin was suddenly aware for the first time of the screams of citizens and tourists panicking in the streets. Sirens filled the air and the red and blue lights of the emergency services flashed on the buildings far below as they raced toward the Acropolis.

“This situation is getting distinctly out of control,” Ryan said.

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Not going to let it get the better of you, are you boy?”

“Me? Never!”

“We need to get to the Parthenon,” Devlin said. “Better cover.”

They used the smoke for cover and made their way across to Hawke and the others who had tucked themselves down behind the northern side of the ancient temple. The carnage was even worse close up and they were forced to climb over the fallen pillars and blasted stonework of what had once been the world-famous Parthenon in order to reach the rest of the team.

“Kruger’s not screwing around anymore,” Camacho said. He was cradling Kim’s head in his arms and she was slowly coming back to life. “He’s going to pay for this.”

“He already is,” Lexi said. “Look!”

She pointed at the southern horizon where the AW101 was hovering above the city. One of the F-16s fired a surface-to-air missile which tore through the sky toward the chopper. The pilot spun around in a defensive manoeuvre which silently impressed the ECHO team and the missile blew past the side of it with a few feet to spare.

Two things happened at once. The missile slammed into the southern side of the Acropolis’s escarpment and blew a substantial quantity of sandstone and marl out of the side of the famous outcrop. It disappeared up into a cloud of filthy dust before coming back down to earth all over the streets of Plaka.

Then Kruger used the chopper’s new position sideways to the F-16 and fired the RPG-7 at it. The grenade scorched its way toward the fighter, its three hundred meters per second muzzle velocity making the short distance of one K in just three seconds flat and plowing into the bird’s starboard wing.

The explosion was savage, igniting the jet’s JP8 kerosene and blasting the fighter into a thousand pieces over the streets below. Kruger fired again and hit the second jet. It blew up into a fireball even bigger than the first. Both pilots had ejected with half a second to spare and were now drifting down to earth beneath the canopies of their escape chutes.

The merciless Kruger ordered the chopper to spin around and Venter filled the air force officers full of lead, killing them before they hit the ground. Then the chopper turned into the sun and disappeared into a mirage over the hills to the city’s east.