The Orpheus Legacy

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Kashala and Zhivkov vanished into the trapdoor with a number of mercs, while others stayed up top to defend the perimeter.

“We need to fan out!” Hawke said into the comms.

Nikolai made a break for cover behind the gift shop while Lexi sprinted for the famous Imperial Gate. Zeke and Camacho were at her back, guns drawn as they spun around and fired on Vizard and Demotte.

Hawke tucked his head down behind one of the blasted statues and watched as Nikolai returned fire from behind his new position at the gift shop. His true skills were hand to hand combat, honed from years of gruelling training with the Athanatoi, but it turned out he was no slouch with an automatic rifle, either. Sweeping the muzzle from side to side, he raked the Inner Narthex with rounds and sent the Blood Crew scuttling for cover in every direction.

“Kashala’s underground and getting further away with every second, guys!” Lea cried out.

“Grenade!” Ryan called out.

Hawke looked up and saw the small black object hurtling through the air. As he’d expected, the Blood Crew were working with short fuses, and it detonated the second it hit the floor. The explosion blasted the statue he was using for cover and knocked it over on its pedestal, crashing down on top of him.

With Lea’s cold scream echoing in the mayhem, he cradled his head and crashed to the ground. Shaken, he crawled free of the debris, but another explosion high in the vaulted ceiling sent a second shower of blasted marble and glass raining down on him once again.

“These guys are crazy!” Kamala yelled.

Rolling back under the upturned statue for cover, Hawke cradled his head a second time and shielded his eyes as the heavy chunks of rock smashed into the floor around him. Dust and marble splinters sprayed out in a five meter radius and covered him all over again.

“You can say that again!” Zeke said.

Hawke coughed to clear his lungs and heard a scream to his left. Clearing the dust off his eyelids, he looked across the expansive cathedral floor and saw Lexi fighting Vizard.

She was in her element, engaging in a hand-to-hand fight to the death with the heavy-set merc. She moved like the devil himself, a blur of feints, sidesteps, arc kicks, and tiger punches, as her beleaguered opponent struggled to keep up with her. Because of his muscle mass, he was too heavy and cumbersome, and she was using it against him.

When he lunged again, she spun around in a three-sixty degree arc and slashed her steel fingernails at him. Their sharpened ends tore four perfect rips in his throat and opened his jugular. He collapsed to the ground with blood bubbling from his wounds, calling out for someone to help him, but it was too late.

With Lexi free of Vizard, she stepped over his body and ran to Kamala’s assistance. The former US Secret Service agent was tough and well-trained, but not in the same league as a man like Alexis Demotte. He was showing no mercy, and after disarming her, he now gripped her by the throat and forced her out of the corridor and into the shadows behind the Omphalion.

“Kamala!” Lea yelled.

Lexi powered herself across the cathedral. “I’m on it!”

Hawke watched the Chinese assassin deliver a flying axe-kick into Demotte’s lower back and knock him down to the floor. Released from his iron grip, Kamala collapsed to the floor, heaving breath back into her body as Lexi spun around and brought her boot up into the merc’s meaty face.

The Belgian merc grunted in pain as the force of the blow knocked him over. He crashed onto the hard stone floor on his back and cried out in pain a second time. Pulling a gun from his holster, he rolled back to his feet.

“Get back, bitch!”

Lexi slipped into the shadows, leaving Demotte free to race over to the trapdoor. As he sprinted through the carnage, he turned and fired blindly at the ECHO team.

Back under the column, Hawke struggled to pull himself free of the weighty section of column on his legs. He was certain nothing was broken, but he was still trapped and vulnerable to attack from any one of the Blood Crew.

“How you doing, Joe?” Lea yelled.

He heaved at his legs, pulling the right one free and now moving his attention to the left one. As he worked, Demotte’s bullets traced over his head. “Just another day in ECHO,” he called back through the chaos. “You?”

“All good.” She fired on Demotte once again, and this time her bullets found their mark. The Belgian mercenary took a direct hit to the throat and collapsed down behind the raised platform.

“He’s down!” Hawke said. “Get ready to go.”

“Time to discharge my payload,” Zeke said.

“Gross,” Scarlet said. “I feel violated just thinking about it.”

Lexi winced. “Please remember there are ladies present, right Ryan?”

Ryan’s face was deadpan. “How would you know what a lady was?”

Zeke howled with laughter. “Good one.”

“Move in!” Hawke yelled.

They raced toward the Loge’s entrance, cutting through the dust and smoke of the battle, leaving behind all the dead mercs who had been tasked with keeping them away from the trapdoor. Above their heads, the magnificent dome loomed like another sky, held aloft by the ancient pendentive vaulting built well over a thousand years earlier.

Moving ahead with guns in the aim, the Turkish twilight streamed in through the windows and sparkled on the ancient murals. Hawke wiped sweat from his forehead and wondered if the dome would survive the day, never mind any more centuries. How seriously people took life and death, he thought, to build all this for a god.

With time running out, they charged the last few men guarding the trapdoor, racing past the green Thessalian pillars and streaming into the Imperial Loge. A savage exchange of fire illuminated the grand space with muzzle flashes and filled it with gun smoke and clouds of marble dust.

Scarlet led the right flank, gun raised and gripped with both hands as she closed in on the Blood Crew. Seeing them pinned down and busily engaged fighting Reaper on the left flank, she stormed their position. Halfway to them now, Reaper threw a grenade at them.

There was a scream, then a dead body was propelled through the archway, arms hanging half-off and blood pumping from arteries. It landed in her path, but she was too close to change direction. Leaping into the air, she glided over the mangled corpse, landed, swerved around the corner and slammed her body flat up against the cold marble wall.

In the shadows to her right, she sensed something move. Flicking her head toward the movement, she saw a figure crouching in the dusty havoc behind a marble sarcophagus. Reaching down to her belt, she grabbed one of the grenades, pulled the pin and rolled it over to the merc. Ducking back behind the column, she clasped her eyes shut and brought her arm up to shield her face.

The grenade exploded behind the tomb with savage ferocity, ripping the marble sculpture around the lid into a thousand pieces and blasting it all over the Imperial Loge in a cloud of smoke, fire and twisted shrapnel. She felt the thud of the explosion deep in her chest and then a second later, a wall of stained-glass windows on the far side of the nave exploded into a million colourful fragments.

The shockwave… she thought, instinctively shielding her face once again, even though the force of the shockwave blew the glass outside, away from her.

“Looks like Kashala is another man down,” she muttered, and jumped over what was left of the man behind the sarcophagus. Sprinting across into the Imperial Loge, she had finally reached what he had been protecting — the trapdoor. Looking down inside it, she saw a grate in the floor with the top rungs of a Rolatube tactical ladder sticking out of the top of it.

Gotcha.

She raised her palm mic to her hand and spoke into it. “I’ve secured the ingress point into the labyrinths. I repeat, we have an ingress.”

With the others racing over to her position, she cut the call and readied her gun. Shining the flashlight down into the hole, she saw the ladder’s rungs receding into the darkness of the crypts. “No time like the present, darling.”

And with that, she lowered herself into the hole and began climbing down the ladder. Above her, Hawke and the rest of the team were seconds away, and when he climbed down the ladder and stood beside her, he said, “Anything?”

Scarlet shone her flashlight on the floor and frowned at him. The mercs left in the Loge to defend the tunnel into the crypts were all dead, but now they faced another hurdle. Staring down through the grate in the floor, Hawke, Lea and Ryan all spoke at the same time.

“Shit.”

Scarlet peered down too, and watched the sewage racing along the tunnel. Taking a step back with her hand covering her mouth and nose, she said, “You know what really gets to me about this life on the road?”

“What?”

“The romance of it all.”

Hawke frowned. “Think we might have to find another way through.”

“No shit, Sherlock!” Zeke said.

“Actually, lots of shit,” Ryan said, finally bringing himself to peer down through the iron grate on the floor. “Way, way too much shit.”

Zeke scratched his head. “But Kashala came down this exact place. I don’t get it, brother.”

Lexi put her hands on her hips and sighed. “This is what happens when we don’t have Alex hacking schematics and blueprints for us.”

“No,” Scarlet said. “We have the boy doing it instead.”

“And just as well,” Ryan said, checking the blueprints on his phone. “Because this isn’t the entrance to the crypts.”

Zeke sighed. “Did I not just say that Kashala used this exact way in?”

“He did,” Ryan continued. “But he didn’t go down there. The clue is that it’s full of shit.”

“So where did he go?”

“That way.”

They all followed his pointing hand, but saw nothing but a wall.

“Eh?” Hawke said. “I think you have to explain yourself.”

Ryan stepped forward and pushed the wall. A low, ear-bending, grinding noise filled the dingy space as a section of the wall slowly revolved to reveal a long, dimly lit tunnel. Ryan bowed and gestured toward it with his hand in a sweeping motion. “Et voila.”