The Orpheus Legacy

CHAPTER TWO

Joe Hawke watched the woman close the gate behind her and make her way up the gravel path at the front of the deserted farmhouse. In her hands she held a white plastic bag filled with groceries bought down in the village at the bottom of the hill. As her ancient Volkswagen cooled in the Anatolian sunshine, she heard something behind her and flicked her head around. It was nothing, but like the rest of the team, they were all on edge.

The former commando and SBS operative gently pulled the drapes a little more and leaned his head forward to get a better view of the property’s front aspect. Azra Muharrem was now at the front door and her key was in her hand. He knew that if there was any trouble it would come knocking the same time she opened the door.

But again, nothing happened.

As he heard the key slide in the lock, he released the drapes and blew out a deep breath, his mind tortured with visions of what they had seen in in the Zagros Mountains. Less than a thousand miles to the east of their present position in the Turkish mountains, it may as well have been on another planet.

A vast structure built with a technology more advanced than anything any of them knew today had hosted a terrible battle in which the Oracle and most of his Athanatoi cult had died. Thinking about the mysterious white-robed guardians who had fought so hard in the Citadel was a bridge too far for his mind to handle, but at least ECHO had managed to flee with their lives.

But any sense of victory was crushed by the knowledge that a team of savagely dangerous Special Ops men had seized the strange Citadel under the orders of the new American president. Worse, President Faulkner was a man who wanted them all dead and had put their names on America’s Most Wanted list.

Now they were international fugitives. Their assets had been seized and their bank accounts frozen. Their leader Sir Richard Eden had been placed under house arrest at his Oxfordshire mansion by the British authorities. This had happened under extreme pressure from the new regime in Washington DC and he was fighting extradition.

Former President Jack Brooke and his daughter Alex Reeve had been arrested and flown to a black site with only a loyal Secret Service agent named Brandon McGee for protection. As of now, no one knew anything about this extraordinary rendition site other than it was rumored to be an artificial island and its name was Tartarus. Named after the ancient Greek conception of hell, no one on the team had a very good feeling about going there to rescue their friends.

And they had lost three valued and loved members of their family at the hands of the mystery sniper. Danny Devlin in Miami, Magnus Lund in Athens and most recently Kim Taylor in Washington DC. Any of them could be next. Most of them felt they were almost helpless to stop it and while none of them knew the identity of the killer, rumors were swirling. They bounced several theories off each other, but the most chilling was that it might be Alfredo “The Spider” Lazaro, the Cuban hitman who had murdered Hawke’s wife.

Whatever the identity of the covert assassin, ECHO had never been lower or more vulnerable. They needed help and they needed money and they needed it fast. Getting themselves out of this hole promised to be the hardest thing any of them had ever done before, individually or as part of the team. Ahead of them lay a long and tough path — rescue their teammate and friend Alex Reeve from Tartarus, restore Jack Brooke’s presidency and get their names off the Most Wanted list.

Even Hawke secretly doubted any of this was possible.

But their first step back to life came when their new friend and former Athanatoi cultist Nikolai Petrov told them he had an old friend who could give them shelter. Her name was Azra. He had met her while studying for the cult on an island off the coast of Turkey. Using the loose change in their pockets, he called her and she said she could help. Her uncle had an abandoned farm building in Anatolia and they could use it for a few days while organising something more permanent.

It was a lifeline, and they grabbed it with both hands.

Now Azra was closing the door behind her and walking through into the subdued light of the front room. She stood in the doorway with the bag in her arms and gave them a cautious smile. A bar of sunshine seeped through a split in the drapes and illuminated a haze of dust motes floating in the dusty air.

“I got what you asked for.” Her exotic accent seemed to calm the tense atmosphere inside the crumbling farmhouse. She set the bag down on the table and started unpacking the groceries. “Or as close as I could find. This is beyaz cheese, and here is some pide bread and of course the bottled water you asked for.”

The starving ECHO team gathered around the heavy, gnarled wooden table and stared enviously as she unpacked the fresh bread, cheese and other items. Since leaving their Dubai hotel they had trekked across Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Syria and made their way west across Turkey en route for Europe. With an inventive mix of hitchhiking and car theft their journey had taken several days and the only food along the way was what they could steal from small village shops or gas stations. At least, he thought quietly, he had managed to take some of the water from the Citadel.

Some of the elixir.

As they started to eat, Lea’s phone shattered the peace. She looked at the screen and confusion appeared on her face. “That’s odd.”

“Don’t tell me,” Scarlet said, flicking her head at Ryan. “It’s the director of the Monkey House at Whipsnade Zoo. They want the boy back.”

“You’re about as funny as the plague,” Ryan said. “And with approximately the same degree of charm.”

Without turning her head, Scarlet raised her middle finger over the back of the chair and waved it in his face. “Do one, nut sucker.”

“Oh, that’s just not nice,” he said. “I think you should apologize.”

Hawke raised his hand to silence the banter. “Why is it odd, Lea?”

The phone was still ringing. “It’s Rich’s number.”

“As in Sir Richard?” Scarlet said, cutting another slice of the crumbly cheese and pushing it into her mouth. “How the hell has he got a phone call through?”

“Yeah,” Lexi said. “I thought they were even monitoring when he went to the bathroom.”

At the far end of the table, the shadowy bulk of Vincent Reno shifted as he tore some bread and gave a questioning shrug. Known by his codename Reaper, the former French legionnaire had always been an unknown quantity but his loyalty was unmatched. He swallowed the bread and raised his eyes to Lea. “Friends in high places?”

“More like phones in low places,” Ryan said. “Am I right?”

Lea shrugged. “Maybe someone smuggled him a burner and he’s making hay while the sun shines.”

The former US Secret Service agent Kamala Banks now shared Lea’s confused expression. “But I thought he was incommunicado?”

Jack Camacho looked confused. “Isn’t that an island in the Maldives?”

“I meant…”

“He knows what you meant,” Lea said. “And we all thought he was out of contact. She took the call and walked out into the kitchen.

“So what now?” Scarlet asked. “We can’t just hide in here like mice. That’s not my style.”

“It’s not anyone’s style,” Hawke said. “Just wait and see what Lea comes back with. The truth is we can’t even think about rescuing Alex and her father until we get our hands on some serious capital. Launching a rescue operation against the full force of the US military is going to be an expensive business. Unless anyone here wants to make the money working at a junk food place under a false name, we need some kind of job.”

“Not sure cleaning grease drains is my thing, darling,” Scarlet said. “But it’s not too much of a leap to imagine Ryan doing it.”

“Bugger off, Cairo.”

Lea stepped back in the room and slipped her phone into her pocket. No one could tell what she was thinking from the look on her face.

“So what did he say?” Ryan asked. “Are we off the hook?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, but nowhere near. He’s still under house arrest and there’s still an international warrant out on all of us.”

Lexi tied her hair back. “Just when I thought life couldn’t get any more exciting.”

Lea took her place back at the table beside Hawke and greedily broke off a chunk of bread. “I’d be careful what you wish for, Lex.”

“So what did he say?” Hawke asked.

“Yeah,” Zeke said, his mouth full of bread. It hadn’t taken long for the amiable Texan tank commander to become part of the team, and when he talked to them it was as if he had been in ECHO since the very beginning. “What did he say?”

At the far end of the table near Reaper, Nikolai, Kamala and Azra were now staring at Lea along with everyone else, praying it was good news.

“He said there’s a job for us if we want it, but we’re going to have to work hard to keep a low profile.”

“I think we can manage that,” Hawke said. “What is it and where is it?”

“He was short of time — I think he was calling from the bathroom…”

“I knew it!” Lexi said.

Reaper growled with impatience. “But what did he say?”

“Not a lot — like I said, he didn’t have much time. He was smuggled the phone by Agent Raynes and had to be quick.”

“The guy we met in Hong Kong?” Hawke asked.

She nodded. “He’s on our side, apparently.”

Ryan drank some water. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

“So what information did he give you?” Scarlet asked.

Lea ate more bread. “The details are with a member of the Eden Consortium and if we meet with him, he’ll brief us.”

Scarlet gave a tired sigh. “Christ, another stuffed suit with no sense of humor.”

Hawke gave her a look then turned to Lea. “Who is this person?”

She shrugged. “Someone named Orlando Sooke, ex-Royal Navy officer… and before you ask, no, I’ve never heard of him before.”

Ryan laughed. “That’s reassuring.”

Lea unscrewed the lid on her water bottle. “I trust Rich with my life.”

“So where are meeting him?” Hawke asked.

“Being aware of our situation, Rich has arranged for this Sooke guy to meet us not too far from here, and inside Turkey. He’ll be in Izmir tomorrow evening.”

Hawke finished his water and leaned back in his chair. “Looks like the ECHO team are back in business.”