The Relic Hunters

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Bodie relaxed as they drove across Hungary. The Hood was somewhere ahead, maybe an hour, maybe half a day, but Heidi had called in all the ground assets she could and was trying to utilize a localized satellite. Only time could tell, and they could do little more than drive north.

Bodie took the downtime to reflect. Though he was thirty three, his life had already been overcrowded with highs and lows. Parental loss could hardly be gauged with an eight-year-old boy, but life had certainly taken an acute and inexorable change. Orphans, he’d learned, were liars, cheats and bullies, or at least the ones he came across. It wasn’t the same for everybody.

Heidi, seated beside him in the car, took in his pensive face and seemed to know just the right question to ask. “So,” the American agent said. “Why’d you become a thief?”

“It wasn’t planned.” He shrugged, not wanting to appear standoffish. Deep down, Bodie craved friendship simply because he’d lacked it through the early years, but found it hard to socialize and make friends. “A lonely boy’s cry for help? Self-harm? A way into a new life? I’ve considered them all, but I really don’t know.”

“Maybe you enjoyed it.”

“Maybe I did. But I didn’t enjoy the prison time. Nor did I enjoy it when the judge made me watch the effect my burglary had on one family. You feel isolated, you know? When you’re on a job. I did, at least. Emotionless, detached. Free.” He gazed ahead. “Those people in court — they were devastated. Broken. It changed me.”

“I heard.” Heidi nodded. “I read your sheet. Victimless crimes, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Proves you have a heart at least.”

“Relics were the way to go.”

“And that’s where you met Jack Pantera?”

Bodie couldn’t stop the anger. “Yeah, and that reckoning’s coming. It’s coming hard.”

“Any idea why he would betray you that way? Maybe it’s because you started your own team.”

Bodie shook his head. “I can’t see it. Jack was fine with everything. Nothing he ever said or did painted him as the kind of guy that would double-cross you. Nothing.”

“Don’t worry,” Cassidy spoke up. “We’ll ask him when we see him. As I wring his scrawny throat.”

“He was your teacher? Your mentor?”

Bodie nodded. “My only friend for a long time. I didn’t trust anyone,” he said. “Before Jack there was only deceit and betrayal, parents and siblings who either didn’t care or only ever used me to get something. Then Jack came along, offered an olive branch, and gave me a friend.” He sat back, folding into himself. “I want to trust people,” he said. “But I don’t even trust myself sometimes.”

“I get that.” Heidi slumped too. “My daughter, Jessica, often won’t take my call. When she does I can’t trust myself not to question and argue with her… so I keep it calm, emotionless.” She sighed. “It doesn’t work. Maybe for some, but not for someone driven like me.”

The car slowed as a bridge appeared ahead, four lanes across a hundred-foot span and a dank river below. Cross moved into the left lane, passing the slower traffic.

“You are a good thief, Bodie,” Heidi acknowledged. “With a good team. It’s a shame your whole damn operation is illegal.”

The Londoner smiled for the first time in a while. “Yeah, yeah, tell me about it. But you say you’re driven? You believe that you’re helping your daughter and husband, keeping them safe, but they don’t see it that way. Am I right?”

“That’s about spot on.”

“And you’re no better off than any of us.”

“And amen,” Cross said. “My wife hated the army life. Never understood why I had this urge to risk everything to save strangers, from across shores, but not our marriage.” He shrugged. “Go figure.”

“But this life.” Heidi looked around. “Doesn’t it ever make you feel lonely?”

Bodie shook his head. “We have a saying. Family is a sense of belonging. Those you choose to be your family don’t have to share your blood.”

“How about you?” Cassidy asked succinctly. “Ever feel lonely?”

Heidi looked away. Bodie sent Cassidy a warning look and received a shrug in return. Cross negotiated the traffic. It was the sporadic bright flash in the sky that sent Bodie’s eyes upward. “What is that?”

Heidi heard the suspicion in his voice. “What now?”

He studied the small white object outlined against the blue sky, obscured by the drifting clouds. At this range it could be an insect, an elaborate kite, a…

“Get your foot on that gas pedal,” Heidi said urgently. “It’s a drone.”

Bodie squinted as it came closer, swooping down toward the bridge. “Whoa, it’s big.”

“Yeah, it’s big,” Heidi cursed. “It’s a fucking military Predator, or similar. Big payload.”

Cassidy squinted up through the window. “My guess is that’s not good?”

“Not if you don’t wanna turn that hair a deeper shade of red, babes.”

Cassidy turned away from the drone to a matter more pressing. “Babes?”

“Sorry. It’s the male chauvinist coming out in me.” Heidi slapped Cross so hard on the shoulder the whole car shuddered. “Get a goddamn move on, Miss Daisy!”

They were halfway across the bridge, still threading through traffic. Bodie knew Cross to be a careful driver; not overly fond of speed and power, and hard enough to shake from his set ways.

“Eli,” he said. “We should get clear.”

The warning was clear. The drone and those operating it would have no compunctions about collateral damage. Cross aimed the car toward a wide space, lightly pressing the throttle.

“Jump on it, man!” Heidi cried. “They’re gonna fire.”

“Yeah, and swerve a bit,” Cassidy said. “No point giving them a bullseye.”

Cross breathed deeply, clearly out of his comfort zone. He twisted the wheel to the right, moving the car slightly. The drone drifted nearer, its mini-engine loud now, spitting at the air like an enormous dragonfly. Gunn was shrinking away and Jemma looking to Bodie for guidance.

“Cross,” he said. “You’d better learn to drive right now or we’re dead.”

Cassidy leaned over the seat. “No pressure though.”

Cross slammed his foot on the gas pedal — and Bodie cringed as he imagined him closing his eyes as he did so — just as the drone unleashed a part of its payload. The missile streaked through the short distance, impacting against the concrete and exploding. Fire gouted in their wake, the flames washing over the rear of the SUV. Bodie, switching positions to stare out the back, saw other cars slamming brakes on and swerving to avoid the blast. Mercifully, all made it.

Their own vehicle sped ahead now, making the most of a clear stretch of road. Cross kept his foot hard down, knuckles sheer white against the wheel and teeth grinding.

“ ’Kinell.” Cassidy turned to Bodie. “I’ve never seen the old man concentrate so hard.”

“Leave him be,” Bodie said. “You okay, Eli?”

“Be better if I could find my glasses.”

Bodie cringed. Fuck. So Cross was driving at speed, ill at ease, the world a constant blur. Would this make Cross a better driver, or worse? An argument could be made both ways.

“You see that big, fuzzy mound ahead?” Cassidy said. “That’s a mountain. The bridge runs into the heart of it. Miss, and we’re fish food. Oh, and dodge left now!”

The second missile smashed the ground apart at their right wheel. Cars on the opposite side of the carriageway took shrapnel and swerved to a halt. Fire washed over the front of the car this time, its heat making those inside bow their heads and close their eyes.

Cross took his foot off for a second. The car slowed. The drone adjusted overhead and came in even closer.

“Can’t you shoot it?” Cross blustered. “Why aren’t you shooting at it?”

Heidi wrenched her weapon from her waistband, scrambled across Bodie and jabbed at the electric window. Bodie leaned back, trying to remove his own gun. Cassidy glanced at the crazy shuffle the two were doing in the back seat.

“Erm?”

“Wanna shut it and get your gun out?”

“I guess.”

Cassidy found her own handgun and lowered the window. She fired at the same time as Heidi, their bullets barely missing the drone as it hovered in the air. The machine backed off, its next missile delayed as the operators evaded several more shots from the car. Bodie finally pulled his own gun free and tried to get in on the action.

The drone shot higher and further away. Cross made the car veer to and fro, approaching a coach from behind and focusing on getting by as fast as he could. The drone tracked him, swerving sharply toward the mountain to get ahead of the coach.

“Punch it, punch it,” Heidi shouted as she leaned even further out of the window, her hair ruffled by the wind. Cassidy was hanging out of the same side of the car, nearer to the front, her red hair whipping back toward Heidi. Bodie tried to join them.

Cross pushed the throttle through the floor, hit the limiter. He didn’t change direction, not wanting the coach to bear the brunt of any attack meant for them, but he did veer even further toward the central divide. In the end, it proved to be a good move as a rocket smashed and smeared all over the upraised concrete, debris shooting everywhere. The three shooters ducked back inside the car so fast they landed in a heap.

Then fought to get back up.

Cross swung the vehicle past the coach and across to the other side of their carriageway. The drop to the side loomed big, straight down to the flat black lake.

“It’s not that far,” Jemma was saying. “We could survive that.”

Gunn glared at her, almost frothing at the mouth. “Are you kidding?”

“What? You worried it’ll mess with your hair gel?”

Gunn looked away, refusing to continue the argument. They were nearing the end of the bridge now and approaching a tunnel cut into the mountain. As Bodie, Cassidy and Heidi reached the open windows, they got one more chance to fire at the swooping drone.

The car bounced into a pothole, throwing their aims off. Bullets went high, but Heidi’s cut through the air just a few millimeters low of the drone. Sudden darkness hit them and they were inside the mountain tunnel, their eyes struggling to adjust, the road and walls lit by high-powered lamps.

Cross found he had to slow now as they came up behind a camper van. The road was a single carriageway in here, and no divide meant it was doubly dangerous,

Bodie stared through the rear window. “It’s coming.”

“It followed us inside?” Cross exclaimed. “Son of a bitch.”

“And now,” Heidi said as the speeding drone raced up to their back window, “we’ve nowhere to go.”