The Secret of Atlantis

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Hawke checked the hotel car park one last time before strolling across the room and perusing the takeout boxes. They were stacked in a messy jumble on the telephone table at the foot of the bed beside some beer cans. Wherever Kruger and Korać were, it wasn’t here. His first guess was they were already gathering their forces together and preparing to leave the country. His next guess was that Luk and Kamchatka were busy briefing their new friends on all they knew about him and the rest of the ECHO team.

He was sharing the Chinese food with his ECHO compatriots and Vincent Reno, but Vincent had looked at the food with disgust and chosen instead to make a cup of coffee from the complimentary jar beside the small kettle. He took a tentative sip, nodded his head with meaning, and then poured the contents of the cup into the pot of a plastic bonsai tree on the windowsill.

No one was saying much and the atmosphere in the room was tense at best. It was true they had gained valuable information from their infiltration of Korać’s compound, but things had gone badly wrong when Luk and Kamchatka had walked back into the picture, and the ensuing chaos had resulted in the compound being torched and some of the enemy taken out, but the main players had escaped.

Mendoza and Soto were out of the game, but Luk and Kamchatka were back in it, and not only that but the Mexicans had managed to pass the idol to Dirk Kruger, the only man who Eden considered worthy of the word nemesis. Kruger always meant business, but this time was more serious than ever because he had forgone home-grown amateur muscle for the much tougher brand available for hire in the Balkans and hitched the notorious war criminal Dragan Korać to his looting wagon.

His phone rang. He looked at the screen and saw it was Alex.

“What gives?” she said.

“We cocked up and lost them and the idol. You?”

“They lost Kruger?” Eden’s voice, in the background.

“Let’s just say he’s expanded his fighting force,” Lea said.

Hawke sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Bastard surprised us with a shitload of hoodlums.”

“Hoodla,” Ryan called out from the bathroom.

Lea sighed. “Oh, fuck off, Ry. You know what he means.”

“Seriously,” Alex said. “Korać had that many men?”

“Uh-huh,” Camacho said flicking through the TV channels.

Hawke shovelled some cold noodles into his mouth. “Including our old friends Luk and Kamchatka.”

“You get anything from them?” said Alex.

“Yes, we think they’re heading to a town called Kalaat Mgoun in the Atlas Mountains. Kruger was more than certain. A place in Morocco called the Valley of the Roses.”

Ryan emerged from the bathroom. “Which means I was probably right about my Atlantis theory. No one go in there for at least half an hour by the way.”

A look of disgust crossed Lea’s face as she slammed the bathroom door behind her ex-husband. “What were you doing in there, opening a drain?”

“All right,” Hawke said, opening the window and giving Ryan a suspicious glance. “We need to focus.”

Lea sighed. “We don’t know about Atlantis, but we do know that what we have is basically dozens of mercenaries belonging to Korać’s insane private army, now hired by a South African tomb raider and gold lover…”

“You mean a chrysophilist…”

“Fuck off again, Ry. You know what I mean.”

“He’s a diamond lover actually, not bloody Goldfinger,” Hawke said.

Scarlet got up from the bed. “Everyone who wants to flush Ryan’s head down the toilet he just defiled, raise your hand!”

Everyone’s hands went up except Maria’s, who shook her head and mumbled something about behaving like stupid children.

“This is an abuse of democracy!” Ryan said.

Lea looked at him. “I once read that the definition of democracy was two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.”

“Or Scarlet, Lexi and Ryan voting on who gets the coffee,” Camacho said with a smirk.

Hawke stepped in, setting the phone on speaker so everyone in both locations could hear the conversation. “All right — recap. What we have here is simple. A Mexican drug cartel boss found an ancient idol and was way over his head. He spoke to an antiquarian specialist in the field and before he murdered him he found out that Dirk Kruger was the only man who could help him. Kruger in turn spoke to Korać because he knows he’s going to need a lot of aggressive manpower for the mission.”

“So right up our street,” said Scarlet.

“Maybe, but this is getting darker now,” Hawke said. “We’ve never faced anyone with their own army for one thing — especially an army of hired mercs with a lot of experience.”

Reaper stubbed out a roll-up and sighed, breathing the smoke from the cigarette through his nostrils. “And Korać can call on people all over the world. He knows mercs in many, many countries.”

Hawke nodded. “Plus we now know Luk and Kamchatka are back on the scene, and they both have a major score to settle with us so it’s personal.”

“In other words,” Scarlet said, “we have enemies coming out of our ars…”

“Yes, thanks, Cairo — we get the picture,” Hawke said. “And while we certainly do have enemies coming out of our arses, I want everyone to understand Kruger is our main target now. He’s payrolling everything.”

“How come you get to say arses and I don’t?” Scarlet said.

Hawke looked at her and shrugged. “Just the way it is.”

“So what’s next?” Lea said.

“Easy,” said Hawke. “We have to get our backsides to Morocco as fast as possible because Kruger has a major head start on us. We need the time to organize a proper strategy against these guys or we could easily lose this one.”

“Agreed,” Lea said.

“All right, so we know where in Morocco thanks to Joe and Vincent — The Valley of Roses in the Dadès Gorge,” Camacho said. “But what’s bothering me is what Kruger thinks he’s going to find there. No one can seriously believe Atlantis is in the middle of the Moroccan desert.”

“That’s why we’re chasing him, Jack,” Lea said.

“So we’re just winging it?” the American asked.

The ECHO team looked at each and replied together: “Yeah!”

“Because we’re that hard,” Scarlet said, and cracked the lid off a bottle of chilled Niška.

Moments after their jet tore off the Belgrade asphalt, Scarlet was still in close dialogue with the rest of the beers she’d stolen from the minibar back at the hotel and her mood was starting to show it. She yawned and stretched her arms. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“What is it now?” Ryan asked. “Forty-five?”

“I’m not a day over thirty-something,” she said, her hands cradling a chilled beer.

Ryan looked at her over the top of his glasses. “You’re having a laugh!”

“Look at my face Ryan. Does it look like I’m having a laugh?”

“In all fairness, it actually does not look like you’re having a laugh, but you might want to pitch your fake age within more realistic parameters next time.”

“Look, it works like this.” Scarlet said, taking a pen off the small table. “You will shut up or I will sign my autograph up your arse.”

“You know what, Cairo?” Ryan said, fronting up to her. “Why don’t you take those stupid mirrored sunglasses off so we can see the real you, or are you too hungover?”

“Bugger off.”

“And what is it with those things anyway?” he said. “A tad eighties, don’t you think?”

Scarlet sighed. “Coming from a fully-grown man in a Green Lantern t-shirt I hardly think you’re in a position to make comments about fashion.”

“They’re back in fashion, anyway,” Lea said matter-of-factly from across the cabin.

“What?” Camacho said, “Green Lantern t-shirts?”

“No, mirrored shades.”

“Well, they look ridiculous,” Ryan said.

“Settle down, everyone,” Hawke said. “We’ve got enough shit to deal with without turning on each other.”

Hawke grabbed a coffee from the galley and went back to his seat. He checked his watch and cursed Kruger’s head start. Eden had been right when he talked about the South African’s luck. He sipped the coffee and hoped that his luck was about to run out, but he knew that in this world a man’s luck never ran out. It had to be taken from him.