Mesmerized by the mellow glow, Lea stared at the sword and noticed a line of tiny symbols carved into the hilt. “You see those symbols, Ry?”
He nodded. “They have a strong resemblance to those on the idols.”
“For fuck’s sake, is this thing Excalibur or not?” Scarlet asked.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Ryan said. He cast his eyes down to Professor Kloos’s dead body and then he looked at Kruger with utter contempt. “The one man who would know for sure is dead.”
Kruger lowered his rifle and laughed. “If you idiots knew the first thing about this game you’re playing you’d know it doesn’t matter if you call the damned thing Excalibur, the Sword of Fire, or anything else. This sword is a gateway.”
As Kruger’s word echoed in the cavern, Hawke looked at him sharply. “What do you mean a gateway?”
Kruger jabbed the Englishman’s chest. “You mind your own damned business, cuiter.”
Hawke resisted the impulse to grab Kruger’s finger and snap it off before landing the punch of his life on the arms dealer’s leathery face. Vermaak was loitering somewhere behind him with a MP5 in his hands, and Zito and Bruno and the other men were still armed and maintaining a good distance.
In normal circumstances he would take Kruger by the neck and use him as a human shield; buy some time, barter his way out using the boss’s life as currency, but these were not normal circumstances. He had seen the look in Zito’s eyes when Kruger pushed him around, and if he used the South African as a human shield he was one hundred per cent certain Zito would use them both for target practice. The only question was why Zito hadn’t already killed them all now the sword had been found. He guessed the ancient relic didn’t mean much to the Italian mobster and that he was waiting for a large cash payment.
“Now get out of my way, you fools,” Kruger snarled.
With the danger of any booby trap now gone, Kruger pushed his way forward through the small collection of people gathered around the sarcophagus and leaned inside to get the sword, but before he did he was careful to wrap it up again.
He moved away from the sarcophagus and carefully placed the covered sword inside a leather bag. “You,” he said, pointing a commanding finger at Bruno. “Take this bag, and guard it with your life. It’s the most precious thing on this whole fucking planet, you understand?”
Bruno stayed calm. He glanced at Zito who gave a shallow nod. After the nod, Bruno casually strolled over to the bag and lifted it over his shoulder, never once taking his eyes off Kruger and Vermaak.
Hawke guessed the South African would have preferred to give the sword to Vermaak but knew he wanted the commando’s arms free in case any trouble kicked off with Zito’s crew.
“It’s time for me to bid you farewell, Hawke,” Kruger said. “You have been a worthy adversary, but I won in the end.” He turned to Vermaak. “Get the men out of here!”
Vermaak ordered the others out of the tomb and they began to file out with Bruno and the sword at the front of the line.
Kruger raised the rifle and pointed it at Hawke’s face. He started to leave the tomb, walking backwards and never breaking the gun’s aim. “When I seal this tomb you’ll die in the dark, you bastards. All of you — like desperate, starving rats. They eat other to stay alive, you know. I wonder what starvation and fear will drive all of you to?”
One of Zito’s men was last, moving slowly past Hawke and the others, but he wasn’t as careful as Kruger and came too close — close enough to strike.
Kruger saw it first and cried out: “Look out, you fool!”
But it was too late.
Hawke struck his hand out with the speed and accuracy of a Cobra attacking a mouse. In one fluid movement he grabbed the man’s gun, twisted it from his hand, broke his wrist and powered his other fist into his jaw. Before anyone knew what was happening, Hawke was diving through the air to the cover of the sarcophagus and firing the weapon at Kruger, yelling at his friends to get down.
Kruger stayed cool, crouching down behind a boulder and tracking Hawke with his rifle. Hawke guessed years hunting big game on illegal safaris had trained the South African to hold his nerve in dangerous situations.
From the cover of the sarcophagus, Hawke craned his neck to check if the others were safe. Lea slid in beside him, and Ryan arrived a second later. Scarlet and Reaper were taking cover behind one of the other cadaver tombs, while Kim and Danny Devlin were safely behind one of the stone support pillars.
That was the good news. The bad news was that Bruno had left the tomb with the sword and Kruger and Vermaak were now jogging out of sight in the tunnel right behind him. Giancarlo Zito and the rest of the Italians were forming a barrier between the ECHO team and the sword.
“We have to stop them, Joe!” said Lea.
“Gotta get past these fucknuts first,” Scarlet said.
“Cairo’s right,” Hawke said. “And it looks like Reaper’s made a start.”
The former French legionnaire was able to exploit his position on the far west of the chamber and was using the support stone columns as cover to inch closer to the Italians. When he was close enough to do some damage, Hawke put down some more cover fire and distracted the enemy, and then the Frenchman attacked.
Lunging forward from the final column, his attack was obscured by the shadows until the last second. He grabbed the nearest man around the neck and Lea winced when he roughly twisted his head and snapped his neck. The terrible sound was covered by the noise of the gunfire, and now Reaper had his weapon — a Heckler & Koch VP9 — and he used it without mercy.
Using Reaper’s attack for cover, Hawke and Lea moved forward now until they were in the thick of the battle. They both watched as one of Zito’s men turned and fled, but they had no need to take him down: Giancarlo Zito himself raised his gun and fired three times, cutting his own man down.
Hawke seized the moment. He grabbed Zito’s arm and leaned into him as he twisted the SIG from his gun hand and brought his elbow up into his face. The Englishman kicked the SIG to Lea who snatched it up while he spun around and smashed his fist into the Italian’s face and exploded his nose.
Two men came to their boss’s aid, dragging Hawke off and piling punches into him. Hawke fought back, but a bloodied Zito was already staggering to his feet and lurching toward the entrance tunnel. He greedily snatched a submachine gun from the hands of one of his men and turned it on Hawke. He fired at the Englishman, even though it meant hitting the two men who had just saved him.
Hawke saw it coming, hit the dust and rolled to cover as fast as he could, while above him Zito’s insane desire for revenge on the former SBS man peppered his own men with lead and tore them to shreds.
Scarlet, Ryan and Devlin charged forward to the entrance tunnel but Zito was ready and met them with another savage hail of gunfire. They dived for cover as Zito now retreated in the tunnel and fired warning bursts of automatic fire from his submachine gun. The rounds traced through the cave, lit by the gun’s muzzle flash in a macabre strobe effect that flashed white up the sides of the rocky walls.
As Zito slowly retreated, most of his men followed, but the last of them decided to have another go, and one of them had Scarlet in his sights. He fired at her, but his gun jammed and that gave the English woman the only chance she ever needed.
She lunged at him and moved into the fighting stance. The man laughed, but his mirth was cut savagely short by a brutal palm strike that smacked into his chin and fired his head back so hard it nearly broke his neck.
“You people are really starting to get on my nerves, fucksqueek,” she said.
The man made no reply, but took a swing at her.
She dodged the blow and sighed. “I can’t decide whether to kill him or date him.”
“Why not do both?” Ryan called over. “If it’s good enough for the Black Widow, what’s stopping you?”
“Really, darling,” she purred. “Sexual cannibalism is hardly my thing.”
He swung another punch and she twisted as she ducked backward and avoided it by millimeters. She regained her balance and fired a no-nonsense tiger-punch into the man’s throat. He pulled his arms up and blocked her punch with his right hand which he now squeezed into a fist in a bid to break her fingers.
Anyone else would have screamed, but Scarlet brought her left leg up into the man’s balls and delivered a hefty whack where it hurt most.
The man grunted in pain and released her hand, giving her enough time to grab his hand and turn it around one-eighty, breaking it right out of his wrist socket. The grunt turned into a howl and he fell to his knees to nurse his broken wrist.
“Please,” Scarlet said. “Let me help you with your pain.”
She snapped out a vicious scissor kick and belted him down into the dirt. She knew he was out cold without even having to look at him. She could tell by the level of resistance she felt when her boot struck the side of his head.
She heard a scream of rage.
She turned to see Lea swinging a piece of rock at arm’s length in a wide arc and bringing it crashing down on the side of a goon’s head. He grunted and crumpled to the floor, knocked out cold.
Across the chamber, Hawke was struggling in his own battle. She watched as he punched his opponent’s jaw, sending him stumbling back over the rubble of the shattered sarcophagus lid and falling onto the floor.
“Had enough yet, dickhead?” he yelled, and punched him several more times before picking up one of the slate fragments of the lid and slamming it into his temple. The impact split the skin open and blood gushed out over the rock, but the man was out like a light. Hawke tossed the rock down and pulled himself up to his full height, scanning the chamber for another fight. He locked eyes on Scarlet as he heaved his breath back.
“I think we’re done and dusted, darling,” she said.
The two of them high-fived and then turned to see the rest of the team waiting at the entrance.
“That’s quite a show you two put on,” Kim said. “But are you coming or not?”
“Kruger’s getting away, Cairo,” Ryan shouted. “Have you finished your foreplay or not?”
Scarlet walked casually over to them and dusted her hands off. As she passed Ryan she said, “If I didn’t know it would turn you on I’d put you in a nose hold for that.”
Ryan laughed and they too shared a high-five. “You’re an arsehole, Cairo.”
“And I love you too.”
Hawke looked at them both as if they were his brother and sister. “Can we move on now, please?”
“After you, darling.”