The Vault of Poseidon

CHAPTER THIRTY

Their moment of humor was cut short when they heard the sound of diesel engines laboring somewhere in the distance.

“What’s that?” Sophie asked.

“Sounds like trucks to me, darling,” said Scarlet.

Hawke cocked his head. “She’s right — I can hear vehicles to the south.” He scrambled up a low rise and took up a covered position behind the trunk of an umbrella pine. “It must be Zaugg making his escape back to the airfield.”

Hawke watched as three black Jeep Cherokees drove slowly down the hill to the south of Sami. They kicked up a trail of orange dust from the unsealed road. He turned to Hart. “Olivia, listen — Reaper and I will go after them — make sure everyone’s all right here and organize an aircraft. Something tells me we’re going to need a flight back to Switzerland as soon as possible.”

Reaper was still watching Zaugg’s getaway through his monocular.

“He’s getting away!” said Ryan, who looked like a drowned ferret coming in at ninety pounds max.

“This man is a genius,” Reaper added, bringing his heavy hand down on Ryan’s shoulder in a gesture of feigned admiration.

“We need a vehicle,” Hawke said. “Any suggestions?”

“Try that,” Reaper replied. He pointed at the last of Zaugg’s Jeeps, now caught in a rut at the top of the hill and separated from the others.

“Idiots. Must be one of the locals Zaugg hired out of desperation.”

Hawke and Reaper picked up some weapons and split up to approach the stranded Jeep from different directions. An overweight man dressed in brand-new military fatigues and a cowboy hat, obviously bought online for the purpose of the treasure hunt, jumped from the Jeep and aimed his rifle at Hawke.

Hawke raised his hands while Reaper approached stealthily from behind and knocked the rifle from the man’s hands before landing a bear-like punch square on his jaw and sending him flying to the ground.

“Please — please don’t kill me!” The man was in his late sixties, and overweight. He spoke poor English in a heavy Greek accent, and when Reaper kicked his cowboy hat off it revealed a thin gray comb-over now out of place and hanging forlornly to the side of his chubby face.

“Don’t kill you?” Reaper said, stony-faced. The bear-like Frenchman flicked a small stone over the cliff with the steel toecap of his combat boot and watched it fly out into the air above the ocean.

“I have money now! Look — gold! Look in the Jeep. More gold than you can imagine! I’ll pay you anything you ask. Anything! Look at the diamonds!”

Reaper offered the panic-stricken man a broad, generous smile. “But some things are too expensive to buy,” he said. “Including your life, it turns out.”

A short burst from the machine pistol induced a second of terrible convulsions in the man, who then slumped to a lifeless heap, his chest peppered with bullet holes.

“Turns out, mon ami, you can dish it out,” Reaper said, with satisfaction, “but you cannot take it. This is the right expression, no?”

Hawke nodded. “Yes, that’s the right expression.”

From their position on the cliff they watched Zaugg’s Jeep leading the others down the road. They got out of the rut in seconds and began their pursuit of the Swiss. A battle between saving Lea, punishing Zaugg and saving the world from this madness fought for supremacy in Hawke’s frantic mind.

“Do you think he knows it’s us in here?” Hawke asked as they drew closer to the convoy.

“The answer is yes because we’ve got company,” Reaper said, looking in the rear-view. It was a second Jeep from the front which had looped around and come in behind them.

Reaper stamped down on the throttle and the Jeep jolted forward in the scrub in a roar of revs and dust. The Jeep had a serious 4x4 capability and no trouble climbing the rocky slope ahead of them and regaining the higher ground where they joined another track and turned south in the search for the other vehicles.

Zaugg’s men in the other Jeep behind them drove over the body of the hired Greek lackey and swung around in the gravel. Moments later it was behind Hawke and Reaper and gaining on them.

Reaper floored the throttle while Hawke climbed over to the back seats and cleared a space among the loot-laden boxes.

“Let the dog see the rabbit!” Hawke blasted out the rear window with the Heckler and Koch MP7 machine pistol, showering the track behind with shards of the reinforced safety glass.

“I think we are the rabbit right now, my friend.”

“Where’s your optimism?”

Reaper laughed. “I lost it along with everything else when Monique divorced me. The bitch.”

The Jeep raced along the east coast path, a sheer drop of at least a hundred feet just a few yards to its right, and a thick row of impenetrable scrub and olive trees on their left.

Through the newly opened window to the rear, Hawke could see their pursuers more clearly now, especially now they were closing on them with such speed. There was a driver, and another man, presumably one of Zaugg’s Greek facilitators. This second man leaned out his window and aimed his gun at them. From where Hawke was sitting it looked like a Strasser hunting rifle.

“A shame we got such a crappy Jeep,” Reaper said, glancing in the rear-view mirror at the 6 litre bearing down on them.

“You can only play with the hand you’re dealt,” Hawke said. He fired the MP7 through the rear window and watched with pleasure as a line of bullets struck the Jeep’s grille and peppered across the hood and windshield.

The noise of the machine pistol in the enclosed cab of the Cherokee was deafening, but not unexpected to the two former soldiers. The other Jeep swerved violently for a few moments, causing the passenger to fire off a shot aimlessly into the air.

After he had composed himself, the passenger used his rifle butt to smash the windshield glass out and the driver was able to get back on track in his lethal pursuit of them.

“That bought us five seconds,” Reaper said. “Thanks, Joe.”

They followed the track down a steep incline, at one point striking a deep pothole and nearly veering off the cliff to the right.

The Jeep behind them accelerated, the driver clearly more familiar with the intricacies of the track than Reaper. “He must be another local.”

Hawke watched with horror as the passenger disappeared back inside the Jeep and fumbled around for a moment before emerging again with an RPG-7D, a portable, handheld anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Developed by the Soviets in the early nineteen-sixties, it was cheap and readily available, used by armies, terrorists and guerrilla forces all over the world.

“Yeah, maybe we have a slight problem,” he called over to Reaper.

They were still hemmed in by the olives on their left, and the cliff-edge immediately to their right. Neither offered a realistic escape from their pursuers.

The passenger took a few moments to aim the RPG. He was clearly having trouble getting a fix on them because of the roughness of the terrain, and his reluctance to fire it made Hawke conclude he didn’t have an abundant supply of warheads with him in the Jeep.

Reaper called back to tell Hawke that a low, dry-stone wall had replaced the olives to their left, but before Hawke could reply there was a cloud of gray smoke from the rear of the RPG, and a bigger flash of white smoke from the front — the signature calling card of the RPG-7.

Hawke flinched as the lethal munition left the launcher, a second flash as the rocket inside the warhead fired up to propel it into their Jeep, screeching through the warm Greek day like one of the Trojan dragons sent by Poseidon to kill Laocoön.

“Then go left!” he screamed at Reaper, who instinctively swung the heavy 4x4 over to the left, sliding down a shallow embankment and striking the wall in a shower of white sparks. A terrific grinding sound filled the cab as the front wing of the Jeep scraped along the stones and slowed them down, flinging rubble behind them like gravel chips.

Reaper struggled to steer the vehicle away from the wall but keep out of the way of the warhead, which flashed past them and disappeared into the distance. A few seconds later they saw another puff of smoke and the crack of an explosion in the side of a hill a few hundred yards ahead of them.

With the danger past, for now, Reaper swung to the left and their Jeep scrambled up the rocky slope away from the wall, but in his zeal to escape he drastically oversteered and seconds later their Jeep almost drove straight off the coast path, forcing another correction on the part of Reaper to bring the vehicle under control.

Their hunter had gained on them significantly in the chaos of the RPG warhead, and Hawke saw they were preparing a second RPG.

He thought fast. Ahead of them the road was running out — they were now approaching the descent into Sami.

Another puff of gray and white smoke from the RPG.

“Go right!” screamed Hawke.

“Right! That’s the cliff.”

“Then get ready for a swim.”

Reaper swung the Jeep to the right, but more cautiously this time, as an error wouldn’t mean swimming, but certain death.

The Jeep skidded over to the right in a cloud of dust and gas fumes before running up on to the scraggy grass verge that precipitated the cliff edge. Reaper was on the left, so Hawke shot out the rear right passenger window and shifted across to get a better look.

“You have about an inch and we’re over,” he shouted, ducking instinctively as the second warhead raced past them, this time to the left, and ending its days in the same way as the first.

“Close,” Reaper said.

“Not as close as this,” said Hawke. He aimed the MP7 and fired another long burst of bullets at the Jeep. Closer now, their pursuers were an easier target, and the second volley tore across their Jeep from the top to the bottom, striking the driver several times in the head and chest.

He slumped forward and the Jeep spun out of control. Hawke saw the passenger trying to push the driver away from the wheel but it was too late. They flew off the side of the road, dust, grit and grass spraying in a wild arc behind them as they plunged behind the line of the cliff.

Seconds later Hawke heard a metallic crunching sound as the Jeep thudded into the rocks at the base of the cliff, and then an enormous explosion.

“Where did they go?” Reaper said, straining to see in the rear-view mirror while keeping the Jeep from sharing the same fate.

“They had to fly.” Hawke reloaded the MP7 with the ammo from the back of the Jeep and climbed into the front passenger seat.

“What about Zaugg?”

Hawke watched as Zaugg’s convoy trundled to the south of Sami on its way to the airfield. “We keep following them. I’ll call Hart and have her join us at the airport. I don’t want him leaving our sight.”

Hawke and Reaper kept their distance as they tailed Zaugg’s convoy to Kefalonia International Airport, and weren’t surprised to see them pull up alongside a white Boeing 767 idling on the apron. It had the words ZAUGG INDUSTRIES painted on the side in black letters.

“He doesn’t do things by half, I’ll give him that,” Hawke said.

“You think we can stop him?” Reaper asked.

“No. He’s obviously bought his way out of here — the customs guys aren’t even looking in those boxes. A pay-off, I guess. We just have to hope Hart and the others get here fast.”

Hart and the others arrived in an old Land Rover, courtesy of Sophie’s hotwiring skills, but it was too late to stop Zaugg.

“He flew out a quarter of an hour ago,” Reaper said, casually sucking on a cigarette.

“Did you manage to organize a plane?” Hawke asked Hart.

She shook her head. “Not enough time, sorry. Not even I am that amazing.”

“Then we’ll have to make other arrangements.”

After customs and security, it didn’t take Hawke long to persuade a cleaner to part with his clearance card and then they were airside and walking across to a line of private jets parked outside a hangar on the east side of the airport. Moments later they were inside one of the jets.

“Who the hell are you?” said an obese businessman. He spoke in a Central Russian dialect. He was surrounded by women.

“We’re your new flight crew.” Hawke powered a fist into the man’s face and knocked him unconscious to the floor in less than a second.

One of the women screamed hysterically. “Do you know who that was?”

“I couldn’t care less. Now sit down and shut up.”

“That was Yevgeny Gorokhov! Greatest glamour photographer in Russia.”

“Glamour photographer!” Scarlet said. “They’re porn models for God’s sake.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Reaper, arching an oddly appreciative eyebrow.

“They’re porn stars?!” Ryan said, a grin spreading across his face.

“We’re models,” said one of the women haughtily but not particularly convincingly. “Not porn stars. How dare you?!”

“Only you could hijack a plane full of porn stars, Joe,” said Hart.

“Hey! How could I have known what they were? We needed a plane and I got us one. You could be a little more grateful.”

“They’re not porn stars,” Ryan said. “They’re models. She just said so.”

“He’s right,” Reaper said. “She did just say that.”

“Please, guys,” said Ryan, never lifting his eyes from the women. “I think we need to get in the air. I feel a warm front coming on.”

“Oh, do shut up, Ryan,” Scarlet said. “And stop being so bloody sexist and pathetic, you little nerd. I cannot believe a woman like Lea married you. I guess she was young. That’s what it must have been, am I right? Young and stupid.”

Hawke laughed. “Ouch.”

“And you can shut up too.” Scarlet folded her arms and pursed her lips.

“Where are you flying tonight?” Hawke asked the women.

“We go back to Moscow. We had a photoshoot here.”

“A photoshoot,” Ryan said. “I love it. Where’s the camera?”

“We go to Moscow!”

“Not any more you’re not. We’re going to Switzerland and we need to get going right now, so everyone shut up and buckle up, in that order.”

In the air, Ryan busied himself serving the women drinks, and then brought Hawke and Scarlet some beers.

“Having fun, Ryan?” Hawke asked, smiling. He was starting to feel like his older brother.

“That one’s Tatjana,” Ryan said. “And the one in the boa is Liliya.”

“You can’t keep them, all right Ryan?” Scarlet said.

Hawke resisted the temptation that had so easily devoured Ryan, and spent the flight considering tactical options and discussing the next phase of the attack with Hart. No matter how hard he tried to focus on the matter professionally, his mind kept wandering to Lea. He couldn’t let her die the way he had let Liz die back in Hanoi.

On the approach to Sion the Citation banked gracefully to the port side to reveal a stunning vista of the Swiss Alps, snow-capped and glistening a pink-white in the late afternoon sun.

The aircraft then swung back with a heavy forty degree turn to starboard to line up with Runway 07. Hawke watched the lights of Sion grow larger as the plane extended flaps and he heard the gear go down.

A few moments later they were racing along the runway, speed brakes activated and the powerful reverse thrusters deployed bringing the jet to taxi speed in seconds.

It was only a matter of time before he got his revenge on Hugo Zaugg.