Valhalla Gold

CHAPTER TWELVE

Hawke went to the door and peered around the arch into the stairwell. The sound of men shouting and hurried footsteps echoed up the steps of the castillo’s tower.

“Sounds like our friends from Florida, all right,” he said. “They’re speaking French.”

“But how could they possibly know we’re here?” Scarlet asked again.

“Like I said — maybe something in Dad’s research,” Lea said. “They must have gone up one side of my flash drive and down the other ten times by now.”

Gunnar looked like Lea had slapped his face. “I was convinced I was the only one who knew how to read the script…”

Hawke gave him a look of consolation. “It doesn’t look that way now, Gunnar… sorry.”

Gunnar’s crestfallen expression was wiped from his face by the sound of the men’s screams as they stormed their way further up the tower’s winding, stone steps. They sounded like a pack of wild animals.

“Guys,” Ryan said. “I hate to break up the debate here, but we have an undetermined quantity of heavily armed Belgian psychopaths running toward us and I’m thinking they’ll be here in less than twenty seconds.”

Victoria gawped at Ryan and blinked. “Oh gosh…”

“He makes a solid point,” Scarlet said.

“So let’s get the hell out of here then!” Ryan added with emotion.

“Sounds like a capital idea to me,” Victoria said, peering anxiously over Hawke’s shoulder and looking down the stairwell. “They’re already too close for comfort.”

Hawke turned to Javier. “Are the shutters on those windows nailed down?”

Javier shook his head. “No.”

“Excellent.”

“There’s no need — we’re five storeys up.”

“Ah…”

Hawke looked at the door. “What’s this wood?”

“The strongest Spanish cedar!”

“Strong enough to keep them busy for a while, in other words.” He slammed it shut. “Give me the key, Javier!”

Javier handed him the key and the Englishman locked the heavy door. “They’ll waste a lot of ammo trying to get through this and that will give us some time to work out a way out of here.”

“Perhaps we can use this to our advantage?” Javier said, taking the cloak back from Lea. “Below the two windows on the right is a drop all the way to the outer courtyard but there is a narrow battlement below the window on the left that leads to a parapet walk. From there we can make our way to the roof of the old chapel and descend to the inner courtyard.”

Hawke opened the shutter and looked at the route Javier had just described. It all seemed straight-forward enough and beyond the north wall of the castle was a large olive grove they could use for cover.

Outside the room they heard the men reach the top of the stairs and began pounding on the door. After a few seconds of rethinking the problem they heard the obvious next step as dozens of bullets smashed into the heavy cedar door.

“Right,” Scarlet said, cocking her gun. “Ladies first, and that means you, Ryan.”

“Hey!”

“You object?” she asked.

“Are you kidding?”

A second later Ryan was following Victoria through the window, then Scarlet climbed out. Lea was next and then Hawke turned to Gunnar and Javier.

“Right you two — out now!”

“Absolutely not!” the Spaniard said with wounded pride. “I go last! My family has defended the castle for seven centuries from people like this!”

Hawke yielded and turned to Gunnar. “Come on — out!” Gunnar made his way quickly to toward the window, axe handle in his grip, but Javier was undeterred and draped the cloak over his shoulders, vanishing from sight.

Outside the window Ryan jogged back from the parapet walk. “It’s an easy trip to the chapel roof and… wait a minute — where’s Javier?”

“Playing the Predator again,” Hawke said.

“What?”

Hawke sighed. “All right Gunnar, out you go!”

“What about Javier?”

“He’s going next”

“No!” protested the Spaniard. “I will surprise them when they enter the room and shoot them with the blunderbuss!”

Hawke rolled his eyes. “Javier, these men have automatic machine pistols. An invisible cloak and a three hundred year-old gun won’t save you if they spray the entire room with lead, which I predict they will do about five seconds after blasting their way through the door.”

“You think?” Javier said with regret creeping into his voice.

“Yes!”

“All right then on this one occasion,” Javier said, holding his finger up to Hawke to underline the point. “I will retreat, but only so I can kill them later with the blunderbuss!”

Hawke fought hard not to look at Javier like he was a total fool, and agreed he could kill them later with the blunderbuss, but only if there was a later, and that meant getting out of here as fast as possible.

But then the door finally burst open and a man stormed in with a Heckler & Koch MP7, raking full metal jackets all over the room. Hawke watched in horror as the rounds drilled mercilessly through Gunnar Jónsson’s chest and throat. He dropped the axe handle and fell on top of it a second later, stone-cold dead.

The gunman turned the weapon on Hawke but the Englishman grabbed the gun’s muzzle and pushed down hard. The man squeezed the trigger in response, firing off dozens of rounds into the floor, but Hawke spun him around and aimed the weapon at the open door, taking out the second man at the top of the stairs and giving them a few more seconds.

“Out now!” he screamed at Javier.

“Never! Defend or die!” Javier snatched up the blunderbuss and ran toward the stairs. As he reached the door one of the men lobbed a grenade into the small room. Hawke picked it up and dived out of the window, using a shoulder roll to propel himself up with his own momentum back to his feet where he hurled the grenade over the battlement.

It exploded before it hit the ground and as the fireball fell down to the courtyard in a smear of black smoke and fire, he turned to see Javier was climbing through the window.

“What happened to defend or die?” Hawke said.

“There are more of them than I thought!”

Javier began to clamber through the window. He was still wearing the cloak. It was draped over his back so from Hawke’s perspective he was perfectly visible, but to the gunmen who now were rushing back into the room the Spaniard would be invisible. That, at least, was something they would hardly be expecting.

“Hurry up, Javier!” Hawke said, the frustration growing in his voice. “We don’t have much longer.”

“Lo sé!” Javier said, but it was too late.

No sooner had he uttered these words when the men were in the room once again, guns raised and ready to fire.

Javier seemed calm, knowing the cloak made him invisible to the men, but he had made a terrible miscalculation. As soon as the gunmen re-entered the room they saw the open window and looking right through the Spaniard as if he weren’t there they immediately caught sight of the Englishman helping him and opened fire.

Hawke watched in horror as the bullets ripped through the cloak and blasted into poor Javier’s back. Blood ran from his mouth, just inches from Hawke’s face, and then the fatally wounded man released his grip on the coquina casing of the window and fell backwards into the room. He collapsed in a wheezing heap alongside Gunnar’s dead body which was still smoking from the terrible wounds inflicted on him earlier.

Hawke knew there was nothing he could do as the enemy swarmed further into the room, firing their guns and rushing the open window.

“Get moving!” Hawke shouted at the others.

Lea led everyone along the parapet walk while Scarlet kept up the rear, walking backwards to cover Hawke as he hid at the side of the open window, pushed back flat against the wall.

“We’ve got to get that axe!” he shouted.

A gunman appeared — the same who had murdered Javier — and leaned out of the window with his submachine gun a few inches ahead of him.

Hawke grabbed the muzzle of the gun and yanked it forward, raising his right hand and driving it into the man’s surprised face at the same time. A crunch of broken nose bones followed a split second later before he pulled the man out of the window, wrenching his gun off him as he fell outside.

Taking his gun, Hawke fired into the room once again forcing the men back, but when he turned to run the man outside on the battlement was now on his feet, arms extended and lunging toward him.

Hawke swung at him, turning his hips as he went to put as much momentum into the punch as possible. Striking the man in the jaw he drove him backwards to the wall where he teetered uneasily for a moment before lashing out at Hawke.

The Englishman dodged the punch and fired a second back at the man, catching him in the face and smashing his cheekbone into shards. He brought his left hand up and plowed his knuckles hard into the man’s eye socket, creating another terrible crunching sound and filling the cavity with blood.

Behind Hawke, the gunmen were at the window again, aiming their weapons at him, so he grabbed the disoriented man and spun him around, using him as a human shield. Holding him up to cover himself from the onslaught, Hawke raised his gun and fired back, driving them back once more. He knew he had to get the axe handle and cloak — they hadn’t even had time to grab an image of the markings on the axe yet.

He hauled the half-dead man to the wall and pushed him over on his way back to the window. His blood-curdling screams filled the Spanish twilight but it was all over in a second when he landed with a squelchy smack on the cobblestone courtyard hundreds of feet below.

With the man’s gun in his hands, Hawke used the window casing as cover as he pointed the muzzle of the weapon into the aperture and sprayed the room with hot lead. Knowing that there was only one narrow exit in the room, he knew this was the definition of shooting fish in a barrel, and it was no less than they deserved after murdering Gunnar and Javier in cold-blood. Plus, the Cloak of Invisibility and the axe handle fragment were still inside.

He kept firing. Some of the men got through the door, others hid behind the chests, while others were now dead. Hawke knew his magazine would be empty any second, but he waited until all of his friends were out of sight and across the chapel roof before retreating. So heavily outgunned he knew there was nothing he could do now to save the cloak and axe from falling into the enemy’s hands but he was also a big believer in the saying live to fight another day.

He stepped backwards along the parapet walk firing his gun in short bursts to keep the men pinned down in the room and stop them firing at him, but when he heard the familiar click click click of an empty magazine he turned on his heels and ran for his life.

Within seconds the men had worked out what was going on and one of them leaned out of the window and fired a ferocious burst of fire at him.

The bullets bit at his heels as he sprinted across the chapel roof, smashing the tiles into shards and dust in his wake and slowly getting closer to him. With seconds to spare he reached the edge of the roof and leaped into the air — a suicidal move for most people but he knew his limits were beyond those of most people thanks to his parkour training.

He sailed through the Spanish evening for a few seconds, a least fifty feet above the courtyard but just out of the gunmen’s firing line. The flight came to a rapid end when he smashed into a wall opposite the chapel, only just gripping hold of the top of it. The enraged screams of the men behind him grew louder as he lowered himself carefully down the wall and dropped the last few feet to the courtyard where the others were waiting for him by an archway in the outer wall.

“Glad you could make it,” Scarlet said, glancing at her watch.

“Bad news I’m afraid… they killed Gunnar and Javier and now they have the cloak and the axe.”

“Excellent,” Scarlet said. “Maybe we should have sent you out first with Victoria and Ryan and left me to do the hard stuff?”

Victoria covered her mouth with her hand. “Those men killed them?”

Hawke nodded and placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“I… I can’t believe it!”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have long,” he said. “They’re right behind me. We need to get into that olive orchard right now and use it for cover. When I was on the chapel roof I saw there’s a road at the northern end of the orchard so we’ll head there.”

“That’s your plan?” Ryan said.

Hawke shrugged his shoulders. “Sure — why not?”

“We have a car around the front!”

At that point the men’s shouting grew even louder and they heard more gunshots.

“You think those guys haven’t got that covered? There’s a small army of them!”

“I see your point.”

“So we’re going into the orchard, right?”

“It’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I suppose.”

“Gee, thanks. Get on the blower to Eden,” Hawke said, still scanning the tops of the castillo’s crenelated walls for any sign of the men. “Tell him Javier and Gunnar are dead and whoever murdered them not only has Lea’s flash-drive but also the cloak of invisibility and the axe.”

“Can’t you tell him?” Lea said.

“Why me?” Hawke said. “I’m the new guy!”

“I don’t want to break it to him…”

Scarlet sighed. “Give the phone to me, you big baby!” She snatched the phone and made the call as they made their way deep into the olive trees. They lost the men more easily than they thought, but Hawke knew their escape was probably a lot more to do with the fact that whoever the gunmen were they now had a nice, new invisibility cloak and a mysterious axe handle, which was probably what they were there for in the first place. Chasing half a dozen people around an olive orchard would be nothing more than a waste of their time and resources.

“What now?” Lea asked as they reached the road.

Hawke glanced at Victoria. She looked like she needed a very strong drink.

“We hitch a ride into town.”

Lea stood on the side of the road doing her best interpretation of a lost lamb for half an hour before an old Mitsubishi Fuso flatbed creaked and rattled around the corner. One of its headlights was flickering and it looked a little worse for wear, but a lift was a lift, Hawke thought.

An old man wound down the window and leaned halfway out, grinning at Lea.

“Necesitas ayuda?”

Lea smiled. “If that means you can offer five people a lift into town, then the answer’s yes!”

Before the man knew what was happening, Hawke and the others scrambled out from behind the olive trees and down the stony bank to the road.

“Hey!” the man said in English. “What is this, some kind of robbery?”

“Don’t be silly now, darling,” Scarlet said, climbing into the cab. “We just need a short ride into town. Now you be a good chap and drive us, will you?”

The man started to object, but then he noticed that most of them were carrying side arms, and the tall Englishman was even carrying a submachine gun slung over his shoulder.

“My truck is your truck!” he said with a nervous smile.