“When do we start?” Lea asked.
Lund walked back over to them and slid the phone back into his suit pocket. “That was Nikos Katrivanos, the Greek Minister of the Interior,” he said. “And he says you have permission to fly to Meteora and make an assault on the monastery.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Hawke said. “We never do anything unless we get permission first.”
Eden gave him a wry smile. “All right, thank you.”
Lund missed the sarcasm. “And he added that it would be ever so nice if you could try and minimize the damage to the building itself, please. It was built in 1475 and he doesn’t want a repeat of the Parthenon if that’s okay with you.”
They all turned and looked up at the scaffolding on the ancient temple perched above high them.
“What?” Lea said. “Us?”
“Yes,” he said with emphasis. “You.”
“Okay, let’s make this happen,” Hawke said. “It’s high-time we took Wolff out of the equation for good.”
“There’s something else,” Eden said. “Something you all need to know about Danny’s death.”
The silence that followed his words echoed the deep sadness they all felt about their old friend’s brutal murder.
“What do we need to know?” Lea said.
Eden seemed hesitant. “He was killed with a marked bullet, one that literally had his name on it. We’ve run tests on the round and I can say it was a .408 bottlenecked cartridge, solid bullet with a non-lead core. Copper nickel alloy round. The conclusion of the ballistics report is that it was fired on a CheyTac M200 Intervention.”
“Holy shit,” Lea said. “That’s pretty much the most powerful sniper rifle in the world.”
“You’re saying this is some kind of vendetta?” Hawke asked.
Eden’s answer was now without hesitation. “In my view his death was a professional hit carried out by an extremely skilled sniper, probably ex-military. As for who ordered it, the best guess has to be the Oracle, but all bets are now off. Worse, there was a threat implying that the rest of us are also in danger.”
“We’re all targets?” Lea said, shocked.
“Looks that way.”
“So there’s a psycho sniper out there with the world’s most lethal rifle and a hit list full of our names?” Ryan said. “You always think it’s going to happen to someone else.”
Lea rolled her eyes. “This is serious, Ry.”
“Lea’s right,” Hawke said. “Until we find the killer, literally none of us is safe. The shooter could be anywhere.”
“We’re in the open now,” Scarlet said, glancing around the area.
“We can’t spend our lives hiding in a basement,” Lexi said. “We have to find the bastard and take him out, but not before finding out who hired him.”
By the time they all heard the crack of the shot, Magnus Lund had already been struck and knocked to the ground. As blood spilled out of the dead man’s head, the team scattered to anywhere they saw cover, shocked to the core at the timing of the murder.
Hawke studied the way Lund had fallen and twisted his head around to the top of the theatre. “Over there,” he called out. “No sign of the shooter but that’s where the round was fired. I’m going up.”
“Are you insane?” Lea said.
“He won’t fire twice,” he said. “Now it’s about escape and evasion until the next time.”
Hawke scrambled up the stone terraces of the theatre, stumbling here and there as he made his way up to the top. He heard the sound of a Vespa two-stroke receding into the distance, and by the time he crested the rise at the top of the theatre and reached the base of the Acropolis it was in time to see nothing but a trail of dust twisting up from an empty road leading back down into the city.
He cursed and kicked at a pile of gravel out into the road. With a sense of mounting fury, he padded back down to the rest of his team and gave them the bad news while Lea called an ambulance. They knew it was too late, but there was nothing else they could do.
“I can’t believe it!” Lexi said. “I can’t believe they killed Magnus.”
Once again shattered by the violence of another sniper’s round, the team rapidly pulled themselves together as the sound of sirens approached from the south.
“How fast can we get to this monastery?” Hawke asked.
“As fast as a chopper can fly,” Eden replied.
Scarlet flicked her cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it under her heel. “And where do we rendezvous?”
“I’ve got a little boat in the Med,” Eden said.
“Then let’s get on with it — not just for Danny, but for Magnus because at this rate there might not be any of us left to fight anyone pretty soon.”
CHAPTER THREE
Disregarding the charged political atmosphere surrounding her, Alex Reeve pushed her wheelchair slowly along a corridor outside the Cabinet Room. It seemed like forever since her father had become President of the United States but she would never get used to living in this place. It was nothing like in the movies, but a mostly quiet, boring place of work populated by straight-faced bureaucrats and steely Secret Service agents.
She was heading for the Oval Office to see her father when Agent Brandon McGee called out to her from behind. She turned and smiled, but there was no reciprocation. He looked concerned and anxious as he walked over to her.
“Hey, Brandon.”
“Alex, hi. We need to talk.”
She twisted her head as her eyes narrowed. “What about?”
“In private.”
“We can go to my apartment in the Residence.”
He thought about it, then shook his head. “I think we need to go for a drive.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “What’s going on, Brandon?”
He leaned over, flicked the brake off her wheelchair and moved around behind her to grab hold of the push handles. “We’ll talk when we’re on the road.”
He wheeled her along the corridor, each second getting closer to the Office of the Vice President. “Are we going to see Faulkner?”
A pause.
“No, no we’re not. Besides, he’s not here. He’s at his private residence. I checked with his Secret Service detail less than an hour ago.”
He steered her to the right and headed toward the main entrance to the West Wing.
“Why would you do that?”
“On the road, Alex. We’ll talk on the road.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
He showed his pass to the door security and they stepped outside. Parked up on the circular drive was a black Secret Service Escalade. A light drizzle fell as McGee pushed down the brakes on the chair and opened the passenger door. Lifting Alex into the vehicle he paused to scan the building for something and then hopped into the driver’s seat and fired it up.
He accelerated around the sweeping drive and headed to the northeast gate. Passing another layer of security he pulled out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and headed west to the river. The traffic was heavy and progress was slow, and inside the Escalade the atmosphere was sombre as the windshield wipers moved across the rain-streaked glass.
“Why the cloak and dagger, Brandon?”
“Your room could be bugged.”
“Huh?”
“You room, back in the Residence.” He shot her a serious glance. “There’s a good chance it’s bugged.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“I am serious. I swept this car just before getting you so I know it’s safe.”
“But my room?”
“Sorry.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
Brandon sighed.
“Not my father?”
“No, not your father. President Brooke is a good man.”
She frowned. Her heart started to quicken in her chest. She wondered if she was having a minor panic response. They’d gotten worse since she was back in the chair. “Then who?”