“I’m right here, mon,” Mrs Marley’s gruff, heavily accented voice came from the shadows across the landing. King swung to face her and didn’t even have time to shout as the obese Jamaican woman levelled her two-hundred year old British infantry musket at him and fired!
“Ben!” Sid screamed at the screen as she saw the gun blast, from Ben’s point of view. It was as though she was living his last moment of life with him, as him.
She practically felt the thunderous jolt of the musket blast slam into his chest, throwing him backwards and over the landing railing. She saw the world spin, the chasm of the jumbled museum spinning around and around, the glass display case rushing up to meet him.
It shattered in a tremendous explosion of glass as King’s limp form smashed through it.
“Shut the hell up!” Gibbs snapped at her. Her outburst had surely given away their position but the woman did not care. Like Raine before her, she charged out from hiding and ran towards the building.
Even as King plummeted to his death, O’Rourke and Garcia shook off their surprise and levelled their weapons on the insane Jamaican. But they didn’t have a second to contemplate pulling their triggers as, at that moment, the entire north wall of the building exploded in an eruption of fire and debris, consuming the two soldiers and Mrs Marley.
Through the fiery breech, four black-clad soldiers swung into the building. “Fan out,” the Team Leader ordered, surveying the destruction. “Find the diary.”
28:
The Hand of Freedom
All hell broke loose.
Running down the west face of the Hand of Freedom building, Raine was pretty much shielded from the blast of C4 which the four soldiers had used to rip open the north wall. Nevertheless, the pounding heat picked him up and hurled him forwards, sending him sprawling across the brittle grass.
Only seconds later he was on his feet again and charging for the door. The lock already picked by Garcia, he had no problem slamming through it, twisting through the second, inner door and into the museum.
Huge chunks of masonry had smashed through the display cases and crushed dozens of artefacts but luckily the explosion hadn’t erupted into a massive fire.
Amidst the destruction he saw the prone form of Benjamin King lying sprawled upon the smashed remains of the display case he had landed on.
He ran to the fallen man’s side. “Benny,” he hissed, touching his bloodied head. He checked for a pulse.
“You, stay here,” Gibbs ordered Nadia as he climbed to his feet seconds after the explosion had lit up the sky. “All units,” he called into his throat mike. “Move in! Secure King and the book!”
He broke cover, hauling his HK-416 from his shoulder and charged towards the building. “Eagle Eye, we need air support. Now!”
Responding to the expert skills of David Sykes, the helicopter twisted through the clear Caribbean sky and dropped towards the ground, pulling up at the last possible second and swinging around the hand-shaped building.
From the large halogen lamp attached under the nose of the bird, a brilliant beam of light lit up the smashed building.
Raine’s fingers expertly found a pulse in King’s neck and he felt the archaeologist stir. He had landed face down on top of a glass and wood display case and now rolled painfully onto his back. His Kevlar body armour had protected him from the brunt of the musket shot and the impact with the display case, but Raine could hear a rattle in the other man’s chest as he breathed. A broken rib, he guessed, hoping he hadn’t punctured a lung. His eyes were dazed and blood ran around his neck and shoulders from a gash on the back of his head.
“Try not to move,” he told him. “You’ve got a concussion and—”
“The dairy,” King gasped. Raine glanced to the top of the stairs, knowing the archaeologist was right. The diary was the primary goal.
“I’m on it,” he said, taking King’s handgun from its holster. Gibbs’ orders be damned — he needed a weapon now. Then, just before dashing into the wreckage, he added with a grin. “Don’t go anywhere.”
On the balcony the black-clad Team Leader rolled Mrs Marley over. Blood ran down her face from where she had impacted with a large chunk of spinning debris but she was still breathing.
One of the other soldiers came out from the master bedroom. “No sign of the book,” he reported.
The Team Leader needed no extra prompting. He slapped Mrs Marley across the face with such force that it shocked her back to consciousness. Her eyes wandered, terrified, before focussing on the soldier.
“Where is the Kernewek Diary?” the Team Leader demanded.
Mrs Marley sneered at him then spat out a sticky wad of blood and mucus. It splashed against the Team Leader’s unmasked face. He drew back his fist and slammed it into the old woman’s nose. It exploded in blood.
“Where is it?” he growled.
Gasping back sobbing racks of agony, Mrs Marley nevertheless remained defiant. The Team Leader quickly drew his holstered handgun, black, unidentifiable, and pressed the muzzle hard against the woman’s fat kneecap.
“Where is the book?” he said again, his voice cold, icy. Uncaring. Despite the blood that soaked her, Mrs Marley never shifted her defiant gaze from her torturer’s face. “Fine,” the soldier shrugged and squeezed the trigger.
The head of the soldier in the doorway exploded in a splatter of blood and gore, shocking the Team Leader. He whirled in time to see an American soldier with a mop of black hair and intense blue eyes launch himself from his cover on the top step and train his M1911 semi-automatic handgun on him.
Mrs Marley took his lapse in concentration to make her own unexpected move. Mustering agility she didn’t know she possessed, she hauled her feet up and slammed her incredible body weight into the Team Leader. He sprawled across the landing, his own rifle scattering just out of reach.
Raine dashed forward, hurdling the corpse of the man he’d just killed and homing in on his second victim just as two soldiers ran onto the landing from the bedroom doorway. They opened up with fully automatic rifles, hundreds of bullets hammering into the wall behind him. In the blink of an eye, he scanned his surroundings and then hurled himself away from the gunfire and into the stinking bathroom.
It looked, and smelt, as though it hadn’t been cleaned in years, but Raine didn’t focus on the stench. He knew that in mere seconds the two soldiers would come swinging around the doorway, guns blazing. He hurriedly unlocked the bathroom window and pulled himself outside, tucking his gun into his waistband as he clung onto the plastic guttering that ran around the building, just above the level of the window.
It wouldn’t hold his weight for long, he knew, so he quickly shuffled along it to the next room over. As he had hoped, the master bedroom’s window was open and so he easily slipped back inside the building, landing softly upon the filthy, broken bed.
He heard the shuffle of boots as the two soldiers spun around the wall and into the bathroom. “He’s not here,” one of them called to their leader.
“Forget him,” the team leader snapped. “Find the goddamn book!”
Raine dropped to the floor of the ransacked room and rolled under the bed, remembering the video stream he had seen earlier of Mrs Marley retrieving the diary from under the floor boards.
The floor was now sticky and damp from the blood of the soldier Raine had felled near the doorway. He ignored it and quietly pulled up the first floor board, then the second. The treasure chest was still hidden underneath but, oddly he noticed, the large brass key he had seen was still in the lock.