King instantly pictured himself driving the screwdriver savagely at their guard but the mercenary had obviously considered that too.
“My gun is aimed squarely at your head,” he told him. “Get any ideas and you’ll have a bullet pass straight through that genius brain of yours. Just do what you’ve got to do then put the screwdriver on the floor and slide it back to me.”
King glanced at the brute’s reflection in the TV screen. Sure enough, the pistol was right where he’d said it would be. Even Raine wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to attack the man with the screwdriver before getting up close and personal with a bullet. Instead, he used the flat head for its original purpose, sliding it between the inside of the lid and its frame. The wood splintered as he levered it along its length until finally it wrenched free, falling into his hands. Within the cavity of the domed lid he saw something glisten.
“Alright, Doc. Do like I said,” Bill’s lackey reminded him.
And like that, the next few seconds all clicked together for Benjamin King.
He cautiously placed the screwdriver on the floor and slowly slid it back, subtly keeping his eyes on the TV in the corner. In the reflection, he saw the guard, gun still aimed at his head, crouch down to the retrieve the potential weapon. He kept his back straight, his weapon poised, but the immediate threat of using the screwdriver to attack him had passed.
He flicked his eyes down to the screwdriver.
King made his move!
34:
Overland Runaway
Wrenching it from its cocoon within the lid of the chest, Benjamin King spun around and with savage ferocity, an act of desperation, he sliced the golden blade, once the weapon of an Ancient Egyptian, across the guard’s throat, gouging deep. Even after so many years, the knife slid through flesh and cartilage as though it was butter, crunching against the bone of his guard’s spine. He was dead pretty much instantly and, in horror, King watched as the body slumped to the floor. The impact would alert Bill in the living room below. He’d kill Adjo’s family, then order Sid’s death—
Adjo moved as fast as lightning and caught the soldier’s body, lowering it softly and silently to the floor.
King stared at the bloodied dagger in his trembling hand, his mind numb.
During his dash through Xibalba he knew he was responsible for the deaths of some of his attackers, but he had never in a million years contemplated the brutal murder of a man, staring into his horror struck eyes as the knife plunged deep, as—
“It is okay,” Adjo whispered. His words seemed harsh on his ears, loud, shocking him from the nightmare of the Welshman’s face as it flashed again and again through his mind.
Gently, Adjo placed a hand on King’s trembling wrist and lowered the knife. It was solid gold, its handle once wrapped in leather that had long since worn away, its hilt decorated with tiny hieroglyphs and precious gems. King remembered Emily Hamilton’s description of a golden dagger which Abubakar had kept and knew this was the same one, but how could it be the map he sought?
“We must do something or that man will kill my family,” Adjo refocused his thoughts on their present plight.
His family? King shook himself back into reality. Adjo’s family. Sid. He didn’t have the time to feel guilt or self-loathing over what he had done. He had to take charge of the situation. He nodded once, firmly, to Adjo then knelt quietly on the floorboards, taking a moment to wrap the dagger in an old shirt which had been tossed from the chest. He then slipped the weapon into the inside pocket of his jacket and reached over to pluck the dead man’s gun from his fingers.
“We need to get the timing just right,” he said in hushed tones to Adjo.
“Is everything all right up there?” Bill’s voice crackled loudly through the guard’s radio.
“Shit,” King cursed. He knew that any delay in a response would rouse the other man’s suspicions. He plucked the dead man’s radio to his lips. “Sure boss,” he said in what he hoped was something akin to a Welsh accent.
He checked his watch. It had been almost fifteen minutes since Bill’s last check in with his pilot. It was almost time to act. “We’ve got the map. Coming down,” he added briefly.
“Copy that.”
“What do we do?” Adjo asked, a stir of panic in his voice.
King had already worked out a plan of attack. “You go first,” he told the hostel owner. “When I say, I need you to create some sort of distraction, get Bill looking away from me.” He was an amateur with a gun. Bill was an expert. He knew that in a direct shootout with his captor he’d end up looking like Billy Clanton at the O.K. Corral. Dead. “Go,” he ordered.
Adjo paused a second by his toolbox and plucked out something which King could not see. He then proceeded to the hatch and descended out of sight.
“Slowly,” he heard Bill warn.
King moved to the hatch and watched Adjo hit the ground. Bill’s voice called up to him. “Okay Ben, come on down.” Then, to Adjo again; “Move over there, stand by the wall.”
King swallowed hard, feeling his heart racing in his chest, desperate to explode. He swung his legs onto the ladder rungs and began his descent, his clammy hands slipping on the wood. Just as he lowered his head through the hatch he caught sight of the Welshman’s dead eyes staring back at him. It was an image that he’d never forget.
His boots touched the ground. “Nothing rash, Ben,” Bill warned. King pretended to ignore him when in fact his attention was fixed solely upon the man holding the gun. The timing had to be just right. Bill would be expecting his lackey to appear at any moment. If he didn’t then he would start firing. King would have to shoot back but if he did that before he checked in with the pilot—
“Okay, I got ‘em covered. Come on down,” Bill called to the dead man upstairs.
King froze. He felt Adjo’s eyes boring into him… now? he pleaded, caring only about his family. When the Welshman didn’t reply—
Bill clicked on his radio again.
Damn. King’s sweat-slicked finger tightened on the trigger—
“This is Bill,” he said into his radio. “Fifteen minute check in.”
“Copy that,” the disembodied voice of the pilot replied. “Resetting the clock.”
That was King’s cue. He checked his watch, noting the exact time, then, imperceptibly, he nodded at the ever vigilant Adjo. Instantly, the window on the opposite side of the room exploded in a shower of glass. It shocked King, having not been expecting quite that and he wasted a valuable moment realising the source of the explosion. A nail gun had appeared in Adjo’s hand, loosing a single projectile through the pane of glass.
King snapped out of his shock, raised his pistol and—
Bill turned to him.
King fired. Once, twice, three times. Each shot punched silently into Bill’s torso, hurling him backwards so that he crashed into the far wall and slouched down it to the ground.
Adjo dropped the nail gun and was in motion instantly, running to his screaming family. King forced himself not to stand there in a dazed stupor and bolted for the stairs, hurling himself down them two at a time.
“Watch out!”
Adjo’s warning came too late. Bill’s entire body slammed into King from behind, rugby tackling him so that they crashed down the remaining steps and through the door at the bottom, sprawling out into the corridor. A young couple who had apparently decided the corridor was the best place to make-out jumped in terror at the sight of the two armed men.