“Okay, Milo,” Mason said. “We need you to direct us toward you and then we’re all out of here. We need to get out of here and it’s better for everyone if we can do that without a fight.”
Zara looked at him in the dim glow of the museum’s emergency night lighting. “You know, as you get older, Jed…”
“I get more rugged?”
“No, your testosterone levels are dropping, old man,” she said with a shake of her head. “Better without fighting, indeed!”
“I hate to break things up,” said Milo. “But the Lost Boys are nearly on top of you. You guys need to take the exit to your left and start moving or you’re in a war zone.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Mason said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Moving toward the security office things got real in a hurry. The two security guards who had headed back to the entrance now lay dead on the floor in the corridor; blood and brain matter splattered over the polished white tiles.
Ella raised her hand to her mouth to stop herself being sick and turned away; Mason knew at once that they were in grave danger and had to act fast. The murders had been professional and quick. He was certain the killers had mufflers on their guns so they didn’t attract the attention of any of the other guards in the museum. What made it particularly vile was that these guards were all unarmed.
The clock was ticking. Mason knew time was running out. The wounds on the dead guards were fresh, and it was clear they had been killed within the last few seconds. “Where are they, Milo?”
“In the room you guys were just in. They’re looking at the sarcophagus right now and they don’t look very happy to be honest.”
“Neither do the two dead guards in the corridor,” Ella said.
“I saw them die on the monitor,” Milo said. “These guys are quick, everyone. They moved like they were on fast-forward or something.”
Milo kept one eye on the Hidden Hand as he guided his friends away from the enemy and toward the security office. Safely inside, they gathered around the CCTV monitors and watched the Bride and her Ravens sweeping through the empty museum in pursuit of them. “They’re hunting the codex,” Mason said. “Look at how they move and communicate with one another.”
“You weren’t screwing around when you told us about these guys, Ezra,” Zara said.
Caleb let out a deep, knowing sigh. “He never screws around, believe me.”
“True story,” Ezra said.
Mason watched the CCTV covering the Egyptian department closely for a few seconds and then he saw the Bride up close for the first time. She was standing in front of the sarcophagus. Flanked on either side by two powerful looking men dressed in black, her beauty was almost bewitching.
But she was the enemy.
“Is that her?” Zara asked.
Ezra nodded. “That’s her.”
“What about the guys in leather trench coats?”
“They’re her Ravens. Utterly loyal to their Bride. It’s an order of loyalty right out of the ancient world and not something most modern minds could understand. They will happily sacrifice themselves if it means she survives. She would do the same for her Lion and so on up the line.”
“Like some kind of crazy suicide cult?” Milo said.
“No,” Ezra said firmly. “Nothing like that at all; as I said, their loyalty to the Hidden Hand is a kind of commitment that just doesn’t exist in today’s world. It’s not suicide. They are warriors in a global order that goes back further than any other we know. To betray that order is worse than suicide.”
Eva leaned into the screen. “Now they’re working out that the codex isn’t where it’s supposed to be.”
They watched the shadowy figures discuss the situation. The woman in particular looked highly agitated. After a few seconds they turned and made their way out of the Egyptian Department.
Ella felt a shiver go up her spine. “Now they’re hunting us. They know we have the codex.”
“We have to get out of here,” Milo said nervously. “We’ve been up against some rotten scumbags in our time but these guys are from another dimension.”
“Agreed,” Mason said. “Dr Hamilton — what’s the fastest way out of the museum from our present location?”
Still drowsy from passing out, she took a few seconds to think. “At the end of the corridor outside this room there’s a lift which will take us back down to the ground floor. From there it’s only a short walk to the Great Court. We’ll come out on Great Russell Street.”
“You stay here, Dr Hamilton,” Mason said calmly. “They want us, not you. We’ll draw them away.” He looked at his team and felt a sudden burst of pride in them. “Let’s get on with it, and keep that codex safe because right now we’re ahead of them.”
Kiya felt the anger flood her body alongside a rush of adrenalin. She had gotten to the British Museum minutes too late and now the enemy had the codex in their hands. The Lion would not be happy but maybe if she could retrieve it fast enough he would never have to know about her error.
As she slipped through the shadows of the museum she swore she would not only hold the codex in her hand, but execute whoever had tried to take it from her.
“How do we find them?” Dariush said. His breathing was hard as they pounded through the darkened corridors.
“We go back to the main entrance,” Kiya said. “They will call for back-up and that is where it will go. That’s where our enemy will head next.”
“There will be many armed officers,” Tekin said. “We must ready ourselves to fight them.”
“I am always ready to fight,” Kiya said without emotion. “And you should be too.”
She and the two Ravens entered the Great Hall and then she saw them. As Tekin had mentioned, there were several armed policemen holding Heckler & Koch submachine guns. With the terror threat so high in London their incredible reaction time was no surprise. They must have been here within minutes of their colleagues being shot.
Kiya stopped in her tracks and the two Ravens immediately halted either side of her. She heard someone cry out: “There they are!”
Fearing they had been seen by the anti-terror police, they darted back into the shadows only to see their enemy appear in the Great Court. They were walking in a group now and the American woman was holding a copper tube in her hand.
“There it is!” she whispered.
“What’s our next move?” Tekin asked.
“Take out the law, then we kill our new enemy and we have the codex.”
They stepped out from the shadows and opened fire without warning on the anti-terror police officers. Their M6 carbines spat fire and wrath across the Great Hall and mowed down four of the six police officers before they knew what had happened. The two survivors dived for the cover of an information board as they desperately radioed in the attack.
Mason and the other Raiders sprinted for one of the enormous circular help desks and skidded to a halt behind the relative safety of a large central island covered in tour guidebooks.
Zara checked her weapon was loaded and gave Mason an anxious look. “Holy shit, they’re already on us, Jed!
Milo was almost speechless. “Fucking hell, did you see what they did to those coppers?”
“It’s not over yet,” Mason said. “The ugly one’s got an HK compact grenade launcher — check it out.”
Milo peered over the desk and watched as Dariush opened fire on the two remaining police officers with the grenade launcher. He fired three of the grenades in rapid succession and they blasted the information board and both the counter-terror officers to pieces.
“Looks like we’re next!” Ella said. “They’re heading this way.”