He was under cover now, but the sound of the nearby traffic confused him and made it hard to judge the number and proximity of the whispering voices.
Russians, goddamnit, Russians!
But sent by whom?
Blaine pulled himself through the slick grass, using the floodlit Acropolis above as a landmark to guide him. His problem was not to defend himself but to escape. He could kill plenty of the enemy, but each bullet used would attract more live ones. Eventually they’d have him. It was inevitable. He kept crawling.
The voices around him grew louder as his pursuers grew more impatient. Each second he evaded them would work in his favor. With the increased possibility that their quarry might escape, desperation, and with it carelessness, would set in.
Blaine stopped behind a smaller row of tombs just before Sacred Way, which divides Kerameikos Cemetery in two. Looking up, he saw they housed among others, Pythagoras. Strange, he mused, that the slightest error on his part now and he would die atop the Greek father of precise mathematics. His plan was not yet formed. The point was now to just keep moving.
A little more than a hundred yards ahead lay the remains of the wall erected by Themistokles around Athens following the Persian invasion. If he could scale it, he might get away before the Russians had a chance to react.
Quiet, he urged himself, as footsteps stopped not more than a half-dozen feet away from the tombs that shielded him. Blaine readied his pistol, determined to avoid using it at all costs because of the attention it would draw.
Fortunately, the gunmen swung across Sacred Way toward the other side of the cemetery. McCracken crawled ten more yards and then slid beneath the raised platform of another monument and rested. It was sixty yards to the walls, and he could never hope to cover the distance on his belly. He had to create a distraction, something that would draw the gunmen away from the direction in which he planned to flee.
Blaine twisted in his confined space, fighting his cramped muscles, and considered his options. First he thought of using the fresh clip in his Heckler and Koch to chip a significant piece of a monument away. He could assume the opposition would converge on it, and then he could escape. But the marble might not splinter sufficiently, and he would have accomplished nothing but to alert the killers to his actual position. No, he had to do something else.
McCracken smiled when his eyes fell upon the Kerameikos Museum, the one modern building within the cemetery. He knew it was packed with the kind of artifacts that would make an advanced alarm system a necessity. A bullet or two through the windows should create the distraction he needed. Blaine aimed toward the largest window he could find. He fired only once.
The shrieking alarm started the instant the glass shattered. Huge floodlights atop the museum blazed suddenly, illuminating irregular patches of the cemetery with an eerie glow. Blaine watched the Russians shy away from the light, dodging and darting, yelling to each other in total confusion.
McCracken pushed himself from beneath the monument and was on his feet instantly. He sprang onto the Sacred Way toward the inner wall that would lead him to the gate and freedom.
The alarm continued to wail, and approaching sirens added to the chaos.
A pair of breathless Russians swung onto the road right before him. He saw them long enough before they saw him to crack one solidly in the throat and launch a kick to the other’s groin. Two blows later, both were unconscious.
“There! There!”
McCracken heard the calls in his wake as he reached the inner wall that stood between him and the Sacred Gate.
He had just reached the top when bullets chewed at the stone near his hands. Dust and chips coughed into the air. Blaine hurdled over and took the impact on both legs equally to save himself from spraining an ankle.
He dashed fifteen yards and reached the Sacred Gate. It was part of a wall at least ten feet high, and because the gate was locked Blaine knew he had no choice but to scale the wall. The gate itself had the most footholds, so he leaped upon it, aiming his hands for a slight ridge just two feet from the top. His legs churned and kicked to keep him from slipping. With the Russians as close as they were, he would get only one chance.
McCracken hoisted himself upward, one hand over the other in a rhythm his feet also fell into. His right hand had just reached over the top when riflemen reached the inner wall behind him and began firing. The Athens police were arriving too and seemed at the outset to be most concerned with taking cover. Blaine’s vulnerability terrified him. A ricocheting bullet grazed his shoulder and the searing pain provided the last burst of adrenalin he needed to throw himself over the wall.
This time his fall was not nearly as graceful. He landed on the ground with a thud and lost his breath on impact. He tried to regain his feet and almost made it, but he fell again onto the knoll that bordered the eastern edge of the cemetery.
A pair of dark Mercedes sedans tore around a corner and headed toward him. With no other choice, Blaine forced himself to his feet and ran along the grass in a daze.
McCracken felt beaten. The cars hadn’t spotted him yet but they would, and there were the many troops left in the cemetery to consider, too. The presence of the Athens police might deter some — but not all. It would only take a few to best him in this condition.
He stumbled on with his head down, but when he looked up he saw an amazing sight. Brilliantly lit by modern floodlights, the Parthenon stood majestically atop the Acropolis, Athens’s ancient hill of state and commerce. The complex, open regularly for tours right up to midnight this time of year, might offer him a means of escape.
The rocky hill contained a set of ancient chiseled steps which provided access to the Acropolis. The majesty of the bright sight, its promise of hope, gave Blaine the energy he needed to run across the street and start up the ancient steps. The going was steep and many of the steps were chipped or rotted away. Blaine slipped regularly but never let himself lose his balance. If he could reach the Acropolis and mingle with the tourists….
Bullets splintered the silence of the night, echoing against the hill. His thoughts were interrupted. Once again only the next second lay before him.
Now three-quarters of the way up the hill, he moved off the steps onto the grassy slope of the Acropolis. The darkness hid him. He struggled on upward, climbing diagonally toward the Propylaea, which formed the original five-gated entrance to the Acropolis. Tourists normally entered by way of Beule Gate, but that was far too bright a section for McCracken to risk.
His hands scraped against jagged rock as he climbed through a restricted area. Once on level ground, he made for the Temple of Athena. Further on he could see that the bulk of the tour group was now concentrated near the majestic Parthenon itself.
“Recent measures enacted by the Greek government have drastically reduced the damage to these artifacts caused by pollution,” the tour guide, an olive-skinned woman, was explaining in English. “But still the rock surface and marble facing have been damaged beyond repair. Surviving through thousands of years of history only to be … ”
Blaine found himself standing next to a mustachioed man with a camera dangling around his neck. The man turned suddenly, surprised by his sudden appearance.
“Hell taking a piss around here, isn’t it?” Blaine quipped. “Nearly killed myself. Ancient Greece wasn’t much when it came to plumbing, I guess.”
The man smiled and returned his attention to the tour guide.
“The Parthenon was built as a temple to Athena and a statue of her stood in the east end until …”