Adriana turned her head and looked down the road. The boy had covered sixty yards and was almost out of sight. They were going to make it.
Then something struck her hard in the middle of her back, sending a crunching, dull pain through her body. The momentum of whatever had hit her carried her to the ground, smashing her face onto the gravel. Two giant arms wrapped around her for a second, then let go as a guard she’d not seen stood over her. The world spun around in her eyes as she tried desperately to regain her bearings. The silhouette of the big man was outlined by the waning afternoon sunlight. He was raising one of his arms in the direction Niki ran. She made out the image of a gun in his hand and realized what he was about to do.
Adriana kicked out with all her might, sending her heel into the side of the man’s knee. Ligaments and cartilage gave way behind the force of her attack, and the guard screamed out in agony. He stumbled for a moment but never fell. She looked down the road, her vision still blurred from hitting the ground. Niki disappeared around the bend behind a thick stand of trees. Adriana smiled feebly, knowing that the boy had made it. The smile was wiped away as the guard brought the tip of his boot into her ribs. The power of the kick sent her rolling onto her other side. He kicked her again and again, finally grabbing her by the shirt and lifting her off the ground.
She coughed violently but stared defiantly into the man’s cold eyes. His head was shaved, and he had a full goatee of black facial hair. Anger flamed in the man’s eyes, no doubt from the injury she’d inflicted on his knee. Adriana quivered as the man stared into her eyes and drew back his massive fist. It was the last thing she saw before everything went black.
Chapter 32
Darkness had fallen across the Apennine Mountains by the time Sean and Tommy reached the park area at Mount Fumaiolo. The drive had taken close to three hours, a little longer than Sean had been led to believe. A few last dying rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon far to the west, casting a pale-orange glow across the sky until it met with the coming darkness.
Along the way, Tommy had interrogated Sean about the backstory with Marek. “So what’s the deal with that guy giving us these guns for nothing? What did you do for him?”
Sean laughed at the reminder. He’d not thought about the sequence of events for a long time. Truthfully, he rarely thought about it. Marek had been going through some tough times. He owed the wrong people a ton of money from a gambling debt. Sean had gone to Marek’s place to ask some questions about a potentially huge arms deal that he’d gotten wind of. From what he’d heard, some Russian mobsters were trying to ship a load of military-grade weapons to a terrorist camp just inside the Pakistani border.
He hoped Marek knew where the deal was going down and who the major players were. When he’d arrived, however, Sean found Marek in a bit of a pickle. The Czech had been tied to a chair, and his home had been doused in gasoline.
“Fortunately,” Sean explained, “I was able to take the men out before they set the whole place on fire. It was pure luck that I arrived when I did. Marek believes that it was some kind of divine providence or something.”
“Well, that explains why he treats you like his own personal savior,” Tommy said.
“I guess,” Sean let out an uncomfortable chuckle.
Tommy tried not to get into the details of Sean’s previous life when he worked for Axis. His friend didn’t talk about those days much, and the last thing Tommy wanted to do was pry. But in this case, he let his curiosity get the better of him. “I assume you stopped the weapons deal?”
“I’m sorry, buddy. That is classified information.” Sean left him hanging for a minute as he steered the car through the tightening curves of the mountains. “But yeah,” he glanced to the side for a brief second, “we definitely took them down. Marek happened to know someone who was directly involved with the operation. He was more than happy to fill me in on the details. We had an international all-star team there waiting to take down the whole thing.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“It was for about thirty seconds. Then the rest of it was just a ton of paperwork. Fortunately, we Axis guys are usually just shipped somewhere else and the paperwork is taken care of back home at HQ.”
The rest of the trip had been mostly quiet. Sean tried to distract his mind from thoughts of Adriana. He didn’t want to worry, but bad men sometimes did horrible things to women. He pushed the thought as far out of his brain as he could, instead focusing on the road ahead. At one point, Sean gave his phone to Tommy and asked that he text Emily, thanking her for getting them out of trouble earlier. He knew that she wouldn’t hold it against him. Emily wanted Sean back in Axis in a bad way. He had been her top agent. Truthfully, he could have been the heir to the director’s position when their former boss had stepped down. She’d believed that Sean would get the job, and was surprised when the Secretary of State called her to make the announcement. What Emily didn’t know was that Sean had recommended her for the position. He was never much of a desk jockey. His soul called him to be active, doing things, not just filling out paperwork. One of the reasons he’d taken the job at the IAA was because Tommy promised him all the field work he could handle. The job certainly had delivered that, but no matter what he did Sean couldn’t seem to get away from international intrigue. He was beginning to resign himself to the fact that he was good at it and that was why he seemed to keep being brought back in to things like the current situation.
Sean shook his head, trying to refocus. This situation was different. Some wealthy Greek businessman had kidnapped Adriana to find some ancient relic. The guy was clearly insane, or at the very least some kind of high-level narcissist. Sean wished he could just be back at his beach shop, soaking up some sun and watching the waves crash in on the sand. He’d saved up a ton of money over the years to set up his little business. And his cabin in the mountains provided an excellent retreat from the crazy world. No matter where he went, though, it seemed like he would never be able to escape those who wanted or needed to find him.
Upon arriving at the top of Mount Fumaiolo, Sean found a designated parking area and pulled the car into a space near a wooden fence. A sign next to the trailhead indicated that the park was closed after dark. Fortunately for the two Americans, there was no sign of a park ranger to tell them to leave. Sean assumed whoever had been working the park earlier had probably left right after sunset. He wondered how many people came to the historic site on a daily basis. The isolated location made for a long drive from most Italian cities. He and Tommy had been fortunate and had not hit much traffic on the way out of Rome. Although not hitting traffic was a relative term. There always seemed to be a ton of traffic in the old city. Spending much of their lives in Atlanta, Sean and Tommy were both familiar with what huge traffic problems looked like.
A cool breeze blew through the trees as the men exited the car. Tommy shivered for a second and zipped up the jacket he’d thrown on earlier. “Glad I brought this,” he said.
The temperature on the mountain’s peak was at least twelve degrees cooler than down in the valley. Fortunately, the two friends knew that ahead of time and had planned accordingly.
“Kind of eerie up here with no one around,” Tommy added, moving toward the trail beyond the wooden railing.