“You got that right.”
She heard him again now. He was along the short corridor in his little bedroom, coughing in his bed. She put down her bag and walked toward him. “Wait a minute, Garcetti.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“Don’t you put the phone down, Cougar!”
She put the cell phone down on the hall table and opened the bedroom door. The ghostly glow from the kitchen lights shone onto the bed and lit up her son. Ten now, his young life had been spent fighting severe asthma.
“You okay, buddy?”
A thin, pale face emerged from the bedsheets and gave a solemn nod. “I guess.”
She hated seeing him like this. The attacks came and went, but they were getting worse. Sometimes when she heard him coughing and wheezing for breath she broke down and cried before going to comfort him.
“You’re going to be fine.”
Fine. Sure, but it was relative term. She had no insurance. Wasn’t even in the system. She was like a wraith, moving through the world the way a ghost drifts through a cemetery. No birth certificate, no ITIN number for tax, no nothing and yet look here — a young boy of ten who spent his life fighting to breathe.
There was a new operation they said could help. It had something to do with radio waves. She didn’t understand all that stuff, but she knew how much it cost. A chunky five figures and she couldn’t reach that high. That was why she was coming out of retirement, just one last time.
This goddam stinking pile-of-shit world wasn’t going to get any more kicks torturing Matthew Clark and that was for damned sure. She knew what she had to do to stop his pain.
He peered over the sheets and saw the time. “You’re going away again?”
“I have to, Matty. I’m so sorry, baby.”
He started to cry and she felt her heart breaking for the thousandth time. She reached out to him but he pulled away. “I hate it when you go away.”
“It’s all right, baby. It’s just a few days, that’s all.”
“You always say that.”
She ran a motherly hand over his forehead and swept his hair back. “I know and I hate it, but it’s what I have to do. I can’t buy you the help you need unless I get paid, you know? This is all I can do, baby.”
And it was. No one gave regular jobs to a ghost. All previous attempts had winded up working alongside illegal immigrant labor or plain old-fashioned stealing. This was all she could do, but most jobs paid only enough to cover the rent and pay for food and Matty’s medicine. This job sounded different. It might just be the one to end their nightmare and start living a real life.
She walked back out to the hall and snatched up her phone. Garcetti might be her handler, but there was a healthy respect people like him had for people like her. After all, she could live with breaking into his apartment and taking him out, but he couldn’t say the same about her. “How much?”
“Kind of you to join me again.”
“I asked how much.”
“One million.”
She gave a weary sigh and raised her eyes to heaven. Money well-spent, she guessed, but it would be more than enough for Matty’s operation plus plenty left over to get out of this apartment and start a new life down in Mexico. “Fine.”
“You will be paid on completion of the mission. Got it?”
She looked along the corridor at the shape of her son in his bed. Watching his thin body shaking as he coughed and wheezed, she knew there wasn’t a damned thing she wouldn’t do for him.
“Got it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Shouldering their weapons and gear without complaint, the ECHO team left the Suburban and set out for the top of the mountain. The day was already hot and the sun beat down on them as they made their way to the coordinates. Their destination was well away from any of the paths used by hikers and tourists in the area.
Over the last hour or so the terrain had become dry, dusty and rocky with scree. One misplaced foot could mean a fatal fall, especially considering how loaded up they all were with equipment, guns and ammo. Highlighting their isolation from the world, a black kite screeched in the blue sky high above them.
Hawke glanced up and saw several others join the bird of prey, circling on thermals and wheeling patiently in the sky as they waited for one of them to tumble in a ravine and die. He pulled his hood up over his head to protect it from the glare of sun. “No way those bastards are having me for dinner.”
He turned his gaze back to Lea, Scarlet, Reaper and Devlin who were now several hundred meters ahead of them up the slope. Looking at Lexi, he said, “When they reach that break on the ridge they should be able to see the rift further to the north. We’ve got some serious pounding ahead of us before we get to the coordinates though.”
“I love it when you talk dirty, Joe.”
He gave the Chinese assassin a lingering look, studying her eyes and lips for a fleeting moment. They had once been lovers, but Zambia was a long time ago — and yet… sometimes the way she looked at him made him wonder. He said nothing but laughed and pushed on up the slope. Behind them, Ryan and Camacho were straggling at the back and arguing over the best poker hand.
Time marched on, each minute full of thoughts of Kruger and where he and his army were. There was no sign of them yet — the air was still and silent and no one could hear any helicopters or Jeeps, but they all knew he was out there somewhere and would never give up until he was dead.
Hawke puffed out a sigh and paused to take another drink of water from his canteen. The dry, scrubby grassland had given way to trees and thick coniferous woodland now dominated the landscape. Pine-covered mountains stretched to every horizon as far as they could see in any direction. Here, among the trunks and undergrowth of the Pangaion Hills, they joined together again and took a short break.
Kim pulled open her backpack and started dishing out supplies. “I got cookies, I got nuts, I got chocolate…”
“Gimme everything,” Devlin said. “I’m so hungry I could eat the fleas off a dead dog’s arse.”
“Mmm, yummy!” Scarlet said. “Thanks for that image, Danny.”
“You’re welcome.”
They tucked in, drinking plenty of water and replenishing their energy reserves before the final push. There would be no time to reenergize and rehydrate if they stumbled on the enemy in a place like this.
One more punishing hour and they found themselves approaching the coordinates Ryan had extrapolated from the shield. Hawke felt the sweat trickling down his back and took in the sky once again. Clouds had blown in from the east and now the pure, blazing blue was mottled with gray and the humidity was increasing.
“Holy crap,” Kim said as she reached the rise and scanned the slope. “We made it!”
With a stormy-looking sky stretching to every horizon, they worked as a team to clear the scrub and scree away from the entrance until they were left with a single boulder blocking their way.
Hawke looked at it with satisfaction. “What time is, everyone?”
They called back in unison. “C4 time!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
When the dust had settled and the earth had stopped shaking, they picked up their equipment bags and headed inside the tunnel. Somewhere ahead of them was the tomb of King Alexander the Great, one of the most hunted archaeological sites on the planet and they were on the verge of its discovery.
“I hate to break it to you, guys,” Camacho said. “But it looks like we have company.”
They all turned and watched as the CIA man pointed through the trees to a gentle rise in the south. “If I’m not very much mistaken that’s Dirk Kruger, with Blankov and Venter walking a little way behind him.”