Their leader silently counted the seconds. “Get ready.”
No one was surprised to see that Mukendi was first with the rocket-propelled grappling hook. At the Electra’s stern now, he fired the modified harpoon at the davit crane’s cantilever and watched with growing excitement as it caught hold of the join between the main support column and boom pivot.
Beside him, Crombez aimed at the other side of the crane and repeated the exercise. When the ropes were secured, Kashala was first to start climbing. Turning to his men, he called out over his shoulder. “This is it. All men into battle except Demotte.”
The men obeyed, easily snaking up the two ropes one by one until they were climbing up taffrail at the Electra’s stern. Riding the waves up and down, they followed Kashala as he reached the top of the fantail and jumped down onto the deck.
Instantly met by more defensive fire by the surviving members of Jagger’s mercs, Kashala saw the man himself taking up a position on the starboard side of the bridge.
“Kill them all!”
Chumbu swept his Kalashnikov over Jagger’s men. “They’re coming from all over the ship!”
“Not all of them,” Crombez called out. “Some are still back at the submersible. They’re taking up a position behind the derrick mast.”
Kashala laughed as he picked off another of Jagger’s mercs. The bullet blew out a chunk of his shoulder and knocked him clean off the portside guardrail. “That’s their last line of defense!” he called out.
Mukendi and Block were at the vanguard now, almost pushing past the cargo ship’s bridge as they took cover behind a lifeboat. “I see Jagger!” Mukendi called out. “He’s retreating back to the submersible.”
“It must still be on board the sub!” Crombez cried out in the chaos.
“Forward!” Kashala glanced at the countdown on his watch. “They’ll be on the radio. We have less than five minutes.”
The men snaked forward in formation, taking up a new front in the cover of the cargo manifold. Jagger was cut off from the bridge and down to his last two men. They had no chance against the Blood Crew and they all knew it. Excitement grew as bullets traced over the deck and the treasure finally came in sight.
Jagger and two of his men had retrieved the mission’s target from the submersible and were sprinting away down the starboard side of the deck on their way to the bow.
“They’re stalling for time!” Block said.
Kashala agreed. The port was in sight. Maybe Jagger had word over the radio that help was on the way or maybe he thought he could swim the distance back to safety. Neither of these things were going to save him.
“Storm the bridge and kill the captain and the senior officers,” Kashala called out to Chumbu and Block. “We’re going to get Jagger.”
They chased them down to the bow and another brutal exchange of fire crossed the enormous deck. Out of rounds now, Jagger thought on his feet and turned the foam monitor on Kashala and his men. Designed to fight fire on the deck, the English merc now sprayed them with the foam jet in a desperate bid to keep them at bay for another few seconds.
It wasn’t enough, and Kashala’s merciless response ended the battle. As Mukendi and Crombez killed his two mercs, the Congolese general watched Jagger clambering over the guardrail. The canvas bag from the submersible was over his shoulder. With his infamous calm under pressure, Kashala raised his weapon and shot Jagger in the head, killing him instantly. The English soldier crashed to the deck with the bag still in his grasp.
“Get the bag,” Kashala ordered Crombez.
The Belgian merc snatched it up and began to open it.
Kashala grabbed his hand and forced the bag shut. Pulling it away from the merc’s blood-stained hand and swinging it over his own shoulder, he stared him out. “Not your business, understand?”
Crombez bristled but gave a single nod. “Whatever you say, King.”
Mukendi radioed Demotte and seconds later the raiding craft was alongside the bow, pulling in tight. Block and Chumbu returned from the bridge, secured rope ladders on the bow guardrail and then dropped them over the side.
“We need to get out of here, King,” Mukendi said.
“Yes,” Kashala said. “Our work here is done. Nothing, and no one, can stop us now.”
CHAPTER TWO
Joe Hawke watched the woman close the gate behind her and make her way up the gravel path at the front of the deserted farmhouse. In her hands she held a white plastic bag filled with groceries bought down in the village at the bottom of the hill. As her ancient Volkswagen cooled in the Anatolian sunshine, she heard something behind her and flicked her head around. It was nothing, but like the rest of the team, they were all on edge.
The former commando and SBS operative gently pulled the drapes a little more and leaned his head forward to get a better view of the property’s front aspect. Azra Muharrem was now at the front door and her key was in her hand. He knew that if there was any trouble it would come knocking the same time she opened the door.
But again, nothing happened.
As he heard the key slide in the lock, he released the drapes and blew out a deep breath, his mind tortured with visions of what they had seen in in the Zagros Mountains. Less than a thousand miles to the east of their present position in the Turkish mountains, it may as well have been on another planet.
A vast structure built with a technology more advanced than anything any of them knew today had hosted a terrible battle in which the Oracle and most of his Athanatoi cult had died. Thinking about the mysterious white-robed guardians who had fought so hard in the Citadel was a bridge too far for his mind to handle, but at least ECHO had managed to flee with their lives.
But any sense of victory was crushed by the knowledge that a team of savagely dangerous Special Ops men had seized the strange Citadel under the orders of the new American president. Worse, President Faulkner was a man who wanted them all dead and had put their names on America’s Most Wanted list.
Now they were international fugitives. Their assets had been seized and their bank accounts frozen. Their leader Sir Richard Eden had been placed under house arrest at his Oxfordshire mansion by the British authorities. This had happened under extreme pressure from the new regime in Washington DC and he was fighting extradition.
Former President Jack Brooke and his daughter Alex Reeve had been arrested and flown to a black site with only a loyal Secret Service agent named Brandon McGee for protection. As of now, no one knew anything about this extraordinary rendition site other than it was rumored to be an artificial island and its name was Tartarus. Named after the ancient Greek conception of hell, no one on the team had a very good feeling about going there to rescue their friends.
And they had lost three valued and loved members of their family at the hands of the mystery sniper. Danny Devlin in Miami, Magnus Lund in Athens and most recently Kim Taylor in Washington DC. Any of them could be next. Most of them felt they were almost helpless to stop it and while none of them knew the identity of the killer, rumors were swirling. They bounced several theories off each other, but the most chilling was that it might be Alfredo “The Spider” Lazaro, the Cuban hitman who had murdered Hawke’s wife.
Whatever the identity of the covert assassin, ECHO had never been lower or more vulnerable. They needed help and they needed money and they needed it fast. Getting themselves out of this hole promised to be the hardest thing any of them had ever done before, individually or as part of the team. Ahead of them lay a long and tough path — rescue their teammate and friend Alex Reeve from Tartarus, restore Jack Brooke’s presidency and get their names off the Most Wanted list.