Hawke smiled, pushed back in his seat and closed his eyes. Despite the banter, he could sense a real feeling of tension in the air. Korać’s worldwide army of mercs was serious business, and Kruger’s obsession with archaeological loot would drive him to any lengths to locate the treasures to be found in a place like Atlantis. Throw in Kamchatka’s sniper skills and Luk’s psychopathic tendencies and this was the mission from hell. A mission, he suddenly thought, that they would be lucky to all walk away from.
Scarlet stepped to the galley to get a fresh glass and after tweaking Ryan’s nose on the way back to her seat she collapsed into the soft leather and sighed.
“Do you believe all that bollocks about Dogons and stars?” she asked Hawke.
He shrugged his shoulders. “These days, living my life is like hanging on to a raft so there’s no time for questions.”
She sighed and sipped her water. “You know, I’m thinking about making this my last mission.”
Hawke turned to her but didn’t know what to say.
“Does that surprise you?” she said.
“I never know with you, Cairo. Why the sudden change of heart?”
“It’s not sudden at all. I’ve been working for Rich for a long time now and since I started seeing Jack I’ve been questioning why I spend my life flying around the stratosphere fighting nutcases.”
“Troposphere,” Ryan called out from the back. “You’re not in a spy plane.”
“This is a private conversation, gomer.”
“Sorry, but I can’t help correcting ignorance.”
“Leave it, Cairo,” Hawke said, gently pulling Scarlet back down into her seat. “You were saying?”
“It was nothing, really. Just rambling… Being with Jack has just made me start to see what I’ve been missing all these years.” She glanced over the headrest in front to where Camacho and Reaper were chatting to the pilots. “And don’t you bloody dare tell him any of this or I’ll kick your balls to Mount Olympus.”
Hawke shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “But you really think you could bail out of ECHO and leave all of this behind?”
She never answered — simply shrugged and walked away leaving him to his thoughts. He looked silently out of the window for a few moments and saw nothing but the ocean stretching to the horizon. He wondered just how far ahead Kruger and the others had gotten in their search. He visualized them crawling all over the Dadès Gorge desperately seeking the next clue that would lead them to Atlantis.
Maybe this time they were just too far behind, and now Scarlet was talking about bailing out as well. Things were going to start changing fast, he thought.
Maybe a little too fast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They landed at Marrakech airport and walked across the apron toward a Royal Moroccan Air Force Eurocopter whose rotors were already whirring and ready to go. Between Alex and her father, the US Secretary of Defense Jack Brooke, they had organized a small back-up force of a dozen members of the Royal Moroccan Army who were now climbing in right behind them.
“So who are these men?” Sergent-chef Chabat asked.
“An assortment of international mercenaries and treasure hunters,” Lea said.
“But what do they want with the Dadès Gorge?” Chabat asked.
“We don’t know exactly,” Ryan said, “but it could have something to do with the search for…”
“That’s classified, Sergeant,” Camacho said firmly, giving Ryan a sideways glance. “We can’t talk about it. All you need to know is we’re looking at a force of around twenty heavily armed men, mostly Serbians but also some Russians, and they have considerable fighting experience. As such, they represent a serious terrorist threat to the vital national security of the United States and your country too so it’s our job to take them out, got it?”
“Of course,” Chabat said. “I’m certain my government knows what it has to know.”
The Eurocopter made short work of the flight east to the Dadès Gorge, and as they approached their destination, Hawke was able to get a dazzling tourist’s eye view of the Dadès River as it cut through the enormous desert canyon below. It was an incredible sight, like a ribbon of steel in the middle of the desert, held in place by the towering walls of the rocky gorge and shining brightly in the bright Moroccan sun. The town of Kalaat Mgoun slipped beneath them as they crossed the Valley of the Roses, named after the famous flowers grown here, but they zoomed over the top of as they made their way further east.
Ahead he saw a large mesa in the center of the river as the chopper flew over the tourists’ lookout point. It spun around and flared its nose for landing on top of the western plateau of the mesa’s lower side. They didn’t need any help finding Kruger and his team — the western section of the meander was now home to three jet boats lashed to the trunks of some walnut trees with mooring rope.
The team climbed out of the chopper and were joined by Chabat and the rest of his soldiers. Without speaking they set off down the path which twisted its way down to the base of the mesa where Kruger’s team had left the boats. Summer was long gone, but the sun here was still fierce and burned hard in the vast Moroccan sky. The Dadès River was impressive, and flanked with countless wadis stretching off toward large ravines on both sides of the canyon. Reaper felt it on his neck as he picked his way down the rocky track.
“At least you won’t need to top up your tan this year, Reap,” Scarlet said.
“But maybe you should work on yours, no?” came the immediate reply. “You have the English pastiness.”
“Hey!”
As they descended toward the Dadès River and carved their way deeper into the canyon, the desert floor began to tower above them. Reaper had never been here before and was inwardly amazed by the place. The feeling of vastness was almost overwhelming and the silence of the landscape was eerie. Nowhere on earth had ever made him feel more insignificant.
“This place is nearly one hundred miles long,” Ryan said from the back of the team. “They call it the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs.”
“I used to know a place like that when I was at uni in Oxford,” Lexi said.
“Really?” Ryan said, stopping in his tracks with amazement.
“Oh no — wait,” she said, pausing a beat for effect. “That was Road of a Thousand Kebabs.”
“Oh yes, very good!” Maria said. “I knew a road like that in Moscow.”
“It wasn’t very good at all,” Ryan said. “It was a terrible joke.”
“That was a joke?” Scarlet said.
They pressed on, banter flying between the ECHO team but Chabat’s soldiers mostly silent. The limestone rim of the canyon was now high above them, and Lea was staring up at it when she tripped on a loose rock and tumbled forward, crashing into the back of Hawke.
“Steady as she goes, Lea,” he said with a wink.
“Anyone see where they went yet?” Scarlet called out. Deep in the gorge now there was no longer any need to shield her eyes from the sun as she peered down the track at the jet boats.
“I think so,” Maria said. “The track from the boat dies out over there but not far beyond it is a split in the mesa.”
They tracked away from their path now and hiked north to the track Maria had found. It was turning into a tough slog now and their weapons began to weigh heavier with each step. They pushed on and were encouraged when they found broken branches on the bushes either side of the fissure in the western edge of the mesa’s rock face.
“Something’s come through here for sure,” Hawke said. “And look down at the path — it’s obvious a number of people have been through here recently by the footprints.”
“And whoever it was, they were carrying something heavy,” Reaper said.