Victoria sighed again. She looked desolate. “But what has any of this got to do with why Nate was killed in Newfoundland?”
Ryan’s eyes widened. “Maybe it’s got something to do with Thor crossing the ocean thousands of years ago and winding up in Canada, like the Vikings did?”
“It can’t be…” Victoria said in almost a whisper. “Thor was a mythological figure! Obviously he couldn’t have existed…”
“Obviously,” Scarlet said quietly. The vodka glass raised to her lips obscured her eye-roll from Victoria.
“But then again,” Victoria continued, beginning to sob, “Nate was an extremely accomplished and highly respected archaeologist. If he was talking about Thor and this hammer all the time then maybe — just maybe there’s something to it after all.”
“That’s a good theory,” Lea said, steering Victoria away from the subject. “I’m no expert when it comes to archaeology, but if you say Nate was onto something then that’s good enough for me.”
Victoria looked up at Lea and the others and dried her eyes, smearing mascara on her cheeks. “Do you mean it?”
Lea nodded and rubbed her shoulder. “Of course.”
“So you don’t think I’m insane?”
“We’ve heard a lot worse,” Hawke said. “Believe me.”
Lea shot him a quick, covert shut up look and handed Victoria a handkerchief.
“Thank goodness for that,” she said, pulling herself together again. She swivelled in her chair and hit the play button on her answer-phone. “Because I got a call yesterday and I know I’m not imagining this.”
The room was suddenly filled with a man’s low, gravelly voice as the message on the machine played: “Lady Victoria… you talk to anyone about Dr Derby and you get the same treatment he got. Keep your mouth shut.”
Victoria jumped in her seat as the line disconnected violently. “Damn thing gets me every time!” she said, almost in a whimper. “I must have listened to it a hundred times since it came in yesterday just to make sure I’m not going mad and imagining it.”
Hawke frowned. “You’re definitely not imagining it, Vikki.” He turned to the others. “Any ideas?”
“French, obviously,” Scarlet said.
Ryan snorted. “Hardly — that’s a Belgian accent.”
Lea felt herself grow cold. Now she knew this could be no coincidence and that she had to tell the others the details of what she’d found in Ireland.
“Lea?” Hawke asked. “What’s the matter?”
“That voice… it sounds exactly like the voices of the men who tried to kidnap me in Ireland.”
Victoria sighed. “Well, whoever they are, I know they must have killed Nate and I know it had something to do with this Thor business.”
“Whatever’s going on,” Hawke said, “we need to get to Newfoundland and see if we can make sense of what happened to Nate. Hopefully we can find a lead up there and then we might be able to work out what happened to him and get to the bottom of this Thor stuff. If we’re talking about some kind of ancient doomsday weapon we can’t waste time.”
Victoria nodded her head “All right, in that case I think we need…”
She stopped talking and her face froze into a rictus of fear. She pointed at the open doors and screamed.
Within the space of a second the tranquillity of the beach hut was turned upside down as the boat Lea had spied earlier passed along the seashore at the end of the garden. Then a number of heavily armed gunmen on the deck fired submachine guns at the property.
“Get down!” Hawke yelled.
“Bastards are doing a drive-by shooting in a frigging motor yacht!” Ryan shouted.
All around them bullets drilled into the luxury room and tore the place to pieces.
CHAPTER THREE
Hawke hit the floor in a heartbeat, and then immediately scanned the room to check on everyone else. Lea was already behind the cover of the sofa and she was returning fire in no uncertain terms, but Victoria looked like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights, so Hawke dived for her and grappled her to the floor with his arms tight around her waist. Lea caught the move in the corner of her eye but said nothing. Everyone else followed suit as the first wave of bullets tore over their heads and wrecked the rear wall.
On the other side of the room, Scarlet had dived for cover and grappled Ryan to the floor with her arms around his waist. They landed with a crash on the mahogany floorboards, and Ryan yelled out as Scarlet fell down on top of him. “If you want me all you have to do is ask,” he said, putting his arms around her waist.
“Gross,” she said “I just saved your life and that’s what you’re thinking about? I hate to break it to you, boy, but I see you in approximately the same way a praying mantis sees a fly.”
“Roger that,” Ryan said glumly.
“Or not, in your case,” she replied.
Hawke peered over a shredded sofa and saw the speed boat had turned around in a sharp arc and was pulling up to the jetty at the bottom of the garden.
“We’ve got to get out here!” he shouted. “We’re out-manned and out-gunned, and not even I am that good.”
Lea shook her head and sighed. “If you were a Mr Man you’d be Mr Modest, I reckon.”
Hawke gave her a sarcastic grin and told everyone to stay calm, but Victoria began to panic and scrambled closer to Lea by the door.
“They’re trying to kill me!” she screamed, and ducked down behind Lea with her head in her hands. “I need to get out of here!”
“Just take it easy,” Hawke said as he unloaded a second magazine through the Louvre windows. He tried to calm her but between the answer-phone message and this attack she could hardly be called paranoid. Someone out there obviously wanted her dead and it had to be connected to Nate Derby’s murder in Canada, but now his focus was on the vicious assault approaching from the waterline.
Outside the boat had now moored on the pier and the gunmen were making their way through the garden, using the lush tropical undergrowth for cover. Hawke counted four of them including a woman with a crew cut, and the way they moved made him think they were ex-Special Forces of some kind. As they got closer, he recognized a tattoo of a burning grenade on one of the men’s necks — the same as the one he had seen on Reaper, which could mean only one thing.
Now, he and the rest of the team returned fire as Victoria grew more hysterical.
“They’ve come to kill me! You have to stop them!”
The assault team in the garden split into two groups, with three of them remaining in the original assault position while the woman disappeared from view.
“Where has she gone?” Scarlet said. “The woman’s disappeared.”
“They’re opening a second front somewhere!” Hawke said, ducking again to avoid taking a bullet. It traced over him and smashed into the wall sending plaster puffing up into the air.
In the chaos of the fire-fight, Lea yelled: “I’ll find her!”
“Where are you going?” Victoria said, panicking. “You can’t leave me alone!”
“Just stay here with the others while I make sure the kitchen’s clear!”
Before Lea could make another move, Victoria panicked and bolted for the kitchen door. Hawke cursed, guessing her intention was to try and escape out the front but that was exactly where the woman with the crew cut had gone to create the second front in their assault.
Lea stayed low and made a move toward the kitchen to try and stop Victoria but she was through the door in a second. If the assault team really were thinking of a pincer movement and coming in through the kitchen, Victoria would be in a lot of trouble.