Treasure of Babylon, page 11
part #2 of Avalon Adventure Series
Moser looked concerned. “Was she alone?”
Bloch gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. “Nein. There were two men on their way to the gate house. There was a skirmish and they fled into the forest.”
“What’s going on, Lena?” Decker asked. “What happened?”
Riley looked at Diana. “Yes, what happened, Di?”
“Moshe, Diana and Charlie walked to the gatehouse to cause the diversion, and when they were gone, and I was alone, this creep turned up.”
“Dammit,” Decker muttered. “I hope they didn’t end up in a goddam crevasse.”
“Bring her with us. Hagen will be pleased.” Moser said. “Goodbye, Mr Decker.”
Mitch Decker wasn’t amused by Riley’s musical guns comment, but that’s what it felt like. As he watched Moser, Kurz and the rest of the thugs dragging Selena into the recess behind the bookcase his mind raced with the agony of what to do next. When the bookcase slammed shut, they both heard a loud gunshot.
“Lena!” Riley said, and rushed forward to heave the bookcase open.
Diana gasped. “They shot her!”
Decker knew better. “They just blew the mechanism that opens the case. No way are we getting through that now.”
“Where do you think it leads?”
“They’re not going out the front. They don’t know where Charlie and the others are for one thing. They could have positioned themselves in any number of tactical locations by now – near their cars, the front entrance. No, they can’t risk it. If you ask me, the smart money’s on the south slope of the mountain.”
“You can’t mean the cable car?” Riley said.
Decker shrugged. “Sure, why not? It’s a direct line all the way down to the lower terminus in the valley and then a short drive into Innsbruck. If they have a car down there somewhere they’ll be out of here and at the airport in no time at all.”
Riley picked up his bag of tricks. “So what are we waiting for, mate?”
They sprinted through the institute until they reached the south side of the main building. Through a large window wall beneath the observation deck they were able to see the cable car’s wheel house. It was a small, isolated building a few hundred meters away from the main complex, accessible via a flat lawn now covered in a foot of snow. They rushed outside and took cover behind a Volvo parked up beside the main building.
“There they go!” Decker said. He pointed to a small group of people making their way between the institute and the wheel house along a covered walkway.
“I see Lena!” Diana said.
“Me too,” said Riley. He curled his hand into a fist and gently thumped the window to his right. “Just can’t believe the bastards got her, Mitch.”
“We’ll get her back.”
“You’re damned right we will. Bring the snow chains for that car!”
As Decker ripped the chains off one of the Volvo’s tires, Riley watched as Moser and the others entered the building and slipped out of sight, and then they heard the sound of a heavy-duty electric motor start up.
“We need to get a move on!” Riley said, and the two men began running through the snow. Up ahead, Stefan Kurz was pushing Selena into a cable car. When the rest of them were safely inside, Lechner operated the car from inside the wheel house control room and then dashed over into the gondola before it jerked into action. He slammed the door behind him, and they began their descent into the swirling snow.
18
They reached the wheelhouse and activated a second cable car. From back at Moser’s compound it had looked secure enough, but now that it was suspended hundreds of feet above the Austrian Alps they all felt the sense of danger and vulnerability.
“We’re never going to catch them up!” Decker said, raising his voice to be heard above the sound of the bullwheel which filled the upper terminus.
“We can do it!” said a desperate Diana.
“Yeah, faint heart never won fair lady, mate,” said Riley. “Besides, we can’t let an old slagger like Moser beat us!”
Jumping into it and slamming the door shut, it swung gently in the cold mountain air as it made its descent toward the valley below. Looking through the forward window, Decker watched anxiously as the gondola containing Moser and her men trundled ever closer to the ground station.
Decker wasn’t exactly certain what a slagger was, but it didn’t sound good.
“Let’s do this!” Riley scanned the gondola’s roof for a few seconds and cursed.
“What’s wrong?” Decker said.
“Some cars have an access panel in the roof, a kind of hatch, but Moser obviously went for the budget model.”
“Roof hatch?”
Riley looked at him like he was crazy. “Sure, a roof hatch. We’ve got to get outside, mate.”
Decker’s eyes widened. “Outside? We’re at least a thousand feet above the mountain!” He shook his head. “And you say I’m crazy. Sheesh.”
“It’s simple maths, Mitch. Our gondola, and Moser’s gondola are both going at top speed and they’re five hundred meters ahead of us. They’re going to get to the ground station way ahead of us. She’s probably already radioed down for a car. By the time we get there they’re gone, mate. Them and Lena.”
Decker took a deep breath and blew it out to calm his nerves. “So, what are you saying? Like you just said, we’re both going at the same speed.”
Riley now turned and pointed at Moser’s cable car with his finger. “No, I said the two gondolas were going at the same speed.”
“I don’t like where this going, Riley,” Diana said.
“You don’t like it?” Decker said.
“It’s where I’m going you’re not going to like.”
“Huh?”
“This is the plan – me and you climb outside, Mitch. You bring the Jericho, get yourself a cozy little place up there so you can give me some cover fire.”
“Why not do that from inside?” Diana said.
“Glass is too thick,” said Decker, immediately understanding Riley’s logic. “We’d waste too many rounds trying to blow it open.”
Riley laughed. “Give that man a cigar.”
“And you?” Diana said, already wide-eyed with disbelief at Riley.
“Me? I’m going down that cable until I get to Moser’s gondola and I’m kicking their arses and getting Lena back.”
“Absolutely not,” Decker said. “We have a responsibility to get Selena back but not if it means doing something so insanely stupid that it costs us the life of another member of the team.”
Riley shook his head. “Relax, it only looks insanely stupid because you’re a flyboy, a big girl, a creampuff, a cupcake, a—”
“Hey!”
“I’m Aussie SAS, mate. They make us do shit like this if we want our brekkie in the morning.”
Diana took a step back and ran a trembling hand through her raven black hair. “Meu Deus! You actually want to do this!”
The Australian gave them both a wide, toothy grin and then slapped each of them heartily on their shoulders. “Who wouldn’t?”
“So with no roof hatch, it’s out the main door, then?” Decker said.
“Right.”
Diana gasped. “But it’s a straight drop hundreds of meters to the ground!”
“Gotta earn that brekkie, Di,” Riley said, and swung open the gondola door.
A blast of icy air filled the cable car with snow and felt like raven’s claws scratching at their skin. With the wind now pushing inside the car, the entire gondola began swinging more violently from right to left as it continued to trundle down the steel monocable above it.
“Hang on!” Riley said. “This baby’s starting to fight back!”
Gripping one of the safety rails inside the car, he leaned his head out of the door and searched for the best way to the roof. He shook his head and sighed. “Why has everything got to be so fuckin’ hard?”
Decker looked at him. “Huh?”
Riley leaned back inside the gondola. “I said it’s a piece of piss, mate. Because of the way it’s designed, the top half of the car cambers in toward the roof, plus there’s a ledge running along the bottom of the windows and a rim around the roof too, so we should be able to get up there without too much problem.”
Decker wasn’t convinced, but he knew he had to do it to save Selena. “Let’s get on with it.”
Riley leaned into his bag and pulled out a small GPS tracker. “You never know when these babies come in useful.” He slung the snow-chain over his shoulder and moved over to the door. “Oh, and for fuck’s sake – don’t look down.”
“I’ll try and remember.”
“And Diana – when we’re up there shut the door. That’ll stop her blowing all over the place like a drunk driver.”
“Got it. Take care!”
Riley warmed his hands and then made the leap into the unknown. Reaching his hand around the side of the car, he gripped the other side of the open door. Holding it as hard as he could in the freezing wind, he swung himself out until he was hanging off the open door. With both his boots now pushed into the shallow inch-deep sill on the bottom of the door’s lower window, he tried to lift his right leg up so he could jam the toecap of his right boot under the sill of the upper window.
Decker looked on grimly as the Australian got the position he wanted and started to push up to the upper half of the gondola, when his boot slipped off the rubber sill and he crashed back down again, everyone thought he was a dead man.
“Fuck me dead!” he cried out.
“Meu Deus, Riley!” Diana cried out. “Be careful!”
Riley cursed again and only just managed to find another grip before tumbling off the side of the swinging gondola. Snow and ice blasted his back and numbed his fingers as he tried the same move once again. They were only a third of the way down the mountain but he had a lot do if he was going to stop Moser and Kurz making off with both Selena and the strange key from the inside of the Angel of God.
Pushing his boot up into the upper sill, this time he was able to get a better hold and use the position to push himself up over the upper half of the car and reach the rim running around the roof. Grabbing it with both hands, he hauled himself up over the side of the gondola and reached the relative safety of the roof.
Without wasting a second, he scanned for something to hold onto and found the base of the grip attaching the gondola to the cable. Hooking his boot around it he then stretched over the roof of the car until he was hanging off the side of it. With his upper body now dangling over the side, he lowered his hand down for Decker.
“All right, Mitch! It’s a great view up here, mate!”
Decker reached out and copied Riley’s earlier moves, only this time he had the benefit of the Australian taking hold of his hand and helping him up onto the roof. When they were both holding onto the fixed grip, Diana threw the lever and they both heard the door shut. The gondola immediately reacted by swinging less in the wind, the same freezing wind that now scratched and tore at them as they sat isolated on the roof of the gondola, hundreds of meters above the razor-sharp rocks below.
Decker checked the weapon. “Eight rounds, Riley.”
The men shared a doubtful look. “I’m going up now,” Riley said. “It won’t take those bastards long to work out what I’m doing, and that’s when you get busy with Golan’s pea shooter.”
Decker nodded. “Good luck.”
Riley laughed and started his climb up the grip. “Luck’s for losers, Mitch.”
The former Australian SAS corporal ran his mouth at top gear and he knew it, but inside he felt the same doubts and fears as everyone else, and he knew what he was attempting to do was one of the craziest things in his life. His main concern was confirmed when he reached the top of the grip and saw the cable close up for the first time. It was braided. This would slow the chain, but he hadn’t come this far to give up now.
Who dares wins, right? he thought.
Looping the chain over the gondola cable, he tested its strength by hoisting his body weight up on it and holding himself there for a few seconds. When he was satisfied he could hold his weight, he pushed himself off the grip and started to slide down the cable.
He picked up speed much faster than he had anticipated, and friction created by the snow chain against the braided cable caused a shower of amber sparks to spit out in every direction as he raced down toward Moser’s gondola. Glancing down beyond his boots, he saw nothing but white, swirling mist and the occasional glimpse of a jagged granite rock sticking up out of the snow. If the chain broke, he’d have ten seconds to curse his stupidity before smashing to his death on those rocks.
Bloch saw him first, and rapidly drew Kurz’s attention to what was happening. Moser was sitting with Selena at the front of the gondola, but now she got up too and walked to the rear window. Slack-jawed with disbelief at what she was seeing, it took her several seconds before she started issuing Kurz and Bloch with orders, and Riley had known all along what those orders would be.
Waving everyone in the gondola to the back of the car, Kurz and Bloch opened fire with their submachine guns on the rear window. The thick safety glass shattered until it was opaque, and then Riley heard the two men hastily trying to smash it out of the frame with the stocks of their weapons.
He raced closer to the car with every second it took them to try and beat the rear window out, but he knew the second they had a clear shot his life was in Decker’s hands. Only the American could keep the enemy pinned down at the front of the car and stop them firing on the ultimate sitting duck, and he had to do it without hitting Selena too. When he thought about accidentally killing Selena with a stray bullet, he was almost glad he was the one sliding down the cable.
As he knew it would, the shattered rear window finally popped out of the frame and tumbled out of the gondola. Twisting and turning in the air, the heavy wind picked it up as if it were a piece of paper and blew it into the oblivion below, out of sight forever.
Riley saw Kurz and Bloch raise their weapons and aim at him, but then he heard a single crack and both Austrians dived for cover below the window sill at the back of the gondola. Decker had hit the side of their car, a moving target, with the bullseye targeting of a top-class sniper and forced both men to hit the deck.
Riley was almost there now, the sparks still flying out from the snow chain looped over the braided cable. He was so close he could hear Moser yelling at Kurz to fire on him again but it was too late. Seconds away from the rear of the gondola, Riley raised his legs ninety degrees to his body and flew straight in through the open window, crashing into the floor of the car and tumbling to a halt a few inched from Moser’s boots.
The Direktor responded by kicking him in the face, almost knocking him out, but Riley had taken worse and quickly got to his feet. He gave Moser a laser-fast back slap and knocked her to the floor before winking at Selena and passing her the GPS tracker. “Fuck, what are you doing here, mate?”
“Riley, you’re such a stupid tosser… look out!”
Before he turned, he felt someone grab him from behind. Craning his neck to see what was going on, Kurz and Bloch had grabbed him and were pinning his hands behind his back. He fought hard, but when Lechner joined in it was three on one, and they were all former Special Forces men. With a great effort, they heaved him over to the open window and threw him out of the cable car.
Riley spun around in the freezing air. They were around thirty meters high now, and he could see the roof of the lower terminus in the distance as he fell. A few seconds later he smashed into a deep embankment of snow piled up in the valley. It cushioned his fall, and then he started tumbling down a ravine on the southern slope of the mountain. When he finally came to a stop, he looked down at the lower terminus at the bottom of the valley and saw Moser and the rest stepping out of the cable car and walking over to a large black SUV parked up and idling in the snow.
He staggered to his feet and started to brush the heavy snow from his head and shoulders. “You blew it, mate,” he muttered. He felt the anger rise in him as he saw Bloch forcing Selena into the car. “And fuck it all, dammit!” he yelled and kicked a rock halfway across the ravine.
19
Norway
Tor Hagen strolled across the broad hardwood decking outside his study and drank in the breathtaking view of the fjord far below. He opened a gold case and slid out a slim, fresh cigar. Silently cutting the head off the cigar, he placed it between his lips and slipped a gnarled hand inside his blazer’s silk pocket.
He drew out a solid gold lighter and preheated the foot of the cigar, and then fired up the tobacco. Back on the table inside was a small bundle of cedar strips, but out here a lighter would suffice, and now he ignited the tip while rotating the cigar.
Drawing on the cigar until the embers were established, he slipped the lighter back in his pocket and breathed out a cloud of the aromatic blue smoke. Another drag on the cigar, and yet more admiration of the view. Snow-capped mountains receded in the bright sunshine, dwarfing the pure, still fjords pooling at their bases. This was truly the land of the gods.
“We’re getting closer, Ursula.”
Moser coughed, and waved Hagen’s cigar smoke out of her face. “We only have the key. Without knowing its meaning we’re no closer to the Ark at all.”
“But we have more than the key, don’t we? We have Atticus and Selena Moore. I am certain that between the two of them they will be able to derive the Ark’s location from the key.”
“Marchand couldn’t.”
“Marchand is not Atticus Moore, and neither is he the great man’s daughter, either. Trust me when I tell you that.”
They were interrupted by the sound of tapping on the sliding glass door behind them, and without turning, Hagen waved a hand to gesture that the person should step outside and join them.
A moment later, Stefan Kurz was standing beside him. He was wearing a black roll-neck with a gun in a shoulder holster, and swept his blonde hair away from his forehead as he approached him. “He’s still not talking.”
