Treasure of Babylon, page 6
part #2 of Avalon Adventure Series
Decker sighed and his shoulders slumped. He turned to Selena and the others. “I’m fresh out of ideas. You?”
“You win,” Herzog called up. He picked up another golden statue they had found and tied it to the bottom of the chain. “You win, you bastard!”
Decker saw what he was doing, but giving the Austrian the wrong statue could only buy them a few seconds.
Kurz gave another laugh as he pulled the chain up. Everyone was silent as they watched the golden Angel of God slowly ascending – not into heaven but into the arms of Stefan Kurz. The Austrian greedily untied it and studied the object before comparing it to a sketch he had on a piece of paper. “Wir haben die Statue!”
With no ceremony, he pulled the pin on the thermite grenade and counted down until the fuse was almost burned.
“Auf Wiedersehen!” he cried out, and released the powerful incendiary into the tomb.
9
“Get down!” Decker yelled as he grabbed Selena and pulled her to the ground.
The explosion from the thermite grenade ripped through the chamber beneath the Holy Sepulchre, its white-hot flames instantly incinerating anything they touched. Without explanation, David Herzog dived toward the explosion, landing on the floor of the tomb a few inches from the grenade. Grabbing the golden statue on the floor he threw it back to them. “This is the real Angel of God!” he cried out. “Now run! Get the Angel out of here before they realize what we have done!” Still clutching the blast wounds on his head and throat, Herzog crashed down into the pile of relics.
“David!” Selena cried out, catching the statue and fleeing behind the marble statues with Decker. The explosion was savage, lighting the tomb as bright as the sun and radiating a heat she thought would melt her skin, but the row of marble statues at the far end of the tomb provided enough cover and distance to protect them from the worst of the explosion.
Herzog’s bravery had won them the true Angel of God, but it had cost the Israeli professor his life. As his shredded body collapsed into the pile of burning treasure chests behind him, he had used his last seconds of life in the best way he could. The experience had left Selena in shock, curled in a ball and clutching the Angel of God to her chest as if it were a life jacket and she were on a burning boat.
“This way,” Decker said, springing to action. “I thought I saw a way out behind Aphrodite…”
“What about David?”
“He’s dead, Lena,” Riley said. “
Decker nodded. “And we’re next if we don’t get the hell out of here!”
Selena felt a wave of sorrow for David Herzog as his body lay obscured in the flames and smoke at the center of the chamber, but the sensation of Mitch Decker tugging at her elbow was enough to shake her mind back into the moment.
“This way!” he called out over his shoulder. “I think I see what he was talking about up ahead behind those statues.”
They staggered through the dust and smoke, stumbling over fragments of exploded artefacts. Shredded wood and bent iron dowels and handles from the treasure chests were strewn all over the floor of the chamber as they made their way across to what they all silently prayed was another exit.
They reached the long line of ancient Greek statues lined up against the far wall. Decker wiped the sweat and soot from his face and blinked in the low light as he desperately scanned the ancient stone faces. In Selena’s burned hands she held the Angel of God as if it were her only child. “Which one’s Aphrodite, Lena?”
“Here!” she called out.
Decker ran to her and immediately heaved the statue over. It fell to the ground with a heavy thud and revealed a crack in the wall behind where it had stood for so many centuries. “My God! He was right.”
Then, through the noise of the flickering flames behind them, they heard the sound of Stefan Kurz yelling in German. “Warten! Das ist die falsche Statue! Sie haben uns betrogen!”
Decker glanced at Selena. “I’m guessing that’s not good, right?”
She nodded and blew out a breath. Wiped the sweat from her forehead. “You guess right. Kurz knows Herzog gave him the wrong statue. He says we betrayed him.”
“We betrayed him? God dammit! He promised he’d let us live and then threw a goddam thermite grenade at us!”
“He’s a bastard, all right,” Riley said.
Charlie passed a hand over his sweating face. “You can say that again.”
Selena shrugged her shoulders, but her response was cut short by the sound of Kurz’s men throwing rope ladders down into the chamber.
Decker’s officer training kicked in. “All right, get into the tunnel and I’ll try and pull the statue up to block the entrance and buy us some time.”
“It’s too late!”
One of Kurz’s men was on them, firing through the smoke. Riley charged forward and swung the arm of a broken statue at him, smashing him around the back of the head and knocking him dead in one blow.
“There’s plenty more where he came from!” the Australian said. “We need to get out, and now!”
Decker sprinted through the smoke and snatched up the dead man’s gun. Checking the magazine to count how many rounds were left, he scrambled over the rubble and skidded to a halt behind one of the chests.
Kurz didn’t hesitate to order his men to return fire, but Decker never flinched. “Hurry, get out of here!”
Selena looked on in awe as the American risked his life yet again to save hers – and the Angel of God. Decker had ducked back down behind the chest to avoid a lethal fusillade of semi-automatic fire. She gasped as the bullets shredded the chest’s lid and tore chunks off the sides of it, blasting the leather straps off and sending clouds of splinters bursting into the air all around him.
“Stay down, Mitch!”
“You don’t say?” he called back over. “And what the hell are you still doing here, Lena! I told you to run!”
“But what about you?”
“I’m right behind you!”
She hesitated for a few seconds and then did as he had said, slipping through the gap in the wall and disappearing like a shadow. Behind her, Decker scrambled a few meters closer to the tunnel and took cover behind one of the fallen statues.
“You have nowhere to run!” Kurz yelled through the smoke. “You are trapped like the rats you are. Hand over the true Angel of God and I will let you live.”
Decker kept his mouth shut. He knew Kurz was goading him into giving away his new position. He reached out for a chunk of Apollo’s arm and hurled it through the smoke as far as he could. It crashed down in the far corner and Kurz and his men swung their firearms around one-eighty.
They opened fire with a savage ferocity that would have killed him stone dead had he been over there, but the feint worked, and now he slipped over to the tunnel, crouched down in the dirt and heaved the statue up on his shoulder. Taking a breath, he then raised it up sixty or seventy degrees before manoeuvring his way behind it and pulling it up to block the gap. “That should buy us a few minutes.”
“Over there!” Kurz yelled. “Behind the Aphrodite statue!”
Kurz ordered his men to fire and the rounds blasted the statue to pieces and struck Selena, ripping through her upper arm. She screamed in pain and immediately dropped the Angel. She hit the dust at the same time as the statue, but by the time she had rolled over and reached out to grab it, it was already in the arms of Stefan Kurz and he was looking down at her with a shit-eating grin on his pock-marked face. He snatched up the statue and aimed his gun at Selena.
“Everyone stand where they are, and raise your hands!”
They obeyed, and Kurz pulled the hammer back on his gun. “Goodbye, Professor Moore.”
Charlie was closest and jumped forward, but Kurz powered the stock of his weapon into his face and knocked him out. With the former MI5 man dead to the world, Kurz aimed his gun at Selena once again. She closed her eyes and prepared to die when she heard a heavy grunt and a scuffle. Opening her eyes, she saw Riley Carr diving through the air and colliding with Kurz. Her ex-boyfriend slammed the Austrian into the tomb’s floor and the two men rolled and grappled with each other.
Kurz pulled a knife from his belt and slashed it in Riley’s face. The blade missed but the end of the handle struck him on the temple and almost knocked him out. He rolled off Kurz and struggled to his feet but the Austrian was already standing and kicked him hard in the ribs, putting him down into the dust again.
With the statue in their possession, Kurz and his men evacuated in the escape tunnel that Decker had planned to use, turning and firing on them to keep them pinned down as they receded into the darkness.
Decker scrambled to his knees and saw Selena was out cold now, and her face had turned ashen white. He ran to her and lifted her head into his lap. A pool of blood was seeping out of her shoulder wound and congealing in the sandy gravel beneath her. Looking across the chamber, he saw Charlie was still out cold too.
Riley ran to her. “Fucking bastards!”
“Get after him, Riley!” Decker yelled, and tossed him the gun. “I’ll look after them.”
The Australian looked anxiously at his unconscious friends. “You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure, dammit! The last thing Lena would want is for that son of a bitch to take the Angel!”
“I’m on it,” Riley said.
Decker watched the young man sprint into the tunnel after Kurz and his unit, and then turned his attention back to Selena, unconscious and wounded in his arms.
10
Riley Carr ran through the darkness of the tunnel, determined to catch up with the men who had shot Selena and killed David Herzog. Halfway along, he heard a tremendous explosion and instinctively dived for the dirt with seconds to spare. A river of fire streaked inches above his head and blasted smoke and brick dust all over him as the energy from the explosion burned itself out down the tunnel.
He guessed Kurz and his crew had found a way out but needed to make it large enough for them to escape through. With the sound of Kurz screaming in German at his men up ahead, he scrambled to his feet and sprinted to the end where it turned into what looked like another crypt. Light flooded in from a small hole in the ceiling and piles of stone and plaster littered the floor beneath it. This is what they had blown up to make good their escape, and he saw at once that Kurz and his men had stood on an old stone tomb to reach their escape route.
The Australian easily leaped up onto the tomb and pulled himself up through the hole until he was standing on a side street to the east of the church. He scanned the area for any sign of Kurz and his men, looking further east down the hill and shielding his eyes from the flash of the burning sun on the Dome of the Rock’s gold leaf.
A quarter of a century ago, the King of Jordan had sold one of his foreign homes to pay for the nearly-two hundred pounds of gold required to cover the roof. It flashed in the burning sun and dazzled the Australian as he squinted in search of the thieves, with no idea where they had gone.
A scream gave him the answer he was looking for. He spun around and saw the men moving away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at speed, kicking and punching anyone who got in their way. One man approached them with his hands raised. He was trying to talk, but Kurz fired on him almost point blank and killed him on the spot.
Thousands of people now bolted in every direction, fearing a major terrorist attack at one of the world’s holiest sites. Kurz was unmoved by the reaction and increased the terror by firing more rounds into the air. After barking more orders at his men in German, he and his team continued their way toward the maze of backstreets to the west of the Temple Mount.
Riley glanced at the man Kurz had shot as a crowd of well-meaning men and women risked their lives to carry him to safety, but he knew no one could survive a point-blank attack with a Heckler & Koch. “Bastards,” he muttered, and took up his pursuit of the tomb raiders.
By the time he reached the street running north-south of the old hill, Kurz had vanished yet again. Police sirens now echoed down ever street as the first responders raced toward the scene of the shooting back at the church. Tourists fleeing the chaos obscured his view in every direction. Leaping onto the roof of a parked Hyundai, he shielded his eyes from the sun again and scanned the area once more for any sign of Kurz.
For a second there were no more clues, but then he saw a man in the street up ahead. He was in uniform, and looked dazed and confused, holding his head in his hands one minute, and then pointing and shouting down the road the next. The Australian followed the man’s pointing arm until he saw an Israel Post van swerving in and out of the traffic toward the Temple Mount.
The flicker of a smile crossed his dry lips. “Got the bastards,” he muttered. “Now all I need is to get me some fuckin’ wheels.”
He searched for a vehicle he could use when the delicious smell of tomato and hot cheese drifted past him, followed by the familiar rasping sound of a two-stroke engine. It could mean only one thing, and he turned over his shoulder to see his thoughts confirmed: a young man was riding toward him on a Vespa. Stacked in a small cage on the back were half a dozen pizzas.
“Riley, mate – never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
As the Vespa cruised past, the driver cast a curious glance up at the man standing on the roof of the parked Hyundai and wondered what he was doing up there. He didn’t have to wait long to find out. As he passed the car, Riley Carr leaped from the roof and crashed down on top of the man.
The Vespa slipped out from beneath them both and wobbled its way over to the kerb where it crashed over on it side and spilled pizzas all over the hot asphalt. The Australian expected a fight, but the man looked at the pistol in his hand and scrambled back like a crab. When he was far enough away he waved his hands in the air and reached into his pocket. “Here! Take my wallet!”
He tossed it through the air and Riley caught it in one hand. “Not a robbery mate – I just need your bike. If it survives I’ll park her up and put the keys under the seat. And I don’t want your wallet, either.”
He tossed the wallet over and ran to the bike. Heaving it up, he kicked the starter and fired the engine up again. He revved it a few times and took off after Kurz in the post van without even looking over his shoulder. “Never look back, mate,” he said to himself.
Speeding into the traffic, he turned a sharp right and joined the last place where he had seen Kurz. It was no more than an alley, cobblestones on the ground and market stalls on either side. He was amazed the Austrian would even consider trying to drive a van down here and wondered if he had made a mistake when he looked ahead and saw the red rear doors of the postal van shining in the sun.
The alley was so narrow that the sides of the van were striking the walls as it raced through the labyrinth, spitting showers of amber and white sparks into the air – but this was the least of his concerns. Now, the rear doors burst open to reveal one of Kurz’s men in the back of the van. He was holding a submachine gun which he now aimed at Riley. A fiendish smile appeared on his face, and then he gave a mocking wink.
“Jesus, Riley!” the Australian said. “You really can be an idiot sometimes.”
He was right. The van barely fit down the alley and that meant the Vespa had nowhere to run and hide.
The fusillade began, firing full metal jackets all over him.
He swerved the bike from side to side to avoid the barrage, but the alley was too narrow to make any meaningful evasive manoeuvre and the bullets snaked after him wherever he went. Pushing hard to the right, he plowed the bike straight into one of the market stalls, smashing it over and spraying a jumble of souvenir scarves, taboon bread and Jerusalem bagels up into the air.
Brushing a coating of sesame seeds and za’atar powder off his face, he swerved hard to the left to avoid more bullets. The man in the back was casually sweeping his weapon back and forth at the Australian, almost playing with him as they blew through the alley at breakneck speed.
Engines revved, stall holders dived for cover and now Riley Carr pulled the gun from his waistband and aimed it at the Israeli Post van. “Have some back, you bastards!”
Loosing three rounds, he struck the van with every shot. The first two punctured holes in the licence plate and the third made its mark in the chest of the man with the gun. The impact of the shot knocked him back until Riley lost him in the gloom of the van’s interior. The Australian took advantage of the shock unfolding in the back of the van and increased his speed, racing ever closer to Kurz.
Almost close enough to touch, Riley stuffed the gun in his pants and prepared to jump from the bike into the back of the van. The alley was running out and up ahead was a road where they would have the advantage, but just as he was figuring out the best way to get into the van, his eyes opened wide with disbelief.
The other men in the back of the van were hurling their dying colleague at him. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. “Not exactly an act of Christian charity is it now?” he called out.
Their response was to heave the man out of the rear doors directly at him.
He hit the brakes and swerved as the dying man came tumbling out the back of the postal van and hit the ground like a bag of potatoes.
Narrowly avoiding the half-dead man by inches, Riley glanced over his shoulder to see his body tumbling into a food stall where he knocked a pile of piping hot shawarma wraps, pickled turnips and chicken schnitzels all over himself. “Not the way to go, mate.”
His satisfaction was cut short when he realized the others were getting away and almost at the end of the alley. He increased speed and put the Vespa on a course for the van ahead of him. The Angel of God was in there, and this was the last chance he had. If he let them get away now they’d be gone forever and so would Selena’s chance of ever finding the Ark and her father.
He fired on them once again. Closer now, he hit the tires and shreds of black rubber were sprayed all over the place by centrifugal force. With both rear tires blown out, the van scraped along the cobblestones with a shower of amber and white sparks spitting out from the rimless wheels.
