Oracle (23 page)

Jade did not tell him that they were already moving as fast as she dared go. The night vision monocular was playing havoc with her depth perception, making her think the ground was closer than it really was, but Dorion and Ophelia were quite literally stumbling in the dark. Fortunately, the path was mostly flat and free of obstructions.

As they skirted along the top of the theatre, Jade could see all the way down to the museum building, and to the ribbon of asphalt that cut across the slope, right above the Gulf of Corinth. She could also see four cars, probably from a rental agency, lined up on the roadside.

Almost there.

Something flashed beside her, as bright as a lightning strike, followed immediately by the sound of tree branches breaking. She looked back and saw one of the aiming lasers stabbing down at them. The shooter was at least five hundred feet away, the distance probably the only thing that had saved them, but Jade’s sense of imminent victory had taken a direct hit. The killers had found them again.

Survival meant a sprint to the finish.

“Use your flashlights,” Jade shouted, tearing off her night vision monocular.

“
Jade, they’ll see us!” warned Professor.

“
They already know we’re here.” She turned on her light and shone it down the path. The cone of illumination was paltry compared to the world revealed in the monochrome display of the NV device, but this was a light that Dorion and Ophelia could follow as well. She started running, charging down the hill like the hounds of Hell were nipping at her heels.

She could no longer see the road, but after about a minute of running, the museum building appeared out of the gloom.

“Jade!”

She glanced back. Dorion and Ophelia were still with her, but Professor had stopped. He made an underhanded throw and something sailed through the air toward her. She caught it reflexively and felt the familiar shape of keys in her hand.

“Get the car started. I’ll try to buy you a few seconds.”

Jade swallowed as the implication of his words hit home, but she nodded and resumed running.

They skirted around the perimeter of the museum and scrambled down a dirt embankment at the roadside. Jade let her machine pistol hang from its sling, and fumbled with the keys, pushing random buttons on the alarm remote. The headlights of the second vehicle in the line flashed, and then to Jade’s amazement, it started up.

Nice,
she thought, and then shouted, “Get in!”

The others were already angling for the passenger side. She almost grinned when she heard Dorion call out,
“Shotgun.”

It was a newer Mercedes GLK 350 compact sport utility vehicle. She slid behind the wheel and quickly oriented herself to the essential controls. The previous driver was evidently a lot taller than she was, but there was no time to fiddle with the adjustment buttons. She scooted forward until her right foot could reach the pedal, and then shifted into gear.

She cranked the wheel hard to the right and jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Mercedes leaped forward, but then it shuddered to a stop as the front corner met the rear bumper of the vehicle parked ahead of it. A strident wailing noise rose up as the lead vehicle’s anti-theft alarm went off. Jade muttered a curse, but refused to back off, keeping steady pressure on the pedal until, with a tortured groan, the SUV burst free of the snag and shot out across the asphalt.

There was movement directly ahead, and in the split-second it took for Jade to decide whether to slam on the brakes or keep going, she heard Dorion say,
“Look out!”

Brakes it is.

The there was a screech of friction and the vehicle came to a complete stop, just a few feet from the man who had emerged from the roadside. It was Professor.

He clambered into the backseat and shouted,
“Go!”

She went.

“Wasn’t sure you were coming,” she remarked as the SUV picked up speed.

He made a noise that might have been a strained chuckle.
“What, you didn’t actually think I was going to make some kind of noble sacrifice did you?”

Actually, I did
, Jade thought, but didn’t say it aloud.

“
I was trying to rig up the laser as a decoy,” he explained. “Then you had to go and set off the alarm.”

“
Oops.” Her sense of relief slipped away, replaced by embarrassment.

“
Where are you going? Delphi is back the other way?”

“
If I had gone that way, you’d still be walking,” she growled, embarrassment quickly turning to irritation. The truth of the matter was that she had not given much thought to what would happen after reaching the relative safety of the vehicle. The cars had been parked facing east and it had not occurred to her to turn around and head for town.

“
Too late now. Here they come.”

Jade checked the side mirror and saw headlights flaring to life behind them.
“We’ll just outrun them. This road has to go somewhere.”

She turned her attention forward again and for the first time since getting into the vehicle, realized that it was equipped with real time GPS. The screen showed their location on the highway; it also showed that they were approaching an almost ninety-degree bend in the road. Jade hit the brakes slowing to a crawl to get through the turn, and then accelerated forward once more.

The GPS showed that the highway was mostly straight for the next few miles—make that kilometers, Jade thought, mentally dividing the numbers in half. There were a couple of wicked looking switchbacks but beyond lay a small city called Arachova; a total distance of ten kilometers—about six miles—and according to the GPS, it would take about eight minutes at safe legal speed.

I wonder if we can do
it in five.
The trailing headlights reappeared in the rearview as the pursuing cars made the turn, and she realized that she would have to push the car—and herself—to the limit to keep them alive that long.

Jade didn
’t need to look at the speedometer to know that they were going a lot faster than the safe, legal speed. She could tell by the vibrations rising up from the road and her own insistent inner voice cautioning her to slow down.

“
Everybody down,” Professor shouted suddenly. A moment later, a series of loud cracks sounded against the exterior of the vehicle and the rear window became a glazed translucent mosaic of tiny glass particles.

Jade had to fight against every instinct of self-preservation to keep steady pressure on the accelerator. She wasn
’t sure how Professor had known the shots were coming; maybe he had seen the lasers with his NV device, or maybe he’d had a premonition of his own.

“
Jade. Give me your gun!”

She had forgotten about the machine pistol, unused and still hanging from its nylon sling. She uncurled one hand from the steering wheel just long enough to pull the strap over her head and deposit the weapon in Dorion
’s lap; if felt like the most terrifying two seconds of her life.

Dorion handed the weapon back to Professor, and a few seconds later, Jade heard a mechanical clicking noise, the sound of the pistol
’s internal mechanism ratcheting bullets into the firing chamber and ejecting spent casings. The smell of burnt gunpowder filler the air but the report was barely audible. In the mirror, she saw a set of headlights abruptly veer left and go out.

“
Got one!” Professor crowed, but his triumph was short-lived. “Oh, you can’t be serious.”

“
What?”

“
More helicopters.”

Suddenly, Jade
’s entire world was suffused with light. The illumination was as bright as sunlight and filled the interior of the car. She flinched away, reflexes overriding every other imperative.

The SUV started to shudder violently as one wheel left the paved surface. Jade let off the gas pedal and tried to guide the vehicle back but it was already too late. She felt an invisible hand lift her out of her seat as the Mercedes careened down the hillside.

The blinding light vanished, plunging the interior once more into darkness, but Jade was barely away of this change. It was all she could do to hold onto the steering wheel as the vehicle crashed through small trees and lurched over boulders. Then something struck her full in the face and everything went completely black.

Professor did not
lose consciousness, but for several seconds—it might have been even longer—he had no sense of where he was. Everything was dark and his nostrils were filled with a strange mélange of smells, some he recognized—gunpowder, pine trees, gasoline, dust—and others he did not. It was the latter, a hot, metallic odor, like electrical wiring about to catch fire, that prompted him to start moving.

Something was pressing against his face; it took him a moment to realize that it was the side-impact airbag. He recalled being walloped in the head with it, like a mean-spirited blow in a pillow fight. He also felt something soft in his arms.

Ophelia. He had hugged her close just as the SUV had gone off the road. He felt a measure of relief when she began to stir.

He raised his head and saw that the interior of the Mercedes was filled with dust or smoke—or more probably some combination of the two—and illuminated once more by the helicopter searchlight that had transfixed them earlier, ultimately causing Jade to run off the road. He could hear it beating the air overhead.

“Jade? Paul?”

There were murmurs from the front seat. Everyone seemed to be alive.

“We have to get moving,” he urged. His hand found the lever, but he had to slam his shoulder against the door to get it open. It finally yielded to his efforts and it was only when he spilled out onto the ground that he realized why he had been so disoriented; the SUV had smashed into a tree and stopped facing down the steep slope at an angle.

The fron
t door popped open and Jade tumbled out. She glanced up at the two helicopters hovering overhead, shining spotlights down on them and kicking up a small dust storm, then turned to Ophelia who was struggling to emerge from the SUV. “I don’t suppose you brought one of those RPG launchers along.”

Ophelia shook her head as if the question had been serious.

An electronically amplified voice sounded from the sky. The words were incomprehensible, but after a moment the voice spoke again, this time in English. “This is the police. Stay where you are.”

One helicopter—the word
“POLICE” was plainly visible in big white letters on its blue exterior—circled slowly, as if looking for a good landing spot. The other one hovered in place, its searchlight beam still illuminating the wrecked Mercedes.

Jade looked at him.
“What do you think?”

He was about to remind
her that the Mexican Army had evidently been working with Hodges and the Norfolk Group at Teotihuacan, but before she could say it, the sound of a bullet striking the SUV’s fender made the point far more eloquently. Barely visible in the darkness beyond the cone of illumination, the killers were moving down the hill toward them.

Professor pulled Ophelia down the slope, seeking cover behind the tree trunk that had stopped the Mercedes. Jade reached back into the vehicle
’s interior, hauled Dorion out and dragged him along after her.

Professor spotted Hodges
’ face amid the crowd of attackers. There had never really been any doubt in his mind that the attack was the work of the Norfolk Group, but here was the proof. “Time to go,” he said, even though he knew they had nowhere left to run.

“
Wait!”

Professor was almost as stunned by the calm, confident way Ophelia said it, as he was by her actual words.

“We can’t stay here.”

She shook her head insistently.
“It will be all right.”

As if on cue, the loud crack of a high-powered rifle echoed off the hillside. Professor knew that sound well; it was a burst from a Kalashnikov rifle, and it had come from the hovering helicopter. He couldn
’t tell where the rounds struck, but the advance of the shooters on the hillside stalled.

Professor felt Jade
’s eyes on him, and the implicit question: What do we do?

He didn
’t have an answer for her. His instincts told him to run, but Hodges and the killers were so close, there didn’t seem to be any point.

The circling helicopter spiraled closer to the slope, close enough that Professor could see that the men inside were wearing dark tactical gear, similar to what he had worn as a SEAL. The pilot brought the aircraft down until the rotor-disk was almost kissing the slope, at which point the uniformed men began pouring forth, rushing toward the wrecked SUV with weapons at the ready.

Time to see if I made the right choice.
Professor raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

The helicopter lifted off again as soon as the last man was out, and
rose high enough to allow the swirling dust cloud to subside. Five men—Professor figured they had to be EKAM operators, the special anti-terrorism unit of the Hellenic Police—surrounded the Mercedes, but their weapons were aimed up the hill at the Norfolk Group gunmen. The air bristled with tension and harsh shouts, but one by one, the killers, despite having superior numbers, began lowering their guns. Hodges was one of the last to surrender his. The man beside him, however, remained defiant. “This doesn’t concern you,” he yelled. Despite his fair complexion and dishwater blond hair, there was a hint of a Mexican accent to his speech. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

One of the policeme
n took a step forward, thrusting his weapon forward meaningfully. “Drop your weapon or I will kill you.”

The man took a step forward.
“Do you know who I am?” His tone implied that it was a rhetorical question and that the policeman most certainly did know.

“
He knows, Andres.” Shouted back a different voice—clear, unaccented American English. “And if you don’t put your gun down he will shoot.”

The gunman—Andres—gaped in disbelief.
“You! You betrayed us.” He took another defiant step.

A shot rang out, and then several more, the reports blurring together in a tumultuous peal of thunder. Andres upper body seemed to dissolve in a red cloud as scores of 7.62-millimeter rounds ripped through him.

He remained upright for a moment, but the light had gone out of his eyes. As the last echoes of gunfire died away, Andres dropped to his knees and then pitched forward, sliding down the slope, leaving a long crimson stain in the dirt.

Hodges showed not the slightest inclination to follow the other man
’s example. He raised his hands in the air and dropped to his knees. The other men with him quickly followed suit.

As the police operators moved cautiously forward to begin securing their prisoners, Ophelia abruptly rose to her feet and stepped out into the open.

Professor hissed a warning, but was too late to stop her. She advanced and began speaking to the man who had moments before answered Andres. “I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so happy to see you.”

“
Well somebody has to keep you out of trouble.” The man’s voice seemed to fluctuate between irritation and amusement.

Ophelia turned and waved invitingly.
“It’s all right. You can come out. We’re safe now.”

Professor felt Jade
’s eyes on him. He could only offer an uncertain shrug, then he too stood up. His first good look at the man Ophelia was speaking to revealed two things immediately. First, the man was not an EKAM operator and did not appear to belong to any law enforcement agency; although he wore a helmet and body armor, he carried no gun and displayed no official credentials. The second thing Professor noted was his appearance. The man was tall and slender, with pale blonde hair and a handsome yet familiar face that looked almost too perfect,

Professor was not the least bit surprised when Ophelia said,
“I’d like you all to meet my brother.”