Dead Six (59 page)

There were only a handful of these keys still in existence, passed down from fathers to whoever was the best warrior among their sons for hundreds of years. Over time they had gained something of almost religious significance. It was prestigious to be the bearer of the key, even though the reasons had long since been lost to the sands of time. Eddie’s file had said the prince didn’t understand what he was sitting on, except that it was prestigious and therefore had to be hoarded.

I found the keyhole in the center of the floor, a bizarrely geometric shape, going straight down. Standing in the indentation, I took the key out. I had to turn the base slowly until the protruding spines lined up with the hole. I inserted it until it clicked into the lock. As I twisted the base back, there was a cold hiss of air around me and the stone under my feet began to shudder. Steps appeared one by one as the floor sank. I leapt back in surprise. I had expected a simple door or something, not an elaborate construction that seemed to work like oiled silk even though it was a millennium old.

Holy shit, that’s cool.

Within thirty seconds a narrow staircase had materialized, shooting straight down into the darkness. The steps were tiny, brutally steep, and made for feet far smaller than mine. I went down, and after a few steps I made out a faint glow. The stairs terminated in a stone wall carved with a three-foot skull. The skull had curving ram’s horns. The light was coming from inside the skull’s open mouth.

There it is
.
Whatever it is
. It was sitting in the alcove formed by the mouth. It was vaguely Egyptian looking, almost like one of those beetle things they carved on the pyramids. A scarab, I believe they were called. It was only two inches of intricately carved black metal wrapped around a gold blob. At first I thought the center was glass, but it was different somehow, almost like crystal. With a shock I realized that the center was actually where the light was coming from.

I was scared to touch it. Maybe it was
radioactive.
“Shit,” I muttered. I didn’t have time for this. I reached inside the alcove and scooped up the thing. It was surprisingly heavy. I froze as I felt it shift in my palm, for an uneasy second thinking that it was alive, but it was the golden interior. It was some sort of dense liquid shifting about sluggishly. I felt incredibly nervous, like I was a child screwing around with something that I really shouldn’t be. There was an unbelievable temptation to just put it the hell back.

This thing wasn’t natural. It was somehow
wrong
.

Reaper pulled me back. “
Time’s up, Chief.”
I looked at my watch, I had only been down here for ten seconds, but it had felt like forever in the dark.
“I gotta go. I’ve set the system for our getaway and crashed everything else. I locked the sprinkler controls. I’ve opened every gate except for the one that leads to the water main. I’m going to pump half the Gulf in here before they get that door breached, punk-ass newbs tried to mess with me. Elevator is running freely now. The guests are trying to get out. All hell’s breaking loose. Shit. Some guards are coming this way, gotta run.”

“Go, I’ll meet you at the car,” I said, stuffing the scarab inside my clothing. I didn’t have time for metaphysical bullshit. I had a job to finish. I ran back up the stairs, reached the top, twisted the key free, and sure enough the stairs began to rise, one by one. I knew that within seconds it would be like I had never been here.

There was no way that stealth was going to work now. I drew one of the FN pistols and kept it low at my side as I hurried up the tunnel. The sprinklers were still pumping. One of the guards stepped into the raining hallway from the control room, shouting into his blocked-off radio. He heard my footfalls and turned just in time to catch a face full of steel slide. The shock reverberated down my arm, and the guard rebounded off the wall. I was past him, in a full-on sprint now. Voices shouted behind me. I extended the 9mm as I ran, not even looking as I fired wildly down the corridor, just trying to keep their heads down.

Bullets whizzed past. I spun to the side as I slid into the elevator. Projectiles impacted the wall, shattering the polished glass. Mashing the up arrow repeatedly, I leaned the gun around the corner and cranked off wild shots until the slide locked back empty. The door slid closed, bullets clanging off the exterior.

I dropped the spent mag on the soggy carpet and reloaded. The elevator car vibrated slightly as pulleys lifted me toward safety. I pushed the button to stop at the lobby floor. The doors opened onto pure pandemonium. Water was pouring down the walls, collecting in chandeliers, and ruining antique furniture. Billionaires were pushing to get out the entryway, and the prince’s men were trying to stop them. A fight had erupted between one of the bigwig’s security detail and some of the gray-uniformed guards.

I collided with a fat, bloated slug of a man. He glared stupidly at me with little pig eyes and tried to push his way into the relatively dry elevator. “Hey, you’re bleeding,” he said nasally in American English as he pointed at my robes. “What happened in here?” Not seeing any guards looking in my direction, I grabbed him by the throat, yanked him into the car, broke his nose with a head butt, kneed him hard in the crotch, and then slammed his face repeatedly into the wall. He collapsed in a whimpering heap in the shell casings and broken glass.

Nonchalantly as possible, I stepped into the indoor rain and pushed through the chaos. Carl magically appeared at my side. “Wow, you really kicked Michael Moore’s ass,” he whispered. I turned back briefly. It had kind of looked like him . . .
Naw.

There was Reaper, also heading toward the door. Hassan was blocking the door with his bulk, shouting for order and begging the VIPs to calm down. I saw Eduard Montalban at the foot of the stairs, a grinning caricature of a human being. In sharp contrast, the Fat Man stood behind him, holding an umbrella open over his employer. Big Eddie golf-clapped for me.

Hassan finally relented, surely not willing to risk the prince’s wrath, and let the sodden guests through the door. We shoved along with the rest of the sheiks, royalty, CEOs, and scumbags into the scorching desert air. Hassan was too busy screaming into his nonresponsive radio to notice me exit. Steam immediately rose from my man-dress as we headed for the car.

The crowd was spreading when the first explosion went off. It was at the opposite end of the compound, but it sent the group into an even bigger frenzy. Reaper had set the mines along the opposite perimeter to detonate randomly. He was grinning from ear to ear, enjoying the up-close view of his handiwork.

The radio under my thobe began to speak. It was my voice in panicked Arabic, the audio file recorded back at our hideout and set to play on the radio net as a final distraction. It was going to repeat every thirty seconds, and it was the only thing that was going to broadcast over their intercoms and radios. “
We’re under attack. Forces are breaching the north wall. All guards to the north wall. Evacuate the guests. The prince does not want them found here. Let everyone out the gates!
” I opened the door and slid into the backseat of our Mercedes. Carl and Reaper jumped in the front.

Around us, other drivers were attempting to start their expensive cars to no avail, their modern electronics all hopelessly fried by Starfish. “Go!” I shouted. We were spinning tires and leaving rubber on the pavement in an instant, zipping through the gardens, through the tunnel under the wall, and then we were out into the blinding desert. The acceleration sucked, but within a few minutes our land-yacht was doing a hundred.

We had done it. We had pulled it off. The palace was shrinking in the distance. All three of us began to whoop and cheer wildly. Carl screamed out happy profanities. Reaper punched the ceiling. We had done the impossible. Phase Three was done. This suicide mission was done.
Screw you, Eddie. We got your stupid treasure.

Then the adrenaline began to subside, and my hands began to shake. That is when I noticed the blood and felt a burning sensation in my back. I stuck one quivering hand under my thobe and probed around. It came back slick and red.

Nothing ever goes according to plan.

“Ow! Carl, careful!” I snapped. “That hurts.”

“Quit your crying. Here you go.” He waved a bloody Leatherman multitool in front of my head with something held in the pliers. I opened my hand and he dropped a bullet fragment onto my palm. Carl poured something stinging on my back then started to tape down a bandage. “That’s it. Must have bounced off the elevator wall and got you. I thought the way you were whining you might actually have gotten hurt or something.”

The limo was still cruising across the bleak desert. Reaper was driving now, so Carl could play medic, and had taken us off the main road and deeper into the dunes. The car kicked up a massive sand plume behind us. “We’re almost there,” he shouted into the back compartment.

“Good,” I answered as I threw the waterlogged and bloodstained man-dress on the floor. Carl handed me a T-shirt. “As soon as we stop, you guys grab Al Falah out of the trunk, shove him back here, and we’ll light this sucker. I’ll get the van ready.”

“What, you get one little hole in you and you think you don’t have to lift the fat guy?” Carl asked with a grin. Even a bitter and angry fellow like Carl had to be in a jovial mood after pulling off a heist like this. He started to undo his tie. “At least he’ll be thawed. When he wouldn’t bend, it was a hell of a time getting him in the trunk.”

They’d identify the burned corpse as Al Falah, probably assumed murdered by his co-conspirators, which would totally point the investigation in the wrong direction at first. Eventually an autopsy would show that he’d been dead for a long time, but by then we’d be well out of the country.

I tried to turn serious for a minute. “Guys, I’ve just got to say. You were amazing back there. The EMP was awesome. You took down security in record time, everything. That was damn near perfect . . . except for the sprinklers.”

“Yeah, what the fuck was that?” Carl shouted before he called Reaper something unpronounceable in Portuguese and threw his tie at the driver.

“Hey, I had to improvise,” our techie answered defensively. “Next time, you do the computer stuff and I’ll do the kung-fu ninja stuff. How hard could it be?”

“Well, either way, we’re done.” I pulled the scarab from my pocket. It still made me uncomfortable. “We got his damn . . . whatever.”

“Rub it and see if it grants three wishes,” Reaper suggested.

“Whatever, Aladdin, Big Eddie will be in contact and we can arrange a handoff. And I didn’t get the chance to tell you—I met Eddie. He was there at the meeting.”

“No way,” Carl said. “Was he there because of us?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But he felt the need to talk to me in person, which can’t be good.”

“Do you think our families are off the hook?” Reaper asked quietly.

“I think I’ve got an idea to guarantee Eddie sticks to his word. I’ll fill you guys in on the way to the border.”

An ancient oil rig appeared ahead of us. It had long since fallen into disuse and was slowly decaying back into the desert. There was a wooden shack behind it where we had stashed our van. A few minutes to destroy the evidence, and we’d be on our way toward the border. We parked near the dilapidated shed. Old canvas tarps whipped in the wind.

I stepped into the searing heat, savoring the
freedom
of it, and went to unlock the padlock we had left on the shed. Carl pulled out a pair of binoculars and scanned the desert we’d just traveled. “Lorenzo, we’ve got dust behind us. We’re being followed.”

I shouted back as I unlocked the door. “How far?”

“We’ve got maybe five minutes,” he responded. “How’d they find us?”

I’d hoped that Starfish would have bought us more time. “Eddie probably had a bug stuck on our car during the meeting,” I shouted. Well, it was either Eddie’s goons or the prince’s men. Eddie must have decided he couldn’t trust us to hand off the goods, that double-crossing bastard, and heaven help us if it was Hassan. I shoved the door open. The white van was a welcome sight. “Hurry up and move that body! We’ve got to roll.”

I was getting into the van, looking for the ignition key, as Carl was unlocking the limousine’s trunk. Reaper was getting out of the driver’s seat.

“They won’t be able to catch us, Lorenzo. Nobody can catch me,” Carl said as the trunk lid opened.

CRACK!

I jerked my head in surprise, jolted by the unexpected noise, dropping the keys to the van’s floorboards.

Carl’s beady eyes narrowed in momentary confusion, bushy brows scrunching together as he looked into the trunk. The first bullet had struck him square in the chest, leaving a red hole on his white dress shirt. The second concussion came a split second later. Blood spurted from Carl’s neck, his hands flying reflexively to his throat as he fell sprawling into the sand.

Time jerked to a screeching halt.

“
Carl!
” Reaper screamed. Someone was crawling out of the trunk.

I was moving, the FNP coming out of my waistband.

The man twisted to the side, one foot hitting the ground, the other still bent in the trunk. He extended a small B&T machine pistol in one hand, seeking Reaper.

“Down! “Down!” I pushed around the van door, punching the FN out, the front sight moving into my field of vision, finger already pulling the trigger back.

Too late.

The submachine gun bucked, brass flashing in the sunlight. Reaper jerked violently to the side, spinning, crashing into the limousine’s hood as the window beside him shattered. I fired, the 9mm in my hand recoiling, the front sight coming back on target, firing again.

The man dove from the trunk, rolling in the sand on the other side of the limo. I moved laterally, gun up, tracking, searching, looking for another shot. He opened up from under the car. Bullets stitched across the shack behind me, flinging splinters into the air. Metal screeched as something struck the van. I was running now, not even thinking about it, trying to flank around the side of the car.