Authors: Russell Blake
Chapter 43
Matt pounded on Franco’s door, the nearest to the side entry of the main building. “Franco, hurry up. This is an emergency.”
The monk arrived and pulled the door open, robes flapping around him like some kind of ungainly bird. “What is it?”
“A group of men are coming up in the cable car. The motor noise gave them away. I don’t know how, but they must be onto us.”
Franco glanced around. “Are you sure?”
“Do you routinely have a half-dozen armed men visit the monastery after hours?”
The monk’s eyes widened. “What do you want me to do?”
“We need to hide Hannah somewhere safe. They’ll be here in seconds.”
“Come,” Franco said, looking over Matt’s shoulder at the upper docking area. Matt hefted their bags, and Franco picked Hannah up after closing and bolting the door, and carried her into a long hallway with tall rustic doors lining each side. He moved to the last one and unlocked it with a key hanging around his neck, and pushed past some dusty crates and a few casks to an old bookshelf, its volumes covered with a patina of filth and cobwebs. After nodding to Matt, he reached up to the top shelf, gripped a thick book, and tilted it forward. A click sounded from behind the bookshelf and he pushed against it. The base screeched like a wounded bird, and the entire bookshelf swung aside, revealing a passageway carved into the mountain rock.
A draft blew from the dark tunnel, carrying the dank smell of wet earth and decay. Franco put Hannah down and turned to Matt. “This leads down the back side of the mountain, where there’s a small river. It was used over a century ago to hide rebel forces and, later, to smuggle enemies of the cartels out of danger.”
Matt held his stare. “Franco, stay here with Hannah. Her mother is on her way. If these goons know we’re here, then they probably suspect she’s coming and laid a trap for her. I won’t let that happen.”
Franco shook his head. “I can’t. The others know nothing of what I’ve brought into this holy place. I must warn them.”
“Who else knows about this passageway?” Matt murmured.
“Only the abbot and I. And the abbot is nearly beyond his earthly concerns. He’s been unwell for years.” Franco hesitated. “Dementia. Half the time he doesn’t know where he is, so the secret is safe.”
Matt knelt down and gazed into Hannah’s eyes, and then groped around in the survival bag and found the small flashlight. He handed it to her and twisted it on, showing her how to work it, and then switched it off. “Honey? I need you to be very, very brave and wait for me here. If you get scared, you can’t make any noise, but you can turn the light on and it will be just like Momma and I are with you, okay? I need to go take care of some stuff, but I’ll be right back. Do you understand?”
The fear in Hannah’s eyes was palpable. “Yeth,” she whispered.
“But no noise. Not even if you hear things that are scary, all right? Because there are some bad men who are looking for us, and I don’t want them to find you. So be extra quiet for me and Mommy.”
Another doubtful nod from Hannah. Matt rose and withdrew the crossbow from the burlap sack, strapped on the special belt, and cocked and loaded it. A pounding sounded from down the hall; the intruders were at the door. Matt quickly placed their bags in the passageway, patted Hannah on the head and held his finger to his lips, and then Franco pulled the bookshelf back into position.
Matt shouldered the crossbow and rooted in the bag for the quiver. He pulled the strap over his head and nodded at Franco as more pounding emanated from the front door.
“How do I get up there?” Matt whispered, pointing to the second-floor balcony that overlooked the main courtyard.
“Stairs at the end of the hall.” Franco pulled the heavy chamber door shut and locked it, then removed the key from around his neck and handed it to Matt. “Keep this. I don’t know what will become of me, but it’s up to you to lead the child to safety.”
Matt pocketed the key. “Don’t open the front door. Let them stew outside.”
“No. They’ll terrorize the other monks. I must–”
Matt cut him off. “You must save yourself, Franco. How can I get into the main monastery from here?”
“Through the kitchen area.”
“Then go warn your brothers. But don’t say a word about us. They can’t reveal what they don’t know.” A thought occurred to him. “Where did you say they kept the shotgun?”
“Over in the main hall, mounted over the fireplace. From here you won’t be able to get to it easily.”
“Then I’ll have to make good with this,” he said, patting the bow. “I’ve got six quarrels. I like my odds.”
Franco shook his head. “Go with God, my son.”
“If not him, with the devil. But I’ll try to take a rain check today, if that’s okay with you,” Matt said, and then dashed down the hall toward the stairs. Franco’s gaze followed him to the end of the gloomy corridor, and then he turned to where the pounding on the front door was increasing in urgency. He crossed himself and hurried in the opposite direction, to where the few other monks in residence were no doubt wondering what the commotion was all about.
~ ~ ~
Jet’s pass in front of the monastery had detected nothing out of place – the area was empty, any likely hiding places devoid of threat. She’d purchased the second-hand clothes and donned them in town, disguising herself as an ancient woman trudging along with her shopping as she reconnoitered the area. A friendly hound had decided to escort her, lending further credibility to her act, and she’d just about decided that the coast was clear when she heard the rev of a big motor, and a black SUV had rounded a corner behind her and parked a hundred meters from the cable car entrance.
She’d continued on without breaking her stride, pausing to inspect the odd trash can, calling the dog in her best imitation of an aged voice, and when she was out of sight, peeked around a building corner to see six thugs moving toward the cable car with pistols in their hands.
Her heart rate accelerated at the realization that somehow Matt’s whereabouts had been discovered, but she willed it back to normal as the glacial operational calm that was second nature to her seeped through her and she calculated the best next step. The faint whir of the distant cable car climbing the hill forced her into action – her baby was up there, and if she didn’t stop the gunmen, anything could happen.
Jet shrugged out of the disguise and rolled her long black cargo pants back down before slipping on her bag, the Glock stashed in her waistband where she could quickly access it. The only surprise as she bolted from doorway to doorway was that the cable car was returning, empty, to the ground level. That gave her pause. Perhaps it was an automatic return? That was probably it, but if not…it meant that there could be more gunmen waiting for her to show up.
Jet looked up at the sky. It would be dark in a few more minutes. An eerie quiet hung in the air, and she forced herself to wait until darkness arrived, and with it, increased odds of making it out of the situation alive.
The only positive was that there were no streetlights on the empty stretch of road that ran in front of the docking station. The buildings where she was hiding were quiet, the businesses closed, any inhabitants thankfully not at home. When the cable car arrived at the street level, she surveyed the area, her senses quivering, hypersensitive to any movement or sound that might reveal a threat.
She heard a distant pounding, like a drum, from the monastery. After a few seconds she recognized the sound: the gunmen were banging on the doors. That could work in her favor. It meant they were certain they weren’t facing any opposition. Certitude had cost many of her adversaries their lives; this time would hopefully prove no different.
Night arrived with a whisper of breeze, and suddenly it was dark enough that she could make it to the docking station if she stuck to the far side of the street, where untrimmed bushes provided welcome concealment.
She checked her bag to ensure the strap was tight across her chest, leaving both arms free for uninhibited movement, and after taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly, she sprinted across the road and blended into the far shadows.
Chapter 44
Fernanda scanned the street with the binoculars, but as the light faded so did their usefulness. She cursed her lack of night vision equipment, especially a scope – what had made perfect sense during daylight was now a dicey proposition. Making a shot at three hundred meters in daylight without a scope would have been child’s play for her, but now the darkness would make everything far less certain.
She mulled over her options and decided that she needed to move closer to the docking station. If the woman appeared, Fernanda would pick her off without hesitation, but the only way to guarantee a clean kill was to close the distance. The question was how near she could get without giving herself away. There was no perfect solution, but she’d spotted one other place by an abandoned shack that would be a marked improvement over her current position.
Fernanda stood, the assault rifle in her hands, and trotted down the hill, avoiding open areas, favoring the brick wall that ran along one side of the mountain road, whose dark color blended with her muted clothes to better conceal her presence. Her black running shoes were soundless on the cobblestones as she ran toward the shack in her fluid stride, breathing evenly.
She was halfway there when the unmistakable pop of a pistol shot rang out ahead. She froze as three more shots followed in close succession, and then all hell broke loose as the night sky erupted with orange flashes from the monastery high above.
~ ~ ~
Matt sighted the crossbow on the nearest gunman below him, no more than twenty meters away, and squeezed the rusty trigger of the ancient weapon. The quarrel hurtled at blinding speed straight for the man’s torso. The thwack of the bow string was answered a split second later by a scream as the gunman went down, impaled by the hunting bolt that had driven three-quarters of the way through his chest.
The other gunmen took several seconds to react to the silent killer in their midst, twisting with their pistols pointed at ground level. Matt stepped back from the high window and recocked the bow, carefully fitting another quarrel into place before peering out into the gloom at the exposed men. One spotted him and got off a shot just as Matt fired the bow again, and this time the bolt tore through the throat of the man behind his target – an unintended fortuitous shot, but one that brought a volley of rounds that peppered the stone around him, sending chips flying as he repeated the exercise with the bow. He locked the bow string and seated another quarrel, and then ran the length of the second floor to take up another position on the far side, where if he was lucky, he could get off a third kill before the gunmen wised up.
Luck wasn’t on his side. More pistol fire anticipated his move, and then the gunmen were dispersing into the dark, running for the other building entrances, now moving targets he had no hope of hitting.
He’d trimmed the size of the attacking force from six to four in a matter of moments, and even if he’d lost the element of surprise, his adversaries were now forced to scramble to find him, a moving target himself, rather than taking prisoners they’d assumed would be unarmed and docile.
A door below him crashed open as one of the gunmen kicked it in, and he slowly backed away from the window. The fight had moved from an outdoor shooting gallery where he had the high ground to a fight in a building where he was toting around a single-shot antiquity while his enemies had semiautomatic pistols.
~ ~ ~
Jet had nearly reached the cable car when the gunfire exploded above her. She didn’t wait to evaluate what had happened, but instead leapt into motion and streaked to the cable car, caution discarded at the sound of a pitched battle from the monastery, which could only mean one thing: Matt had seen the gunmen and engaged. But six against one, and Matt with a broken hand, weren’t odds she liked, and she felt an overwhelming pressure to get to him at all costs.
She slid the car door open, crouched low, and cursed the strip of rope lighting that illuminated the interior from the door frame – a thoughtful touch for nocturnal visitors, but not for someone trying to sneak into the car without being seen. Now committed and having no way out but forward, Jet stepped aboard and punched the button that activated the tram motor. The car lurched from the platform, and then she was climbing, suspended above the sheer side of the dark mountain five meters below, an ocean of brambles and brush.
~ ~ ~
Fernanda saw the light flicker to life in the cable car as she arrived at the shack. Someone had opened the door. She raised the binoculars and spotted the top of the woman’s head, just the forehead, hair, and eyes. She dropped the glasses and brought the rifle to bear, but the car was now moving, swinging on the cable, a trickier shot even at the closer distance.
She tracked the tram’s ascent and smiled when the woman stood, illuminated by the faint lamp, her profile clear. Fernanda hesitated for a fraction of a second – the woman looked enough like her to be her sister. She quickly recovered from her surprise, lined the sights up on the woman’s chest, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked against her shoulder, and she fired again for good measure and then peered through the binoculars and eyed her handiwork.
~ ~ ~
A shower of glass blew from the window opposite Jet and an exit hole punched through the far wall, and then a second shot followed it as she dropped to the floor of the cable car. Her intuition that a shooter had been watching the street was correct. But the shots had missed, instead hitting the window where the sniper must have fired at Jet’s reflection, leaving her with a tough choice – wait for the gunman to realize she wasn’t hit, or drop into the unknown below the tram and hope for the best.
She decided to punt and began rocking back and forth, moving the cable car ever so slightly as it continued its climb, adding to the level of difficulty of the shooter getting a decent shot. Every meter of distance increase her survival odds, and a moving target was always trickier than a stationary one.