Hunt at World's End (13 page)

If Daniel had seen their kiss on the boat, he didn’t mention it. In fact, Daniel didn’t talk much at all on their trip back from the marina to the hotel. It seemed unlike him, especially after he’d been so excited when they’d brought the Eye up. Gabriel, back in his street clothes, adjusted the heavy backpack on his shoulders as they rode the elevator to the penthouse and tried to guess what was going through the older man’s head. Daniel stood at the front of the elevator car, shifting his weight anxiously from one foot to the other. Something was definitely up; he’d have to ask Daniel about it when they were next alone.

Which they weren’t right now. Standing in the back of the elevator beside Gabriel, Joyce surreptitiously wrapped her fingers around his. He glanced at her, but she didn’t meet his eye, keeping her gaze forward and her face expressionless, entirely professional. The elevator pinged and the doors opened, and she quickly pulled her hand back.

Daniel led the way to his room, pulling the keycard from his pocket. He slid it into the lock mechanism on the door, waited for the little light beside the slot to turn green, and then pushed the door open. As they walked through, Gabriel saw Daniel raise his hands over his head. His heart sank even before he saw Edgar
Grissom sitting on a chair in the living room, one leg casually crossed over the other. It wasn’t until the door slammed behind him that he noticed the other men standing in key positions around the room. Three stood near Grissom, another by the side table along the wall, and a fifth was behind them, covering the door. All five had guns drawn and pointed at them.

“Frisk them,” Grissom said. The man behind them left his post at the door and patted Gabriel down. Not finding anything, he moved on to Joyce.

“No weapons,” the man said.

Grissom beckoned. “The backpack.” Gabriel shrugged out of it and the man who’d frisked him carried it over. Grissom unzipped it, looked inside, and chuckled. “Excellent. The Star, the Death’s Head Key, the second gemstone, even your gun. I couldn’t have gotten a better gift if it were Christmas.” He lifted the emerald out of the backpack and regarded it in the light. “Once again I ought to thank you. You have done all the heavy lifting for me, Mr. Hunt. Killing you seems like such a waste. I really ought to hire you instead.” Grissom replaced the emerald in the backpack and zipped it closed. He smiled at Daniel. His hands, no longer raised, hung feebly at his sides. “Professor Wingard can tell you that I am a fair man to work with.”

Joyce’s face clouded over with anger. “You…helped him?”

Gabriel suspected his own face was displaying a similar combination of disbelief and disappointment. How could Daniel have sold them out? Not just Gabriel, the son of two of his oldest and closest friends, but Joyce, his own niece, whom he’d spoken so sincerely of wanting to protect. Or maybe he thought this was a good way to protect her? Get the Eyes and the Star out of
her hands once and for all, never mind whose he was putting them in?

Daniel looked on the verge of tears. “I’m so sorry, my dear. You must believe me when I say that. Mr. Grissom contacted me a week ago, told me you’d been kidnapped in Borneo. He said he would bring you back safely if I helped him with his search for the gemstones.”

“And you believed him?” Joyce demanded.

“Why shouldn’t he?” Grissom said. “I’m a man of my word. But imagine my surprise when I discovered that the famous Gabriel Hunt had beaten me to it. Of course, even before I contacted your uncle, I already knew you were in possession of the Star of Arnuwanda, Miss Wingard. It’s amazing what spreading a little cash around can accomplish with the locals here in Turkey.”

Gabriel glanced at the three metal cylinders standing by the side table and remembered Daniel mentioning how the expensive acetylene gas was safer in his room than at the dig site because the place was full of thieves. Well, one of those thieves had signed their death warrants with a phone call to Grissom, and for what? A few extra coins?

Daniel turned to Gabriel, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I didn’t know you would get involved, Gabriel. I thought they would just take the key from you in New York and that would be the end of it.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Grissom laughed. “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet? How we knew you had the Death’s Head Key?”

Daniel hung his head and wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Tell me,” Gabriel said. Grissom started to speak,
but Gabriel cut him off. “Not you. You,” he said to Daniel. “You tell me.”

Daniel took a deep breath. “You know I still talk with your brother from time to time, right? The last time, Michael mentioned that you’d gone to the Amazon to find the key. When Mr. Grissom mentioned he was looking for it, too, I thought…” He shook his head and looked at Joyce. “I’m no fool. I knew the kind of man I was dealing with. But I thought if I got him the key, it would ensure your safety. Please, Joyce, I’m so sorry. I only did it for you.”

She turned away from him.

“Please—”

Grissom smiled. “Don’t beg, Professor. It’s not seemly for a man of your experience. She is a petulant child and doesn’t appreciate what you’ve done for her.”

“Speaking of petulant children,” Gabriel said, “where’s your son? I’d have expected to see him here, carrying your bags.”

“Julian will be joining us momentarily, Mr. Hunt. I know how much he’s looking forward to seeing you again after your last encounter.”

The door behind Gabriel opened.

“Ah, speak of the devil,” Grissom said.

“The stairwells are manned, and the security cameras on this floor will be down for half an hour,” Julian reported. “Any longer than that and hotel security will get suspicious. We’re going to want to be long gone by then.”

“Well done,” Grissom said. He nodded toward Gabriel. “Our friend here was just asking about you.”

Julian came around. He had a gun in his hand and Gabriel saw that his throat still bore the angry red marks of the choke hold that had rendered him unconscious.

Gabriel smiled. “Nice scar.”

Julian turned the gun toward Gabriel’s face.

“Not yet, Julian,” Grissom said. “You’ll have your chance soon enough, my boy. But Mr. Hunt and I have some unfinished business of our own.” From his jacket pocket he pulled the ivory-handled dagger. He pressed the eye of the dragon carved along the handle and the two additional blades sprang out to flank the central one. Grissom rose from the chair, leaving the backpack on the cushion behind him.

“Step aside, Julian,” Grissom said.

Julian obediently stepped to one side—but in doing so, he came within Gabriel’s reach. Gabriel swept one hand up, grabbing Julian’s gun arm and yanking it so the weapon pointed toward the side table. The gunman standing there ducked aside, but he wasn’t the target. Gabriel squeezed Julian’s fingers against the trigger.

One of the acetylene cylinders exploded in a violent eruption of fire and thick black smoke. Everyone hit the floor except the gunman who’d been nearest to the table; a large piece of the canister’s outer shell sliced crosswise through his torso and pinned him to the wall. His clothing erupted into flames.

A shrill alarm sounded from the smoke detector on the ceiling. The sprinkler system turned on, drenching the room in a cold rain. Gabriel wrestled the gun out of Julian’s hands, sprang to his feet and broke for the chair across the room, where Grissom had left the backpack.

Undeterred by the sprinklers, the fire climbed up the wall, devouring the wallpaper and charring the wooden frame of the mirror above the side table. Thick black smoke filled the room. Gabriel felt light-headed, and realized the acetylene gas was mixing with the smoke. Through the haze, he saw Grissom kneeling and cough
ing violently into a handkerchief, the dagger on the floor by his knees.

Shapes moved in the thick smoke as Grissom’s men got back to their feet. Gunshots sounded. Gabriel heard a bullet zip past his head and smash a ceramic lamp by the couch. Another smashed the mirror into shards of glass. With Grissom’s men unable to see, they were shooting in all directions. He heard voices shouting but none of them sounded like Joyce’s. He’d lost track of her—but he didn’t dare call her name, not while the gunmen were looking for any indication of a direction to fire in.

He snatched the backpack off the chair and, hearing footsteps behind him, spun around. A man rushed toward him through the smoke, gun in hand. Gabriel swung the backpack, hitting the gunman in the head and knocking him to the floor. The man rolled away and came back up with his weapon blazing. Bullets tore through the air beside Gabriel, so close he could feel their heat on his skin. Gabriel lifted Julian’s gun, aimed into the center of the dark mass in the smoke and fired. The man fell and didn’t get back up.

Sopping wet from the sprinklers, eyes burning, throat raw, he slung the backpack over one shoulder and dropped to a crouch. A breeze from a shattered window swept through the thick smoke, clearing it a little, and he was suddenly able to make out two figures grappling on the other side of the room. One was tall and thick, the other shorter and with a ponytail flapping at the back of her head. Joyce! He saw her elbow her opponent in the side of the head. When the man fell forward, she brought her knee up into his face. He hit the floor hard and stayed there. As Joyce turned, another man came up behind her, snatching her off her feet.

Gabriel sprang toward them, but something grabbed him from behind. Hands wrapped around his throat and he heard Julian’s voice hissing in his ear. Gabriel tried to swing his gun around, but Julian batted it away. The gun slipped from Gabriel’s fingers and flew across the floor. Then Julian’s hands tightened around his throat again.

A massive explosion rocked the room. The other two cylinders, Gabriel thought—the heat of the fire must have set them off. The blast knocked Julian off his feet and Gabriel was able to pull himself free from the other man’s grip as they fell. Flames leapt across the wall and licked at the ceiling. More smoke poured into the room. He heard Grissom coughing again somewhere off to his side. Gabriel rolled away from Julian. His hand touched something hard. He grabbed it—Grissom’s triple-bladed dagger.

Gabriel stood, the smoke stinging his eyes. The gas in the air made him dizzy. He stumbled forward, hitting the sliding glass door that led out to the terrace. Closed. Gabriel reached for the handle to open it when he saw Julian lurching out of the smoke toward him, his hands extended before him. He’d found another gun somewhere and had it pointed at Gabriel’s face. Gabriel ducked, stepped toward him, and drove the dagger in his fist upward. He felt it sink into Julian’s gut. Julian collapsed on top of him, the gun falling from his hands. His face was just inches away and Gabriel saw the fury drain from his expression. In its place, shock. Fear. Pain. His mouth opened, and he drooped forward. Gabriel let Julian’s body slide to the floor.

Another figure came running toward him through the smoke. Gabriel groped along the floor for the gun
Julian had dropped until he saw Joyce break through the wall of black haze.

“We have to get out of here,” Gabriel said as she reached him. A bullet whizzed past them, cracking the glass of the terrace door.

“Where’s Daniel?” Joyce asked.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said, “but I think he’s shown he can take care of himself.”

“Daniel!” she yelled.

“After what he did?” Gabriel said. “You still—”

“
Daniel!
”

A short figure rose up slowly from the floor nearby and Gabriel realized Daniel Wingard had been cowering behind the couch.

“Joyce,” Daniel said, coughing, “thank god you’re all right.”

Gabriel shouted in Joyce’s ear, “Give me one good reason we shouldn’t leave him here with his friends.”

“I can’t do that,” Joyce replied. “I can’t just leave him. Whatever he’s done.”

“Then he’s your responsibility, not mine.” Without waiting for an answer, he plowed through the smoke toward the door of the suite. Flames roared along the wall near the door, bathing them in heat. Gabriel put one arm up, covering his nose and mouth. He touched the doorknob. The metal was hot from the flames, but not too hot to touch. He turned it and pulled the door open. Smoke billowed out over his head as he thrust his head into the penthouse hallway, gulping air. The fire alarm was sounding even louder out here, wave after wave of shrill electronic pulses. Gabriel looked left and right, trying to spot the fire stairs. The prospect of climbing down thirty floors didn’t thrill him, but it was better than staying here.

He spotted the stairwell door at the far end of the hall. As he set one foot out of the suite in that direction, though, the door burst open—and men began pouring out, running toward him with guns drawn.

Gabriel slammed the door shut and quickly fastened the deadbolt lock. It wouldn’t hold them out for long, but hopefully long enough to find another way out of here. He led them back across the burning, smoke-filled hotel room toward the terrace. Behind them, fists pounded on the door, barely audible above the blasting alarm. Gabriel slid the glass door open and shepherded Joyce and Daniel onto the terrace.

Joyce looked around. “Now what?”

Gabriel walked to the edge, skirting the table and chairs, and looked down. A crowd had gathered on the street below, pointing up at the smoke billowing out of their room. From where he stood, a column of terraces extended thirty stories down. As he’d noted earlier, it would be possible to climb from one to the next—for him, at least; maybe even for Joyce—but getting back inside the hotel would be a challenge. There was no guarantee anyone would let them into their room, and the glass of the terrace door had barely spiderwebbed even from multiple gunshot strikes—it wouldn’t break easily, not with just a couple of light lounge chairs to swing at it. And if they couldn’t get in, they would be sitting ducks, easy pickings for any of Grissom’s men who followed them down.

But up—up was another matter.

He dragged one of the chairs away from the table
and placed it against the side of the building. He could hear Grissom’s men pounding and kicking the door. He had to hurry. Any moment they would switch to using their weapons to blast the lock open.

Even standing on the chair, the roof was too high for him to reach. However, there was a thick cement ledge, maybe ten inches high, running along the wall just below the roof. He reached for it, his fingers brushing the Turkish designs carved into the cement. The banging on the door stopped. He could picture them aiming their guns at the lock. He stepped up onto the back of the chair, got a firm hold on the ledge and pulled himself up. From there he hoisted himself onto the gravel and tarpaper surface of the roof. He bent down to help Joyce up, then left her to help Daniel while he took off the backpack, unzipped it, and pulled out his Colt. He put the backpack back on his shoulders as the sound of gunshots and splintering wood came from under them.

Daniel threw one fat, stubby leg onto the roof and hauled himself up, then lay on his back, huffing the fresh air and trying to catch his breath. Below, Gabriel heard the terrace door sliding open. Glancing over the roof’s edge, Gabriel saw Grissom’s men burst onto the balcony. Two of them raised guns his way.

“Move!” Gabriel shouted, ducking back from the edge as gunfire sped his way. Joyce helped Daniel to his feet, and the three of them ran across the roof, the gravel crunching under their heels. The hotel covered the better part of a city block and in the light of the setting sun, the roof seemed to extend forever. Halfway across, he ducked around a metal shed to find the roof access doorway, but it was locked from the inside. He rattled the knob once and kept moving. Behind them, Grissom’s men were still climbing up from the terrace below. Ahead, an obstacle course of turbine roof ventilators
stretched for yards like a sea of low, gray onion domes. He started weaving around them as bullets began flying their way. Fortunately, climbing up to the roof had slowed Grissom’s men, so there was room enough between them to make aiming hard. But the sprint had taken its toll: Daniel was already out of breath and lagging behind, and Joyce was hanging back to help him. “Come on,” Gabriel said. “They’ll catch up if—”

The roof access door slammed open. Half a dozen men ran out onto the roof in pursuit. Gunshots cracked. Bullets ricocheted off the ventilators, dug into the gravel at their feet. Gabriel stopped, raising his Colt, but he couldn’t get a clear shot with Joyce and Daniel in the way. He let them rush by, then fired. One of the gunmen spun and fell. The others kept coming, filling the air with bullets. Gabriel ran, keeping his head down. A bullet ricocheted off a ventilator by his feet.

The field of ventilators ended and, a moment later, he saw the edge of the roof approaching. Joyce reached it first, skidding to a halt. She looked down, turned back to Gabriel.

Gabriel stopped at the edge, his heart pounding. He looked over and saw the white cement roof of the apartment building that abutted the hotel. The drop looked to be about fifteen feet. He could hear the shouts of the gunmen drawing closer. Their only chance was to keep moving.

“You’re going to have to hang down and drop. I’ll hold them off as long as I can. Go!” Joyce climbed over the edge, holding onto the concrete rim with a white-knuckled grip. Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel saw Daniel doing the same. Gabriel covered them, picking his shots carefully. He only had so many bullets, so he had to make each shot count. “Are you down?” he shouted. Joyce’s voice came from a distance: “Yes.”

Gabriel swung around and without pausing to look, jumped off the roof. He braced himself for a hard landing and rolled as his feet hit the surface below. The impact was jarring and one of his palms got badly scraped, but he lurched back to his feet and kept running, sprinting after Joyce and Daniel. They were climbing over a low brick wall separating this building from the next. Behind him, Grissom’s men reached the edge of the hotel’s roof and opened fire. Bullets chipped the cement all around him. He kept sprinting, pausing only once to toss a gunshot back their way.

“Gabriel!” It was Joyce shouting to him from the next building over. She had reached the roof access shed for this building and had her hand on the knob. “This one’s unlocked!”

He raced toward her as she pulled the door open. She stepped back with a startled expression on her face. An instant later, two burly men barreled out of the shed carrying axes in their hands.

Gabriel lowered his gun and hid it behind his back as they turned to face him.

“Miss,” one of the men said, “we’ll need you to stay back. You, too, sir.”

More men were emerging from the shed. They all wore the heavy rubberized uniform of the Turkish municipal fire brigade. One pointed in the direction of the Peninsula and they all began heading that way.

“Please make your way down to the ground floor, sir,” one of them said to Gabriel as he passed. “The fire is spreading. It isn’t safe for you up here.”

“No, it’s not,” Gabriel said. “Though I have to say, I feel a lot safer now that you’re here.” He glanced back. Grissom’s men had faded—they were nowhere to be seen.