The Vengeance of the Tau (21 page)

Stars exploded in front of McCracken’s face. The German had lost his grip on the submachine gun and flailed to get it back. That gave Blaine the time he needed to ram the palm heel of his right hand hard into the German’s solar plexus. The man’s mouth dropped to gasp silently for air. His eyes bulged and McCracken slammed him across the side of the head with both fists interlocked. His head whiplashed against the wall, face seeming to meld into it as he slid down hugging the asphalt. McCracken grabbed his weapon as well and continued on.

“I’m heading back up for the lobby now.”

“Go back down!” the German leader ordered one of the members of Team Four.

“I did not hear that. I—”

The leader next heard the thud of impact, followed by a brief burst of gunfire. More thuds followed and then the echoing of escaping footsteps.

“Who is left? Do you hear me,
who is left
?”

Only four men reported in. He had lost a dozen, dammit, a dozen of the best the movement could provide. But not just to McCracken; that much was clear. Another force was at work here—one equally deadly, if not more so.

“All teams,” the leader started, “converge on the lobby. Repeat, converge on the lobby. The target is coming this way.”

Though several floors apart and on different sides of the hotel, the Twins’ heads snapped up at the sound of gunfire in the exact same instant. It took only an instant more for them to pin down its origin. One was three floors away, the other four. Along the way each had been slowed by the necessary removal of another of the amateurish force. They hadn’t used their guns this time, for fear of confusing the other and perhaps defeating their own purpose. Hands were more than sufficient, a neck broken in one case, a nose bone driven through the brain in another.

Still, the Twins felt the unfamiliar pangs of anxiety. The distance between either of them and McCracken was considerable. He could conceivably be out of the building before they closed the distance all the way. Separated by the length of several floors, the Twins smiled simultaneously. They had forgotten briefly that the remainder of the depleted force would have heard the gunfire, just as they had. Not that these men had any chance against McCracken, but they could slow him down—and that was all the Twins needed.

They rushed on.

McCracken took the stairwell to its absolute bottom, two levels below the lobby, and tried the door. It was locked. He hadn’t anticipated this, knowing it reduced his enemy’s options as well as his own. He had no choice but to retrace his steps and exit one floor up at the lower lobby. But his unfamiliarity with that level made it a poor choice under the circumstances. The lobby was a much better one specifically, because he knew the layout and could thus cut the fastest path possible through it. All his options were fraught with this risk. The trick was to choose the least of all evils and support himself with the forty-five shots remaining in the pair of submachine guns slung from either shoulder if necessary.

McCracken retraced his steps up the first flight and then started up the second leading to the lobby. He had the exit door in sight when a large figure lunged before him from the next staircase up, aiming a strange-looking square pistol Blaine’s way. Blaine managed to get a hand on the bigger man’s wrist and force it upward. A muffled spit rang out. The pistol’s barrel seemed to cough.

Tranquilizers!
Blaine realized.

The bigger man slammed him against the wall, still trying to bring his weapon down. McCracken smacked a knee into his groin. The big man fought the pain off and with brute strength began to succeed in angling the tip of his barrel back in Blaine’s direction.

The force of the two men confronting each other resulted in a crunching pirouette, as they spun and slammed each other into the walls, which seemed almost ready to give. One of McCracken’s submachine guns rattled to the floor when he tried to grasp it. The other dangled out of reach.

Suddenly Blaine heard the heavy rattle of footsteps, followed by a few words exchanged in German. Stationary against the big man for an instant, he was able to see another pair of men crouched in combat position on different steps of the staircase that wound toward the floor above the lobby.

“Halt!”
one yelled, showing his machine gun just ahead of the other.

Before he had opportunity to use it, a barrage of automatic fire from above tore into both him and the man just above him on the steps. The two Germans crumpled down the stairs, while the giant tottered in utter confusion between McCracken and the staircase. He had taken an uncertain step forward when his huge body was pummeled by an unceasing cascade of bullets—two guns’ worth, judging by the sound and angle. Somehow Blaine managed to keep his feet through the barrage, and the big man’s frame provided enough cover for him to lunge for the door leading out of the stairwell.

The bullets of the new pair of killers traced him all the way through, and Blaine burst onto a short hallway that led to the center of the main lobby.

“Come in!
Anyone
respond!”

When no response came, the German leader knew the last burst of bullets he’d heard had wiped out the rest of his team. He alone was left to deal with McCracken, if the force that had killed his men hadn’t killed McCracken as well.

He couldn’t let that happen. There was too much at stake.

A fresh burst of gunfire reached his naked ear, followed by screams. The lobby seemed to still all at once.

He saw the only option he had left now and bolted for the lavish front desk across the lobby.

Blaine reached the lobby to find people starting to flood out in all directions, scattered by the sounds of gunfire. He let himself be swallowed by part of the mass and took cover within it.

The sound of terrified screams preceded the all-too-familiar clacking of automatic fire by barely a second. McCracken swung to see a wall of people behind him collapsing.

Innocent people! These animals were killing innocent people, goddammit!

Enraged by that reality, McCracken began shoving the panicked throngs around him aside, searching for a space in the chaos through which to fire the submachine gun still slung on his shoulder. He found a small gap and snapped off a single rapid burst through it toward a pair of figures that had at last emerged. The broad, curly-haired man took a lobby table over with him for cover, while the broad, curly-haired man—

Wait! They were
twins
!

Their firing resumed without any regard for the innocent bystanders between them and McCracken. Blaine pressed his trigger again.

Click.

The clip was exhausted. His only chance now was to flee. But he held fast to the Ingram to keep the twins guessing.

Blaine joined the surge of chaos in the main exit’s direction, made all the worse by the arrival minutes before of three bus loads of tour patrons. He ducked low to remove himself from sight, but, again, the twin killers simply fired at anything that moved in an attempt to flush him out.

The crowd flooding from the lobby was jammed up at the doors, the wall of panicked desperation stationary and rigid. There was nowhere to go.

Suddenly a new surge of bullets erupted from the other side of the lobby, fired in the direction of the twins. Blaine caught a glimpse of a man with a crew cut ducking back behind the cover of the front desk to avoid the twins’ return fire. Just as fast, the man bounced up again and opened fire with a fresh magazine, forcing the killers to scamper for cover of their own.

McCracken seized the opportunity to charge out of the hotel with the rest of the crowd, the rush absorbing him. On the sidewalk, though, he stopped. Inside, a man had saved his life. The man was a professional, just like the Germans who had tried to take Blaine with tranquilizers. He could be part of that team. He could have
answers
!

McCracken had to save him.

He swung his eyes desperately about the circular drive fronting the hotel, searching for something to make use of, something—

Blaine’s gaze locked on the lead tour bus in the procession of three. Its engine was still on, the driver having fled with the task of removing the luggage from the underneath compartment only half-completed. McCracken rushed to the open main door and up the steps and got the door closed before he had barely taken the driver’s seat. Then he shoved the big bus into gear and drove it straight forward.

The screeching of the engine almost drowned out the sound of the hotel’s glass front wall disintegrating upon impact. Glass was thrown everywhere as the bus roared right into the lobby, destroying everything in its path. The terrified bystanders managed to dive out of its way, as Blaine steered it for the front desk.

The twins’ bullets began pounding its frame just before the bus got there.

“Get in!” he screamed out the open driver’s vent. “If you want to live, get in!”

The man threw himself up over the counter and chanced a dash round the bus’s front, firing all the way. He lunged up the steps and Blaine jammed the bus into reverse, as the doors hissed closed again. Bullets turned them into spiderwebs of flying glass, and the man with the crew cut returned the fire with his pistol.

The bus’s tail end slammed through another section of the lobby’s wraparound glass, taking a hefty portion of a wall with it this time. Its front hadn’t made it all the way out when McCracken shifted into drive and tore off, turning the entire entryway into a ruined shell.

The windshield shattered under the force of the twins’ gunfire, which peppered the frame as the bus started away. Ducking low beneath the dashboard, Blaine heard a pair of thumps as at least two of its outside tires were shot out. But that wasn’t about to stop him from steering the bus straight onto the main road fronting the Büyük Efes.

“Who are they?” Blaine demanded of the man kneeling on the floor a yard away from him. “Who are
you
?”

“The man who’s going to tell you what’s going on,” the man said breathlessly in German-laced English. “The man who has the answers you need.”

Chapter 20

“
I’M LISTENING,
”
MCCRACKEN SAID
, watching the man’s gun.

“Not here. Not yet. They’ll be coming.”

He bent the bus into a screeching turn and sped on.

“You’re part of the team that came for me in the hotel.”

The man nodded. “Its leader.”

“One of your men was carrying a tranquilizer pistol.”

“It was never our intention to kill you. We need you alive. We need your help.”

“You could have asked for it.”

“You wouldn’t have given it.”

“Why?”

“Because we are Nazis, Mr. McCracken.”

The car’s rear doors were yanked open simultaneously.

“Go!” one of the Twins screamed.

“After the bus!” the other added.

“Now!”
they followed in unison.
“That way!”

The driver sped off before Billy Griggs could catch his breath. He had seen the bus first crash through the hotel lobby and then screech away, but had thought the Twins were responsible, for who else would have—

“Take a right here!”

“Don’t slow down!”

“A left now!”

“I see it!”

The Twins were out of the car again before it had come to a complete halt, rushing forward as if the traffic around them didn’t exist. It moved in stops and starts. The snarl, they saw now, had been caused by the battered bus being abandoned by McCracken in the middle of the avenue. The Twins checked it cautiously, knowing this might be a ruse to get them to lower their guard. McCracken could be hiding or lurking anywhere, setting a trap, waiting to strike.

Just as they would have.

But he was long gone, and not alone, either. They hadn’t killed the German team’s leader when the chance was there and now McCracken had rescued him. That error seemed certain to compound their failure. The Twins looked at each other.

“Shit,” they said together.

“At the dig, those were your men I found dead inside the find!” Blaine realized. “What was left of them anyway.”

They had abandoned the bus nearly ten minutes earlier. The German was driving one of the four cars he had planted in all directions from the hotel, as an added and ultimately fortuitous precaution. McCracken sat in the passenger seat tensely.

“Not my men, Mr. McCracken. If they were my men, things would not have progressed to the unfortunate heights they did.”

“They killed the head of the dig team.”

“Their orders were to do nothing of the kind. And they never, under any circumstances, should have entered the chamber. They exceeded the parameters of their mission.”

“And what about your mission?”

“My orders were to stabilize the situation in Ephesus and, once your involvement was uncovered, help you in any way possible.” He looked McCracken’s way. “I’m afraid I arrived too late to be of any service to you.”

“The helicopter!”

“Yes.”

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Tessen. Hans Tessen. At least, that used to be my name.”

“Until you were resettled after the war. Who by? ODESSA? The Comrades Organization?”

“We should not dwell on the past with the present in the peril it is.”

“But you were a soldier.”

Tessen’s neck stiffened. “I
am
a soldier, Mr. McCracken, just as you are, and our enemy this time is a common one.”

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee back at the hotel?”

“They killed my men, disrupted my orderly plan to establish contact with you.”

“Orderly?” Blaine raised disbelievingly. “Your men blew up the door of the room they thought I was in.”

“To take you by surprise, to give them a chance to explain.”

“Hope they were going to do a better job than you are, Hans.”

“Someone else sent those twins, Mr. McCracken. That someone is your true enemy.”

Blaine thought of Billy Griggs and the battle that had spread onto the Golden Gate Bridge. “And just who is that?”

“I don’t know, but if the past is any indication …”

“That’s twice you’ve mentioned the past, Hans. Why don’t we start there?”