Something’s wrong.
He shifted over to a neighboring window and rose high enough to peek past a corner. The vantage was less exposed than the doorway. Below his position, the white marble steps of the Holy Ladder blazed under the midday sun. The stairs were empty for the moment, but from his lofty position, he had a clear view down into the garden courtyard behind the church. A clutch of people gathered there around the red umbrella of a tour guide.
Before going silent, Seichan had reported on the arrival of a busload of Chinese tourists—who came with a suspicious group of at least six men.
Down below, the tour guide lowered her umbrella and pointed toward the chapel.
Gray tightened his jaw.
Are the tourists heading up here?
He willed them to remain in the courtyard. He didn’t want to put any civilians at needless risk, especially if he had to shoot his way off this rocky spur of the mountain.
Then movement drew his attention. From the rear door of the church, the familiar figure of Sister Clara stepped into the sunlight. A pair of Chinese men accompanied the nun. She shaded her eyes and lifted an arm toward the chapel. The men looked in his direction.
Gray slunk farther back, cursing the nun’s goodwill. Had the men inquired about their group or was Sister Clara merely telling the story of the chapel, the legend of Saint Eustace? One of them finally bowed his head in thanks to Sister Clara. The other headed off and confronted a pair of dark figures waiting at the fork in the path. Words were exchanged; then the same pair headed down the path toward Saint Benedict’s grotto, clearly ordered to search the hermit’s old cave.
The man who gave the order was rejoined by his partner, who lifted his gaze toward the chapel.
Gray ducked completely out of sight.
So that accounts for four of the assault team.
He guessed the other two were still in the church or out front, covering the escape routes off the mountain. The enemy intended to lock the summit up tight. The only other way down from here was straight over the cliff.
And here I am without a parachute.
A muffled whisper rose from the hole in the floor behind him. He caught only a few words, but the note of inquiry was easy to recognize. Roland and Lena wanted to know what was going on.
“Stay below,” he warned as he dropped flat to his belly next to the door.
He kept his SIG Sauer extended ahead of him, aiming toward the two men as they began the hard climb toward the chapel. He weighed the option of simply rolling over to the trapdoor and hiding below with Roland and Lena, but clearly the enemy knew their targets were on the mountaintop. He feared what would happen if the assailants failed to find them, what they might do to the civilians or the group of nuns at the convent.
Plus Seichan was still down there somewhere.
Knowing that, Gray needed to stay in place, to back her up.
Halfway up the stairs, the man in the lead unzipped his thigh-length jacket, revealing Kevlar beneath and a compact assault rifle slung across his belly. He raised the gun, keeping it hidden from below with his body. Gray recognized a ZH-05 rifle, the latest hardware of China’s special forces. The weapon came equipped with a laser-guided grenade launcher.
Then if that wasn’t bad enough . . .
In the courtyard below, the tourist group drifted away from their guide and began to separate: some heading upward, others moving down toward the grotto. If Gray opened fire on the stairs, he risked a stray round cutting into those civilians.
He needed a new plan.
Gray glanced over his shoulder. The chapel had four windows, each open and facing a different cardinal direction. He had to get those two men in here, away from the civilians. He belly-crawled away from the door and aimed for the altar directly behind him. Above it, a window opened onto the mountain spur on that side. If he hid outside and waited for the men to enter, he could hopefully ambush the pair.
But first he had to make sure Roland and Lena remained safe.
As he reached the trapdoor in front of the altar, two pale faces stared back up at him. “Close it up,” he ordered. “We’ve got company coming.”
Though plainly frightened, Lena nodded and hauled hard on the bronze lever. It refused to budge. Lines of strain creased her forehead as she struggled with the centuries-old mechanism.
Roland squeezed next to her, adding his strength—then something finally gave way. The floor jolted and the ramp began to rise with a rhythmic ticking of gears.
Satisfied, Gray ran toward the window above the altar.
At least they would be safe.
Now to find Seichan.
He vaulted onto the altar and leaped for the sill of the open window. As he flew, a gun blast sounded behind him, coming from outside. Landing in the open window, he twisted around.
A dark object came whistling inside.
Grenade.
He barely registered it, already moving. The small 20mm grenade struck the roof and ricocheted off. It hit the top of the altar, then bounced and rattled over its edge.
With no other choice, Gray flung himself out the window—but not before he caught a glimpse of the grenade dropping through the trapdoor before it closed.
Cursing, Gray hit the ground outside and flattened to the granite mountaintop. He covered his head as the detonation shook the ground under him. Tiles broke off the chapel roof and shattered all around.
He pictured Roland’s and Lena’s scared faces.
What have I done?
1:08 P.M.
What did you do, Gray?
Seichan crouched in a small cave as the explosion subsided. The flames from a dozen small candles and votives continued to shiver from the quake, dancing her shadows across the stony walls of Saint Benedict’s grotto. She kept her legs braced for another breath, her muscles bunched to make a leap for the sunlit exit.
Outside the cave, screams rose as the tourists reacted to the explosion, likely fleeing from the vicinity. Good, she thought grimly. With the crowd gone, there’d be less risk of collateral damage from the firefight to come—and it would come.
Once she was satisfied that the cave roof was not about to come crashing down, her concern returned to Gray. He must have been the target of that explosion, but she had no way of making radio contact with him inside this cave.
So first things first.
She dropped to one knee and yanked her steel dagger from the neck of her dead assailant. His cohort lay sprawled a yard away, his neck slashed from ear to ear. Earlier, she had guessed the enemy would search this dark grotto and so had set up her ambush. She had hoped to take out at least one of the enemy.
Two was even better.
She had already dispatched a third, a guard left near the parking lot. She had no trouble getting close to him, approaching him from his blind side, from the convent where she had been hiding earlier. Caught by surprise, he had reacted too slowly. Afterward, she had hid his body under the tourist bus and had circled the church to set up the trap in the grotto.
Preparing to continue her assault, she wiped the bloody dagger clean on the victim’s chest and slipped it into her wrist sheath. She tugged a sleeve over the weapon to hide it. As an extra precaution, she reached under the dead man’s jacket and removed the pistol hidden in a shoulder holster. She shoved the weapon into her belt at the base of her back. Once ready, she smoothed her disheveled clothes, checking how she looked.
At least black hid the few drops of blood splatter.
Seichan adjusted the wimple of her nun’s habit. Earlier, while hiding in the convent when the bus of Chinese tourists arrived, she had searched the rooms until she found the garment in a closet and had quickly donned the disguise. What better way to get a drop on the enemy than to play a simple nun, especially here on church grounds?
Satisfied with her look, she headed toward the exit. As she stepped out of the cave and back onto the sunny path, she came upon a young Chinese mother and her four-year-old daughter. The pair shelt
ered behind the grotto’s glass ossuary, as if the bones of the dead friars would protect them. The woman’s eyes met hers, her expression frightened, her arms clutching tightly around her child.
“Xiūn?, jiu ming!” the woman pleaded in Mandarin.
Sister, help me!
Maintaining her guise, Seichan pointed toward a gate in the church fence that led out to the parking lot. She kept her voice soft, consoling her in Mandarin. “Get to the front, my child. Don’t stop. Keep heading down the road.”
The woman only clutched her daughter more tightly, clearly too scared to move.
Seichan rolled her eyes and took a more direct approach. Through a slit in the habit, she removed her stolen pistol and waved the barrel at the gate.
“Move! Now!”
That worked better.
Like a spooked jackrabbit, the woman bolted with her child.
With the way finally clear, Seichan stalked to the fork in the path. She now had a clear view to the chapel above. She spotted a pair of men running up the steep steps. One carried a pistol; the other hauled a smoking assault rifle. The two reached the chapel and dropped to either side of the door, their backs to the walls.
Her heart quickened, anxious for Gray.
She raised her pistol, but the men were too far away for any chance of a decent shot. So she touched her throat mike.
“Gray, are you okay?”
His voice came back immediately, whispering in her ear as he subvocalized into his mike. “Still alive, if that’s what you mean.”
Relief flooded through her, but she spoke tersely. “You’ve got two men about to knock on your front door.”
“Got that. Can you handle any others? We need a way off this rock.”
She glanced toward the church. “Working on it.”
The last assailant must still be holed up in the sanctuary, which was a problem with the tourists hiding inside. A glance to the church’s rear courtyard revealed the gardens had mostly emptied out. The tour guide remained in the open, looking anxiously up toward the chapel. The tiny woman clearly recognized the threat, yet bravely tried to get the last of her clients into the church.
Through the open door, Seichan spotted a crowd milling inside.
This is not going to end well.
She tucked her hands—including her stolen pistol—into the wide cuffs of her habit’s sleeves. She bowed her head and hurried toward that rear door, hoping her disguise held out long enough for her to surprise the remaining assailant. She did not want a firefight to break out inside that packed sanctuary.
The tour guide spotted her and motioned for Seichan to hurry. The woman still held her umbrella aloft, hiding less from the sun than from the gunmen above.
Seichan increased her pace.
As she neared the door, rifle blasts drew her attention back to the mountaintop chapel. One of the men strafed his automatic weapon through the open doorway, while the other ducked low and rolled into the chapel.
She fought against a desire to sprint up there to help Gray, but she had her own assignment. As she neared the sanctuary door, a dark figure burst out into the courtyard from the nave of the church. Seichan immediately recognized the man. The spatter of fresh gunfire must have drawn her target out. He came barreling toward her, oblivious to the threat in front of him.
She smiled, pulled out her stolen pistol, and emptied most of the clip into his chest. The impact of the barrage stopped his charge. She placed the last round through the center of his forehead. He teetered in midstep, his expression shocked—then toppled backward to the gravel path.
She tossed the spent weapon and reached through a slit in her habit. She tugged free her SIG Sauer from a hip holster—a precaution in case there were any other men. Earlier she had identified at least six, but there could be more.
In the end, she was correct about the number of men.
The tour guide lowered her umbrella between them, as if sheltering behind it. Seichan met the woman’s eyes over the top edge—and saw no fear there.
Not good.
Seichan immediately recognized her mistake.
Apparently I’m not the only one in disguise.
Seichan leaped to the side as bullets ripped through the umbrella fabric, chasing her to the ground. A round struck her SIG Sauer, knocking the weapon out of her grip.
The woman twirled the umbrella and closed in on her.
1:12 P.M.
As gunshots echoed up from below, Gray skirted low around the outside of the chapel. A man called from inside, likely telling his partner that the place was empty. Gray heard the confusion in their voices. The pair must be equally mystified at the lack of damage inside the chapel from the grenade.
Gray had his own worries about that blast, about the fate of Roland and Lena.
Reaching the window on the south side, he popped up with his SIG Sauer and fired at the man inside the chapel. He squeezed his trigger twice, aiming both times for a head shot, knowing the enemy had body armor under their civilian clothes. Both rounds struck true and dropped his target to the ground. He ducked away as a spray of automatic fire ripped through the window, coming from the doorway.
Gray retreated back the way he had come, putting the chapel between him and the shooter. The window above him faced the front door. He pictured the gunman sheltered there, watching all three windows for any movement.
Gray propped his back against the wall. He held his pistol in both hands, clutching it to his chest, readying himself for the challenge, to see who was the quicker draw in this standoff.
Then a series of loud blasts rang out—three of them.
A small grenade came sailing through the window over his head. It struck a boulder ten yards away and came bouncing back toward him. He imagined similar missiles flying out the other two windows. Apparently his adversary was trying to blow him out of hiding.
It certainly worked.
With the first grenade rattling back toward him, Gray had no other option but to twist around and dive for the window above. He leaped headlong over the sill as the grenades exploded in a series of chest-thumping booms outside. As he flew through the air, he kept his arms ahead of him, cradling his pistol between his hands and firing toward the doorway.
His opponent never flinched from the barrage. The gunman lay on his belly, hiding behind the doorframe, his assault rifle chugging rounds into the chapel. Gray felt something burn across his bicep as he hit the marble floor and slid sideways into the body of the first assailant he had shot.
Gray lay on his back, using the dead man’s mass as a shield, and fired over the form.
The situation was plainly untenable—which proved true with his next breath.
A familiar sharp retort echoed from the doorway. A grenade shot past his nose, hit the altar, and ricocheted straight toward him. Anticipating such an assault this time, Gray flung the dead body over him, caught the skittering grenade with the dead man’s chest, and smothered it with the body.
Gray huddled on top, curling his limbs in tight to keep the dead man’s body armor between him and the grenade. From a corner of an eye, he saw his assailant fling himself away from the doorway, hiding from the blast to come.
The explosion tossed Gray high. He flew upward amid a cloud of blood and smoke. Then he crashed back down. But rather than hitting the floor, he fell through it as the concussive force of the grenade had shattered the thick marble slab that covered the hidden stairs.
He struck those dark steps hard.
Deaf and dazed, his ears aching, Gray clawed back to his knees, then his feet. He teetered atop the debris and lifted his head through the hole. Smoke obscured the shadowy interior of the chapel. A rectangle of sunlight glowed through the pall, marking the doorway. A shadow rose into view there.
His opponent.
Safely hidden in the smoke, Gray took his time and lifted his SIG Sauer. He had managed to keep the pistol still clutched in his right hand. He did his best to steady his aim and emptied the last of hi
s rounds at that shadow.
With grim satisfaction, he watched the dark form slump to the ground.
Good enough.
Gray’s legs gave out and he fell sideways, sprawling across the top of the dark stairs. His vision blurred, but then a bright light grew from below, revealing two watery shapes.
Hands clutched his shoulders.
“Gray?”
It was Lena.
He forced his breath out, his lips forming a name.
“Sei . . . chan . . .”
1:15 P.M.
The next round clipped the wing off an angel statue in the garden.
Nine . . .
As Seichan hid behind the statue, she kept count of the number of shots fired by the Asian assassin with the umbrella. If the weapon was the same design as the one Seichan had stolen from the dead man in the grotto—a Chinese QSZ-92—the dual-stack magazine held fifteen rounds, which meant her opponent still had plenty of ammunition left.
Seichan had spent the past two minutes in a fierce game of cat and mouse with the deadly woman across the church’s gardens. Loud explosions interrupted their battle, echoing down from the chapel above. Seichan took advantage of those blasts to dive from cover to cover, to draw her opponent to waste more shots.
All the while, she did her best to quell her fears for Gray, to ignore the chatter of automatic fire from up there. She needed her full attention at hand. This assassin was disciplined and well trained, with a heart as cold as her own.
Seichan caught glimpses of the woman as she danced through the gardens and shielded her form with an expert twirl of that infernal umbrella. Her adversary appeared to be no older than twenty, maybe even younger. Her straight black hair was cut in a severe line across her forehead and along the bottom of her ears. Seichan estimated her height was at best five feet, all of it lithe muscle, a frame built for speed, which the woman used to her advantage.
Seichan had tried repeatedly to reach the SIG Sauer that had been knocked out of her grip, but her opponent kept her away from the pistol. Left with only her throwing knives, Seichan had already flung two at the woman—the first sliced through the umbrella’s fabric but failed to find a target behind that shield; the second was blocked by an expert twirl of the umbrella’s steel ribs.