The Secret of Excalibur_A Novel

  “Fifteen. Fourteen …”

  Not even halfway. A hundred yards in twelve seconds. Could he do it?

  In theory, yes, but this wasn’t a running track—

  The guard was still facing the front lawn. Despite the cold, Chase now felt heat racing through his entire body, exertion and adrenaline and fear.

  “Seven …”

  Fifty yards, forty, the ground just a blur. He pushed harder, harder, lungs burning.

  “Three …”

  Left. The guard was turning, about to walk down the side of the mansion.

  Toward him—

  “One—”

  No time to slow. Instead Chase dived through the door, landing hard on the tiled floor at the instant Nina closed the switch. He skidded across the room and slammed against the far wall.

  “Zero,” said Mitchell. “Did you make it? Eddie, Nina—answer me, dammit!”

  “He’s here, he’s here!” Nina gasped. “Eddie, are you okay?”

  “Shut the door,” he panted, weakly waving a hand. Nina closed it. “Bloody hell, I must be getting out of shape. Two hundred yards never used to take me that long.”

  “Did anyone see you?” she asked, dropping to her knees to help him sit up. His heart was racing; she could feel it pounding even through his layers of clothing.

  “Give it five seconds, we’ll know.” He took out his Desert Eagle, hand shaking as he pointed it at the door.

  Five seconds passed. Ten. Nothing happened.

  He let out a long, relieved breath. “Guess we’re okay. Jesus.” He pushed himself to his feet, Nina assisting.

  She kissed him. “God, I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Glad to be here. Oh, you’ve …” He indicated her red lips. “You’ve smudged it a bit. Still, suits your cover—like you just gave someone a blow job.”

  Nina decided not to tell him that he now had on almost as much lipstick as she did. “I think Eddie’s fine, Jack,” she said testily. “What now?”

  “For you, the best bet is to hide in plain sight—go back to the party. Eddie, I’ll guide you up to the top floor.”

  Nina peered out into the hallway. Nobody was in sight. “Okay, it’s clear.” She looked back at Chase. “Good luck.”

  Chase stroked her arm as he passed. “See you soon.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Mitchell’s directions led Chase to a small staircase at the back of the house. He quickly climbed it.

  If the mansion’s uppermost floor was off-limits, there would be a guard. The question was, how would he respond to an unexpected visitor? The party was after all being attended by Russia’s most rich and powerful people; being threatened by a goon wouldn’t be appreciated.

  If the guards were under orders to be polite but firm, that would give him an advantage. They wouldn’t be expecting gate crashers …

  “Okay I’m about to go in. I’ll call you back in a minute,” he whispered into his headset before removing it and shoving it into his jacket. Earphones and a mike would raise the suspicions of even the most half-witted security guard.

  He took a breath, then opened the door.

  As he’d expected, there was a guard in the hallway, who hurriedly jumped up from a chair. Chase gave him a bleary look, pretending to be drunk and lost. The guard approached—then unexpectedly smirked.

  Chase tensed, not knowing what had brought on the response. Had the guard somehow recognized him? Then the man touched a finger to his lips. Chase did the same, and found a smear of sticky red lipstick on his fingertip. No wonder the guard had been so amused. He looked like a geisha.

  He smiled back, then punched the man in the stomach. The guard doubled over, wheezing. Chase whipped out his Desert Eagle and clubbed him on the back of the neck. He collapsed face first onto his chair with such force that his head ripped right through the rattan seat. He fell to the floor, the chair around his neck like some strange angular horse collar.

  Chase dragged the unconscious man to the top of the stairs, closing the door behind him, then put his headset back on. “I’m in.”

  “Was there a guard?” Mitchell asked.

  “Yeah, but he’s sitting it out. So now where?”

  “On the security plans, there was a room with extra systems, probably for a safe.”

  “Wait, I’m supposed to crack a safe?”

  “Not if Vaskovich’s already opened it. Head for the front of the mansion.”

  Chase got his bearings, then proceeded down the hallway. “Eddie,” Nina’s voice hissed through his headphones, “that bitch who killed Bernd and Mitzi is here. So’s the big guy, Bulldozer.”

  “Do they know you’re there?”

  “I hope not! I’m staying as far from them as I can.”

  “Any sign of Vaskovich?” Mitchell asked.

  “No, but I’m kind of keeping my head down.”

  “He could still be upstairs, then,” said Mitchell, sounding hopeful. “Which means you’ve got a chance of catching him, Eddie.” The American issued more directions, Chase following them and arriving at a turn in the hallway.

  He cautiously looked around. A set of double doors a few yards away were half open, another guard standing outside them. His attention was more on the voices coming from within than on the corridor, curiosity having gotten the better of him.

  Chase marched around the corner, gun aimed at the guard’s head. The man took a moment too long to react, first caught by surprise and then involuntarily freezing in fear at the sight of the huge weapon pointing at his face. By the time he overcame his paralysis, over four pounds of hard steel had cracked against his skull, dropping him to the carpet as effectively as one of the Desert Eagle’s bullets.

  Barely breaking stride, Chase stepped over the fallen guard and kicked open the doors.

  Standing before him were three startled men: Kruglov, Vaskovich and a third he didn’t recognize. There was no mistaking what lay on the table between them, however.

  Excalibur.

  “Ay up,” said Chase, his gun locked onto Kruglov. “Remember me?”

  “Chase!” hissed Kruglov. His eyes narrowed. “That bastard Mitchell. He got you in here, didn’t he?”

  “He’s around. The sword’s here,” he told Mitchell, before flicking the gun toward Vaskovich. “Hi there. You don’t know me, but I know you. You killed someone I cared about, and a lot of other people besides.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” said Vaskovich, eyes flinty behind his glasses.

  “You didn’t pull the trigger, but they’d all be alive if you hadn’t told fuck-face here to get you this sword. Now, me?” He thumbed back the Desert Eagle’s hammer for emphasis. “I pull my own trigger. If I’m going to kill someone, at least I’ve got the balls to take the responsibility myself.”

  As he’d expected, Kruglov didn’t react at all to the purely psychological effect of the hammer-click. Vaskovich flinched, but otherwise remained composed. The third man, however, gasped in fright before overcompensating with bluster. “Who are you?” he demanded. “How dare you threaten me! I am Felix Mishkin, deputy defense minister of the Russian Federation!”

  “I don’t care if you’re Yuri fucking Gagarin!” Chase told him. He aimed the gun at him; Mishkin instantly cringed back. “Sit down and shut the fuck up.”

  “I’m airborne,” said Mitchell over the headset, the whine of a helicopter engine partially obscuring his words. “I’ll be there in four minutes.”

  “So how is Nina?” asked Kruglov. Chase whipped the gun back around at him. Vaskovich’s eyes betrayed a flash of comprehension at the name, but Chase, his attention focused on the former KGB man, didn’t notice.

  “Better than you’ll be in a couple of minutes,” Chase snarled.

  A very small, calculating smile crept onto Kruglov’s lips. “What are you waiting for, Chase? Why not just kill me now?”

  “You in a rush?”

  “No, but you have us, you have Excalibur. There is no reason for you to wait … unless yo
ur escape route is not yet ready,” he concluded, the smile broadening. “Go ahead and shoot.” Mishkin gabbled disbelievingly in Russian. “He won’t fire,” Kruglov told him, still speaking in English for Chase’s benefit. “Everyone in the building will hear the shot. He will never get out of the mansion, never mind the grounds.”

  “You keep telling yourself that. In the meantime …” Chase stepped up to the table, gesturing for Vaskovich and Kruglov to back toward the open safe set in one wall. “I’ll be having this.” He picked up Excalibur.

  “You are making a mistake,” said Vaskovich. “Whatever Jack has told you about why I need the sword, it is a lie.”

  “Well, it’s funny, but after the experiences I’ve had with billionaires in the past, I don’t believe a fucking word they say anymore.” Chase stepped back, starting to feel vulnerable. Mitchell was still over three minutes away—and as long as he was holding the sword, he would be forced to fire the heavy Desert Eagle with one hand, reducing his accuracy. He would also have to drop the sword if he needed to reload with the spare magazine attached to his holster strap.

  And there was something else, a growing feeling of wrongness. While Mishkin, now sitting, was trembling in fear, both Vaskovich and Kruglov were almost visibly growing in confidence as he watched. He glanced at the doors. Nobody there but the downed guard, no sounds of movement. But—

  “Jack,” he said, voice taking on urgency. “Those extra security systems in here—were they just for alarms? Or was there anything else?”

  “I’m not sure,” came the reply over the helicopter noise. “There might have been some data lines.”

  “Data? Like to a computer?” He looked more closely at the yawning safe. “Or from a camera?” There was a small circular hole in the top of the frame, only exposed when the door was opened.

  He was being watched.

  The men in the mansion’s security center had seen the whole thing—and to protect their boss they would have ordered others to the room without raising a general alarm …

  Chase looked through the doors. There was a very slight shadow being cast on the unconscious guard, someone pressed against the wall outside—

  He snapped the Desert Eagle around and fired at a point two feet to the door’s side. The noise was almost deafening, the recoil kicking his whole arm up and back as a hole exploded in the wall—followed by a pounding thump as the lurking man was blasted across the hallway into the opposite wall.

  He wouldn’t be alone …

  Chase fired at the other side of the door. Somebody tumbled to the floor, blood spraying across the hall carpet.

  Movement in his peripheral vision—

  He spun back to face the Russians by the safe and saw Kruglov dive at his boss and throw him down behind Mishkin’s chair. The minister screeched, flinging up his arms in a pathetic attempt to shield himself from Chase’s bullets.

  Chase didn’t fire. He couldn’t blow away the Russian deputy minister of defense to kill Kruglov, or even to stop Vaskovich’s plans. Instead he ran for the doors, hearing movement outside. Gun in one hand, he swung Excalibur with the other—

  Even without its weird glow, the sword was still sharp, hacking deep into the wrist of the guard who had been just about to shoot him. Before the man even had time to scream, Chase pistol-whipped him with the Desert Eagle and knocked him to the floor.

  Nobody else was in the hallway, but others would be on their way. Nina and Mitchell were both speaking at once, the latter’s shouts drowning out the former’s frantic whispers. “Eddie! What happened, what’s going on?”

  “If you can cut three minutes off your flight time, that’d be great!” Chase answered. “How do I get out?”

  “Back the way you came, but continue past the stairs, then go left.”

  Chase was already running. “Shit—how’s Nina going to get to the chopper now?”

  The background noise from the hall had changed, party conversation turning to confusion at the gunfire. “Eddie, Eddie!” Nina said as loudly as she dared. “Dominika just ran upstairs! What do I do?”

  “Nina,” said Mitchell, “in about two minutes that whole place is going to be in total panic. You’ll have to get out then—either meet up with Prikovsky’s other girls, or just steal a car and head for the U.S. embassy.”

  “I don’t know where it is!” Nina protested.

  Chase was almost at the stairwell. “I’m going back for her!”

  “No!” Mitchell’s transmission crackled as the shout briefly overpowered his microphone. “If you go back you’ll die, and Vaskovich will get Excalibur again!”

  Chase reached the stairs, slowed fractionally—then continued past them. “Shit!” Reluctant as he was to admit it, Mitchell was right. He arrived at the turn and went left. “Nina, get close to the front door—soon as people start running, you go out with them!”

  He heard a door crash open behind him. He twisted and fired at the guard who ran around the corner. The shot missed, blowing a hole in the wall, but it had the intended effect—the man jumped back into cover.

  Mitchell directed him toward the balcony. Chase kicked open a door, firing another shot back down the hallway as he went through. The pursuing guard fell to the floor. Behind him was Dominika, wearing a black cocktail dress, hair now an acid yellow.

  Chase took aim. She saw him and dived, the .50-caliber bullet burning over her as she landed and grabbed the guard’s gun. Before Chase had a chance to recover from the recoil she loosed four rapid shots. He jumped backward as the door frame splintered.

  The room was a library. It was unlit, but enough illumination came through the arched French windows from the lights outside for him to see the balcony beyond. Mitchell had been right about there being enough clearance for a helicopter to hover beside it, but it would be tight.

  No time to fiddle with the windows. Instead, he flung Excalibur at them as hard as he could. The sword smashed through, clanging down outside amid the shattered glass and broken wood. Chase shielded his face and jumped at the broken hole. Jagged glass sliced against one side of his head, but his leather jacket took most of the damage. He shook off the fragments, then snatched up the sword and pointed the Desert Eagle back at the library’s door.

  No sign of the chopper. He glanced over the balcony’s side. Dozens of expensive cars were parked below. On the front lawn, mostly hidden behind the mansion, was the glossy black tail of a helicopter.

  A shadow in the doorway. Chase fired as another of Vaskovich’s guards rushed through. The bullet hit his shoulder, spinning him like a top.

  Dominika jumped through the door behind him, gun blazing. The remaining windows burst apart. Chase dropped into a clumsy roll as bullets chipped the stonework of the balcony wall behind him. He fired a wild shot. The Russian woman rolled too, far more gracefully, dropping her now-empty pistol and taking the wounded guard’s weapon in a single smooth movement.

  Only two bullets left in the Desert Eagle. Maybe Mitchell had a point about his choice of weapon after all …

  The helicopter suddenly roared into view overhead. A gale scattered glass fragments across the balcony as it swept past, nose tipping up sharply in a hard braking maneuver. It wheeled around, turning side-on to the mansion and slipping back toward it.

  Chase had lost sight of Dominika in the darkened library. But she was there somewhere, waiting to strike.

  The helicopter, a small MD 500 with a rounded, almost egg-shaped fuselage, moved closer. Its strobing navigation lights lit up the balcony like silent explosions. He could see Mitchell in the pilot’s seat, eyes flicking between him and the yellow-painted tips of the rotor blades, judging the distance to the mansion wall. Fifteen feet, ten, the blades perilously close to the wall …

  Movement: acid-blond hair streaking past the broken windows—

  Chase blasted off his penultimate shot as Dominika ran across the library, muzzle flashes searing a dotted line across his vision.

  But she wasn’t aiming at him.
r />   The helicopter’s aluminum skin bucked as bullets cratered the thin metal, the Plexiglas windows cracking. The aircraft lurched. Chase thought Mitchell had been hit, but he recovered, only startled. The American mouthed words at him, voice drowned out by the engine noise. Come on!

  Chase looked back at the library. Dominika was in cover past the windows. He only had one bullet left. And she had a much bigger target to aim at.

  The MD 500 swayed drunkenly, buffeted by its own backwash from the building as well as whatever damage Dominika had inflicted. It drifted away from the balcony despite its pilot’s attempts to hold it.

  Running out of time …

  Chase vaulted onto the stone balustrade and jumped.

  Excalibur clutched in his left hand, he slammed against the helicopter’s port landing skid, hooking his right arm over it. The Desert Eagle dropped away, spinning down to smash like a hammer through the windshield of a Lamborghini parked below. The whole chopper was shaking from the impact, Mitchell battling to compensate for the extra weight swinging from one side.

  Dominika sprang out of the library and emptied her clip into the helicopter’s cabin.

  A bullet slashed across the top of Mitchell’s thigh. He yelled, reflexively jerking his leg against the anti-torque pedal. The MD 500 spun around anticlockwise, the cockpit for a moment head-on to the balcony, presenting him as a perfect target—

  But the gun’s slide had locked back. Dominika was out of ammo. The little helicopter kept turning before Mitchell fought past the pain and regained control of the tail rotor, countering the spin with the other pedal. The chopper had made almost a half-turn, its starboard side facing the balcony, hovering less than ten feet from the edge.

  Chase hung from the port skid. He saw Dominika looking back at him. She dropped the useless gun, tensed … and leapt from the balcony.

  She caught the starboard skid with both hands, swinging from it like a gymnast—and kicked Chase in the chest.

  Air whooshed from his lungs as he was knocked back, the crook of his elbow slipping off the skid. He dropped, just managing to clamp his hand around the metal tube. His headset jolted loose, following his gun down to earth. Gasping, he swung helplessly, the sword a deadweight in his other hand.