Rob Jones
Raiders

CHAPTER ONE

The hunt was electric. Kiya felt the man’s fear as he stumbled down the steps and strained his eyes in search of an exit. The Ravens watched him too, each circling around the vaulted chamber to cut off any possible escape route.

But their prey was fast and knew the building better than any of them. Fumbling a door handle in the dark, Monsignor Bruno Scala, the head of the Vatican’s Archivum Secretum pulled on the heavy oak door until a crack of light appeared in the darkness. It lit up the old man but he moved into the shadows before they could get to him and then he was gone, slipping away through a stone archway beyond the door.

Kiya whistled in the low light and ordered Tekin and Dariush to follow her into the corridor after Scala. The Ravens mustered, and once again she felt the adrenalin coursing through her veins like fire as she moved after the fleeing man; the lethal Bride flanked by her two Ravens…

Through the archway now, and Scala was clambering up a short series of stone steps at the end of a twisting corridor. Lit only by a couple of bare electric bulbs, the desperate man’s shadow bobbed up and down along the ancient stone wall as he once again slid from view.

Kiya resumed her pursuit, pushing out into the subdued darkness of the tunnel and making her way toward the archway. She heard Tekin and Dariush moving swiftly a few paces behind her.

The chase exhilarated her because she knew she would win. She knew in her heart that the old man could never escape from the thing which hunted him — the thing of which she was just a tiny part.

And when she caught her prey tonight, the Lion would be pleased and he would reward her lavishly with his promise to elevate her to a Soldier. She had dreamed of it since the day she had joined them. To think it was only hours away gave her a bigger adrenalin rush than a needle full of ephedrine.

To be lifted out of the mass of humanity as they had done to her, to give her the answers most sought but never learned, was enough of a gift, but to move from Bride to Soldier in less than a year… Her heart quivered as thoughts of secret rituals flashed through her mind. They said the pathway to Soldier was one of the hardest… but she was certain the Lion would guide her.

“There!” Tekin said. “He went to the left.”

Her carob brown eyes flicked up and saw the Raven pointing to another door at the end of the tunnel.

Dariush rushed up behind them. “Did you see him, Kiya?”

“Yes — come on!”

They sprinted along the corridor and burst through the door, finding themselves outside in the moonlight. They were on the roof, and ahead of them Monsignor Scala was slipping and sliding on the tiles as he made his way along the apex. He was struggling to reach another door a few hundred meters to the north at the base of a clock tower.

“He’s getting tired,” Kiya said, her own chest rising and falling with the effort of the hunt. She smiled. “Very tired.”

Scala clutched at something hanging around his neck and called over to them as he swung open the door. “Do not move settled things, you demons! Do not drag this out of the ancient past!”

He turned to slip inside the door but Kiya had tired of the chase. She pulled a shuriken throwing star from her pocket and threw it across the rooftop. The sharpened steel blades spun into a blur and flashed silver in the moonlight as it zoomed through the night and buried itself in the throat of Monsignor Bruno Scala.

The old man’s eyes almost burst from their sockets as he realized what had happened. Reaching up for the star he pulled it from his neck. The blood pumped from his jugular as if he were a slaughtered pig. He fell to his knees as his blood pressure rapidly dropped.

“I have taken him,” she whispered. She heard the reedy voice of the pipes as they floated through her mind. She closed her eyes and saw the sun setting over the Nile Valley. The priests were dancing around the temple and chanting to the sun god.

She opened her eyes.

Vatican City.

She walked across the apex of the roof with the Ravens behind her. To the rest of the world they were nothing more than three silhouettes in the light of the crescent moon, but to Scala they were judge, jury and executioner.

Kiya held out her hand. “Give me the ankh.”

The old man was breathing hard, and blood bubbled out of his mouth when he spoke. “Quieta non movere!!” His fearful, hoarse voice made the Latin sound even more ghostly as it echoed across the rooftops. “Do not move settled things!”

“Goodnight, Monsignor,” Kiya said, and gently closed his eyes as the old man slumped back against the clock tower. As his last breath left his dying body, she snatched the ankh from his dead hands and held it up to the moonlight. The symbolic value of the shape was as ancient as time itself, and she couldn’t resist staring at it:

Her eyes danced over its ancient beauty. It was made of gold, as the legend had said it would be, and it was encrusted in precious gems — diamonds, rubies and sapphires. She followed the moonlight reflecting off the gold and saw what she had been hoping for — a carefully carved lined of symbols stretching all the way up one side and down the other. This would change the world forever.

“This is our treasure?” Tekin asked.

Her smile was the only reply.

“Then we must leave,” said Dariush. “The sun will rise soon.”

Slipping the ankh around her neck and scanning the streets of the Vatican City for any sign of trouble, Kiya the Bride was satisfied she had completed her mission and it was time to return to the Lion’s den.

CHAPTER TWO

The two sports cars were neck and neck as they raced along the road below him. From up here on the ridge, out in the Arizona desert, the man in the sunglasses was able to track them easily with the naked eye but now he wanted to get closer to the action. He pushed his glasses up on his forehead and lifted an old pair of army binoculars to his eyes.

He watched the cars with approval as they fought for supremacy along the desert highway. The Bugatti Veyron was in the lead, but the Lamborghini Aventador was closing fast and as they approached, the hot wind carried the sound of their powerful engines to his ears.

Behind them was a Honda, a family hatchback.

He grinned and shook his head.

Crazy kid…

A shallow bend raced up to meet the speeding cars and the Aventador made a break for it. Up on the ridge, the man smiled; it was a textbook move: the Lambo took the inside line in a hurry, drew level with the Veyron in the braking zone and then floored the throttle, overtaking into the lead and beating the more powerful Bugatti to the apex.

The Bugatti fought back, taking advantage of another long straight, but then the inevitable happened, and the little Honda ripped past both the Veyron and the Aventador and streaked toward the horizon until it merged with the shimmering mirage.

The man on the ridge laughed. He imagined neither Caleb Jackson nor Virgil Lehman were too happy about the kid getting the better of them on the bend, but the race wasn’t over yet and now they were on another straight, heading back in his direction. He tossed the binoculars into his hired Ford, fired up the engine and drove down the winding track that would lead to the finishing line — the old ranch Caleb called home.

The drive was short. He could see the ranch after the first bend and two minutes later he was parked up in the front yard and leaning on the hood. He heard the two sports cars revving wildly as they approached the property, and wondered if Caleb or Virgil had managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and humiliation.

When the Bugatti appeared first, he saw that the older man had won after all, and that meant the kid would have to try again another day.

The Veyron’s eight litre, quad-turbocharged engine growled like an angry monster as it pulled up outside the garage and then a moment later the Aventador swerved in behind it. Both drivers killed their engines at the same time and then climbed out of their cars into the silence of the desert.

Caleb Jackson shook his head as he walked over to the man in the shades and raised a beefy, tattooed arm to remove his own pair of Wiley’s sunglasses.

“Fuck me, if it isn’t Jed Mason…”

Mason pulled off his shades and returned the smile. “In that case I’m glad to say it is Jed Mason.”

Caleb laughed, but the smile quickly faded. “Been too long, Jed.”

Mason nodded.

Virgil and Mason shook hands. “I was glad when you called, Jed.”

“How’s Amy?” Mason asked.

“Like any six week-old girl,” Virgil said, beaming with pride. “She keeps me and Jen up nights but she’s cute as a button. But hey — what’s this all about?”

Mason said, “Wait till Mr Risk and his Honda arrive and I’ll let you know.”

The highly-tuned Honda turned into the property at last, steam pouring from its radiator grille. Milo Risk climbed out, ran a hand over his hair and joined them.

“How’s it going, all?” Milo said.

Caleb raised a hand. “Howdy, Milo. What the hell are you doing here? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you in the mirror.”

“He asked me to meet him here,” the young IT specialist said, jutting a smooth, untanned chin at Mason. “All cool, V?”

“Just dandy,” Virgil said. “Saw your little problem back there on the road. Too bad.”

Milo managed a stoic shrug. “I saw you two are still measuring each other’s dicks with these cars of yours. You deserved the humiliation.”

“He has a point,” Mason said. “The car thing is bordering on an obsession, Cal.”

The kid had a wide grin on his young face. “Oh, man… your faces when I hit the gas on the Honda.”

“Sleeper car,” Caleb rumbled. “The last refuge of the scoundrel.”

“The techno-geek, more like,” Virgil said.

Milo laughed. “You know what they say, Virgil — better a techno-geek than a library nerd.”

Virgil looked confused. “I’m a polymath, anyway — do they say that?”

Caleb broke things up. “Why are you here, Jed?”

“You know why.”

Caleb looked up at the sky before locking his eyes back on Mason. “I thought we agreed no more jobs?”

“We did.”

Milo looked at Mason. “Big?”

“Bigger than anything we ever did before.”

Caleb sighed. “I’ve heard it all before, besides — I have another job on the horizon.”

Mason cocked his head. “Another job?”

“Sure — is it so hard to believe that someone other than the great Jed Mason might want to employ me?”

“Not at all. Who’s the idiot?”

“Old friend of mine who used to work for the NSA.”

“Used to?”

Caleb kicked a stone across the yard, put his hands in his jeans pockets and scratched a line in the dirt with his boot heel. “You might say he’s trying to set up on his own.”

“And when is this job?”

“I’m expecting a call any minute now.”

Mason sighed. “Come on, Cal. Just for old times’ sake? If we pull this off we’re all set for life — and our kids too. That’s presuming you can find a woman stupid enough to hook up with you.”

“That big, huh?”

Mason nodded. “What about you, Milo?”

“I never turn down a pay check.”

“Virgil?”

“I don’t know… I have Jen and Amy to think about now.”

“Nice Lamborghini,” Mason said. “You buy it with money you made with my team, or money you made pissing about with poker?”

Virgil looked down at his dusty boots.

Caleb crossed his arms and tried to look casual. “What’s the job?”

“Asset extraction.”

“The best damned asset recovery crew in the world,” Virgil said, briefly looking up from the ground before returning his eyes to his boots again. “So I kinda worked that out already, Jed,” he said. “That’s sort of what RAIDERS is: Rapid and Incognito Deployment, Extraction and Rescue Service. I need some detail. What are we talking about here — stolen jewels, kidnapped royalty?”

“One of the most famous objects in the world has been stolen, but no more details until you’re on board. You know the way I roll.”

“Come to think of it,” Caleb said, a broad white smile spreading on his tanned face. “I am kinda bored racing cars.”

“I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” Mason said. “Virgil?”

Virgil looked up from his boots. “If you’re putting the team back together, does that mean she will also be joining us?”

Mason nodded. “Sure.”

Caleb laughed.

Milo sighed.

Virgil pretended to cry.

* * *

She leaped over the temple’s ridge tile, twisting in mid-air as she somersaulted down to the gable roof. Landing like a panther, the setting sun flashed in her eyes as she regained her balance and scanned for the enemy. High above the temple, the Japanese mountains rose up into a salmon-pink sky.

From up here on the roof of the Hall of Buddha she could see nearly the entire monastery, from the sōmon gate in the west to the sōbō where the monks lived. She scanned the entire site and then she saw one, scuttling along the roofed portico passage which connected the Zen rock garden with the Dharma hall. It looked like it could be Shen, or maybe Shintaro. It didn’t matter: whoever it was had let his guard slip and now she had found him.

She climbed down the pagoda roof, one tier at a time until she was close enough to lower herself onto a lower sloping roof belonging to the belfry, and then shimmied down a drain pipe until she was on the ground. She could see it was definitely Shintaro now, and he was weaving in and out of some pine trees, diligently cloud-pruned by her very own hands.

She ran with the grace and speed of a leopard in pursuit of the fleeing monk. With the thrill of the hunt electrifying her blood, she pounded after the man, determined to bring him down and improve her personal best. He was heading toward the karakado, a gate in the west of the temple compound with an arched roof.

She paused for breath. Darker now, and the sun was sinking into the cypress forest to the west of the temple. She sprinted again, feeling the warm air rushing into her lungs as she hunted down her prey. She was almost on him when the head priest, or Jushoku, swung the wooden bell hammer in his right hand and struck the enormous suspended gong. The sound rippled out over the compound and everyone froze where they stood.

The hunt was over.

Zara Dietrich walked over to the Jushoku and bowed. “Why have you stopped the games?” she said in perfect Japanese.

The Jushoku returned the bow but said nothing. Instead, he pointed his chin over her shoulder. She turned around to see nothing less than three ghosts.

With her guard dropped, one of the monks lunged toward her, but the Jushoku clapped his hands together. “Stop!” he said in stern Japanese. The man froze on the spot, gave a shallow bow and took a step back. The other monks followed his lead and backed away from the American woman dressed in black robes.

Now, Zara walked over to the ghosts, shaking her head gently in disbelief.

One of the ghosts spoke. “Zara Dietrich,” he said. He was still leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. “Fancy meeting you here…”