seep. 'I can't move.'
'You're not listening to me,' Kreist barked. 'I said back away. Now!'
Jenny took some rather obvious gulps of air. 'Give me a moment, will you?' The hand closest to the corpse gripped the muzzle of the gun. 'My head is still swimming.'
Kreist took a threatening step toward her. 'I will not ask you again.'
Saying a silent prayer, Jenny said, 'All right, all right, I'm getting up now, okay? Just don't shoot.'
Kreist spat. 'Little bitch, what the fuck are you doing out here?'
Jenny began to get to her feet, in doing so showing him quick a bit of her provocatively bare midsection. She saw his eyes shift. At the same time, using all her strength, she jerked the gun free of the corpse's bulk, grabbed the grips with her other hand and, turning, pulled the trigger. Kreist, not understanding, staggered back and, Jenny, remembering all too vividly what had happened with the first attacker, kept firing until she had put four shots into the German and he was lying face up on the ground, his eyes fixed and staring.
Without a backward glance, she turned and ran, ignoring as best she could the searing pain in her side, the blood seeping from her wound. Once, she fell to her knees, winded, exhausted, her head lolling, but she heard Bravo's voice in her head and she forced herself first to her knees, then to her feet, put one foot in front of the other, faster, faster.
'The cavern is a kilometer northeast,' he had said.
The cache was hidden beneath a semicircular altar to the Greek goddess Aphrodite. The stone altar was without adornment of any kind, having been looted decades ago. In fact, had not his father delivered precise instruction as to how to find it, Bravo might never have known its original use. Bravo had a flashlight, but it was not necessary here. This section of the cavern was a honeycomb of small caves, passages and chimneys, some of which rose all the way to the surface of the mountainside. As a consequence, sunlight, colored by the greenish minerals in the rock, provided eerie illumination. Along with the light came sound, the wind moaning in mournful melody, as if through a gigantic panpipe.
He positioned himself in front of the dark stone altar on which, presumably, animals had been ritually slaughtered by pagan Greeks before the Virgin Mary came to these shores, perhaps even after, for the goddess of love held a special place in the hearts of Greeks. Wasn't everyone in need of her help?
He heard a sound, no more than the wind made, soughing through the chimneys, and the hair at the back of his neck stirred. He was not alone in the caverns-the Russian, and behind him, surely, Jordan. What had happened to Jenny and Camille? Who had fired the shot? Were they okay?
He heard the sound again, nearer to him this time, and he put his plan into effect, leaping to his right, arms outstretched in front of him as he hurled himself through one of the holes in the cavern.
He winced at the deafening sound of a gun being fired, the echo roaring through the passage he was in. When he turned, he saw the Russian on his hands and knees, coming after him. The Russian paused, raised his Makarov. Just before he squeezed off another shot, Bravo leapt upward into a chimney. Under cover of the noise, he scrambled into the first passage he came to. He crouched there, waiting, steeling himself for what had to be done.
The moment he saw the top of the Russian's head he attacked, slamming the heel of his hand against the Russian's ear. Launching himself forward, he kicked down, dislodging the gun from the Russian's hand. This was essential-it disarmed his adversary and evened the playing field-but it also allowed the Russian the time he needed to recover from the blow to his head.
The man reached out, butting his head into Bravo's sternum. As Bravo fell back, the Russian hauled himself out of the chimney. In the horizontal passage there was precious little room to maneuver. Within the space of three blows being delivered, Bravo had the measure of the Russian. He was ex-military, FSB or perhaps Spetsnaz. The modern battlefield being what it was, these soldiers had little use for hand-to-hand combat and so were trained only in what was known as 'short and sharp,' the killing blow to be delivered within thirty seconds of engagement.
Having absorbed three of the Russian's blows on bone and heavy muscle, Bravo got inside his adversary's defenses, broke the man's nose with the edge of his hand, his cheekbone with the knuckles of the other.
But he was mistaken if he thought that would finish off the Russian. It only got him going. He rushed Bravo, bulling him backward against the passage wall. Pinning him there with his superior weight, the Russian began a series of lightning-quick blows to Bravo's body and head, aimed at numbing Bravo's major upper-body muscle groups. Without them, Bravo couldn't defend himself, let alone launch a counterattack. Within moments, he'd be helpless.
He was going into shock, his vision a blur. He tried to get at Lorenzo Fornarini's dagger, but his side was pinned to the wall. He had only one hope. With his free hand, he dug in his pocket. Switching on the flashlight, he shone it directly into the Russian's eyes.
The Russian, blinded, staggered back, slammed into the opposite wall. Bravo went in beneath his raised arms, buried a knee in his groin. As the Russian doubled over, Bravo drove the same knee into the man's chin. His head snapped up and Bravo delivered a blow to his temple. The Russian slid to his knees, tears streaming down his face, but still managed to grab hold of Bravo, shake him until his teeth rattled. The man opened his mouth to bite Bravo, to rip a chunk out of him, and Bravo smashed the flashlight into his face, again and again, the blood running, the skin flayed off, until at last the Russian keeled over.
Blood was everywhere. Bravo collapsed where he stood. He put his head in his hands, but they were shaking so badly he immediately lifted it up back. The Russian wasn't breathing, he was gone.
His body aching, Bravo crawled to the edge of the chimney, shinnied slowly down it, his knees pressed to either side of the hole, until at length he dropped to the cavern floor. He saw the gun he'd kicked from the Russian's hand and, bending over, reached for it.
At that moment, pain exploded at the back of his head, and he pitched forward into unconsciousness.
Chapter 32
'I have to hand it to you, Bravo-you and your father-you ran quite a race.' Jordan came around into Bravo's line of vision. 'But, in the end, all your scheming, all your machinations didn't matter, because here we are and-' He held something shiny between the first and second fingers of his right hand. 'Here it is-the key to the Order's cache, the key to immortality.'
He crouched down beside Bravo, who lay on the cavern floor, hands behind his back, wrists and ankles tightly bound. 'Go ahead, by the way, try as hard as you can to work your way out. It won't do you any good.'
'Why are you doing this, Jordan? What happened to you?'
Jordan laughed. 'You make it sound as if I'm suffering from a blow to the head. Poor Bravo. I never was the helpful, straight-shooting lad I pretended to be. I did a good job lying to you, don't you think? No, don't bother to answer. It doesn't matter what you think anymore.' He patted the top of Bravo's head, as if he were an old pet who'd sadly but inevitably come to the end of his life.
'Happily, that phase is over, along with pretending to listen to my mother. While she's been out here, keeping tabs on you, I've staged a coup d'etat of sorts. The Knights tied to that disgustingly inbred cabal at the Vatican, the Knights my mother has been desperate to take over, the Knights of St. Clement are no more. They're my Knights now-the Knights of Muhlmann.'
'That will be enough.'
Jordan's head whipped around and Bravo strained to get a look, though he recognized the voice well enough.
Camille stood, training the Witness on her son. 'Untie him.'
Jordan laughed. 'Mother, you can't mean it.'
'But I do, darling, I very much do.'
'Are you still pretending to be his friend? I've already told him you're not. You're every inch his enemy, just like me.'
'Fortunately, I'm nothing like you, Jordan. I killed the Albanian, by the way, and judging by the amount of blood dripping down that shaft I'd say Bravo put away your Russian, what's his name, oh, yes, I remember,
