Fishing out his phone he made a call. “Cass? Drive them back across the valley floor.”
“Running low on bullets.”
“Use them. I have an idea.”
Almost immediately, Cassidy and Yasmine leapt out of hiding, concentrating a burst of firepower among the rocks where the two remaining Hoods were hiding.
Bodie saw them scrabbling away, heads down, and he shot off at a run.
Straight for the guard by the chopper.
The man didn’t see him coming. Bodie skidded to a halt at the back of the aircraft and aimed his gun at the man’s head.
“Hands up,” he said. “Lie flat on the ground.”
The guard hesitated, his face swept by conflicting feelings. Bodie waved the gun at him. “Don’t be an idi—”
The guard dropped to his knees and brought both hands up, gun aimed. Bodie almost wasn’t fast enough. He fired at the same time as the guard. His bullet, already aimed, slammed through the guard’s chest. The other’s bullet shot high into the air. Bodie gritted his teeth as the man collapsed in a shower of blood. He quelled the repulsion welling up inside him.
Bodie reached into the back of the chopper and grabbed a sack of weapons. Cassidy and Yasmine were almost at the chopper. Jemma was the most exposed, running across a stretch of open ground for the first dead Hood.
Cassidy’s gun clicked on empty. The Hoods heard and looked up. Bodie upended the bag, letting the weapons clatter in a heap to the desert floor. He dropped to his knees beside the pile, scooped up a handgun and fired, covering Jemma.
Cassidy joined him, grabbing a semi-auto, and then Yasmine. Lucie was crouched among rocks at the top of the hill.
Jemma reached the dead Hood and picked up the canvas sack containing the ore sample. Then, without breaking stride, she changed direction, sprinting back toward Bodie and the others.
The Hoods targeted their guns on her.
Cassidy and Yasmine targeted them, sending them back into hiding with a flurry of well-aimed bullets. One man yelled as a streak of hot lead zipped past his temple.
Bodie hefted the largest weapon that had been inside the bag, imagining its purpose had been to do exactly what he was about to. The Illuminati had been planning to steal the ore and seal the cave. There was no other reason to be carrying an RPG.
Bodie loaded it, then aimed it at the cave entrance. They had their own ore. They had the Illuminati’s ore. Sealing the cave would gain them valuable days.
But Linus was still in there.
Bodie fought his conscience, his moral compass. The plan was good. Of all possible outcomes of their trip to Algeria, this was the best. But his finger hovered over the trigger, loathe to fire. Would Linus survive being trapped inside for a few days?
Probably.
That’s not enough certainty for me.
There was movement at the cave entrance. Linus stumbled out, holding his head. Bodie breathed a deep sigh of relief, glad he’d held off, relieved he hadn’t killed someone in cold blood and that his conscience had kicked in.
He fired the rocket.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
The mountain above the cave entrance exploded, shattered rock and dust detonating into the air. Bodie watched rocks and boulders of all sizes sliding down the hill, tumbling and crashing to the ground, rolling across the valley floor. The thunder of the explosion rang out, stunning the still dry air.
Everyone dropped to the ground for extra protection; Bodie dropped the rocket launcher. For a moment he wondered if one grenade would do the job properly.
It wasn’t a massive explosion, but it was enough. The cave entrance was blocked by a ragged wall of broken rock, partially hidden by dust. Bodie felt a mix of elation and guilt but, if he was being totally honest, the damage didn’t look too bad and would probably be reversed in a few days.
Assuming nothing had collapsed inside.
He couldn’t dwell on that. Jemma was already scrambling past him, heading for the top of the hill. Cassidy was hefting the Illuminati’s own bag of weapons and following her. Yasmine was keeping the Hoods pinned down. Bodie chased Cassidy, first thinking to empty his clip into the chopper’s engine bay. They had a long run ahead of them and couldn’t stop the Hoods calling in reinforcements, but they could delay a pursuit.
Lucie was horrified and made it clear. “What have you done?” she gasped.
“It’s cosmetic,” Bodie assured her. “I aimed above the entrance and not inside. It’ll give us a head start.”
Lucie sniffed and turned away. “Where’s the ore?”
The historian had made herself the unofficial keeper of the ore. Jemma handed hers over without speaking and then held up the Illuminati’s bag of ore.
“What do you want to do with this?”
“Bring it,” Bodie said. “Until we’re sure we don’t need it. The truck’s a good forty minutes away.”
Getting the direction from the compass on their phones they first ran around the range of hills before pushing out into the desert, returning to the boulder-strewn fields they’d traversed earlier. They couldn’t run or move too quickly here. A misstep would lead to a broken ankle, or worse.
Yasmine led the way through the perilous field, finding the easier path. The sun beat down as if it were trying to fry an egg on their faces, relentless.
Bodie gauged the halfway point and called for a brief stop, dragging what was left of his water out of his backpack. Most he drank, the rest he threw over the top of his head, feeling a moment’s blessed relief.
Yasmine was watching the surrounding rocks and hills. “We should
