I t didn’t look as if the Italian had seen them yet. Grant was sure it was the same guy. That arrowhead widow’s peak was unmistakable even from this distance.
They’d all flattened behind the wall. Cavano’s man may not have recognized them, but now he might be curious why they had suddenly disappeared.
“How did they find us?” Stacy said.
“I’m guessing it’s my good friend Lumley,” Grant said. “Cavano probably heard about the theft at the museum last night and put two and two together.”
“There’s too much open space to make a run for it,” Tyler said.
“What’s the plan?”
“We need to get this guy isolated. When we capture him, Stacy can act as our interpreter so we can find out who else might be lurking around.”
“Should we use the old bait and tackle?”
Tyler nodded. “And since he knows you, it looks like you’ll have to be the bait this time.”
“He’ll have at least one friend with him,” Grant said. “Probably a guy with a mustache that looks like it was drawn on with a Sharpie.”
“Head around the back of the old museum. When he follows you, I’ll come up behind him.”
“What about me?” Stacy said.
“Stay here.” Tyler handed her the backpack and put his earpiece in. “You’ll be our eyes. If you see mustache man coming, let me know.”
She dialed his phone, and they were connected. “Got it.”
He looked at Grant. “Let’s do this.”
Grant slithered over the railing and dropped down through some scaffolding that had been set up to rebuild part of the wall. He was now below the eye level of Cavano’s man. He scrambled over the rocks until he was next to the rear of the shuttered Old Acropolis Museum.
He looked back and saw that the guy was thirty feet from Tyler’s position and getting closer. He purposefully kicked a rock, and the man’s head jerked around. Grant took off behind the building. A mountain of garbage bags was piled in the corner of the Acropolis next to an unused crane lying against the citadel’s southern wall.
Grant turned the corner. He glanced behind him, but it didn’t look as if the man had followed him. That meant he was going to try to cut Grant off.
Grant took off, running along a narrow-gauge railroad track that had originally been built to transfer artifacts from the Parthenon to the crane so that they could be lowered to the new museum for relocation. A railroad handcart was in his path.
Before he could reach the handcart, the man appeared from around the corner and drew a pistol on Grant, who stopped and put up his hands. The Italian slowly moved forward.
“Hey, I know you,” Grant said with a smile. He knew the man might not speak much English, but it didn’t really matter. “How’s your noggin? I bet you’ve still got a nasty headache.”
“Zitto!” He began to creep toward Grant, the gun never wavering.
Grant understood the universal tone for “Shut up!” but he just needed a few more seconds.
“Listen, I’m really sorry about knocking you out in London, but I thought you were a Hare Krishna asking for money.”
“Zitto!” the man yelled again.
Tyler, who had sneaked up behind the one-word wonder, pressed the knife of his Leatherman to the man’s carotid artery.
“How about you zitto instead?” Tyler said.
The man froze. His lips were twisted with contempt. He wasn’t happy about getting played. His gun remained aimed at Grant.
“Got him?” Grant said.
“Yeah,” Tyler said, “but we’ve got to do this fast. Company’s coming.”
*
Stacy hadn’t seen the man with the thin mustache sooner because he had gone around the opposite side of the Parthenon. She had been following Tyler fifty feet behind him, keeping an eye out for his blind side, but the gantry crane shack next to the Parthenon had obstructed her view. The only reason she had spotted him at all was because of the blinding reflection of the sun off his silk shirt. He must have seen Tyler, because he had his pistol out.
By this time, the gantry crane workers, who were almost finished setting a marble block onto a ten-foot-high stack, had stopped what they were doing. They were focused on Tyler with his knife to the gunman’s throat, but none of them were making a move to help. Stacy would have to do this on her own. To her right was a four-wheel dolly for moving the marble blocks from the tracks into position for the gantry. It was empty except for two cats lazing in the sun.
In seconds, the second gunman would come around the corner and have a clear shot at Tyler. Although she was unarmed, Stacy had to do something.
She grabbed the dolly’s handle and wheeled it around until it faced the corner of the shack. When she swung it around, the cats jumped off. As soon as she saw the man’s shiny shirt come into view, she pushed with all her strength, the tires crunching over the gravel.
The mustache man, focused on Tyler until he heard the dolly racing toward him, turned in time to get a shot off, but it went wild. Stacy didn’t stop. He was standing on a patch of the slick marble, so he couldn’t get traction to jump out of the way. The dolly crashed into his legs, causing him to pitch forward onto it. Despite his obvious pain, he regained his balance, got to his knees, and brought his pistol to bear.
By this time, Stacy was at full speed. The dolly hit the outer wall of the Acropolis with a jarring thud. The man flipped backward, and before he could arrest his momentum, he tumbled over the side.
Stacy was sure she’d never forget the awful scream that ceased abruptly when he thudded into the rocks fifty feet below.
Through the earpiece, Stacy had alerted Tyler about the second gunman, but Tyler hadn’t been able to make the first man give him the gun before the shooting started. When the shot went off behind him, the sound was so close that Tyler thought he was dead. No one could have missed from that distance. It was just enough of a distraction that the man in his grip was able to twist away from the knife and elbow Tyler in the stomach, driving him to his knees.
The man squeezed off a shot at Grant, who took cover behind the track cart. Then the man somersaulted to his left and aimed at Tyler, who got to his feet and dove for the cover of the stairs leading down to the Old Acropolis Museum entrance. Bullets pinged off the wall behind him.
The situation had gotten ugly quickly. Instead of getting the drop on the bad guy, Tyler and Grant were now helpless. If there were any more than these two, it would get even worse.
Tyler looked around for a weapon, maybe a missile of some kind, but there was nothing except a few stray stones. He peeked out and saw the first gunman notice Stacy and give chase. The second gunman was nowhere to be seen. With no other choice, Tyler picked up the heaviest stone he could and took off after them.
Stacy ran into the area cordoned off by the workmen, who had fled at the sound of the gunshots, leaving the gantry crane still in motion, the marble block nearing its intended position. She got as far as the crane when the Italian grabbed her by the backpack and hauled her to a stop.
Tyler had made up some ground, but not enough. The man whipped around with the gun pressed against Stacy’s head. He shouted something in Italian, and it was clear that he wanted Tyler to give up.
Tyler put up his hands and dropped the rock. Grant skidded to a stop twenty feet to his right.
“What’s he saying?” Tyler asked.
“He said he’s waiting for his friends,” Stacy said. “They’ll have heard the shots.”
“Think he speaks English?”
“Doubt it.”
Tyler saw that they were standing just in front of the tower of blocks. The gunman wasn’t paying attention to the sound of the crane, and the slab that was moving into position bumped up against another block that was already in place, straining its supporting nylon straps nearly to the breaking point. The slab had to weigh a thousand pounds. The gantry crane’s control panel was in front of him, with each button labeled with one letter, but he didn’t know Greek, so he couldn’t tell which was up, down, left, right, forward, or backward.
“How do you spell left in Greek?” Tyler couldn’t read Greek words, but thanks to the formulas he’d used in engineering school he could read Greek letters.
Stacy knotted her brow at the request, then said, “Alpha rho iota-”
There it was. “Got it. Grant, say something to our friend.”
“Hey!” Grant shouted. “Point that gun at me!” The gunman’s gaze flashed to the side just long enough for Tyler to press the “left” button unnoticed. The crane’s chain began to move in that direction, the marble slab twisting around the other block. This was going to be close.
Tyler put up his hands. “When I tell you,” he said to Stacy, “step on his foot and push him backward. But first tell him we’re surrendering.”
She nodded and spoke in Italian. The man smiled a self-satisfied grin. He took the gun away from her head and gestured with it for Tyler to get over by Grant.
The marble slab, pitched at an angle by the taut straps, slowly scraped around the tower. Any second it would be free of the other blocks of marble. Tyler saw it begin to rotate.
“Now!” he yelled.
Stacy stomped on the gunman’s toe. He yelped and let go of her, and she shoved him backward as he hopped in pain. He steadied himself against the tower of marble to regain his footing. The moving slab came loose and swung around in an arc, spinning wildly toward the gunman.
Tyler had been hoping the action would simply provide a distraction, but as it spun the straps loosened and let go. The block dropped onto the Italian’s head and chest with a sickening smack, crushing him to the ground. His legs twitched for a moment, then went still.
Tyler ran over to Stacy. “Are you all right?”
She was breathing hard but seemed unhurt. “I’m fine. How did you know it would do that?”
“I didn’t.”
Grant came over and bent down to look under the block.
“Can you reach his gun?” Tyler asked.
Grant stood up with a disgusted expression and shook his head.
“Let’s get out of here,” Tyler said.
“How?” Stacy said. “This guy said he had friends at the entrance.”
“There’s another way. Come on.”
He took her hand and sprinted toward the north side of the Acropolis, with Grant at his side. He didn’t have time to explain that when he’d seen the woman in the wheelchair and wondered how her husband got her up all those steps he realized there must be an elevator. He’d noticed its metal cage opening to let another wheelchair passenger out on the north side of the Acropolis when they’d walked past the Parthenon.
As they approached the opposite side of the Parthenon, Tyler spotted two more men sprinting toward where they’d heard the gunshots, both carrying pistols. He reached into the backpack and took out the unused smoke grenade from the day before, which Grant had rigged for use in case Tyler needed a backup in the museum. Tyler activated the grenade and tossed it into the open courtyard, where it began to spew orange smoke. Screams erupted from the few tourists who hadn’t been frightened away by the earlier melee.
When the smoke was thick enough, Tyler nodded to Stacy and Grant, and they ran for the elevator. Shock waves from the bullets pierced the air all around them, but the smoke concealed them enough to prevent the Italians from getting a clear shot.
The next two hundred feet were the longest Tyler had ever run, but the sight of the metal cage off-loading a wheelchair passenger kept his motor going.
They reached the elevator and piled in over the operator’s protests.
“Down! Down!” Tyler yelled. Two men emerged from the cloud of smoke behind them, pumping out rounds without much care for accuracy.
The bullets pinging off the metal silenced the lift operator’s protests, and she slammed the cage closed. The lift lowered below the wall before the men could reach them. The operator screamed as bullets ricocheted off the roof, but the heavy steel was too thick for the rounds to penetrate.
Tyler heard one of their pursuers yell “Polizia!” and the shooting stopped. The police must have arrived on the Acropolis.
When the lift reached the bottom twenty seconds later, Tyler poked his head out, but no one was waiting above to take another shot. They apologized to the terrified lift operator and left her cowering in the elevator as they dodged the wheelchairs of a tour group waiting to get on. In five minutes they were back at their motorcycles. Police cars sped past them up the long drive leading to the closest point they could get to the Acropolis entrance.
As they raced back to the hotel to get the rest of their belongings before heading to the airport, Stacy clung to Tyler’s back, shaken by their brush with death. Normally, Tyler would be high-fiving Grant for coming through enemy action like that unscathed, but he couldn’t bring himself to celebrate. He knew that the worst was still waiting for them in Naples.