Brad Thor - The Athena Project

Priorities , thought Casey to herself as she led her team deeper into the building.

A door at the rear of the reception room opened onto a loading bay area. There were crates and pallets stacked everywhere. Computers, stereos, televisions; Heger seemed to have a little bit of everything. In the corner, parked next to a yellow forklift, were two Kawasaki Ninja motorcycles that probably belonged to the guards. Beyond that were several pumps, hoses, and an array of marine salvage equipment, which had most likely been used to drain the water from the Kammler complex back in Zbiroh.

On the opposite wall were the building’s circuit breakers. It had been decided that Cooper would stay back to shut the power down when she got the signal. Casey had not intended the assignment to be a punishment for what had happened outside the bunker. In fact, it was just the opposite. She was sending the message that what had happened at Zbiroh was water under the bridge and that she still trusted Cooper to watch their backs.

For her part, Cooper didn’t know what to think of the assignment. She knew Gretchen well enough to know that she didn’t do things out of spite, but she felt as if she was being left out of the actual takedown of Heger and, right or wrong, that bothered her.

Clipping their radios to the outside of their packs, the women slid their NVGs, then their headsets on and tested their gear. When everyone was good to go, Casey gave the order to move out.

From the loading bay, Casey, Ericsson, and Rhodes slipped into the main part of the building. It was a large, wide-open space with a glass-paned skylight that ran down the center of the roof. Several of the panes were broken and there were puddles in different spots across the dirty concrete floor.

At some point, a bulldozer appeared to have been brought in to push debris into six or seven large piles. Some of the refuse, like old department store mannequins and broken carousel horses, seemed oddly out of place.

They moved through the building’s cavernous interior like ghosts, remaining in the shadows and not making sound. When they neared the last pile of rubble, they could make out several parked cars, including Heger’s black Range Rover.

To the right of the cars was the collection of offices Skovajsa said Heger had retrofitted. Casey powered up her NVGs and signaled for Ericsson and Rhodes to do the same.

They crept as close to the offices as they could and then Casey radioed Cooper to kill the power. Seconds later, all the lights in the entire building went out and Casey, Rhodes, and Ericsson burst through the main office door. It was then that they realized Skovajsa had lied to them.

There was a desk and a couple of file cabinets, but other than that, the room was completely empty except for a heavily fortified door at the other end. Casey didn’t waste any time. She charged right at it. Ericsson and Rhodes followed.

The three operators were halfway across the room when bullets began coming through the drywall. While Rhodes and Ericsson took cover, Casey went for the door and tried to kick it in. It didn’t work.

With bullets popping and snapping all around her, Casey suddenly thought of the sawed-off shotguns up front and wished they had brought one with them. The subsonic 9 mm ammunition she and Rhodes were using wasn’t going to help much with the hinges on the fortified door.

They had lost the element of surprise and they were taking withering fire. Pinned down at the door, Casey waited for a lull in the shooting and then ran for one of the filing cabinets.

When she got there, she hailed Alex again over the radio.

“Where are you?”

“I’m halfway to your position,” Cooper replied.

“We need you to go back and grab those shotguns from up front. Hurry!”

“Roger that,” replied Alex, who turned around and ran back toward the front of the building.

“When we get back to Prague, Skovajsa is a dead man,” Rhodes said.

Before Casey could respond, the shooting started up again.

“There’s got to be another way in,” yelled Ericsson.

Casey judged the distance to the door they had come in from and then replied, “When I say now , I want you two to make a break for it. I’ll try to keep them pinned down.”

Ericsson and Rhodes nodded.

Casey waited for another lull and when it came, she said “Now!” and began shooting. She put her shots high so as not to accidentally kill Heger. They needed him alive.

As Ericsson and Rhodes tumbled out the door, they were greeted with more gunfire, this time coming from the direction of the cars. With no other choice, they scrambled back inside.

“There are two more shooters outside,” said Rhodes. “By the cars.”

Casey squeezed herself up against the filing cabinet as another round of gunfire tore through the room. “They’re going to make a run for it!”

The bullets came in wave after wave, pinning them down. When they finally stopped, there was the sound of squealing tires outside.

“They’re running,” yelled Casey. “Go! Go! Go!”

Ericsson and Rhodes leaped up from behind the desk and took off with Casey right behind.

When Rhodes peeked out the door, there was a quick burst of fire and then silence as Heger’s last shooter hopped into a car and sped out of a rolling garage door that had been opened.

They had taken two vehicles: Heger’s black Range Rover and a yellow Porsche 911.

Rhodes fired at the vehicles even though she knew they were out of range. Casey was in the process of telling her to cease fire when the trio heard a high-pitched whine quickly approaching.

When Alex Cooper sped by them on one of the Kawasakis from the loading bay, she had to be doing at least sixty miles an hour. By the time she hit the street outside, she was up to seventy-five.

Neither Heger’s supercharged Range Rover nor the Porsche were any match for the racing-inspired motorcycle Cooper was piloting. There was no way they could outrun her, but they could run her off the road. And that’s exactly what the driver in the Porsche tried to do.

Had the driver been thinking, he would have realized that he would be better off keeping his vehicle steady so his passenger could lean out the window and try to shoot her. Twice she saw the passenger begin to poke his head out, but twice he was forced back inside by the driver’s overly aggressive maneuvers.

As the Porsche slowed, Cooper had no choice but to slow down as well. The streets were too narrow to try to pass. One wrong move and that would be it. And while she had slipped on a helmet sitting near the bikes, at these speeds it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

They took three turns, and each time the driver of the Porsche tried to slam on his brakes to cause her to crash, but each time Cooper was ready for him. The only problem, though, was that she was losing sight of Heger and the Range Rover. She was going to have to do something about this Porsche.

At the next intersection, as the driver slowed down and she saw the passenger attempting to come out of his window yet again with his weapon, she decided to make a very bold move. Instead of slowing down, she gunned it.

With oncoming traffic there was not enough room to pass the Porsche, at least not on the street, so Cooper leaped the motorcycle up onto the sidewalk. If one person stepped out in front of her, it would be all over.

She pressed herself tighter against the bike and gave it even more gas. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the yellow Porsche keeping right up with her on the street. It was time to lose them.