Gabriel Hunt - Hunt at World's End

“I’ll do my best,” Gabriel said, and darted out from behind the statue’s leg.

As he went, skirting the edge of the fray, Gabriel looked for Grissom in the chaos and darkness. He finally spotted him at the far end. Grissom had picked up a fallen sword and was using it to block someone’s attack. At first Gabriel couldn’t make out who Grissom was fighting, but then another figure stepped out of the way and he saw the flash of a long metal staff swinging down to batter Grissom’s sword. The high priest. Grissom had gone straight for the missing gemstone himself.

Gabriel pumped a shell into the shotgun’s chamber and dove into the battle. He weaved around the first jeep in his path, butting a cult member in the head with the shotgun, then pulled the trigger and blew another off his feet. He shouldered past one of Grissom’s mercenaries, who spun on him with his handgun, and Gabriel blasted him aside. No favorites in this fight. Gunshots rang out all around him, the clash of swords, the cries of the wounded. He shoved his way past men locked in battle, ducked blades as they swung at him, and reloaded the shotgun as he went.

The fighting lessened as he broke through the crowd and made it to the spot where Grissom and the high priest were facing each other. The high priest whirled his staff, knocking the sword out of Grissom’s hand. Grissom backed away, out of reach of the staff’s bronze blade, and drew his ivory-handled dagger again—his weapon of last resort, it seemed. The two extra blades slid into view as he thumbed the hidden button. The cult leader didn’t look impressed.

Gabriel sprang forward, slamming the butt of the shotgun into Grissom’s back. Grissom dropped to his hands and knees, coughing hard. The cult leader looked startled for a moment, then lunged at Gabriel, who sidestepped the blade, knocking the staff aside with his shotgun. Something wrapped around his shins, tripping him, and as he fell he saw Grissom’s arms around his legs. Gabriel hit the sand hard. He swung the shotgun down toward Grissom, but the other man scrambled away, and suddenly Gabriel saw the high priest looming over him, the staff raised high over Gabriel’s chest. Gabriel rolled aside, and the blade sank into the sand. He got to his feet, leveling the shotgun at Grissom and the cult leader both, moving the barrel back and forth between them.

The three of them circled, Grissom with his dagger, the cult leader with his staff, and Gabriel with the shotgun. His finger twitched on the trigger. He was tempted to try to blast them both, but buckshot was hardly a precision projectile. If he shot at either of them, there was a good chance he’d hit the gemstones. He didn’t know what would happen if they shattered, but with the amount of energy they seemed barely to be containing he suspected it wouldn’t be good.

“We are at impasse,” the cult leader said, his words thick with a Russian accent. The emerald glowed at the top of his staff. “But not much longer. All Teshub’s Eyes are to me soon. And world will burn in Ulikummis hand.”

“Oh, just shoot this man already,” Grissom said to Gabriel. “If I have to listen to one more minute of his gibbering…”

“Quiet, both of you,” Gabriel said. “Now: give me the gemstones.”

“Give you the sacred eye?” the high priest spat. “Never.”

Grissom shrugged. “I’m certainly not going to give you anything. I suppose we are, as the man said, ‘at impasse.’”

Gabriel heard a sound then overhead, a sound loud enough to cut through the clamor of battle and bloodshed. It sounded like…a helicopter? He risked a glance up, but could only make out a blur high above him, something dark moving across the sky. What would a helicopter be doing out in the middle of the Kalahari Desert at night? Had it been drawn by the sound of gunfire, or had someone reported the sudden twilight appearance of a colossus half the height of the Statue of Liberty?

But the shape—copter or otherwise—sped out of sight before he could properly make it out and Gabriel returned his gaze to the scene before him. It had changed meaningfully even in the fraction of a second he’d looked away. At first, he had the impression that Grissom and the high priest were wrestling, standing so close together they seemed to be grappling with each other. It was only when the staff fell to the ground that Gabriel realized Grissom had stabbed his dagger into the high priest’s chest. Grissom shoved, driving the dagger deeper. The high priest dropped to his knees as Grissom tore the dagger out, then he fell forward onto the ground. Grissom grabbed the staff from where it lay in the sand and cut the emerald free from its lashings with a single swipe of the dagger’s razor-sharp blades.

Gabriel swung the shotgun toward Grissom and stepped forward so the barrel was just inches from his face.

“What are you going to do, Hunt, shoot me?” Grissom said calmly. “And risk destroying three priceless historical artifacts in the process? I don’t think so. I don’t think you’re the kind of man who—”

Gabriel jabbed the muzzle toward Grissom’s forehead. “You don’t know what kind of man I am.”

Grissom’s self-confident smile faded.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Gabriel said, “but I will if you don’t hand over the jewels.”

“Well, then, Hunt, you’ll have to shoot, because I’m not handing over a damn thing. But,” he said, “before you do, you might want to consider what will happen if you accidentally hit one of the jewels. Ah—I see you have been thinking about this. Good. You are wise not to pull the trigger. It could be like a nuclear explosion if it went wrong.” Grissom slid the third jewel—the emerald liberated from the high priest’s staff—into yet another pocket on his vest. The thing was bulging around him now like a life jacket.

“You have to make a choice, Hunt. There are only two options. Shoot me—and risk blowing us all up, and the statue, too—or let me go.”

“You’re wrong,” Gabriel told him. “There’s another choice.”

“Oh?”

Gabriel clubbed Grissom across the face with the shotgun’s stock. Grissom fell backward, dropping unconscious to the sand, a streak of blood across his mouth.

“There’s always another choice,” Gabriel said.

Hanging the shotgun over his shoulder by its strap, Gabriel knelt beside Grissom to pull the vest off him. He felt the jewels inside, knocking gently against one another through the padded fabric. The Three Eyes of Teshub. Together again, for the first time in millennia. Even through the fabric, the energy passing from one to the others made his palms tremble.

He hung the vest over his other shoulder. The Cult of Ulikummis and Grissom’s men, unaware that their leaders were out of commission, were continuing to struggle across the patch of desert standing between Gabriel and the statue. Which meant he had to go around. Cradling the vest under one arm, he started running, keeping to the outskirts and sprinting as fast as he could. Stray bullets zipped past him and puffed clouds out of the sand where they hit. He kept his head down. The statue loomed up ahead.

He glanced behind him as he skidded to a stop and in the distance saw Grissom climbing unsteadily back onto his feet. They wouldn’t have long. He turned to Joyce, who was standing beside Daniel with her arms by her sides. His Colt, he noticed, was nowhere to be seen—and neither was DeVoe. “What hap—” Gabriel began, but the question answered itself: Joyce shook her head sadly, apologetically, as DeVoe stepped into view, training Gabriel’s own weapon on him.

Gabriel ducked away, dashing around the statue’s leg. He heard a gunshot and saw a chip of stone fly off the statue where DeVoe’s bullet had hit.