Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear

With this gory specter out of his path Gabriel saw Christos again, held between two larger men, each spreading one of his arms wide while Niko lifted a wooden chair and swung it back over one shoulder.

Gabriel got to Niko just as the man completed his backswing. He plucked the chair out of Niko’s hands as he was about to bring it down. Niko spun, dumbfounded at finding himself empty-handed. Gabriel gave the chair back to him, full in the face, the wood of the chair’s back splintering when it connected with the big man’s jaw. Niko slumped to the ground. Gabriel dropped the remnants of the chair and finally drew his Colt.

“Let him go,” he told the men holding onto Christos’ arms. “Yes, you.” He gestured with the gun. The men backed away, hands up in the eternal gesture of surrender. He could have had their wallets if he’d wanted them.

“You,” he said, pointing to the one with smaller feet. “Take those off.”

“My shoes?” the man said.

“Off,” Gabriel repeated, and he accepted the soft gum-soled loafers with his other hand. He jammed them into his jacket pocket. They’d do.

“Thank you—” Christos began, but Gabriel cut him off.

“Later. What’s the safest way out of here?”

Christos led him behind the bar, where a wooden panel set into the floor came up when he pulled on the iron ring in its center. A ladder led down to a cellar, and at the bottom they found the bartender, sitting on an empty wine crate, playing solitaire with a filthy, creased deck of cards. “You see what you started, Christos?”

“I didn’t start it, Papa, Niko did.”

The old man shrugged. “Nobody ever starts it. But who’s left to clean up when it’s finished? Eh?”

“I’ll clean up, Papa.”

“You! That’ll be the day. Go on. Get your American out of here before they take him to pieces.”

Gabriel reached into his pocket, took out a few of the hundred-dollar bills he had left, laid them down beside the king and queen of spades. “I apologize for the trouble.”

“Feh,” the bartender said, and spat on the ground, but he kept the money.

They came up into a rear courtyard behind the tavern building. Christos had a green-and-white papakia—a souped-up moped—leaning against the wall. The long, narrow padded seat had room for two and Gabriel climbed on behind him, holding onto the young man’s waist. He saw a purple knot swelling up on Christos’ neck where one of the bar’s other patrons had landed a blow. It was ugly and looked painful—but things could’ve gotten a lot worse, Gabriel told himself. They were lucky to be leaving when they were.

Christos revved the engine and they zoomed off. Two sharp right turns brought them to a steeply rising road through the mountains. Christos seemed to know where he was headed, and Gabriel left him alone to concentrate on driving—until he heard the sound of engines coming up behind them.

“Can this thing go any faster?” he asked. In front of him, Christos shook his head.

Had they been spotted leaving the tavern? There’d been several more of the mopeds leaning against the wall, and certainly some of the brawlers they’d left behind might have been mad enough to follow if they’d seen their prey getting away. Maybe even the man he’d left standing in his socks.

But looking back over his shoulder, Gabriel saw not more papakias come into view but a trio of Ducati Multistrada motorcycles, low to the ground and Corvette red. And their helmeted, black-jacketed drivers were a far cry from the rustics who’d bloodied each other for sport back in the bar.

One of them drew the long barrel of a rifle from a side-mounted holster on his bike’s chassis and fired two shots in their direction.

Christos swerved across the opposite lane and back again, tilting the papakia at a precarious angle.

“Don’t worry,” he shouted back, and then, switching to English, “I drive good—like your Steve McQueen!”

“Great,” Gabriel said, pulling his gun. Steve McQueen. He twisted in his seat, aimed carefully at the lead driver behind them and pulled the trigger just as Christos swerved wildly again. The shot went wide.

“Damn it, kid, I’ve only got three bullets left,” Gabriel said.

The bikes were gaining on them, their engines growling as they accelerated. The driver with the rifle was raising his gun again. Gabriel did the same.

“Keep steady this time,” Gabriel said, “or I’ll save the last one for you.”

“But there’s a turn coming up!” Christos said.

“Fine,” Gabriel said and squeezed the trigger. The driver went off his bike backwards, the faceplate of his helmet shattered. His rifle spun end over end into the brush on the side of the road.

Christos leaned into the turn, an almost 180-degree switchback zigzagging up the mountainous terrain. Gabriel had to strain to hold on.

The two remaining cycles stayed with them through the turn. Neither of the drivers had rifles, but as Gabriel watched, they both pulled out semiautomatic pistols.

“We’ve got to lose these guys,” Gabriel shouted.

“Hold on,” Christos said and, turning off the road, plowed through a field of scrub. The spiny undergrowth tore at Gabriel’s ankles and every few feet a rock under their tires threatened to overturn them.

The other bikes were still on their tail.

A bullet flew past just inches away.

The field angled upward before them, a sloping incline, hilly but empty, not a boulder to hide behind, not a tree.

“How’s this helping us?” Gabriel shouted.

Without warning, Christos braked. Gabriel slid forward, slamming into Christos’ back, and the papakia itself juddered ahead a few feet. The bikes behind them shot past, steering to either side of them to avoid a collision. They began parallel turns that would bring them around again—and then as they passed the crest of the next hill over, they vanished from sight. The sound of metal tearing and twisting and smashing against rock reached them from what sounded like far below. Gabriel jumped off the bike and ran forward, slowing as he got to the place where the other men had disappeared. He stopped at the edge of a crevasse, a sudden rocky sinkhole that bisected the field and plunged at least forty feet straight down. The cycles looked to be very near the bottom. The drivers weren’t moving.

Gabriel returned to the bike.

“I grew up just the other side of this field,” Christos said as they got underway again. “Papa, he would tell me, don’t ever drive in there, no matter what. But I didn’t listen. None of us boys did. We all dared each other, who could go the closest. We could find the edge with our eyes closed.”

“I guess those guys didn’t grow up here,” Gabriel said.

“I guess not,” Christos said.

They were back on the road, chugging up the side of the mountain once more.

“How do you think those guys got on our tail?” Gabriel asked.

Sitting in front of him, Christos shrugged. “Someone must have called them, told them there was a man asking questions about a sphinx.”

“They tell you to keep an eye out for that?”

“Mm-hm,” Christos said. “Said they’d pay, too. Fifty dollars U.S. for any tip, no questions asked.”

“That’s a pretty good deal,” Gabriel said.

“It is.”

“Yet, instead of taking them up on it yourself, you just led them over a cliff.”

“That’s not a cliff,” Christos said.

“They’re just as dead,” Gabriel said. “Why’d you do it? Why not turn me in for the money?”

Christos thought about it for a moment. “You gave my father three hundred dollars when you didn’t have to. I’m not going to turn you in for fifty.”

“What if they offer four hundred?”