Drake watched their faces. The inside of the van was already awash with tension and fear. Now, there was terror. These men belonged to the Blood King. They would have been terrorized themselves. They had been willing to die in a sacrificial fire and now the very people they’d been ordered to kill were ordering them to turn on their master.
“Please . . . please . . .” The one word seemed to be coming from all their lips.
But Alicia had as much righteous fire as any nuclear bomb. If these men thought they would get leniency now, after attempting to murder thousands in the heart of three major cities, then they were crazy. Alicia punched some more before asking a SWAT commander for a Taser. She levelled it at one of the seated men.
Next, she grabbed a baton and started beating the third captive around the shoulders and upper back. When the first man she’d spoken to tried to step forward, she spun and kicked him in the sternum. The tased man was shaking, yelling, and then fell onto his back. The second had folded and was weeping into the floor of the van.
Drake pulled Alicia away, holding up a finger to say: Give it a minute. The blonde reacted with a snarl but then held back, breathing deeply. At the side Cam watched everything in silence. Drake thought the gravity of the events of the day so far might have shocked the young man into thinking discretion was the better part of valor.
Drake turned to the video screens and saw Molokai involved with one set of captives, Dahl with another. Those watching remained quiet, possibly looking away. Drake turned back to the captives in his own van.
“Guys,” he said. “This really is the end of the line. There’s nowhere to go. Face it, even if you don’t talk, Kovalenko will think you did. And we can let it leak that you did. So, you’re done. One of you is gonna talk. Might as well be the first and earn some goodwill.”
The men coughed and groaned, but with Kovalenko involved there could be no letting this slip. They would get information one way or another.
Alicia slid out her knife.
Drake looked to the side. Cam watched impassively as Alicia slammed her blade right through the hand of the man lying on the floor. His scream reverberated around the inside of the van. Alicia held her knife in place and knelt, whispering in the man’s ear, “I want answers.”
On screen, Molokai held one of his captives up in the air. The big man threw him up and then over so that he landed heavily on his back. There was a crunch and silence. Molokai bent down to lift the next man.
“No! No! There is only one more!”
The voice came from Drake’s van, from the mouth of a man watching the screen as he sat propped up against its corrugated side.
Drake stared, heart hammering. “What did you say?”
“There is only one more nuclear weapon!”
One more? Grigori had spoken of three. They had neutralized three.
Alicia whirled toward the man. “There’s another nuke?”
The speaker sat upright, hands thrust out in supplication. He started to speak once more but then his fellow captive, a thin individual wearing a T-shirt and chinos leapt at him; striking him with the front of his head and slamming him to the floor.
“No, no, no,” he hissed, saliva spattering from his mouth. “He will kill my family. He will kill—”
All the while he was headbutting the first man, smashing his forehead down time and time again. Alicia had grabbed hold of his jacket and dragged him clear, but the man struggled.
Drake leapt in to pull the speaker clear and Cam rammed an elbow into the attacker’s face. Bones broke. The man went down hard.
Again, Drake was surprised. That’s a pretty mean punch.
The speaker was covered in blood, his nose broken and bent, three teeth missing. He was spluttering. Drake hauled him into a sitting position.
“I’ll get you the help you need,” he said. “But first you have to tell us everything you know about this fourth nuke.”
The speaker spat blood and shards of tooth to the floor and shook his head. “No. First you get me to safety.”
Drake glanced at the screen. Molokai was holding another captive above his head, preparing to slam him down onto the concrete.
“Seriously,” Drake said. “The first to speak lives. I don’t give a shit about the rest of you.”
“You have to save my family. You have to help my wife and children.”
“We will. By killing Luka Kovalenko.”
“You can’t kill him,” the man spat, “he is the most brutal part of his father.”
“Hey.” Drake slapped the man to get his attention. “I killed his father.”
Shock filled the terrorist’s eyes. Shock and awe. “Is that true?”
“I can’t prove it, but yes, I killed Dmitry Kovalenko. Shot the bastard in the face.”
“You save me and my family. That is all. There is a fourth bomb, yes. It is in New York City and the Blood King is there with it. Right now. Planting it. And protected by a small army.”
Drake’s head reeled. If the Blood King himself was priming a nuke at that very moment in the heart of New York, then this information was more than a credible threat. It was an imminent attack.
“Where is he?” Alicia shouted at the man in her fear. “Where is he right now?”
The speaker opened his mouth to answer but Drake acted instantly. He struck the man across the face and leapt on him, smothering any words that might have fallen from his mouth. Then, squeezing the man in a tight bear hug he looked up from the floor straight at Alicia.
“Shut off the monitors,” he said.
“Drake, what the hell are—”
“Shut down the fucking monitors. I’m sorry Mr. President, but this man can’t reveal the whereabouts of the Blood King right now to anyone except the members of Strike Force One. We’re proven. We’re loyal. With deep respect to everyone else watching: You’re fucking not.”
CHAPTER NINE
Harry Hodge was the Commanding Officer of Special Operations of the New York Police Department. He was a weary-looking man with drooping, bushy brows and a mouth that turned down at both ends. His teeth were yellow, his tongue and lips often stained red from bottles of wine consumed the night before. His clothes were usually wrinkled and half a size too big because, as he often said, he’d been born a size in-between and preferred to go large rather than go small.
He listened now as the Special Forces teams interrogated the men they’d caught in Philly, Chicago and Washington DC. He stayed on the line as long as courtesy allowed before ending his participation and pushing back in his plush leather chair and staring out the window for several long minutes.
Decision time.
But in truth, there was no decision, at least not one that mattered beyond picking the phone up to make a single phone call.
Hodge rubbed his tired face. His had been a rough, unlucky life despite the heights he’d risen to as a police officer. He was a fifty-something man that looked and acted close to retirement. He was fond of telling people he’d had a hard paper round from the age of six.
Hodge made sure the door was locked before placing the call. He dug a burner phone out of his pocket. He’d been forced to learn the number by heart.
Hodge paused with his finger hovering over the final key. For the last three years of his life he’d been fighting an ever-strengthening hurricane. He’d been enfolded in darkness, battered by storms, shoved to and fro by forces far stronger than himself. He was one of the top cops along the eastern seaboard for God’s sake, but he could do nothing to suppress the influences weighed against him.
It all started more than twenty years ago. Hodge had been a street cop, protecting his patch and trying to connect with the local community. The cop culture hadn’t changed much through the years—the old guys always passing on their wisdom—and bad habits—to the new guys.
Hodge’s partner back then had been a man named Field, and he’d gambled in all the wrong places. Field was in for thousands to the Chinese and the Russians. He paid
them back with information and small favors. From a youthful standpoint, Hodge saw the pull of gambling, how the thrill drew you away from the shit and horrors you had to deal with during a working day. Sometimes, you needed the gambling more than you needed sleep.
Hodge resisted for about two years. The damn trouble was that Field was flipping chips so often he’d become buddies with half the assholes in town, and half the hookers. The top crime bosses were aware of him.
Shit, Hodge thought. They even used to do him favors.
When Field was killed in a dime store shootout, a gap had appeared in the mutual favor society that existed in New York between cops and criminals. Hodge was the natural successor.
But I told them to go fuck themselves, didn’t I?
Hodge shifted in his leather chair. Outside, it was raining. Sleet spattered the panes like slingshots thrown from the gods. The glass was obscured by a small waterfall. Hodge felt his fist clench around the burner phone.
Am I really going to do this?
Hodge had lasted out against the Russians’ influence far less than two years this time. When Field died and Hodge refused to take his place, the Russians banned him from every establishment and Hodge missed it. He went from being a VIP guest to an outcast, from dining on free bloody steaks and fine wine to TV dinners. From thousand-dollar hookers to Porntube. When Hodge finally caved and returned to the Russians, he’d known deep down that he’d never escape their clutches again. He’d known his life was no longer his own.
But the stink of corruption never stuck to Harry Hodge. Maybe it was providence, fate or something entirely different. Maybe it was the pure blind luck he never seemed to achieve at the roulette table. He’d risen through the ranks at a slightly above average rate, receiving recommendations from top officers along the way.
Three years ago, he’d attained the rank of Special Operations Commander. That gave him oversight on all manner of entities from SWAT to structural collapse rescue. From suicidal jumpers to water rescue. The remit was huge but fortunately he had an extensive staff to lean on.
Also, he was in a better position to serve his masters.
Because that’s what they had become. Hodge knew he’d have been better off staying as a beat cop. The higher you rose the more they expected. The better his position, the worse the crime they required him to commit.
And if he didn’t give them this current, new nugget of information, he was pretty sure they’d find out and kill him.
Hodge pressed the send button.
“Dah?”
“It’s me. Put him on the phone.”
“Him? You mean Sergei?”
“No, not damn Sergei. The boss.”
“If I am to disturb the boss it had better be good.”
The line clicked as Hodge was put on hold. The seconds passed like a fluttering heartbeat, engulfing him like an elongated tunnel. His innocence was at the other end, unreachable. His guilt formed the tunnel itself. His absolution was right before him, hanging on to the tunnel’s edges with thin, bony slipping fingers.
“This had better be good, Hodge.”
The sound of his master’s voice sent a spasm of fear through the police commander. The line was faint and echoey, but then the man was thousands of miles away.
“I have the greatest news ever.”
“A bold statement considering a man once told me he’d secured me a walk-on part in the last ever episode of Game of Thrones.”
Those words were so far removed from what Hodge considered his master to be that he momentarily paused, unsure that he’d been put through to the right person.
“It is okay, Hodge.” The man eventually sighed. “I do not have all day. Tell me your incredible news.”
“I know where Luka Kovalenko is right now.”
Even veteran Russians could be surprised, and Hodge heard a sharp intake of breath. “I knew we could flush him out by using Grigori.”
“You did?”
“It does not matter. Tell me now.”
Hodge considered a small bargain, but then remembered the caliber of the man he was dealing with. The only person in the world as bad as the Blood King was the man on the other end of this line.
“New York City.”
Hodge spent five minutes detailing exactly what had been said in the President’s live video interrogation, word for word.
“New York is a big place,” the grating tones said when he’d finished.
Is that it? No big thank you? No, I’ll see you right for that, my friend?
Hodge said, “You have a lot of men.”
“And so does the Blood King,” the voice mused. “We are aware of many of them. One face may lead to another. The Old School will rise again.”
Hodge swallowed. “I don’t understand.”
“For years Mother Russia was ruled by the oligarchs, by the wealthy and the well connected. Not by the politburo, you understand, but by the men that owned and paid the government, as I own and pay people like you. Since the rise of Dmitry Kovalenko that all changed. Power shifted to the criminal element and, chiefly, the Blood King. Today . . . Luka Kovalenko owns Russia as fully as he owns his racehorses, his yachts and his billions. Tomorrow . . . the hope is that the Old School will rise again.”
“This Blood King . . . he is a madman.”
“That is true. But even mad men can rule the world. All they need is money, charisma and people stupid enough to believe the shit that comes out of their lying mouths. It happens all the time.”
Hodge thought about that. “I guess.”
“You have brought me good news, Hodge. In an hour I will have every loyal Russian national out on the streets of New York, searching for the Blood King. And there will be a reward.”
Hodge closed his eyes. “Shit, that’s gonna be—”
“Yes, a bloodbath, yes. That is what I want. An environment so toxic it prevents Luka Kovalenko escaping. It destroys his army. It puts me and my friends back on top of the country we love.”
“You’re staging a coup? In New York?”
“I like that. Yes, I am staging a coup. I have made the decision to overthrow the usurper that rose to power in shadow. I chose to back the Old School. Russia will be great again. The Blood King will be dead. And then we can move forward once more as we always did. I choose rebellion.”
Hodge bit his lips until they bled. He ground his teeth together until they hurt. What the hell have I done? Started a war between the Blood King and Old Russia? Here? In New York?
He barely heard his master sign off. Didn’t answer when his secretary tried to put a call through. There was nothing else for it . . . Hodge knew what he had to do.
Without wasting another second, he grabbed his coat and his car keys. He told his secretary to hold everything, that he was feeling terribly ill and to redirect all calls to his cell. If anyone rang, they didn’t need to know he was fleeing the city. He bade her goodbye and headed down the stairs to the street. The drizzle that saturated the air outside didn’t matter. The traffic didn’t matter.
Only the next few hours mattered.
Hodge jumped into his car and switched it on, determined to get the hell out of New York before the shit really hit the fan.
CHAPTER TEN
The atmosphere inside the plane and then the ground transport was as highly charged and optimistic as any Drake could ever remember.
They knew where the Blood King was right now and, apart from his loyal followers, they were the only people on the planet that did so. For the first time he could remember, Drake knew they were one step ahead of the Blood King.
Always before, Kovalenko had struck without warning, implementing a well-laid and sometimes years-in-the-making plan at exactly the right moment. Always before, Drake and his team had been caught on the back foot, reacting instead of attacking, trying to survive instead of launching the assault.
But now all that was different.
They were a step ahead. They were about to smash down on
him like a fucking planet, take the threat of the Blood King away forever.
New York was busy at this time of day.
The entire Strike Force team was back together, crammed into the rear of a van. Two armed officers drove, twisting through the streets as fast as they could without the aid of sirens. Their Intel told them the Blood King had an “army”. How smart and plentiful that army was remained to be seen.
Drake sat beside Alicia who was sitting beside Cam. Mai, Luther and Dahl were opposite them. Kinimaka, Hayden and Molokai were near the doors. Kenzie sat at the top end, ready to relay any orders through to the drivers.
“You sure Cam’s up for this?” Drake whispered to Alicia. “This is Luka Kovalenko, after all.”
Alicia rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know, Drakey. I can’t leave the little bastard alone though, can I?”
“He’s not your child. Not your responsibility.”
“I saved his life. He saved mine. And if you know someone’s been knocked off kilter mentally shouldn’t you try to help them?”
“I don’t think this classifies as helping.”
“He can stay back. He’s good at watching our asses.”
Drake smirked. “I bet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s definitely got a crush on you.”
“A crush? What is he—thirteen?”
“Kinda looks like a teenager.”
Alicia shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Ninety percent of the guys I meet have a crush on me.”
Drake accepted the inevitable and clammed up. He’d never get anywhere with the blonde. Not if she’d made her mind up. And, to be fair to Cam, he had shown some raw promise back there. It was clear the young man had been in some tough scrapes in his life, and that he’d fought his way out of them. He’d witnessed death and violence, most recently the tragic death of his sister. How would that affect his decision making? Drake put it to the back of his mind and re-checked his weapons.
Dahl rocked with the van’s harsh motion. It was cutting up traffic, threading between lanes. It was approaching their target. Dahl was ready. Luka Kovalenko had risen to power a relatively short time ago, making himself known by attacking what was the SPEAR team at the time, killing friends like Lauren and Smyth, and SAS soldiers like Shaun Webster. He’d hit the US President with everything he had. Still, he had ultimately failed thanks in some part to the SPEAR team. The fact remained that as long as Kovalenko lived, the world would never be safe. Dahl would never rest for the sake of his children and other children all across the planet. They deserved to be allowed to grow up and develop without anxiety, without stress, without the mental anguish people like the Blood King caused. Dahl would be happy to pull the trigger that ended his reign of terror.
The Blood King Takedown Page 5
