Matt Drake Book 9 - The Plagues of Pandora

by David Leadbeater

  “Get out of the goddamn way,” he muttered as people leaped safely to all sides.

  “Three down,” Caitlyn observed. “One to go.”

  Crouch nodded. Russo’s bird was tracking the final mercenary ‘copter high above, following the curve of the falls around the Horseshoe bend and all the way to the American side. An arch bridge spanned the river there, called the Rainbow Bridge, which separated the Canadian side from the American side, tall and gray, eye-catching. Crouch saw the final chopper heading toward it.

  A plethora of worries invaded his heart. Everything from a rocket attack against the bridge to a landing in one of the many featureless parking lots. Quickly he hauled on the collective and gave chase from below as Russo pursued from above. The last chopper swooped low and shot through the great arch of the Rainbow Bridge, closely followed by Russo and Crouch, pushing for even more speed. Shots were fired from the fleeing machine but seemed rather half-hearted now.

  “So now they have another agenda?” Crouch realized. “It has to be the Pythians! What else could it be? Who else could turn this chopper around? Listen everyone, I’m guessing that the Pythians have a pretty much foolproof evacuation plan and a whole army of men to execute it. They’ve called in the reinforcements now. Follow our lead.”

  Affirmations snapped in through the comms, most of them implying grim relief. The Pythians were on the run. At last. It was a capture or kill mission now.

  *

  Hayden felt like she’d been sidelined for years. Truth be told, since she’d been shot, she hadn’t really missed the field. The break had given her time to think, to adjust, to recuperate whilst reflecting on her life. From FBI agent and then liaison to Secretary Gates to leader of SPEAR in so short a time; through her chaotic relationships until she finally let Mano Kinimaka be the person he’d always wanted to be. For most of her life she’d felt as if she’d been waiting for something to happen.

  Treading water.

  Always the person on the fringes, looking in. But since she met Matt Drake the adventure, the whirlwind, had never stopped.

  She hoped to God it would never end.

  Fired up, she let Kinimaka drive whilst she took the Alfa’s passenger seat. The Hawaiian, big behind the small wheel, nevertheless drove with dexterity and brilliance, shooting the mid-size, lime-green car to within a hair’s breadth of the third Jag’s black rear fender. With all the windows open the snarl emitting from the car’s twin tailpipe was a noisy, powerful, mechanical howl.

  Kinimaka held the Alfa at top speed, seeing a clear stretch ahead.

  Karin shook her head. “They’re gonna pull away from us.”

  “Not if I can help it.” Hayden watched as all the Jag’s windows came down and black barrels were poked out. The other car, the red Lexus, powered past to her left, its own windows down and Smyth’s head sticking out: a pissed-off, vengeful Alsatian. The Jaguar slowed slightly, and came up alongside.

  Hayden threw her door open, clung with one hand to the top side of the door frame and leaned across the roof, steadying her gun by lying on the smooth metal. Gusts of wind ripped at her. Tiny motes of debris blasted her clothing. She took aim on the array of gun barrels and didn’t waste a moment.

  She opened fire. One . . . two . . . three shots pumped into the back seat and then the front. Blood splashed the side of the car, red against pitch black. A gun slithered out, bounced against the asphalt. Shots were fired wildly into the air. The last Jaguar veered and then righted itself as Smyth’s Lexus swerved in on the second in line. Hayden fired more shots in the driver’s direction. A bout of return fire sent her ducking behind the frame, knowing how futile the gesture was but accepting it as a normal reaction. Her own window shattered but no bullet struck her.

  Kinimaka’s face was distorted by worry and anger. “Get in!”

  Hayden fired one more time, sighting carefully and taking a deep breath. Her bullet took out the driver. The black Jag bumped across a concrete verge, spun a one-eighty and then motored up the first hill of a verdant golf course, chewing grass and snapping off a lonely flag. Men in white T-shirts and checkered pants ran screaming.

  Hayden climbed back inside. “One down.”

  “I hate it when you do that!” Kinimaka nevertheless floored the gas pedal to come up behind Smyth’s Lexus.

  “Been a while,” Hayden said. “Missed it.”

  She watched ahead as the second Jag in line suddenly spouted an excess of gun barrels through its side windows. Smyth, being the closest, flung his own door open and stepped onto the door sill, hanging with one hand on the frame. Unlike Hayden, he was on the right side of the car, next to the Jag. Screaming at the top of his voice he reached out and wrenched a gun away from its owner, then another. As his driver inched even closer Smyth reached inside the other car’s window and grabbed a man’s throat, pulling him half out the window.

  Stuck as they were outside the window, the gun barrels couldn’t properly reposition to fire at him. Then the Lexus swerved, striking a pothole, and Smyth lost his grip. Thinking fast he pushed off the side of the Jag and landed back inside his own car, almost sprawling onto Lauren.

  The New Yorker’s eyes were open, lackluster, almost lifeless, but she still managed a wan smile. “Still playing the clown, huh?”

  Smyth had never played the clown and both of them knew it. Even now she was teasing him. He held out a calloused, bloody hand and placed it so gently on her knee she could barely feel the pressure.

  “Hang in there, beautiful. We’re close.”

  Through his comms he heard Hayden explaining that the third Jaguar had been seized and searched by following police and nothing resembling an antidote had been found. She also confirmed that the road ahead was relatively clear. The authorities, using police choppers and commandeering others, had sealed off most of the off and on ramps.

  He sat up. Bullets pinged through the car, smashing windows. In a moment he realized Agent Collins had been far from idle; seated in the front passenger seat she had replicated Hayden’s earlier movements and was holding the door frame and leaning away from their car, out over the asphalt at ninety miles an hour, to evade enemy fire.

  Smyth growled, jumped back onto the door sill and wrestled another gun away from its owner. Then, without a split second’s pause, he launched his torso across the deadly gap and through the Jag’s open window.

  Inside the rear, it was an instant melee. Two bodies already crowded the footwell. Smyth punched hard into the chest of the man he’d landed upon, the one he’d disarmed a second ago. As he did that a final merc, shuffling around in the far seat, took a bead on his face with a handgun.

  “Say bye bye, soldier boy.”

  The finger pressed. Smyth couldn’t get out of the way, but continued punching his own adversary right into the last instant of his life. Anything . . . anything to save Lauren and take these mercs and their evil bosses all the way down to a place where they could only drink brimstone.

  The merc fired.

  Smyth jerked his head back, expecting pain and death. Instead he saw the merc lurch sideways as a bullet took him in the side of the face. His shot twitched wide.

  Smyth, still punching, glanced back. Collins lay prone on the top of the Lexus, entire body outside the car, sighting along her outstretched arms.

  Smyth stared. “Jesus Christ.” Is she for real?

  Her business-like grin said that she was.

  Turning back he realized that the merc he was punching had succumbed long ago. Now only the man in the driver’s seat was still moving.

  “Get out! Get out!” Smyth heard Collins’ scream barely through the ringing in his ears. What the . . . ?

  Looking ahead he saw that the Jag was out of control, the driver now slumped, the car veering slowly toward a Shell gas station and a dozen empty pumps. Faster than he could think he scissored his body around and opened the rear door, letting it swing wide.

  Komodo guided the Lexus to within a foot of the speeding, drifting Ja
g.

  Smyth leaped over as Collins rolled off the roof and distorted her body to fit back through the open window. The movement took its toll, wrenching her handgun away, scraping her spine and elbows and making her scream, but the result was worth it.

  Panting, she rolled toward Smyth.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  His vision was momentarily blinded as the second Jaguar careened into the gas station, smashing through upstanding pumps and rebounding off a metal stanchion, then spinning several revolutions before hurtling into the kiosk. Bricks and mortar rained down on it.

  His thoughts were only for Lauren. “I just hope the antidote wasn’t in that car,” he said as the first licks of flame surrounded it.

  Lauren Fox reached out a shaking hand to comfort him. “Don’t . . . worry. Don’t. Thank you for trying.” A breath rattled through her frame. It sounded like her last.

  Smyth had to turn away. As he did he felt the covered syringe move in one of his pockets. The drug that would slow her metabolic rate! Heart surging with hope he withdrew the hard plastic tube and prepped the liquid.

  Please. Please work.

  Quickly, he uncovered Lauren’s arm and injected the fluid. Now they were working on hope and luck and good will. He smiled as her eyes fluttered open.

  Collins nodded, grim-faced, at the lead Jag.

  “Now we end this. And them.”

  *

  Hayden ordered Kinimaka to plant his foot through the floor. Their Alfa spurted forward just as the Lexus sped up. If these Jaguars had initially been heading for the Pythian HQ, delivering an antidote that the second facility had just formulated, then they were now fleeing for their freedom, their lives. It wouldn’t have surprised Hayden to find that the Pythians had ordered the second driver to smash into the gas station. Hopefully, the lead driver wouldn’t do anything quite so foolish.

  As their cars swept up to the side of the last remaining Jaguar, the men inside started shooting. The Lexus took a peppering to the front fender, the Alfa a stippling around the front wheel arch. Still, nobody backed down. Engines roared in protest, shuddering the very air they dispersed. Ahead now, the two-lane carriageway was about to run out, the road curving into a built-up area. Hayden realized they had seconds to act.

  “Again!”

  She flung her door wide, but it was already too late. The Jag roared ahead as its driver decided to utilize its own firepower rather than its occupants’. At the last moment Komodo, driving the Lexus, tried to swing over into its slipstream but turned an instant too soon.

  The Lexus impacted against the rear of the Jag hard enough to make the driver lose control. The results were terrifying, sending the huge black car into an eighty-miles-per-hour spin and its occupants into a fortunate oblivion. At first the Jaguar swerved within the limits of the road but then it hit the high curb and flipped, spinning slowly lengthways as all its wheels left the ground. Rolling helplessly, it smashed into a wide glass restaurant frontage, destroying the window, its frames and the brick wall above it. Wreckage exploded inside and outside the restaurant. Tables scattered.

  Hayden leaped out the moment Kinimaka squealed to a halt but she was a step behind Smyth. Like a bulldozer the soldier smashed aside hanging clumps of brick and mortar and reinforcement bars. Like a maniac he tore open the front driver’s door and took hold of the merc positioned there.

  Smyth shook him wildly. “Antidote!”

  Then, beyond him, clasped in the trembling hands of the passenger, Smyth saw a clear transparent cylinder, about the size of a tin can, jammed full with small phials.

  “Is that it?”

  “Save me,” the mercenary whispered. “I don’t want to die like this.”

  Smyth reached out and took hold of the cylinder. The moment he did so his heart began to quake, his pulse raced like never before. Are we too late? Is Lauren already too far gone?

  Gritting his teeth, he ran like hell.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  Holding the cylinder as carefully as if it held his own soul, Smyth jumped into the Lexus’ back seat. Within moments he sensed everyone gathering around him. Hayden, at his shoulder, whispered, “This is for all of us.”

  He quickly detached the accompanying bags of syringes and upended a phial, drawing clear liquid inside. A squirt to dispel air bubbles and he leaned toward the motionless, white-faced woman that had been robbed of her great vitality, so unbelievably depleted.

  “This is from me,” he said and jabbed the needle through her skin.

  “How long?” he heard somebody ask. Karin’s voice.

  “How is she? Has anything happened?” Collins’ voice.

  Smyth discarded the empty syringe, leaning over Lauren’s mouth. He didn’t care that he might contract or have already contracted the disease. A serious, more aloof head might have, but Smyth was incautious and fiery and, above all, a soldier. He would see this through to the bitter end, for good or bad, and he would not leave any person down.

  No breath came from Lauren’s mouth, no life crossed her lips.

  Drake’s voice came through the comms. “We’re following a chopper to what we believe is the Pythian HQ. They seem to be panicking and on the run. Or it could be some other kind of misdirection. Anyhow, we have both aerosols and the last sample now. How’s Lauren? Did you get the antidote?”

  Smyth hung his head, unable to speak.

  Hayden’s voice was less than whisper. “We’re waiting.”

  Kinimaka added, “Smyth administered it. But it may be too . . .”

  Smyth placed a hand on Lauren’s cheek, as gentle as a feather landing. “Please,” he whispered. “Don’t die on us.”

  Hayden took a deep, juddering breath. Though intense noise and activity surrounded them not an iota penetrated their team’s cocoon. It was only when Lauren’s face twitched under Smyth’s touch that anyone thought to take a breath.

  “Lauren?”

  Her eyes fluttered, her body gasped air. Her whole frame shuddered. Far too weak to move she nonetheless forced breath through her lungs and opened her eyes.

  Smyth leaned in so close he couldn’t focus. Relief flooded him, a liberating fountain. For the first time he could remember, he didn’t feel anger in his heart.

  The others crowded around, congratulating and rejoicing.

  Smyth stayed put. No way was he going to let them see the tears in his eyes.

  *

  Drake joined Alicia, Dahl, Mai and Trent in the race to catch up to Crouch’s choppers. The Augusta had developed a fault after his mistreatment back at the warehouse so they were now crammed into a military Humvee, following Crouch’s directions. The roads of Niagara Falls were filled with the noise of wailing sirens, K-rail barriers and rows of police. Drake already knew the Canadian authorities were cooperating fully with the international effort, and was grateful for it; no way would they want to be the ones that dropped the ball on something of this magnitude.

  “There!” Drake pointed at the skies. “Two o’clock!”

  Dahl approximated their position on a map. “They’re following the Niagara River. Can you make this thing go any faster?”

  “We’re trying, sir. We’re trying.”

  The vehicle roared onto the Niagara Parkway and then River Road, racing past a colorful place called Daredevil’s that promised ice cream, pizza, popcorn and fries. Alicia moaned as she went past.

  “God, I’m hungry.”

  “Here.” Drake broke out a Mars bar. “You remember? The SAS used to swear by them. A sugar rush before battle. Trouble is, nowadays they’re so small you need two.”

  Alicia sat back in fond memory. “I do remember, Drakey. I remember much more than you think.”

  The Humvee blasted on, following the curve of the river, a low stone wall to their right and thick clumps of trees hiding real estate to their left. River Road was a prime location, its properties large and mostly hidden by the treeline. Crouch’s voice crackled across the comms.

  “We’re ha
nging back now. Yes, I know they’ve already seen us but we’re not going to fly right into a trap. The Pythian chopper is slowing, banking, going down! It appears to be a house right here on River Road. We’re kind of level with Oakes Park, can you see it?”

  Dahl drew a line with his finger across from Oakes Park to River Road. “Got it. We’re ten minutes out.”

  “Good. Because we’re putting this baby down right in the middle of the highway.”

  Drake glanced around the interior. “Why would they lead us right to their lair?”

  Trent frowned. “Could be a dozen reasons. Megalomaniac disorder mostly. Their leader believes he can’t be caught. That fits our profile, considering how open and willing to take responsibility these Pythians have been so far. They’ve practically invited us to take part.”

  “Some say this is only their opening salvo,” Mai said.

  “Judging by their behavior so far,” Trent said, “I guarantee you their leader wants to meet at least one of us. My guess is that is what this is all about.”

  Drake narrowed his eyes, finding the whole scenario hard to believe. Yes they had come up against some evil, crazy masterminds in the past, but someone like this?

  “It’s their escape plan I’m worried about,” Trent said.

  Alicia cocked her weapon. “They’re not going to get the chance.”

  Trent looked unconvinced.

  At that moment a red Lexus and a light-green Alfa Romeo sped alongside the Hummer. Trent leaned forward to check out the occupants of the Lexus. “Everything okay?”

  Collins replied immediately. “Nothing broken.”

  “Looks like you got hit by a Gatling gun.”

  “They showed us theirs, we showed them ours. Ours was bigger and harder.”

  “Y’see,” Alicia nudged Drake, “size does matter.”

  “Oh, balls. Is this another Beauregard thing?”