The Matt Drake Series Books: 7-9 (The Matt Drake Series Boxset 2)

by David Leadbeater

  Mai stood very still. This was one of the memories she had kept buried all these years. And despite her words, she wasn’t sure she could take Gyuki. She would not be bated into trying before she located her parents.

  “Maybe later,” she said with cold detachment. “When do we leave?”

  Gyuki shrugged. “The clan village is two hours away. If we leave now we can be there before lights out.”

  They exited the hotel, found Gyuki’s car, a mundane white Honda and joined the slow-moving traffic. Once away from the bright lights and bustling attractions of central Tokyo, the roads grew quieter and Gyuki made better time. His driving was unremarkable and he did nothing to make himself stand out, just one of many homecoming minions. Mai studied his visage in the repeated wash of oncoming headlights and found it to be unkind, merciless and devoid of emotion. The world could only become a better place when this man breathed his last.

  High rises gave way to office buildings, then to rows of houses and, eventually, to patches of undeveloped grassland. After two hours Mai looked thoroughly lost, and Gyuki didn’t even mention blindfolding her. It was one of his failings, this arrogance, this all-encompassing clan belief that he, and they, were superior beings. It may eventually prove his undoing.

  At last, Gyuki pulled the car off the road at a turn marked by two overhanging wizened old trees and an abandoned church, and drove about three more miles. The tree-lined road was pitted, overgrown with roadside shrubbery, and extremely unappealing. Designed to keep the curious away, no doubt. Gyuki circumvented several nasty potholes, bounded across a few more, and then pulled into a blind road to the left. He powered up the double-rutted dirt track, then slowed as the trees grew sparse and a flat space opened out.

  Mai saw a dirt-topped parking area where several other cars as nondescript as Gyuki’s sat waiting for the next assassin. Or maybe just for the next grocery run. Who knew what womb-to-tomb assassins got up to these days?

  Gyuki parked and got out, signaling that Mai should follow. The Japanese woman was happy to do so, taking in every twist and turn of the emerging village as she went. The Clan had extended since she had left. What had been a long shed billeting a dozen mixed men and women, girls and boys, was now two. A fighting arena sat between the two; square and marked by hanging red banners adorned with the golden symbol signifying the name of the Clan.

  Tsugarai. It was only a family name, but it should have meant devil.

  Mai familiarized herself with the place. Beyond the two sheds were dotted half a dozen small dwellings, no doubt the homes of the clan chiefs, and one small temple. Further over near the tree line stood one final building, a long low structure with barred windows and doors. This was also new. The village had never needed a jail before.

  Gyuki pointed Mai to the temple. She tried to shake off the sense of unreality which had clung to her since she had stepped out of the car. Not only was she stepping back in time to a place she feared and hated, but where was everyone? The village was deserted, as quiet as Hayami’s boat now that the man was dead.

  “Quiet day, Gyuki?”

  The man ignored her, his attention captured by the temple before them. It was by far the fanciest building in the village, tastefully adorned with golden flags and with two lion-head statues that stood to either side of the entrance.

  “Shoes off at the door. Bow when you enter,” Gyuki reminded her. It was like taking a terrible trip down the haunted highways of her past. By most standards the clan temple was simple, little more than a large and gently curving roof traditional in Japanese architecture with thin, movable, non-load-bearing walls. The oversized eaves gave the interior a classic dimness, contributing heavily to the temple’s foreboding presence. The interior consisted of only one room, commonly called a moya, though the movable walls could partition small areas off.

  Mai was aware that most temples were sacred places and business would never be conducted there, but the Clan held mostly to their own rules and broke them when it pleased. As she crossed the threshold, she paused for a minute to let her eyes adjust. Figures slowly materialized out of the gloom beyond.

  The clan master, Bishamon, looked as old today as he had over twenty years ago, not a day younger than three hundred. Mai wondered if his stick-thin right hand could still whip out with a quick cuff as fast as it used to.

  “Hisashiburi, Hanshi.” Mai saw no reason to antagonize the elder too soon, allowing him the high honorific which roughly translated as ‘Grand Master’.

  “Your family misses you, Mai.”

  She bowed her head, aware that Bishamon’s statement had nothing to do with the feelings of her parents. “I have returned,” she murmured at the earthen floor. “To do your bidding.”

  The clan master unfolded his body from where he sat, cross-legged, upon a raised dais. He wore only a loin cloth and a white robe open down the middle. As he crept toward her, Mai was reminded of a spider slinking across its web on thin, spindly legs.

  “You returned to save your worthless sister and her koshinuke boyfriend. You have far to go before we will allow your true rebirth.”

  “Of course.”

  “But for now it is good.” Bishamon waved dismissively at her. “Gyuki tells us Hayami is dead. Go see your parents now, Mai, and see what you fight for.”

  Mai spun immediately, anxious to get away from the evil old man and his private lair. The place stank of deep buried things; bad earth, sweat and old blood. Not a whisker stirred in there, not a whisper went unheard. The deep shadows concealed more than dark corners, she was sure.

  Outside, the pitch black night was not as sinister. Clouds scudded across a quarter moon. She paused to get her bearings and Gyuki’s voice whispered close to her ear. “Looking for something?”

  “No,” Mai said quickly. “Waiting for you.”

  “We have eighteen warriors,” Gyuki told her with a smirk. “Two master assassins and the Grand Master. If you held any notions about freeing your parents—and yourself—Mai, I hope you are no longer courting them.”

  “Two master assassins?” Mai was surprised. “I thought you were the only one.”

  Gyuki hissed. “Then you are an idiot. The Tsugarai never stagnate.”

  Mai fell in behind him, wondering who else might have made the grade to master assassin. She could barely remember any of her old classmates. Truth was, she had tried to forget about all of them and held serious doubts that any had actually survived. Questions regarding the prison-like building struck her again.

  Gyuki led her around one of the big sheds. Nestling close to its treeward side, small, squat and built in perpetual shadow, was a single story structure which could be labeled as little more than a hut. Gyuki waved her toward the door.

  “Go. I will wait here. You have thirty minutes.”

  Mai stared at the door. Legs which never failed her in battle suddenly started to shake. My parents? The couple who had sold her in order to put food on the table. Sold her, albeit unknowingly, into a violent form of slavery that she was still trying to escape. For a minute her feet refused to move, and she almost turned around, but the sight of Gyuki’s amused face galvanized her body and will.

  Before she knew it, she was knocking on the door, heart pounding. The first thing she heard was shuffling, then a man’s voice—my father’s voice—and the sound of the door being dragged open.

  Words failed her. Emotion slackened her face. The old couple staring out at her wore expressions of utter amazement. The woman acted first.

  She fell to her knees. “Mai?”

  Her father fell onto her, sobbing, and it was all she could do to hold him up. Behind her, the callous voice of Gyuki cut through the night.

  “Twenty minutes.”

  Mai carried her father inside.

  ****

  Five more minutes passed before anyone could speak.

  “When they said they could find you, we didn’t believe them,” her mother somehow strung a sentence together. “But they . . . they have
taken good care of us.”

  Mai supported her father as he tried to lower himself into a chair. “Wait. They’ve taken good care . . . you mean you’re here voluntarily?”

  Her mother, Chie, spoke quickly, her accent so thick Mai could barely follow. “They found us many months ago. Your father . . . he was not doing so well. They took us in. They knew your sister, Chika, she . . . she—”

  Disowned you, Mai thought, but said nothing. She could see the agony they had been through. It was etched on every single line and curve of their faces, it limited their every movement. It had all but destroyed them.

  The Clan had given them hope. Again. For the second time. And the Clan would dash that hope on a whim and gladly hand her parents the poisoned swords upon which to throw themselves.

  Mai bit back her thoughts and feelings. “It is good to see you again,” she said simply, and reveled in the pure happiness that flowed across her parents’ features. For now, it was enough.

  ****

  Mai walked out into the night, making sure her parents knew she would return soon. In what capacity, she didn’t know, but she intended to be back within days rather than weeks.

  Gyuki stood unmoved, quietly laughing at her. “A wonderful reunion.”

  Mai walked right up to him until their breath mingled. “What’s next?”

  “Next? You will show your true worth to the Tsugarai Clan. Today was but a test. Tomorrow—” Gyuki actually began to laugh.

  Mai gaped at him. Never before had she heard the master assassin laugh, and never again did she want to. It was a truly demented sound, like a mental patient finally freed after being forced to watch Coronation Street or Days of our Lives for twenty five years straight.

  “Tomorrow,” Gyuki got a hold of himself. “You revisit the Coscon.”

  Mai staggered. “I what?”

  “You remember it well, I am sure. The Tokyo Coscon where your name became legend. The great Mai Kitano will return once more. Tomorrow we need a job completing.” Gyuki chuckled. “It so happens that our target will be there. How very fitting.”

  Mai struggled to articulate.

  “And more. Your target is a prominent member of the Yakuza. A leader. You must make a spectacle of him, teach them a lesson. They have dishonored the Tsugarai.”

  Mai turned away from his manic laughter. The last Coscon had all but killed her, left her a wreck, and made her name. She had almost destroyed a branch of the local Yakuza, turning herself into a lasting target, and now they wanted her to do it all again.

  Within the halls of law enforcement, her name was legend because of the Coscon. Her rise through the ranks had been meteoric. A sudden idea formed in her mind as she stared into the face of Gyuki’s insanity.

  Maybe, just maybe, she could pull this one off too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  Drake heaved a sigh of relief as word finally came down the chain of command.

  “Mission is a go. Repeat, mission is a go.”

  The VP had taken his time, but had eventually signed off on a plan devised by every one of the Joint Chiefs and their advisors. No single man wanted to be lumbered with formulating the strategy that could potentially save or sacrifice the President of the United States, but something had to be done. It had finally come down to the military men and their lifelong experience.

  Dahl clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon, matey. Time to chuck Kovalenko back through the gates of Hell.”

  The men rose. They were a large group, involving many agents from the FBI Counter Terrorism Division, Hostage Rescue, and Special Weapons and Tactics. The hotel consisted of twelve floors, over three hundred rooms and around forty suites. Cutting edge technology had been used to penetrate the hotel’s walls, technology that Drake had encountered once before. The secret base over in the Florida Keys had used their advanced camera to determine the President’s location. Once redirected it had examined every room, floor by floor, finding civilians hiding in fear behind locked doors, tourists closeted together and watching CNN’s live feed, a turn-down maid engaged in a little discreet robbery, a manager surfing the Net for the best odds to gamble as to whether President Coburn lived or died, then the rogue Secret Service agent Marnich, and finally Kovalenko and his band of mercenaries. The Presidential Suite was on the top floor, but Kovalenko had set up his twisted sideshow one floor below. It was noted that Kovalenko stayed well away from the windows and used no unnecessary lighting, so they assumed he knew nothing about the American’s see-through-walls technology. But the harsh truth remained—they would only get one crack at this.

  Marnich’s family had been contacted. It had been verified that they weren’t under duress and that the US agent was officially a traitor. Everyone in the room knew the Government had been compromised, the stoplight scenario upheld that hypothesis, but no one knew to what level. The Department of Defense was sweeping DC itself to ensure no other surprises remained in the form of radiological or biological signatures. The NSA reported no particular increase in anti-US chatter around the globe. The airspace above DC had been partially restricted and military flyovers were underway. The country’s threat level had been raised. In addition to the top-secret camera feed, an infra-red SaTScan had been ordered of the hotel in case the advanced camera passed outside its range of influence.

  Drake craned his neck to view the live feed being bounced by satellite from the hidden facility in Key Largo. Kovalenko sat alone at a little round table, a shot glass and mini vodka bottles arranged before him as if they were on parade. Half a dozen of his men roamed the suite, each man dressed in a similar suit to the President, passing from the bedroom to the main room and through to a second bedroom. Two captives could also be seen, trussed up in the back bedroom, also wearing dark suits. The bar area was manned by a wiry African, who appeared to be Kovalenko’s second-in-command.

  President Coburn rested with his feet up on a leather couch, looking remarkably calm and relaxed. His eyes were fixed upon a wall-mounted TV, watching minute-by-minute reports of the night’s events.

  Now, Drake slipped around the sheer outer walls and then the courtyard of the Hotel Dillion, concealing his movements from and ignoring the raucous choppers hovering above. The news cameras had been allowed to stay, at a safe distance, to help fuel any overconfidence Kovalenko might be starting to feel. They knew the Blood King was pretty well isolated up there, but they also knew he would have some kind of a plan. Shot through with craziness or not, the situation wasn’t going to get any better.

  Drake followed Dahl and half a dozen members of SWAT through a side door into a restaurant and dimly lit bar area that let out close to a rear stairwell. Each one of the hotel’s three stairwells were being negotiated at the same time by mixed forces, kept in constant contact by a central comms command. The central comms would orchestrate the clandestine assault whilst constantly analyzing every single scrap of information pinging around out there.

  Drake paused as the team leader’s fist punched the air. He didn’t like the thought of being nothing more than a play piece, shuffled about a strategic board, dependent on the whim of others who might give the order to abort or strike at any given moment—he thought those days had shrunk to a distant speck in his rearview—but the mission objective surpassed all his sensitivities. That and the chance to avenge Gates and finally put Kovalenko into the ground in return for everything that had been committed in his name.

  “All perimeters clear. Proceed with caution.” The command came down the line. The team leader stepped out, hugging the wall all the way to the stairwell door. His men followed. Communications were constant, passing between command and all three teams. FBI experts of all shapes and sizes were being utilized on the outside, from Hostage Rescue specialists, who analyzed Kovalenko and his men and President Coburn’s every move, to respected pros from America’s most elite tactical divisions. This truly was a fluid mission in all senses of the word, and under extreme scrutiny. Drake hit the stairwell as the sixth man in li
ne and stayed against the wall, looking up as far as he could, but only able to see as high as the third floor. One flight of stairs up and they were halfway between the first and second floors. The team leader signaled another pause. Drake listened to a flurry of information. All three teams had infiltrated to the same level and, so far, met no resistance. This was expected. Every floor of the hotel had been scrutinized; the dilemma was that the rest of the mission had to be executed expeditiously.

  Whilst Kovalenko’s men had enjoyed months of preparation toward this exact moment.

  Drake followed as the team scaled another set of stairs and then two more, bringing them up to the third floor. Dahl turned and tapped him on the helmet, pointing to the window nearby. Drake glanced out to see flashing blue lights parked haphazardly for entire blocks and washing the streets and stone walls all the way to the White House.

  Crazy mayhem.

  It hit Drake then that there were times in the UK’s and America’s histories, nights like this when everyone was glued to the television or the radio or the Internet, and these were the moments that went down in history, never to be forgotten. These were the moments when you always remembered where you were and what you were doing. Moments that changed the world, and your life, forever.

  Drake turned away from the window and steeled his resolve. Not only were the police, the FBI and the Army out there, so were his closest friends, all part of the only family he had left. This nightmare would only end for everyone by cutting the head off the snake.

  With no contrary orders, the team progressed further up the staircase. The SWAT team advanced on whisper-soft feet, the whole black-clad group looking like a team of Ninjas. Drake had heard the term ninja used by the FBI, referring to a ready-to-go SWAT team member, but it only reminded him of the real thing. Although kept to a minimum, the sound of their passing still echoed. The fifth and then sixth floor came, then another squawk of static signaled a halt.

  “Sit rep. Check.”

  All three team leaders radioed the all-clear. Command furnished them with a blast of information—nothing had changed ‘upstairs’, but they sounded confident that no news was good news.