“Where would we even start?” Mai asked.
“The weapons were either stolen or given away. You will have to hunt them down.”
“There are ways,” Hayden said. “Remember . . . we located the Sword of Mars ourselves.”
“And what about FrameHub?” Karin asked.
“I hate to say this, but they come second to this. Nothing in this world could be more important now than those weapons. They literally have the power to crack the world in half.”
Drake listed to the somber silence, the weary surprise. “Do we have allies?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Crowe said. “The other burned teams. The Brits—I have a source there in the SAS. Maybe others.”
Drake thought it might be fun hooking up with the SAS one more time. Crouch caught his eye and smiled, knowing exactly what he was thinking. The Yorkshireman watched Karin. “Secretary Crowe,” he said. “I believe we may have a way to take out FrameHub. We don’t want to fail there. Perhaps we could multitask.”
“Perhaps. Now, start making plans. I’ll be in touch later.”
“One thing,” Drake said. “What are we supposed to do with Luther?”
“He’s there? Oh well, bring him with you. He’s useful.”
“At the moment, he’d rather clap us in chains.”
Crowe was silent, then said. “Give him the phone.”
Luther looked surprised, but held out a hand. “Hello?”
“I’ll tell you one thing although my every instinct says I shouldn’t. One of the leaders of Tempest is a man called General Gleeson. Do you know him?”
“Ah, yes, Madam Secretary, he’s the man that sent me after SPEAR.”
“I know. Look, Luther, as the end of the day it’s your call. But you’ve seen first-hand what these people can do. You’ve fought alongside them, bled with them, risked your life with them. Deep down, you know what they are. They’re soldiers, Luther, just like you. All they want to do is help normal, down-to-earth, ordinary people live their lives as freely as they can. They’re not American traitors; they’re international patriots. Save your damn soul and give them a chance.”
Luther handed back the phone and glanced around the team finally alighting on Drake. “I trust her. I don’t trust you, quite yet. I have my team; they’re coming with us.”
The Yorkshireman grinned. “We’re teaming up?”
“I’ll let you tag along in case I need my gear cleaned.”
Alicia clicked her fingers. “Can you be more specific about that part?”
Kenzie nudged Drake. “Better watch your bitch, Matt. Sounds like she needs soothing.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“It?” Alicia raised an eyebrow. “And not right here you won’t. Too sandy.”
Mai rose and walked over to Luther. “Look forward to working with you, my new friend.”
Luther eyed her respectfully. “You are the best warrior I have ever seen.”
Dahl reminded them of his own aerial heroics. Hayden and Kinimaka moved to sit slightly apart, saying little but allowing each other to enjoy some new, and some old, familiar company.
Dahl stretched his legs after a while, leaning this way and that to ease out the kinks in his back. The team were having a last few rations and swigs of water before moving out. He wanted to wander just for a moment and ponder over what might be happening back home.
What he might be missing.
In the end, he didn’t want to miss all of it.
So, when Kenzie came up, all smiles and innuendo he grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
“What? You mean me? Us? I won’t accept that.”
“You have to,” Dahl said. “And the sooner you do, you will move on.”
“Hey.” Her voice rose. “You said you saw something in me. Something better. You said I had a heart. I believed you. I followed you. This is where it has brought us.”
“I can’t help your past, Kenzie.” And he wouldn’t apologize for it either. “Life is a game of chance. You work hard enough, stay straight, and good things will happen to you. Forget the billionaires so power-stricken they’ve lost their humanity. Forget the ones that don’t seek redemption, but wallow in corruption. Live a good life.”
“I can. With you.”
“I am already spoken for,” Dahl said. “And I do love my wife. I will not risk her and the children with you. Whatever you think we have, Kenzie—” he started to walk away “—whatever you think this is, it is now over.”
His words hung in the air behind his back, stunning her.
It is now over.
Dahl didn’t look back. Drake guessed what was transpiring and watched his friend’s back carefully, still not fully trusting Kenzie. What would this new development do to her? He was ready, fingers poised over a Glock, in case she acted.
She didn’t. She walked back to the crew, face blank, eyes far away. Drake couldn’t tell if she could get past it or let it destroy her. Alicia was watching Kenzie too, a knowing wariness in her eyes.
Bloody hell, he thought. What comes next?
The toughest quest of their lives, searching for the weapons of the gods? A journey with the old-school blood and thunder warrior and his big brother? The return of Karin and her unknown agenda? FrameHub? Tempest? Dealing with the dreadful knowledge that they had been burned and were, essentially, still being hunted along with more than a dozen other teams?
He stood up today, ready to heal quickly and face the world with a little laughter and a good deal of camaraderie.
Tomorrow, and its oncoming, unstoppable nightmare, would be here all too soon.
THE END
Weapons of the Gods
(Matt Drake #18)
By
David Leadbeater
CHAPTER ONE
“We are the core elements of Tempest,” General George Gleeson told CIA high-flyer, Mark Digby. “But our goals are too widespread to reach on our own.” He waved at a bank of monitors positioned on the desk in front of them. “Switch them on.”
Digby activated all five monitors with the push of a button. Gleeson waited for the newcomers to realize they were on-air, settling back in his padded leather chair and basking in the ambiance that surrounded him: four walls of solid oak paneling, low light bleeding from underneath gold colored lampshades, a whole wall full of old hardbacks that he’d never even looked at, and a vast, imposing desk—the centerpiece and workstation of his private house.
Digby coughed. The new attendees looked up.
“Are we ready?” Gleeson asked.
Digby jumped straight in. “The events in Egypt didn’t pan out quite as we hoped,” he said. “And the Sword of Mars eluded us before that. Other players got in the way,” he conceded. “SPEAR. FrameHub. Luther. Even the goddamn CIA.” He chuckled at the joke made at his own expense. “It was too dangerous, too much risk. Tempest were exposed and some people out there are now aware that we exist.”
Five faces returned his gaze with unhappy glares of their own, among them a judge, a police commissioner, a Wall Street wiz and a presidential aide. The latter spoke up first.
“Where does that leave us?”
“Well, Mr. Troy, it leaves us with a challenge to overcome. Tempest was created to gather together the greatest weapons known to man—the weapons of the gods—and to discover if there’s a way to use them together, concertedly. To date, just a single one of those known weapons has surfaced. The Sword of Mars, which now resides in London . . .”
Gleeson leaned forward before Digby could continue. “From here on in, gentlemen, we’re at critical mass. Or, to put it another way you’ll understand—we gotta throw everything at it, tirelessly, dispassionately, even unethically. If you want to win—it’s no holds barred from here on in.”
Troy nodded. “Do we have the new, up-to-date list of weapons?”
“It’s in your inbox. All twenty of them.”
“And Luther? Did we lo
se Luther?”
“At this stage of the game,” Digby sighed, “we must assume that we did.”
The banker and the police commissioner shook their heads in anger. Gleeson reminded them of the contingency plan.
“The Syrian camps are well underway. They’re already radicalizing hundreds and our mercs are training them. Soon, we’ll have an army to distract not only the masses but every police force of the First World. Then we can barnstorm our way to the weapons.”
“Are we strategically ready for all those lines of attack?” the police commissioner asked.
“Truthfully . . . no. Not yet. But it won’t be long.”
“And all the disavowed, alienated and disordered Special Forces teams out there? How long can we keep a lid on it?”
Gleeson deferred to the presidential aide, Troy, to answer that.
“I’m working tirelessly at it but even I—with the General’s help—won’t be able to alleviate suspicions forever. A few weeks maybe.”
“Another reason why speed has become imperative,” Gleeson said. “We can’t use CIA assets anymore. We’re fortunate we prepared some of our own. The camps are viable. Let’s start using them.”
The general took in the mood of his comrades as best he could. He preferred face-to-face at the place he’d dubbed The Chamber. The military was all about physical confrontation, but he was also forced to admit modern communications were far faster when matters were pressing. This wasn’t a case of deciding which one of them was in deep and who dangled their toes in the pool. No, they were all up to their necks in it. This had become more of a test of courage.
His mind also considered the possibility that one of them might betray him.
“Questions?” he barked.
There were none. Gleeson didn’t like it. These people should be spouting, chattering all sorts of rhetoric back at him. Their silence betrayed their doubts and the fact that they weren’t fully invested.
Well, that would change.
He glanced over at Digby, the one man he could trust. “I think we should convene a meeting.”
“I agree.”
“That’s gonna be extremely hard for me,” the presidential aide said negatively. “I’m juggling a hundred balls over here.”
“The Chamber,” Gleeson said, ignoring Troy and then snapping out a time and date. “No excuses, gentlemen. It will be good to catch up.”
He tried not to let any malice seep into the tone of his voice.
Once they agreed to it, Gleeson signed off. He took a moment to confer with Digby and then rechecked the status of their Syrian terrorist camp with his commanders on the ground. All was progressing well, and at speed. The weapons of the gods were almost within reach. Gleeson knew they could be tracked due to an incredibly rare element in their makeup, but the tracking device had to be close in order to work. That still left them with the problem of getting close.
Not so much the Sword of Mars.
He allowed a smile to grace his heavy features, patting his fresh stubble of hair down as he did so. The mole he’d planted in the British government six years ago would finally prove worthwhile.
Maybe tonight. Damn, how he would like to get that first weapon under his belt. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Gleeson laughed at his own small joke, ignored Digby’s stare, and left the room. Once in the hallway, he fished out a cellphone and called a private number.
“Hello? I need a whore.”
The woman he knew as Madam Masuda sighed in her worldly way. “Another so soon? Okay, I have Nightshade here and ready to go. She is . . . exotic.”
“I bet,” Gleeson laughed and then thought: Nightshade? But his desire got the better of him. “Send her right over.”
“Good. Please give her one hour.”
*
Madam Masuda never took her eyes away from the tall, dark-haired woman sat before her. “I cannot say how dangerous this is. He might recognize you.”
Lauren Fox inclined her head as a sign of agreement. “This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for,” she said with a sassy accent. “Bring it on and let Nightshade live one last time.”
“I can make you up.”
“Good. But make it heavy. We don’t want him to recognize me now, do we?” She laughed, feeling good. At last here was a way to help her friends, get close to Gleeson and maybe even find out who the presidential aide was—the man or woman that had been blocking all her attempts to reach President Coburn. When Secretary of Defense Kimberly Crowe came to their side, Lauren had been hopeful that her knowledge and experience with Gleeson would pay off.
Gleeson may or may not have seen her photo when he decided to target SPEAR after Peru and then during their Egypt jaunt.
But he’d never seen Nightshade.
It was time to start destroying the evil pyramid that rose against them, their reputations and the entire civilized world. She would start at the very top.
CHAPTER TWO
Ignoring the clamor of internal warning bells, Lauren Fox slipped into her Nightshade persona. It had been a while, but Lauren and Nightshade had been alter-egos for many years and the traits soon came rushing back. Of course, her “costume” was back in New York these days, but Madam Masuda was able to lay her hands on almost anything.
“Leather,” Lauren had confirmed. “Boots mostly. The outfit can be lacy, I guess, but not too revealing. I’ll need whips and gloves. Good gloves. If I have to touch this creep I don’t wanna feel it.”
Madam Masuda held up a black object. “Strap on?”
“No! I don’t even wanna get close to this guy.”
Traveling in the car on her way to see Gleeson, Lauren recalled the time, not so long ago in Peru, when she walked away from the team, returned to DC and started unearthing the truth. It had been a frustrating period—striking one closed door after another—but now she sensed a better opportunity. She imagined the conversation she would need to engineer to extract all the right answers.
The car stopped, the big, burly driver half-turning in his seat to look at her. “You okay, miss?”
He saw only Nightshade wrapped in a knee-length beige coat. “Yeah, thanks. The hardest part is meeting them.”
“I’ll be right here,” his voice rumbled deeply. “You need me, you hit the button.”
Lauren nodded and climbed out of the car. Gleeson had invited her to a hotel about half a mile from the Capitol building, set back from a busy street and popular with tourists. The old perv probably had a bellboy on retainer, one that could loan him an empty room for an hour or so. Lauren had seen it many times before. Money corrupted in every imaginable way, and people like Gleeson in their powerful roles used it to get exactly what they wanted.
Through the hotel doors Nightshade stalked, heading down a level to the elevators and then punching the button for the third floor. She swept along a quiet, echoing corridor, then stopped and knocked at a door. Within seconds, it was pulled open.
“Come in,” he said. “I have less time than I thought. The wife wants to meet me for dinner.”
Nightshade stepped inside and closed the door, thumb hovering over the button that would summon her driver. Gleeson appeared to be at ease but hurried. She saw nothing dangerous in his body language but that might change. She slipped off the long coat and waited until he turned around.
“Answer me this first,” she said. “If a girl told you she had a whip, would you want her to use it on you, or would you want to use it on her?”
Gleeson struggled with a reply, but he was also distracted by her lithe body clad in stockings, suspenders and skimpy underwear. Finally, he said: “Both?” in a husky, questioning voice that told her she already controlled the room.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s start by removing those trousers.”
Nightshade fell into her role, taking over, giving orders that Gleeson certainly appeared to appreciate. The darker persona took over, propelling her easily through the first half hour. The action was p
retty much routine until Gleeson asked to switch roles.
You’re fucking kidding me? No way in this world would she let this pompous, corrupt wedge of debased beliefs have any power over her. But this was where the Nightshade personality helped. The game expanded, the stakes went higher, and she took him to a higher realm of dominance.
She was conscious of the opulent room, the tightly closed crimson drapes; the widescreen television on low volume and tuned to a sports betting channel. She wondered if Gleeson would be signed in. She noted a carryall perched upon a small, round table and a change of clothes neatly pressed. Of course, the objects she preferred were a cellphone and a laptop.
And time.
The essential trick was getting away with it, and she had to act whilst Gleeson was still excited about being immobile. Luckily, this was Nightshade’s last outing. Lauren would never use the identity again. In truth, Nightshade had retired some time ago—this final collision with her questionable past was only to help her friends survive the trouble they were in.
With a flourish, she stuffed Gleeson’s own jockey shorts into his mouth, smiling at the faint confusion that came across his face. She pulled duct tape from her coat pocket and fastened it first across his mouth and then around his wrists and ankles. She made sure all coverings were off the bed because she wanted this ass to feel maximum embarrassment when they found him—assuming he could feel anything beyond superior. Time was short, so she made a point of searching for his wallet, his jewelry and any other valuables. She then took his phone and laptop.
Gleeson’s eyes bulged and he writhed around on the bed. Lauren shook her head at him. “You’re going nowhere, bud. Keep struggling and you’ll break that baby-white skin. I’d wait for maid service tomorrow, if I were you.”
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