Matt Drake 8 - Last Man Standing

by David Leadbeater

  SaBo looked a bit green. Her second favored her with his brightest grin yet.

  “Locked in tight,” he said, and strode away. Coyote watched him go, wondering if she would have to kill him later, and then turned her attention to the screen.

  “Watch what happens . . .” SaBo used one of the high-definition monitors to zoom in on the police station.

  ***

  The Sunnyvale police station was a small two-story building, relatively innocuous, that sat behind a flat, wide parking area. Trees grew close to its back and sides. The windows were wide, some of them sporting the newest law-enforcement slogans. Figures could be seen passing by the brightly lit frontage on both levels. Squad cars sat outside, ready to go.

  The first thing the police knew about the assault was when two missiles smashed through the windows and exploded inside the building, one at ground level and one on the first floor. A third was fired, but detonated against the outer wall, its shooter receiving a death glare from his captain for his inadequacy. The RPG attack had been timed to occur seconds before a mercenary team assaulted the building, spreading quickly inside to corner their prey, to overcome them through sheer violent intent and force, and prevent any communications from reaching the outside. The mercenary leader had also found this kind of initial brutal attack often led to fewer casualties.

  Of course all this was merely minimization, not prevention. Nobody on earth could stop this news getting out. But the Coyote only needed nineteen more hours.

  The mercs wounded where they had to and locked up those that surrendered. The flames that licked around the offices were soon extinguished. The communications room was destroyed, though nobody could tell if a secret alarm had been tripped or some other method of silent contact had been utilized by the officers during the assault. The mercenaries took down the police and fire stations in less than half an hour, but it was fair to say the town’s authorities had never seen the like of this before. Salvos of gunfire ripped walls apart, brought ceilings down, smashed windows and even squad cars outside. Broad, ruthless, well-protected men smashed skulls and faces, brooking no debate. The closest a cop came to real injury was when two mercs chose to dangle him out of a window in retaliation for throwing a punch, but then those mercs were reprimanded by their leader who was heard to say, “Not yet.”

  Local responders, en route to the station or the source of the emergency call itself were captured or shot down, depending on manpower. SaBo did his best to show Coyote every altercation and his best was very good.

  “The only trouble we’ll have now will be from the residents that live near those two stations,” SaBo said. He pointed to the wrecked buildings, the clear cries that were slowly dying down, the groups of mercs still running rampant through the parking areas.

  “For now,” Coyote said. “In this kind of situation, trouble starts to escalate and, like a tidal wave, it will only stop when it crushes us into the ground.”

  “I’ll try not to be here for that,” SaBo said, coughing. “Can’t swim.”

  “You’re here until I say otherwise,” Coyote said. “But fear not, I don’t intend to sacrifice you. I’ve always considered mercenaries expendable, not computer geeks.”

  SaBo bowed down.

  Coyote turned her attention back to the tournament. “What’s happening now?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Drake turned to the others.

  “It’s nothing but a show of force, I guess. They’re subduing the local authorities, letting this tournament play out as much as possible. Twenty four hours is rather ambitious, but they don’t even need that. Still, we do need help.” His eyes fixed on Crouch.

  “I already explained who you need. The single element controlling this entire area is surveillance monitoring.”

  Drake nodded. “Karin would have to take on Coyote’s geek, head to head, and she’d have to win. To do that, she’d have to be at the top of her game.” He shook his head.

  Mai held up a hand. “She can do it. Give her the chance to step up.”

  Drake didn’t have to explain what Karin Blake had lost recently.

  “Well, one thing’s for sure,” Alicia said into the silence. “We four can’t go. We’re tagged.”

  Crouch chewed his lip. “I could get beyond the net, make the call, and return.”

  “Wait.” Drake eyed him properly for the first time. “You’re not tagged?”

  Crouch almost smiled. “There’s a reason I became leader of the Ninth Division, Drake.” He tapped his skull. “Smarts.”

  “Coyote and her goons don’t know you’re here?”

  Crouch nodded. “The only reason I didn’t bring the British Army is because I knew Coyote would have set her tripwires and traps. I wanted to test the lie of the land first.”

  “Of course. Are you still as well connected as I remember?”

  Crouch betrayed no emotion. “All the way to the top, my friend.”

  Drake knew the leader of the British Army’s most successful covert operation’s team wasn’t referring to the Prime Minister. His influences ran a little higher, to the places where clouds obscured most people’s view. He reeled off contact numbers for Karin and Komodo and, as a precaution, for the remainder of the team back in DC.

  “Karin should still be in Leeds,” he said. “Do you have a facility with a rait good computer?”

  Crouch raised an eyebrow. “Rait good? I realize we’re in your home county, Drake, but less of the lingo.”

  Drake smiled a little, still unsure how to address his old boss of bosses. The situation was both awkward and a little delicate. Deep down, Drake was and always would be a soldier and Crouch was his superior. But now, not only was Drake a civilian, but so was Crouch. For the moment at least.

  Alicia had no such qualms. “Okay, so the Crouchster hits up Karin, gets her on the job, and we carry on offing the bad guys. Sounds like a plan to me. What are you all waiting for?”

  ***

  Michael Crouch moved away at pace. Alone, he ran the plan through his mind once again, reaffirming just how important the success of this particular mission was. Lives depended on him reaching Karin Blake, both civilian and military. He was aware of the girl’s recent losses, but knew enough about her involvement in the SPEAR team’s exploits that he trusted her to step up to the task at hand.

  Crouch stuck to the back alleys, a detailed plan of Sunnyvale lodged in his mind. The destruction of the Ninth Division still stunned him, making even everyday decisions that much harder and causing him to doubt himself for the first time in decades. The field of action was just what he needed.

  Toward the end of the alley a merc awaited. Crouch hugged the shadows, scanning the ground for debris that might give him away if he stood on it, and moving only when the motion would not be seen. He stayed low, outside the merc’s natural line of sight. As he crept closer he saw the bored look on the man’s face, the weapon cradled low, the Bluetooth headset flashing at his right ear.

  It might be useful to commandeer one of the comms.

  Not for long, he reasoned. Coyote and her captain would have some kind of protocol worked out. But even five minutes might yield some precious information. Crouch considered the man in front of him. He’d heard the saying: Mercs don’t get old; and, in his way, had instantly understood every nuance of it. Mercs had no country, no home, no people back home that depended on them. This made their cause infinitely weaker. A soldier could bite back on his true origin when times got tough, whilst a merc? What could he bite back on?

  A roll of bank notes.

  Truth was, Crouch reflected, mercs rarely grew old enough to retire.

  He darted forward, tackling the man’s gun-toting arm first, bending it around his back until he heard the snap. With a whirl he managed to stick out a fist and stifle his victim’s scream whilst at the same time bending his other wrist until it broke. Crouch finished with a savage strike to the forehead, using the man’s own gun, and crouched low, testing the air.

&
nbsp; Nothing moved. A television blared through a partly open upstairs window. A cat rustled by. Crouch took the weapon and the Bluetooth earpiece and proceeded across a main road then down the side of a closed supermarket. The two-minute dash put him briefly in the open, but it was still the safest way to the fields beyond the town. As Crouch reached the rear of the supermarket he paused, catching the smell of smoke drifting on the wind.

  He listened, senses attuned.

  Though he couldn’t hear them or see them, he certainly smelled and discerned their nasty little habit. It had given them away. Plumes of smoke belched from a dark corner, among the supermarket’s recycling bins. Crouch wondered if the men had been stationed there or were taking a spontaneous break. Either way, it mattered not. If he wanted to continue at pace he’d have to get rid of them.

  He tapped the earpiece, muttered several garbled words and then said clearly, “. . . moving away from the supermarket . . . help.”

  Questions came back. Crouch ignored them. If the mercs had any discipline whatsoever they would check out the communication, possibly assuming one of their number was either compromised or under attack. The men back at their field office would need answers. Crouch waited. Within seconds the invisible men behind the recycling bins melted out of the shadows and proceeded boldly across the rear parking area and into the street. They looked both ways. Nothing stirred.

  Except for Crouch, who crept among shadows, trying hard to keep his own discipline and not make an example of these shoddy men. A dozen far better than they had been gunned down during the attack on the Division. A dozen that he’d personally handpicked and trained, men and women that were just, fair and skilled, proud to be at their posts. Their losses could never be recouped.

  It hurt Crouch deep inside. The pain felt as if the marrow was being stripped from his bones; a pure physical agony. It made him stop at the edge of the first field; it made him sink to his knees. Did he blame himself?

  Of course. Shelly Cohen had set out to make a fool of him, and she’d succeeded. In fact, she’d succeeded so well that she’d destroyed his whole organization. Most of all, she’d succeeded so well he already knew that he was out of the British Armed Forces and their security games the moment the first bullet had been fired.

  Burdened and bent, he nevertheless laid his own yoke aside and rose to the task. The field was dark, and led to one even darker. A number of land mines had been hinted at, but Crouch knew it was fair to say that if such an atrocity were true, they’d have been laid closer to main egress roads and points of strategic entry.

  He wasn’t looking for a road or an escape route. He was looking for a signal.

  Another field and a high hedge stood in his way. The final field was heavily rutted and smelled of recently turned earth. At last, after twenty minutes of scrambling, the signal flashed up strong on his cell display. He’d reached the edge of Coyote’s net.

  Crouch tapped in Karin Blake’s number, listening to the beeps as the call tried to connect. The night was cool out here, exposed to the scathing winds; the vast patchwork skies arching above like the roof of some great gladiator dome. The silence that lay over these rugged fields was unbroken, millennia-strong, but nothing more than a deception. Everywhere the struggle continued unabated, unsolved.

  Crouch stayed low as the call was answered by a woman’s voice.

  “Karin? My name is Michael Crouch. Have you heard of me?”

  A moment of silence, and then, “I’ve heard the name, but how do I know you are who you say you are?”

  Crouch reeled off a favorite Dinorock quote of Drake’s, and Mano Kinimaka’s phone number. He also brought her up to speed on the events of the tourney. Karin’s silence attested to her shock.

  After a moment another voice joined them. “What do you need?”

  “I take it you are Komodo? Good. This game they have going is dependent on one thing alone—their ability to control their environment. At the moment they are doing it well—they’re prepared. We need to disrupt that advantage.”

  “How?”

  “Take their cyber superiority away from them. Once we have that we own them.”

  “Sir,” Komodo said respectfully. “I get you. But this ‘game’, as you call it. This is Coyote’s challenge. This is her laying down the gauntlet. If we end it too soon won’t she just pop up somewhere else, in a month or a year, and make things even harder?”

  Crouch agreed, in essence. “Not the point,” he said. “We have civilians involved. Local authorities held captive. The threat of brutal force. Even if we feared this woman might slit our throats in our beds a fortnight from now, we should still act to stop this.”

  “Of course. What’s the plan?”

  Crouch was about to go over Karin’s role but a moment of doubt stopped him. A leader for decades, his competency was currently in question. Who the hell was he to ask this tormented woman to put herself on the line again?

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” She spoke up into the void. “You want me to take down Coyote’s network. Damn . . .”

  “Do you think you can do it?” Crouch ventured.

  “I guess. Do you have any idea how good their circuit boy is?”

  Crouch narrowed his eyes. “Their what?”

  “Circuit boy. Circuit girl. It’s what we hackers used to call ourselves back in the day . . .” she paused. “Maybe still do. Who knows?”

  “No ID,” Crouch affirmed. “But the guy must be good. If not for what he’s already achieved then because Coyote chose him. In itself, that is a bold endorsement.”

  “Sure,” Karin said blandly. “Are they . . . are they in trouble?”

  “None more than usual. But they appear to be happy enough. Drake for one finds it easier to fight an axe-wielding madman than fight through the crowds at Meadowhall.”

  “Yeah, I can’t see any of them shopping at the mall.”

  Crouch took all the emotion out of his voice. “The night will be a long one. Will you do it?”

  Karin sighed. “Of course. Of course I’ll help them. All of them, even Alicia and Smyth, are my life now. We’re family.”

  Crouch didn’t dare speak for a moment. The girl had lost her parents, her brother, but still continued to speak of family so strongly. It made him hate his own weakness.

  Eventually, he gave her an address in Leeds and a high-priority password.

  “Go now. This will probably be our last communication until this all pans out. Hit ‘em hard, Karin, and take no prisoners.”

  “You have my word.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Karin took only a moment to review Crouch’s request and then rose quickly to her feet.

  “Let’s go.”

  Komodo held up a hand. “We should communicate with Washington. They may be able to help.”

  “Do it on the way.”

  Karin forced all thoughts of death and tragedy from her mind. The only way she could help her friends was to give them her full attention, allowing every thought process chance to live and develop and breathe on its own. The demands of cyberwarfare were huge, both on the brain and the subconscious, affecting not only instant cognitive reaction but also those thought processes that matured in the background, usually developing at length into the idea that won you the endgame.

  Karin started the car, a rented Mini Cooper, and swerved out into traffic. Horns honked. Karin fiddled with the satnav whilst Komodo called DC. Luckily, the traffic lights through Leeds city center were frequent enough that they didn’t need to pull over. Karin took the route past a statue called the Black Prince and accelerated up Kirkstall Road.

  Komodo spoke at last. “Smyth? What’s going on?”

  Her boyfriend listened as Smyth unleased a veritable tirade. Karin cold hear the furious tones clear enough, especially as Komodo had to lift the phone away from his ear.

  “Safe house got hit.” He shook his head, translating Smyth’s bluster. “Everyone’s safe. Kinimaka fought an . . . elephant, I think. Smyth did all
the work. Saved the day. Fell off a building . . . the usual.”

  Komodo stopped the man in his tracks with a few choice comments and brought him up to speed. Smyth’s rejoinder was surprisingly heated.

  “What the hell are the Brits up to? They having Terrorist Amnesty week or something?”

  “Coyote has prepared and planned this with the Blood King’s help and money,” Komodo said. “If the man can kidnap President Coburn he can sure engineer the shutdown of a town for twenty four hours.”

  “Damn Russkie,” Smyth said. “Bastard’s in the ground and still haunting us.”

  Komodo agreed, but didn’t say so out loud. Instead he explained Karin’s new role as she shot past a Vue cinema and restaurant area, then negotiated a series of bends. Soon, the main road was left behind and darkness closed over the car. Even the streetlights were sparse. Komodo didn’t like it, and ended the call saying he would get back to the DC team.

  “Where the hell are we?”

  Karin shrugged. “Almost there. I trust Crouch. Don’t you?”

  Komodo grunted. “Drake does. But the man’s been compromised for years. How’s that affecting him right now?”

  “Dunno. Maybe when this is over he and Michael can sit down and talk about it.”

  Komodo wondered at her brusque tone but ignored it. “Well, it’ll take more than a coffee at Starbucks with Crouch to convince me, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

  Karin stopped the car outside a nondescript warehouse. The place was in darkness, streetlights out for blocks around, surrounding businesses either closed down or shut for the night.

  A man glided out of the shadows ahead. For all intents and purposes he looked like a local security guard, even to the apparent paunch at his waist. The only things that gave him away was the chiseled face and observant eyes; the hand that never left his pocket. He signaled to Karin to turn the car headlights off.