For Volkov, it changed everything. He wasn’t able to sever all contact with Russia after thirty years, but he scaled it back, and one of the final pieces of information he received before embarking on this cruise was the devastating knowledge of what the Blood King was planning next.
Soon.
I have a terrible knowledge . . .
But who could he tell? Those members of the Russian hierarchy in the know would never come forward for fear of recompense. Volkov harbored only an understandable, scathing hatred for the CIA and thus, America, so he would not leak it to them. He had no old friends outside Russia—they had all abandoned him the moment the CIA tried to end his life.
He could take the new Blood King down. He could leak the information and stop that madman initiating an evil plan. But . . . if he revealed his intelligence to the wrong person Kovalenko would be informed and would then vanish again.
And, next time, Volkov might not be in a position to help save a world which he was starting to become fond of again.
Volkov was seated upright, his back to a sofa, when three more pirates entered the restaurant. It was morning, just after breakfast. Volkov knew there were no more older people to search and threaten. Something new was coming.
His eyes and mind were focused on one person only. Mary was picking at the remains of a tray of what were once fresh strawberries. Mary’s open face bore laughter lines so deep they made her look happy even when she was impassive. At the start of all this Mary had looked at him often; their gazes never straying far from each other. The questions she asked with that steady observation were clear. All Volkov could do was silently implore her to wait, to stay unobtrusive and distant, to give him a chance to explain later.
Long ago, when the secrets he kept constricted his heart, soul and mind in suffocating nooses, he learned the art of stillness from an ex-army vet. A trained and practiced soldier was able to blend with his surroundings, in forest, urban areas or brushland, for days. You found a spot and stayed there. You waited, seeking or watching your target, for that split-second order and that rush of adrenaline that might come one hour or one week after you went into cover. Volkov was not a soldier, but the lesson he learned was how to quell his fears, how to steady his racing heart, and how to remain silent and impassive in the face of intense fear.
In this restaurant, aboard this ship, he could hardly go into hiding. But Volkov could remain unemotional, detached from everything that was happening.
When the pirates came this time, they came in hard.
“Up, get up!” one of the newcomers shouted in barely legible English. “You get up now!” The man, a scarfaced, sweaty individual with lanky hair and lesions on the back of his hands, started pulling people up by the hair, grabbing handfuls and hauling. Both men and women cried out as they were pulled to their feet.
Volkov noticed they all looked fifty or over. The time had come then. They were either going to find him or start killing. They were going to call him out.
The sudden flurry of violent activity after so many days of lethargy panicked the passengers. Fear swept the room. Volkov saw people rising and backing away toward the far windows, as if that could save them. He saw families cowering on the floor. Interestingly, he saw the four Special Forces soldiers—as he thought of them—positioning themselves in case they were forced to act. This could all go downhill very fast.
Gradually, in groups, all the older men and women were herded against the starboard bank of windows. Even the infirm were made to stand or kneel. Volkov’s turn came and he made sure he didn’t stand out in any way—just another old man dragged up and made to stand in line.
From the corner of his eye he saw Mary given the same treatment. She was already up on her feet and went easily and uneventfully, but she did shoot him a scared, questioning look as she passed right by him.
Volkov stayed aloof.
It was the only way he could help her now.
What happens when they start torturing passengers? Killing them? What then?
His gaze settled on the Special Forces people. It was curious for him to realize then how hard he was relying on them. He didn’t know them, their strengths and weaknesses or even their precise mission, but it was getting way past the point when they should make their move.
Six pirates came around to the front, facing the line of over-fifties.
“One of you,” a man said, thankfully speaking clearer English. “We want one of you. He knows who he is. He knows we want him. Any further punishment you take is his fault. So, Volkov, step out of line now.”
His heart sank. Yes, he’d known it would come to this but even the most pessimistic heart harbored a slight hope. If he were alone Volkov would step up without a second thought, but once these people found Mary, once they tied his persona—Kirby—to her, they would use her to make him talk.
And the end of that wouldn’t be good.
“Last chance,” the pirate said and raised a blood-stained blade. The other five did likewise, raising daggers, a machete and other blades items.
“Wait, wait,” a man called out. “This Volkov you speak of. Couldn’t he be hiding aboard the ship? It’s a big ship and dozens of faces I know aren’t here with us, in the restaurant.”
The pirate rushed the man. “Let’s start with you.”
Volkov showed no emotion. The man’s outburst had gained him another few minutes.
The pirate turned to his fellows. “Start cutting. Sooner or later we will come to someone he loves.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Drake wasn’t watching the pirates or the line-up of older passengers at that moment; his attention was fixed on a potential catastrophe.
Three brawny, angry-looking men appeared to have had enough of the harsh treatment. They all wore tight T-shirts, jeans and canvas sneakers and appeared to be together. Their muscles were bunched as they rose up to a crouch. Drake saw two of them nodding, their mouths grim as the third spoke.
Have-a-go heroes. Shit. We don’t need this now.
Drake was too far away to do anything about it. If he rose and charged them the pirates would turn and see him running. They might shoot him or all of them. They might turn on the passengers. One way or another, this would not end well.
Drake gestured frantically, hoping he looked like just another concerned passenger. Luther, at his side, had his eyes fixed on the men too.
“We gotta rush them.”
“Too risky for everyone.”
“Those pigs are just gonna shoot them.”
Drake caught the eye of one of the three men and gave him a “calm down” motion of his hand. The guy gave Drake the wanker sign and mouthed the words “fucking pussy.”
Drake spread his hands. “Stand down, dickhead.” His whisper carried to the men, but not the pirates.
“Fuck you,” the man mouthed and turned to his friends.
“Gotta say,” Luther said. “You English guys are great when it comes to making friends.”
“Bollocks,” Drake cursed. “How would an American do it? Talk about the Superbowl or Wall Street?”
“Now I see why Dahl and you communicate so argumentatively.”
Drake was weighing options. The three men were talking quietly, picking their targets. Over by the window the pirates grabbed a gray-haired woman, yanked her out of line and stabbed her in the arm. Her cry stunned the room.
The have-a-go heroes rose. Drake cursed and reached for his Glock as Luther did the same. The problem wasn’t killing the pirates they could see, it was not getting a passenger shot in the crossfire.
The leader of the three-pack, a man with stubble for hair, yelled out a war cry as he started his run, giving the pirates plenty of warning.
Drake winced, resigned to battle. But, if the gray-haired lady hadn’t been stabbed, what happened next would have been comical.
The three men sprinted, all yelling. Two pirates turned. At that point both Alicia and Mai rose up like avenging angels and fell on the thr
ee men, pinning them to the ground. When the pirates turned fully there was nothing to see—no attackers, nobody at all on their feet, just empty space.
They squinted in confusion and frowned at each other.
Drake feigned indifference, barely glancing at them. Luther studied the floor. Out of the corner of their eyes they watched Alicia and Mai struggling in silence with the three men they had pinned to the carpet. When the pirates finally shrugged and looked away Alicia was straddling one man whilst Mai had her legs over another. The third—the leader—was unconscious.
“Is it wrong to think Alicia looks quite comfortable in that position?” Luther murmured.
Drake sighed. “I dunno. It is her favorite.”
“Not a surprise.”
“I wouldn’t mention that to Mai if I were you.”
“Crap, no. I like living.”
Drake watched as Alicia and Mai subdued the would-be heroes, practically choking them into submission. The pirates were yelling now, screaming at their captives until they began to shake or fell to the ground. Everything was degenerating, going to shit. Drake saw knives flash over by the window and heard several screams. Suddenly, the restaurant no longer looked like a safe haven. It looked like a slaughter ground.
“They’ll get to Volkov,” Luther said. “Do we have to wait any longer?”
Drake jumped on the comms, whispering as he conveyed the situation to Hayden aboard the USS Bainbridge.
“They’re crossing the line. Weapons are being used on the passengers. They want Volkov and they’re gonna kill to get him.”
Immediately, Hayden responded. “Can you stall?”
“Stall?”
“Hold them up.”
“I know what stall means. Why?”
“Dahl got his way. We’re hitting Salene’s HQ.”
“Now?”
“In the air as we speak,”
“Thanks for the heads up.” Drake didn’t bother to hide his frustration.
“I was about to call.”
“Yeah, heard that before. ETA?”
“Minutes. No more than ten.”
Fuck. Drake didn’t like it one bit. The pirates were already tipped over the edge. Hearing that their HQ was under attack might be the spark that lit the touchpaper.
“Can you distract them?” Dahl asked.
“Yeah, shit, I’ll show ’em my hula.”
Kinimaka laughed down the comms but Dahl only growled. “What the hell’s that? A euphemism?”
Drake hesitated, thinking. Seconds had passed, no more than half a minute since he contacted Hayden. The pirates were shoving those they’d hurt against the windows, shouting into their faces. They didn’t have a clear idea of what they were doing. They didn’t have leadership, not up here. It was chaos. Blood already smeared the windows, long streaks left there by men and women forced to stand facing the sea as they bled.
“We find you, Volkov!” a sneering, rat-faced individual was saying.
“This is his doing,” another shouted above the commotion. “Volkov has done this to you. Come forward, coward!”
Drake had seen subordinates acting like this before. Their boss would put the fear of God into them and send them on some impossible mission. Kobe had probably told them there was no going back to shore if Volkov wasn’t found, meaning they would do anything to unmask him.
Stall them? How do you stall bloodthirsty animals like these?
Drake turned back to the comms. “You guys really gonna hit that tin-shack city?”
“It’s a solid option,” Dahl said predictably.
“It’s as solid as crazy paving,” Alicia said. “And so are you.”
“Op’s a go.” Hayden spoke over them quickly. “Do what you have to do, Drake.”
The comms fell silent. Drake summed the situation up. Do what you have to do? That would involve serious casualties.
Working quickly, Drake took out his gun, knife and comms, and passed them to Luther. Then, he rose. For a moment he caught an older guy watching him, a guy reclining next to a cutlery trolley, and he almost paused and frowned at the man but then one of the pirates spotted him.
“Get down!”
Drake risked it all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Torsten Dahl always looked forward to a HAHO jump. The adrenalin rush was a heady elixir for him, just the sort of thing you needed when you were embarking on a deadly mission. High altitude, high open incursions required an oxygen mask to prevent hypoxia. Of late, there had been some talk of using wingsuits which were being occasionally employed by the military. A wingsuit creates a surface area between the legs and under the arms and are also called ‘birdman’ or ‘squirrel’ suits. A major advantage of the wingsuit was that a soldier could fly for miles before homing in on his target, thus making him a harder target for the enemy to track.
The disadvantage of wingsuits was the weight of the extensive weaponry a Special Forces soldier required; it just caused too much drag.
And Dahl knew, for this mission, they were going to need a lot of weaponry.
The HAHO jump meant you could travel for miles before landing inside an enemy compound, as well as carrying a whole lot of gear. Dahl was pleased with that. Seated now with his team, aboard a plane flying at 28,000 feet, he waited patiently as the minutes passed. Not for the first time, they were headed into a lethal and undetermined situation. The odds could hardly be worse.
But Dahl was always confident.
Not just in himself. He knew he was operating at the top of his game. More than that, it was the people around him, soldiers and friends, that he had come to trust with his life through the last few years. They were his equal. He would walk through all the fires of hell for them. Today, they were backed up by another Strike Force team, led by a man called Garfield whom he didn’t know. But, as Hayden told him, you didn’t apply to join a Strike Force team—you were chosen by the best of the best.
The plane juddered as it passed through a patch of turbulence. Dahl held on. The team had been choppered to a nearby aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean before boarding it. Now, through the windows he saw only gray mist broken by patches of tattered cloud. Drizzle spattered the windows and then marched slowly upward. He checked his watch.
“Eight minutes.”
Hayden was seated next to him. “Piece of cake,” she said.
Dahl knew their mission would be anything but, yet admired her confidence. “Salene has dozens of men. His true HQ can’t be pinpointed down there. There are an unknown number of civilians. He has an escape route and a dock.” Dahl shrugged. “Just another day at the office, I guess.”
Hayden grinned.
Molokai leaned over. “He won’t be expecting us.”
“I just hope we’re in time,” Kinimaka voiced the fears they all shared after listening to Drake’s last few minutes of broadcast.
“Five minutes,” Dahl said.
“Keep a clear head,” Kenzie said. “We’ll have this done in thirty minutes.”
Dahl admired their collective conviction. It made them better soldiers, elevating them above the norm. The plane shuddered again, its aluminum frame rattling loudly. The nose dipped and then rose again. A green light flashed. One by one the team started walking toward the door.
“Ready?” Dahl fixed his mask, turned and gave the thumbs up to his friends standing behind him.
“On you,” Kinimaka said.
Dahl took a breath and then heaved himself out of the airplane. His world went from stable to chaos in a split second as winds snatched him and flung him through the air. He plummeted fast, buffeted from all directions. His view was a kaleidoscope of color. The canopy sprang open, seizing his body and jerking it back up into the air before allowing it to drift at speed toward its destination.
Dahl checked the comms. “Report.”
Everyone came back positively. So far so good. They plunged through cloud at first, which was exactly what they wanted. The further the cloud cover extended, the mo
re subtle their infiltration would be. It was only at about 2,000 feet that Dahl began to see patches of blue below.
“Coming in hard.”
“Straight down into the rat warren,” Kenzie said.
Garfield’s men were spread out to Dahl’s east, just black shapes in the sky. Their mission was slightly different to his—secure the perimeter, the backside of the hill, and look out for civilians. It was expected Salene would have booby traps. It was expected he would have snipers and watchers. Garfield’s mission was complex and blunt. It didn’t have the sharp clarity of Dahl’s but it would make their attack easier.
Watching the land unfold below through the gap between his boots, he saw the cloud part and then a big, blinding rectangle of reflected light assaulted his eyes. The corrugated roofs of the tin shacks were a legitimate first enemy, destroying their vision all the way down. Dahl kept it at the corner of his eye, checking the coordinates on the GPS he had strapped to his wrist. If they hit those coordinates, they would be striking hard into Salene’s HQ, assuming their Intel was sound.
He made ready. His boots hit one of the roofs hard. He folded, rolling, shrugging out of his chute and letting it go. The roof had buckled where he landed. There was a narrow gap to his right, something he could jump down through, or a new hole to his left, where the roof had bent away from the wall when he hit.
Dahl took the new gap, figuring there would be less chance of it being guarded. He ran and dropped straight down into a square room, his Heckler and Koch MP5 pointed to the front. Quickly, he swept the room. Kenzie and Molokai dropped through the roof, landing on their feet. Dahl was in a small space, made stifling by the heat and the tin roof, although a sheet of foil insulation—presumably to absorb the heat—was tacked to it. An uncomfortable looking bed lay in one corner—its single sheet thrown back, its mattress so thin and hard it could have been an exercise mat. Bottles of water and spirit lay all around it. Dahl saw a stack of colorful men’s magazines atop a low, plastic table along with several rounds of ammo that belonged to an obsolete Ruger handgun. He waited for Hayden and Kinimaka to join them, the five fully equipped soldiers taking up the majority of the room, and then headed for the door.
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