The Edge of Armageddon

by David Leadbeater

  “Don’t worry,” Drake said. “We’re the English.”

  Mai sent a glare his way. “Japanese.”

  And Beau interrupted his search for the men’s room with a raised eyebrow. “Definitely not English.”

  Drake ran as gracefully as he could through the still-closed restaurant, clipping a chair and table as he went. The men’s restroom was small, consisting of only two urinals and a toilet. He checked under the bowl.

  “Nothing here,” he said.

  Stress crisscrossed Beauregard’s face. He tapped the buttons of his watch. “Time’s up.”

  The hovering waitress jumped as the telephone rang. Drake held out a hand to her. “Take your time. Please, take your time.”

  He thought she might bolt, but inner resolve sent her toward the receiver. At that moment Alicia came out of the female restroom, a fraught expression on her face. “It’s not there. We don’t have it!”

  Drake flinched as if he'd been struck. He stared around. Could there be another restroom in this tiny restaurant? An employee’s stall perhaps? They would have to check again, but the waitress was already speaking on the phone. Her eyes flickered toward Drake and she told the caller to hold.

  “It’s a man called Marsh. For you.”

  Drake frowned. “Did he ask for me by name?”

  “An Englishman, he said.” The waitress shrugged. “That’s all he said.”

  Beau lingered at his side. “And since you are easily confused, my friend, that is you.”

  “Cheers.”

  Drake reached out for the phone, one hand rubbing the side of his face as a rush of weariness and tension washed over him. How could they fail now? They had defeated all the odds and yet Marsh might still somehow be playing them.

  “Yes?”

  “Marsh here. Now tell me, what did you find?”

  Drake opened his mouth, then closed it quickly. What was the right answer? Maybe Marsh was expecting the word “nothing”. Maybe . . .

  He paused, wavering from reply to reply.

  “Tell me what you found or I will give the order to kill two New Yorkers within the next minute.”

  Drake opened his mouth. Dammit! “We found—”

  Then Mai came sprinting out of the women’s rest room, slipping on the wet tiles and falling onto her side. In her hand was clasped a small white envelope. Beau was next to her in a split-second, retrieving the envelope and handing it to Drake. Mai languished on the floor, panting hard.

  Alicia stared open-mouthed at her. “Where did you find that, Sprite?”

  “You did what they call a ‘boy look’, Taz. And that shouldn’t surprise anyone, since you’re three-quarters male anyway.”

  Alicia fumed in silence.

  Drake was coughing as he tore open the envelope. “We . . . found . . . a . . . a bloody USB stick, Marsh. Shit, man, what is this?”

  “Well done. Well done. I’m a little disappointed but, hey, maybe next time. Now just take a good look at the USB. This is your final verification and, as before, you may want to pass it on to someone with a bigger brain than yourselves or the NYPD.”

  “Is it the inside of the . . . cake?” Drake was aware of the waitress still standing nearby.

  Marsh laughed loudly. “Oh good, oh very good. Let’s not let the cat out of the bag, eh? Yes, it is. Now listen, I will give you ten minutes to send the USB’s contents to your betters, and then we start again.”

  “No, no we don’t.” Drake waved toward Mai, who carried a small backpack in which they had stashed a tiny laptop. The Japanese woman dragged herself off the ground and came over.

  “We won’t chase our tails all over this city, Marsh.”

  “Umm, yes you will. Because I say so. Now, time is ticking. Let’s get that laptop booted up and enjoy what happens next, shall we? Five, four . . .”

  Drake smashed a fist into a table as the line went quiet. Anger boiled his blood. “Listen, Marsh—”

  The restaurant’s front window exploded as the front fender of a van smashed through into the eating area. Glass shattered and tore slices from the air. Woodwork, plastic and mortar burst into the room. The van didn’t stop, crashing down onto its tires and roaring like death’s apprentice as it tore through the small room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Julian Marsh felt a sharp pain in his stomach as he rolled to the right. Slices of pizza fell to the floor and a bowl of salad tumbled across the sofa. Quickly he clutched his sides, quite unable to stop laughing.

  The low-slung table that sat before Zoe and him juddered as a wild foot gave it an errant kick. Zoe reached out a hand to steady him, patting his shoulder rapidly as another exciting event began to unfold. So far, they had watched Drake and his team spill out of the Edison—viewing quite easily as they had a man dressed as a tourist filming the event from across the street—then seen the mad dash up Broadway—this hysterical tableau more sporadic as there were only so many traffic and security cams a local terrorist could hack into—and then viewed with bated breath the attack that had somehow evolved around the concrete mixer.

  All a nice distraction. Marsh had held a burner cell in one hand and Zoe’s thigh in the other, whilst she scarfed down several slices of ham and mushroom and messed around on Facebook.

  Three screens, eighteen-inch each, faced them. The pair now exhibited rapt attention as Drake and Co. stormed into the little Italian restaurant. Marsh checked the time and glanced at the colorful façade.

  “Shit, this is a close one.”

  “Are you excited?”

  “Yeah, aren’t you?”

  “It’s an okay movie.” Zoe pouted. “But I was hoping for more blood.”

  “Just give it a minute, my love. It gets better.”

  The pair sat and played in a rented apartment that belonged to one of the terrorist cells; the primary one, Marsh thought. There were four terrorists, one of whom had set up the cinema-like viewing area for Marsh by previous request. Whilst the Pythian couple enjoyed their viewing pleasure the men sat aside, crowded around a small TV, and monitored dozens of other channels, searching for tidbits of news or awaiting a call of some sort. Marsh didn’t know and didn’t give a hoot. He also ignored the odd looks and stolen glances, knowing full well that he was a good-looking man, with a quirky personality, and some people—even other men—liked to appreciate such individuality.

  Zoe showed him a little more appreciation, slipping her hands down the front of his boxers. Damn, but her nails were sharp.

  Sharp and yet somehow . . . pleasurable.

  He spent a moment gazing at the suitcase nuke, a term he couldn’t quite remove from his mind even though the minimized bomb sat in a large backpack, and then shoveled a little caviar into his mouth. The spread before them was magnificent, of course, comprised of foods priceless and tawdry, but all delicious.

  Was that the nuke calling his name?

  Marsh saw that it was time to act and made the call, speaking to a charming waitress and then the thick-accented Englishman. The guy had one of those bizarre tones of voices—something smacking of peasantry—and Marsh made twisted faces as he tried to decipher vowel from vowel. Not an easy task, and made somewhat harder with a woman’s hands squeezing your nutcracker suite.

  “Tell me what you found or I will give the order to kill two New Yorkers within the next minute.” Marsh grinned as he said it, ignoring the annoyed looks cast by his disciples across the room.

  The Englishman hesitated some more. Marsh found a slice of cucumber fallen out of the salad bowl and stuck it deep into Zoe’s hair. Not that she’d ever notice. Minutes passed and Marsh conversed over the burner cell, becoming more and more excited. A cold bottle of Bollinger sat nearby and he spent half a minute pouring a large glass. Zoe snuggled up to him as she worked, and they sipped from the same glass, opposite rims of course.

  “Five,” Marsh said into the phone. “Four, three . . .”

  Zoe’s hands took on a particular urgency.

  “Two.”


  The Englishman tried to barter with him, clearly wondering what the hell was going on. Marsh imagined the vehicle he’d arranged to be plowed through the front window at a pre-determined time, aiming now, accelerating, bearing down on the unsuspecting restaurant.

  “One.”

  And then everything exploded.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Drake flung his body toward the restaurant wall, grabbing the waitress around the waist and taking her with him. Glass and brick fragments sluiced off his rolling body. The oncoming van squealed for traction as its tires struck the restaurant floor and its middle rocked over the window sill, its back end now rising and smashing into the lintel above the pane. Metal screeched. Tables collapsed. Chairs piled up as debris before it.

  Alicia had also reacted instantly, scrambling around a table and away, her only wound a small gash across the shin from a fast-moving splinter of wood. Mai somehow managed to roll across the top of a moving table, escaping any harm and Beau went one better, leaping above her and jumping from surface to surface, at last timing a jump so that his feet and hands struck the side wall and helped him land safely.

  Drake looked up, the waitress screaming at his side. Alicia stared accusingly.

  “So you grabbed her, did you?”

  “Look out!”

  The van still came forward, slowing by the second, but now the barrel of a gun poked out of the lowered passenger window. Alicia ducked and covered. Mai rolled some more. Drake withdrew his own handgun and fired six bullets at the disembodied hand, the sounds loud in the confined space, vying with the van’s deafening roar. Beau was already in motion, darting around the back of the vehicle. At last the wheels stopped turning and ground to a halt. Broken tables and chairs cascaded from the hood and even from the roof. Drake made sure the waitress was unharmed before moving forward, but by then Beau and Mai were already at the vehicle.

  Beau had smashed the driver’s window and was grappling with a figure. Mai checked positioning through the smashed windshield and then picked up a splintered length of wood.

  “No,” Drake began, his voice a little croaky. “We need—”

  But Mai wasn’t in the mood for listening. Instead she threw the improvised weapon through the windshield with enough force that it stuck hard in the driver’s forehead, quivering in place. The man’s eyes rolled up and he stopped struggling with Beau, the Frenchman looking bemused.

  “I did have him.”

  Mai shrugged. “I thought I should help.”

  “Help?” Drake repeated. “We need at least one of these bastards alive.”

  “And on that note,” Alicia piped up. “I’m fine, ta. Nice to see you saving Waitress Wendy’s ass though.”

  Drake bit his tongue, knowing at some deep level that Alicia was only ribbing him. Beauregard had already dragged the driver out of the vehicle and was rifling his pockets. Alicia headed over to the miraculously untouched laptop. The USB had finished uploading and had deposited a hash of pictures onto the screen—disturbing images of silver canisters that made Drake’s blood run cold.

  “It appears to be the inside of a bomb,” he said, studying wires and relays. “Send it to Moore before anything else happens.”

  Alicia leaned over the machine, tapping away.

  Drake helped the waitress to her feet. “You okay, love?”

  “I . . . I think so.”

  “Mint. Now how about rustling us up a lasagna?”

  “The chef . . . the chef hasn’t arrived yet.” Her gaze swept the destruction fearfully.

  “Hell, and I thought you just threw ’em into a microwave.”

  “Don’t worry.” Mai came over and laid a hand on the waitress’s arm. “They will remodel. Insurance should take care of this.”

  “I hope so.”

  Drake again bit his tongue, this time to stop a curse. Yes, it was a blessing that everyone was still breathing but Marsh and his cronies were still wrecking people’s lives. Without conscience. Without ethics and without concern.

  As if by psychic link the phone rang. This time Drake picked it up.

  “Are you all still kicking?”

  Marsh’s voice made him want to hit something, but he kept it strictly professional. “We’ve forwarded your pictures on.”

  “Oh, excellent. So that’s that bit sorted out then. I hope you grabbed a bite to eat whilst you waited because this next part—well, it could kill you.”

  Drake coughed. “You do know we haven’t verified your bomb yet.”

  “And, hearing that, I see that you want to slow events down whilst you try to catch up. Not happening, my new friend. Not happening at all. Your cops and agents, military people and fire department, may be part of a well-oiled machine, but they are still a machine, and take a little while to get up to speed. Therefore, I take that time to tear you apart. It’s quite fun, believe me.”

  “What do the Pythians get out of all this?”

  Marsh clucked. “Oh, I think you know that conceited group of ragamuffins recently imploded. Was anything ever more certain? They were led by a serial killer, a psycho stalker, a megalomaniac and a jealous domineer. All of whom happened to be the same person.”

  Alicia leaned closer to Drake at that moment. “So tell us—where is that bastard?”

  “Oh, a new girl. Are you the blonde or the Asian? Probably the blonde by the sound of it. Darling, if I knew where he was I’d let you flay him alive. Tyler Webb only ever wanted one thing. He abandoned the Pythians the moment he knew where to find it.”

  “Which was at the bazaar?” Drake asked, now playing both for time and information.

  “A hive of heinousness that place, am I right? Imagine all the deals done there that will impact the world for decades to come.”

  “Ramses sold him something,” Drake said, testing.

  “Yes. And I’m sure the tricky French Pain Au Sausage has already told you what that item was. Or you could always ask him right now.”

  So that confirmed it. Marsh was watching them, though he didn’t have eyes in the restaurant. Drake sent a quick text to Moore. “How about telling us where Webb went?”

  “Well, seriously, what am I, Fox News? You’ll be asking me for cash next.”

  “I’ll settle for that terrorist asshole.”

  “And back to the job at hand.” Marsh spoke the words and then seemed amused at himself, abruptly laughing. “Sorry, private joke. But we’re done now with the verification part of the chase. Now I want to give you my demands.”

  “So just tell us.” Alicia sounded weary.

  “Where’s the fun in that? This bomb will detonate unless I am completely satisfied. Who knows, dear, I may have even chosen to own you.”

  In an instant, Alicia appeared ready to go, eyes and expression so fired up she could ignite a desiccated forest.

  “I’d love to get you alone,” she whispered.

  Marsh paused, then continued quickly. “The Natural History Museum, twenty minutes.”

  Drake set his watch. “And then?”

  “Hmmm, what?”

  “It’s a big ass piece of architecture.”

  “Oh, well if you get that far I’d suggest stripping a male guard called Jose Gonzales. One of our associates sewed my demands into the lining of his jacket last night. Ingenious way to transport documents, eh, and with no comeback to the originator.”

  Drake didn’t reply, more perplexed than anything.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Marsh said, again showing amazing cerebral qualities. “Why not just mail you the pics and tell you my demands? Well, I am a peculiar man. They told me I have two sides, two minds and two faces, but I prefer to see it as two separate qualities. One part twisted, the other bent. You see what I mean?”

  Drake coughed. “I certainly know what you are.”

  “Excellent, then I know you will understand that when I see your four torn-apart corpses in about seventeen minutes, I will feel both wonderfully happy and terribly annoyed. With you. Now, goo
dbye.”

  The line went dead. Drake clicked his watch.

  Twenty minutes.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hayden and Kinimaka spent their time with Ramses. The terrorist prince appeared ill at ease in his six-foot square cell: dirty, disheveled and, though clearly exhausted, pacing like a caged lion. Hayden donned a flak jacket, checked her Glock and spare ammo, and bade Mano do the same. No chances would be taken from here on in. Both Ramses and Marsh had proven too clever to underestimate.

  Perhaps the terrorist myth was right where he wanted to be.

  Hayden doubted it, doubted it immensely. The fight inside the castle and the desperate death of his bodyguard had showed how anxious he’d been to escape. Also, was his reputation ruined? Shouldn’t he be trying desperately to repair the damage? Probably, but the man wasn’t destroyed to the level where he couldn’t rebuild. Hayden watched him stride as Kinimaka fetched them a couple of plastic chairs.

  “There is a nuclear weapon in this city,” Hayden said. “Which I am sure you know, since you brokered the deal to Tyler Webb and Julian Marsh. You are in this city and if the time comes we’ll make damn sure you’re not underground. Of course, your followers don’t know we have you . . .” She let it hang right there.

  Ramses pulled up, tired eyes fixing on her. “You refer to the double-cross of course, where my men will soon kill Marsh, take charge of the bomb and detonate. You must know this through Webb and his bodyguard since they are the only ones who knew. And you also know that they merely await my command.” He nodded as if to himself.

  Hayden waited. Ramses was sharp, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t slip up.

  “They will detonate,” Ramses said. “They will make the decision themselves.”

  “We can make your last few hours pretty much intolerable,” Kinimaka said.

  “You won’t make me call it off,” Ramses said. “Even through torture. I will not halt that detonation.”