The team were so unbelievably happy to arrive at the safe house, and even happier to separate and shut the doors to separate rooms. To a person they were beat, weary, battered, bruised, bleeding.
Blood soaked them all, contusions and woolly-headedness too. Those that hadn’t been knocked unconscious wished they had; and those that had, wished they’d been able to help. Drake and Alicia walked into their room, stripped, and headed straight for the shower. A red-hot burst of water helped wash more than blood away. Drake helped Alicia and Alicia helped Drake in the places where their arms were just too covered in bruises to help.
The team weren’t broken, but they had been somewhat beaten.
“Always somebody out there—” Drake gasped as the water smashed into him full flow “—who can take you down.”
“I know.” Alicia piled handfuls of liquid soap into her palm. “Did you see the way Dahl bounced off her?”
Drake started to cough. “Oh, no, please. Don’t make me laugh. Please.”
It didn’t feel off to Drake, that he might find humor so soon after what he’d just witnessed. The man was a soldier, trained to deal with trauma and heartache, death and violence; he’d been doing it for most of his life, and soldiers coped differently. One of those ways was in camaraderie with their colleagues; another was to always look for the lighter side of things.
When possible. There were some situations that brought even a soldier to his knees.
Now Alicia, cut from the same cloth, recalled Kinimaka’s tussle with the immense Olga. “Shit, it was like Godzilla’s baby versus Godzilla. Bloody Mano was more shocked than hurt.”
“He sure can take a head-butt.” Drake grinned.
“Not!” Alicia laughed and they soaked for a while together, willing the pain away.
Drake later vacated the shower, donned a bath sheet, and walked back into the bedroom. A sense of unreality hit him. An hour ago they’d been at the very center of Hell, immersed in one of the hardest and bloodiest battles of their lives, now they were washing up on a Texas ranch, surrounded by guards.
What next?
Well, the bright side was they had won three of the four corners of the earth. And three of the Four Horsemen. The Order had concealed four weapons, so by Drake’s admittedly slightly incoherent, fuzzy and wholly unsure calculation, that left just one. He laughed at himself.
Shit, I hope I got that right.
Footsteps sounded at his back and he turned.
There stood Alicia, fully naked and glistening with water from the shower, her hair plastered across one bruised shoulder. Drake stared, and forgot about the mission.
“Bloody ’ell,” he said. “So there are times when seeing two of you is a good thing.”
She padded over and removed his towel. “Do you think we have time?”
“Don’t worry,” he said with a smile in his voice. “This won’t take long.”
*
Later, and after they’d found and tried to avoid every bruised part of both their bodies, Drake and Alicia donned fresh clothes and wandered down to the vast kitchen. Drake wasn’t sure why they chose the kitchen; it seemed the natural place to congregate. Failing sunlight slanted in through the picture windows, turning golden and burnishing the wooden floor and kitchen fittings. The place was warm and smelled of freshly baked bread. Drake sat on top of a bar stool and relaxed.
“I could spend a month here.”
“One more Horseman,” Alicia said. “And then we take a break?”
“Can we do that? I mean, it’s not like the bell-ends of the word take a break, love.”
“Well, we have to answer to Crowe anyway,” she shrugged, “about Peru. And Smyth may have problems. We shouldn’t be away on a mission when a member of our family is in trouble.”
Drake nodded. “Aye, agreed. And then there’s SEAL Team 7.”
“Someday,” Alicia sighed, sitting on a perch next to him, “our holiday will come.”
“Ey up, look what the cat dragged in!” Drake cried, sighting Dahl.
The Swede eased his way through the door, stepping carefully. “Bollocks, I’m trying to walk but am seeing double of everything.”
“You think walking’s tough?” Drake said. “You wanna try shagging.”
Dahl felt his way to a bar stool. “Someone fetch me a drink.”
Alicia slid her bottle of water across. “I’ll go get another.”
Drake eyed his friend worriedly. “You gonna have to sit the rest of this out, mate?”
“In truth, it’s getting better by the minute.”
“Oh, ’cause I remember you sitting out the fight with Olga.”
“Piss off, Drake. I don’t ever want to remember that.”
Drake chortled. “As if we’re ever gonna let you forget it.”
The rest of the team emerged in dribs and drabs and, twenty minutes later, they were all sat around the breakfast bar, nursing coffee and water, fruit and bacon strips, and more wounds than they could count. Kinimaka wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye and Smyth couldn’t hold anything in his right hand. Yorgi was immensely subdued. Kenzie couldn’t stop complaining. Only Mai, Lauren and Hayden seemed their normal selves.
“Y’know,” Hayden said. “I’m just happy we’re all through that together. It could have been much worse. The atropine did its job. Any after effects, guys?”
Yorgi, Smyth and Kenzie blinked. Kenzie spoke for them all. “I think Olga beat the after effects away.”
Hayden smiled. “Good, because we ain’t done yet. Those teams who didn’t attend Fort Sill and Dallas were searching for the final clue. Luckily, the DC think tank and the NSA were able to keep tabs on the main players.”
“SAS?” Drake guessed.
“Well, the Brits, yes. Followed by China and whatever remains of the French—”
“SEAL Team 7?” Dahl asked.
“Unknown, undeclared, and unsanctioned,” Hayden said. “According to Crowe.”
“There are higher entities than the Secretary of Defense,” Kinimaka said.
“President Coburn wouldn’t hang us out to dry,” Drake protested. “I have to believe he knows nothing about the SEALs.”
“Agreed,” Hayden said. “And whilst I agree with Mano, that there are higher entities than Crowe, there are many more insidious ones. The kind that come sideways at you, out of the blue, and give you little choice. I have to believe there’s more going on than we know.”
“Doesn’t help our problem.” Smyth grunted, and lifted a glass of milk with difficulty.
“True.” Hayden grabbed a handful of fruit and settled herself. “So, let’s concentrate on ending this bad mother and get home. We’re still the biggest team, and the best. Even now the Brits only got about a day’s head start. The Chinese too. Now, it seems out of all the rest only the French are revitalized. They have sent another team, three strong, to hook up with the only remaining original.”
“So in the battle of the Special Ops forces,” Dahl said. “We’re on top.”
“Yeah, but it’s hardly relevant. And false. It’s not like we’re hand to hand, or in the wilderness together.”
“It’s raw, unpredictable battle,” Dahl said. “It’s as real as it gets.”
Hayden nodded and then quickly went on. “Let’s recap the Order’s text. ‘At the Four Corners of the Earth we found the Four Horsemen and laid with them the blueprint of the Order of the Last Judgment. Those who survive the Judgment quest and its aftermath will rightly reign supreme. If you are reading this, we are lost, so read and follow with cautious eyes. Our last years were spent assembling the four final weapons, the world revolutions: War, Conquest, Famine and Death. Unleashed together, they will destroy all governments and unveil a new future. Be prepared. Find them. Go to the Four Corners of the Earth. Find the resting places of the Father of Strategy and then the Khagan; the Worst Indian Who Ever Lived and then the Scourge of God. But all is not as it seems. We visited the Khagan in 1960, five years after completion, placing Conq
uest in his coffin. We found the Scourge who guards the true last judgment. And the only kill code is when the Horsemen arose. The Father’s bones are unmarked. The Indian is surrounded by guns. The Order of the Last Judgment now live through you, and will forever reign supreme.’”
She finished and took a drink.
“All right? It makes more sense now, I guess. The Order are dead, long gone, but there’s still some small element of them in on this. Maybe a mole. A loner. Maybe something else. But he’s good enough to hack that Dallas lab, and good enough to take a whole lot of Special Forces down, so we can’t underestimate that.”
She paused as Drake waved. “Yeah?”
“You know the best place for him to be?” he said. “Inside the think tank in DC. Or working for the NSA.”
Hayden’s eyes widened. “Crap, that’s a real good point. Let me think on it.” She poured black coffee from a glass jug.
“Time flies, my friends,” Mai said.
“Yeah, I’m with you.” Hayden gulped down a mouthful. “Breaking the text down then: the last corner of the earth is Europe. We have to find the tomb of the Scourge of God, who is the Horseman of Death and guards the true last judgment. The worst of all. And the kill code being when the Horsemen arose? I don’t understand that as yet, sorry.”
“I guess the think tank has been on this a while?” Yorgi said.
Lauren now spoke up from her position leaning against the enormous fridge. “Sure have. An ancient leader was once labeled with the questionable title ‘Flagellum dei’, by the Romans that he fought and murdered. He was probably the most successful of the barbarian rulers, and attacked the east and west Roman empires when he lived circa 406–453. He was the most feared enemy of Rome and once quoted: ‘There, where I have passed, the grass will never grow again.’”
“Another aggrandized, ancient mass murderer,” Dahl said.
“Attila the Hun,” Lauren said, “murdered his brother in 434 to become sole ruler of the Huns. Notorious for his fierce gaze, Attila was known to roll his eyes often ‘as if to enjoy the terror he inspired’ according to Edward Gibbon, a historian. He also reputedly claimed to own the actual sword of Mars, the Roman god of war. You can imagine the fear and horror this might inspire on the Roman battlefield.”
“We get it,” Drake said. “Attila was a bad, or good, boy depending on which side you were on. And who wrote the history books. How and where did he die?”
“Several conflicting accounts describe how he died. From a nosebleed to a knife, at the hand of his new wife. When they found his body the men, as was the custom of the Huns, plucked the hair from their heads and cut deep, hideous wounds in their faces. It was said that Attila, being so terrible an enemy, had his death announced by the gods as a fantastic windfall. A blessing. His body was put in place at the center of a vast plain, inside a silken tent, for all to see and admire. The best horsemen of the tribes rode around and around in circles and spoke over campfires of his great exploits. His was a great death. It goes on to say a celebration was enjoyed over his tomb.” Lauren continued to repeat the pertinent points DC whispered into her ears. There was no point setting up a speaker.
“They sealed his coffins with gold, silver and iron, for he had three. And they believed these three materials befitted the greatest of all kings. Of course, arms, riches and rare gems were added. And, also as custom it seems, they slew everyone that labored on his grave to keep its site a secret.”
Alicia glared around the table. “One of you dies,” she said. “Don’t be asking me to bury you. Not a friggin’ chance.”
“You’ll be both unhappy and glad to hear Attila’s tomb is one of the greatest lost burial sites in history. Of course, from some of the others—King Richard III’s long-missing body turning up under a parking lot in Leicester a few years ago—we have faith that they can still be found. Cleopatra, maybe? Sir Francis Drake? Mozart? Anyway, as for Attila’s it is believed that the Hun engineers diverted the Tisza River long enough to dry up the main river bed. Attila was buried there in his magnificent, priceless triple coffin. The Tisza was then freed, concealing Attila for all time.”
At that moment they heard the sound of an approaching helicopter. Hayden swept her eyes around the room.
“I hope you’re ready for another fight, boys and girls, because this ain’t nowhere near finished yet.”
Drake stretched aching muscles. Dahl steadied his head on his shoulders. Kenzie winced when she touched the scrape down her back.
“To be fair,” Drake said. “I was getting bored here anyway.”
Hayden smiled. Dahl nodded as best he could. Mai was already on her feet. Lauren headed for the door.
“C’mon,” she said. “They’re gonna brief us more on the way.”
“Europe?” Yorgi asked.
“Yeah. And to the final Horseman of Death.”
Alicia jumped off the barstool. “Great pep-talk,” she said sarcastically. “You make it sound so thrilling, even my toes are starting to tingle.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Another flight, another struggle on the horizon. Drake settled into the comfortable seat and listened as Lauren voiced DC’s judgments and findings on the case of Attila the Hun. The team sat around in varying poses, taking in what they could and trying to shrug off the hurt after the newly named ‘Olga incident.’
“Attila’s grave lost to history,” Lauren recapped. “Never found, although there have been a few bogus discoveries. Now—” she paused, listening “—have you heard of a gravitational anomaly?”
Dahl looked over. “There is more than one meaning to that term.”
“Well, this is our meaning. Quite recently, scientists discovered a huge and mysterious anomaly buried beneath the polar icecap. Did you know that? It has vast dimensions—151 miles across and a depth of almost a thousand meters. Spotted by NASA satellites it presented a gravitational anomaly because changes in its vicinity indicated the presence of an enormous object sitting in a crater. Now, discounting the wild theories, this object represents a gravitational anomaly. It doesn’t sit right, doesn’t move like all else around it, and can thus be detected by high-powered radar.”
“You’re talking GPR,” Dahl said. “My old specialty.”
Drake made his eyes widen. “Are you sure? I thought that was male stripping at hen parties. The Dancing Viking, they called you.”
Dahl gave him weary. “Cut it out.”
Alicia leaned over. “He seems grumpy,” she stage-whispered.
“Rebounding off an unsuspecting old lady will do that to you.”
Amazingly, Smyth had tears in his eyes. “I gotta say,” he choked, “I’ve never seen anyone bounce off someone so hard without a trampoline involved.” He hid his face, trying to compose himself.
Kinimaka patted his shoulder. “You okay, brah? I never seen you laugh before, man. It’s weird.”
Lauren cut in, saving the Swede from more ribbing. “GPR, but on an intense scale. I mean, Google Maps have the strange Antarctica object. You can see it from your laptop. But to find something as small as Attila’s tomb? Well, that involves using machines and software that NASA haven’t even admitted to owning yet.”
“They use a satellite?” Yorgi asked.
“Oh yeah, all the cool nations have it.”
“Including China, Britain and France.” Drake pointed out their list of rivals.
“Of course. From space the Chinese could identify a man sitting in his car, check the Internet sites he’s browsing through, and categorize the contents of the sandwich he’s eating. Any man. Almost anywhere.”
“Just men?” Kenzie asked. “Or women too?”
Lauren grinned and whispered, “I have a man in my ear, relaying this. Sounds a tad young, like he hasn’t discovered women yet.”
Drake listened as the chopper split the skies between America and Europe, the third and fourth corners of the earth.
“Right, well, anyway ...” Lauren winked. “Piecing together the
obscure geography of Piscarus, it is said in one text that Attila’s famous palace was seated between the Danube and the Tisza, in the Carpathian Hills, on the plains of upper Hungary and neighboring Jazberin. In a far more obscure passage it states that Attila’s grave was across from his palace.”
“But buried beneath a river,” Mai stated.
“Yes, the Tisza traverses Hungary from north to south, a huge tributary of the Danube itself. The path of the river will help our scientists. Hopefully, their investigations with geophysical technique will combine satellite, magnetics, MAG and GPR. Magnetic surveys are supplemented by GPR profiles across selected anomalies. They also say they can see if and when a river was ever diverted.” She shrugged. “We’re talking thousands and thousands of images for a computer to crunch, then make a determination.”
“All right, all right, so we’re heading for Hungary.” Alicia faked a headache. “Just say that.”
The team settled back, wondering how their aggressive counterparts were doing.
*
Hungary, the Danube and the Tisza looked just as black as the rest of Europe at night, but Drake knew right now it was far more volatile. The most powerful of the Four Horsemen lay down there—Death—and those that found it might well shape the future of the world.
The team landed, took off again, landed once more and then jumped in a huge, non-reflective van to complete the last leg of their journey. The number crunchers hadn’t concluded anything yet, the areas were still large and the target small, not to mention old and potentially degraded. It would have been nice to find the Order’s own workings out, but their sudden killings all those decades ago put paid to any backtracking.
They set up a camp on the plains, put a guard around the outside, and settled in. The winds were high, ruffling the tents; the surreal reality of all they had done during the last few days still trying to sink in.
Are we really here now, camping halfway up the side of a Hungarian hill? Drake wondered. Or are we still being pummeled by Olga?
The blooming tent canvas spoke the truth, and so did the wriggling shape at his side. Alicia, wrapped in her sleeping bag so that only her eyes peered out.
The Four Corners of the Earth (Matt Drake Book 16) Page 18
