“Let’s keep it down,” he rasped along the line. “We have no idea what we’re dealing with here.”
“I do.” Hayden said softly. “Boudreau.”
Drake paused and looked along the line. At the back stood the man-mountain, Kinimaka. His steely eyes met Drakes’ and expressed just one word.
Revenge.
Drake moved off. “I’ll tell you this, Hayden. Boudreau ain’t the hardest man on this vessel.”
The passageway ran straight for twenty feet before hitting a ninety degree junction. Signage was noticeably absent. Drake felt a moment of frustration and then turned right, almost sure it led to their cabins from which he could easily find the deck.
The odd thing was they walked in utter silence. On board a ship of hundreds he heard not a single voice. Creepy thoughts of the Bermuda Triangle entered his head.
At last they reached their cabins. As Drake paused to have a quick look a second intense explosion shook the U.S. cruiser, making the walls and the floor shiver and shake.
“Above decks could be worse,” Kennedy said.
“Now, maybe,” Drake told her. “But if those guys made it down here we’d be gravy.”
“Down here?” Hayden looked shocked. “How could they ever get down here? There’s a boatful of U.S. marines to get through.”
“But they already knew that,” Drake said. “And yet still . . . they’re attacking this ship.”
The ex-soldier led them on, trying to exercise speed and caution and, at last, they were standing before a set of stairs that led up to the deck. Now, the sounds of combat were more apparent.
“Seriously,” Kennedy reiterated, “wouldn’t it be easier to hold them off down here.”
Drake felt a moment’s frustration. He was trying to save their lives. Questions weren’t helping. “Stop thinking a step ahead,” he said shortly, “and try thinking four or five steps ahead. They will have planned for that contingency. Now follow!”
Boots hammering the steps, he pounded upwards, cracked open the door and glanced out. One . . . two . . . three. Five seconds, then he ducked back in.
“Ship’s clean,” he said. “No bad guys. The marines are holding them off.”
He cracked the door again and they filed out. The big five-inch gun mounted on the bow was before them. Behind them bristled the various radar arrays towers and illuminators. The deck was jammed with hard-faced marines. Alarms and sensors were going off everywhere.
But Drake read the confusion behind their eyes and saw the panic they were concealing at the shrieking warning bells and stopped dead. “Don’t like the look of this.”
He started towards the big gun and then something happened that made the British seen-it-all SAS soldier stand and gawp like a three-year-old on a visit to Disneyland.
Above the bow, above the massive gun, above the port and starboard side, and rising like prehistoric moths appeared at least a dozen choppers. In less than a second they all opened fire. The sound of metallic hell filled the air so loudly that Drake found himself unable to think.
He fell to the deck and crawled. As his senses returned he glanced underneath his own body. His friends were in a similar state, stunned into immobility. Bullets clanged and whined and ricocheted off every metal surface - a category-five hurricane of lead that tore through skin and bone and left men screaming in its wake.
Drake looked up when it stopped, relieved to be in one piece. Half a dozen helicopters were drifting over the ship, rappel lines unravelling. Drake foretold the future and scrambled quickly for a discarded weapon. There were plenty about. The carnage around him was indescribable. At least three-quarters of the downed men were still alive, in various states of hurt, but there was nothing he could do for them now.
It was kill or be killed, and this was his stage.
“Stay with me!” He ran instinctively for the side of the boat where he knew life-rafts were positioned. Emergency escape. That was all they had in their favour now.
But quicker than he would have believed possible the rappel lines quivered and men were landing lightly on deck all around them. Drake punched the first hard in the face, the second he clubbed with the machine-gun.
Many marines were still functioning and began to fight. A melee erupted on deck, gun-battle and hand-to-hand fighting of the most violent kind.
Drake led his small party through the middle of it. Mano Kinimaka bulldozed straight into a gathering group of enemy combatants, scattering them like bowling balls.
“Run, damn you!”
The life-rafts were about ten feet away. All of a sudden Drake saw half a dozen bouncing grenades litter the deck.
It was then that the war really began.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Dive!” Drake screamed, hoping everyone got the message. He felt Ben hit the deck by his side, groaned as Kennedy landed on his legs, and thanked his lucky starts it hadn’t been Kinimaka. Explosions ripped through the ship. Soldiers died on both sides, twisting and yelling as they collapsed.
Drake grunted again as one of the enemy landed on him, having bore the brunt of the shrapnel that was heading his way. Still, a few shards tore through Drake’s skin, causing a searing pain that he ignored.
He pushed to his knees. They had to get to the life-rafts. Their survival depended on it. But around the corner of the steel radar column they hit serious obstructions. Marines were taking cover among the girders, both at deck-level and further up amongst the tree-like stanchions. Bullets pinged from surface to surface faster than a man’s eyes move at a women’s beach volleyball tournament.
Bradey was in the midst of it, firing and shouting orders through his radios, trying to hold together a makeshift team of some of the best men in the world who, in a matter of minutes, had been sent reeling.
That was the key factor here, Drake thought. Not skill or bravery, but shock and awe - the Americans being played at their own game on their own soil. By Christ, there would be some repercussions.
The life-rafts were effectively cut off. And the battle behind them was only getting fiercer and closer. Drake knew the only way to protect his people was to fully engage in this fight. He fired his weapon at the men slithering down the ropes. Enemy bodies fell and crashed to the deck. The sound of breaking bones made even the hardest man wince. Some bad guys paused in mid-fall to level their weapons and fire a few bursts in Drake’s direction, but their aim was spoiled by the sway of the ropes.
Kennedy snatched up a gun and started firing.
Ben ducked behind them as a metal sleet drove above their heads. Luckily, the raucous sound of his mobile ringing distracted the enemy more than Drake and his friends.
“Sis?” He answered it without thinking. “Karin? Yeah, yeah, not bad. Look-”
Drake dived left, hitting the deck in a roll and came up firing. More bodies somersaulted from the skies, trailing fountains of blood, and came crashing down amongst their own brethren below.
“No,” Ben was saying, “I’m in the States. Look . . . what? What’s wrong with seeing Hayden?”
A man had surprised Kennedy, sneaking up behind her amidst the turmoil and strong-arming her around the neck. She struggled, bucking and kicking fiercely, suddenly reminded of her contest with Thomas Kaleb in the battle arena, reminded of that rank smell, those evil, blood-smeared hands. How he touched her. How he drooled on her . . .
Fight!
The inner voice, so loud and commanding, was pure self-preservation. She lifted her body, using her attacker as a fulcrum, and then swung all her weight backwards, still holding the light machine-gun.
Her heels crashed into his shins, making him buckle but not relent. The butt of her gun jabbed his ribs. The back of her head, on the return swing, then smashed against his forehead with stunning force.
The man staggered away. Kennedy turned and mercilessly opened fire, sending his body reeling against the bulkhead.
Ben was on his knees, eyes a centimetre away from deck, looking for all the world
as if he had found a new breed of insect on a still, sunny day in the calmest meadow. “Karin. I hear you, but Hayden’s alright. She’s good for me-”
The soldier Kennedy had shot landed face down beside him, broken and bloody. The knife he had been holding but never gotten the chance to use bounced off Ben’s head and struck the floor.
“She’s CIA,” Ben said with a dollop of sarcasm. “Not Marine Force Recon!”
Drake allowed himself to join the fray again instead of keeping half an eye on Kennedy’s struggle. The deck was crowded now, much of it covered in pitch battle. One thing was obvious to Drake - the cavalry, by now, would be well on its way.
So that pointed to another, more-important thing - the attackers and Boudreau, if the sadistic murderer was indeed behind this - would have planned for all this. Thus they would more than likely already have secured the device.
All we have to do is hang on, he thought. We can’t escape, we just have to live.
“That way.” He pointed back past the door they had come through. There was a corner bulkhead and a storage bin over there - meagre coverage but better than their current position.
They scooted across. Drake made to grab an opponent who was in their way, but Mano Kinimaka beat him to it, bulldozing past and ramming a stiff arm into the guy’s head. It was instant lights-out for their adversary, and a better way out for him than Drake had been planning.
As he ran, Drake sought to help his fellow soldiers by firing single shots at their rivals, relieving pressure, saving lives, backing the team. His own mobile had vibrated twice, and that meant either Wells or Mai, or both.
Another explosion, and this time fire and frag blasted past the corner they had just vacated. A member of Bradey’s SOG squad tumbled into view and lay without moving.
“Watch that corner,” Drake instructed as he now moved carefully to the starboard side of the ship and peered over the railings. If he had been expecting aircraft carriers, a deadly armada or swarms of choppers he was hugely disappointed. Beyond the choppy, wide seas and the foggy shore in the distance there was nothing to see. He had to assume Boudreau’s assault and getaway crew lay to the port side.
How on earth were they ever going to escape?
Hayden was breathing shallowly beside him. She nudged his shoulder. “It’s the same set-up as back at the safe house, Matt. Overwhelming surprise. I tell you, there’s more than one insider helping them here.”
“Stunning,” said Drake shaking his head. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. Look, Hayden, we’re soldiers, but they’re not.” He nodded at Ben and Kennedy. “We need to help the marines from here and just survive. Boudreau’s men have to depart soon.”
“With the box!” Hayden looked like she was about to head below decks.
“Lost,” Drake said. “For now.”
Ben’s voice was starting to rise. “Karin! I’ll call you back. You just can’t talk to me like that!”
Hayden’s eyes held a depth of pity that suddenly made Drake scared for Ben. “He’s a great kid,” the ex-soldier said quickly. “His family mean the world to him.”
“As my father meant to me,” Hayden returned. “But he’s gone, and all I have are some memories of him. Funny, how such loving feelings can fade with time, leaving you knowing you had them, but not remembering the overwhelming depth of them.”
“Your father,” Drake said. “He was CIA wasn’t he?”
“James Jaye. J.J.,” Hayden said with pride. “If I do nothing else with my life I will honour his death.”
Ben was well and truly in second place with this one, Drake thought. How naive of him to think of them as the happy couple, living among the roses and not sensing the coming blight.
Kinimaka now hunched down beside them. “So,” he said. “What are we looking at?”
“Water, water everywhere and not a boat to sink,” Drake said before rising to his feet. Kinimaka just stared. Drake took a moment to shoot two adversaries who dared to peer around the bulkhead and then checked his weapon.
Three-quarter empty. “Where the hell are the marines?” he wondered aloud.
Then Hayden screamed, making Drake almost squeeze the trigger in alarm. A chopper had been drifting towards them, inch by inch, and now as it came within their warning range a man had leaned out and started shooting.
“Boudreau?” Drake guessed.
“The very motherfucker,” Kinimaka growled. “Fruit-bat crazy, that one. Pure fruit-bat.”
A great claxon went off, louder than the shooting and the fighting and the death-cries of wounded men. It could only mean one thing. They had the device. Then ropes unravelled heavily from the chopper and struck the deck like big boa-constrictors all around them. All of a sudden men were abseiling down.
Were they trying for Hayden again?
Drake fired the machine-gun one handed, scooping up a knife with the other and walking towards the landing zone. Dead adversaries plummeted to the ship’s deck, bouncing hard. Hayden emptied her clip too quickly, panic affecting her aim. This arsehole Boudreau really had her traumatized, no doubt his intentions when he so brutally executed her men.
Kinimaka walked with them, waiting for the hand-to-hand. He didn’t have to wait long. Their enemies bounced lightly and sprang forward. Drake allowed one to land on his knife, then twisted and slashed another across the throat. He caught a blow on his chest and fired close-up, sending a man skidding back into his comrades, scattering and confusing them.
A knife flashed.
Drake let it pass through the gap between his arm and his chest without even blinking. The knife-wielder’s expression change from smug to terrified in a millisecond. It changed to agony one millisecond later.
Kinimaka was at his side, an intimidating presence if ever there was one. Boudreau was leaning out of the chopper, being held up there only by his men, spittle flying from his lips.
“Get him!” came the mad scream. “Can’t you fucksticks see him? He’s fuckin’ big enough!”
Mano? Drake thought. They were after Mano Kinimaka? Not Hayden?
“He’s desperate,” Kennedy’s voice came from close by. “The Blood King must have given him another chance.”
More men came at them. Drake understood better now why they weren’t shooting. They wanted the Hawaiian alive. Never mind, it would accelerate their downfall.
He front-kicked one man in the chest, heard ribs break. To his left and right, Kinimaka and Hayden used close-up fighting techniques. Boudreau’s team was good, and the melee soon turned into a stalemate, helped at Drake’s end by the limited corridor of attack his enemies were afforded by the bulkhead.
Again the claxon sounded. “Fuck you!” Boudreau’s voice rang out, a madman on the verge of losing his last, tentative grip on reality. “Fucking useless meatheads!”
And he started shooting indiscriminately. Several of his men went down. Blood slathered the deck. Boudreau laughed. “Fucking,” he fired, killing a young mercenary with red hair. “Useless,” he fired again, sending another bullet into another subordinate. “Meatheads!” He fired twice more. Two more men collapsed, one with a hole in his head and his blood spattered across the rest of the living.
“Get back! Are you deaf as well as useless?”
The remaining men started to jog towards the port side. They must have some kind of makeshift disembarkation apparatus over there.
Which is why they were defending that area so ruthlessly against Bradey and his men.
Drake let them go. He had no interest in chasing down fleeing men. The chopper above them with its crazy occupant veered upwards and began to climb.
Hayden was staring at Kinimaka. “What gives, Mano. Why’d that monster want you?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The stakes had risen higher than ever and still they had no idea which mastermind was orchestrating the humiliation of the United States on its own soil.
The SOG commander, Bradey, was alive and looking flabbergasted. He seemed to have l
ost control of his reasoning abilities. All he could say repeatedly was that someone had declared war against the U.S. military inside its own damn country.
Who would have the resources? Drake wondered. Who would possess such audaciousness? There were people out there who could do it, and he betted that almost every one of them was currently trying to contact the CIA to assure them it wasn’t me.
“All of DC will be involved in this now.” Hayden had said something, Drake fancied, just to shut Bradey and his rambling up. “And the device that was stolen? That's huge.”
“I’ll say,” Ben agreed with her. “I just got off the phone with dad. He says it’s already hit Sky News. Jeremy Thompson looks gobsmacked.”
“Poor old Jeremy,” Drake said. “One thing’s for sure though, if the Blood King now has the box, then he’s not going to waste any time before chasing after the controller.”
“Everyone will,” Kinimaka said.
Ben’s mobile sang out a Pretty Reckless song. He moved away to answer it. “Karin?”
Drake ignored Hayden’s long look and muttered something about taking a leak. Kennedy was involved with a fallen marine. The man looked so young, lying there trying to look so tough, and all the while back in Montana or Alabama, or plain old Texas, his family were unaware that their son and brother and friend was sharing his final moments with a stranger.
Drake disappeared below to check his mobile. He was right. Wells had tried him twice, Mai just the once. He hit ‘return’ and waited.
“How ya doin’ pal? I’m betting you’re near that ship, am I right? The Drakester I knew never strayed far from a battle.”
“Not by choice, Wellsy old chap,” Drake laid on the jabber. “What do you have for me?”
“Ed Boudreau is a mercenary, plain and simple. The gentleman has all the usual accolades. Even more so now, since he just rammed it up the Yanks’ arses. I have a full dossier on the man, but squat-a-doodle-do on the person he works for.”
“Nothing?” Drake could hardly believe it. “MI5. SAS. Her Majesty’s Secret Service. A dozen secret agencies and you have zilch?”
The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake 2) Page 6
