The Swords of Babylon (Matt Drake 6)

by Leadbeater, David

  Drake wheezed in an ounce of breath, stomach convulsing, then hit the ground hard as Zanko threw him across the yard. Still conscious enough to tuck and roll, Drake lay still for a few precious seconds as Zanko stalked up to him. He thought about using the shank in his sock, but decided that might put the fight on a whole new level. Zanko moved in closer.

  “Time to—”

  Drake came up groggy, but with an aim born of experience. His left fist swung hard into Zanko’s groin.

  “Dahhhhhhh!”

  Zanko doubled over, hands clasping, eyes bulging. “Not . . . fair,” he managed to gasp.

  “And you think this is?” Drake indicated the yard, the inmates, the lack of guards. He stood with his hands on his knees as Zanko moaned, recovering slowly from the immense stomach blow.

  “You pack a punch like a fuckin’ jackhammer on acid, Zanko.”

  The Russian’s face twisted into a feral grin. “I know, little man. You should meet my grandmother, Zoya.”

  “Maybe next time.” Drake launched a knee-strike, slamming into his opponent’s forehead. Zanko tumbled back, losing balance, and crashed to the ground. The inmates, raucous until now, went quiet, some of them staring at Drake with sudden awe.

  Drake spied Yorgi still attached to the side fence. The thief was watching carefully, chin resting in his hands.

  Zanko struggled to one knee. Drake decided against the top of the skull attack this time, not wanting to break an elbow, but moved to the Russian’s back. The thick neck looked like a corded tree trunk. He moved in to deliver a swift punch, but at that moment Zanko swiveled and caught the blow in a huge fist. With a burst of strength, he yanked Drake off his feet and brought him sprawling into a face-plant. Drake’s head exploded for the second time in five minutes.

  But this time Zanko didn’t give Drake any respite. A double blow to the stomach sent the Yorkshireman to his knees, head hanging; a punch to the side of the skull sent him toppling on to his side. Drake’s head grew fuzzy as the concrete came up to meet him.

  Then Zanko’s mouth was at his ear, even as the Russian delivered more blows to his body. “Every day, Drake. You get this every single day.”

  Pain seared from Drake’s abdomen to his brain, more pain than he could stand.

  “Until you die.”

  The last thing Drake saw was the much promised armpit, dripping with sweat, a tangled mess of matted black hair, and then the putrid stink as the foul mass closed over his face.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Several hours later, Drake came to. A heavy stench hung in the air and it took him a moment to realize it was Zanko’s stink, plastered across his own face. With that knowledge, Drake gagged, jumped down from his bunk and ran over to the sink. SAS training had never included being smothered into unconsciousness beneath a crazy Russian’s armpit. Though it had included similar, he mused, splashing his face and scrubbing it with a bar of old soap. Luckily, his breakfast stayed down. He began to wonder what time it was. The bastards had taken his watch when they first threw him in here. That was twenty quid’s worth of Casio he’d probably never see again.

  He walked to the front of the cell, grabbing the bars. If he leaned far enough to the left he could see the door that led to the yard. It was closed. He glanced up then, toward one of the guard perches. Above that was a grimy window. Drake saw daylight, but of the waning variety. It was near sundown.

  Good. Wouldn’t be long now.

  He needed another chat with Yorgi. There were still unasked questions and, since he couldn’t absolutely guarantee taking the inmate with him if he managed to escape, he wanted every ounce of information he could glean. Drake stepped back and stretched warily. His stomach felt like it had been hit by a pile driver, his limbs throbbed in time to the flow of his blood. He had been taught to compartmentalize pain, but this was a whole new level.

  Nevertheless, he stepped out of his open cell door and moved to the railing, peering down at the level below. He was wondering how he might find Yorgi, when the man drifted into view, catching his eye. All the other prisoners were occupied, playing cards, or wrestling, pumping iron or maybe discussing who might be worth shanking that day. The gangs all had their heads together. Drake tried to peer into every corner, but saw no sign of Razin or Zanko.

  Ignoring the pain, he darted for the steps and walked fast across the dining hall, entering the meeting room and the corridor beyond a few seconds after Yorgi. Even though there were no sounds of pursuit, the two didn’t slow down or talk until they were hidden again inside the roof space.

  “A good fight,” Yorgi said first. “Earlier. You put up a good fight against Zanko. I’ve never seen him even bleed before, let alone be knocked down.”

  “Fat lot of good that did me.”

  “Eh?” Yorgi didn’t understand the saying.

  Drake rubbed his ribs. “I still lost.”

  “Ah, but now the gangs respect you. They won’t harm you again, not unless Razin orders them to.”

  “Small mercy.”

  “The American professor,” Yorgi said. “I have not yet found him. But I know another way.”

  Drake half smiled. “Let me guess. It involves you being on the outside?”

  Yorgi shifted. “You see how the world works quite well, my new friend.”

  Drake said nothing. Chances were, Yorgi already knew where this professor was being kept, or at least the street name. Razin’s men weren’t being exactly secretive with their information.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said at last. “But come tomorrow – any time – keep a very close watch on me.”

  Yorgi nodded in the dark and offered a bottle of water. Drake drank thirstily. “Damn, that’s good. Have you heard anything new about Razin’s project?”

  “The Babylon thing? The swords? No. But if he hasn’t found them yet, he will soon. The man is obsessed and he can throw all his resources at this.”

  “That’s what I feared.”

  Yorgi went quiet. Drake sipped half the bottle and handed it back. The two of them sat there for a while in silence. With time on his hands, Drake found his thoughts wandering. A question popped into his head – one that burned away at his heart and mind like the searing face of an iron, one that he wished he had the time to fully address.

  “Yorgi,” he said, hesitant. “In your travels, during your life, have you ever heard of an agent . . . or an assassin . . . called Coyote?”

  The Russian thief almost choked on his water, spitting some of it on to the Styrofoam roof tiles. Then he went very still.

  Drake waited.

  Yorgi cleared his throat. “What kind of name is that?” He laughed nervously.

  Drake shrugged. “A memorable one.”

  “Well, I don’t know that person. No.”

  “Are you sure, Yorgi?”

  “Why should I?”

  “People in your line of work. They . . . know many things. They hear everything. It’s part of your job.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Drake sighed. “I knew a very good thief once. He . . . died recently.”

  “And did he not know this Coyote?”

  “I never got the chance to ask him.”

  “I am sorry. The name means nothing to me.” Yorgi’s voice was firm now, resolute. Drake let it drop.

  “Fair enough.”

  Yorgi held out a bar of chocolate. “Let us hope for a good tomorrow, my friend.”

  Drake unwrapped the thick block. “I’m counting on it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It took all day Thursday for the team to prepare. Dahl constantly chomped at the bit. Hayden worked wonders through Jonathan Gates with the Russian government. Having already acquired a chopper and weapons, she further smoothed the path by getting the Russians to admit they would rather see the jail obliterated off the map than not – it would rid them of part of the blight that was Nikolai Razin.

  But the chopper had to be American made. The arms had to be American. It
was all to guard the Minister of Defense’s back, and it wasted valuable time, but was extremely necessary. Karin kept in touch and watched several areas via satellite feed, all the time fine-tuning her tech from Washington, preparing to be their ‘all-seeing-eyes’ when they assaulted the jail.

  Alicia was ready within minutes of their arrival, and spent the next several hours texting Lomas and keeping herself upbeat by insulting almost everyone who came within three feet of her. The only person she gave a pass to was Mai – the Japanese woman seemed uncharacteristically anxious not only about Drake, but about something from her past too. She mentioned it briefly to Alicia – the Clan is looking for me – but Alicia didn’t know enough about Mai’s life to heed the first signs of onrushing calamity.

  Kinimaka watched it all from the back of the room, offering advice where he could. When Hayden started to look overburdened, her jaw clenched and shoulders tense, he eased over to her and took her outside for a break. When Torsten Dahl appeared a few feet away, phone to his ear, saying what sounded like a ‘hope to speak soon but can’t be too sure’ speech to his wife and kids, Kinimaka moved away. When Alicia beckoned him over he listened to her talk about the biker gang as if they were her newfound family – and he smiled. It was good that she had found a semblance of home; at least until she decided it was time to move on.

  And when the phones were dumped into their cradles and all calls ended; when the quiet of anticipation fell like a soft, frayed blanket; when the team – the family – looked to each other and prepared for one of the biggest assaults of their lives, Mano Kinimaka took a second to send his mother a last simple text.

  Love you.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Drake heard the sound of approaching helicopters as he lay waiting atop the concrete block that was his bed. It was early morning. His eyes were closed, but sleep had never been so far away. He was waiting for this moment; that sound.

  The whump, whump of the approaching choppers took him back a few months to the start of all the current madness where, in York, he had simply been photographing models at a catwalk show. Those were the days, he mused.

  But now Mai was back in his life, the beat of his heart restored, and even now she was on her way to pull his arse out of the mire. He jumped up, checked that the shiv was still down his sock, and moved next to the bars. Somehow, he didn’t think this was one of those prisons that would stay locked down during a raid. The inmates would be called upon to help defend it.

  Razin’s rules.

  The noise increased. Prisoners across the aisle from Drake leaned out of their cell doors, arms waving, faces pressed between the bars. The choppers drew closer. The men began to shout. Drake thought the team might breach through the exercise yard wall or the kitchen area. They wouldn’t risk blowing out any wall that ran anywhere near a cell. They wouldn’t go through the front door. This was strictly smash and grab.

  Which brought him to his first problem. Yorgi. He hoped the waif-like thief had heard the tumult by now and was standing ready, maybe even using the roof space to creep nearer to Drake’s cell, but he couldn’t be sure of it. So when the cell doors opened with the sound of a large bolt shooting back, he waited a moment for the aisle to clear, then slipped quickly away from his room. Following silently in the wake of the last man, he descended the stairs and circumvented the gym area whilst trying to ignore the shrill complaints of his bruised body. Rotor blades thudded just beyond the walls, the sound unmistakable now to even the oldest and most inexperienced ears. The team was landing.

  Drake ran. Gunfire sounded from outside the walls. Inmates ran to the exercise yard door, but it was locked. Someone shouted for one of the guards to open it. A man recognized Drake and stepped in front, but ended up on his back, nose askew, to sleep out the rest of the day. Drake’s eyes unceasingly sought his target, but Yorgi made no appearance. He raced into the meeting room and beyond into the bright corridor. Two men stood up ahead, blocking his way, a guard and a prisoner quietly conversing.

  “Here he is,” the guard said in English. “His friend. Get him.”

  Drake never slowed. He used his momentum to drop and slide across the polished floor, swinging his legs as he got close to the prisoner, sending him crumpling to the floor. When he landed, Drake had already relieved the guard of his baton. He spun once, taking the guard out with a blow across the forehead and the prisoner out with a strike to the back of the neck.

  Then he was speeding off again, approaching the end of the corridor. He ran down to Yorgi’s room and saw the destroyed roof tiles, pipes and aluminum framing scattered across the floor.

  Someone had found Yorgi and pulled him out of his secret home.

  Drake swore. Where would they take him? Was he, Drake, to blame? He searched the floor for any sign of blood or something he could use as a weapon. He picked up one of the steel pipes – a prison weapon if ever he saw one. Footsteps thundered by outside the door, guards rushing so fast that they didn’t see him. Drake walked to the frame and listened.

  Muffled shouts reached his ears, the sound of a man begging for mercy behind a closed door. The standard prison echo, he thought, but this voice sounded a lot like Yorgi’s.

  Drake rushed out, listening hard, pinpointing the noise as coming from behind the fifth door down. A rushing sound accompanied the screams, a sound Drake had heard before.

  Oh shit.

  He barged into the room, letting the door smash back against the wall. Three men whirled at the sound, one of them holding a wide, industrial hose. Yorgi sat against the rear wall, drenched, whimpering, gasping for breath. They had been trying to drown him standing up.

  Drake ran hard. The hose whipped and exploded with a thick stream aimed at his legs. Drake jumped through the torrent, bringing the pipe down on a man’s nose before lashing it left across a second man’s mouth. Both screamed and bent double, holding their heads in their hands. Drake dropped the pipe and grabbed the hands of the man holding the hose, forcing the brass handle down between his legs. He let go and immediately the hose, unconstrained, began to skip and jerk like a ferocious snake. Drake jabbed the man in the solar plexus before finishing him with a rigid windpipe strike. He ran across to Yorgi.

  “Hey, hey, you alright?”

  The saturated man looked up. “I have had worse beatings.”

  “Bloody great.” Drake extended a hand. “Trust me. I do keep my word.”

  ****

  They sprinted back up the glaring corridor, Yorgi squelching and shivering with every step. Drake slowed as they reached the far door and put an arm out to stop Yorgi.

  “Wait.”

  He peered into the room. It was empty, but through the open door at the far end he could see right into the mess hall. Pandemonium reigned. Prisoners scurried haphazardly past the opening; shouting, gesticulating and fighting each other. A great huddle of them suddenly fell backwards, tripping over feet and twisting to crawl away. Drake heard a loud explosion before brick dust and shrapnel flew in a razor-edged cloud across the mess room.

  “Now!”

  Drake pulled Yorgi along. The sound of gunfire exploded from ahead. Prisoners twisted, spurting blood, as they charged forward. Drake paused for a second at the entrance to the mess hall, then walked out into full view, hands in the air.

  Don’t shoot me, he silently intoned. Please . . .

  “Matt!”

  Mai’s shout came on the heels of Dahl’s cheer and just before Alicia’s expletive. The three soldiers knelt among a pile of rubble, rifles tucked firmly into their shoulders, a ragged, crumbling hole at their backs where the door to the yard used to be. Some of the prisoners recognized Drake and charged at him. The guns bucked and men skidded to his feet, already dead.

  Drake ran hard, pulling Yorgi along. Mai and Alicia covered his sprint as Dahl turned to check their own retreat. A shout sounded from somewhere behind Drake. He whipped his head around and saw a spectacular sight. The whole crowd of prisoners – mostly Razin’s men – hurtling tow
ard him in a rag-tag wedge. Not a man amongst them wanted to have to explain to Zanko why they hadn’t tried to prevent Matt Drake’s escape.

  Drake reached his friends. Mai and Alicia, and now Dahl, fired around him, felling prisoners with leg and body shots so that they tripped up the men following behind. Some hurdled their fallen comrades, brandishing an assortment of weapons from plastic trays to improvised shanks; others swung knotted bed sheets full of rocks.

  “Go!” Drake shouted.

  “Nice to see you too!” Alicia shouted back, carefully squeezing shots off as the mob closed in. Drake ran through them, letting them cover his back, out into the exercise yard. A crazy scene met his eyes.

  A military chopper had landed in the yard, amidst prison vehicles and storage sheds. The rotors were still spinning, as was the barrel of the nose cannon, having fired a burst at the prison’s main entrance where most of the guards were situated. The fence was down, a clear escape route showed right to the helicopters door. But the guards in their towers and their wired-off perches still took pot shots.

  Drake whirled. “You guys bring me a gun?”

  Dahl skidded to a halt beside him. “This is a quick extraction. We have no intentions of inducing a shoot out!”

  “You’re taking the piss.” Drake pointed at the guard towers. “They’re all yours, Dahl.”

  He ran hard, staying low, heaving Yorgi firmly behind him. At first, bullets peppered the dirt around his feet, but, after a few well-placed shots from Dahl, the volleys soon stopped. Drake exited the fenced area. Both Mai and Alicia backed out of the ragged hole. Alicia threw a small device back into the prison and shouted, “Run!”

  Drake put his head down. An explosion sounded behind him, and, when he slipped a glance that way, he saw a cloud of fire stretching up and billowing out, Mai, Dahl and Alicia framed by the flames, sprinting hard, guns still firmly at their shoulders and searching for targets, faces set as grim and hard as he’d ever seen.