“Oh, we’re going back to the camp,” Dahl said. “We’re gonna sort this shit out once and for bloody all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Drake listened as Hayden described how Marko Lupei walked free of the police station within two hours. Hayden had received the information via her contacts in the CIA and Interpol. Lupei’s high-flying lawyer, paid for by Dumitrescu, had interrupted all proceedings and demanded that his client did not talk. Lupei was due to attend a court hearing in a couple of days after quickly being granted bail but even that was a dubious date. Nobody wanted to stand up to Lupei and, despite what the Roma were trying to do to transform how they were seen in the public eye, the old reputation still held a lot of sway.
The team were packed into another hotel room, this one Hayden’s, and they were tucking into a room service breakfast the morning after they’d rescued the captives from Lupei’s trucks. Drake’s body ached, his cuts stung, and his bruises throbbed. For once he was happy that Alicia wasn’t here to “give him something else to think about.”
Drake tucked into a heavily buttered croissant, listening as Hayden finished reading an email out loud.
“Lupei’s entire crew was released. The carnival folk. Apparently, they’re essential to his livelihood, an integral part of the show. And, the lawyer argued, it’s not like you don’t know where a carnival is.” She shrugged. “So Lupei’s free to do whatever he wants.”
“One thing.” Mai brandished a bagel as she spoke. “None of them are flight risks. That’s pretty obvious. They’re Roma and carnival workers through and through, for life. They aren’t going anywhere.”
“Which leads us to what happens next,” Cam said. “We’ve kinda failed by not defusing the Roma war that’s coming. We saved the few but put the many at risk.”
Shaw placed a hand on his shoulder. “We did the right thing. You’re not responsible for saving your entire people, Cam.” The Native American was busy cleaning her knives and drinking a gallon of coffee.
Drake waved what was left of his croissant at Hayden. “Kid’s got a point though. By now, Hagi must be pretty much mobilized. And Lupei has troops coming. We gotta use Karin.” He fished his phone out of his pocket.
“Karin?” Cam looked confused. “How?”
“I meant that she can get a look at Hagi’s compound. Take a look at what’s going on there.” Drake made the call.
“And whilst she’s doing that,” Kinimaka said, “ask her to survey Lupei’s next stop. If Dumitrescu is sending troops to reinforce him, they’ll head straight there.”
“The Carnival is moving?” Drake asked, listening to the ring tone.
“The Carnival is ending,” Kinimaka said. “Today they travel, and tomorrow is the last stop. It says here online—on their website—it will be the biggest, loudest, most stunning carnival Romania has ever seen.”
Drake ground his teeth together. Lupei was trying to draw bigger crowds either to ward Hagi off, or paint Hagi as the terrible aggressor when he attacked. “How many days is it over?”
Kinimaka blinked at the screen. “Crap,” he said. “Just one.”
“Bollocks,” Drake cursed and passed the information along to Karin. “Anyone heard from Alicia or Dahl?”
Hayden shook her head. “They’re still tracking the Brigazi.”
Drake jabbed a button to turn Karin on to loudspeaker. “Just getting an overview of the Hagi camp now,” she said. “Expanding the view. Overlaying the data we had a few days ago.”
The young woman went quiet for a while before continuing. “Right, well, there’s a huge increase in activity. Hagi resides amid a forest with fields to all sides. Those fields are now full. Jesus, it’s like he’s massing an army. How far does he have to travel to get to the final carnival site?”
Hayden did a quick calculation. “Less than an hour.”
Drake made an agitated sound. “This is gonna be a brutal gypsy war,” he said. “Sorry, Roma war. This is not gonna be a fight, it’ll be no holds barred, full-on combat. Hagi wants revenge and Lupei wants to be king. The carnival is just the battleground for the culmination of generations of conflict.”
“And guess what?” Kinimaka said.
All eyes turned to him. “What?” Mai asked.
“We’re gonna be smack bang in the middle of it,” Kenzie said for him.
“As usual,” Mai said with half a smile.
“There’s a lot at stake,” Drake said. “Normal, innocent Roma people. Civilians visiting the carnival. Links to Dumitrescu and whoever is pulling his strings. The local cops and security that will get caught up in this thing. If we can defuse it, or end it quickly, the risk will be worth it.”
Hayden nodded. “Which brings me to another matter—”
“Listen,” Karin interrupted. “I have to go. Boring NSA stuff, you know. I’ll ping these photos across in case you can use them.”
Drake thanked and her and turned to Hayden. “Aye, love, you were saying?”
“Weaponry,” she said simply. “We’re gonna need some.”
“A shit-ton,” Drake agreed. “Maybe we could steal it from Lupei.”
Kinimaka laughed. “I like the poetic justice in that.”
“There’s a far easier way,” Hayden said. “We can use some of the CIA stations in Bucharest.”
“We don’t have a lot of luck with safehouses,” Mai intoned, only partly joking.
“I don’t mean houses. I mean stations. You’ve all heard of the waystations, right? You know they’re not a myth.”
Shaw sat up. “Being comparatively new here, I’d say no.”
Hayden looked apologetic. “Of course. The CIA and many other agencies have for many years placed weapons, cash and other crucial survival items in so-called waystations across many of the major cities and towns in the world. These waystations can take the form of anything from houses and apartments to containers designed to look like power boxes or circuit breakers on busy streets. To everyone but those that know, they’re invisible. Now, as Team SPEAR and later Strike Force, we had access to the boxes and their locations. We just have to hope we can still use them.”
“Won’t the overseers know we were ghosted and refuse access?” Kenzie asked.
“There are no overseers,” Hayden said. “Ninety percent of the waystations are unmanned. Used for dire emergencies only.”
Drake finished off his coffee and tried to remember where he’d left his jacket. “You’re right,” he said. “And we should take care of that right away. I’ll feel better hitting Lupei’s carnival with guns and ammo rather than a hope and a prayer.”
“One last thing,” Cam said. “This is my family. I—”
“We’ll do all we can to keep them safe and alive,” Hayden promised him.
“No, you don’t understand. My immediate family are lost to me. Murderers and human traffickers. I mean lifelong friends... Elena who serves cotton candy and donuts. Anatolie who breathes the fire. I mean Cici and Corneliu who work the Ferris wheel. There’s Virgil and Nicoleta and—”
Shaw sat down next to him. “Hey,” she said. “We’re the deterrent not the aggressor. We’re going primarily to save innocents like Elena and Virgil. If it wasn’t for them, we would happily let warhounds like Hagi and Lupei exterminate each other.”
Drake nodded, liking Shaw’s style. “Well said, love. Well said.”
“And not just people in my carnival,” Cam said, nodding. “I have friends in the Hagi clan. The Grotsus, the—”
“Those too,” Shaw said quietly. “We don’t take sides unless one of them is trying to kill us.”
Drake liked that too and said so. Several minutes later, the team was climbing into two vehicles and going in search of the largest waystations that Hayden could find on her confidential-access map. Drake dwelled on the problems looming on the horizon, wondering how the hell they were going to intervene in a Roma battle. Especially when at least one hugely influential government figure was in favor of it.
&n
bsp; Either way, Dumitrescu won.
Maybe it was time to start looking into the politician. And equally as important, find out who the hell was pulling his strings. Clearly, that entity held a lot of power, far more than a government minister.
Hayden pulled up at the first waystation. “Right guys,” she said. “Let’s go get us some guns.”
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
As a deep, forbidding darkness fell, laced with freezing gusts of wind and lashed by an endless torrent of rain, Drake and the rest of the SPEAR team settled in Hayden’s hotel room, with every light blazing against the onset of night, the heating turned up to full and the curtains closed to keep out the dark. A spectacular collection of weapons occupied the wide couch with a seemingly endless array of ammo and grenades lined up along the floor. The team were clad in T-shirts and jeans, their standard uniform these days, and arguing over the seven Kevlar vests they’d obtained.
“Dahl won’t need one,” Drake was saying. “The idiot wouldn’t know he’d been shot for at least an hour and would keep going.”
“Assuming he returns in time,” Kenzie said, with a glance toward the curtained window.
“He’ll be back,” Drake said. “The Mad Swede would never miss out on the battle of a lifetime.”
Kinimaka opened his mouth to argue his own case but then there came a knock at the floor. Drake blinked and frowned, looking at everyone gathered in the room and then at the piles of weapons and ammo.
“Bollocks, we’re all here aren’t we? Who the hell is that?”
Kenzie had leapt across the back of the sofa to the door and its peephole. “Not all,” she said grinning and then unlocked the door before throwing it wide open.
“Kenzie!” Alicia cried. “Of all the people I’d like to greet me at the door you rank down there with Hannibal Lecter.”
Kenzie ignored her, grabbed Dahl and pulled him into the room. “The nasty bitch didn’t take advantage of you, did she?”
Alicia walked through the door, followed by Oana and Alba. Cam was over the sofa and hugging his sisters before Drake could blink. Shaw followed him closely.
Drake eyed Dahl. “Dare I ask what happened?”
“Pretty standard rescue op,” the Swede returned. “What’s all this then?” He indicated the assorted weapons.
Drake filled both him and Alicia in on what they were up against. “It’s good to have you two back.”
“Good to be here.” Dahl clapped him on the back, heading directly for the food. Alicia moved in close.
“Miss me?”
“Only in bed when my feet got cold. You?”
“Nah. Torsty kept me entertained. How do you feel about male-male-female relationships?”
Drake choked and coughed. Hayden locked and bolted the door and let everyone enjoy their reunions for a while. It was good to have the whole team back together, at least those who’d come to Romania. Kinimaka opened wine and handed out glasses. The big Hawaiian was the first to propose a toast.
“To family,” he said. “Always first.”
Drake sat among his friends, listening to them speak, even suffering Dahl’s heroic descriptions of the gym battle without interruption, and finally hearing how Alicia had saved the life of a movie star and later been invited to her Hollywood mansion.
“Can’t pass that up,” the blond was saying. “Who knows—I might meet Boreanaz. Johnson. Even hook up with Carrera again...”
Drake had heard enough. “How about we focus on Lupei and Hagi and all the other shit about to go down?” he said.
Hayden stepped in as if she’d been waiting for the right moment. “Yeah, sure. Lupei’s planning an elaborate carnival for tomorrow night. We think that’s when Hagi will hit him, and Lupei knows it. Hagi has his army. Today, we saw troops arriving near the carnival to support Lupei. Nobody wants to stop this thing from happening. Rather, they want to play it out to further their own agendas and careers.”
“And it’s not like we can call anyone,” Mai said. “We’re disavowed, along with all the other teams. President Lacey did a real number on us.”
“We’ll deal with him next,” Hayden promised. “Even if it kills us.”
There was a moment’s profound silence, as if her words rang all too true. Drake knew that taking down the US President—if indeed that was what they had to do—would be the hardest mission they’d ever been tasked with. Nothing else came close. Losing some or all of their number was a real possibility.
“Let’s get the Carnival of Curiosities out of the way first,” Cam said. “Do you guys have a plan?”
“What do you know of Lupei and how he organizes his battles?” Mai asked intelligently.
“Lupei? Well, my father fights like the carnival master he is. With misdirection, with imagined magic and elaborate traps. He likes a vast stage and plenty of people watching. He shows off. Makes a spectacle of the doubters—the Hagis in this case. The battle—the carnival—it is all a great show.”
“Fucker thinks he’s Hugh Jackman,” Alicia grumbled. “When he’s little more than a huge clown.”
Oana now rose to her feet. “We can give you a list of our good people, and their roles in the carnival, who could be extracted before Hagi arrives?” she offered. “I mean, Alba and I. Cam knows them, but we have lived with them all our lives. You can’t let this bloodshed overtake them.”
Drake nodded as Hayden agreed and asked them to compile a list. It seemed quite obvious by now that they would be heading out early in the morning, planning to arrive at the Carnival’s final location before most of the cavalcade itself. The howling wind and lashing rain attacking their window was a poignant reminder of what tomorrow would bring.
“Pass me that bourbon,” he said. “I think a drink with friends is just what we all need.”
Their time passed quickly, every second a countdown that they chose to ignore in favor of camaraderie, of companionship and good times. Tomorrow did not exist until they were ready to let it exist. There was only now—the company of soldiers, good men and women, and their friends laughing and warding off the dark watches of the night.
The long day would be here soon enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
In hell, there are no soft options. No mercies awarded or expected. Drake had been in hell many times before. Today, he expected to return.
When they arrived a few miles south of the patch of ground where the Carnival was already setting up, they settled in and tried to formulate a plan. Even as they approached the fairground by road it became obvious why Lupei had chosen this place to fight.
All roads led past Purgatoriu. This small area of land, a large rectangle between major road arteries, was called Purgatory. Once the site of a World War 2 ammunitions factory, it had earned the name through the torments visited upon them by the Nazis, despite Romania siding with Germany. Every road accessed the site, which made it the perfect place to stage events. The road network also served as a natural border, making it hard to get close without attracting attention.
“Hagi is gonna come from all sides,” Drake muttered. “Using the roads. It really is gonna be hell in there. No way out. Enemies from all directions. They’ll block the roads maybe, stop any cops that may want to get near. If there were no civilians and decent carnival folk present, I’d say leave ’em to it.”
They were sitting in their vehicles, in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, half a mile south of Purgatory, able to view snippets of activity because the land was so utterly flat. Hayden and Drake both had field glasses to their eyes. The fast-food restaurant at their backs was lunchtime busy.
“What time does the Carnival open?” Shaw asked.
“Five o’clock,” Cam answered. “Gives us five hours.”
“In which we can’t get close,” Drake said. “The whole place is cordoned off and the motorways form a natural boundary. Every man, woman and child working in there will have been told to look out for strangers. This means—”
“That w
e’re gonna have to wait for opening time,” Alicia said. “Yeah, we got it. Who wants a cheeseburger?”
The trunk was loaded with weapons, ammo and all manner of combat paraphernalia. All nine of them had a copy of Cam’s sisters’ list, the men and women they knew would need protection. Oana and Alba were sitting in a hotel room two miles away with strict orders to stay put.
Not that Drake expected them to do so.
But they could only deal with what was before them. And that was the Carnival of Curiosities, and its last stand.
Alicia brought food back to the car in four large brown bags. Fueling up on fast food before a fight wasn’t exactly advised, but Drake thought it did put a label on the SPEAR team. Words like appropriate and correct weren’t ever likely to be part of their arsenal.
“So, we gonna sit here for the best part of five hours?” Kinimaka wondered, mouth around a burger.
“What you wanna do, Mano?” Alicia asked. “Warm up? Go jog around the parking lot before slipping your Kevlar on?”
“I’ve heard worse ideas.”
Drake turned to Hayden. “What time is sundown?”
“Five o’clock, but looking at the weather it’s gonna start to get dark earlier.”
It would work in their favor. Drake eyed the sky through the windshield. It was leaden, like dark sheet steel.
“A good sky for a bloody battle,” he said. “A good day to restore a bit of balance to the world.”
“Whoa,” Alicia said, wiping ketchup from her shirt. “You got me all goosepimply there.”
“Think for a minute, Alicia,” Drake said. “This is for all the people that Lupei has enslaved, sold, and bartered before. We’re powerless to help them, but we can help those in limbo, those in captivity, and those that might have come down this road in the future.”
As if in response, it started to rain.
*
Drake led the way, darting between trees as darkness stole fully across the land. They’d found a way to get close to the fairground first across a couple of minor roads, then a flat, rutted field and finally through a thick stand of trees. It wasn’t easy but it was preferable to driving to the Carnival, parking up and walking through the front gate fully armed and wearing bulletproof jackets.
The Carnival of Curiosities (Matt Drake Book 27) Page 19
