Matt Drake 07 - Blood Vengeance

by David Leadbeater

  Hayden took in the light-green shuttered shop fronts, the dimmed lighting, the higher floor windows staring down on this modern crypt as if in judgment, the polished tiled floors and highly reflective surfaces.

  “It’s in the middle of Washington,” she said, as if that statement might help switch the lights of commerce back on.

  “Ain’t nowhere safe from the bullshit bean counters,” Smyth said, looking at Karin. “Where’s the exit?”

  Karin pointed to the right. The team set off at pace, Hayden surrounded by a sense of the surreal as the empty mall echoed to their hollow footsteps. From somewhere above them the sound of cash machines opening and kids’ conversation and laughter drifted like the sounds of old, distressed ghosts. She felt a huge relief knowing the food court was on the next level.

  A muted explosion chased the space behind their fleeing heels. Smyth turned in place, still running, and loosed several bullets in the direction they had come. Kinimaka ducked as return fire whickered overhead.

  The leader barked a resonating order, signaling the start of a prolonged bombardment. Bullets flashed through the air and impacted against the shiny walls, cracking the hard surfaces. Hayden and her entire team dived headlong, hitting the floor and sliding with solid momentum. Komodo and Smyth rolled as they slid, coming around with guns already blazing.

  The battle raged as Karin, Hayden and Kinimaka scrambled behind a round maroon-colored pillar. Chips of plastic showered through the air around them as their enemies concentrated their fire power. Smyth and Komodo rolled the other way, having to lie lengthways behind the short wall of a semi-circular water fountain. Komodo slithered until he could poke his head around the edge, and fired a few rounds.

  Then he turned to Hayden. His eyes said it all. They were dangerously low on ammo.

  Keep moving, Smyth was mouthing at her. She knew the military man’s mantra by heart. To stop was to die. She sat with her back to the pillar and surveyed the area. Karin pointed out the exit, dangerously exposed at the end of a long, wide corridor.

  “How many of those assholes are left?” she asked Kinimaka.

  “Best guess? Eight, maybe a few more or less.”

  Karin grasped Hayden’s hand. “What is this? What’s going on?”

  Hayden weighed the impact of revealing her fears and decided against it. “Not sure. Yet.” Both Karin and Kinimaka had loved ones out there and to start worrying about them now wouldn’t help anyone.

  “We need to break for that exit,” she said. “Before we run out of ammo. What we need is a diversion.”

  “What about that?” Kinimaka pointed overhead. Hayden took it in and looked speculatively at him. “Can you take ‘em all down?”

  The Hawaiian raised an eyebrow. “How long have you known me?”

  “Alright.” Hayden signaled Smyth and Komodo. As she peered out she saw the attacking unit creeping forward in perfect formation whilst still firing. It was going to take a miracle to get all of them out of this one alive.

  She prayed. “Go.”

  Kinimaka rolled onto his back and fired toward the ceiling. All his remaining shots went into breaking the supporting cables that tethered half a dozen swirling plastic displays to the roof. As the displays plummeted down, the SPEAR team rose and ran.

  Hayden saw the albino dive sideways as the enormous hard plastic casings shattered against the mall floor, crushing several of his men and making a noise like several RPGs exploding. Three men made it straight through by sliding, but lost their weapons and came up holding knives.

  Smyth and Kinimaka were in their faces. Smyth shot the first point-blank, then upended his empty rifle to club the next across the bridge of the nose. Despite the audible crack, the merc didn’t even flinch, just snorted and lashed back at Smyth. The ex-Delta soldier took a swipe across the cheek; blood flew and he hammered the butt of his rifle into the guy’s teeth. The merc lunged a second time. Smyth let the knife pass less than an inch from his body, trapped the arm and broke it. At the same time, he disabled the man with a heavy blow to the temple.

  Komodo dispatched his own adversary just as the albino hit them. This man didn’t fight conventionally. He slid in, taking Komodo’s legs, but not just tripping him—the blow almost broke Komodo’s shins. He yelped in agony. Smyth covered for him, stomping toward the albino’s head. When his foot landed it crushed nothing but empty space; the albino was already up, lithely twisting around behind him and encircling his neck with a thick arm.

  Hayden saw the albino’s power and the sudden panic in Smyth’s normally sardonic face as he felt his adversary’s strength. She couldn’t fire for fear of hitting her team mate so she bounded over the gap between them. The roof displays had devastated the ranks of their attackers, but several were groaning and already rising to their knees.

  Hayden punched the albino in the soft place behind the ear, then put a choke hold around his own neck. She expected him to fall back, but was amazed when he bunched the muscles in his neck and fought her grip. She had never known anything like it. Even as she applied all her strength she couldn’t actually tell if she was making any impression.

  Smyth twisted hard. The albino didn’t shift an inch. His lips moved as he whispered something into Smyth’s ear.

  “If this were prison, soldier, you would be my boy.”

  The three fighters struggled hard, locked into position, as precious seconds flew by. When Komodo approached the tableau, the albino only grinned. “C’mon, boy, I’ll take you too.”

  But then Kinimaka broke it all apart by hitting the albino with a waist-high tackle. Hayden was flung aside. Smyth hit the floor hard. The albino cracked his head against a pillar and looked stunned. Kinimaka pushed away.

  “We gotta go!”

  In an instant they had turned and were sprinting for the exit. The albino shook his head to clear his daze. His men picked their way through the display wreckage, bruised and bleeding, and searching for lost weapons. Hayden pushed the rest before her. She was now the only one with any ammo, and needed to cover the escape. For precious seconds they ran unhindered, seeing the double exit doors loom closer with every step. Blackness pressed hard against the glass and people strolled along the broad expanse of Pennsylvania Avenue outside. More than escape, it offered divine freedom. She couldn’t believe they had all escaped this latest skirmish intact.

  Hayden risked a glance back. The albino was drawing a bead on her, one eye closed. She saw his wrist flex, then felt the punch of the bullet as it struck.

  She staggered, gasping. Ahead, Kinimaka turned, eyes suddenly wider than she had ever seen and burning with fear. Hayden put a hand to her waist, but felt nothing. Her legs were still working.

  “Jesus,” she breathed at him. “Must have ripped right through my jacket.”

  Kinimaka breathed deep and reached for the swinging exit doors. Cold air flowed into the mall.

  Hayden slowed. The gun cracked again and this time she felt the bullet as it punched through her abdomen, felt the gout of blood explode from her body, felt her nails rip as she grasped desperately for Kinimaka and missed, falling hard to the cold mall floor.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Kinimaka ducked as another bullet passed close to his head. With one heave he managed to lift Hayden’s inert body and drape it over one of his massive shoulders. He knew full well what was happening here. He had heard the albino’s comment ‘The Blood King sends his regards’, and knew time was of the essence. He should get word to his family right away, but Hayden was his closest family now and she needed him.

  They rushed out of the mall into the cool night. The bright lights of Pennsylvania Avenue bathed them in stark unreality. Life wasn’t about eye-catching colors, provocative billboards and gleaming cars. It was struggle and desperation and momentary bursts of pure pleasure. It was dirty, unforgiving and ever-changing.

  Komodo dashed out into the middle of the road, stopped a car and hauled out the driver. Without ceremony, the rest of the team piled in, Kini
maka holding Hayden across his lap. She was still breathing, and he kept every emotion reined in as the world passed him by.

  “Nearest hospital?” Komodo cried.

  “Needs to be secure,” Smyth rasped, unaccountably calm.

  “There’s a military hospital on Georgia,” Karin said, her eidetic memory useful as ever. “Should be well guarded.”

  Kinimaka passed his cell over to her. “Call them, and call Langley too. If they have any men to spare, we’re gonna need them.”

  Smyth turned to him. “You think this thing ain’t over?”

  Kinimaka cradled the unmoving head of his girlfriend. “I think it’s far from over.” He was about to continue when Karin cursed out loud.

  “What is it?”

  Instead of answering, shocked into silence and with tears suddenly bright in her eyes, Karin turned up the radio. The broadcast filled the car.

  “. . . and to recap, reports suggest that the Secretary of Defense, Jonathan Gates, has been killed in Washington DC tonight. Though the authorities remain quiet, eye witness accounts speak of a professional gunman. It’s still too early to speculate on—”

  Smyth stared at the radio as if he could will it into submission. “Is this right? It could only have just happened.”

  Karin handed Kinimaka back his cell and shifted to dig her own phone out of her jeans pocket. “This is the Blood King,” she said. “It’s the Blood Vendetta. When we learned of the riot earlier, I wondered about it. But there were no reports of any prisoners escaping. So either he has full communications working on the inside and has been orchestrating this thing for months, or he’s free.”

  Kinimaka’s eyes were huge. “Or both.”

  Silence reigned in the car as Kinimaka and Karin both pressed speed dial numbers on their cell phones and listened to the dreadful, ominous drone of unanswered ringtones.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Matt Drake glared at Torsten Dahl across the beer-stained table.

  “Face it, mate, you’re English. Everyone thinks you’re English. You sound English. You act English. Maybe not a Yorkshireman.” Drake shrugged. “But nobody’s perfect.”

  Dahl threw back the last of his pint. “So you think I’m almost perfect?”

  “Didn’t say that,” Drake pointed out as he sipped at a Pepsi Max. He glanced around. The quiet pub they’d entered half an hour ago had become decidedly busy in the last five minutes. Couples crowded the bar. Some were shouting. Others sat staring into space. Drake picked up on the air of shock and disbelief.

  “What the hell’s going on over there?”

  But Dahl was like a dog with a bone. “Do you think Mai’s perfect?”

  Drake flicked his attention back to the Swede. “What?”

  “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Mai upped and left and wouldn’t take you with her.”

  “Is that why you invited me here? To talk? Shit, I coulda been watching prime time.”

  “You know exactly why I invited you,” Dahl said quietly. “You’re pissed off with her. But, mate, I have to say . . . she knows what she’s doing. If she wants to do something alone, neither you, me, or the entire Swedish Special Forces can stand in her way.”

  Drake chortled. “The Swedish Special Forces couldn’t catch an escaped monkey, let alone handle Mai.”

  Dahl took the barb with a fixed smile. “Don’t be pissed off at her. It’s obviously something she has to do.”

  “Heard that before,” Drake said. “Doesn’t mean it’s right.”

  Dahl shrugged. “Well, matey, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong either.”

  Drake stared into his glass for a moment, ignoring the rising noise around them. “Honestly? It’s the danger she’s willingly walking into. These wankers who think they own her . . . they’re worse than the fucking Yakuza. Far worse.”

  “We should be with her.” Dahl sat back. “I agree. Look, if she does this her way, she’s free. If she doesn’t, it will never end.”

  “You missed the option where she’s dead.”

  Dahl looked away, not wanting to push the issue of Drake and his woman. For the first time, the tumult around them registered on his radar. He sniffed the air. “I smell trouble.”

  Drake nodded and slipped off his chair. Together the two men drifted closer to the bar, joining the ever-increasing crowd.

  What they saw shocked them to the core. Drake felt his mouth dry up instantly, and found he couldn’t move a muscle. Dahl’s gasp of disbelief was audible.

  The picture on the TV screen was an aerial view of central Washington DC. The Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial shone, and then the view centered in. Flashing lights, black vans, and cop cars jammed the display. An inset showed a portrait of their boss, Jonathan Gates, and the red ticker across the bottom spelled out the words: Secretary of Defense killed in Washington DC.

  Drake backed away, fighting off a black cloud which threatened to overwhelm his vision. He turned to Dahl, but found that the words just would not come. Their eyes locked and expressed all that needed to be said.

  Dahl pointed at the way out. By the time they reached the saloon-type exit doors, the Swede had found his voice. “Do you have your ID?”

  Drake nodded.

  “We can drive straight there.”

  Again Drake nodded as a dark maelstrom of scenarios whirled through his head. They knew Gates had been seeing Sarah Moxley at the Hotel Dillion tonight, but what the hell had happened? Outside, the streets were strangely quiet, eerily so. The population of Washington, it seemed, were clustered around their TVs. Dahl led the way to their parked car and set off at pace.

  “He was a good man,” Dahl said into a thick silence broken only by the car’s purring engine. “The kind of man you could admire. The type of politician you could follow. A rare leader.”

  “Who would do this?” Drake blurted without expecting any kind of answer. The list was endless—from an opportune civilian whacko to a disgruntled general to the more likely terrorist scenario.

  “We’ll find out,” Dahl said, slowing the car as he approached a road block. “And then we’ll stuff their fanaticism so far down their bloody throats it’ll hopefully choke ‘em.”

  ****

  They ended up running half the way to the restaurant. Both men checked their phones, but although Drake had received a missed call from Hayden, neither of them could raise the rest of the team. It was most likely because the SPEAR HQ was going crazy and being run ragged, but Drake didn’t like it and neither did Dahl. They would have kept trying, but the checkpoints grew more regular the closer they came to the restaurant, each one more stringent than the next. When they finally reached the scene, Drake stood back, appalled.

  The whole façade of the famous, respected restaurant had been blown out. Shattered glass littered the sidewalk all the way to the curb. Tables were upturned and broken. The two men didn’t enter the restaurant, but lingered on the fringes, eyes drawn toward the two inert bodies lying in the center of the room.

  Drake took one more moment to grieve, then packed it away. He swallowed hard and began to look around. “That’s odd,” he said.

  Dahl nodded. “I saw them on the way in. Secret Service. Two of them.”

  “I thought they only protected the President.”

  “They do. But Coburn was speaking across the road.” Dahl rolled his eyes to the right, surveying the ground in between. “I don’t like the look of this, Drake.”

  Drake cast his eyes over the bodies. The woman sitting in a chair near the bar, held there along with other witnesses, looked familiar.

  “Sarah?” he called. “Is that you?”

  She looked up, and a wave of gratitude swept across her face. She hobbled painfully as she tried to walk over.

  A cop walked up to her. “Wait right there, miss.”

  “Could we just have a moment?” Drake picked his way through the debris and tapped the cop on the shoulder.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The Yorksh
ireman flashed his badge. “Part of Gates’ team.”

  A look of respect entered the cop’s eyes. “Alright. Sure. Take your time. But she ain’t gonna be cleared to leave for a while.”

  Drake enfolded Sarah Moxley in his arms. The sobs that wracked her body brought his own grief bubbling back to the surface. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m so sorry.”

  “He . . . he was a good man. He didn’t deserve this. There are so many others—”

  Drake put a finger to her lips. “Don’t finish that thought,” he said. “You might regret it later. Do you know the assassin’s identity?”

  “They’ve told us nothing.”

  “Once we get going on this,” he said, “The bastards who planned it will have nowhere to hide. Trust me.” He didn’t care that he’d told himself he’d never make that promise again. Not after this.

  But Moxley suddenly pulled away. Tears streaked her face and her lipstick was smudged, but her eyes bored into him with a mix of intellect and fear. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “The Blood King did this. At least, he organized it. The killer said as much before someone saved my life by shooting him.”

  Drake felt the bottom of his world fall out for the second time in thirty minutes. He pulled further away from Moxley and held her at arm’s length. “Are you sure?”

  Her expression conveyed the words she couldn’t speak. Drake fished out his phone and looked at Dahl.

  “Call your family,” he said. “Kovalenko ordered this.”

  Dahl went white, turning away as he made the call. Drake pressed a speed dial number and waited for the call to connect. The seconds passed by like hours, each one cleaving a year from his life.

  “Hello?” Mai’s voice, at last, thirteen hours ahead.

  Drake told her everything.

  “Oh, my God. Poor Jonathan. But I have to call Chika and Dai. I have to go. Matt, thank you, but I have to go.”

  Drake understood. His next call was to Ben Blake. In his experience, the young man never parted for more than half a minute with his phone and always answered. He waited expectantly, but this time it just rang and rang. Drake checked his watch. It was early morning over in the UK. Maybe . . .