But at that moment they heard the unmistakable sounds of their team breaking up and moving out. Ben’s voice shouted over the hubbub. “Sis?”
Komodo shrugged. “So? First, we’ll go save the world.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The team negotiated their way out of the castle and headed back down the hill toward the waiting cars. Hayden believed that Cayman, since he had remained below with his men and showed no signs of pursuit, had called in reinforcements. But that wasn’t the main reason they were moving out double-time.
As they ran, she dry swallowed painkillers. Every movement sent a bolt of fire through her wounded side. So far today, she’d taken enough painkillers to poleaxe a horse, but the adrenalin spurred her on. Twisted brush underfoot and thorny shrubbery to the side attempted to send her into a headlong tumble. As she emerged from cover, the entire city of Singen opened up before her, sprawling to the horizons.
Kinimaka steadied her with a huge arm. “If you’d let me carry you, boss, I’d do it.”
“I know, Mano, but not today.”
Jonathan Gates thoughtfully tapped his phone against the side of his leg. “So I stand here, a US Secretary of Defense, trying to decide who to call upon for help.” He gave them all a cheerless smile. “But I can’t think of a single person – with the right connections – who I trust.”
Hayden took a moment to steady herself. Over the last few weeks and months, she felt like she’d lived an entire lifetime. Her hopes, her dreams, her future – everything had changed. She kept imagining that one day she’d wake up to find it had all been a crazy dream. That Matt Drake and Ben Blake and Alicia Myles didn’t really exist – they were nothing more than the warped and fevered ghosts of her imagination.
But here she stood on the tree-dotted hillside of an ancient castle, above what had once been a volcano, long ago. Her boss and her colleagues were with her. The world was at stake.
A train ran between Stuttgart and Singen, bringing with it a cargo of civilians, mercenaries and death. One way or another, she had to get aboard that train.
She turned to Ben and Karin. “Get me the train’s details. I need exact times. I need all changes. The works.”
“On it,” Karin said immediately. Ben gave her a dull look before fishing out his iPhone. She didn’t smile at him. It was as if he knew her thoughts. Knew that they were as good as over.
Time to grow up, Ben.
Drake had been conversing quietly with his SAS buddies. Now he caught her eye and drifted over. “You grab those pieces,” he said in his Yorkshire accent. “Or destroy ’em. Or hide them somewhere. Just fuck those bastards up. Whatever it takes.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Alicia, Mai and I will be hitting Luxembourg. Wells was spying on Cayman and this Shadow Elite crowd for a decade. He worked for them. Knew their moves. I see a point coming in the very near future where that knowledge might be helpful.”
“And you’ll find your wife’s killer too?”
“I hope to get his identity. I won’t go after him until this thing with the tomb of the gods is over.”
“Make sure you keep in touch.”
“Every hour.”
Drake gave her a look, something full of respect and admiration and more than a little love. She knew right then, in a post-Ben world, that Matt Drake would remain her friend. She watched him walk away.
She turned toward Kinimaka, hoping to get a little heart-warming camaraderie, but Daniel Belmonte planted himself between them.
“You haven’t had need of my services so far,” he said with an impish smile. “But there goes a man who just might.” He nodded after Drake. “Do you mind?”
“Sure. Why would I mind?” Hayden sighed. “You’re here because you got caught up in the flow. You’re useless to me.”
“I’m the best at what I do.”
“Stop with the double-entendre’s, Belmonte. We had sex. Just the once. It was...” She met his eye. “Not bad, to be fair. But first and foremost, you’re a thief.” She looked at Drake. “So go be one.”
“My pleasure.”
“But, Belmonte,” she warned, “I know you think you’re god’s gift and all that, but take a piece of advice?”
“Try me.”
“Stay clear of Alicia Myles. She’s. . .blue-eyed disaster.”
As Belmonte walked away, deep speculation on his face, both Ben and Karin came walking over to her. Kinimaka shot her a “chin up” look. Gates put a gentle arm around her shoulder.
Ben said, “Stuttgart to Singen is over a four-hour journey. We have the time to drive to Zurich train station, where it stops for forty-five minutes, and board there. The trip from Zurich to Singen takes one hour. . .”
“Giving us sixty minutes to search the train, find the pieces and neutralize them.” Karin finished in classic sisterly fashion. “One way or another.”
Dahl had finished up on the phone to his Statsminister and caught the last part. He too stared after Drake. “Do not repeat this, but I’d give my career to have that man with us.”
“This is a team,” Hayden said firmly and felt Gates grip her shoulder hard. “Not a one-man effort. Between us, we’ll board the train, find the pieces and unmask the assholes behind all this. Now”—she started walking toward the cars, the throbbing wound in her side temporarily forgotten—“mount up.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Drake hurried over to bid farewell to Sam and his SAS pals. The man they’d left behind, Rob Ingles, was being quietly mourned in the way of soldiers. Mai had also lost loyal friends and was standing silently to one side. Drake waited for the somber moment to pass.
“We’re heading out,” he said at length. “How’s your standby situation, Sam?”
“As of now, mate, we’re good. We’re able to remain in Europe for at least a few more days. But within the week…” Sam made a face. “Some shiny arse is gonna catch on and this thing’s gonna have to be explained.”
“It will be,” Drake said, thinking of Jonathan Gates’s influence and Wells’s hidden research. An uneasy memory of his time in the SRT resurfaced then, like a bone-white hand rises from beneath the bed in the dead of night, to clasp its cold, clammy fingers around a man’s ankle. It was the time when his unit had been ordered not to interfere in the interrogation of the village. Orders from on high. Orders from who though? Maybe he’d find more than one answer among Wells’s papers.
“We’ll wait as long as we can,” Sam told him. “There’s three more teams currently operating in Europe. Just so you know.” He winked.
Drake thanked his friend and jumped into one of the cars, along with Mai, Alicia and Belmonte. Within seconds, they were leaving Hohentwiel and their friends in the rear-view and driving quickly to a private airstrip on the outskirts of Singen. Dahl’s people had secured Drake and his friends a special charter for their trip to Luxembourg – the general feeling being that the quicker he got there, the quicker he’d get back.
Silence reigned in the car. Belmonte tried a few quips to engage some kind of conversation but, for the other three, this was their down time. The drive afforded them the chance to unwind and recoup a small part of their tattered reserves.
As he drove, Drake found his brain dipping into waters so murky, he’d rather leave them undisturbed. Old fears had been raised, and with them, the non-resolution of newer fears. Mai Kitano, by his side, had given the teleportation device to the Blood King in return for her sister’s safety. An understandable act sure, but one she still needed to answer for. She had also kept the secret of his wife’s death from him for years.
And then there was Alicia Myles, lounging in the back seat, head back, blue eyes aimed toward the window, staring sightlessly at the fields and trees rolling by. She had not only kept the same secret, but she had been a part of Abel Frey’s murdering gang, and he was sure she was still highly motivated by hard cash. What she’d done for it in the past, he didn’t want to know.
But what might she
do for it in the future?
His thoughts switched toward Ben Blake. They’d started this adventure together, only a couple of months ago. Now they were poles apart, separated by love, loss and necessity. Drake hadn’t even asked Ben to accompany them to Luxembourg. He’d known what the answer would be and, quite frankly, he judged they’d be better off without him.
A soldier’s judgment, not the decision of the civilian he thought he’d become. Life had turned again. As it often did.
But now was not the time to process any of it. If Dahl’s man in Iceland was right, then some kind of battle was coming, a battle to end all battles, and its outcome would decide who ran the world. The factors were already fighting in a narrowing theater of war. It was only a matter of time before they would all meet. The Shadow Elite had already shown their hand for the first time in an age, and were maneuvering toward a terrible end game. Drake and his friends were being isolated, cut down and impeded. Their window of opportunity was shrinking.
Hence Hayden’s crazy plan to board a passenger train.
“You give any thought as to how we’re going to do this?” Alicia spoke up without moving her position.
“It’s a suck-it-and-see scenario,” Drake told her.
“My favorite.”
“All I know is that the facility is near the airport. It’s nothing special, just a way-station of sorts. Only problem – it’ll be guarded by the best soldiers in the world.”
“Time for Mr. Belmonte to show his mettle.” Alicia watched the scenery flash by.
Drake pulled up outside the airfield. “You ready?”
*****
The flight lasted only thirty minutes. All Drake could think about was Hayden, Dahl, Ben and the others who were currently speeding toward a crazy encounter. He wanted to be with them. But the fact that Wells had researched the Shadow Elite and taken the time to hide his findings in such an obscure place told Drake he would be better prepared by having it. And Alyson’s ghost had more than a chance of being laid to rest.
The plane dipped and then landed smoothly. Even though the airport was the expected eyesore of concrete and steel, the countryside that surrounded it looked picturesque and agreeable. Within minutes of leaving the plane, they were shown to a waiting vehicle. Then they were on their own.
Drake programmed the sat-nav with figures he’d taken from Wells’s recording and drove out of the airport. The secret facility was only a twenty-minute drive. About ten minutes before they got there, they passed a dingy-looking pub. Battered cars and gleaming bikes littered the car park. Even as they drove by, Drake saw a man crash through one of the windows to land headfirst in the dirt. A big bruiser filled the new gap, grinning and pouring half of the man’s pint on top of him. The other half he drank with gusto.
“My kinda place.” Alicia gave a grin.
“Aye up, Belmonte,” Drake said. “Do you wanna drive by now and have a little reccy, or stop and come up with a rough plan?”
“The reccy,” Belmonte said immediately. “Better to see what we’re dealing with.”
“Well, don’t get your hopes up,” Mai said. “This secret facility won’t come with its own guidebook.”
Drake slowed as the sat-nav announced they had reached their destination. The car skirted the back of the airport, where an industrial area had sprouted up. Warehouses and fast food shops, car showrooms and walled-in businesses. The one to their immediate right was a long, low warehouse surrounded by an iron gate with spikes and a high wall topped with razor wire. Nondescript signs had been fixed to the wall and the top of the warehouse itself. Horne Manufacturing.
“Good area for me.” Belmonte started a commentary. “Plenty of places to hide around here. Plenty of places to use as a staging area and a fallback point. Three ingress points are available, the fourth hard up against another unit. See there? A flat roof. Another plus. The warehouse isn’t too high, either. Razor wire everywhere, but that won’t be a problem. I spotted a discreet guardhouse inside the main gate, behind the posts. The extra security there rules it out for our use.”
Drake nodded. “Discount anything that will take time.”
“The best don’t need much time. In any case, we’re left with the walls, the air, or the other unit. Do you have any idea what that other unit might be?”
Drake shook his head. “My guess? Part of the same facility. From what Wells said, there are some storage rooms against the back wall of the big warehouse. Nothing fancy. We are talking army here, after all. He stashed his research there.”
“Why here?” Mai asked.
“Opportunity,” Drake said. “His status brought him here often. It’s chiefly a way-station, meaning it can be used for literally anything. Wells would’ve been called out here a lot.”
“But it’s still just a warehouse,” Belmonte said. “The men guarding it are good, yes, but chiefly it’s a brick, block and metal structure with the same basic design as any other. They wouldn’t have beefed the construction up.”
“No. But they wouldn’t have been complacent about the internal security, either.”
“One problem at a time,” Belmonte said. “Trust me. I’m the world’s greatest thief, after all.” A grin. “The weak point is where the walls of the first and second unit meet. There’s a return on the wall there – see – that runs back to the building and could give a good man access to the grounds and the roof.” Belmonte traced an imaginary tick in the air. “First problem – overcome.”
Alicia groaned. “And I let this clown into my pants. In my defense I was pissed at the time.”
Belmonte didn’t even look at her. “There are no windows. The door we can see is off-limits. This leaves us with only one play. The roof. But I’ll need a special tool. And it’ll be noisy.”
“Then come up with another plan.” Drake let his impatience show in his voice.
“There is no other plan. It’s a warehouse, not Buckingham Palace. There are only a finite few places of ingress. Besides, the roof plan will work. We just need a distraction.”
His eyes roved over Mai and Alicia. “And what better distractions could we possibly hope for?”
“You’re not seriously thinking of sending us in to. . .woo the guards?” Mai asked with a touch of incredulity.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. What I have in mind is far more dangerous.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
If chasing the Blood King through the Gates of Hell had been the most dangerous moment of Matt Drake’s life, then walking into a bar full of truckers, junkies, cutthroats and thieves didn’t lag too far behind. Belmonte, the prissy Brit, went first. Then came Drake, and last of all came Mai and Alicia. Drake drifted through the smoky bar like a wisp trailed by a forest fire. Hard men with big arms and tattoos craned their shaggy heads around to check out the girls, their pints still poised at their lips. Scantily clad cage-dancers stopped their jaded gyrations, gripping the bars and poking their heads through to get a better look. Burly bouncers wearing tank tops and imitation Levis, patted their exposed Tasers and stood to attention, sensing the mood swing. Men propping up the bar halted their conversation and swung around as if they, too, sensed something different. Behind the bar itself, both barmen reached slowly underneath the wide length of chipped, scarred wood.
A hush fell over the place. After the men had checked out the girls, their cruel eyes sought out any opposition they might find – Belmonte and Drake.
Drake didn’t even have to scout the place. Knives were on tables. Lines of coke and heroin laid out in plain sight. A man with long hair and a Metallica T-shirt sat in the corner, kissing one of the girls deeply whilst twirling a pistol around a finger.
A gang bar. A serious one. He was surprised. On the whole, Luxembourg was a safe country, a prudent place to live, except for a few areas around the train station and the airport. Like this.
Smoke and harsh intentions thickened the air. The click of safety switches being slackened off made a sound like a startled rattlesnake. Drake
imagined that any outsider who even tried to order a drink here would be lucky to leave the place alive.
Then Drake took out a wad of one-hundred euro notes almost too thick to hold in his hand. Slowly he flapped them in the direction of the hardest table in the room.
A bullet slipped through the stunned fingers of one of the bikers and the man’s mouth fell open faster than a spring-loaded trapdoor.
“So,” Drake said, “We’re looking to make you an offer you can’t refuse. Who do we need to speak to?”
*****
They were going for a three-pronged operation. It had been deemed too dangerous for Drake to take part. The repercussions for getting caught would be bad for any of them, but for Drake, it would be infinitely worse. Belmonte had used his connections and skills to find the nearest location that could source them a laser cutter and a few choice tools with which to splice an operations board into an electronic panel. At first, Drake had doubted such tools could be so easily found, but when he saw their everyday nature and the ways Belmonte could adapt them for his own use, he soon found his confidence in the thief beginning to grow. Even the laser cutter itself was not a special tool. Most merchant tool outlets sold them.
So, Alicia had joined force with the bar gang—an experience she seemed to relish. Drake, hanging at the back of the crowd, had already winced several times in anticipation after some of her finer insults, but unsurprisingly they served only to make the bikers grow fonder of her. Already he’d noticed an exchange of numbers and a Bluetooth sharing of mobile data – photos or videos. He shook his head.
Alicia thrived on danger, got drunk with it. Tonight, she was in her element as the crowd of bikers and thieves approached the secret SAS facility.
*****
At first, Belmonte and Mai stuck together. Staying to the shadows, they skirted the warehouse until they reached the point where its two buildings came together. Here they crouched for a while, impatiently waiting for the signal.
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