The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake 4)

by David Leadbeater

  The sound of a dozen rifles being cocked rang out across the sunlit courtyard. Hayden stared instant death in the eye with one last incredulous thought.

  I didn’t even get time to talk to Ben.

  *****

  Drake thought fast on his feet, faster than at any other time in his life. The immediate goal was to find a GPS tracker, something they could sync with Karin’s recurrent signal and home in on. With Belmonte’s expertise, it was a simple job, but required them to return to the “hot zone” around the airport’s warehouse district they had just vacated. Drake didn’t think twice. He led the way, purchasing the tracking device and returning to the airport in less than half an hour, just in time to catch the next plane to Prague, a journey that would take them less than seventy minutes.

  Drake didn’t waste a single one. “I have two plans,” he told them. “A and B. . .”

  *****

  Hayden didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she stared down the unwavering gun barrel, defiant to the last. Her thoughts became internally focused, her perceptions dulled. Time stretched before her like a piece of elastic, taut with expectation.

  A balloon drifted through the skies above the courtyard, blood-red, with its long string dangling and twisted as if pulled directly from a child’s hand.

  The movement caught everyone’s attention. When Hayden flicked her eyes back again, she was startled to see that a man had threaded his way through the gun barrels.

  The Norseman. He stood before his soldiers, long blond hair rustled by the breeze, craggy face drawn in what some might have thought was sympathy, but Hayden knew amounted to nothing more than circumspect disinterest. It was the attention a young psychotic might give to a fly caught in the web of an approaching spider.

  “Odin,” he said. “He was the Father of the Gods. As I am the father of our council. We are alike, Odin and I.”

  Hayden shifted uncomfortably. Beside her Dahl managed a guffaw.

  The Norseman’s face tilted. “My wealth goes back to the days of the Vikings. My wealth’s origins are the oldest known. I am descended of Beowulf, though the doubters would have you believe he never existed. The great poem—written in 800 CE, but only rediscovered in the seventeenth century tells of a real king and a real land. But Beowulf, they say, did not exist. Well here—” He tapped at the soil with his foot, the foundations of his home. “I have proof that he existed.”

  “And that he fought a monster?” Dahl said with sarcasm.

  “We all fight our monsters. I only said Beowulf was real, not Grendel.”

  “You are the Norseman,” Hayden said, still shocked despite herself.

  “The man behind it all.” His face gave no expression. “The shadow that rises above the Shadow Elite. Yes.”

  “And you would use the doomsday weapon?” Hayden asked.

  “Use?” The Norseman sucked at the word as if it was a mint toffee. “Use? Such an ambiguous word. Yes, I would use it, my dear, but in what way do you mean?”

  “To destroy the fucking world.”

  The Norseman’s eyes barely blinked. “Don’t be so fucking stupid. Why would I do that? Why would I destroy that which I own?”

  Dahl laughed. “Because you’re crazier than batshit, mate.”

  Hayden winced. She heard Ben’s sharp intake of breath and even Komodo swallowed hard.

  The Norseman didn’t waver. “The doomsday device will be used as our security net. Once in place, it will never need to be called upon.” Then his eyes went far away. “But imagine. Imagine if one day it was let loose. Fire and water, storms and lightning and thunder, earthquakes and mega tornadoes engulfing the world. What beauty. What an end!”

  Hayden knew he wasn’t kidding around. This man didn’t have it in him to joke.

  “Odin faced Ragnarok,” the Norseman told them. “With his sons by his side, he marched into battle. He faced monsters. Real monsters—”

  “No.” Dahl interrupted the most powerful man on the planet. “He didn’t.”

  The Norseman fixed a hooded gaze onto the Swede.

  “I saw Odin’s bones,” Dahl said. “I touched them. I saw where he lay down and died. He certainly didn’t die fighting on any battlefield. Ragnarok,” he said softly, “is the real myth.”

  “He’s right,” Gates spoke up for the first time. “Ragnarok is now, not back then. Odin averted it once by making the gods die. But the finding of his shield started a chain reaction that had to end with the discovery of the third tomb and the doomsday weapon. It’s now our choice. We decide. It is mankind’s decision to save or destroy itself. The words are written in the Icelandic tomb.”

  “You refer to the day of reckoning.” The Norseman studied the US Secretary of Defense impassively. “But it is all moot. Do you remember the Cold War? The days when the Russians and Americans pointed a thousand nukes at each other and waited for fate to take its course? A bad time, even for us. We can’t possibly control every single itchy finger and one slip, one moment of rage, could’ve plunged the world into nuclear war. But now. . .we will be the only superpower, and we will hold all the weapons.”

  “What if we call your bluff?” Gates ventured.

  “We are the Shadow Elite,” the Norseman said simply. “If one voice rises against us, it shall be quieted. If many voices rise against us. . . then we’ll wipe the fuckers off the map.”

  The Norseman stepped back then and took a long look at them. Hayden held her head high. The Norseman turned away and passed through the line of rifleman.

  As one the weapons steadied, aimed, and held still.

  A voice said, “Fire!”

  The sound of gunshots, screams and bullets impacting against brickwork ruined the peace of an idyllic winter’s day.

  *****

  No sooner had the plane landed than Drake and his friends were fighting past other passengers and racing to get through customs. If anyone thought them rude, they certainly didn’t speak up. But then their hard faces would have put off all but the hardiest or oldest of complainers.

  Outside the airport, into the bracing cold, the four could relax a little. Drake waved at a taxi and pulled out the tracking device that Belmonte had expertly cobbled together.

  “Still strong,” he said.

  Mai, next to him, studied a map of Prague. “Dejvice.” She reeled off a suburb of the old city and the taxi took off at pace. As they rode, they reviewed the plan. It was rough, it was risky, but it was the best improvisation they could come up with under this kind of time limit and pressure. Drake was certain their friends would be killed today. It was just a matter of when.

  “And the eight pieces of Odin?” Mai said.

  “Are secondary,” Drake said again. “Our friends come first.”

  “We should at least try—”

  “Mai,” Drake said forcefully, “I’m sorry. But you lost your say when you acted alone. You risked it all to save Chika. Now it’s my turn.”

  Alicia turned bright eyes on the Japanese woman. “Hey. Look at it this way—a bitch who fucked up like you did—normally they’d just put you down. This way, you get a second chance.”

  “Put me down?” Mai echoed. “And who’s going to do that? You?”

  “I’ll put you both down if you don’t quit.” In reality, Drake knew they were only mentally preparing themselves for the fight and the violence to come. He threw a glance at Belmonte.

  “You’d probably be better off staying in the car. The other car, if you know what I mean.”

  The thief nodded. Drake’s plan was verging on suicide, but it was all they had. At that moment, Drake’s mobile rang, an old Dinorock tune, something about smoke on the water.

  Drake listened for a moment, and then his face fell. “Oh no,” he said. Then, “And there’s no chance that—?”

  The Englishman listened some more. The news did not look good. At the end he nodded and turned the mobile off. “That was Sam. His team can’t meet us here in time. Balls.”

  “Doesn’t change
the plan one bit,” Alicia said with some relish.

  Drake nodded. “They’re heading straight for Vienna. They will meet us all there later. Assuming. . .”

  “We survive,” Belmonte finished with a shake of his head. “Oh dear.”

  “Whatever happens, mate”—Drake turned to him—“You have to meet them there and tell them everything. If we die, the pieces of Odin will be in the wind.”

  Drake closed his eyes. “I just wish we knew if they were all alright.”

  *****

  Hayden’s hands, still held together with plastic ties behind her back, were roped loosely together and passed through a metal ring that had been built into the uneven brick wall at her back. The rope was tied. Her team, all shaken but alive, were lined up beside her.

  So it was to be psychological torture to start with, at least. The firing squad had been accurate enough. Their bullets had smashed into the wall above their heads, showering masonry and hot jacket fragments over them. The Norseman’s face hadn’t even twitched. Then they had been dragged roughly inside the mansion and pushed into an unfurnished ground-floor room. Concrete floor. Brick walls. A large drain in the middle of the floor.

  A killing room, easy to clean afterward.

  Now, men with grins on their faces dragged big industrial hoses into the room. Normally used for sluicing, they were now aimed at the captives. Hayden braced herself for the impact. Then more men crowded in behind them, some holding machine guns, others equipped with an odd-shaped weapon. Large barreled and stubby, it somehow looked more menacing than the Heckler and Kochs.

  “Rubber ball gun,” Dahl said without emotion. “Hits harder than most men. Probably best to duck.”

  Hayden eyed the Swede tied beside her. “Options?”

  Before he could answer, the Norseman’s soldiers got started on their version of fun. The hose was switched on, slithering straight as the water surged through. Two men held the nozzle, unable to contain their mirth as a deluge of water jetted out and struck the helpless captives full-on. Hayden was blasted in the face and her head smashed back into the wall, making her see stars. The force of the water stopped her breathing. She felt like she was drowning, standing up.

  Gasping for breath, she swallowed water, whipping her head from side to side and trying to turn away. But the stream of water was inescapable and terribly powerful. The last breath of air was forced out of her lungs. She had faced water-boarding before, but it had nothing on this. At the edge on consciousness, she heard the boom as the rubber-ball guns began firing.

  The unmistakable sound of Ben’s voice, screaming, reached her ears.

  She swallowed more water, coughing, unable to get rid of it all in the face of the unyielding current. Then, when she had just passed the moment of surrender, the stream passed on to the next person—Kinimaka.

  Hayden hung her head, almost spent. Her knife wound was throbbing again, the pain cutting through the cloud of helplessness that surrounded her. She gave thanks that one of the rubber balls hadn’t struck her yet, for if one was to impact with the wound. . .even CIA discipline and all the training in the world might not stop her from begging for mercy.

  So she hung from her bonds, showing defeat, feigning vulnerability whilst fighting hard to get her breath back and willing strength to return to her body. Again, she tested the plastic ties, hopeful the water might have loosened them. But if anything, it appeared to have tightened them, making the edges cut into her already-bruised skin.

  Despair invaded and sought to occupy her heart. Her head fought against it, seeking an escape route, but deep down the terrible truth could no longer be denied.

  There was no way out of this one.

  She allowed her head to swing sideways and saw the water cannon had just reached Karin. Would the deluge damage and destroy her mobile phone? If it did, they were in for a long, painful and hard-fought death.

  *****

  Drake studied the mansion where his friends were being held until he had pinpointed Karin’s exact position. The place blended right in with every other property around here. They were built right on the street, as if coveting every ounce of space they were allowed with minimal gardens, but imposing outer walls, high and almost unscaleable. Narrow, curtained windows looked out at street level, with the larger double-panes on the second and third floors. Drake couldn’t even see a door. Maybe there was one around another side, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t about to knock. He knew his plan was risky and fraught with assumptions, but the situation required an immediate and extreme response.

  “There.” He pointed out the exterior wall to Mai and Alicia, then left them to it. With Belmonte alongside, he prowled the nearby streets for two of the likeliest vehicles. Within five minutes, he had spotted a grey Land Rover and a powerful Toyota saloon. He pointed them out to Belmonte.

  “Ready?”

  “No, but I’m game.”

  *****

  Hayden raised her head at last. A rubber ball caromed off the wall next to her right eye, the man who fired it laughing like a maniac and quickly reloading so he could try again. To left and right her companions tried to make themselves less of a target by scrunching their bodies up, but they were all drenched, and most of them had been hit in the most painful parts of their bodies.

  “We’re here all fuckin’ day!” One of the mercs laughed and then brayed laughter like a strung-out donkey. He aimed and fired, his shot true. The rubber ball slammed into Komodo’s ribcage, but the big Delta soldier never flinched.

  Hayden sighed at his stupidity and saw Karin do the same. Damn soldier boys and their macho displays. The mercenary’s laughter continued. “Now there’s a challenge I accept. Believe this, bud, every hero I ever knew is long dead.”

  Dahl tried to flick his drenched hair to the side. “Good, lad. I’d have done the same.”

  “Then we’ll all die as fools,” Hayden whispered fiercely. “We have to be smarter than these animals, not stoop to their level.”

  “Suggestion?”

  Hayden despaired. “Don’t you have a plan? The great Torsten Dahl. The mad Swede. Whaddya say?”

  “I say—” Dahl held up his ripped, bloody and free hands. “Let’s go shove their fucking heads up their arses.”

  The mad Swede ran like the Devil rode his heels. Mouth wide, shrieking, with blood flying from his waving hands and water all around him, he charged down over a dozen armed men. In seconds he was among them, destroying the side of one man’s face with a savage elbow and kicking a second so hard he didn’t stop tumbling until he hit the back wall with enough force to knock him senseless. Hayden used the chaos to twist her own wrists again, but the pain of the ties ripping through her flesh made her cry out. How the hell could Dahl stand it? The man had to be superhuman. She saw Kinimaka and Komodo trying the same, faces contorted but full of desperate determination, and then Komodo wrenched a wrist free.

  At that point, the whole place went crazy.

  The Norseman strode in through the far door, shaking his head when he saw the melee and calling for more guards to come from the seemingly endless warren of rooms that made up his mansion. To his credit, he stood his ground, watching events unfold. Then, as if by great magic, Mai and Alicia suddenly appeared behind him, having gained entry through a ground-floor window. The Norseman immediately flung himself behind a unit of guards.

  Suddenly, the tables were turned. With Dahl, Mai and Alicia free and able to battle, there wasn’t a mercenary group in the world that would stay confident. The women bounded into the room, dealing wounds and injuries out as if they were distributing presents. Hayden gave up her struggle with the bonds, worn out with stress and pain of her wound, and waited for Komodo to find a weapon that would free her.

  The Delta soldier broke free and fell to his knees. Groaning, he scrambled quickly to one of the men Dahl had left in his deadly wake, frisked the body and came up with a standard-issue knife.

  The Norseman advanced farther into the room, unarmed, unfaz
ed, his craggy face betraying not even the slightest hint of emotion. What did he know?

  Hayden leaned forward as Komodo reached over and sawed through her bonds. She was in no condition to fight, but stumbled forward anyway, hoping to at least take one enemy out of the fray. Mai and Alicia had made their way over to Dahl, targeting the mercenaries with the deadliest weapons first and killing them.

  The sound of gunfire ricocheted around the large space. One of the hoses was still running, sending water gushing up against a wall and rebounding back in a mini wave. Dahl slammed a man’s head into it, rendering him unconscious, and left him to drown.

  Behind Hayden, Komodo freed Kinimaka. The large Hawaiian grunted his thanks, hurdled a fallen mercenary to reach her side and held out a steadying hand. “You should fall back.”

  “You givin’ me an order, Mano?”

  “Yes, boss, I am. Now get behind me.”

  Kinimaka stood strong as a mercenary lined him up in his sights. The shot exploded from the big gun, the rubber ball impacting with bruising force against Kinimaka’s thigh, but eliciting nothing more than a disdainful grunt. Kinimaka reached out and grabbed the mercenary by the neck, lifting him off the ground. The mercenary jammed the barrel of the gun under Kinimaka’s neck.

  The two men stared at each other, inches apart.

  Hayden scooped up a small handgun and shot the merc between the eyes. Kinimaka sent her a grateful wink. “Mahalo.”

  “Any time. You do me, I’ll do you. So to speak.”

  Kinimaka blinked in surprise, but then turned abruptly as a sudden hubbub filled the room, loud even over the noise of fighting and shooting and screaming.

  Hayden stared too. Her hopes fell. A second substantial group of mercs swarmed into the room, all armed and looking hungry for blood. The Norseman crossed his arms and leaned against a wall. Game over.

  A dozen guns fired at once, aimed high in an expression of strength and intent. Dahl paused in mid-flow, a mercenary in each hand. A deadly hush fell slowly over the room, the sudden silence ringing in their ears.