In total, about sixty people had made the flight, the majority of them army personnel. Nowhere near as many as Drake wanted, but significantly more than he’d had yesterday. Among them were eleven members of the SAS, a group of Delta soldiers, members of Torsten Dahl’s SSG, and a few old friends Gates had somehow dragged in.
The men had been pulled from various operations. Some were on special exercise, others babysitting civilians. One knot had been guarding a company of scientists conducting experiments. Still others had been stuck on extended surveillance posts.
They responded immediately to the desperate call of the men they respected most.
But they still needed a leader. Most had looked to Dahl. But Dahl had looked to Drake.
The Englishman struggled to hide his shock. “Pull the other one, you fruitcake.”
“This is your operation, Drake. Always has been.”
Not even a second passed before he started talking. The plan lived and breathed inside him anyway, as it did for every mission, always evolving. By the time he had finished, the team wore looks of satisfaction, even if they all did still seem a little worried.
Drake counted himself lucky. The downside to this mission was enormous. They didn’t have an aerial view of the topography. They didn’t know how many men they were up against. They didn’t know exactly where the pieces would be kept. They didn’t know the firepower of the enemy. A terrorist was an unknown quantity on a good day, but this. . .the list went on.
But Drake had been winging this since he started back in York, when an Apache helicopter had interrupted a catwalk show. Now it seemed an age ago, but in fact, was a mere few months. He was more than ready to finish with Odin and his bloody bones.
The plane taxied to a halt, bouncing hard. The instant it stopped, a green light came on and the rear loading bay door started to descend. Men ran out into the cold air, moving fast to secure a temporary perimeter. The team leaders checked their compasses to get a bearing. Drake followed Mai and Alicia off the plane, followed by the rest of his team, including all the civilians. They were coming along; every hand would be welcome and needed today.
The icy air hit Drake in the face. Quickly, he tugged his jacket higher, checked his small pack and weapons, and watched as everyone else did the same. Gates and Hayden had secured arms and ammo from a CIA facility at Vienna airport along with some essential extra items—grenades, RPGs, Kevlar vests, communications, water and even some pouches of rations.
Hayden put herself beside Drake as they headed out. “You know I’m really in charge, right?”
Drake saw a half-smile on the American’s face. “Oh aye. How’s the side?”
“Fuckin’A. If I’d swallowed any more painkillers, I’d be seeing Santa and his fuckin’ reindeers arriving behind us.”
“Might come in as useful backup.” Alicia put in from behind them “Still probably best not to get stabbed again this time.”
Drake led them up a steep, grassy slope to the outskirts of a small wood. “Through here for the cover,” he said and clicked his mic. “All clear?”
The answer came back, loud with excess static.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s march.”
*****
The teams separated a little as they marched through the dappled forest, each group sticking to their own. It took extraordinary circumstances and even more extraordinary men to bring rival squads like this together and Drake was glad those men were on his side. The circumstances he wasn’t too happy with. He cast a quick glance back to assure himself of the Norseman’s position, being escorted by two SAS guards. Though the old man had been genuinely shocked at Holgate’s betrayal and his secret group’s massacre, he’d still be trying to scheme a way out of this.
They trudged for a while, staying sharp. Drake found his thoughts turning inward. Responsibility for his friends and the team weighed heavy across his shoulders, but no terrorist could ever be allowed to own such a terrible weapon as the one devised by Odin and his equals. To think that the quest for the tombs, the crazy chase after the Blood King, the search for Wells’s secrets, had all led him to this- trekking through the bitingly cold and remote Czech countryside with the dark shadows of mountains far ahead being nothing less than the environs of Transylvania.
The com chirped in his ear. He pressed the chest mic. “Yes?”
“Beyond the wood the ground starts to rise,” a discordant voice reported. “There are dwellings at the top of the hill.”
“The village?”
“If the coordinates are right—yes.”
“They’re right.” Drake thought of Holgate’s terror at the end. “Are the houses tightly packed together?”
“Yup. And the village appears to be deserted.”
“Good. Wait for us.”
The view from the outskirts of the wood struck Drake with a sense of lost hope and desolation. Yellowed, dead grass carpeted the minor hill. Around its potholed summit stood haphazard structures, dilapidated and ruined, with chunks missing from their walls as if a great Transylvanian monster had rampaged through, destroying everything in sight.
And it had, of course. The civilians—the women, the children—were long gone to some unknown fate. The evil men who had wiped out their town had left their mark and simply moved on to the next without even a look back. Men like these would never show remorse.
Drake thought about the kind of men now gathering beyond the rise. Fanatics yes, but worse than that—well-organized fanatics with deep pockets. He clicked his mic. “Move out.”
The team moved, at first like a newly made machine that needed oiling and grinding into shape, but these men were the ultimate professionals, and immediately began to adjust to each other. The lead SAS team topped the rise first. Drake saw one of them suddenly lash out, and as he ventured higher saw a lone terrorist fall, his neck broken. The team melted between the buildings. Drake, Mai, Alicia, Dahl and the two CIA agents made up the middle group with the civilians—Ben, Karin, Gates and Belmonte bringing up the rear, now with Komodo and a two-man Delta team as guards.
Drake reached the grassy summit and pressed himself hard against a cold, concrete wall. Its edges were sharp where a grenade had blasted it, its surface pockmarked where bullets had raked it many years before. Whilst he paused, he listened. The sound of men came from somewhere ahead, not near, but conversation and laughter buzzed along with the trembling wind.
Mai tapped his shoulder. “Up.” She knotted her hands. Drake used them as a step and waited for her boost. When it came, he propelled his body up and over the edge of the flat roof, landing horizontal and staying absolutely still for a minute. The same thing was happening on houses to left and right and in front. Tiny bits of grit and sharp gravel cut into his hands and scraped a low but harsh protest as he crept cautiously forward, head so low his nose was less than an inch from being cut to ribbons.
He reached the edge of the roof, facing west, and raised his head cautiously above the concrete lip. Immediately below he saw another SAS trooper take out a second wandering guard. The terrorists’ perimeter was thin here, but it wouldn’t be long before someone made a noise that carried too far.
Ahead, beyond the houses, the ground sloped down to what would have been the center of the village. A paved plaza had been built there, once a meeting place for the villagers, now a market square for extremists. Drake took time to raise a pair of compact Steiner Rangefinder binoculars and not only study their gathered enemy, but also to use the inbuilt laser to accurately distance the various elements he could see.
Several knots of men stood in conversation or wandered around the square. They seemed to be milling around a dozen different spheres of interest. Drake refocused and, between bodies, recognized some stacked crates that bore the imprint DBA Kinetics and another that read, simply Kord.
They were high-end machine gun companies. Countless crates stuffed to the hilt. Enough weaponry to start and finish a small war.
A small adjustment and he wa
s looking at a consignment of Vektor Grenade Launchers. Still another and there was a huge fuss around a pile of anti-aircraft missiles. Each stall was numbered. Drake let the binoculars drift a bit, taking in the view beyond the plaza. The ground sloped away towards the flat plains. A wide, tarmacked road cut an ugly path down to the terrorists’ staging area.
Here, Drake saw numerous choppers under heavy guard, several trucks and large drums of what he thought might be oil. Other vehicles—some high-end cars, a military Humvee. And a sizeable tent, more than likely the auction area.
He saw no sign of the eight pieces of Odin. Surely, they had to be in the tent. But, truth be told, he didn’t know. And the large mass of men assembled down that slope and among the choppers beyond daunted even him.
Several rows of large containers lined the summit to his right, just where the houses ended. Since the terrorists couldn’t have brought the containers with them, he deduced that they must have something to do with the old village, or with whoever moved in afterward and then vanished.
Slowly, he shuffled back and slid down to the ground. Dahl, Hayden and Sam came up to him. “Not good,” Hayden reported, her voice higher than usual probably due to the painkillers. “The plaza is not heavily guarded, but the way beyond—that’s just batshit crazy.”
“More than a hundred,” Dahl agreed. “And surprisingly sensible. It’s their escape route and the site of the auction. The leaders will be conducting their deals in private on the plaza. Nobody wants a talkative guard eavesdropping on their dealings now, do they?”
Sam looked worried. “Matt, even our team would have trouble getting near that tent.”
“Let’s look at it another way.” Drake shrugged. “The bastards will be over-confident, smug and proud, as terrorist leaders often are. That’s our advantage.”
“It may be,” Dahl said. “But none of that helps us sneak past over a hundred well-placed guards.”
Drake met the Swede’s eyes. “Who said anything about sneaking?”
It was a moment before Dahl caught on. “Fucking hell, you’ve got massive balls, mate, I’ll give you that.”
“Scarily big,” Drake agreed.
“Wait, hoaloha.” Kinimaka forgot himself in his surprise. “You mean to attack them. Them?” He waved a hand in the tent’s general direction.
“Not strictly attack,” Drake said gently. “More like storm.”
“Are you tripping cos you’re not getting your daily diet of fish and chips or something?” Kinimaka blustered. “We can’t—”
Hayden moved close to Kinimaka and stopped him with a tender hand placed on the shoulder. The Hawaiian almost jumped out of his skin and turned, wide-eyed, to stare at his boss.
“It’s alright, Mano,” she said quietly. “You should listen to him. He’s our leader.”
Drake squatted with his back to the wall and looked up, immensely moved to see all the people who he regarded as his “team” gathered round at this last moment. Mai and Alicia sat beside him. Hayden and Kinimaka dropped to their knees to listen. Ben and Karin and the haunted Belmonte had crept to his other side. Komodo—the soldier who had gamely chased down the Blood King with him—sat with Karin. Jonathan Gates stood behind Komodo, grim determination radiating from posture, his face and his eyes.
And Torsten Dahl, the mad Swede, gazed at him with something like utter respect, love and unreserved faith, a hard-earned quality in any man of combat, let alone one as capable as Dahl.
Drake held up an imaginary glass. “We could go home this minute,” he said. “The terrorists won’t care. The world would never know. Or we could hang around and not back down. Raise a glass to freedom and stuff our way of life down these bastard’s throats. We’ve stuck it out this far together. . .”
Drake met every eye, every concerned flicker. “When our dreams die. . .” He pictured Alyson and Kennedy, but most of all he saw the person he had most wanted to know, but had never known. The person who had lived but never known life—his unborn baby, Emily. “We want to die. Or drink. We realize there are worse things than hell. But I’m still here—and I’m around to tell you this—the last few months have more than hurt us, they’ve kicked us hard in the bollocks, but they brought us here. Together. Right now, with that doomsday weapon less than a mile away.” He stood up, hefting his rifle. “So let’s go show these terrorist clowns what the term balls to the wall really means.”
PART 4
DRAKE’S LAST STAND
‘...and into the valley of death rode the six hundred...’
‘Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them.’
An excerpt from: ‘THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE’ by Alfred Tennyson.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Among the deserted houses the team crept, just waiting for that moment—the step that proved to be the one too far. It came quickly. They managed to quietly despatch another three of the terrorists’ perimeter guards before it happened, but the fourth’s finger squeezed reflexively on the trigger as he died.
Shots rang out, horrendously loud among the grim concrete walls. In that moment every man and woman sprang to life. Guns up, the teams darted between the buildings, spreading out to ensure nobody flanked them. Gunshots rang out as more terrorist guards began to converge. Drake saw a bobbing figure up ahead, fired, and blew a corner of the wall away in a hard, sharp spray. One of the SAS teams had climbed to the rooftops and were keeping pace up there. Every corner posed a new problem, every turn of the street threw shadows and potential hiding places in their faces.
Drake advanced steadily, Mai and Alicia—the two people he would most want at his side in this situation—keeping pace. Every few seconds, more shots rang out. He could only imagine the panic in the plaza, the arms being packed away and the choppers being warmed up. With a quick jab he keyed his chest mic. “Make sure the Norseman’s kept handy. If anyone knows who has the pieces, it’s him.”
The chance was slim, he knew, but they couldn’t afford to miss even the slimmest opportunity here today.
“I miss this,” Alicia said happily at his side. “Late nights, days of battle and rough sex. My kind of living.” She opened fire as a man peered around a corner ahead, blowing a small part of his head away.
More streets, and the attackers spread out even more until their line grew dangerously thin. Drake saw the final few houses ahead where the ground sloped away towards the plaza and hurried forward.
His mic buzzed. “Problem.”
“What?”
But then he reached the summit of the hill himself and flashed a glance down. A large amount of terrorist guards and what looked like hired mercenaries were running toward them, staying low and firing in sequence so that never a second passed without a bullet in flight. A well-organized force.
Drake cast quickly about. The containers were a few hundred yards to their right, offering advancement and cover. He keyed the mic. “Move right.”
They side-stepped quickly, backs to the houses, firing tenaciously and throwing dozens of grenades. Bullets flashed in both directions, hammering against the house walls like thunder, showering those around with mortar, digging up dirt around the advancing terrorists, spinning some around and sending others hurtling back down the bloody slope. Explosions tore up rock and soil, flesh and bone. A desperate melee of death and destruction saw Drake’s whole team dodging to the right and digging into positions among the high, steel containers. Drake threw himself to the hard earth, kicking up dust and stones, wasting no time as he sighted on those below and blasted out another barrage of lead.
Then the attackers crested the hill, still firing, and were suddenly among them. D
rake fired twice, still prone, taking two men out, then rose and met a head-on assault. He smashed the butt of his rifle into the man’s teeth, felt a spray of blood, lifted the weapon and brought it hard down on the top of his head. The man fell to his knees. Drake drew the knife with his other hand and finished it. Another man flung himself at the Englishman. Drake simply stood, unbendable, and met the man’s flight with a powerful head-butt to the face. Without sound or movement, his attacker collapsed in a heap.
Gunfire, grunting and screaming, shouts of mercy and cries of bloodlust pierced the day. Mai took a surprise elbow to the face and stumbled back against a metal siding, weapon falling. Drake was almost too stunned to react, to help her, but before he could even move, Alicia drew her pistol, spun and shot the adversary in the time it took him to draw a single breath.
Mai blinked at her. “Thanks.”
Alicia just winked before turning her attention back to the man she had by the throat.
Drake shook his head. “This is all just a delay tactic.” He could see beyond the edge now, down into the plaza. The terrorist leaders were just finishing up their business as if it were a steady day at the local meat market. They didn’t hurry. Barely a single one cast even a glance up the hill to the place where men fought and died on their behalf.
“Damn their arrogance,” he whispered furiously. “But it’ll cost them.”
As the onslaught began to thin out, Drake advanced. He took a quick look around, taking stock. He couldn’t see everyone, but saw no fatalities on their side.
“To me,” he said into the mic. “To the plaza.”
Men emerged from between the containers, weapons ready, steadfastly determined to make the next advance. With high and constant vigilance, they swept down the hill, shooting everything that moved ahead. Now, to Drake’s satisfaction, the terrorist leaders and arms dealers were fleeing with abandon, leaving personal bodyguards and crates and boxes of armaments and missiles in their wake.
The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake 4) Page 18
