Theatre of War (Matt Drake 28) Tenth Anniversary Novel

by David Leadbeater

  The warehouse sat around them mostly in darkness, its rafters higher than she could see and pooled in shadow, its four walls lost in the gloom. For all its grungy mystery though, it seemed secure and was certainly remote.

  “Have you organized our journey back to the States?” she asked Bryant during one of his circuits.

  “Of course. We leave in five hours on a cargo plane which will take fourteen hours to arrive. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be back in the States.”

  Mai nodded. It was the best they could expect. Bryant took a moment to tell her that the disinformation and other attacks were still occurring but to a lesser degree.

  Zuki overheard and looked up at them. “Because the main damage has been done,” she said. “Further attacks of that nature are being made to help confuse the population now. And prepare the way for the second, and real, mass attack.”

  Mai wanted to press her right then, but Alicia was getting Drake and the others on the line. Minutes later she heard Drake’s voice, confirming that they could both see and hear Zuki through the monitor.

  “Here you go,” Alicia said. “Here’s your chance to help your fellow humans.”

  Zuki’s disgusted expression would have turned fresh meat rotten. “Their plight is of no concern to me. They have their role in life, and it does not involve even being aware of me. They are not worthy. I—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Drake’s flowery Yorkshire tones came through the computer. “Tell us what we need to know, or I’ll set Alicia on you.”

  Zuki glanced at the Englishwoman who bared her teeth in response.

  “The first attack occurred over a day ago. The Devil’s plan was to confuse, frustrate and anger the people so that everything that comes after might be mistrusted by some and dismissed by others. The more doubt we sow, the better our chances of success.”

  “You are a member of the Scourge then?” Hayden asked.

  “I do not belong to any group or society, but I do stand with them for now. They should have their revenge.”

  “That makes me think you know their identities?” Hayden said.

  “Our agreement was for information relating to the six attacks. Nothing else.”

  “But we need to know their identities to stop the attacks—” Hayden began.

  “Let her speak for now,” Mai urged. “We don’t know how much time we’ve got.”

  “How little time,” Zuki affirmed with a smirk. “The second attack begins on day six. Two days from now. It will devastate your nation.”

  “How?” Alicia asked.

  “The Devil calculated that your infrastructure should come next. Roads. Deliveries. Transport. That kind of thing. He adapted an old model, a plan which showed how the Russians might infiltrate and neutralize America. He modernized it. This attack was supposed to have been handled by the Devil himself. I don’t know who has the responsibility now.”

  “Wait? The roads? How the hell are they gonna do that?” Drake asked.

  “Not just roads. Bridges. Junctions. Pile ups. First major routes will be blocked, and then secondary ones.”

  “Maybe it won’t happen,” Kinimaka said. “I mean, you said it yourself. The Devil’s dead. So might be his plan.”

  “Don’t be a fool. The first part would not have been triggered if the subsequent five parts were not viable. This plot has been underway for years, decades even. It could have waited decades more. But the Scourge have enacted it and now it can’t be stopped.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Drake said. “What’s the third attack going to be?”

  “Wall Street,” Zuki said. “The finance and banking structure. The plan allows for some major cities—New York, Las Vegas and Washington for three—to be spared from all attacks at first. This makes it harder to close them down, to stop them running as normal, and heightens the sense of confusion. Do you see? Governments survive and depend on giving out very little real, truthful information. Have you ever seen a politician questioned? The proof is right there. It’s all about sidestepping, and the best in the world become leaders. Well, New York, Las Vegas and Washington are sidestepped at first just so their subsequent attacks will hit all the harder.”

  “And the fourth attack?” Dahl asked in a haunted voice.

  “An odd one,” Zuki said with an air of mystery. “And not in fitting with the rest of the attacks.”

  “What do you mean?” Bryant asked from his position at Mai’s side.

  “A theft. A very special, precise and difficult theft.”

  “Wait, wait,” Alicia said. “Am I the only one wondering why the Devil would entrust his great plan to this piece of rat shit? I mean, come on...”

  “The roadmap of attacks was entrusted to several failsafes. Both people and places,” Zuki said. “That is why, after the Devil was killed, they can still happen. The people? Well, a protégé of the Devil is one, named Selena Blade. A man named Spartak is another. And there’s Madame Davic. There are others that I don’t know.”

  “Whatever.” Alicia looked unhappy she couldn’t slap the woman. “Get on with it.”

  “Yes, as I said the fourth attack is puzzling. The Scourge want a particular collection of Fabergé eggs that the Americans kept in Las Vegas following a gang’s attempt to steal them. Though the property of a collector, and essentially belonging to an unnamed Russian, the Fabergé eggs were never returned and lie, to this day, in some casino vault.”

  Mai was reeling. “Are you kidding? If you’re kidding, you’ll be going back to Shin Kudo to be Yuna’s pet.”

  Alicia glanced at her. “Yuna?”

  “Later. Listen Zuki, we saved those eggs and caught the gang who tried to steal them. Are you saying this is another element of the plan that leads right back to the SPEAR team?”

  “I know nothing of that or the theft of the eggs. I’ve been in prison, remember? I know only that the Devil was tasked to regain this collection of Fabergé eggs and that he had a list of the best thieves in the business to complete the task. Only the very best. Infamous, he called them.”

  “I’ve known some good thieves in my time,” Drake said. “Who did the Devil chose?”

  Zuki screwed up her eyes. “As if I cared for their names. I do not need to know those people. But, like I said, the fourth attack is different and formulated, I believe, only to suit the personal aims of the Scourge.”

  “Right, right.” Hayden sounded like she was scribbling the information down in haste. “And the fifth attack?”

  “Properly back on track. The biggest yet. Power grids, water and gas facilities. Police headquarters. This will be the final attack on America’s civilization. After this occurs, you will see a breakdown of humanity. People reverting to their animal selves. It will be beautiful.” Zuki smiled and sat back in satisfaction. “Of course, we’re leaving the radio and television stations intact so that they can be effective and help spread our... message.”

  Mai wanted to hit her but, instead, asked the obvious question. “You said that there were six attacks, not five.”

  Zuki looked down. “Yes, six. But unfortunately, the Devil never fully disclosed the sixth attack. I know only that it involved all the royal families of the world. He died before he was able to elaborate. I have no real idea,” She looked at them with wary eyes.

  “Don’t try to screw us,” Hayden warned.

  “Shin Kudo would love to have you back,” Mai said.

  “You’re lying,” Alicia said.

  “You killed the Devil. You,” Zuki snarled at them. “Think about that. When you happily killed the Devil before he could reveal the final part of his plan you killed your best chance of stopping it.”

  Zuki smiled at them, all of them, eyeing one and then the other with an evil leer. She finished with her gaze settled on Mai. “You owe me my freedom.”

  “One minute,” Hayden said. “These plans. How can we stop them? Who’s responsible for putting them into action?”

  “I can only guess.” Zuki shrugged. �
��Madame Davic for the first.”

  “Yes, we know that one.”

  “The Devil’s successor, Selena Blade, for the second. Spartak for the third. I imagine this gang of thieves for the fourth. And the fifth... that’s definitely the Scourge themselves, putting the final nail into America’s coffin.”

  “And where would we find this Scourge?” Dahl asked.

  “You think they tell me that? Even I, of the secret upper classes, have no knowledge of their whereabouts. But I can tell you this... they are an old entity. Old and bitter and willing to burn everything you people hold dear.”

  Mai believed every word of what Zuki was saying. And now that they had prior knowledge of the coming attacks what could they do?

  Bryant put her thoughts into words. “So now we have this roadmap. We know when and, roughly, where they’re coming. The trouble is—you guys are ghosted, and Glacier is already being attacked by Lacey’s cohorts.”

  “We have a few contacts,” Hayden said, meaning the Assistant Director of the FBI, Mai thought. “And we have to be there. At the site of the attacks. We can help.”

  Zuki shook her head. “You fool yourselves. You are immaterial and cannot stop this. You are too insignificant.”

  “But we can try,” Hayden said. “That’s what we do. That’s what all soldiers do. We try until we’re dead and hope that maybe we’ll make a difference.”

  Mai dragged Zuki up out of her chair, turned her around and deliberately gave her a hard kick up the ass. Under the circumstances, it was the most undignified treatment she could think of. “Fuck off then, bitch. Go crawling back to your masters.”

  Zuki staggered, face hot with embarrassment and anger, but managed to control herself. “I need a phone.”

  “The only thing you’re getting is another kick up the arse,” Alicia growled, moving toward her.

  “Careful,” Mai warned. “She’s deadly.”

  Alicia slowed but kept going.

  Zuki backed away toward the deeper shadows where the exit door stood. Seconds later she was gone, rushing out into the night. Alicia wasn’t bothered. Zuki would simply run into Dai Hibiki and his colleagues, who had instructions to detain and question her further. The stakes were too high to simply let her go.

  Alicia turned and shrugged. “I really wanted to kick that royal brat up the arse,” she complained. “Well done, Mai. That’s the best thing I’ve seen you do in ten years.”

  “We haven’t been together for ten years.”

  “No, but I’ve known you for ten years. Which admittedly, is a prison sentence. Hopefully Zuki will fall and break her neck before she reaches civilization. We’re a long way from Tokyo.”

  Mai nodded with an optimistic expression.

  Hayden interrupted them, asking them to return to DC as soon as possible and then signed off to plan their next move.

  Mai met Alicia’s eyes and then Bryant’s. “This is going to get far worse before it gets any better.”

  “Just point me at the danger,” Alicia said. “I’ll give it my best.”

  They made ready to return to the theatre of war.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “The second attack,” Hayden said, “is huge. If we could stop that we could essentially nip this whole thing in the bud.”

  Drake listened as they talked, passing ideas back and forth. He’d been a soldier—on the side of the good guys—for as long as he could remember, and one of the hardest parts of all this was knowing that no matter how hard you tried, how much you put on the line, there was always another madman wanting to end your way of life. The innocent would always be harmed. Even the SPEAR team, that had done so much, couldn’t stop them all.

  “Infrastructure,” he said, “across the United States. Roads, bridges, and more. One thing stands out—the sheer manpower required to carry it all out.”

  “First,” Dahl said. “The planning has taken years. You either import these people a month at a time and give them a wage and a boss to report to, or you use the disenchanted who already reside inside the country. Maybe both. Rather than manpower, the big issue I can see is the vast expense.”

  “Which is why only one of these secret old royal families could pull it off,” Hayden said. “According to most, their wealth is endless. But you do bring up a good point. That kind of transfer of money every month for years on end would surely leave some kind of trail.”

  “I’ll get Karin searching for that.” Drake pulled out his phone and made the call. “Maybe she can get us a break.”

  “More urgently,” Kinimaka said. “How do we stop the second attack?”

  Drake took a seat. Following the attacks on the safehouse and Glacier’s headquarters, they had returned to and crowded inside their old office building, the place where their Strike Force missions had begun, the place that had been attacked by Luka Kovalenko and then forgotten about. It was dark, the room lit only by dim backup lamps, and cold. No generators had been switched on since that might alert any eagle-eyed analyst. The team had pulled up seven chairs and arranged them around their old kitchen table. Though familiar, their surroundings felt hostile, unsafe. Cam and Shaw were keeping watch.

  Kinimaka had already searched the place, coming up with a dozen boxes of earbud communications devices which they all pocketed. Other small, abandoned items like infra-red field glasses and military knives proved that the place had received only a cursory examination before being vacated.

  Dahl swigged from a bottle of water. “We have to take out the chief instigator. These teams, and there must be dozens spread out all over the country, need direction. A ringleader, if you like. And it must be computerized. There are too many parts for it not to be. If we could find that instigator...”

  “Well, we know he or she operated from Devil’s Junction,” Hayden said. “The place that was set up after Devil’s Island blew up. And that Sutherland was trying to locate it. Let me make a call.”

  Drake met Dahl’s eyes as Hayden spoke to the FBI assistant director, both of them too tense and anxious to make any kind of witticism. With the first attack still ongoing and the second looming on the horizon, it was almost physically painful to be standing here, doing nothing.

  “We’ve got something.” Hayden’s words lifted their spirits. “The FBI tracked old movements between that casino where we finished off the Devil and the Blood King and a relatively new setup in the desert. This setup consists of dozens of old buildings that, while neglected and abandoned on the outside, show movement between them and many new sets of tire tracks. Also, there’s a ton of electricity being used if the infra-red heat signatures are anything to go by.”

  “It’s in the right place,” Dahl said. “Is Sutherland sending a team?”

  “How can he?” Hayden shrugged. “He’s the Assistant Director of the FBI and he’s currently hiding in the back of a car he bought for three hundred dollars earlier today, armed with a bag of burner phones and a bucket of water to drop them into, making calls like this and texting me a new number every few hours. He’s looking for allies. Sutherland can’t trust anybody except us.”

  “Did he give you directions?” Drake asked.

  “Better, he gave me coordinates.” Hayden nodded. “We’d best call Bryant and find out the fastest mode of transport he has available. This all depends on us reaching Devil’s Junction before the second attack begins.”

  Drake turned to Dahl. “While she’s doing that, we could track down a few of those old CIA safe boxes and arm ourselves. They’re hidden all over America’s cities for emergency purposes and the codes are never changed.”

  Dahl rose fast, grateful for something to do. “Lead the way.”

  “I always do, mate. I always do.”

  *

  Hours later, during the fifth day, and with only hours remaining until the start of the sixth, the SPEAR team landed in Nevada on a dusty brown landing strip baking beneath a hot, early evening sun. The surrounding mountains glimmered with seemingly impossible hues—mints, b
right reds and greens. The team gathered around a knee-high mound of dry earth as the private jet rose into the sky trailing a plume of dust.

  “Clock’s against us.” Hayden checked her watch’s compass and set off toward the nearest set of rolling hills. Devil’s Junction lay about three miles distant, beyond those hills.

  The team wore a ragtag assortment of clothing, including Kevlar vests, which they’d managed to pull together from their old HQ and various CIA safe boxes stashed around Washington DC. They also carried a rough and untidy set of weapons. Both Drake and Dahl’s hopes were that they could relieve the guards ahead of some of their undoubtedly better weapons early in the fight.

  “We’re going in blind,” Hayden said as they jogged, picking up the pace. “We don’t even know if this is the right place. We have to find this Devil’s protégé, whatever she is, as soon as possible and neutralize them and everything she’s touching. Those protecting her are as guilty as the Scourge. We’re at kill or be killed, guys, and that repeats for the entire country. Whatever’s necessary...”

  Drake already knew it. He focused ahead, aware of the scorched earth around them and how it was a fitting metaphor for what they were doing, and what America might become if they failed. Right now, he wondered if the Devil had chosen this place deliberately long ago, just to drive home that very idea.

  The sun beat down hard as it made its way toward the horizon. On any normal mission, they would wait for darkness to fall.

  On this mission, they couldn’t wait even for a minute.

  Sweating, silent, the SPEAR team made their way through the arid Nevada desert. Cam and Shaw ranged to both sides. Kenzie pulled ahead, searching for any advance guard. Drake, Dahl, Hayden and Kinimaka made up the central wedge. They were of the mind that it had been months since the Devil was killed and any major surveillance should have been stood down.

  Ahead, Kenzie held up a hand. Drake slowed as he approached. The Israeli turned.

  “Clear right up to the ridge.” She pointed ahead. “The complex is on the other side.”