Theatre of War (Matt Drake 28) Tenth Anniversary Novel

by David Leadbeater

  It depicted the Romanovs themselves, sitting in that old ballroom around a century ago, the last of the Tsars executed by the shadow royals themselves.

  Now, in this ballroom, the six descendants of Anastasia and Alexei stopped what they were doing and stared at the interlopers, the SPEAR team.

  Drake trained his gun in their midst. “Down on the floor,” he said. “Hands behind your back. You fuckers are done.”

  The Romanov royals didn’t move, didn’t show fear, didn’t even blink as far as Drake could tell. They stood like statues, unfazed, and stared him down.

  Alicia, still embracing the harsh objective of kill or be killed, still mindful of Hayden and Kinimaka’s plight, still thinking of innocent American citizens, put a bullet in one of the older men’s legs.

  Which got them all moving.

  Drake ran forward, firing above their heads to scare and scatter them. Screams tore at the air, entirely from servants. Drake caught up with one of the younger male Romanovs and kicked him in the spine, sending him headfirst across the floor. Alicia leapt onto the back of another.

  Mai and Shaw swept the legs from under two women. Dahl and Cam barged into the final two.

  Drake hauled his man up to find himself staring into the face of a haughty, aristocratic male of about thirty. The disdain was right there in this man’s eyes which helped give Drake the pleasure of smashing two of his teeth down his throat.

  “You must have a control room,” he said. “Evidence. A center of operations. And you people, you Romanovs, wouldn’t allow anyone else to control what you do. I’m sure of that. So tell me now, or lose the rest of your pearly whites.”

  “It’s okay,” the oldest Romanov said. “They’ll find it anyway.” He nodded through a rear door. “It’s all through there.”

  “So you’re the Scourge,” Alicia spat. “We should shoot you all now and save the taxpayer a fortune.”

  “Then shoot us now,” the older man told her. “Do it. You must know it happened exactly this way before. This is a fitting end.”

  Drake shook his head at their fatalistic attitude. From the younger women to the older men, they were all nodding, accepting their fate. He was harshly reminded that people with nothing to lose were the most dangerous creatures on the planet.

  “Check the room.” He turned to Cam, Shaw and Kenzie. “In fact, check all the rooms.”

  They nodded and made a fast exit.

  Dahl ventured into the control room first, checking for traps. Seconds later, he reappeared. “It’s clear,” he said, “And you have to see this.”

  Drake helped to make sure the Romanovs were secured with zip ties and that the servants were exactly as they seemed, before walking across to the Swede.

  When the big man stepped aside, Drake whistled. “Whoa, now that’s a set up.”

  It was impressive. Banks of computer screens formed a wall-to-wall digital and data-based center of operations. Two enormous TV screens were divided into squares of twenty squares each, all showing different news channels.

  Social media platforms scrolled by on even more screens to left and right, controlled by the Scourge’s hundreds of different accounts and by computer programs. This was the hub of their attack, the center of hell, so to speak.

  Drake called Karin without wasting another second, showed her the room using the FaceTime app, and followed her instructions on the safest and quickest way to first stop the outflow of fake news to social media and then send this information and everything that was stored on the computer banks to the NSA. Through this, they were helping Hayden, Kinimaka and Sutherland and so many more Americans.

  Eventually, Drake wandered back out into the ballroom. Alicia and Mai were covering the six Romanovs who were sitting on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs.

  The Romanovs were tight-lipped, their eyes filled with hatred. They all stared fixedly ahead, and not a single one of them appeared defeated.

  Drake narrowed his eyes. He took a long look around the room. He glared at the Romanovs and then flicked a finger at Dahl.

  “What is it?” the Swede bent his head to Drake’s ear.

  “Have you ever seen a defeated enemy looking smug?”

  “Guess not.” Dahl flicked a glance at the six captives. “But what’s your point?”

  “My point? The Scourge planned this for decades. Now, I understand that we surprised them. I see how we neutralized their guards. But... check out their faces. If they weren’t sat in handcuffs, mate, I’d almost believe they’d won.”

  Dahl frowned. “I guess, in a way, they did. They crippled America. They installed a traitorous president. They may have killed other shadow royal families that we don’t yet know about.”

  “But it’s all over. They’re caught. Jailed for the rest of their lives. Would royals—these royals—accept such a dishonorable end?”

  Dahl blinked rapidly and turned to the Romanovs. “You’re ready to die?”

  The Romanovs sat smiling, their eyes unseeing. Perhaps this had always been their plan.

  The shrill ringing sound of Drake’s phone made his heart leap. Taking a deep breath, he plucked it out of his pocket. “Yeah?”

  “It’s Karin. I’ve already started trawling through all that data and it’s just as well I did. You have to get out of there right now!”

  “What? Why?”

  “There’s a program nestled inside the code. A program that resets every thirty minutes. If it’s not acted upon, acknowledged every half hour, it activates the biggest chain of explosives you’ve ever fucking seen.”

  Drake stared at the Romanovs. “They’re waiting,” he said. “Waiting to die.”

  “Get the fuck out of there!”

  Drake sprang into action, yelling out orders to everyone in sight. There was no telling how long it would be until the computer required a reset, and no hope whatsoever that the Romanovs would help them do it.

  “Whatever happens,” the older Romanov said. “This house will soon be reduced to less than nothing. Exactly like our enemies.”

  The yearning for vengeance shone through his words.

  Drake ignored him and made sure the servants were already heading out of the room, led by Cam. Then, with his team, he hauled the Romanovs to their feet and ran.

  There was something in the air, a kind of ozone that wafted across his nostrils, something primed and ready to ignite. Maybe it wasn’t really there, maybe it was his imagination, but the steely breath of electrical atmosphere clung to every surface, every statue. It was building too, and it came with a rising hum of energy.

  “What the hell is that?” Alicia cried out.

  Drake just put his head down and ran, dragging one of the middle-aged men along with him. Dahl had trouble with his captive but kicked the man until he complied.

  Alicia threatened to drag her charge along by the balls, and then demonstrated her intentions, which had a remarkably fast effect toward compliance. Mai and Kenzie pulled their female prisoners mostly by the hair.

  A wild, screeching, battling crowd, they ran headlong down a wide corridor toward the front door of the house. They knew nothing about the blast range, about the size of the explosives—only what Karin had screamed at them.

  They could have left the Scourge behind, but desperately wanted something to show for these dreadful days of war, out of this last-ditch mission. Even one living Scourge member might be made to save lives.

  The electrical voltage in the air increased. There was a sense of impending discharge, of terrible release. Drake ran faster, almost falling. Alicia was a step behind and then all the others. One mistake and they faced almost certain death.

  A deep, reverberating boom surged up from beneath the house. It was chased by countless others, each one rumbling like an earthquake that shook the ground.

  Drake reached the front doors and pushed them open. He hurried outside. More explosions shook the house’s foundations.

  As Drake raced away from the doors, lookin
g back, he saw the house’s entire façade slump. Glass shattered as if it had been shot from within. Brick and blocks cracked and slewed. The face of the vast house crumbled in on itself, the devastation accelerating as it continued.

  And not just that—the very ground they were running on fell away beneath their feet.

  The explosions continued. The paving, the stones and then the grass disappeared at their heels, dragging them down.

  First Kenzie stumbled, was caught by Dahl and hauled along, and then Mai staggered, collapsing to her knees.

  Alicia wrenched the Japanese woman to her feet, employing brute force and adrenalin, and heaving her along until her feet caught up.

  The great house collapsed a moment at a time, horrific, deep-rooted collisions of load-bearing walls and foundations and surging rubble crashing back up at the night with a sound like collapsing mountains.

  Massive mushroom clouds of dust plumed up and out, obliterating vision. The solid ground dropped away into an ever-expanding pit, a vast new crater that swallowed the house whole and chased Drake and his team across the grounds of Redheim Palace.

  Drake’s heart hammered in his chest. His legs were heavy, his energy at an end. They’d been sprinting, dragging their captives, for far too long, each person galvanizing their teammates, staying ahead of the flow of destruction by mere inches.

  All around his flying feet the soil erupted, the grass and stones overturned, the destruction kept pace with his every move.

  Dahl, Alicia and all the others were spread out in a long line to his left and right, staggering and struggling, staying alive by the second.

  The monster that was the house’s destruction pursued them at a manic pace, flinging clouds of dust and rubble at their backs that bruised and cut them.

  They didn’t falter. Didn’t give up. They were a team—unbreakable—and they ran as one.

  But in the end, Drake stumbled.

  The earth fell away underneath him. He hit the ground headfirst, stunned but still fully conscious, scraping at the broken ground with a hand. Beneath him, one of the Romanovs struggled. Looking left and right, he saw that his teammates had also succumbed to the expanding crater.

  All except Dahl.

  Git, Drake thought.

  Then he blinked and smiled as he realized the ground had stopped folding. He’d reached the extent of the demolition before falling and now lay at the very fringe of the great pit, the ground angling away behind him.

  Slowly, he dragged himself up. Dahl helped Kenzie, and then the team joined together to haul each other to safety. When Drake had a chance to look back toward the huge house they’d just vacated, the scene took his breath away.

  “You don’t see that every day.”

  What they could see through the swirling smoke was a rough, jagged crater perhaps a hundred feet deep and a vast hole filled with unrecognizable debris and mind-numbing wreckage.

  It took Drake’s breath away and sent him to his knees. “You people,” he said. “You people are pure evil.”

  Confident that his team stood around him, and that they were unhurt, he pressed a button to radio the chopper that still hovered high above.

  “Come get us,” he said. “We’re done.”

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  In the end, in the dire days that followed, America mourned its losses and the harsh reality that they’d believed in; that they’d accepted and followed a false leader, a traitorous president who sought only to destabilize and destroy the country.

  There was no easy return to normal life. Not for millions of Americans who’d had their world turned upside down. Not for the recently dead and their grieving relatives. Not for the police and other authorities who’d lost confidence in the government.

  And not for the seven Strike Force teams who had been ghosted and disavowed when President Lacey took office.

  Drake and the entire SPEAR team met, almost a week later, in Leicester Square, in the heart of London. It had been a long, hard slog in custody for Hayden and Kinimaka, but eventually the truth, the stern reality and Lacey’s backstory had emerged.

  Now, Drake sat on a bench, watching the flood of humanity flow by. Normality, it seemed, had resumed. The whole team were convalescing, still battered, bruised and reeling from the terrible events they’d witnessed. Not least of which was how quickly some parts of humanity had unraveled.

  But Alicia didn’t want them dwelling upon the miseries. She knew the only way forward was through high spirits and clear outlooks. Through hope and happy anticipation. Her first action was to show everyone her nose.

  “Perfect wouldn’t you say? Thanks to Cassidy Coleman and her relic hunter friends. Told you I didn’t need to get it fixed.”

  Mai raised an eyebrow. “Really? You looked like an old boxer for about three months there.”

  “That bad?” Alicia frowned.

  “Oh yeah. I’ve got pictures.

  “You’d better not have. If you ever show them, I’ll end you.”

  A helicopter drifted overhead, the emblem of a news channel plastered across its side. Drake punched Dahl on the arm when he caught the Swede staring at it.

  “Leave it alone,” he said. “You can’t fight them all.”

  Dahl grinned. Cam and Shaw laughed. The sun beat down onto the square and bathed them in balmy, healing rays. Drake squinted his eyes and looked up at it, reveling in the calm evoked within him.

  Hayden and Kinimaka were seated to his left side. The big Hawaiian kept staring over his left shoulder as if making sure something hadn’t decided to move.

  “Don’t worry, Mano,” Kenzie said. “The new Hard Rock will still be there in half an hour.”

  Hayden looked content, just taking in the atmosphere. London was hectic and industrious and often demanding, but it offered a peaceful haven at the center of the storm. Hayden closed her eyes, breathing in the harmony.

  “Zuki behind bars,” Mai said. “Again. The Scourge under lock and key in some off-the-books black site. Five of the eight militia groups that aided them taken out. And all their plans, contacts and activities recorded on computer. It’s the best end we could have hoped for.”

  “Enjoy it,” Drake said, sitting back. “We deserve it. We deserve this moment in time, after fighting for so many years. We’ve earned it.”

  “But what’s next?” Alicia asked, always looking forward. “A new president. A new agenda. The special forces teams re-engaged maybe. And no obvious enemies out there in the world. No Blood King. No Devil. No Zuki or Scourge or any of the others. It’s like... a new beginning.”

  “Here’s to us,” Drake said, raising his half-empty bottle of water. “And to what lies ahead.”

  “The best,” Dahl put in. “The best of our days lies in the future we make.”

  The bright day passed over Leicester Square, the burdened souls made lighter for a while, their troubles washed away. There was no darkness, no shadow, only potential, weeks and months ahead made better for all people by the sacrifices they made, by the way they ran into conflict rather than away from it, and by the way they held duty foremost in their hearts.

  Nobody walking past them, who saw them, who smiled at their contentment, knew just what they’d done or how much they’d sacrificed. And the SPEAR team were good with that.

  THE END

  Please read on for an update to the Matt Drake world.

  I hope you enjoyed reading this tenth anniversary story as much as I enjoyed writing it. A celebration of ten years of Matt Drake. Many threads came together for the main story and the big scenes and, of course, there was the long-awaited meeting with the Relic Hunters. Drake, Alicia, Dahl and co. have now been working together and getting into trouble for a decade and I want to take this opportunity to thank all my readers, old and new, who have made this possible with your continued encouragement, reviews and support.

  Next up, it’s the second part of the Relic Hunter adventure centered around the Illuminati which is slated for an early September
release.

  If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review!

  If you would like to be kept up to date with new releases from David Leadbeater, please complete a contact form by clicking below:

  Other Books by David Leadbeater:

  The Matt Drake Series

  A constantly evolving, action-packed romp based in the escapist action-adventure genre:

  The Bones of Odin (Matt Drake #1)

  The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake #2)

  The Gates of Hell (Matt Drake 3)

  The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake #4)

  Brothers in Arms (Matt Drake #5)

  The Swords of Babylon (Matt Drake #6)

  Blood Vengeance (Matt Drake #7)

  Last Man Standing (Matt Drake #8)

  The Plagues of Pandora (Matt Drake #9)

  The Lost Kingdom (Matt Drake #10)

  The Ghost Ships of Arizona (Matt Drake #11)

  The Last Bazaar (Matt Drake #12)

  The Edge of Armageddon (Matt Drake #13)

  The Treasures of Saint Germain (Matt Drake #14)

  Inca Kings (Matt Drake #15)

  The Four Corners of the Earth (Matt Drake #16)

  The Seven Seals of Egypt (Matt Drake #17)

  Weapons of the Gods (Matt Drake #18)

  The Blood King Legacy (Matt Drake #19)

  Devil’s Island (Matt Drake #20)

  The Fabergé Heist (Matt Drake #21)

  Four Sacred Treasures (Matt Drake #22)

  The Sea Rats (Matt Drake #23)

  Blood King Takedown (Matt Drake #24)

  Devil’s Junction (Matt Drake #25)

  Voodoo soldiers (Matt Drake #26)

  The Carnival of Curiosities (Matt Drake #27)

  The Alicia Myles Series