Dallas opened the sarcophagus, which was standing upright. A collection of guns, ammo and grenades slithered out. One of the grenades rolled right past Dallas and struck Kenzie’s boot before it stopped, making her wince.
“What did I say? Careful.”
“Was hardly my fault.” Dallas nodded at the plane. “There should be another eight sarcophagi on there.”
“Let’s check.”
The task force’s team leader, a man called Duke, was calling everyone together, ready to assault the rear of the plane. Inside were at least four guards and a pilot, but nobody was sure of the greeting they would get. Kenzie fell in behind three other men, Dallas at her side. She found herself thinking about their relationship, which was a strange one.
Dallas liked her and wanted more. He never once tried to hide or deny it. She respected him for that. But no matter how hard she tried, she was still hooked up on the mad Swede. The problem was, she believed Dahl and his wife, Johanna, would split. It was just a matter of time. And she wanted to be there for him. She knew he liked her. But back to Dallas, and his vibrant, humorous, occasionally geeky personality, and she wondered why the hell she didn’t give it a go.
The old Kenzie would have. Several times by now.
What the hell has happened to me?
Duke ran around the rear of the plane, gun positioned comfortably in his shoulder. Shots rang out. Kenzie’s team rallied around Duke, firing into the back of the plane. Screams and shouts emerged.
Kenzie came up just as a huge, bald man with a white beard leapt out of the plane, a knife in each hand, bellowing and leaking blood from a bullet wound to the right bicep.
He smashed down hard into one of her teammates, crushing him to the floor. The impact was hard, stunning both men, but the massive brute recovered first. Kenzie saw him slide the knife through her colleague’s ribcage a second before she hit him, barging him away.
He rolled and came up slashing with both knives, filled with bloodlust and probably some high-grade heroin judging by the wild glare in his eyes. Kenzie caught the first knife on the barrel of her gun, deflecting it. The second knife swung in from her right, which she stepped inside of.
Now she was nose to nose with the big man.
His yelling filled the space around them. His teeth were bared and grinding so loud she heard them over the chaos. She headbutted him, but the helmet she wore spoiled the blow, only serving to confuse him.
Bullets rifled his frame from the side, making him jerk. Kenzie stepped back, pulled her handgun, and shot him between the eyes.
She dropped down beside the man who’d been knifed.
“Cole,” she leaned over. “Cole, hang in there.”
He was coughing, white-faced. Blood pooled across the floor. Kenzie removed his jacket whilst another man readied a field dressing. Within seconds they had him bandaged, but he didn’t look good. Duke, Dallas and the others climbed aboard the plane and made sure it was safe before jumping back out.
“Evac,” Duke said. “Right now.”
“He needs medevac,” Kenzie said.
“He’ll get it as soon as we’re out of here.”
Backup was on its way, waiting to secure the whole area. The task force’s job was only to make it safe.
Kenzie had seen this process work before. They hefted Cole and exfilled, jogging for eight minutes before reaching their vehicles and checking on the medevac team. It was three minutes out. Cole would be fine.
Kenzie sat with her back to one of the truck’s big wheels, checking her weapons, armor and communications equipment. On one previous occasion, they’d gone straight from one op to the next, with no time to prep. She wouldn’t be caught out like that again.
She missed the old team. She missed the camaraderie. The liveliness between Alicia and Mai. The banter between Drake and Dahl. And all the others. She wished this was their op now, and that they were here. When she joined the elite task force she’d called Hayden and the others out of courtesy, in case she couldn’t join some of the future ops. To a person, the team had been shocked. They hadn’t believed she was working on the right side of the law and had treble-checked everything.
“I think I’d know if I was working for a false flag organization,” she’d told them, meaning some criminal organization purporting to be a government agency. Also, she’d floated the possibility that her new team might be able to offer her old team a few jobs, every now and again. The response had been positive.
Dahl had sounded the most concerned. Six weeks ago, he’d even flown out to check on what the elite team were doing. It was a subdued reunion, marred by the fact that they hadn’t kept in touch. She didn’t know where he stood in his life, and he wasn’t sure about hers. They broke the ice over beers and then went on a mission together. Dahl had been a welcome addition to the group. She remembered with fondness one of their conversations.
“Want me to take out that tank?” he’d asked Duke.
“That’s a working tank,” Duke had replied with incredulity. “Not a reproduction. And it’s filled with enemy soldiers.”
Dahl had looked confused. “I know.”
“You want to take out a tank by yourself?”
“That’s what I do.”
The mad Swede had proceeded to do just that, reveling in the action, backed up by three men and Kenzie. After that they’d drawn close again, pulled together by the battle heat and the wind-down before Dahl remembered that he had to go home and resume normality.
“Ball and chain still dragging you down?”
“She’s not the bad guy here. I guess we all are. Well, I am. The ones that come off worse are the kids.”
“If it’s not right, they’ll get hurt anyway.”
Dahl stared at her. “Did you read that on a cereal box?”
“Hey, I’ve lived too. I know the harsh reality of a failed relationship. Nobody wins. Everyone loses.”
“Well, nobody’s lost yet.”
Dahl returned to Washington, once again vowing to patch up his marriage and do his best for the children. Kenzie hadn’t heard from him since.
Now, as Cole was treated by the medevac team and Dallas drank from a fresh bottle of water, Kenzie reflected on everything that had happened since the SPEAR team disbanded. It hadn’t helped her, but it had been necessary. The trouble was, you couldn’t just say “I’m gonna spend three months dealing with all the bad shit and then I’ll be fine.” You couldn’t exorcise your demons on demand. It took time, and it took work. As far as she knew the others were all doing well. Maybe it was time to check in with them.
At that moment, her cellphone rang. Before she even looked at the screen Kenzie knew exactly what it would say:
Strike Force One.
It was the number Hayden had set up for when she needed to call them all together. It was a new mission. Kenzie felt her heart lift and a surge of excitement rush through her.
About bloody time.
CHAPTER FOUR
Hayden and Kinimaka traveled a lot. They started in northern England, visiting Manchester, Harrogate, York and Leeds. The weather wasn’t good, but they stayed indoors or used umbrellas or spent entire days in cinemas, watching the latest releases and catching up on old ones. Hayden found comfort in the dark anonymity of a movie theatre. In there, in the dark, where the big screen filled everyone’s senses, you didn’t have to be anyone. You didn’t have to try. Or fight. Or run. Or worry. You could escape.
They drove a lot too. The scenery was often obscured by drizzle, by cloud and fog, but sometimes, they chanced upon bright scenes of natural beauty, found a place to stop, and ate sandwiches and drank coffee, observing the landscape.
It was a getaway. A wind down. Just two people comfortable in each other’s company clearing the last few years of chaos from their hearts and souls. Trying to find a way to live with it. They both knew it would take years rather than months, but it was a start.
At nights they found a hotel or a bed and breakfast, took heavy
rucksacks up to their rooms and enjoyed some alone time. They both commented how strange it felt. They both found it hard to engage in small talk, not knowing how to properly respond to an idle observation. The immediacy of the chase had been replaced by a lethargy of inactivity.
One night, after two weeks, Kinimaka joined Hayden in her room and they spent hours talking. It was like old times. It wasn’t awkward, all the bad was behind them. The next night they spent in one bed, catching up a different way.
“Has there been anyone since me?” Kinimaka asked the next morning.
“Are you kidding? I’ve been racing around the world with you.” She frowned a little. “Why? Has there been with you?”
“Oh yeah.” Mano smiled. “I’ve fallen for many women. But only by tripping over them.”
Hayden laughed and tried to roll him onto his back. Her legs were already trying to straddle him when he said, “Do you think there’s any future in a relationship like ours?”
Hayden stopped, surprised. “What does that mean?”
“This R&R time is fleeting. It’s transient. Soon, we’ll be running off again somewhere. In battle. Maybe beaten and tortured. Maybe fighting for our friends like on Devil’s Island. The Blood King and the Devil are still out there.”
Hayden raised an eyebrow. “So, what do you mean?”
“I guess I’m trying to warn you that we’ll never be able to leave the soldier’s life.”
“Would you want to? Work a steady job? Commute? Trade comfort and safety for living on the edge? For that feeling of exhilaration that comes with every single mission?”
“No,” Mano admitted. “But I don’t want to lose you again.”
Hayden nodded. She agreed to a point, but also felt a little crowded by his depth of emotion. She’d joined the CIA and then SPEAR to help those that couldn’t help themselves, to serve, to protect every civilian around the world that struggled to work and provide for their children and pay crippling government taxes that were mostly squandered. She’d joined to help.
“New team,” she said. “New life. New missions and new battles. Let’s see how it goes first.”
Kinimaka nodded and then pulled her on top of him. Unfortunately, he pulled too hard and sent her flying off the side of the bed. Hayden landed with a grunt and two new bruises.
“Shit,” she said. “Who needs to fight bad guys when I’ve got you?”
They continued their tour of England, heading south, stopping on the outskirts of Milton Keynes that night in a large hotel. Hayden took her laptop with them to dinner and made her daily assessment of the new Strike Force initiative. In addition to the always available Internet HQ, there was a red-alert signal that could be sent to their phones if something imminent and terrible happened. Hayden logged into a secure website that was still in the early days of planning.
“A virtual HQ.” Kinimaka shook his head. “All those years of trying to find the right headquarters and we end up using a friggin’ laptop.”
“It’s clever.” Hayden spun the machine half toward him. “See . . . the inter-agency chatter comes up here.” She pointed at several lines of scrolling communications where questions were asked, replied to, and information was shared. “This is the alerts page.” She tapped an icon. “It goes blue if there’s a new one, green it’s been taken, or red if it hasn’t. See? There are two new ones now.”
“But what if nobody takes them?” Mano asked.
“It doesn’t work like that. Other teams are already responding. Units like SWAT, SEALS or Special Ops, depending on the situation. The Strike Force teams are backup until they arrive; then they assume control. In any case, if we have to attend, we get a mobile alert.” She opened information regarding the two new missions as Kinimaka looked on.
“A rumble in the jungle in the Amazon,” she said. “A European archaeological expedition has been kidnapped by . . . well, they’re guessing some drug lord or other. Then there’s a Russian oligarch hitting a Syrian oil pipeline. Putin’s denying everything, naturally, so the people that really run his country can get richer.” She frowned. “I mean what can ten billion buy you that eight billion can’t? What drives these people?”
“An extra large yacht?” Kinimaka suggested. “A new hotel? A small country? Who knows?”
Hayden watched the feed for a while, ordering her mains as she waited. “The British are all over the pipeline,” she said. “And Trent is covering the Amazon mission. Remember him?”
Kinimaka frowned in surprise. “Trent, Radford and Silk? The disavowed guys? They’re part of a Strike Force team now?”
“Yeah, our opposite number actually. They work from the west coast. It’s a big team, eighteen strong, so I guess they rotate regularly. Maybe we’ll come across them again one day.”
“Hope so.” Kinimaka looked up eagerly as his meal arrived. Hayden closed the laptop, knowing there’d be no interest from him now until the food was eaten.
Later, she told Kinimaka that all the information placed on the Internet HQ came from a man they were calling the Strike Force coordinator. His codename was G, and nobody knew why. During their months apart, Hayden spoke often to Drake and Dahl, and also to Mai and Luther. They didn’t meet, purely because they were traveling so extensively, but heard about other team meetings at far-flung places of the globe.
In the first month, Mai and Luther met Molokai in Hong Kong. It was quick, but it was comforting, they said. Catching up set them at ease and showed that everyone else was feeling the same way as they were, which was slightly lost.
In the second month, Dahl joined Karin and Dino, and later Kenzie, over in the Middle East. Both meetings were good, fruitful. Dahl reported that all members of the team were still very much in shape and eager to jump into new missions. Dahl himself seemed quiet to Hayden, even over the phone. The Swede had a lot on his mind.
“This Strike Force coordinator,” Kinimaka said, one rainy day in England. “What does he do exactly?”
“He’s a go-between for several different agencies, national and international. CIA. FBI. Interpol. MI6. Trusted contacts. He gets up to the minute information. He has a vital job on his hands.”
“And he knows an awful lot,” Kinimaka stated.
“I guess so.” Hayden nodded. “Are you saying he could become compromised?”
Kinimaka shrugged. “It’s something to bear in mind with everything we know about the Blood King.”
As their vacation drew to a close, they decided to head back to DC to find a place to live. The excitement of apartment hunting preoccupied them for a while. They spoke to Drake and also to Kono, Mano’s sister, who was now living just a half-hour drive from them. It didn’t occur to Kinimaka to arrange a meeting until Hayden prompted him, but once he organized it, they lunched at the Hard Rock together and found out Kono was expecting a baby to her new husband—a man called Hanini, or Han for short, which according to Kinimaka meant “to pour down like rain” in Hawaiian.
“Not sure about the name,” Mano said. “But I’ll love the baby. Congrats, sis!”
Hayden found it all so incredibly atypical for her. This was actual life, real people building a present and a future. This was what she protected, and it was great to see and hear it working first hand.
Still, she wanted more.
“I think we should go back to Hawaii,” Kinimaka said. “Just for a short time, and not necessarily alone. I’d love to go with the team.”
“Agreed.” Hayden had a soft spot for Mano’s homeland and loved the atmosphere of the Pacific state.
They settled into their new apartment, bought furniture, even looked at the possibilities of cooking food. Kinimaka was predictably great at it; Hayden not so good.
But she always reminded herself that, whether they were burning food or ordering takeaway, they weren’t being shot at or chasing the worst kind of human detritus.
After Mano’s latest creation in the kitchen, a scoop of rice, some chicken laulau, a helping of poi and coconut cream p
udding for dessert, Hayden settled back with a glass of wine in her hand, flipped up the laptop and checked that day’s reports.
And found the new mission.
CHAPTER FIVE
Torsten Dahl knew the end was coming. The kids loved having him home, but Johanna didn’t. She’d seen too much, experienced too much of his world, and couldn’t understand why he chose to remain there.
“He was behind me,” she said late one night. “He touched me. He could have murdered me, and the kids, and I wouldn’t have known anything about it. I can’t live with that failure, that incompetence. I have to believe that I can at least try to save my kids if someone threatens them.”
She was talking about the world’s most ruthless and brilliant contract killer. A man known as the Devil. It seemed Luka Kovalenko—the new Blood King—had put out a contract on Dahl’s family which the Devil had initially taken on. It was only later, after the Blood King tried to erase the Devil in nuclear fire, that the contract killer changed his mind. Still, he’d come horrifically close.
“Why would you choose a life that can come back and threaten your family?” Johanna asked.
She didn’t understand then and she never would. He’d tried many times to explain his calling, his passion, the natural abilities that suited a soldier’s lifestyle. He’d tried to explain that he didn’t love her any less. He couldn’t explain the trauma of battle in the same way he couldn’t explain the unease he felt when walking around a shopping mall.
He felt far more comfortable stalking through an enemy encampment.
“It’s not a choice,” he said, “when you can’t do anything else.”
That made her frustrated and angry. But he didn’t mean he was incapable of doing anything else. He meant being a soldier was his one vocation.
“Can you promise me nothing like that will ever happen again?”
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