The Blood King Takedown

by David Leadbeater

  His call went straight through to Strike Force HQ.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hours later, Dahl converged on another hotel. This time though, he was back in the United States and the hotel room purportedly held an unknown number of deadly enemies and one devastating weapon.

  Dahl had never visited Philadelphia before. He never imagined he’d visit under these circumstances. Kenzie and Kinimaka had made the journey with him as the other members of the team closed in on the other two bomb sites.

  Dahl wiped sweat from his brow. “Approaching hotel,” he breathed into the mic.

  Kinimaka and Kenzie were beside him in the back of the SWAT van, the quickest and most accessible vehicle they had been able to find after landing at a private airport just fifteen minutes ago. Alongside them were six very capable looking SWAT officers.

  Behind them were two vans loaded with more armed men.

  Behind them was a fleet of police cars, taking up all lanes. Every single one carried trained firearms or bomb disposal experts.

  Nobody wanted to hit this particular nuke with a sledge hammer.

  Dahl didn’t smile at the memory of how he’d disarmed a nuclear bomb not so long ago in New York. It wasn’t his fondest memory. Instead, as the vital convoy came to within ten blocks of the target hotel and went silent, he dwelled on the last few hours of his life.

  It had been a wild ride to Bruges and then all the way back. They’d flown in the fastest jet the CIA had been able to offer, at President Coburn’s command. The flight back had been a flurry of phone calls between the Strike Force HQ, the entire team, the president’s office and several highly ranked generals. The threat was live, it was the Blood King, and it was serious.

  Dahl didn’t say it out loud but wished the rest of the Strike Force team the best of luck. They too had split up, rushing off to Chicago and Washington DC to spearhead the assaults on the other addresses Grigori had given them.

  “Four minutes out,” Kinimaka said.

  Their driver slowed. They couldn’t allow their targets to know they were closing in. Intel had identified a large parking lot two blocks east of the hotel where all the vehicles could be left out of sight. This mission would be the complex, perfect combination of pure stealth and brute force.

  The SWAT van swung into the parking lot and pulled up. Dahl threw open the door and jumped out into a miserable, steady drizzle. Lighting was poor and gray, the skies overcast and hanging low. Boots hit the ground at his back, splashing in puddles, as Kinimaka and Kenzie leapt out. The sizeable assault force was connected by a comms system.

  “No movement at the front,” a spotter informed them.

  “Nothing at the back either,” another said.

  “Only people that have been in and out since we arrived have been stopped, vetted and detained,” a man said. “They all check out.”

  Dahl looked up. Three- and four-story brick buildings stood all around, their facades slick with water. Windows cracked open and curtains twitched. Police cars were still entering the lot.

  “We have to go,” Dahl said. “In less than thirty seconds, we’re gonna be all over social media.”

  With limited time and access, they had still been able to determine that nobody of interest had been seen around the building since Grigori’s revelations. That led them to believe the Blood King’s men were still inside. The bomb, or at least the means of detonation, should also be inside. The beauty of Grigori’s betrayal was that nobody—not even Luka Kovalenko—knew the first thing about it.

  Dahl settled his MP5 to his shoulder and moved out at a fast pace. He wore the body armor, helmet and eyewear of the Special Weapons and Tactics team. Together, they carried ballistic shields, stun grenades, tear gas, flash bangs and battering rams inside their clothing and attached to special webbing on the outside. Dahl knew they were all highly trained men, but he didn’t need that knowledge. From years of experience he could sense Kenzie and Kinimaka at his back even though he couldn’t see them; he could feel their movement; knew where they would be at every moment. That was experience you couldn’t teach, something anyone outside a Special Forces team could never understand. If you fought and died and saved each other’s lives for long enough you developed an almost psychic link to your colleague.

  They passed down a narrow alley, leaping piles of garbage and squeezing past rusting dumpsters. Dahl was conscious that it would have made the perfect ambush point, but nothing happened. Soon, they were at the main street leading to the front door of the hotel. Cars and vans splashed along out front; people wandered along the sidewalk under umbrellas and hoodies. Whatever happened next wouldn’t change their fates.

  Dahl hugged the shops, hotels and houses that fronted the street, staying as close to their facades as possible. He passed a Chinese takeaway, a laundry and a family-owned bookshop. He checked back once, saw a stream of armed men and women wearing helmets and carrying guns, and drew a deep breath.

  They were here.

  The hotel entrance stood at the top of three steps to his right. Dahl barged through the smoked glass door, Kenzie a step behind. The desk clerk looked up in alarm. Dahl pressed a finger to his own lips in warning, but the clerk opened his mouth to challenge them. Kenzie stepped from behind Dahl and aimed her gun between his eyes.

  “Shut the fuck up, idiot.”

  The desk clerk froze, arms coming up. Dahl ran past him and aimed for a set of stairs to the right of the front desk. The carpets were mottled red and black, threadbare. Dahl rushed up two flights and paused. The room they were targeting was on the top floor. As he’d climbed, Dahl had been careful to look out for infra-red warning alarms or booby traps. He’d come across none.

  Now, he stepped onto the top landing and checked the corridor. Nothing moved. The passage was clear. He took a moment to gather himself.

  “Ready for final assault?” he said into the comms.

  Nobody vetoed the question. Dahl set himself once more and pushed out into the corridor. Three doors stood between him and the one behind which the Blood King’s men were plotting carnage. Dahl advanced in total silence, barely breathing. Before the door, he paused to allow a man with a battering ram to come past. That man positioned himself and then swung the device hard at the door, splintering it and smashing it back into the apartment.

  Dahl ran in less than a second later.

  It was a small bedroom with a dresser, a table and a bed. Five men were inside, in varying states of shock. Some were bare chested, others wearing shorts and tops. One was drinking out of a can, another cleaning a gun. One man was sitting at the top of the bed, tapping away on a laptop.

  Dahl trained his sights on him. “Don’t move!”

  He edged further inside, allowing others to follow. As he did so, the room exploded into violence. The man with the laptop lifted his arms and threw the device at Dahl. The other four antagonists dived and ran for weapons. Dahl and his colleagues could have opened fire, but they needed these men alive. Nuclear threat required they should be interrogated. Inside information was essential.

  Dahl ignored the laptop, letting it bounce off his shoulder, and closed in on the seated man, who produced a knife. He rolled to his knees and lashed out. Dahl didn’t have to move; just caught the knife on his body armor and smashed his opponent in the face with his gun. The man sprawled backward, groaning. The knife fell away. A wide, tall window in front of Dahl let in plenty of light, revealing a good view of the city. Dahl jumped on top of the man, tied his arms and legs with flexi-cuffs, and spun around.

  Kenzie was standing over one fallen opponent; Kinimaka another. The rest were struggling, fighting to reach weapons even as the SWAT officers pointed guns at them. Dahl saw intense desperation in these men.

  “Stop!” one SWAT leader shouted, bewildered.

  “Better to die here,” one man muttered, “than in prison, at his command.”

  “The device,” Dahl said.

  Men were already looking for it. Kinimaka was on his knees
, checking under the bed. The man Dahl had subdued was just sitting there, eyeing him with an evil leer.

  Why?

  A SWAT officer opened the room’s only cupboard door. Dahl turned in warning but it was already too late. An explosion shook the walls and destroyed the cupboard door, blasting outward, taking the SWAT guy off his feet and slamming him into the far window.

  Dahl, struck by the blast, felt the world turn upside down as he was thrown from the bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dahl hit the floor and rolled into the far wall. The man he’d cuffed earlier was in the way, breaking his fall. It had been a small explosion, not enough to kill a man but enough to render him unconscious.

  A bomb protecting a nuclear device wasn’t going to be too powerful.

  Dahl shook his head and reached out for the SWAT officer who’d been thrown against the window. His nose and forehead were bloodied but he was otherwise okay, blinking and trying to stand. Dahl steadied him with a gloved hand then rose to his feet.

  He looked over to the cupboard.

  It was blown apart, its remains jagged splinters of wood like protruding teeth, and chunks of hanging plaster. A white dust drifted through the room. Two SWAT officers had been hit in the back with flying debris but had only suffered some slight bruising.

  Dahl focused on what lay amid the debris.

  A rucksack, black, strong, and fastened. Large enough to contain one of the mini-nukes that the Blood King had forced the scientists to make. It lay in front of Dahl’s eyes like a crouching predator, something horrible waiting to strike.

  “Bomb tech,” someone shouted, and a man stepped forward.

  “Check for booby traps first,” Kenzie said.

  The man nodded and knelt amid the shattered remains of the cupboard. Dahl climbed to his feet, threw his HK over his shoulder, and walked across the bed to assist.

  From behind Dahl came a new noise, a deep, thudding, booming noise that he recognized. The hotel’s windows rattled; the meagre sunlight trying to pierce the overcast was blocked out. Dahl spun and yelled out a warning.

  “Down!”

  An attack chopper hung about fifty feet away outside the window, a black, menacing, predatorial shape that threw spikes of fear through Dahl’s body. The Swede flung himself headlong, clean across the bed, and landed amidst the carnage of what was left of the cupboard, just as the attack chopper fired.

  It was like being inside an industrial grater. Dahl saw glass, plaster and block work shredded and come spearing through the room, some smashing out the other side and into the corridor. Bullets scythed through the air, thudding into brick and block, shattering the masonry until it was pulverized or fell away to the street below. The outer walls held, but the inner ones crumbled, bringing part of the ceiling down. Dahl lost sight of both Kenzie and Kinimaka in the madness. When the stream of bullets shifted away from his position, he raised a wary head.

  The chopper was drifting closer, he guessed hanging just thirty feet away in mid-air. Through the smoked glass cockpit he could see two pilots wearing helmets, aiming the guns from left to right and back again. They were using the right wing’s machine guns. Everyone inside the room was pinned down, unable to even crawl to safety. Dahl could see two dead SWAT officers.

  He ducked low and reached for the black rucksack.

  “Find out if this is what we came for,” he urged the bomb tech lying beside him. “Find out now.”

  Dahl spoke into the comms. “Bastard can’t hang out there forever, firing at this rate. Get ready.”

  Several affirmations came back. Most of these men and women already knew and were waiting for the stream of lead to let up. Dahl could see the shadow of the hanging, deadly bird on the jagged remains of the back wall as the sun pierced the clouds behind it. The cloud of dust that thickened the air was so dense men were choking on it. One of the terrorists had been crushed alive by falling masonry, his limbs askew, his eyes bulging as the pain became unbearable.

  Dahl leapt upright as the barrage from outside stopped, and unleashed a volley of his own. Three others joined him. Their bullets peppered the chopper’s body, its cockpit and nose but made little impact. The pilots didn’t flinch.

  They were swinging the bird around so they could make better use of the left wing’s machine guns.

  Dahl saw they had seconds to spare before the next assault.

  The bomb tech chose that moment to yell: “We got the nuke!”

  Dahl assessed the situation and saw nothing good coming in the next few minutes.

  Unless someone changed the rules.

  The mad adrenaline charge filled him. He could do this. End this situation. It was just going to take a massive set of balls and a strong dose of insanity.

  The mad Swede leaped over the bed, crashed through what little remained of the window and landed boots first on the room’s tiny outdoor balcony. The chopper was a massive, overbearing black beast hovering right before him, a monster prepared to kill. Dahl didn’t stop running. A man could jump approximately ten feet with a run up. Dahl made the jump, leaping out over the balcony, through the air above the street, and landed chest first on the bulbous front nose of the attack chopper, gripping hard with gloved fingers. Roaring engine noise filled his senses. The pilots started visibly, staring at each other in disbelief before making any evasive maneuvers.

  This gave Dahl his chance.

  Still holding on with his right hand he unclipped a grenade from his webbing and threw it into one of the chopper’s side-mounted Rolls Royce engines. He’d expected the pilot to dip the chopper’s nose in an effort to flip him off and that action came now. Dahl clung on with mad strength as the aircraft swung down and to his left, counting out the seconds. The chopper veered in mid-air, rotating down and then around on itself. Dahl watched for the upcoming concrete and jumped off when the chopper was at its lowest, hitting the sidewalk hard and allowing his knees to buckle. The SWAT gear saved him from serious injury, the thick vest and bulletproof helmet taking the brunt of the impact, making his head and bones ring and vibrate.

  The chopper fared differently.

  Still bucking up in the air, coming out of its evasive maneuver, its pilots saw that they had dislodged the attacker and steadied for a moment, facing away from the hotel. Dahl punched the comms button to warn everyone above but in the next half second the helicopter exploded, fire bursting out of it and shooting up at the sky. For a moment the day was as brightly lit as summer, and then the wreckage rained down in large, lethal chunks.

  Dahl, staring up, managed to roll out of the way of the nose as it smashed into the road. He saw rotors slicing upward and then plummeting down; a huge twisted chunk of metal and glass crashed down in a fiery heap. Intense heat shot out at him. Dahl rolled away, jabbing again at the comms.

  “Get the hell out of there.”

  “You’re fucking insane!” the SWAT commander came back.

  “Apparently,” Dahl said. “But I’m not the one stuck in a burning room with a nuclear weapon.”

  The comms went silent. Two minutes later he saw a string of figures surging out of the hotel and into the street. He rose and ran over, nodding at several admiring eyes and looking for Kenzie and Kinimaka. They emerged with the bomb tech carrying the black rucksack.

  “We got two of the fuckers alive,” Kenzie said, her eyes bright. “That one back there, laptop guy, said the bomb was about to be transferred to Independence Hall near the Liberty Bell to be detonated in a couple of hours. Which means . . . Grigori’s information checks out.”

  Dahl nodded. “We have to pray the others made it in time.”

  With three operations ongoing, nobody knew how the other teams were faring, and calling them at any time might impede their progress. All they could do was liaise through the Strike Force HQ.

  “First time we’ve really needed the HQ,” Dahl pointed out. “But it seems to be holding up.”

  “Are you hurt?” Kinimaka asked him. “After all, you did just a
ttack and kill an Apache attack helicopter.”

  Dahl raised his eyebrows at that. “Thanks, Mano,” he said. “I didn’t realize until you just said it. That’s a sub and a chopper in about a week. Let’s see if that Yorkshire pussy can top that.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Matt Drake would never admit it out loud, but he was feeling more anxious and apprehensive than he could ever remember.

  First, Alicia was back after her recent short mission with the Gold Team. The blonde hadn’t been away long, but Drake had missed her, and he’d been worried about her. Hearing about some of her crazy exploits whilst searching for the Manila galleons hadn’t exactly quelled his uneasiness.

  Second, she was all pumped up, raring to go. Drake was reminded of Mai’s nickname for her—Taz—which described her down to a T about now. She was running on a big high—success, danger and crazy adrenaline streaming through her body. When she’d left the Strike Force team to join the Gold Team for a short while, she’d been talking about leadership, but after returning had not mentioned it for days. Maybe she’d learned something on that mission.

  Third, there was the Blood King. Luka Kovalenko was back in a terrible way with nineteen low-yield nukes at his disposal and three primed right here in the US. Drake had always imagined the Blood King would return in a big way but couldn’t have imagined he’d go this big. Everyone had thought the nukes would be sold or held as some kind of collateral—not used in what appeared to be a petty act of revenge against the Strike Force team and President Coburn.

  Fourth, something had changed.

  Alicia had brought back a young man from her last mission. A young man who’d made a very big impression on her. He was called Cam, short for Camden, but Alicia often called him Cammy. At first, Drake had listened in horror as Alicia described saving Cam from a group of mercenaries near a vast, seemingly haunted, ship graveyard and of how those mercenaries had murdered Cam’s only true family—his sister—right in front of him. He saw the horror in Cam’s eyes and the compassion in Alicia’s. He saw the vitality it had taken out of both of them. He understood why Alicia couldn’t leave Cam behind the very next day.