Matt Drake Book 9 - The Plagues of Pandora

by David Leadbeater

  “Dudley and the Pythians,” he said. “With several passengers. Where does he expect to go?”

  Drake stayed low. “Man’s a loon but he ain’t dumb. Le Brun and Bell have endless contacts.”

  “What are you saying?” Crouch asked.

  “Just . . . be ready for anything.”

  Through the door they could see Dudley manhandling a woman in a bikini whilst Bell tried not to watch. Le Brun held a gun which almost pointed toward three other passengers, two men and a woman, its barrel wavering between their heads and a view of the sea. Thankfully, when nerves made her accidentally pull the trigger, the bullet flew wide.

  “We have to end this. Now.” Hayden made a move toward the door, but Dahl held her back.

  “Wait.”

  Drake agreed but didn’t say so. Instead, he whispered, “We need a fix on the aerosols first. Nothing’s more important.”

  All hell let loose. Yorgi appeared on the deck to the side, jumping from the bulkhead above. Le Brun whirled, gun barking. One of her hostages chose that moment to be a hero, leaping at her. Healey and Smyth and Lauren appeared over to the left, heads rising above a balcony as if they’d climbed the set of spiral-shaped stairs that clung to the outside.

  “Damn it, Healey,” Crouch hissed. “Stay put.”

  He was too late. Le Brun’s bullet shattered the door in front of Drake, showering them all with glass. Yorgi leaped at her throat just as the hero-hostage struck her from the other side. Dudley, face set as hard as a tombstone, lifted the woman he’d been accosting high above his shoulders as if she were the weights in a lifting contest.

  “Shit, shoot that bastard!” Kinimaka growled.

  Dudley stepped toward the edge of the ship, still hefting the woman high. Drake spotted the small rucksack on his back.

  Head shot.

  But before he could even begin to lift his gun Lauren, breaking free of Smyth, sprinted for the deadly Irishman. Drake saw in an instant what was happening. Lauren saw only a woman in trouble, her reactions were instinctive.

  From out of the clouds on the horizon came two midnight-black birds.

  Drake ran past Dahl, passing the scuffle where Le Brun fought to maintain a hold on her gun, knowing Dudley would immediately catch sight of him and move his attention away from Lauren. The Irishman reacted in a moment, throwing the unlucky woman straight at Drake and bowling him over, then springing across the deck. His moment of opportunity was rapidly closing as Healey and Smyth converged from one side and Dahl, Hayden and Kinimaka from the other. Drake untangled himself from the woman, forehead pounding where she had struck. He saw Mai join from the right and Alicia stood by him.

  Dudley would have to be a magician to get outta this . . .

  Then the Irishman grabbed at Lauren, took a blow to the throat and staggered. Buoyed by her victory, Lauren struck again.

  “Not twice, wee minx.”

  Dudley caught her wrist and twisted, causing her to cry out. Smyth yelled protectively at the top of his own voice, threatening barbarity, but Dudley only cackled. In a deft move he shrugged off the backpack and held it in his free hand, spreading the drawstring mouth. By now the black birds had come close enough to see that they were military issue, unmarked and old, probably bought from one of hundreds of black-market arms bazaars held monthly around the world. Machine guns hung inside their open doors.

  Dudley lifted the backpack in signal. Drake saw the choppers swoop toward their target. Time to make a fast decision. The Greek military choppers had all disgorged their occupants and returned to the mainland. If Dudley and the Pythians escaped this way they would have an almost unassailable head start.

  He moved forward. “Let her go. You have more than a dozen guns aimed at you.”

  Dudley sneered. “Ah, the best of the best, no? Your crew ain’t gonna give me any trouble, fella. Do yer know why?”

  Drake did.

  Dudley allowed the backpack to fall, leaving three small black boxes clutched in his left hand. “Y’see this wee silver button here? I press that an’ . . .”

  “Fucking madman!” Lauren struggled in his grip.

  “Quit it, pretty. Afore I stuff Pandora’s sweet wee Box down yer throat.”

  Alicia stepped up, pushing Drake aside and closing the gap to Dudley. “Hey dude, did you mean to make that sound so dirty? ‘Cause, man, I’m all for some girl-on-girl action.”

  Dudley blinked, surprised. It was the instant they all needed. A dozen fingers stroked triggers, aims were double checked, and then a shot rang out too quickly, too soon, and Miranda Le Brun jumped to her feet, wailing.

  Right in front of Dudley, the Pythian woman clutched her chest as blood bubbled around her fingers. She ducked and weaved, screaming, dying, still holding the gun that had been turned on her and firing off rounds erratically into the air. A bullet struck Nicholas Bell, but only snagged his jacket and sent him spinning to the ground. Another blasted into the arm of the hostage-hero, sending Yorgi sprawling on top of him.

  Le Brun’s reign came to an abrupt end as Dahl calmly executed a head shot.

  By then the choppers were hovering overhead and machine guns were trained on the sky deck, masked men poised behind them.

  Dudley grinned at his audience. “What is it they say? ‘Til feckin next time? Git yer skinny arse over here, Bell.”

  Drake didn’t back down. “We can still take you out, mate.”

  “Aye, and die doin’ it. But I guess that don’t matter to heroes like yerselves, eh? Well, how about this?”

  Dudley pushed the silver button on one of the boxes, dispensing the aerosol inside and releasing the weaponized gas—straight into Lauren’s face.

  The SPEAR team, to a man, cried out. Machine gunfire smashed into the deck from above as Lauren fell. Dudley sprinted hard and leaped over the side of the ship toward a swinging harness, two boxes still in one hand, and swaying back to offer a powerful arm to Bell’s outstretched hands.

  “Look at it this way,” he yelled. “Now yer feckers have a test subject!”

  Drake found cover as the deck disintegrated under fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  Mayhem and chaos ruled in Greece. Dudley proved his madness by refusing to flee and forcing his saviors to pepper the cruise ship with round after round. His screeches of laughter were audible even above the clamor. Drake crawled hand over fist to grab Lauren and pull her out of the line of fire. Dahl took hold of the screaming bikini-wearing girl and Alicia took hold of Yorgi’s ankle and hauled him off the wounded hero.

  “Get inside, Yogi.”

  She scooped up the injured man and carried him inside as bullets chewed the deck around her ankles. Not wanting to appear too hasty she used her free hand to return fire at both black choppers. Drake grabbed her and heaved her to safety.

  Hayden immediately took charge of Lauren and flew down the stairs, Kinimaka at her heels. Smyth and Crouch followed closely, then Karin, screaming into her comms to alert Caitlyn.

  Drake knew they could scream all they wanted. Without an antidote Lauren was dead.

  He stayed put with Dahl, Alicia and Mai. The old soldiers. Waiting for any chance they might get. Russo joined them. Everyone expected Dudley to order his escape at any moment but the irrational Irishman hung around.

  Drake eyed Dahl. “He’s madder than you.”

  “I’m not entirely sure I approve of that statement.”

  “Oh, yeah, now I remember. You dropped out of private school because it was too . . . what? Cliquey? Snobbish?”

  “I dropped out of a private school. They’re not all like that. And I don’t really want to talk about it, particularly not now.”

  “When this is over then. Over a pint?”

  “Ah, Drake, I have to say sitting in a bar with a glass of milk just doesn’t do it for me.”

  Drake stared through wreckage as bullets smashed into the sky deck again, a spotlight for Dudley’s riotous fury.

  “Next time it’s beers all around. B
elieve me.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “Mai isn’t dead, Dahl, not like Kennedy, and I’m not an alcy. I can handle it.”

  “Of course you can. I was just . . . um, are the two of you okay?”

  Drake smiled a little at the big soldier’s clumsy attempt at sympathy. Truth be told it had come out a hundred times better than anything Drake could have tried. Soldiers like them never became all warm-hearted, most showed their respect and love for their adopted families through time-honored traditions such as cutting sarcasm and caustic wit.

  “Tell you later,” he said at last. “We’ll get drunk together, you and I, Alicia and Mai. And right the world. Who wouldn’t want to be at that table, involved in that conversation with us?”

  Dahl pointed to the skies. “It’s a deal, my friend. So long as we survive this.”

  His last word was accentuated as a Greek military chopper joined the fray. Dudley must have seen it coming, but still chose to remain. As the chopper flew over the ship’s deck Dudley’s men fired on it. The chopper swooped and evaded, men hanging on inside. Its front end rose a little and a missile flew from its underbelly. Drake heard an explosion and then a rain of metal and fire spilled onto the deck. Men crawled through the debris, screaming.

  “Jesus Christ!” Russo yelled.

  “Keep your knickers on, Robster.” Alicia patted his arm.

  “The laws of damnation and luck tell me that wasn’t Dudley’s helicopter,” Dahl said just as the Greek chopper swung hard left, raked by a volley of lead. Metal pings raked its entire right side. Drake saw a skid strike the side of the deck and the huge vehicle bucked forward, nose-diving hard. More bullets shattered its back end. Men leaped clear of the rearing vehicle, slamming into the deck and rolling, some instantly peppered by bullets.

  In another moment the helicopter dropped over the side of the deck, smashing into the sea. Dahl was on his feet and sprinting the moment it was out of sight, four comrades at his heels.

  “We have to save those soldiers.”

  Outside, the fires burned bright and pure chaos slammed into Drake’s every sense, almost overwhelming.

  But he did notice one thing as he stooped to help the nearest soldier.

  Dudley’s chopper was already a speck in the sky. The madman had escaped and he’d taken two aerosolized boxes with him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  Drake and Dahl had had enough. The Pythians had left nothing but death and crisis, heartbreak and devastation in their wake. The world was reeling. Since day one his team had been on the back foot, always playing catch up, but now, after all that had happened this day, the Yorkshireman and the Swede were about to take the bull literally by the balls.

  They were going to squeeze until they got answers. And then there was Smyth, distraught over Lauren; Alicia always up for the destruction of a madman’s dream; Hayden and Kinimaka, ever the professionals, but like coiled vipers when backed into a corner; Mai, having taken a back seat until now, starting to wonder if she could have helped prevent what had happened to Lauren. And Crouch’s team too—Caitlyn, distressed at the news and moving mountains with her investigative knowledge; Russo and Healey, barely able to holster their guns, and Michael Crouch—the man with the wherewithal and the contacts to get anything done.

  A fully fuelled jet. A shower on board. A quick, energy-laced meal and they were well on their way back to Washington. Drake wished he could have joined Mai in the shower, if only to liberate a little tension, but the Japanese woman remained distant. Alicia offered to join him, but since she’d already offered to join Russo and Caitlyn too he decided to completely ignore her, not even offering a rejoinder.

  But he remembered the good times. Perhaps long ago now, but they had been great together once. Drake and Myles. Their stories, their exploits, their wild times together in and out of war would fill a book. Several books.

  Christ it was so long ago. Far away now, like most of the best memories of his life. Of course, as he’d learned over time, you only realized you were living the best times of your life when you lost them. Never go back. The idea rang true for Alicia Myles, but not necessarily for him. He had returned to Mai, returned to England and to the place where Alyson died, returned to Coyote.

  Has it helped?

  Truth be told, he didn’t know. But one absolute remained unexplored. Before all that, before everything, there was the SAS, the Ninth Division and Alicia Myles. Looking back, he thought, you usually romance your memories. You remember them better than they actually were.

  But not always. Sometimes they really were as good as you remembered them.

  He watched out the window as Washington DC unrolled below and geared himself up for what was soon to come. Now wasn’t the time to vacillate, now was the time to storm across their enemies’ field of play, decimating their forces.

  The moment the wheels bounced and squealed on American asphalt he rose to start doing exactly that.

  *

  “Do you have a location?” Hayden used a black walkie-talkie, holding the case to her lips.

  A man’s voice came back, clipped tones conveying a no-nonsense attitude. “We have eyes on. Founding Farmers. Been there forty minutes, looks set for the night.”

  Drake was listening in. “Hope he bloody well gets gut-rot from his last meal as a free man.”

  The team, with Alicia’s new crew as crucial backup, hastened through DCs clogged arteries, updated constantly by the team on site. Drake experienced a little déjà vu. The last time he’d driven along these streets, a time that now seemed a long time ago, was when he’d chased the Blood King to the Foggy Bottom metro and saved President Coburn’s life. By the time they pulled up close to the restaurant known as the Founding Farmers, only a block away from one of their previous HQs, he felt totally lost. That started up a longing for the old streets of York where he’d started anew and met Ben, and that brought him full circle to the fact that they were here now, fighting hard, whilst most people in these parts basked in a healthy spring; forced to put an end to yet one more murderous son of a bitch’s apocalyptic plans.

  Quickly they moved into position. When they were ready Hayden took a glance around the now admittedly overlarge team. “So who doesn’t he know?”

  “Don’t worry,” Dahl growled. “It’ll take me just a minute to shove a gun down his throat and march him right out the back.”

  “No. There’s innocent people in there. Kids.”

  Dahl stepped down.

  “Every second counts,” Smyth said, not only now for the good of the world, but also for a dying Lauren Fox.

  Komodo said. “I’ll go in with Yorgi, Healey and Caitlyn. Mismatched colleagues grabbing a drink after work. We’ll find a way and fast.”

  Quickly, the four were prepped and given civilian jackets. Alicia put a hand on both Healey and Caitlyn’s shoulders, leaning in to give advice.

  “Now remember, we’re in a hurry. No slinking off to the restroom for a shag.”

  Healey took a deep breath but then almost squeaked as Alicia gave them both a slap on the behind for good luck. “Now you’re both jealous of me.” She grinned and slipped back into hiding.

  Drake watched the foursome enter the Founding Farmers. “Do you ever let up, Miss Myles?”

  “Not in this life, Drakey. Just keeping my mojo train on the right track and moving forward. Life’s too short for repentance.”

  “You have none then? No regrets?”

  “Fuck, yeah. I have a ton. Just leave ‘em all behind.”

  “Can’t do that forever.”

  “Who says so? You? No way you hang on to yours, Drake, not without lugging a dump truck behind you.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  They moved over to Hayden. A surveillance team had been watching their target for over an hour – after he finally reappeared on the radar – through a series of scopes they had assembled inside a neighboring office block. Drake took a peek through one of the glasses, carefully following Ko
modo’s progress as he meandered through several occupied tables. Yorgi, Healey and Caitlyn kept pace. Of course there were no free tables near the target, but the man, sat with his head bowed, didn’t know that. Komodo quickly took the seat next to him and leaned in, grabbing his arms and locking them to his sides. The maneuver looked like someone giving a greeting to an old friend. Drake imagined Komodo laughing out loud. The others took the remaining spare seats and also leaned in—perhaps secreting weapons that Komodo had already found, maybe imparting advice, but always covering their real intentions.

  Within minutes, Komodo was leading the tall figure out of the restaurant. Healey left money on the table and Caitlyn and Yorgi were ready to field any questions. None arose.

  Drake left his place of concealment to face the man whom the Pythians believed was probably the one most unlikely to betray them.

  “General Stone,” he said. “You’re gonna tell us everything you know.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  “Starting with,” Hayden said, “where is your friend Dudley taking those samples?”

  Under strictest security they had taken the General to a safe location. Now he sat handcuffed to a spartan desk inside a spartan room, a man alone in more ways than one. With the ongoing crisis Hayden had taken it upon herself to keep Stone isolated from standard protocol. She figured they had a few hours before questions were asked.

  And anyway, time was hardly their ally today.

  Stone glared impassively. “I am a United States general. This isn’t Afghanistan, young lady. I demand access to my representatives.”

  “I have two representatives for him.” Alicia held up her fists. “Morgue,” she nodded to her left. “Hospital.” She indicated the right. “Let him choose.”