Drake led the pack away at a steadier rate. Hopefully the shooting would cause confusion and mayhem among their pursuers, bringing the road into the options scenario. Of course, it was merely a road and who knew how well traveled it might be?
The shooting began behind them. Measured, even shots designed to take out the lead runners. Kinimaka, Smyth and Pine were well covered back there, able to concentrate and fully trust that Mai had their safety as her priority. So far seven gunshots had rung out with no return. The signs were good.
“Wish we had comms,” Drake said.
“Y’know,” Alicia returned. “That’s becoming the new proverb.”
Luther ignored them and moved over to his remaining protégé, a woman called Carey. Drake heard him checking on her spirits. Carey seemed capable, but quiet, reserved. Drake wondered if it was her first outing with Luther.
Bad luck.
Taking down the SPEAR team was never, ever going to be easy.
Drake paused now, taking stock. The road was visible ahead and random cars were running along it. He wondered what Vladimir had done with the remaining vehicles. Carefully, he checked the status of those that guarded their backs.
Running now. On the way here.
Then we’d best be ready to help them. The wolves would be at their backs.
He wiped sweat from his brow in rivulets, looking at Dahl.
“Plan B worked,” he said. “How about a C?”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Karin Blake sat with her back to the tall white fridge, the laptop open in front of her on the scarred wooden table. Palladino and Wu sat opposite, legs propped up on tired-looking chairs, a bottle of chilled beer clasped in their hands. The house in the Californian desert was cool, due to cold snap sweeping through the state, and a tranquil breeze blew through the open doors.
“You relaxed enough there, Dino?” Karin asked the young soldier.
“Oh, yeah, I’m good. I could get used to this.”
Wu saluted his friend. “Me too, bud. Me too.”
Karin shook her head, but it was for show. Truth be told something had just popped up on her computer screen that she didn’t want them to see.
Am I really seeing this now? I really don’t want to see this now.
Plans were already prepped. Arrangements made. Time was ticking and she didn’t have long before they were due to head out. It had taken awhile, even for her, to sift through Tyler Webb’s maze of secrets, draw out the useless from the perverted and the plain silly to those skeletons in the closet that might just rock the world.
Three she classed as megaton blasts, but one of these was in play even now—the American splinter group that had disavowed SPEAR without anyone’s knowledge and were pursuing world-domination of their own, codename: Tempest. It was an attempt to amass the most terrible weapons that had ever existed—the weapons of the gods. Two more were imminent, but it was the Tempest riddle that she had to unravel first.
It would do no good if they succeeded.
So, the enigma presented itself. She and SPEAR were on the same side, at least for a week or so. Another issue that made what had popped up on her laptop rather timely and interesting.
“You checking up on Drake again?” Dino asked. “Hey girl, you still on board with the plan?”
“I am.” Karin nodded. “They’re somewhere in Egypt right now chasing down the seven seals. Last I heard, seal four was down and then they vanished off the radar. Even our radar. Luther was closing in.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s all over.”
“We need to get going soon,” Wu said. “Enough of this waiting around. We end this, and then we can move on. You can move on. We’re a team, right? You ready?”
“Give me thirty,” Karin said. “Still a few things to finish off.”
Guiding her plan to fruition had already caused great heartache, and the dangerous part was yet to come. Since the day Komodo died on the streets of Tokyo, since Drake found a place for her in the army training camp . . . since then the wheels had never stopped turning. In truth they’d been turning long before that—when Ben died perhaps—but not so loud that they consumed her every waking and sleeping moment.
Tyler Webb had owned a wealth of secrets. Karin and her team had appropriated them a short time ago. Now, she knew.
She knew everything.
One member of the SPEAR team was dying.
And Drake? Well, his secret would have to wait. She didn’t know whether she hated the man or admired his tenacity, but when all the people he proclaimed to love died around him and still, pigheadedly, he forged on down the same path, the reasoning had somehow become lost.
But she felt for Lauren Fox. Felt deeply. Living with what she knew could happen at any minute was one of the worst nightmares imaginable, and Karin admired the New Yorker. Her attention was then taken again by the image bobbing around her computer screen.
An ultra-confidential invite to meet FrameHub face to face and talk about becoming a Fellow.
The language of it told her what to expect. Calling it ultra-confidential envisioned an organization of young know-it-alls that bristled with self-importance; that knew very well how clever they were. She assumed a ‘Fellow’ was a sworn-in club member, another arrogant term. She’d worked with male geeks before. Back then she had tolerated the looks and the sniggering. Now, she’d maim them for it.
Still . . .
It came at entirely the wrong time, but joining an organization like FrameHub was a lifelong dream come true. There, she could make a difference. There, she could fight in the way she really knew how. But what about her bloody plans?
So long in the making, perfect in the execution. This was the endgame.
This group were behind the deadly ransom demand of Egypt, Greece and Turkey. It didn’t make perfect sense, but she assumed there was another motive behind it. Perhaps they were involved in the seven seals hunt for the ancient doomsday weapon. That made a kind of sense—geeks would think it cool and want to own it, they would see it like some kind of game. To them, knowledge was power and the ancient seals and the machine without doubt offered some kind of all-powerful knowledge.
She thought again about all the threads, slowly coming together. Drake and SPEAR. Egypt. FrameHub and their ransom. The splinter cell. Tempest, all the weapons of the Gods. Lauren Fox now in DC. Luther.
Her world was no longer her own, and was moving on at a frightening pace.
“Wait for me,” she said. “Make ready to go. I have a final call to make.”
She rose, grabbed a bottle of water and walked across the kitchen and out the back door. A rather nice desert breeze caressed her face, telling her what she was about to miss.
“Shit.”
She tugged out her cellphone and dialed a number.
“Yes?” Robotic, the voice answered on the fifth ring.
“This is Karin Blake. I just received an invite from you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
“This is Karin Blake?” the robotic voice answered. “Are you sure?”
“Last time I checked,” she said, squinting at the desert and dirt road ahead.
“Voice recognition is good, but why are you calling on this cellphone?”
Karin saw their confusion. “Ah, you can see my location, right? A silly mistake that Karin Blake would never make. Don’t worry, I’m leaving as soon as we end the call.”
“And the cell?”
Karin breathed deeply. “I’ll feed it to the first coyote I meet.”
“Good.” No sense of humor then. “Your Web footprint was hard to track but nothing eludes us for long. Do you know who we are?”
Karin was tempted to say: “The psychos holding three countries and millions of innocent people to ransom?”, but curbed her ire. The potential here was too appealing to waste on sarcasm.
“FrameHub? Yes, I do. The whole world knows of you.” She smiled, knowing the right words to plump their egos.
“Yeah they do.” The excited robotic voi
ce sounded ridiculous. “We’re the hottest property on the planet right now . . .”
Karin cringed a little.
“But hey, what better time to reach out to a bi . . . um, girl like you? Seriously, we are the masters of this universe. Digitally, together, there’s nothing we can’t do. Nothing we can’t own. Nobody we can’t own. We’re friggin gods.”
“You just proved that with the demonstration.” Karin fought to keep her voice amicable.
“Yeah we did! Wasn’t that fuckin’ mega? How that missile exploded over the tops of all those houses, showering down like fireworks? I bet the people on the ground were crapping themselves, am I right?”
Karin closed her eyes, breathing deeply. FrameHub were looking less and less appealing—in particular as this guy had been chosen to be their spokesperson—but this kind of offer rarely came around in a lifetime.
“I’m listening.”
“We want you to join us.”
“I realize that. Why me?”
“Are you kidding? I have pictures. Also, you’re more intelligent than the average lumbering mammal out there. Phonetic memory. Keyboard wizard. First class coder. I have to say—you would further our cause.”
“Be clear here. What is your cause?”
“We can talk more of that when we meet but, on a basic level, we’re playing a game. FrameHub versus the world. Ain’t it cool?”
“And you think I can help?”
“We know you have secrets, Karin. We know you went after the stash left by that corkscrew, Webb. It was on our radar too, but—and admittedly this is one of our problems—we didn’t have enough people to spare. We were all involved in configuring the ransom game.”
“You want me for my secrets?”
“Some of them. The most wicked. I mean, I may not be a social butterfly, but I do know that’s how the world works, right?”
“For some,” Karin admitted. “There are some that just like to get along.”
“Really? What are they called?”
“Humans. Look . . . I’m interested. I have schemes and designs of my own but, I am interested. Where do we go from here?”
“We meet,” the voice said. “We talk. We audition you.”
Karin didn’t like the sound of that. “Audition?”
“Yeah, check out your talent. What do you excel at? Are you a hacktivist or a ‘denial of service’ girl? How are your back-door capabilities? Do you like a Black Hat or White, or both? Can you form a botnet? Do you enjoy some keystroking, how big a Trojan would you prefer, and what’s your favorite payload?”
Karin shook her head to the vast desert, knowing he was getting off on the terminology but not quite hating him for it. “I get it, I get it. Nice speech, but it did sound rehearsed. You already know my talent or you wouldn’t have contacted me. Where do we meet?”
“Where you headed?”
She hesitated, then decided honesty might help in this case. “Surprisingly . . . Egypt.”
“Land of blood and sand. That’s good. We’re not far. I’ll call you when you get in.”
“No, sorry. We’re going in undercover. I’ll have to contact you.”
A robotic snort. “Don’t be ridiculous. Expect my call.”
He cut the call, leaving Karin to wonder about modern freedoms for just a moment before the screen door slammed and Dino padded out to meet her, a look of concern on his face.
“You good, Blake?”
“C’mere, Dino.” She waited for him to approach and then grabbed him in a headlock, forcing him down and kissing the top of his head. “What a bunch of dorks we are, hey? We were soldiers. There’s so much bad out there . . . in the world . . . and here we are, months into plotting some kind of twisted revenge.”
Dino struggled out of her grip, red-faced. “What the fuck, Blake? Since when did we kiss?”
“We should probably do it more. Maybe we’d be better people.”
“Crap, are you coming on to me?”
“For fuck’s sake.” Karin kicked at the dirt. “Do I look that desperate? And, you know . . .” She laughed, a twinkle in her eye. “You’d only wanna win anyway.”
He grinned and turned away. “I am better than you.”
“You ready to prove it?”
He looked wary. “In what way?”
“Egypt, mate. We’re going to Egypt. Finally. This is it, Dino. The plan is in motion. The endgame. We’re gonna do this!”
“I’m ready. So long as we sleep in separate rooms.”
“With Wu?”
“I didn’t mean it like—”
“I know. You don’t trust my wandering hands. Maybe I’ll sleep with Wu instead.”
“You think you’re the hot one that can take her pick, eh?”
Karin gave him a radiant, sexy smile. “What do you think?”
“It’d rather take a crate of beers.”
Karin laughed and punched him on the shoulder. Dino winced. She felt almost as close to the young solider as she’d once felt to Ben. Dino was the brother and Wu the close friend. The three of them had formed a bond, unbreakable, entwined until death. Until now, the path had been relatively straightforward and easy. But the hard work was coming. She expected both Dino and Wu to form the solid wall at her back.
“Ready for Egypt?”
Dino nodded. “I’ve been ready since we deserted.”
“Everything set?”
“Yeah. The money we appropriated from Webb’s accounts paid for a nice private jet. Passports are fake, of course. We’re good, Miss Blake.”
“Excellent, Mr. Palladino. Shall we go and kick some arse?”
“Ass, you mean ass.”
“I guess we’re in America, so I do.” They headed back into the house, picked up their packs and Wu and headed out to the car.
No turning back now.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Plan C appeared to be working.
When two vehicles appeared, following each other down the blacktop, Drake and Dahl put their misgivings aside and pointed their weapons at the drivers. Happily, they were both male and young and didn’t appear too traumatized as a dozen soldiers crowded in alongside them. Of course, they never saw Vladimir and his men coming over the hill at their backs. With the entire team barely inside the cars, hanging out of windows, wedged so tight even their bones hurt, they made the break for freedom.
Smyth drove one car, Kinimaka the other. Drake was squeezed in beside Luther, with Crouch alongside.
By design.
They talked about the fifth seal. “Of course I remember,” Crouch said indignantly. “I remember the design. The pyramid is from Saqqara, the earliest burial site of the nobles of the First Dynasty. One of the common traits of this mission has been the age of the objects in question. Perhaps this doomsday machine is the earliest of all.”
“Because it is a weapon of the gods?” Kenzie asked. “And thus came first. It makes perfect sense.”
“Why not recap that curse again?” Drake said, for Luther’s benefit.
“Find the seven seals for seven tombs and settle the fate of men. Follow the lost symbol that entombs the Ancient Doomsday Machine. Break the seven seals of Egypt and start the End of Times.”
“No matter how many times you hear it,” Alicia said from the front, “that always sounds nasty.”
“The same could be said of you, bitch,” Kenzie, crammed next to her, said.
“Shut it, skunk.”
Drake urged Crouch to continue. The older man was happy to take his mind off aching bones, bruises and raw wounds.
“Saqqara is in the north and where we should go next. If we can’t stop FrameHub, the CIA and possibly this splinter group fighting for and getting the doomsday machine then we’re all in big trouble.”
“Is it a big place?” Drake knew they all needed rest and to head blindly into some ancient vastness was just foolhardy at this point.
“Relatively. And our rivals will be headed there too. Saqqara comprises undergroun
d galleries, funerary tombs, monuments. It’s also famous for having the oldest comprehensive stone building complex throughout known history. It remained significant to the Egyptians for more than 3000 years. Such incredible history . . .” Crouch tailed off, shaking his head in wonder.
Dahl shouted something back through the open window. Drake had to strain to catch it.
“Any thoughts on why FrameHub would want the weapon so badly?”
“Just the obvious,” Crouch said. “They’re a new entity. Though why they’re clouding the issue with this ransom demand is unclear.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Drake said. “Muddying the waters. Flooding Egypt with mercs. They aim to steal the weapon in the chaos and use it when they fancy it. They’re kids, spoiled kids at that. It will be another ransom, another game. At least, that’s my take.”
“Sounds feasible,” Crouch agreed.
Luther was listening intently, but remained on mission. “I may be grateful for your help, and all, but you guys are coming in with me. All of you.”
Drake admired his tenacity. “It may have escaped your knowledge that we outnumber you five to one.”
“Doesn’t matter. I never fail.”
“Neither do we,” Dahl said, half out the window and catching some serious airflow. “I’d advise you to re-evaluate.”
“Orders are orders,” Luther said. “Can’t change ’em.”
Drake gestured for Crouch to continue. “Well,” the Englishman said. “I recognized the pyramid at Saqqara. It’s from the third Dynasty, called Djoser’s step pyramid, world-famous and with a rectangular base. We’re getting very close to the seventh seal now, my friends, so we really must hurry. Whoever gets their hands on that machine . . .” He shuddered.
For the first time, Luther glared at him. “You keep talking about a machine. What is it?”
“Nobody knows. The curse of the seven seals leads the way to, supposedly, an ancient machine that could destroy the world. Don’t get me wrong here—we know this is an olden-day piece of writing and comes with the undesirable tag-word curse, but we started out skeptical too. But so far, each tomb or monument has led us to the next. It may all be hoax, but what if it’s not?”
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