But sadly, the opposite was true.
Drake noticed the rain had started to fall as he left the asylum and wondered if the sky was weeping tears for the damned.
Or was it for all the soldiers?
CHAPTER SIX
The following day, the morning was bright and crisp, the blue skies an unbroken dome above. Hyde Park was teeming with dog walkers, cyclists and joggers. Luckily, it was a considerably large place and the SPEAR team kicked their way across the glistening grass with morning dew on their boots, meeting Major Bennett and Captain Cambridge on the path that ran past the statue of Achilles.
Hayden held the Sword of Mars, wrapped in two supermarket carrier bags. Bennett couldn’t hide the smile when he saw it. “Really?”
Hayden shrugged. “Best we could do on short notice and all the sword-wrapping shops were closed last night.”
“Interesting place to meet.” Dahl eyed Achilles. “Topical.”
“We aim to please,” Bennett said. “It’s also tourist free at this time of a morning. Now, we do have much to talk about . . .” He paused and picked up two cardboard trays full of steaming hot drinks. Cambridge picked up another and offered them around.
“Civilized.” Luther nodded his thanks.
“Don’t get used to it. First things first—Tempest are totally hell-bent on gathering all the weapons of the gods. There appears to be no order to them, no clues on how to find them. We’re relying on getting close and then using this rare element to pinpoint the location. The point of that recap is to highlight the words ‘getting close’, which is the problematic part. So, what do we know about these weapons?”
Cambridge held up a thick folder. “Most of the gen’s in here.” He flapped it backward and forward. “Pages full of information on the Sword of Mars and the others. Read it.” He slapped it down on a bench right in front of Hayden.
She stared at the generous file with fear. “Jeez, dude, I haven’t read that much since high school.”
“Mars was, or is, the Roman god of war,” Bennett said. “Identified with the Greek god, Ares. These classical deities are now thought to once have been real men, or perhaps real gods that walked the earth. Some are even identified with the Atlantis myth and, it is said, were the kings of Atlantis, later worshipped by lesser races such as the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and thus their legends turned them into the gods we know today.”
“You’re telling me Atlantis is real now too?” Smyth grumbled.
“Well, no, my friend, but rumors are starting to surface, some new evidence has come to light. Who knows? Perhaps another team will chase that, but we must concentrate on finding the weapons, defeating Tempest and proving all your innocence.”
Hayden liked this man and the way he set his goals out quite clearly. She sipped strong black coffee and stood in the sunshine, letting its warming rays soothe her soul. It was good to take a moment to feel the sun on your face.
“Mars was the son of Jupiter. He was virile, a thriving life force. The spear of Mars is most associated with him, but the sword is a good second.”
“This raises a question,” Hayden butted in whilst Bennett took a breath and a sip of his drink. “If we’re scouring the planet for these weapons, presumably under fire, we need a safe place to send them when we find them. A secure network of contacts, so that we can ship them to you, Major, allowing you to store them with the Crown Jewels, or something. We can’t be lugging them around the world with us.”
Bennett nodded. “Yes, we came up with the same idea. We will provide for you a state-of-the-art communications system and have already tasked a special unit to shadow you at all times. Between all of you, and them, we should be able to extract the weapons without risk.”
“Sounds great,” Alicia spoke up and Hayden glanced at her. “Any ideas what’s up next?”
Her question raised most of the crew’s eyebrows, Hayden noticed, including Mano’s. She found her attention briefly fixated on her old flame. The big Hawaiian was as solid a home as she was ever going to get and, incredibly, was still interested in her. Hayden didn’t want to blow it this time, so she was taking everything slow, creating no expectations and offering no promises. The hope was that it would all just fall into place.
Wouldn’t that require a period of stability?
Sure, and that wasn’t even on the horizon. A network of criminals had to be taken down first, a network that had entwined its way through the power-halls of Washington DC. Its contacts would be formidable, its reach all-embracing. Even here . . .
“Let’s get on with it,” she said, snatching up the folder. “We’ll get savvy with this and be prepared for the next few weapons. Maybe a little knowledge of the gods will help us find them.”
“Well,” Bennett held out a hand as she prepared to wrap the meeting up, “we do have an idea as to the whereabouts of the next weapon.”
She stopped. “You do? Why didn’t you say so?”
“It seemed best to surprise you.” Bennett shrugged. “With no path to follow it’s like putting a pin in a map and going after the closest. We chose the Key of Hades first simply because it was originally found in the tomb you all discovered.”
“Which one?” Dahl asked.
“There was more than one? Ah, well, I suppose you have your secrets. The Odin tomb. The place where you found the bones of Odin.”
Hayden thought back momentarily to a time when she first met Drake and his friendly associate, Ben Blake, gone but never forgotten. At that time Alicia had worked for the other side and Dahl was a fixture of the Swedish government. Kinimaka had been involved in some other mission centering on the Blood King. So was Mai, for that matter. Karin had been involved also, kidnapped by a madman, and Kennedy Moore too—yet another lost soul.
“Feels an age distant,” Dahl said reflectively.
“Yeah.” Hayden hid her emotions and addressed Bennett. “Please go on.”
“The Key of Hades was discovered along with a whole host of other items inside your Icelandic tomb. Many of these items were removed before the tomb collapsed or exploded or whatever happened to it—”
“The Swords of Babylon,” Kinimaka rumbled. “That’s what happened to it.”
“Right, well, the Key of Hades is a small object about the size of a big man’s hand. Obviously, we don’t know its purpose for being or why it was inside Hades’ tomb, but we do know it’s on Tempest’s list. Now, after the key left the tomb under guard it was sent to a museum in Stockholm for study, and from there it was very quickly stolen.”
Drake glared at Dahl. “Typical.”
The Swede closed his eyes in a long-suffering way. “I remember an awful lot of archaeologists coming and going in those days. I guess not all of them were real.”
“It was a busy, frenzied few months. It’s always the same. Nobody knows who’s really in charge or who their actual superior is, and then the carrion swoops in to take a piece of it. Money talks, and in this case it talked the Key of Hades right out of that museum and into the hands of a thief known worldwide as Aladdin.”
Alicia gawped. “Fuck, don’t tell me he’s real too.”
“No, no, just a moniker given to him by some agency somewhere. Aladdin is known to steal without trace, a true ghost, but also never to properly tidy up the breadcrumbs that could lead to his benefactor. He leaves that to them. Some, of course, don’t realize or think they’re too important, and here we have one such individual.”
“You know who has the key?” Yorgi asked.
“We do, son. He’s a shipping magnate that owns the Gad Shipping Line and, specifically, the Enlargo yacht.”
“One of the biggest ever produced,” Cambridge added.
“Quite.” Bennett nodded. “This man—Gordon Demba—has lived aboard the Enlargo for a decade, sailing from port to port. He’s not especially troublesome, stays off all the main radars, and I’m guessing he has no idea that we know about the key.”
“Did you send the heavies in?” Smyth
asked.
“Of course not. The key has to be taken covertly. We must leave Tempest guessing. And Demba will have his own security detail.”
Hayden had guessed they would be chasing the shipping magnate down. Smyth, of course, was hoping for a swift return to Washington. Lauren hadn’t been in touch for a while. She finished her coffee and threw the cup into a trash can.
“Where we headed, Bennett?”
“The Pacific Ocean,” the major said. “We’ll sort out the coordinates later. Are you ready to go?”
“Sure,” Hayden said. “But there is an issue. Is it wise to seek just one weapon? Won’t that let Tempest grab at least a few?”
“We don’t have the backup yet,” Bennett admitted and Cambridge nodded along. “We don’t know who to trust. Why do you think we’re meeting here instead of MI5 or 6, or somewhere closer? I want you people and a select team or two, soldiers I can rely on.”
“Honestly,” Hayden said. “We feel the same, and we can always split the team. But let’s stay together for now. This is what . . . a two-day op?”
“At the very most,” Bennett agreed. “And it’s relatively simple. In . . . out . . . Demba is no soldier and employs no mercenaries.”
“We need a thief,” Drake indicated Yorgi, “and a bodyguard. Take your pick. I guess it’s a go.”
“The Key of Hades is on that boat,” Bennett said. “And the jet is equipped with the retro-fitted GPR device you requested. It has been recalibrated and will seek out the one specific element we need. If it doesn’t beep, I’ve sent you on a wild goose chase.”
“It’ll beep,” Hayden said. “Have faith.”
“Oh, I have faith,” Bennett sighed. “But, right now, only in the people I see around me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Flying at full speed toward the middle of nowhere, Drake was reminded of the vast size of the Pacific Ocean. It was no surprise that there still existed officially uncharted waters and even islands out here. The scale was staggering.
They sat in the back of a big Chinook cargo chopper, forsaking the preferred military alternative because of the size of their group. Alicia was complaining about the bumpy ride and Mai was reminding her that she usually enjoyed that sort of thing. Kinimaka and Hayden were chatting; Smyth was looking distant and holding a phone to his ear; Kenzie and Dahl were sitting apart, trying desperately not to stare at each other; Yorgi was passing the time with Luther and Molokai, the latter wrapping his heavy robes tighter as cold penetrated the chopper’s fuselage—so it was business as usual really, with Drake watching over them all.
Still no word from Lauren, or even Kimberly Crowe, so they were flying blind with no fresh updates on Tempest. Drake wondered how Karin was getting on. He didn’t expect to hear from her or her team so soon—infiltrating FrameHub would be extremely perilous even for her. The odd bunch of supergeeks that had targeted Egypt with a missile a short while ago were clearly unhinged.
But now she has training, and so do her new friends. And what the hell did she mean by saying: I’ll interrupt my agenda for this?
What was her agenda?
The pilot communicated that two of them should go up to the cockpit. Drake and Hayden rose first, so they trudged steadily along the steel fuselage, listening to their own reverberating footsteps and the quiet murmurings of their team.
Drake glanced sidelong at Hayden. “You good?”
“Feels like we’ve been on this damn road a decade, Matt,” she said. “Always another crisis. I do believe the world would continue to turn without us.”
“I’m not so sure,” he joked, but then grew serious. “We do make a difference. Sure, there are other teams, other agencies, all good men and women, but work at it like we already won it, Hay. We do good.”
“And who works for us?” Hayden said as they reached the cockpit.
The pilot turned to them so Drake could say no more, but he knew what she meant. The situation with DC and lack of understanding from President Coburn’s allies and even the man himself was challenging. Of course, with all the missions they had been through during the last few weeks, the time period seemed far longer than it was.
They had been safe in Transylvania only a few short weeks ago. Peru and the Incas just before that, each op leading straight into the next.
A drifter with a gun, in the full-time employment of the government that wants to kill me, he thought. That’s what I am, what we all are. Helluva job description.
“Thanks, guys,” the pilot was saying in what Drake recognized as a Yorkshire accent. “We’re twenty minutes out so you might wanna prep. Gonna belay you whilst we hover. Shouldn’t take too long to reach deck; we have four lines.”
Drake grinned. “Ey up, mate, are you from God’s own country?”
“Ey up.” The pilot turned with a genuine smile. “Don’t be shoutin’ down me lug ’oils, pal. Where y’ from?”
“Ponte,” Drake said, pronouncing it “pontey.” “You?”
“Cas.”
“Hey, Dahl!” Drake called back into the hull. “We got a bona fide Yorkshireman right here!”
“Oh, fuck,” came the long-suffering reply. “If only we had a half-intelligent translator.”
The pilot looked over his shoulder, through the door of the cabin. “You wanna understand Yorkshire, mate, go watch The Full Monty.”
Hayden disrupted the mutual northern solidarity. “Are you staying close?”
“I’ll hang around,” the pilot guffawed, all jovial now. “Judging by the fuel level you will have about . . .” He made several clucking noises. “Forty minutes.”
“That’ll give us time to steal the key, tidy up after ourselves and probably even re-paint the boat,” Drake said.
“Maybe even a spot of shark fishing.” Dahl poked his head through and stared at the Yorkshire pilot as if inspecting a new species. “Is this the inbred layabout?”
“Y’see any other pilots on board, ya blonde wazzock?”
Drake choked back laughter. The pilot held up a hand in apology. “Seriously, people, we’re ten minutes out.”
By the time the pilot called out again the team were lining up by the doors, rappel lines in hand. Drake and Hayden were staring out of the windows, trying not to let the rolling blue waves hypnotize them. They tested comms and checked weapons. Soon, Drake saw the shipping magnate’s boat on the seas.
“It’s bigger than I thought,” he admitted. “Better work fast, team, and sweep in pairs. Plenty of places aboard for guards to hide themselves.”
The Enlargo was a mixture of silver and black panels, the front end as sleek as a speedboat and the stern a sweeping fusion of elegant lines. Three decks above water were visible, but there would be at least two more below.
“Nobody in sight,” Hayden said. “Good start.”
“Time to go,” the pilot shouted.
Luther opened a door and then Drake, on the other side, did the same. Lines were dropped, spooling down to the clear, clean deck. The first two descended, guns ready, covered by those still up top. Soon, the next batch went and then the last, Drake and Hayden among them. Luther touched deck first, with Molokai and Smyth a second behind. The soldiers dropped low and checked their surroundings. Drake landed softly and heard no noise other than the lap of waves against the hull and the chopper overhead.
Weird.
Somebody should have heard the chopper’s hover pattern, if not the approach. Quickly, the team divided and moved aft and forward. Drake saw highly polished brass rails, gleaming windows and one cold, but half-drunk ceramic mug of coffee. He saw an open door, a misplaced throw heaped in a corner, a yellow bottle of sun cream with the top still open.
A small pile of coins as if someone was in the middle of counting their change.
But no signs of people.
Alicia voiced his feelings before he could. “Well, this is fucking creepy.”
The boat rocked gently, soundless except for the newcomers. Drake wondered if they were all hiding b
elow, or all passed out, or . . .
Don’t think. Search.
“The key may still be here,” Hayden said in his earpiece. “Move your asses.”
He climbed a set of stairs quickly to the top deck, but it was nothing more than a pool surrounded by sun loungers. The second deck was an outside viewing area and recreational room, bordered by smoked glass windows and a pair of sliding doors. He went through drawers and a cupboard with minimal hope of finding anything and wasn’t surprised.
“Heading down to main deck,” he spoke over the comms. Alicia, his partner, tapped him on the shoulder.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
He wasn’t in the mood for a witty comeback. All his senses were on red alert. “Probably, love.”
“Good. Because I’m a few minutes away from abandoning ship.”
The comms blared into life. “Thought you should all know—that thing is drifting,” the pilot said. “Not much, but it’s a very calm day. See if you can drop the anchor, folks.”
Drake continued walking, trying to ignore the tiny shiver that traveled the length of his spine. Drifting? He’d been around boats enough to know where the electric anchor winch control would be situated and found it easily. The sound of the anchor deploying was raucously loud in the quiet day, causing both Alicia and him to check their perimeter uneasily.
Another transmission: “Scrubbing to the side of the boat. Looks like something came alongside.”
Drake moved within and helped Dahl and Mai search furniture and nooks and crannies for any sign of the Key of Hades. Cambridge had provided them with a photograph of the original artifact found near Odin’s tomb. Again, he found it surreal that they were weaving through another tale connected to their first mission and the old gods. The Key of Hades was a mediocre item as far as artifacts went, but its title and more likely its size was what made it appealing to thieves and collectors. Big money, small risk. They checked under sofas and behind the television, opened every paperback and a thick photo album, but came up with nothing.
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