“We know you found his trove of secrets,” Barracuda said. “So, share.”
Karin sought to cement her standing and presence among them by making them wait. She walked over to the refrigerator and used their personal goods to make herself a coffee and a slice of toast. Then, she wandered back over to them, hooking out a chair from behind a desk and sitting down.
“You want to hear about Webb’s secrets? Listen up.”
An hour later she stopped, sat back.
“Wow,” Piranha said. “But we already knew about Tempest. We’re not interested in them.”
Karin feigned shock. “You know Tempest? How?”
“Because we have a plan of our own.” Piranha could contain it no longer. “We’re gonna take down America.”
The nervous excitement in the room was tangible, electric.
Karin knew right then that she had to discover what they were up to before taking them out. And that meant staying with them.
Damn it.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
She drew out the remainder of the day, avoiding “beer o’clock” with the nerds and finding several opportunities to siphon off information. They rarely left the lair. They had more than one plot ongoing, but nothing as big as the one they called America. She spent the night with one eye open, lying uncomfortably on a cot and trying to avoid any contact with the sheets. Two others snoozed in nearby alcoves, snoring and talking in their sleep, restless.
The next morning, she roved the basement, storing every scrap of information related to the place, everything from external data storage boxes to plug points. Questions such as: “Do we have weapons?”, “Do we have an escape route?”, and “Do we have protection?” were asked and answered quickly. Piranha, Manta and Moray showed her what evils they were up to in their spare time and it was all she could do not to tear their heads off right there and then.
Ruining lives via social media, through doctored emails, messages and photoshopped prints. They lived for it, and utilized a points-scoring system to see who wrought the most damage. Their laughter grated on her nerves.
Again, she was called upon to implement a mini-crisis, but fortunately it was nothing that totally affronted her morals and she managed to live with it. Later that morning, after their ten o’clock chocolate break, Barracuda called for everyone to listen up.
“Time to move ahead with the prison break,” he said with an excited lilt to his voice. “Initiate step two!”
Some clapped, some hooted, but one—a kid called Pacu—shouted up: “In front of the bitch? You sure, man?”
New Karin wanted to shove the kid headfirst through his own computer screen, and she would have done it—but Old Karin put the op first.
“I’ve done everything you asked.”
Pacu grunted. “Too early, Piranha.”
“I’m right here,” Karin said. “Not going anywhere. Why not use me?”
“We’ll just keep her here until the mission succeeds,” another one spoke up. This one’s name was Goonch, Karin recalled. “No risk. Then, we know she’s one of us.”
Barracuda watched her. “You okay with that?”
Karin nodded but then raised her hand. “I’m cool, but we have to get one thing straight.”
Eight faces stared.
“The next one that calls me a bitch will get Error 404’d.”
The room broke out into laughter at the little nerd joke. Error 404 was usually followed by the words: Not Found. Even Pacu grinned.
“All right, then,” Barracuda said. “We’re going all in with this one. Opening every supermax facility in the United States simultaneously. Cells, inner doors, outer doors. And we’re gonna keep them open. It’ll be a total fucking blast!” He cheered.
Karin coerced another smile to appear. “Will you have eyes on that?”
“Shit, of course we will. That’s the whole point. Some of these supermaxes are way out in the sticks, sure, but the prisoners will get to the closest town at some point.”
“Cool. Where are you so far?”
Barracuda held up a hand. “Soon,” he said. “First, we have to initiate Stage Two. The grunt work’s already done. Coding, programming, all that cool stuff. But we still need to install it discreetly on their systems. You can help with that, Karin. Shit, what are we gonna call you?”
“Praying Mantis,” Goonch suggested.
“That’s not a vicious fish, dickhead.”
“I know, but it’s cool and kinda describes her, don’t you think?”
“Too much of a mouthful. How about Payara—the vampire fish?”
“It’ll do,” Karin said. “How can I help?”
“Like this,” Barracuda led her to a terminal. “First we need to embed the code and then implant a common trigger to start it all.”
“I can do that. What date did you have in mind?”
“There’s nothing in mind,” Barracuda said softly. “It’s happening in two days.”
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
“Egypt again?” Drake complained. “Shit.”
A subdued team flew under the radar in an unmarked chopper, entering Egyptian airspace with the help of Cambridge and an agreeable airfield controller by the light of the half-moon. What made him agreeable, Drake could only guess, but he assumed it came with a picture of Benjamin Franklin on the back.
Without Yorgi, and with Kenzie’s support at an all-time low, Drake felt as if he was nursing wounds that he didn’t even have. Not yet anyway. He consoled himself with the knowledge that they would see Yorgi again.
Soon.
Hayden regaled them with more than one tale. “The Flail of Anubis is next,” she said. “Our sixth weapon, hopefully. This one also comes with a thorny provenance. The government themselves seized it from the den of a relic crook, and then proceeded to store it away in a vault.”
Dahl shifted his bulk, squeaking across the hard seat in the big chopper. “If we catch any more of these dinosaurs,” he said. “I’m thinking of bringing my own pillow cushion.”
Drake groaned. “You choose now to reveal that nugget? Now, when I’m too depressed to fully capitalize on it?”
“Yeah.” Alicia nodded gloomily. “Yeah.”
“I thought it might cheer you up.”
“Nah.” Drake sighed. “Feels like I lost a friend.”
“Feels like I lost a cuddly toy,” Alicia admitted. “Poor ole Yogi.”
“He’s not dead,” Hayden growled. “Get a grip. We’ll be seeing him again soon. Now listen—they locked the Flail of Anubis away until the world at large figured out what these weapons could do. They waited. Nothing happened. The tombs were destroyed and the flail was largely forgotten about. It’s still there, inside the vault, but we have a couple of major problems.”
“Shocker,” Drake intoned. “Lay ’em out.”
Hayden rolled her eyes. “Egypt is still reeling from the attack that FrameHub instigated—the rockets hitting Cairo. The city and its people haven’t recovered, the government are slow to help. The press only fuel the fire, as per usual, to sell copy. The good news is that the vault isn’t in Cairo, it’s in Alexandria.”
She paused, attracting everyone’s attention.
“And the bad news?” Luther asked.
“It’s stored inside a bank vault—”
“Not bad,” Molokai cut in. “You just have to use the right amount of dynamite.”
Hayden tried to finish: “Which is positioned across the road from a terrifying situation currently unfolding in the heart of Alexandria,” she continued. “Terrorists are holding hostages captive right across the street.”
Drake sat up. “Terrorists?”
“Yeah, my thought too. What kind of terrorists, right? Well, they’re Tempest’s kind. I’m thinking the entire hostage crisis is a ruse. A deception.”
“The terrorists make noise over the road whilst Tempest’s mercs steal the flail?” Luther said. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Full military presence t
hough,” Kinimaka added. “Snipers on roofs. MRAP vehicles on the streets. Seems like they’re prepared for a war.”
“They’re taking no chances after Cairo,” Smyth said. “And I don’t blame them.”
“How far into the crisis are we?” Mai asked.
“Good question. Only an hour. One hostage dead unfortunately, but they’re talking.”
“Stalling,” Alicia said.
“Agreed. The area has been evacuated and roped off, but there’s still plenty of ways to approach.”
“How long do we have?” Dahl asked.
Hayden indicated the creaking fuselage of the chopper. “We’re already there. We’re landing.”
*
The chopper put them down in Alexandria, three miles from the hot zone. They wore big coats over their gear and moved carefully, speeding up only when the roads and streets were clear. They split into three groups, opposite sides of the road and a minute apart. They checked the new comms set up. All was well. Drake moved briskly with Alicia and Mai, Dahl a step behind, all sweating profusely. It felt normal, it felt competent, but it also felt threatening.
As if a creeping shadow of foreboding lay over them. Drake was not one for premonitions, but couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming. Why? Because, finally, after all this endless struggle, the closing stages were in sight. Yorgi was gone. Kenzie was leaving. Mai fancied a bit of Luther. The tables were tipping, times changing. Nothing would ever be the same again.
But not for now.
Together, they moved closer to the bank and the hotel across the street where the hostage situation was unfolding. Cambridge was relating information down the comms line but, strictly speaking, Whitehall’s influence in Egypt was unremarkable, forcing them to read between the lines.
Molokai and Luther broke into the back entrance of a ladies’ fashion store. Hayden led the way through the storage room into the retail space, ducking behind a big metal arm full of clothing so as not to be seen through the front windows.
Drake crawled among the clothes and peered through.
A wide road and sidewalks separated them from the poorly maintained frontage of a street hotel, signs unpainted for years and windows unwashed. The front door was closed. Police cars lined up outside as if waiting at a drive-thru, but their occupants were crouched behind wheels and doors, guns drawn and waiting. Two large vans could also be seen—Drake guessed at least one of them was a communications vehicle, the other probably concealing a strike squad. The entire area was lit not only by streetlamps but by portable floodlights, giving it a stark, ghostly feel. Drake saw no movement at the hotel’s windows.
“Still negotiating,” Hayden reported.
“The only question,” Luther said. “Is will they kill the hostages to cover up Tempest’s attack on the safe, or to cover up their escape?”
“Both,” Mai suggested. “They have eight hostages.”
“But Egyptian SWAT will go in at the first loss of life,” Molokai said. “They have to.”
“Maybe we can diffuse it all,” Kenzie spoke up, “by finding the flail first.”
“Listen,” Hayden said bluntly. “What is happening to the hostages is not something we can influence. Or change. And you can bet your butt that no Egyptian SWAT team is gonna accept our help. So, it’s on with the op, no questions.”
“I’ve bet my butt a few times,” Alicia said wistfully. “Always lost.” She looked around. “Maybe I wanted to.”
Drake removed the hem of an electric-blue skirt from his shoulders. “Thanks for sharing,” he said. “The bank’s on this side then?”
“Next door,” Hayden said. “The vault is one floor down. Are you ready?”
Kinimaka struck and then caught an entire arm of clothing one second before it fell to the floor. “Wait. What if they’re already inside?”
Molokai grunted. Luther explained. “We want them to be inside, Waikiki. We ain’t got any other way of getting in without making the noise of a thunder god.”
“Waikiki?” Kinimaka frowned. “I’m from the North Shore.”
“Even better.” Luther crawled out of the racks of clothing. “Follow me, North Shore. Strictly speaking, my own tendency would be to come at this big, blast this mother out of the water, but I fear for those hostages. Let’s not make it worse.”
Drake was surprised at the big warrior’s low-key thinking. “Lead the way.”
Dahl appeared alongside him, wearing the electric-blue skirt like a headdress. “We following the god of blood and war now?”
“Sorry, mate, I can’t talk to you looking like that.”
“Like what?” Dahl was unaware of the accoutrement.
“Like a pretty Disney princess.” Alicia pulled the material tight around his ears and blew a kiss. “Princess Torsty.”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s more like it. C’mon.”
Retracing their steps, they approached the bank’s rear entrance. Molokai reached it first and held up a closed fist. Drake joined him at the front. The sides of the bank jutted out from the main façade, forming a pillar from behind which they could peer. The bank’s rear doors had been breached but no alarms were ringing. A guard lay dead on the floor, just inside, surrounded by a pool of blood. Somehow, they had made him open the door.
Drake knew there were hundreds of ways to coerce a guard—from threatening to kill a passerby to abducting a family member. No scenario was out of the question for Tempest. The inside of the bank was well-lit, seemingly empty apart from the dead guard lying behind his desk, and open-plan all the way to the front.
“It’s tricky,” he said. “We’ll have to be careful the street cops don’t spot us.”
They established the location of the vault and its access stairs through Cambridge and then made ready.
“If they’re already down there it’s gonna get noisy,” Alicia said.
“Then bring your ear muffs, honey,” Hayden said, breathing hard. “ ’Cause Alexandria’s about to get real loud.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Hayden wasn’t wrong.
Chaos and bedlam fell upon them, almost as if Luther himself was a jinx, attracting a turmoil of death and destruction. Drake pushed open the rear doors and then Cambridge was shouting in their earpieces, warning them that Whitehall had intercepted a communication from the bank with the message: Engage.
The noise began. Drake heard and saw what happened next as an elongated moment in time, a slideshow of dreadful events. First, the terrorists struck hard. Windows across the entire second floor of the hotel burst out amid flames and a roar of detonation. The cops outside ducked, yelled and the vehicles rocked as glass and debris shattered down among them. A second explosion soon followed.
At the same time there came a muffled whump from directly below. The mercs were blowing the safe.
And then, as the SPEAR team crowded past him, the bank’s highly polished, white-marble floor partially collapsed right in front of them. Cracks appeared at first and then a rough hole the size of a Smart car just fell away.
“What the—” Alicia approached it.
Drake went with her, equally perplexed. They waited a moment, staying low so that even their silhouettes wouldn’t be seen from the outside. Kenzie had a genius moment and switched the interior lights off at the precise moment of the second explosion.
“I think they cocked up down there,” Alicia whispered.
Drake peered into the hole very carefully, allowing his eyes to take in the scene half a meter at a time. A wall had been blasted apart, its edges now standing ragged and damaged. Within that wall stood a wide door with a gray wheel at the center, the entrance to the vault. The door was unmarred.
“They totally screwed the pooch,” Alicia said. “Backward, forward, and upside down. Shit.”
Two mercs lay dead on the floor, another wounded. Four more stood around scratching their heads. Drake heard noise from outside the bank and saw the Egyptian strike force jumping out of the va
n and storming the front of the hotel. Cops drew beads on the windows with their guns. Fires raged. The street was a wreckage-strewn battleground.
“I hate that we can’t help,” Dahl said.
“That’s what we’re trying to change,” Hayden answered, looking down. “Are they trying again?”
Drake saw that they were. “We should retreat,” he said. “Fast.”
Seconds later a lesser explosion could be heard across the road just as a slight blast came from below. Drake covered his ears, being close, and prayed that the entire floor wouldn’t collapse. By the time he looked up a chorus of cheering started to ring out from below.
Second time lucky.
Maybe not.
He sprang forward, gun up, the rest of the team at his side. They reached the hole seconds later, just in time to see the four men below pulling open the vault door. One slipped inside whilst the others stood guard near the descending staircase.
Drake looked from the staircase to the hole. Dahl crawled up beside him. “Whaddya think, Yorkshire Terrier?”
“I think we should throw you over first, then use your belly as a soft-landing pad.”
Dahl grinned. “How about we all go together?”
“Oh, no. I . . .”
But then Luther and Molokai were alongside and grinning all too familiarly. The Mad Swede had them hooked. With barely a pause the three men arranged themselves around the hole, giving first dibs to Dahl, whose idea it had been.
“See ya downstairs, Yorkie,” Luther said.
Drake groaned. Now even he was saying it.
Dahl leapt in first, knees tucked in, holding his weapon carefully as he fell through the air. Molokai and Luther were right behind him. Without an instant of pause Drake and Alicia followed them.
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