Presently they reached the parking area and were joined by all the bikes, minus the two bombers. Drake cast his eyes over the powerful machines, ticking in the heat. A gray van was indicated and its rear doors thrown open.
“Get in,” the leader said.
“You’re really gonna regret this,” Kenzie said.
“Crap,” Alicia said between gritted teeth. “I normally don’t get into the back of a van like this. Not without first being treated to a glass of Lambrusco.”
The team climbed up and sat around the dirty, gritty floor. A moment before the rear doors were slammed shut the lead merc made another appearance.
“So you know, bombers will remain in place until we reach destination. Understand?”
Drake nodded. The doors closed.
“Shit,” Alicia said. “It’s like a bloody oven in here.”
“Don’t worry,” Drake patted her leg, “we can treat this as a reconnaissance mission. Let’s get some valuable info.”
“Don’t touch me.” Alicia swatted his hand away. “You’re all sweaty.”
“I thought you liked that.”
“Not this kind of sweat.”
“Oh, there are different kinds?”
“Damn right there are.”
Drake stared around. The others all sat in repose, resting, conserving their energy and wondering where they’d end up, and who might confront them. It wouldn’t be Luther, Drake was sure. But another player. A big player.
“Well,” Kinimaka said to make conversation. “I guess this is the first team sauna.”
*
Drake found it interesting that they hadn’t been stripped of weapons or even searched. The threat of a man wearing a bomb-suit was enough. They were free to talk, plan, execute.
“What do we think this is all about?” he asked.
“I’ve been thinking that too,” Crouch said. “Unfortunately, there are a dozen possibilities. The US government, looking for you. Old enemies of any one of us. It could be linked to the FrameHub situation. A rival team. More likely though, it has something to do with the seven seals.”
“Wouldn’t they have waited until we found the fourth clue?” Mai asked.
“Yes, they would. That’s another thing bothering me.”
The van bounced and rattled its way toward an unknown destination, the team holding on as best they could. Several times it slowed, but then sped up again, and soon the sounds of the city were left behind. It felt like they were out in the middle of nowhere—not a single sound outside the truck could be heard.
“They’re taking us into the desert,” Hayden said.
“No good ever came out of a forced trip to the desert,” Kenzie said. “Believe me, I know.”
Dahl shifted beside her. “Do you know any of these guys?”
“Me? Why? You think they might be relic smugglers?”
The Swede shrugged. “Good place for it.”
“I don’t recognize anyone, but if I do—you’ll be the first to know.”
“I am sorry, Kenzie,” Dahl said into the silence. “I know how hard you’re trying to leave that life behind.”
“It’s like . . . kicking a drug habit. Losing that sense of intense danger, excitement, satisfaction. It’s like losing a whole part of yourself that you love.”
“Hey, we’re not exactly the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band,” Drake grumbled.
Kenzie nodded and smiled. “Of course, I know. The danger though . . .” She clicked her tongue. “It’s different. Very different. It calls me. It wants me. And, if I’m being honest, sometimes I want it all back.”
“I know this sounds unlikely, but I know what she means,” Alicia said quietly. “Being on the other side for a while—it has an effect you can’t shake off. It calls. Always.”
Kenzie gave Alicia a grateful look and then huddled down. Drake had thought she’d already kicked the bad habit. What did she need to get past it? Listening to them, it seemed that Alicia, Kenzie’s arch-enemy, might even be able to help.
At last, the van slowed and then came to an abrupt stop, throwing both Yorgi and Smyth, who had been standing, to their knees. Men started shouting, many men, and some came running around to the back of the van.
The sound of weapons priming was loud and ominous.
“You come quietly,” the merc leader shouted again. “We have many men and bomber still in Luxor. You hear?”
Drake shouted a compliant reply.
The back doors opened. Drake saw darker skies, full of sunset and glaring lights illuminating a rough paddock, bordered by a fence. At least a dozen men had weapons trained on them.
The merc leader grinned. “Now. You come with us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Scream as loud as you like. In the desert, nobody will hear you.”
That had been the advice of just one of their endearing guards, all of whom were filthy and foul-looking. They were inside a prison, just inside the entrance to a network of caves. The prison was makeshift but it was strong, made up of two mountain walls and strong, thick four-by-four that had been hammered and then concreted into the already sturdy floor. Laths of two by two made up the horizontal braces, giving the guards something to rest the barrels of their guns on when they wanted to have a little fun.
To the prisoners’ left they could see the entrance to the cave system, softly illuminated as the night drew in. To the right the wide passage ran on into darkness, the way marked by flickering torches.
Alicia just watched the guards.
This had been such a terribly confusing few weeks. For her. For them all. It showed the measure to which any kind of powerful authority held their prize employees. It was repeated in all walks of life. In the end you were just a number, only as good as your last failure. The wins only helped those already in front of you. She shook her head violently to dispel the negative thoughts. Stuff like that could get you killed.
So her concentration went, fully, to the guards. There were eight of them at any one time. Others came and went. They didn’t appear to have any structure, any balance. Just animals with weapons and a small slice of power. She figured they’d been incarcerated for the best part of two hours now and had learned zilch. Twice, Crouch and Drake had spoken up, asking why they were here.
The guards snarled like desperate, rabid, grimy dogs and rested their guns on the slats. Once, they fired, the bullet passing in between Drake and Yorgi, and slamming into the mountain wall. Everyone outside the cell laughed. What a great joke.
Alicia loved these people. They were her weakness. Being alone and focusing every day on a new horizon had its drawbacks, yes, but it damn well had its perks too. Caring about nobody, having nobody, meant your heart and your mind and your emotions could never be held hostage. The thought of having loved ones scared her more than any other event in her life.
The thought of losing loved ones was unadulterated hell.
But she turned to her strengths now, knowing they held the best chance of getting everyone out of here alive. It would help to know why they were here, but escape was the priority.
The situation was grim. The team had no weapons, no comms. They hadn’t been offered food or water. Every man outside those wooden bars held a reliable weapon. They were being watched twenty-four-seven. And it was getting cold now, the desert night drawing in. The extra clothes they’d been forced to wear earlier—to conceal Kevlar and weapons—were welcome now, though the bulletproof jackets had been taken from them.
There will be a chance. We just need to be ready, to recognize it.
The guards watched her watch them. To be fair, they weren’t half bad, a few always standing well back, away from the bars, overseeing all and remaining indistinct. Alicia wanted to bait them, to anger them, force them into a mistake, but unfortunately it appeared none of them spoke English, which took the wind well and truly out of her sails. All she could do was transmit her disdain through her gaze and, to her credit, she thought she was doing a pretty goo
d job.
Alicia shifted, accidentally kicking Yorgi. This was another problem. They were cramped, thrown side by side in this small cell and then chained together. Chained to the wall. Chained by the legs and the wrists.
A knocking sound echoed through the cell, drawing everyone’s attention. A new man stood there, Uzi poised across the slate, the barrel inching from target to target.
“My name is Saint.” He laughed. “I know! Crazy, huh? I’m your jailer, your new direct boss. What I say, you do. When I say it, you jump, or bend, or crawl. You drink when I tell you. Eat when I tell you. Sleep if I let you.” He paused. “Is that clear?”
Alicia glared back with utter contempt.
Drake said, “Why are we here?”
Saint shook his head very slowly. “You don’t listen. I knew you wouldn’t listen. All right, then. Here’s lesson number one.”
He shot Yorgi.
The Russian thief screamed, scrambling in the dirt on the floor of the cave. Kinimaka and Smyth, the closest to him, leaned over to steady his writhing body. Chained together, he pulled on all of them, making the rough iron chafe and bloody their wrists and ankles, pulling their limbs to and fro.
Yorgi took an enormous breath, tried to steady himself. The bullet had grazed his thigh, traveling by. Smyth’s hand staunched the blood loss.
“In case you’re wondering,” Saint said. “My aim isn’t off. It’s perfect. I could take an eyebrow off a stag at a thousand yards. I could take your nose off—” he nodded at Drake “—or shoot one up your ass. Perfect.” He looked to Alicia. “I know you don’t wanna be here. But you are. And I’m in charge, so get fucking used to it.”
“Yessir, boss.” Smyth couldn’t help himself. “Whatever you say.”
Saint whipped out a wicked looking knife, letting the serrated blade glint in the light. “I’m also good with this,” he said softly. “In fact, I skinned a man alive just last night. Right here. Took me hours. But then,” he looked up, “practice makes perfect, eh?”
Nobody spoke.
“Well, that’s a little better. I don’t expect answers. I know who you are. What you are. Team SPEAR.” He laughed. “What a prize. If only my orders were different I’d have half the world’s terrorists on their way down here, ready to make a highest bid for you. I’d make a fortune. But—” he sighed “—that’s just a wet dream. And speaking of wet dreams,” his black eyes moved across the women, “I see four right here.”
Alicia knew it was a test, a provocation issued to see if they needed another demonstration. For now, nobody did and Saint took it as another sign of acquiescence.
“Good, good,” he said, tapping first his gun and then his knife against the bars. “I see we’re gonna get along. Now I do realize you have no idea what’s going on. I do realize you’re all dying to find out. And I do realize you’re all hungry, thirsty and uncomfortable.” He let out a peal of laughter. “So . . . on that note, I’ll bid you goodnight.”
He turned away, speaking quite clearly to the guards as he went.
“No food. No water. And keep it unpleasant.”
Spoken in Romanian, Kenzie translated for the team. “They have to be the mercs from the first tomb,” she said. “Or part of them. I wonder what they want.”
“Well, we did kill a lot of them.” Dahl watched Yorgi.
“It is okay.” The young thief noticed everyone’s concern. “It burns, but is only a flesh wound.”
“Wrap it cleanly,” Hayden said. “I’m guessing infection down here is rife.”
“I will.”
“I’m not liking this,” Crouch said. “Revenge? Maybe. But who do they bloody work for? It almost feels like a CIA op.”
Hayden stared at him without emotion. “You know, I guess anything is possible. There are more off-the-books ops these days than sanctioned ones.”
A machine-gun ratcheted, the noise cutting through the cave. When Alicia looked to the bars she saw a grinning man with jagged yellow and black teeth. Slowly, he held a finger up to his mouth, revealing bleeding gums.
“Shhh.”
Water came creeping into the cell, soaking the floor. Alicia rose with the others, the process incredibly complicated with them being chained together. She guessed this was more of the ‘unpleasant’.
Forced to stand, the team passed a few more hours.
The night was long. The guards came and went, seemingly randomly, joined by those that just wanted to take a look. The random aspect to things only made it all the harder. Alicia saw no way out—at least no way without taking casualties. Real casualties.
“If we thought being on the run was grim,” she said. “It was a walk in Hyde park compared to this.”
“Shhh!”
“Oh, go snog a sand spider.”
The guards attacked the bars then, sticking long knives through and jabbing at the captives. Alicia took a blow to the bicep, felt the blood flow. Hayden cried out from a deeper cut; Dahl from a longer slash. The team rattled their way to the center of the cell, sloshing in water, only a hand’s length away from the hacking blades.
Yorgi bit his lip until it bled, already suffering.
“Nice work, shit-for-brains,” Kenzie whispered in Alicia’s ear.
Alicia studied her wound. “Yeah, I was hoping they’d just stab you.”
Then Saint returned, calling the guards back from the bars, laughing to see their predicament. “Well, well, the SPEAR team humbled. I do love seeing this. Wait, just wait . . .” He rushed off, returning in half a minute.
“Hold that pose.”
He took a photo on his cellphone, chuckling all the while. The laughter turned incredibly evil toward the end.
“And this is only the beginning,” he said. “The night before the storm. The calm before the thunder and violence. Oh, how I look forward to tomorrow!”
He skipped away, happy.
Alicia closed her mind away for a while, unwilling to accept this situation. It won’t last. They had several of the best leaders, soldiers and fighters in the world among them.
But tomorrow was always going to come.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Morning dawned outside the cave network, throwing lustrous rays through the opening and onto the dusty floor. Alicia had given up standing the night before, along with all the others, and now sat in a slurry of dirt, soaked through, her back against the mountain wall, as far away from the guards as was possible. The rest of the team were seated around her, arrayed as best and as restfully as they could be under the circumstances.
During the night, the guards had broken out several small toys. One, a mini-crossbow like a child’s toy, could fire toothpicks, small nails, stones and other sharp implements at a fast and bruising rate. The guards appeared to start gambling on who could make the best shot, elicit the loudest cry of anger, strike certain areas.
It all fuelled Alicia’s fire.
She restrained it, nurtured it, made ready to release it all when that chance arose.
Saint arrived half an hour later.
“Oh, hey.” He looked around and then back the way he’d just come. “They didn’t bring your breakfast? No coffee and bacon? Oh, shit, well, never mind that. I came with news. Who wants a bit of fun interrogation?”
The team generally ignored him, but those that were watching didn’t let their eyes waver.
“C’mon, kids. It’s all good. A finger here, a toe there. I promise to be precise. No ragged edges . . .” He grinned and spread his arms. “Or you could just talk to me.”
“You need to make your mind up,” Smyth growled. “They’ve been telling us to shut up all night.”
“Ah, well, I am in charge after all. Not you. Anyway, was that a volunteer?”
Smyth grinned back. “Whatever, man.”
“I see you had a nice cool night. Don’t worry, it’ll start to warm up again soon. And I mean really warm up. The temperature in here can rise to a dangerous level. Luckily though—” he swigged from a plastic bott
le “—we all have more than enough water.”
He poured the remainder onto the floor before their eyes.
Alicia unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “You do know a time will come when we get out of here?”
“Oh, yeah, Alicia Myles, I really do. In fact, that’s gonna be later today. And then the games really will start!”
He turned away as another man came running up, clearly more than just a colleague to Saint.
“Bud, you gotta come and look. They fired us an email across, showing us what happened. FrameHub, I mean. They launched their demonstration, just a dose of what they’re capable of.”
Crouch leaned into the chained circle. “FrameHub? I don’t get it. Why are they interested in us and what does it have to do with the seals? Shit, what are we missing?”
“Hey, Liam,” Saint said. “What did they do?”
“Stopped a vital dam working in Egypt. Poisoned some kids in the isolation ward in a hospital in Greece. Suffocated six workers in Turkey. All CPU-based shit.”
Saint was grinning now. “This, I gotta see. Give me a moment, bro, I’m trying to decide which one of these assholes I start snipping.”
Liam gawked. “Gotta be one of the hotties, bro. Let the guys pass her around a while; soften her up.”
“You can fucking try.” Alicia was up and at the bars faster than the new merc could blink, her sudden adrenalin dragging the others with her. With the small space she created, she took the opportunity to jab three stiffened fingers at his eyes.
Liam squealed and staggered back, holding his face. Saint shook his head in bewilderment. “Bro, you are a fucking pussy. And not too bright. Get the hell outta here. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Liam staggered away, moaning.
Saint affected a look of embarrassment. “Yeah, I know, I know. And he’s one of the brightest. So look, we gonna do this the hard way or the fun way?”
The Seven Seals of Egypt (Matt Drake Book 17) Page 11