And heard the mercs laughing hard as they pulled up, some firing for fun into the sky. He figured they had about thirty seconds to live.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Drake saw legs and torsos approaching the sideways truck. Luther was already prepared, machine gun lying along his right leg, aimed at the mercs. Drake patted Nielson everywhere before finding the keys, uncuffing himself and then handing them to Dahl.
“I know what you’re doing,” Luther said without moving a muscle. “Making one more mistake to add to the ledger. Don’t.”
Drake rooted through the upended crate, finding grenades and guns. “First time we’ve been free in a while, mate. Feels good.”
“You are not free.”
“I beg to differ,” Mai said. “We hold all the guns. And they’re trained on you.”
Luther grunted. “It will do you no good, Kitano.”
“Well, I’ll give you this,” Kenzie said appreciatively. “You sure do have balls.”
“Like steel.”
“But you are lacking in the brains department, my friend,” Mai told him. “Surely by now you can see you need us.”
Luther didn’t reply for a moment; even from behind Drake could see his shoulders and muscles working as he struggled.
“I need no help from prisoners,” he said. “Especially enemies of the state.”
And, as the legs got closer, Luther opened fire, shearing some off at the knee and shredding others. At the same time he shimmied himself down the truck and through the tailgate, finally able to stand and face the enemy as he wanted to—head on.
They ranged all around him, at least ten men with semi-autos. Still firing, he waited for the hot death of a dozen rounds.
Fury smashed and burned all around him. Wounded and dying men, the fires and smoke of crashed vehicles, the evil thunder of gunfire; it was the very place where he’d been born to die, and he’d known it from around the age of six.
The HK fell on an empty mag. Never giving up, never resting, Luther whipped a new one out and slammed it home. By then, of course, a dozen men had him lined up in their sights.
Ah, shit.
And then glory stung the battlefield, and Luther’s very soul, as the SPEAR team streamed around his left and right sides, a torrent of violence and surprise attack, a surge of death gunning for the very men that had incarcerated and tortured them. Luther stood strong at the center, picking attackers off one by one, and the SPEAR team lived up to every expectation he’d ever heard, chasing the bullets down, running into danger, facing the worst of the worst and tearing their ruthless lives to shreds.
Luther’s second truck fared in a similar manner to the first, its disavowed occupants jumping into the fray after slewing to a halt. When Luther looked around, and all too soon, the second pursuing turret-gun vehicle was pulling up, closely followed by the one remaining standard truck.
“Go, go,” Drake cried. “Into the desert. Run!”
Luther saw his two surviving people among the others. The kid, Pine, and the diva, Carey. It would be hardest for them.
“Move it!” he cried. “We have more safety in numbers for now.”
Later on, he would re-evaluate that statement.
*
Drake aimed for the high desert mounds after checking everyone was together. The group didn’t bunch in case Vladimir and his mercs decided to empty a mag in their direction. Drake ranged ahead, ignoring the sweat and the heat, the deep sand that dragged his steps down, the aches, pains, cuts and bruises he’d suffered in the arena.
This was desperation survival now; the end game to end it all.
“How far to that road?” he asked Luther, the man’s huge head about all he could see on his right periphery.
“Last check had it two miles,” came the low reply. “That way.”
Drake altered the direction of his run. Behind he saw Alicia, Dahl and Kenzie, followed by all the others, heads down and running easily. Crouch was being helped by Smyth and Kinimaka, but the Englishman looked to have perked up.
“Chocolate goooood,” Drake called to him.
“Anything is good when you’ve been beaten, tortured and forced to fight for over a day.”
Drake nodded, thinking: It’s not over yet, pal, and slogged on. Behind them he saw Vladimir and Saint’s frames vanishing in the heat haze, but noticed how the mercenaries were lining up.
“Bastards are giving chase,” he said. “Vladimir must be scared of his masters. This FrameHub? What do you know of them, Luther?”
“Fuck off, Drake. We ain’t friends.”
Drake shrugged as Dahl chortled. “Our charismatic leader,” the Swede said. “Working at the top of his game.”
“Maybe I can help,” Alicia panted from behind as they jogged up an incline. “After all, I’m pretty sure we’ve . . .”
“I remember you,” Luther growled. “Yeah, it took me a while but I remember you now.”
“There you go,” Alicia said as if they were now all good friends. “Problem solved. Sometimes bumping uglies can be useful too.”
“We bumped heads, not uglies,” Luther said, legs pumping hard. “You worked for the other side back then, Myles. Seems you still do.”
“I did?” Alicia frowned. “Stop being such a smug shit. America and all its covert agencies change sides every week. You’re just an order taker, Luther. Might as well work at a restaurant.”
Luther rumbled like an angered bear.
“Guys,” it was Hayden speaking. “Can you stop trying to make friends? I thought we established that’s not your forte.”
Drake stopped at the top of the rise, shading his eyes as he gauged the lay of the land. The desert stretched to all sides, in places flat and in others composed of rolling dunes. Far away to the east he thought he spied a narrow black strip.
“There we go,” he said. “Good call, Luther. I guess even a grunt can be right once a day.”
“You got a problem with grunts now? We can settle this right here, asshole, if you wanna.”
“I have no problem with grunts,” Drake set off. “Just wankers that follow blindly.”
“You were like that once,” Crouch called over. “It’s how they shape you.”
“True,” Drake admitted. “But then I was still a teenager.”
Luther looked over as they ran carefully downhill. “Army man straight outta school?”
“Yep. Never knew nothing else.”
“Same here. Parents almost killed me.”
From the rear of the pack there came a shout from Mai. The Japanese woman had ranged back a little to get a feel for what was following.
“Twenty armed mercs, including Vladimir and Saint. Get a move on.”
Drake was worried. The mercs were relatively fresh, trained and hungry for blood. They had their boss with them who, no doubt, was eager to finish and probably earn a decent pay day. Thinking it through, he decided the road was too far.
“Plan B,” he said.
Dahl chuckled. “Not that old maxim.”
“Always works,” Drake said. Quickly, he shouted out a strategy and received a plethora of thumbs-up.
“How many rifles we got?”
Three shouts—Kinimaka, Smyth and Pine—one of Luther’s boys.
“Can you handle it?”
Three affirmatives.
“Then do it. Mai, you hang back to supervise it.”
Drake slowed as they found their positions. Kinimaka ran to the right, a hundred paces; Smyth to the left. Pine remained at the center and Mai watched over it all. They hunkered down on one knee, sighting carefully until the enemy were in sight.
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 voice 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?”
The Seven Seals of Egypt (Matt Drake Book 17) Page 16