After a while, he realized he was alone in the bathroom, staring through the open door. The techs were staring at him. With a grunt, he strode back into the main room. Hayden stood by the big window, framed in sunlight, her long, blond hair on fire.
She turned at once, happy. “Drake and Myles will be landing tonight. 8 p.m.”
A tech guy stood up so fast he knocked a kitschy brass table over. The noise didn’t even reach him or make him stop turning a tablet computer around and around in his hands.
Hayden put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”
The man stared at her and then thrust the tablet into her face. “Shaun Kingston,” he said. “Owner of Kingston Firearms. One of the biggest legit arms dealers in the country. If he’s in bed with the Koreans. . .”
Hayden stared at the picture. “Then we’re up shitstorm creek.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Mai Kitano faced the facility’s commander, disdain twisting her face.
“Those rags you wear,” he said, sadistic glee making him look like an evil circus clown. “They’re torn. Muddy. Maybe we should remove them for you.”
She and Smyth had been tied by the wrists to upended bedsteads, their hands twisted through broken, rusty springs and then secured to the iron side rails.
“You can try.”
The grinning base commander faltered and took a step back, reading the certainty in her eyes. A soldier stepped from behind, clearly not interpreting the situation, and strode forward. Mai instantly took the weight of her body on her wrists and kicked out with both feet. The first strike knocked the soldier to the left, straight into the hard, oncoming right.
The sound of his neck snapping silenced the room.
“No! No! Tie her feet.” The commander’s expression turned from uncertain to livid in a millisecond.
The other soldiers hesitated, not trusting their own skills. Mai smiled viciously.
“Fools!” The commander blustered, but didn’t repeat the order.
One of the soldiers leaned into him. “Should we shoot her?”
“Probably.” The commander let out a deep sigh that made his fat jowls wobble. “But not yet. Wait.” He stalked from the room, shouting at a subordinate to go and fetch him the sat phone.
Smyth regarded her with the utmost respect. “Even tied up.” He laughed. “Even tied up you’re lethal. Maggie, I gotta say—you’re my dream girl.”
Mai shook her head, unable to hide the smile. It soon evaporated though when the sound of Dai Hibiki’s groans filtered through the battle rage. The undercover Japanese agent had so far borne the brunt of the ill treatment. The Koreans had beaten him to the ground, then kicked and stomped on him until he stopped moving. Mai had heard more than one bone break in the onslaught. Her heart and mind wept, but her outward facade remained carved in stone.
“What is this place?” she asked, always digging. “What do you do here?”
The soldiers just stared at her. Then, from the corner of the room, came a clicking noise. A man, as thin, ugly and repugnant as a stick insect, rose, finely knobbed cane in hand. He didn’t stop moving until he could reach out and touch Mai, well within lethal range.
“You still want to know?” His voice cracked, old with pain, old with terrible experience. “Even now before all these weapons. You still want to know? That is why I love you, Miss Kitano. The legend of Shiranu is real! It is real!” He cackled on like a man driven insane. “That is why, even locked away here in this purgatory, I have tried to follow your every move, your every victory even before Tokyo Coscon.” He raised the tip of the cane and shoved it against what he could see of her flat stomach. “It would be a pleasure to die by your hands. Or feet. As you prefer.”
Mai looked momentarily at a loss. A weapon rattled and clicked. “Come away from her, Doctor.”
“Doctor? You run this place, bud?” Smyth rattled his bedstead. “C’mon. What can it hurt? You done life here, man, longer than any prison sentence. What gives?”
The doctor bowed his head. “At first, we outlined a proposal to propagate super assassins. Sleepers. It eventually became a leadership-run People’s Republic program.”
“Assassins?” Smyth almost laughed. “You kiddin’ me, doc?”
Mai watched the end of the cane being pressed into the flesh just below her navel. She let her gaze run along its length and then up until they met the doctor’s eyes. “Is this what you want?”
“Yes, Miss Kitano.”
“Then speak.”
It was one of the oddest situations imaginable. The captive promising death to the captor if they played nice and spilled the beans. Only Mai Kitano could conjure such extreme and fatal adoration. And the inept guards watched partly in fascination, and partly because they had no orders to the contrary.
“These assassins pass no blame on to Korea. It’s what’s known as a ‘sparkling blow’ against the West. Clean. Spotless. Death. It can be attributed to a chance act of ferocity, triggered by a single predetermined phrase.”
“So why use them now?”
The doctor nodded ever so slightly at Mai and dug the end of his cane into her stomach. His next words caused a furor.
“Officially, they are not yet in use. General Kwang Yong has commandeered the program for his own personal means and gains.”
Soldiers rushed forward, cackling. Mai raised both knees, swinging viciously under the doctor’s chin. His head snapped back hard, breaking the connection with his spine. The body slithered lifelessly between her legs and down to the floor. Once again, the soldiers backed off.
“If I could choose a way to die”—Smyth tested his bonds—“it’d be between your legs, Maggie.”
The lab door opened and the chubby-faced clown commander walked back in. “It’s done. The general will return and take care of this. What happened here?”
“The doctor.” One of the soldiers pointed at Mai in explanation.
“I have never known a prisoner like you before.” He drifted closer. “You give grown, armed men nightmares. Which clan are you from?”
Mai whispered a word in a voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear, but the commander’s frame visibly wavered. His entire body shook and he was an inch from having to pick himself up off the floor.
“Clear the room.” He hissed. “The general will have to take care of this.” Without ceremony, he forced a path through his men. “We wait. Now, we wait.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Shaun Kingston sat without moving, betraying no emotion as the calls came in thick and fast. General Kwang Yong thrust an encrypted phone back toward a subordinate and started smoothing out his cuffs.
“My people need me,” he said quietly. “I must return to the island. Immediately.”
“Anything I should know?” Kingston asked inoffensively.
“They have captured Mai Kitano.”
“I assume that’s a good thing.” Kingston didn’t pretend to recognize the name.
“It is an interrogation fit only for a General.” Kwang Wong puffed his chest out self-importantly. “And as regards our own enterprise—I need to know what she knows. Only me.”
“Understood. Germaine? What do you have?”
The bodyguard had been busy fielding half a dozen calls. “We’re about to get fucked more times than a porn star. The bastards have exposed us, sir.”
“Be more specific.”
“They know you were at the Desert Palms. They’ve even figured out why we zombied-up to take out those drunk pricks who barged in on us. In hindsight, sir, that might have been a mistake.”
Kingston didn’t miss the gentle irony. “So it seems. How easily our best laid plans can fall apart, eh, Germaine? Years of toil and strategy flushed away in a second by four idiots and an expensive hooker.”
Germaine nodded. “Since time began, sir.”
General Kwong Yang interrupted them. “I too need to leave. I wish to use the same airport I arrived at.”
Kingston
nodded. “Goes without saying, General. My jet’s kept in constant readiness there. And I have more properties and friends throughout the European and Asian continents than I do in the Americas. We’ll head out together.”
“Very well. I will prepare.”
“General,” Kingston said softly to the retreating man’s back, “do we still have an arms deal?”
Three seconds of silence passed saturated with such thick tension it could have absorbed the thrust of a knife. Then the North Korean spoke without turning. “Of course we do, Kingston. If you wish I could always awaken our army. . .”
Kingston shuddered. He knew the effects an army of sleeper agents would have on American soil. The chaos and terror that could be triggered by random violence. He also knew how much the Korean relished making each and every call that turned a sleeper into a zombie-like assassin. The power in his voice could turn a respected, everyday American into a horrific extension of the North Korean army. Kwang Yong had invited Kingston to watch once, to bear witness to the wickedness. Kingston had felt obliged to acquiesce, just once. What he saw in Kwang Yong’s face was something he’d never seen before.
Undiluted hatred. Gleeful malice—the kind a priest might associate with an avenging demon. Wanton and immoral rage.
Just six words: The Devil is in, Miss Jones.
If a man could have a sexual, corrupt and psychotic experience whilst delivering a message on the phone, then Kwang Yong had stolen the gold.
“You would do that just to cover our escape?”
“Wouldn’t you? Mr. Kingston, you have made a deal to supply models of advanced weaponry and top secret blueprints to, quite probably, America’s worst and most proficient enemy. Did you think there would be no collateral damage?”
“Not beyond a certain scale.”
“Then on whom did you think we would use your DREAD system? Your XM-25’s?”
Kingston hadn’t actually taken his thoughts much beyond private island parties, a decadent, faceless lifestyle and megayacht ownership. Now, he pushed it all aside. “We have much to do.”
“Then I should really go and prepare.”
“You do that, General.” Kingston exhaled noisily. “It’s all unraveling. How long do we have?”
Germaine considered the question, whip-thin frame coiled with tension. “We have half a dozen material assets they will check first, but we need to be gone from this house by dawn, sir.”
Kingston checked his bespoke Rolex. “It’s five p.m. now.” He turned to his assembled men. “Load up the trucks, boys, and prep the armored cars. We move out in twelve hours.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Matt Drake felt the heavy burden that weighed heavy on his heart and shoulders ease a little when he walked into the safe house. Some of the world’s most capable people stood ready for action, preparing to take the fight to the enemy and erase his entire operation.
Dahl walked straight up to him and clapped him on the back. “Good to see you back in one piece.”
“Cheers.”
Hayden met his eyes from across the room. “Hope you’re taking that little desert-island jaunt off your vacation allowance, Drake.”
Alicia sniggered beside him, then crossed over to a quiet corner, already checking her phone for missed voicemails or texts. Drake nodded to Karin, Komodo, Kinimaka and Gates, already noting Ben’s absence. He fielded some questions about Mai and tried to put all speculation as to her fate out of his mind, lest it completely debilitate him. He described the dramatic overland trip and the exploits of Romero. When speaking about the Russians, he was far more forthcoming, describing the Moscow HQ and what little he’d seen of the operation, the ancient maps of Babylon and the tower of Babel, and the monstrosity that called itself Zanko.
Two new people sat staring at him from the farthest corner of the room: a grizzled, middle-aged man wearing a denim jacket and cowboy boots, and a dark-haired woman wearing tight hole-in-the-knee jeans and a ragged sweater.
“Ya know,” Alicia drawled, “you’d think when a girl gets told she’s going to a safe house, it’d be a house, rather than a bloody underground basement.”
Lauren Fox nodded in agreement. Hayden smiled. “Welcome to the CIA, Myles.”
Drake took in the room with new eyes. “This is a CIA building?”
“Sure is,” Kinimaka told him happily. “And it may be cozy, but it comes with all the mod cons.”
He directed them over to a central console, much like what an airplane pilot operates. Above the console sat a trio of TV screens, flickering with grey static for now. Kinimaka tapped a button and all three screens burst into life.
“It’s a direct feed from the main CIA building at Langley. This is what they’re doing now. The bit that relates to us anyhow.”
“CIA?” Drake wondered. “Doesn’t this thing come under FBI jurisdiction now?”
“We don’t have time,” Hayden said briefly. “You’ll see.”
Drake watched as three ultra-clear satellite images appeared. As the resolution increased and magnified, some major activity could be seen inside what appeared to be a walled compound. The center was a sprawling old mansion, abutted by many low-slung buildings that resembled car garages. The outside was a maze of gardens, warehouses and dirt roads, exiting the property at several points.
“What are we looking at?”
“An estate that belongs to Shaun Kingston, our arms dealer. It would appear the man’s getting ready to move out big time. See all the damn vehicles? That’s a shitload of metal, a shitload of manpower and a shitload of weapons. And that. . .” Kinimaka tapped a moving figure surrounded by other moving figures. “As far as we can tell is General Kwong Yang.”
Drake’s eyes widened. “They’re both together right now? Still in the country? Oh, please don’t tell me that’s in Europe. I just came from there.”
“It’s not in Europe, Drake.” Jonathan Gates came over to stand next to his shoulder. “Kingston’s compound is a twenty minute drive from here.” He shrugged. “Maybe thirty.”
Drake felt an instant rush of adrenalin. “Tool up, people,” he hissed. “We’ll make his last journey a ride he’ll never forget.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Just as the dawn rose, a sprawling convoy of vehicles hit the highway hard. The rising red hues painted their dark colors crimson, marking them red, as though tinged with blood. Drake and his team were racing to intercept them in three separate Humvees. Hayden and Kinimaka shared the first, Dahl and Komodo the second, with Drake’s partner being Alicia. When they closed in on their prey and the convoy spotted them, the race was well and truly on.
Drake shook his head at the excessive procession. It was being led by a black supercar, what looked to Drake like a new custom-specced Viper. Behind it ran a trio of SUVs, a Ford F150 with an open bed, a shiny chrome Mack truck and, somewhat bizarrely, a stretch limo.
“That’s the Korean.” Drake flicked the comms open so everyone could hear. “In the limo. Gotta be. And Kingston will be in the Viper. The rest is pure firepower.”
Dahl raced up alongside him, eyeballing him as the two cars sped along inches apart. “Are you quite ready for this?”
Drake gunned the Humvee, inching ahead. “Stop poncing around, mate. Mai’s still on the island and this is our last chance.”
“I find sometimes in moments of extreme stress it helps to set a little wager. What do you think?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Simple. Count bad guys. The one who takes out the most wins.”
“I’m in,” Alicia said instantly, grinning.
Drake chewed his lower lip. Hayden remained notably uncommunicative.
Dahl said, “Scared you’ll lose, Drake?”
“Nope. I just don’t want to see you sloping off to Sweden with your tail between your legs when you get pounded. I’m in. Winner takes all.”
Dahl’s Humvee roared ahead, rapidly closing the gap between himself and the last SUV in line. At the same
time, Drake saw the heavily tinted SUV windows being rolled down and weapons come bristling out as if the vehicle had suddenly raised its heckles. The huge Mack truck swerved over two lanes as its rear doors were flung back.
Four men stood in the opening, sub-machine guns ready.
Men popped their heads up above the F150’s high sides just as the sound of cop car sirens and the thud of approaching helicopters hammered the air.
Drake wasted no time slamming the accelerator through the floorboards. “Game on.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
For once, the roaring engines of powerful vehicles drowned out the crazy fusillade of lead that erupted across the three-lane interstate. Drake didn’t flinch as bullets pinged off the Humvee’s windshield and frame, trusting the upgrade kits to protect the armored vehicle. Hayden switched to the left, aiming to put one of the SUVs between her and the truck. Dahl was already past an SUV and fast approaching the eighteen-wheeler, sparks flashing off his vehicle like a Disney fireworks show.
The F150 loomed outside Alicia’s part of the windshield.
“Can’t get too much of a good thing.” The Englishwoman cracked her window, aimed her gun, and fired. A man twisted and collapsed into the flatbed, his gun flying through the air and clattering down the highway. A bullet somehow managed to fizz in through Alicia’s open window, thudding into her headrest.
Alicia whistled. “Nice shot. Wow, you know, Drakey, I miss this.”
Drake swerved. A police chopper thundered overhead. His rearview filled with the flashing blue lights of the speeding cop cars Gates had requested, some of them clearly modified as they began to catch up. He gasped as he saw Dahl’s Humvee dart to and fro behind the Mack truck. The bad guys were leaning out of the truck’s rear hold, trying to bring a rocket launcher to bear on the Swede’s transport.
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