The Swords of Babylon (Matt Drake 6)

by Leadbeater, David

  The chopper came up quick. Hayden and Kinimaka stared down at him. Gunshots peppered the windshield and bounced off. Drake saw Hayden finessing the cyclic stick as he clambered aboard.

  Yorgi made a wet sound as he plumped down on to the seat beside him.

  The chopper lifted off, barely giving the other three enough time to jump aboard. Dahl was the last, making an athletic leap to grab hold of one of the skids, then crouching and leaping again in an instant, gun swinging, like a world-class free runner.

  Drake stared. “Nice.”

  “New hobby.”

  “I meant the rescue.”

  “Oh, well, you’re welcome. Couldn’t leave you out here on your own to be horribly tortured.”

  “Dahl,” Alicia said, “hasn’t stop pacing up and down since we got here. I think he loves you, Drakey.”

  “Bog off.”

  Dahl reddened.

  “And thanks to you too, Alicia.” Drake let himself relax for just a moment as the chopper continued to rise.

  “You know, they just had to say words like guns and explosions to get me here.”

  Drake turned to Mai. “Hey—”

  Just then Hayden screamed, “Oh no, dammit! They’ve got a fu—”

  A massive explosion shook the chopper as the rocket propelled grenade struck the chopper’s undercarriage. The helicopter immediately spun out of control.

  Kinimaka shouted out what was already clear, “Hold on! We’re going down!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Drake grabbed hold of a restraint strap with his left hand, and pushed Yorgi firmly back into his seat with the other. He saw Hayden fighting the collective, Kinimaka leaning across to help by adding his own strength, as the sky flicked around and around like a crazy kaleidoscope.

  “Ow!” Drake smashed his head against the bulkhead. Aware that the ground was rushing up, he held on even tighter and yelled, “Where’s the spare guns, for fuck’s sake!”

  The chopper slammed down hard, the sickening crunch of its buckling skids giving them a millisecond to prepare before the belly of the machine struck concrete. The impact sent Alicia tumbling, smashing her head against a seat back. Mai and Dahl held on, but crashed into each other. Drake protected Yorgi with a grip like a band of steel.

  As the chopper came to rest, Hayden immediately unbuckled and climbed out of her seat. “Hurry!” Both she and Kinimaka took up weapons and opened the cockpit doors, quickly establishing positions as guards came running forward.

  Alicia groaned as blood seeped from her scalp down her forehead. Drake crouched beside her. “Can you focus? Can I borrow your gun?”

  “Piss off!”

  Dahl threw open the side door, reaching into a lockbox as he did so. “Spare weapons and mags in there, Drake. Help yourself. You might want to arm your new friend, too.”

  The Swede jumped down, followed by Mai. Drake delved into the lockbox. Alicia jumped out the other side, backing up Hayden. Guards ran at them from the entrance of the prison building, using the cover provided by several sheds and vehicles along the way. Prisoners had crossed over the breach in the wall by now and were again massing for a charge.

  “We don’t have much time!” Hayden yelled. “Anyone got a plan?”

  Dahl shouted above the din. “This way!”

  Drake picked an M4 assault rifle, slightly out of date perhaps, but a great weapon, and handed Yorgi a SIG Pro semi-automatic pistol. “Make sure it’s loaded and grab some spare ammo.” Drake readied himself at the door, prepping the M4.

  “Ready?”

  Yorgi nodded.

  Drake jumped, landing a foot behind Dahl. Bullets fizzed all around the stranded chopper, even skimming off the concrete and the tiny spaces underneath the machine. Yorgi landed awkwardly and Drake steadied the man before he tripped headlong. Mai sent sporadic bursts at the walls over the prisoner’s heads, shattering the concrete and showering them with hard shards. Dahl made sure they all saw where he was pointing.

  “There.”

  He took off, staying low. Drake quickly searched the inmate crowd for signs of Zanko or Razin, but saw nothing. He waited as Mai slipped past him and he saw Hayden, Kinimaka and Alicia running their way. He turned and followed the mad Swede, making a bee-line for a big, green Ukrainian built KrAZ truck. The behemoth was a six wheeler, with an open back partly covered with a tarpaulin that strapped into hooks situated all along the truck’s high, steel sides.

  Perfect for deflecting bullets.

  Dahl clambered up into the high cab, whooping with delight when he found that the truck was already idling. Drake reasoned that his team’s helicopter arrival had interrupted some kind of delivery and the driver was long gone.

  The team climbed aboard, two in the cab and the rest in the truck bed, sitting with their backs against the solid sides. Dahl pumped the accelerator and shifted gears, wincing as the mechanism made a deep, angry grinding sound.

  Alicia sat beside him. “It ain’t your wife, Dahl. You can’t smooch the damn thing into submission. Give it some fuckin’ wellie.”

  Dahl rammed the gear lever home and stepped on the pedals. The truck roared and lurched forward. Diesel smoke belched from the exhausts. Bullets pinged and bounced off the sides as the guards rounded the stranded chopper. Dahl trod on the accelerator and turned the wheel, aiming for the prison gates.

  He slammed the back panel. “Gatehouse!”

  A trio of guards already stood outside, aiming their weapons as the truck roared toward them. Mai and Drake stood up in the back and let loose on full auto. Two of the guards twisted and fell, the third ran like a spooked rabbit. When the truck slowed, Drake jumped to the ground and ran, using the enormous wheels as shelter, before smashing his way into the gatehouse where he searched a wall-mounted, gray console. The commands were written in Russian, but there were only two significant buttons. One red, the other green.

  He hit the green one, heard the satisfying crunch and saw movement as the gates swung inward, and climbed back into the truck as it began to pick up speed. As he paused atop the sides he cursed. “Bastards are chasing us.”

  ****

  The heavy truck rumbled and roared as it bounced and crashed its way through the prison gates and on to a rough-and-ready road. Dahl fought the wheel at every turn. Alicia checked the side mirrors to gauge the pursuit.

  “Three trucks, a little Land Rover type thing and a kind of mini-pickup. Drake would probably know the makes, models and street value.” She smiled tightly.

  Dahl was wracking his memory. “You remember the map? If we branch off up the road ahead we come to Zalinsk – the empty town?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Dahl swung the wheel hard when the turn came up, sending the truck jouncing along an even bumpier road and his teammates sprawling across the truck’s bed. Through the subsequent yelling, Dahl uttered the quiet words, “Apologies people.”

  They crested a muddy rise. The town of Zalinsk lay in a shallow depression, nothing more than an unsystematic jumble of buildings, many now open to the elements as the place had been abandoned for so long. With the pursuing vehicles only a half mile behind, Dahl set off down the slope only a little faster than was safe. When the truck hit the bottom he aimed it at the middle of two of the nearest buildings and hauled on the brakes when it had effectively blocked the road.

  “Pile out!”

  Dahl hit the dirt first, Alicia a step behind. Drake scaled the truck’s sides and flipped himself over the top, then waited for Yorgi. Mai landed deftly beside him.

  “Who is your new friend, Matt?”

  “Prisoner. Thief. Informer. Entrepreneur. It’s good to see you, Mai.”

  “It will get even better when we reach civilization.” Mai smiled demurely, then raced off through the open door of a nearby building, heading for the roof. The pursuing convoy was already thundering down the slope, some of the guards taking hopeless potshots. Drake followed Mai as Hayden and Kinimaka aimed for a nearby structure, the big ma
n as usual ensuring he was the screen between his boss and the line of fire. Drake thought that Hayden was so used to his routine, she barely noticed it anymore.

  Gunfire cracked from the rooftop. Drake saw the lead truck’s windshield shatter and had an idea. “Yorgi, wait behind me.” He pointed.

  Sinking to his knees, he took aim with the sturdy M4. The sights lined up and he squeezed off a flurry of bullets. The lead truck lurched and swerved as the driver-side tire exploded, veering off the road and bouncing rapidly down a sharp hill. Drake imagined the men being flung around inside the truck bed much more vigorously than he had been, and saluted with the rifle when he saw two of them thrown so high they were tossed over the side.

  His teammates all opened fire. The second two vehicles ground to a halt, their occupants scrambling out and either finding cover or rushing around the back. Drake stayed where he was for the moment.

  Then four guards poked their heads into sight. One exploded instantly, a splash of red being the only testament that he’d been there at all. The other three leveled rocket launchers.

  Drake ducked and threw himself into the dirt as missiles flew at them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Russell Cayman wandered through the chaotic dust-thickened ballroom, an eerie wraith in the dark. Otherworldly, the stench of death and human flesh clinging to him like a thick toxic miasma. His step was sure and he had eyes for only one thing.

  The bones of Kali, Goddess of Evil.

  She hung before him, wired to the wall in all her glory. Cayman had rebuilt her skeleton full-size and then used iron wall hooks and industrial wire to keep her in place, spread magnificently across the wall and looking down on him from a superior position.

  On them.

  Cayman dragged the half-dead body of a local man behind him, fingers wrapped in his long blood-matted hair, the slithering sound of his last passage punctuated only by the occasional tattoo of his boots striking the floor in response to intense spasms of agony. Cayman stopped when Kali loomed over him, the sight of her dirty gray bones a soothing balm to his scorched eyes.

  “My Goddess.” He knelt. Around him tiny shadows shifted – the denizens he lived with, all squatting in the dark like creeping Gollums – in the once-empty mansion that had belonged to the secret group known as the Shadow Elite. The ballroom was where most of them had so painfully died, so Cayman found it fitting that Kali should reside here, pressed up against the dried patches of their life blood.

  “I bring you . . . a sacrifice.”

  He threw the body at her feet, watching as the twitching man bled out. He enjoyed taking and killing the locals in this area of Vienna, sometimes offering them to Kali, other times feeding them to the rats and adding their tenderest pieces to his saucepan.

  He had grown into a culinary genius.

  When the man stopped twitching, Cayman moved forward, kneeling in the pool of still-warm blood, and supplicated in front of his god. He leaned over and kissed Kali’s feet, held the cold bones against his cheek. At last he felt whole again, nourished, part of a family. Cayman’s real mother had dumped him into a ditch and driven away when high on drugs. Kali would be his guardian, his overseer, for life.

  His cell phone rang for the first time in weeks. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t surprised. In most ways he was fully expecting the call. Cayman kissed the cracked bones one more time before standing and moving away to a far corner, at the center of a sticky network of spider webs.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been expecting me, Russell?”

  “Yes, sir, I have.”

  “Good. Where are you now?”

  “The old mansion.”

  “In Vienna? How excellent. Then you must come to me at once.”

  Cayman acquiesced. He had always known there existed one single man, one indistinct figure who ruled them all. The true leader of the Shadow Elite. “I’ll set out as soon as it’s light, Mr Block.”

  “And Cayman?”

  “Yes, Mr Block?”

  “Make sure you bring the bones of Kali with you. With her help . . . we will once again rule the world.”

  Cayman was in no position to argue with the once and future king of the world. He softly agreed and finished the call, staring up one more time at the immense skeleton wired to the twenty-foot-high wall.

  “We have one more night, my Goddess.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Drake shielded his eyes as the rockets exploded. Sheets of flame burst upwards and outwards, detonating like a fire bomb. He saw the entire building to his right literally sag as walls were blasted away – the same building Mai, Alicia and Dahl occupied. He could only watch as rock and stone cascaded down and the entire structure began to crumble.

  “Look out!” The warning felt way too late.

  Mai, lying in wait on the flat roof, had ducked behind the stone parapet when she saw the missiles swinging in. Their impact sent an ominous vibration through the structure beneath her, one she felt through her own body and understood immediately. At first there was only the groan of heavy foundations shifting, but then the entire roof area lurched and sagged. The front end slumped, bricks and mortar cascading away, crashing to the ground below. Mai scrambled backwards, catching the eyes of Dahl and Alicia.

  The Englishwoman shook her head. “Building’s collapsing with us on top?” She sighed. “Must be Friday fuckin’ morning.”

  Dahl rose and nodded at Mai. “You ready?”

  “I know there’s only one way off this roof.”

  The entire building dropped another inch, the front part of the roof falling away to leave a rough and ragged precipice. Dahl strapped his weapon over his shoulders, and Mai followed suit. As the roof sagged again, they saw the prison guards situated ahead of them jump into their vehicles and advance. When the collapse accelerated, Dahl roared and ran straight at the disintegrating edge. The whole building rumbled and shook. Cracks exploded across the roof’s surface. Mai ran at his heels, Alicia close by. The roar of adrenalin pumped like a thrash band in their ears. Their sprint suddenly turned into a downhill race as the top of the building sank even lower. A mushroom cloud of dust and smoke billowed ahead.

  Dahl reached the edge and hurled himself into space, pushing off hard and using the still slightly elevated roofline to get extra lift. Mai leaped beside him, arms and legs still pumping, as the bulk of the building caved in behind them. The roar of shattering brick and rock hurt Mai’s ears. Her eyes sought the ground through the smoke, hoping they had jumped far enough to clear—

  They landed hard, hitting grass a second before debris burst across it in a tumbling tidal wave of rubble. Mai felt her legs clipped by rock as she landed and rolled, her momentum keeping her ahead of the wave. Still, fragments of rock flew around her, compressed, then fired out by the rolling mass. At last they stopped; the clouds and the dreadful noise behind them, the onrushing vehicles before them.

  Dahl, kneeling, legs covered by a mound of rubble, unstrapped his rifle and took aim. “Blow the bastards’ tires out.”

  Drake told Yorgi to stay put and ran up to them. “Bloody hell! Are you lot okay?”

  Bullets flew past his head, but fired from behind. Hayden and Kinimaka were still snug on their rooftop and following Dahl’s lead. Mai checked her body quickly, but saw no signs of blood. Nothing vital screamed at her. She joined the rest of the SPEAR team and took aim. Her first shot shattered a windscreen. The vehicle veered wildly, speeding closer. Her second shot took out the second vehicle’s front passenger tire. It swerved to the left and clipped the rear end of the first vehicle.

  “Shit!”

  The team scattered as the first vehicle tipped and crashed on to its roof, momentum sending it tumbling toward their position. Five tons of metal bounced past them, coming to rest amidst the ruins of the house. Dahl groaned. The rocks piled on his legs had slowed him up and the truck’s front bumper had come within an inch of his skull as it whipped past.

  “I’ll finish ‘em.
” Alicia scrambled after the battered vehicle.

  Mai squeezed her trigger as men jumped from the second vehicle. One fell backwards, slamming hard against the bodywork before slumping lifelessly. Dahl uttered a satisfied grunt as he took out another. Then a third stepped around the hood, RPG cradled across his shoulder. As he pulled the trigger, Hayden or Kinimaka took his head off with a double-shot – the RPG aimed straight up as its operator fell – the grenade screamed high up into the air like a flare before falling down through a small arc and exploding against a rocky outcrop.

  Mai heard more shots and much cursing as Alicia dispatched the guards still trapped in the second truck. That left only two remaining. “They’ll be radioing for help.”

  Drake pulled a face. “I doubt they can have many more guards to send. They still have to run the jail.”

  “I meant from other connections,” Mai explained carefully, making Drake feel a little foolish. “Razin clearly owns part of the Russian government.”

  “If they did, they’d have told him you were coming to free me,” Drake said.

  “They didn’t have enough time,” Dahl said with a wicked grin. “Hey, good to see you, ya bloody Yorkshire terrier.”

  Drake took the proffered hand with a grin of his own. Alicia slapped him across the back of the head as she returned.

  “How the hell did they snatch you in the first friggin’ place? Did you stop sleeping with a gun under your pillow?”

  Drake thought back to the abduction. “It was our fault,” he admitted. “We got complacent.”

  “Too much Mai-time?”

  “Is that possible?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Alicia sniffed. “But you sure interrupted me at a delicate moment.”

  “Delicate? You?”

  “Well, if you must know, Lomas was just—”

  Hayden ran up to them, Kinimaka a step behind. “We should go. Now.”