But not today. Komodo and the team were relying on her to aid their assault. With the comms fixed up, she concentrated on the surveillance system, using the CIAs global mapping system to zoom right on top of the house. The magnification was tremendous and crystal clear. She remembered one of the weapons they had utilized on a previous mission – the one that could see through walls. Such a weapon would come in handy here, and in the future, but she just couldn’t get the idea out of her head that Alicia would use it for something unsavory.
A double click told her Komodo was back online. “Game on?”
“It’s in play. Herrera and Tyler are scouting and finding a place to hole up. We’re gonna snatch the first one to show his ugly Russkie face, and use him to get inside.”
“Sounds risky.”
“Tried and trusted. Besides, it’s all risky, babe. We’re outside trying to get in.”
Karin heard one of the men whisper about canning the babe talk, and guessed immediately it was Smyth. She had heard enough about the irascible marine to recognize his disposition even over the comms.
“Don’t worry,” Komodo said. “Poor ole Smyth’s depressed. He texted Mai twelve hours ago and she hasn’t replied.”
Karin laughed. “Maybe he missed off the kiss kiss at the end, eh?”
There was a short silence, then Smyth’s voice came over the airwaves. “Miss, I can only say you’re lucky I’m Delta. If I were a marine I’d have told you to go fuck yourself after that.”
Komodo burst into laughter. “He’s got it bad. Hey, Romero, how d’you live with this all day?”
“We ain’t married, sir. He can see whoever he wants.”
“I think Drake might have something to say about that.” Karin watched as two figures – Herrera and Tyler – cautiously approached the Patterson house. The two Delta soldiers competently worked their way to the foliage and waist-high decking that fronted the house, concealing themselves within. They did not rush. Karin counted twenty eight minutes of waiting and shuffling.
“We’re all set here.”
Komodo paced the inside of their white builder’s van. The cover was sound. The house across the road was being renovated and demanded different amenities every day.
Romero said, “So how’s Drake? This all part of some new exploit?”
“Babylon,” Karin heard Komodo reply with amusement in his voice. Then, “Don’t ask.”
“See, we’ve been wondering,” Smyth said. “Since our team hasn’t yet been renewed, if you might put in a good word.”
Karin could almost hear Komodo’s brain ticking. “A what? Why?”
Silence followed. Maybe they were communicating through eyebrow and hand gestures.
Then Komodo spoke with excitement in his voice. “You’re kidding? Really? You want to join SPEAR? Well, Drake speaks very highly of you, Romero. I’m humbled that you asked me to speak for you.”
“Any time, man.”
Smyth’s voice broke in. “Did Mai speak well of me?”
“She said she could never have survived without you.”
There was another silence, and then Karin heard Romero’s whisper. “Don’t start crying, for fuck’s sake.”
“Fuck you.”
She shook her head at the displays of military humor. With nothing else to do for now, she walked over to the little fridge freezer and took out a bottle of water. As she stood swigging the cold liquid, it suddenly occurred to her that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been alone like this. An odd thought for her. Karin was used to being physically alone in the darkness of her apartment, and mentally alone in the darkness of her mind. Her last alone moment must have been in her apartment, just before she told Ben she was going to Hawaii to help.
She had slotted into her new existence with ease, reasoning that she’d been born to lead this life. All her tragedies had prepared her for it. The moments she lived in now, these fine days, were the best she had ever known.
And Komodo held firm at the center of it all, her anchor. As that thought crossed her mind, the double-click of a live comm caught her attention.
“We’re in play. Side door just opened.”
Karin ran back to her seat, switching between the satellite display and Komodo’s helmet-cam. He was focusing between the barrel of his gun and the van’s inside handle as he waited for the go. Karin switched to Tyler’s head-cam. Through gaps in the foliage, she saw a bulky figure moving toward the man. Tyler’s light breathing punctuated the other man’s steps.
“Target outside. Do we have a go?”
Karin immediately switched to the overview. Nothing else moved in the vicinity of the house. “All clear.”
“Move.”
Komodo’s command started the team’s offensive. The back of the white van burst open and three men jumped out, racing across the sidewalk and up the garden path. Tyler stepped out from concealment and dragged his opponent down to the ground, executing a perfect choke hold. Karin heard desperate struggle and frantic grunting noises, but it didn’t last long. Herrera joined Tyler and, between them, the two Delta soldiers trussed the Russian up tighter than a Christmas turkey.
Karin watched through Tyler’s head-cam as Komodo passed them on the path. The tiny camera swiveled to watch Komodo, Smyth and Romero press on through the half-open door. Then Komodo’s head-cam showed an empty hallway, paintings on the wall, the steep stretch of a staircase, a washing basket full to overflowing. The comms system picked up coarse laughter coming from down the hall. Komodo signaled, and the three men headed that way. Komodo’s gun barrel made controlled movements from side to side. Karin quickly checked the overview. Still clear, but a paperboy was making his way down the street.
A bull-like man emerged from the room at the end of the hall, surprise written almost comically across his face when he spotted the three armed soldiers approaching him. Immediately, the testosterone kicked in, outweighing the intelligence by at least five-to-one, and he reached around the back of his waist for a gun, shouting.
Komodo’s weapon bucked. The bull hurtled back against the frame, changing the paint from white to vivid red. Komodo pushed on. A shot was fired blindly from inside the room, burying itself into the wall.
“Tyler, Herrera, check upstairs,” Komodo whispered into his comms.
“One in the kitchen,” Romero reported. “Unfriendly.”
Smyth had checked the rest of the ground floor. “All clear.”
Komodo turned quickly. “Finish it.” He moved fast down the hall, tracking Tyler and Herrera up the stairs. “Smyth,” he said. “Don’t forget the garage.”
“On it.”
Karin watched as Romero’s helmet-cam kicked back heavily. The man fired heavy rounds through the kitchen’s plaster walls, leaving holes the size of side-plates. A brief scream signaled that the coast was clear.
Smyth ran inside, double-tapping the Russian to be sure. The inner connecting door that led to the garage was slightly open. Karin watched him approach it swiftly, but carefully. He nudged the door wider with the barrel of his weapon.
“Contact,” he murmured under his breath. “The wife’s here and not alone.”
As if to verify, a high-pitched command rang out, “Get back! You come no closer to me!”
Karin winced. The last remaining Russian stood behind Audrey Patterson, one arm across her throat, the other holding a pistol to her head. The woman looked terrified and tears streamed down her face.
Smyth moved forward, probably hoping to force the assailant into the classic mistake and move the gun away from the hostage in order to point it at the bigger threat. But the Russian didn’t comply.
“I shoot!”
The gunshot rang out, deafening through the comms. Karin saw Audrey Patterson shriek and go limp, but the bullet had only shot past her forehead.
“The next goes in!”
Komodo grunted as he joined the scene. Karin watched as four head-cams fanned out into a semi-circle. The fifth was aimed at the rough
concrete floor, creeping slowly.
“Nowhere to go, fucker,” Smyth said with typical testiness. “Put the pea shooter down.”
“You let me go!”
“End of the line, Boris,” Smyth growled. “Be a good Russkie. You don’t want to end up smeared across the walls like your friends back there.”
Komodo stepped forward. “Calm down,” he said softly. “Both of you.” Karin wasn’t entirely sure if he meant the Russian and Mrs Patterson, or the Russian and Smyth.
“What do you want?” Komodo asked. “You let her go. We’ll talk.”
“Leave. You get out of garage, we drive away. I push her out when clear.”
Smyth snorted. Karin felt every muscle in her body tense, every nerve ending stand on edge as the fifth head-cam, Tyler’s, focused on the treads of a tire and stopped. He had to be only three feet away. Now he would wait.
Komodo stepped to the side this time. The Russian followed him, gun wavering. “Why don’t we all just calm down,” Komodo said. “Point that gun away from Audrey’s head and we’ll talk.”
“Alright!” the Russian screamed. “I aim it at you!”
It all happened very quickly and clinically. Tyler got the signal from Herrera, stood and fired twice. The Russian’s head exploded, spraying the professor’s wife and the side-wall. The woman collapsed to her knees, hysterical but alive.
Smyth and Romero rushed to help her.
Komodo addressed the comms. “Mission complete,” he said. “Be back soon.”
Karin checked the overview again. The paperboy had disappeared. The houses were all quiet. She would inform the authorities that they could move in. The peace and quiet of suburbia would live to see another day.
With time to spare, she fished out her cell phone and speed-dialed her parents’ number, wondering how life was treating them over in Leeds. After that, she would call Ben.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
“This could be the fight of our lives,” Mai Kitano commented.
Drake crawled through the desert, ignoring the morning sun that beat down hard on his back, weapons ready. Their packs were comprehensively packed, even to the tools they might need for entering the dreaded pit. But, for now, Drake’s eyes were fixed firmly on the prize ahead.
The three large camouflaged tents that belonged to the ragtag group of Razin’s men pillaging the ancient pit of Babylon and, if they survived that, the Devil’s Tower, the Tower of Babel, where Zanko and Razin hunted for ancient treasure.
“Nah, no worse than the battle around the coffee machine first thing every morning.”
Alicia crawled at their sides, equally tooled up. “I’ve had harder times pulling my bike leathers on.”
Mai eyed her. “But not so many taking them off, I bet.”
Hayden, Dahl and Kinimaka approached from another angle, the two groups connected by a hardy communications system. Their objective – acquire all the swords at all costs. Ominous events were afoot in the world, and this was the team’s only viable link to them.
The Russian perimeter was loose, made complacent by weeks of indolence. Judging by their careful surveillance, it seemed the Russians had a complement of around a dozen men, including two bosses – a man and a woman, neither of whom were Zanko or Razin.
They will have stationed themselves at the Devil’s Tower, Patterson had guessed. Whilst their men acquire the remaining swords. Patterson, Akerman and Yorgi had been left back at the all-terrain vehicles for this little jaunt. The civilians would only cause distraction.
Alicia blew a gust of sand out of her mouth. “Oh yeah, I’m lovin’ this.”
Drake surveyed the tented area through a pair of high-powered binoculars, identifying the positions of the guards. “Aye, it’s bloody hot out here. Could be worse though. At least we haven’t come across one of those mental camel spiders yet.”
Alicia swiveled her entire body. “What?”
“Y’know. Six, seven inches. Move at ten miles an hour. Jaws like a croc. Those camel spiders.”
“So I’m lying here up to my tits in sand, and now you mention them. Thanks.” She cast around as if expecting one of the beasts to pop up out of the dunes.
“The scorpions are worse.” Kinimaka’s voice came over the comms. “I just crawled over one. Luckily, I squashed it, I think. They might survive a nuclear strike, but there ain’t no surviving the mighty Mano.”
“Let’s just go.” Alicia started to crawl again. “I’m starting to like the look of these Russians.”
Drake kept pace, crawling with his elbows, nose an inch off the jagged, dusty terrain. The early morning sun was already beating down. A steady breeze billowed the overlarge tents ahead and stirred mini dust devils. The trio topped the last little rise and waited.
Hayden’s voice came over the comms. “Go.”
They rushed the perimeter. Drake’s weapon spat. A guard fell instantly. Others followed suit around the rough circle. The team’s rush ate up the ground between them and the enclosures. Within seconds, they were amongst the utility vehicles, packing crates and diesel drums. The tent flaps burst open and a swarm of badly dressed men flew out, weapons held high or still strapped to their backs. One still held on to a half-empty bottle of Southern Cross vodka.
Their shouts of pain stung the morning air.
Two more figures burst out of the tent. “Victoriyah!” one of them yelled. “Call Nikolai!”
The woman, black-haired and half-dressed like the men, and sporting a confident, superior expression, threw her own vodka bottle in the direction of Hayden’s team. “Of course, Maxim. I have little else to do.”
Maxim discharged a stream of bullets into packing crates. Drake ducked as one nicked off the frame by his head. More bullets thudded into the crates as Maxim’s men caught up with the situation. Mai leaned out and picked one off with a perfect head shot, sending him flying back into his boss’s legs, crumpling him.
“Idiot!” Maxim yelled, scrambling to his feet and kicking at the corpse, face a livid red. “Victoriyah! Hurry up!”
“Suck it, Maxim.”
Drake turned an almost amused look toward the women. “Sounds like those two are practically married.”
Alicia peered out, and almost got her head blown off. Splinters of wood cascaded across her hair. “Bollocks.”
More shots rang out. Hayden’s team advanced, drawing the fire. Drake climbed on to the lip of a badly stacked crate and peered over. In the two seconds he had spare, he put a bullet through someone’s throat and saw the through-and-through pass tantalizingly close to Victoriyah’s skull.
“We’re thinning them out and they know it,” he said. “Let’s move.”
The trio burst from behind the crates, passing close to three haphazardly parked trucks, and out into the open. Only forty feet separated them now, and the pit of Babylon lay off to the left like a festering, exposed sore.
Drake focused on Maxim, but the Russian hit the dirt fast. Victoriyah threw herself alongside him, throwing the cell phone at his head.
“Dumb fucking thing doesn’t work.”
“No, Victoriyah. It’s the dumb fucking thing trying to work it!”
Drake fired as Maxim rose, his shot whizzing by the Russian’s head. By then it was too late to do anything about the object clasped in the man’s other hand – a grenade.
Maxim threw the pineapple shaped explosive. Drake hurled himself to the right and rolled. Mai and Alicia were an instant behind. Plumes of dust and sand rose around them. In three more seconds the grenade exploded, sending shrapnel shards spinning every which way.
The ground shook. Alicia let out a sharp cry. Mai struck Drake’s bottom half, still rolling. Drake heard the terrible death-filled fizz of deadly objects passing by him at killing speed. The ground rumbled again.
At last he stopped, fully alert, bringing his gun up and looking to the tents. Dust clouds obscured his view. Beside him, Mai reached out for Alicia, pulling the Englishwoman into her.
“Are y
ou hit?”
“No. But I think I saw one of those fucking spider things.”
Drake peered through the clouds. Hayden’s voice shouted in his earpiece, “Come in. Are you okay?”
“We’re good. Just—”
And then their entire world shifted. The very ground they were lying on began to subside, to crack. Narrow fissures ran from the site of the grenade explosion all the way to the pit of Babylon.
Drake saw what was about to happen. “Uh, oh.”
The earth collapsed beneath them.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Drake tumbled forward, clawing at anything that might arrest his fall, but the rocky earth fell away in a steep cascade, taking all three of them with it. Evidently, the cave-in wasn’t confined to their area, but extended all the way to the tents, as Victoriyah’s echoing voice berated Maxim for his insanity.
Time stopped as Drake fell. Their lives hung in the balance. This could be an endless fall down a bottomless pit or a sharp plunge down a steep slope. He tucked his body as it bounced off the sides, drew his head down as shale and stones poured all around it. At last, he hit the bottom, plainly a narrow space, since he immediately rolled a short way up the opposite side.
And that meant . . .
He dragged himself to his knees, head spinning, limbs howling with pain. He steadied himself by staring at the ground and bringing a pile of rocks into focus, then looked up.
A Russian’s top half protruded from rubble further up the slope, partly buried, but still miraculously holding his gun and staring wild-eyed at his situation. Two more guards groaned and crawled through the debris that had collected at the bottom. Beyond them, Drake saw Maxim and Victoriyah sprawled across each other, struggling hard.
Rivers and streams of rock continued to run down both slopes.
Far above, Drake saw one of the tents leaning over the new crevice, balanced precariously and slowly slipping.
Crap! He pulled at Mai and cast about for a weapon. Their guns were nowhere to be seen. Alicia ran past him then, leaping nimbly from pile to pile, drawing her Army-issue knife as she closed the gap on the fallen Russians. Drake followed her. Alicia slammed the hilt of her weapon under the first man’s chin, giving him no chance to react. The second struck out at her, glancing a blow off her shoulder. Alicia caught the arm and broke the wrist as Drake drove his own knife through the man’s throat. Only Maxim and Victoriyah remained.
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