Matt Drake 11 - The Ghost Ships of Arizona

by David Leadbeater

  Beneath them the ship’s deck groaned, the entire side trembling. It was entirely possible that this buried ship could split in half and take them all with it. But this was no time to dwell on the mind-blowing discovery they had made nor its final incredible location. Drake saw a head pop up from below and gave it a side-vent. There were other routes down to the lower decks. Dahl crept around a bulkhead whilst Smyth stole in the other direction. Bullets slammed off molded woodwork close to their heads.

  “Careful!” Drake shouted. “Don’t want to upset the ghosts now, do we?”

  A man rose, bellowing back. Alicia’s bullet took him down. Drake kept a careful eye, but then it happened. The moment that beggared belief.

  Looping up from the galleon’s stern, high and proud, came a black hand grenade, its thrower chuckling even as he lobbed it. A true madman then, a courter of death. Drake dropped his gun as the grenade came down, trusting Alicia to cover his sudden desperate sprint out into the open, then flung himself headlong, hand outstretched in imitation of a fielder trying to catch a ball. The grenade came down, spinning, about to strike deck when Drake’s hand slid underneath it, closed around it and then flung it over the nearest rail. Even then it exploded almost immediately, the force of its blast taking a chunk out of the cliff side and sending shattered wood spinning around like spears. Dahl and Smyth stormed the stern as Drake lay breathing hard, his energy spent for a moment.

  Alicia crawled over. “You okay? Nice fielding, Ian.”

  “Ian?”

  “Botham.”

  “Ian Botham was a bowler and a batter.” Drake knew little about the game of cricket. “I think a goalkeeping reference would be more appropriate.”

  “Bollocks to your sports and, for that matter, your cars. I have no time for either of them.”

  “Yeah, and that’s gonna have to change too.”

  Alicia’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, is it?”

  “Yep. Taking you and Dahl on a track day as soon as we’ve brushed this bloody battle off and showered.”

  Alicia looked prepared to argue, but Dahl and Smyth came rushing up. “Job done,” Smyth said. “What’s next?”

  Drake gazed around. “Below decks,” he said. “Where the real ghosts of this entire adventure lie.”

  “Gold,” Smyth said. “You mean gold.”

  “Do I?”

  Smyth and Dahl watched two entrances to the galleon’s innards as Drake and Alicia searched for another. The obvious ones were probably on the side buried into the cliff wall, but Alicia soon found a third. By that time those above had unfurled a rope ladder that almost touched the deck. Soon, Kinimaka stepped gingerly down as if expecting his clumsiness to fatally dislodge the ship from its ancient resting place.

  Dahl grunted. “Careful there,” he said. “Might have to jump the last two feet.”

  “I did try to follow you guys,” Kinimaka moaned.

  “You four!” Hayden’s voice rasped through the quieting day. “Did you really think sliding down the hillside on top of your enemies was a great idea?”

  Dahl blinked. “I didn’t really think. Besides, Drake made me do it.”

  Hayden huffed in exasperation, before getting over it and reviewing the ship’s deck. “And the best way in is . . . ?”

  Alicia pointed toward the stern. “There’s a ladder. It’s one person at a time but the mercs haven’t found it.”

  “Good. They clearly located this one first and decided to blast it open.” Hayden seemed pleased.

  Smyth kept his gun leveled at the shattered trapdoor until more soldiers joined him. Then a deal was offered to those mercenaries still inside. Drake thought it was a pretty sweet deal; after all most of their buddies were already roasting in Hades by now and their boss had betrayed them. Who even knew where Tyler Webb was? To a man, the mercenaries climbed out of the hole, hands above their heads, and cowed. Soldiers rounded them up. Even then, Hayden reminded the team that booby traps and even snipers could have been left behind. The next few minutes weren’t going to be easy.

  “Let me go first.” Kinimaka headed for the hole. “You guys did it last time.”

  Hayden backed him up, then Drake and Dahl, Alicia and Smyth. Yorgi stayed on the ship’s deck, eyeing the slope above as though he wished he’d ridden it as hard as the SPEAR team rebels.

  Drake kept his handgun handy as the team slipped through the hole in the galleon’s deck. As far as he could make out—and exhausting his limited knowledge of old galleons—they were somewhere around where the mizzenmast would have been, in front of the captain’s cabin and officer’s quarters. Most of the stern was still buried in the steep dune’s sandy face and below him he assumed would be the gun deck, supplies and stores and the ballast deck. The opening that he lowered himself through was tight though he heard no complaint from the big Hawaiian, probably because Hayden followed so close. The wooden steps descended at a thirty degree angle and were quite sturdy, though treacherous with sand. Alicia slipped behind him and grabbed his jacket for support, cursing.

  “Steady,” Drake said. “I already lost a tooth today.”

  “You did? Oh, sweetie. I hope you properly punished the nasty person who did it.”

  “Later,” Drake promised. “Later.”

  Wide wooden planks formed the floor of the gun deck. Kinimaka and Hayden were the first to break out flashlights, swinging the beams around. Progress was slow due to them having to constantly check for traps, but Drake soon found himself immersed in this lost, long-buried world. Here was a dusty cannon with dull scrapes along its sides and runnels beneath its wheeled undercarriage, sand-filled now but once in deadly, perfect order. Rectangular crates stood in several corners, some destroyed but others intact and awaiting discovery. Drake spied some wooden slats running across a far wall that reminded him of bars and imagined that might be the ship’s brig. Absolute silence filled the area like a spectral shroud as the group stopped and took stock.

  “One more level,” Kinimaka said. “Down to the hold, I think. That’s where all the stores are, the biscuit and salted meat, the water, beer, gunpowder, cannonballs and spare sails. It’s also where pirates kept their treasure during a voyage.”

  Drake urged him ahead, spinning as a slight sigh reached his ears. Alicia was nowhere near him but he was sure it had been a woman’s sigh. Dahl shot him a testy look.

  “What now? Hearing things? One too many knocks on the head?”

  Drake frowned. “Just thought I—”

  His flashlight beam illuminated a bleached skull that lay on the floor. Eyeless sockets stared back at him. So the dead were watching after all. He shivered. “C’mon.”

  Dahl grunted. Alicia moved past both of them. Smyth, bringing up the rear, swore as he stepped on a pile of bones. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I do have respect for the dead.”

  Drake stepped after Hayden, then abruptly ran into her back. Kinimaka’s voice drifted from several steps ahead. “Um, guys. There’s a funny noise down here.”

  Drake listened. The Hawaiian stood poised to descend another set of steps down to the next level. With no noise either above or to their sides, the team couldn’t shake a feeling of isolation, of otherworldliness, but set their senses to listen. For a long moment there was nothing.

  “You imagined it,” Hayden said.

  Then a low whine broke the silence, ascending to a wail as it rose up the stairs. The pitch of the cry set Drake’s nerves on edge and made the hairs on the backs of his arms rise.

  “What the hell is that?” Smyth asked.

  “Dunno,” Alicia said. “But I ain’t wearing the right kinda protective vest for it.”

  “The wind,” Hayden said. “It’s just the wind.”

  “Are you sure?” Drake asked. “There are no windows down there.”

  “Well what else could it be? You believe in ghosts now?”

  “Only when I’m investigating a ghost ship that’s been lost for hundreds of years and still holds the bones of its crew below dec
k. Maybe the galleon wants a new crew.”

  Hayden nodded to the bulging wall that ran to their right. “And see there? Gun ports and countless imperfections in the ship, all leading to the two-hundred-foot deep valley.”

  Drake shrugged. “Mano,” he said. “After you.”

  The Hawaiian gulped a little, but to his credit barely hesitated. The rest of the new ship’s crew filed after. Slowly, they descended into a deeper darkness. Drake felt the breeze immediately blowing in from the right. The wail became a shriek for several seconds before dying away to a desperate moan. Something tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Fuck!” he yelled, making Kinimaka jump in the process.

  Dahl coughed innocently. “You okay?”

  Smyth also coughed, but in an intentionally grumpy manner. “Hurry it up down there. We just fought and beat hundreds of stone-cold killers and you pussies are scared of a couple of ghosts. Ain’t this the hold?”

  Drake swung his flashlight around, seeing that it was. Toward the far end the team’s joined beams illuminated eight sturdy crates, all banded around with heavy metal and constructed of thick planks of wood.

  “The treasure of Santa Ana.” Hayden sighed. “We found it. We stopped Webb and hindered the Pythians again. It will be the end for them.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Dahl said.

  “Oh, I will,” Hayden returned. “Because now we have Nicholas Bell too and I’m so fucking sick of being stalked and watched in my own bedroom that I’m gonna spend however long it takes to bring Webb to heel. My heel. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

  “I’m not even sure they have any members left,” Drake said lightly as they strolled toward the treasure chests. “Maybe Beauregard would know.”

  Alicia stopped in her tracks. “Good point. We don’t even know where he is.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find him,” Hayden managed a smile. “Missing anything in particular?”

  Alicia tried desperately not to throw a guilty look toward Drake and succeeded . . . mostly. “Umm, nah. I’m over that stage now.”

  Hayden regarded her closely. “You do look a little different.”

  “I do?”

  “Maybe. Lighter somehow. Maybe it’s the gloom.”

  “Why, thanks.”

  Before the eight chests they stopped, questers eyeing well-earned prizes. More skulls and other bone fragments lay scattered about between the chests and Drake even saw what looked like the head of a tomahawk.

  “From one battle to another,” he said. “It never ends.”

  Kinimaka sat cross-legged before one of the chests. “Well, they ain’t going anywhere,” he said. “And we can’t open them easily. I think it’s time to take a break.”

  The team sat around him, flashlights illuminating each other and the darker spaces. Down here, among the riches and the ghosts and the sand they all felt a sense of peace. Only the outside world brought danger.

  “From Odin to the ghost ships,” Drake remarked. “It’s been a helluva rough ride.”

  “But not without some merriment,” Dahl said.

  “And the best camaraderie,” Hayden added.

  “The making of the best team in the world,” Smyth said. “And more than a few hard farewells.”

  “A new family,” Kinimaka began. “Who—”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Alicia hissed. “Are we all gonna kiss now? I’ll tell you one thing that’s gonna be changed tomorrow—me.”

  “I knew it.” Hayden smiled.

  “But not too much.” Alicia winked. “Still gotta keep you wankers in line.”

  “Are we done here?” Smyth asked.

  Drake unhooked his backpack and pulled out a bottle of rum. “Y’know,” he said. “The world can wait. I think we’re just getting started.”

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  Drake passed around the rum, smiling as the whole team swigged it straight from the bottle. The pirate ship with its vast treasure groaned and moaned around them, its timbers expanding, its decks scoured by desert squalls. When his turn came the liquid burned a fiery path to his stomach and instantly put the world in better perspective.

  “To fallen comrades,” he said and passed it around again.

  Whilst he waited, Dahl turned toward him. “Have you heard anything from Mai?”

  “As much as I expected to,” Drake murmured, but shook his head at the same time. “Grace is in hospital, fighting hard. She’s a battler that one and she will survive.”

  “I have faith in Mai as much as anyone I have ever met,” the Swede said. “She will return.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Drake swigged again as the rum returned, now half empty. Sighing, he rested his weary back against a treasure chest. The bruises that marred his torso would be turning purple by now. The empty tooth socket ached. But none of that mattered.

  “To the future,” he said. “To beating Webb and any other idiot daft enough to take us on.”

  Hayden accepted the bottle with a bow of her head. “Speaking of that,” she drank deeply before continuing. “The latest intel on Ramses and that terrorist arms bazaar is quite promising. It’s imminent. Any day now. The NSA are working on a location.”

  Smyth cleared his throat. “At least give us chance to wash the desert’s dust off.”

  “Webb will be there,” Hayden responded. “Beauregard said so. And if that pans out, I don’t care if it’s tomorrow morning, we will be there too.”

  Alicia took a double swig. “Shit, woman, chill out.”

  “You ever wake up with a stranger staring down at you in bed?” Hayden flung back, but then—at the look that crossed Alicia’s face—had to laugh. “No, no, don’t answer that.”

  “It will never happen to you again,” Drake said as Kinimaka laid a huge hand over his girlfriend’s. “No more splitting up for this team. From here on in, what we do we do together.”

  “As good as that sounds,” Hayden smiled, “it might not be entirely practical.”

  “Clearly.” Dahl huffed slightly. “Nobody shares my bed except my wife, pal.”

  Drake looked exasperated. “Oh aye! That’s clearly what I meant—”

  “I did promise Crouch one more treasure hunt,” Alicia said, handing the bottle to Yorgi. “But if this arms bazaar is as big as you say—we could gain an awful lot of scalps there.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You and your treasure hunts.” It was Dahl’s turn to take a sip of the rapidly dwindling liquid. “Always running.”

  Alicia plucked the bottle from his hands before his lips reached the neck and finished it off. “Not anymore,” she said simply. “I’m not saying the road ahead isn’t going to be hard—more like hell with me—but I’m going nowhere fast anymore.”

  “I hope so.” Dahl nodded and looked at Drake. “Got any more o’ that good grog, matey?”

  Drake laughed, shaking his head. “Next time you try fighting whilst protecting a liter plastic bottle of rum in your backpack.”

  Hayden held up a hand. “To craziness.” She held up an imaginary glass. “And all the things we have done.”

  Drake saluted, his mind flicking back past the Odin and Blood King escapades to Babylon and the madness in DC. He lingered over the Pandora event where they had teamed up with a talented trio of ex-CIA agents called the Disavowed—Trent, Silk, Radford and now Collins were a force to be reckoned with and no less zany than Drake’s own team. He hoped one day to team up again.

  Quickly, he told them all about Karin and her request. The words were met with solemn appraisal and a blanket acceptance. Fort Bragg certainly wouldn’t damage Karin and, chances were, it could help. The conversation reminded them all that Karin, Lauren, Jenny and Nicholas Bell were still out there.

  Drake shifted, groaning. “I guess we should be heading out.”

  “One more minute,” Alicia said softly. “I like this.”

  The team settled again, wounds and bruises aching, but even behind the grimaces hidden smiles formed. There was no gr
eater team than the one that fought for each other, played for each other and died for each other.

  “Whilst we’re talking,” Hayden then said, “and nicely isolated here—” the old galleon moaned and grunted around them, scoured by sudden breezes, eddies of sand blasting through the deck in mini-tornadoes; the great, heavy treasure chests complaining with age and the surrounding timbers belligerent and burdened, “—I believe we need to investigate Robert Price.”

  Dahl shifted uncomfortably. “The Secretary of Defense. You mentioned something like this before. Has he disobeyed one of your orders?”

  “Very funny. No, I first heard it from General Stone. Remember him? He alluded to Price being dirty when he had no reason to. I just think . . . there’s something off about him, and we should be careful. We have too much at risk.”

  Drake didn’t need to question her. “Whatever you say.”

  “We ain’t sending Lauren in this time,” Smyth barked. “Not after the last shitstorm.”

  Drake cocked his head. “Is that the real reason?”

  “Sure it is!”

  “I heard she was sweet over Nicholas Bell.”

  “Fuck Bell. He’s going to jail.”

  Drake refrained from ribbing the snappish soldier beyond his limits. Bell might actually be set loose if he could help them arrest Webb. He studied Alicia who sat relaxed at his side. Her blond hair had fallen across an eye and one cheek was all squashed up as she rested her head against a crate.

  “You ready?”

  Alicia considered the team sat around her. “One extra minute,” she said. “Just one. There’s no rush.”

  THE END

  Please read on for more information on the future of the Matt Drake world

  Here ends the current adventure but fear not! There’s much more to come. I’m often asked/told never to end the Matt Drake series and always reply the same way—no end in sight yet! Plans are already afoot for the next three adventures, The Last Bazaar, The Edge of Armageddon, and one more, which will follow a very different style, and all hopefully be released in 2016, along with Alicia 3, again heading in a different direction. One of the Drakes might slip to 2017, we’ll see. I even have a fresh idea for a stand-alone Torsten Dahl novel! Out of interest I am also toying with the idea of a Drake/Myles origin novel (set in the nineties it would begin their story within a larger adventure). Good idea or not? Let me know. Beyond that look out for regular signed paperback giveaways on my Facebook page.