Weapons of the Gods

by David Leadbeater

  She crouched carefully at the door to the next carriage, and peered through the grimy glass pane.

  It was a scene from Hell.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The terrorist was standing on a seat, head and shoulders above the passengers he had forced to stand all around him. One hand held a woman by the hair, the other a gun pointed at her temple. She was sobbing, her face bloodied. Those around her were either trembling, crying or trying to look strong. He could turn the gun on them in just a few seconds.

  “Do you see Berry?” Kinimaka asked. “This has to be a diversion.”

  “Can’t see him,” Hayden said. “But you’re right. He’s in there. They haven’t had the chance to get the dagger off the train yet.”

  “And the dagger may no longer be with Berry,” Molokai said. “I’ll handle this.” He pulled out a rifle from under his big coat.

  “No.” Dahl put a hand on the man’s wrist before he brought it up into sight of the terrorist. “That asshole has half the weight of that trigger loaded already. Even a dead-center bullet could cause a reflexive reaction. It needs handling differently.”

  Smyth stepped forward, hands up. “Then handle it.”

  He approached the door, easing it open. Hayden followed suit and the rest spread out, similarly displayed. Dahl retreated to the broken window and quickly perched across the sill, his head stuck outside, staring down the buffeting gusts of wind.

  Mad, he thought.

  But necessary. He gripped the top rim of the window and hauled himself out, hanging by fingertips and ankles hooked over the sill. Next, he balanced his feet on the sill, flexed his powerful legs and lunged up toward the roof of the train. A blast of air shook him and the train as it raced toward its destination. Out here, Dahl could see approaching buildings: warehouses, homes and shopping malls. In the skies he could see several helicopters and a smudge in the air high above, a potential fighter jet.

  Oh bollocks.

  Would they?

  Cambridge had to be passing valuable Intel along, but it all depended on the capabilities and disposition of the man in charge. It might even depend upon the suit at the top of the chain. He believed in President Coburn’s ability to do the right thing—hell, they’d fought together during the Blood King’s attack on DC—but didn’t believe certain people would let Coburn have his say.

  Tempest would be engineering all this, right down to the last detail.

  Who held the dagger?

  Dahl heaved his body over the top, rolled and halted on top of the train. He sat up, bracing his body into the wind. He walked forward the number of paces that would have taken him to a face-to-face with the terrorist. He glanced over the side of the train.

  Rails and heaps of gravel rushed by; the track’s banking beyond that. Cambridge was silent on the comms. Hayden whispered that it was now or never.

  It became an orchestrated strike. At the heart of it all was the knowledge that the terrorist didn’t really want to kill the woman he held—not yet at least. She was his greatest asset. Everything in Hayden’s and Dahl’s training said that he would hesitate. Dahl gripped the side of the train with one hand, the rim of the window with the other and lowered himself down carefully, not quickly.

  The movement caught the terrorist’s eye, made his head swivel over. That movement pointed the barrel of the gun away from the woman for a split second.

  Hayden broke the window of a small box that triggered an alarm.

  And nothing happened.

  “Oh, no,”

  The terrorist started to turn back toward them but Molokai and Smyth were already in full flight. They leapt across seatbacks and through the scared passengers, hitting the terrorist at chest height and propelling him back off the seat and onto the floor. The gun went off, a bullet passing harmlessly through the roof. Smyth took his hand grenade whilst Molokai fractured all the bones in his throat. They held his arms down as he died and then quickly disabled his bomb-jacket.

  Hayden took control. “Stand apart,” she shouted at the mostly bewildered passengers. “Right now!”

  Kinimaka and Smyth stood on the seats, covering the passengers with their own weapons. There was no time to explain; to do so would increase the overall danger. Molokai dragged Dahl inside and then they all watched with guns at the ready.

  Hayden unhooked her pack from her shoulders and pulled out the GPR device. The view outside the windows changed from fields to buildings.

  We’re coming into Dallas, she thought. And there’s still at least one terrorist on this train holding a bomb.

  What do we do?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Drake dragged the chain from around his neck as the car sped off. The museum was safe, the old man was in hiding, and the mercs had been dispatched. Not a bad few hours’ work if he did say so himself.

  “Wait,” Alicia said. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” He was never sure if she was about to crack a joke at his expense.

  “Your hands, Drakey. Look at your hands.”

  “They’re bloody black bright,” he drawled. “My mum would kill me.”

  “That’s not dirt.”

  She was right. If anything, it was like coal dust, a covering of inferior black paint perhaps. The incoming thought made his heart leap. “Shit, this isn’t the fucking Chain of Aphrodite.”

  “No,” Mai said, staring at his hands and then the chain links that were starting to flake and reveal the silver beneath. “That old man—Doukas—deceived us.”

  “Bastard,” Drake swore. “But then, why should we expect anything else from a thief? Kenzie, get us back there.”

  “We’ll never find him,” Mai said.

  “Oh, I think we might,” Kenzie said, staring ahead through the windshield.

  Drake focused. Doukas, even now, was running across the car park area in the direction of the furthest row. His face was panicked, his gait made awkward by a slight limp, and age. When he reached the front of an old gray Nissan, Kenzie swerved her car to within an inch of his knees.

  Drake opened his door and stepped out. “Get in.”

  His tone brooked no objections. Doukas was practically dragged into the back seat and wedged between Alicia and Drake. Kenzie backed up and then swung the wheel toward the exit.

  Three mercs stood in their way, remnants of the earlier force.

  “Where did these guys come from?” Luther asked.

  “Probably searching the museum.” Drake told it as he saw it, but who really knew? “Doesn’t matter. Kill ’em.”

  Mai slammed a fist against her own door handle and allowed it to swing open. “I’m fucking sick of these assholes.”

  Alicia let out a noise of shock, gawping after the Japanese woman. “What happened to Little Miss Proper Pants?”

  “She’s fucking sick.” Drake threw open his own door. “Don’t you listen?”

  Mai fired instantly, not waiting on any kind of ceremony or aggression from the mercs. Her aim was never in doubt, the first bullet smashing one’s shoulder blade and spinning him around, the second taking out an elbow, and the third destroying a knee. The mercs fell, weapons clattering to the ground. Mai’s step didn’t falter as she stalked toward them, closing the gap, lining up the kill shots. One merc groped for his weapon, claimed it, and fell dead over it. Another crawled away, aiming for a spot between parked cars, but died a few seconds later as Mai opened fire.

  The last held both hands in the air.

  Mai finished him before he could even try to betray her trust.

  Drake let out a long breath, balanced by the side of the car with his handgun sighted. Mai turned away from the dead and headed back inside. Drake followed. Luther, in the passenger seat, coughed politely.

  “Nice work.”

  Mai ignored the American and turned to Doukas. “That is what we do to our enemies, scumbag. Do you want to be our enemy?”

  Doukas shook his head, trembling. “No. No. I—”

  “Save it,�
� Mai growled, now eye to eye. “What the fuck are you up to, old man?”

  Kenzie took the opportunity to get them moving, driving around the bodies and heading out of the exit. The traffic in this relatively small Greek town was sparse, and the sidewalks quiet. Sirens were screaming in response to the earlier gunfire, but nobody had converged on the museum yet. They had to assume the police would have been led to Doukas’ apartment.

  Kenzie threaded a discreet path away from the noise.

  Mai ground the barrel of her gun under Doukas’ chin. “Talk, old man. You put us all in extra danger. That’s already unforgivable, but if you spill everything now I might even let you live.”

  Doukas couldn’t stop shaking as, finally, he came clean.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The GPR device squealed, signaling that the dagger was close by. Hayden wondered if it was sophisticated enough to indicate an exact position. The little red dot blinked faster as central Dallas came closer. Cambridge’s voice filled her ears, informing them that they had twenty minutes left to pull this off. The only reason they hadn’t been overridden so far was because they’d now annulled seven out of the eight bombs with no loss of life. Nobody outside the train would risk their career betting against odds like that by sending in a strike team.

  We can’t risk the train.

  “Molokai, Smyth, finish that last terrorist.”

  She watched them approach the end of their carriage and then turned her attention to the nervous passengers. One by one, she sent them past her position, holding the GPR in one hand and a Glock in the other. Kinimaka stood next to her, with Dahl, Yorgi and Luther opposite.

  And then she knew the identity of their enemy: a woman with scraped-back brown hair, sweating at the temples, wearing a large coat and moving with her head down. She indicated the woman to Dahl and Luther and then raised her gun.

  “Stop!”

  Someone screamed. Heads whipped around. Hayden didn’t expect the woman to attack, but neither did she expect her to fall to her knees and start wailing.

  “No, no, no . . . I can’t, just can’t . . .”

  She shrugged the coat off her shoulders, let it fall to the floor. Hayden half-expected to see a bomb-vest, but the woman wore only a simple white blouse. The Dagger of Nemesis fell to the floor and Hayden got her first real look at it.

  Around fourteen inches long, with a wickedly serrated and notched blade, the dagger emitted no radiance despite the bright strip lights shining down on it from above. The dense, black surface absorbed everything. The handle grip was man-size and ribbed along its entire length and, when Hayden placed the GPR upon it, it made the device go crazy.

  Good to know.

  The fallen woman was sobbing into the floor. Hayden lifted her head. “What is it?”

  “They have my husband. Forced me to board the train. I was supposed to jump when it slowed, then make my way to a phone box on Ross Avenue.” She nodded at the dagger. “With that.”

  Hayden hung her head for a moment. The evil of men . . . and women . . . could never be underestimated.

  “Sit tight,” she said, then opened the comms. “Cambridge? Sit rep?”

  “More telling info from Crowe and Lauren, gleaned from the general’s computer, but we’ll discuss that later. This is your last chance, Hayden. They’re literally lining up guns on anyone all along the final route. They’re on the ground, crammed in second and third story windows. They’re on rooftops. You have . . . four minutes.”

  Hayden screamed for Yorgi to race right down to the back of the train, to make the passengers lie down. She raced with Dahl and Luther toward the front carriage to see what the hell was happening with Molokai and Smyth.

  The last terrorist stared, eyes huge, the terrifying gleam of utter fanaticism glowing from his face. He’d tied one man to the headrest of a seat and was making him hold tight to a grenade.

  A grenade from which the pin had already been pulled.

  The terrorist knelt on the seat behind him, a gun aimed at the rest of the passengers that were lined up at the front, some kneeling, some standing. Smyth and Molokai were halfway down the aisle.

  With no options.

  Hayden stole inside the carriage without being acknowledged, knowing she had to be there. The others followed. The terrorist saw them immediately, but knew he had the upper hand.

  “I will kill everyone,” he said.

  “Oh, I know you will,” Hayden replied. Because you’re a mad little fucker. She addressed the captive holding the live grenade: “What’s your name, bud?”

  “Mark. Mark Starzynski.”

  “You have kids, Mark?”

  “Yes, I do. Two.”

  “Well, Mark, you hold onto that lump of iron like it’s gold, the winning lottery ticket, and your kids’ futures all rolled in to one. Got that?”

  “Yeah, right, I got it.”

  Good. Now, fuckhead?”

  The terrorist narrowed his eyes at her, gun wavering.

  “Yeah, you, fuckhead. You look at me, not at those poor people. Just me. You wanna know why?”

  “You are a crazy bitch.”

  “Well, that’s something you got right today. It’s was me that killed all your deranged pals. I gave the orders. I pulled the trigger. How’d you like that?”

  “Two minutes,” Cambridge said inside her head.

  Kinimaka’s voice replied with real fear. “There are loads of passengers being forced to stand,” he hissed. “At the front. And the team too. Pass it on.”

  “Ah, shit, I’ll try but they’ve gone dark now.”

  The ominous phrase that nobody liked to hear. Hayden glared at the terrorist standing in front of her.

  “I sent all their worthless lives to a shitty hell, and spat on their filthy corpses. What do you think of that, asshole?”

  “Back away!” the terrorist yelled. “You back away now or I will kill everyone!”

  “You said that already.” Hayden came to within arm’s length. “How about you stop being such a fucking coward and point that gun at me?”

  “I blow your head off! You stay!”

  Cambridge whispered: “Thirty seconds!”

  Hayden leaned forward and hissed: “Boo.”

  The terrorist shrieked and whipped his gun toward her. Before he’d even pulled it halfway round both Dahl and Molokai had put bullets into his chest, above the bomb-vest. Hayden wasn’t watching. She saw Mark Starzynski shaking badly through her peripheral vision, and reached out to steady the hand that gripped the grenade.

  “You’re safe now.”

  To Cambridge she said, “All clear.”

  The train thundered on, minutes from Dallas Union Station. Hayden ordered everyone on the entire train to lie down and hoped to everything she held dear that Cambridge managed to get the message through.

  Dahl pulled the emergency brake and the train began to squeal, wheels shrieking as it came to a fast stop. Hayden slid forward. Dahl hung on and smashed through the nearest window.

  “We’re not waiting,” he said as the train finally came to a halt. “The bureaucracy would end this entire mission.”

  He was right. Hayden pulled her body upright and related all she knew about the woman with the captive husband to Cambridge.

  “Try to help them.”

  “Will do.”

  Not knowing where the shooters were, but knowing they had no choice, they put their trust in Cambridge’s contacts and exited the train.

  Already dashing headlong toward the next mission.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They never stopped running.

  It was in their blood, in their heart and soul. The mission, the world, and those they fought against demanded it, and they always rose to the challenge.

  In the darkness of a luxury minivan, in the rear of an empty, unlit parking area, they came to a stop after many hours of traveling. Finally, they were able to rest, but the updates kept on coming, never ceasing, keeping the mission running at top speed.r />
  Cambridge described the aftermath of Dallas. “Incredible outcome,” he told them. “Only the rambunctious twats that missed out on theoretical glory are even questioning it. And those we can handle. You still have the dagger?”

  “Are your people close?”

  “Yep. I have men on the way so we can feed it back through the network. Back to England and the Key of Hades. This will be the third of the weapons in our possession, including the Sword of Mars.”

  “Didn’t the others get the Chain of Aphrodite?”

  “Ah, they’re still working on it to be honest.”

  Smyth grunted at that. “Not cool.”

  “Yeah, they hit several snags over in Greece. But nobody got hurt, so we’re good.”

  “Earlier you mentioned receiving some important information from Crowe and Lauren,” Hayden reminded him.

  “Of course. Whoever they’re using to delve through General Gleeson’s laptop has uncovered something significant. It seems the list of weapons that Secretary Crowe acquired was by no means the definitive one. There’s another . . .”

  Hayden sensed the bad news wasn’t quite finished. “And?”

  “It’s quite a bit longer. We’re counting at least seventeen weapons so far, with the potential for more. But this does explain why we’re encountering Tempest at every weapon site, and why some of their team are mercs and some terrorists. It also explains why they initiated the terrorist training camps.”

  “They’re stretched very thin,” Smyth said. “We get it.”

  “Like Marmite on toast,” Cambridge said. “This also helps explain why they’re not unduly disturbed about losing all the weapons that we obtain.”

  “Working from a bigger list,” Dahl said. “No doubt they’re still getting the majority.”

  “Exactly. I’m seeing items ranging as far back through the gods’ roster as the very oldest—the Spines of Erebus and the Rivers of Styx. The biggest—the Gates of Ishtar—is referenced as being ‘practically unobtainable’ and ‘infinitely desirable.’ But there are many more.”