Now Belmonte, in addition to thievery, had one other delectation. The appreciation of beautiful women. Getting close to Mai had been the other reason he opted to join this operation and now seemed as good a time as any to get the ball rolling.
“You did the right thing,” he said. “You got your sister out. Then you got Kovalenko.”
“Drake got him, actually,” Mai said lightly. “I got Boudreau. And Chika will always be my first choice.”
“And what does your agency say to that?”
“My agency,” Mai repeated, “affords me some slack. Because they know what I can do.”
Belmonte wondered briefly if that was a veiled threat. But he was a confident man, and the more he talked, planned, and used his wits, then the less he would dwell on Emma and what had happened to her. “I hear you’re one of the best. I imagine you’ve heard the same about me. . .” He paused.
When Mai didn’t answer, he went on. “People like us, we should make the most of our time. Who knows how long we have left?”
Mai didn’t even look at him. “Which movie did that come from?”
“I’m good at what I do. Everything I do.”
“That’s so original. Save it for the next time you get drunk with someone like Myles.”
Belmonte peered around at the dark shapes of hedges swaying and ugly brick walls blocking out the faint stars. “I do believe you’re right. This isn’t quite the best setting.”
“You sound desperate, Belmonte,” Mai said evenly. “And I think we both know why. Get it straight in your head and then have another go.” She flashed him an unexpected grin. “Now a girl can’t be fairer than that, can she?”
Belmonte was about to answer, his own face creasing into a smile, when a loud explosion shattered the air.
Alicia’s signal.
Mai nodded up at the wall. “Mask on and move.”
*****
Drake watched from the shadows, an act that now struck him as purely alien after the last few months of being called constantly into action. He couldn’t even listen to proceedings on an earpiece for fear of interfering with the facility’s or Belmonte’s delicate communications frequencies. The facility was an unknown quantity, thus they had had to base their plan on several informed assumptions. It had never been broken into or even challenged before, therefore it was assumed that, when a mob targeted it, most of the personnel inside would be sent to investigate and resolve the issue.
Most, but not all.
The warehouse would not have dedicated guards. The trained men inside would be considered enough, especially since no sensitive material was housed there. Drake watched as Alicia ran with the pack, flirting with drug dealers and gunrunners, and reminded himself not to get too comfortable with her presence. Or with her loyalty.
She was a woman apart. One who lived, worked and played only for herself.
His mind flickered backward in time, to Kennedy Moore, and the brief months they had shared. Her loss was a scorched and ragged hole in his heart, one he’d tried to fill with forgetting, but now was trying to overcome. God, it was hard. Even in the midst of all this, with barely a second to think, the grief and the loneliness threatened to overwhelm him. And now, Alyson’s memories had also swirled up from the bottom of the deep abyss he’d buried them in, clutching for purchase in his already scarred and battered brain.
And Ben Blake. Poor old Ben had been on his own since the moment his hands were literally stained with Kennedy’s blood. Drake couldn’t help that. It was a harsh way to grow up. But at least it was growing up. At least it was life.
Ben still has a chance with Hayden, Drake thought, and he needs her. He needed every good, stable and combative thing about her. Hayden was a woman who knew how to fight for the good things in her life. A true warrior. But Ben’s chance with her was quickly diminishing.
At that moment, one of the lead bikers launched his petrol bomb against the wall of the compound. There was a smash of glass and a brief flame, then belching smoke and an aggressive cheer. Even Alicia joined in. Drake shook his head and secreted himself in the shadows.
Men of the British elite forces were rushing to the gate.
*****
Belmonte climbed first, Mai a foot behind. When he reached the horizontal wall, he flattened his frame and scurried across like a rat through a narrow drain. His balance and technique were perfect. He paused on the edge of the warehouse roof, hugging the curve, just one more shadow against the black. Mai slithered next to him.
Belmonte unhooked the device he’d fashioned and lowered his body precariously until he was level with a junction box, legs and feet hooked around the eaves of the building and the brick wall. Mai scampered over him and quickly found the position they had pinpointed from the ground earlier. If she gained entry here, she’d be able to lower herself into the warehouse, into the section containing the box files. Now she took out a laser cutter and, without waiting for Belmonte, started to quickly cut through the sheet steel roof decking. Belmonte had said it would be made up of 1mm metal lying atop Rockwool sandwich panels with a polyurethane backing. The laser cutter made short work of the metal, slicing through in seconds, and then allowed her to take away the Rockwool in one thick chunk, granting her the option of replacing the roof elements if they made good their escape without drawing attention.
“Wait,” Mai whispered, seeing more men heading toward the burning fires at the gates. “Give them all a chance to get out there.”
Then she signaled him, and it was suddenly do or die. Belmonte had told them early on that, as this short notice and without specialized equipment, he couldn’t possibly circumvent the alarm system, but he could rig something that would be able to splice into the electronics. Not a major problem.
He flicked a switch and the facilities main door came crashing down. Now most of the soldiers were locked out.
Mai had already rigged her descender, the hardest and most expensive of the items they had had to source. Now she threw herself through the hole and toward the warehouse floor. As she fell, she hurled half a dozen of the gang’s improvised smoke bombs in all directions, her sharp eyes clocking the positions of six men. There would be others.
She landed softly, bouncing on the soles of her feet. Despite the restrictions of the mask, she could clearly see the ordered rows of box files that stretched to her left and right. The box immediately before her was lettered C.
Then she heard the sound of choking men and thumping boots. Of course someone had seen her. Even amidst the smoke, they would know how to search and track and corner her. She had to move fast.
Dashing to her right she followed the letters to F and a box junction. She could either move down it and search for W or keep moving. At that moment, a figure emerged out of the billowing gloom. With the advantage of surprise, Mai made sure her first blow was effective, staggering the man to his knees. Even then, he somehow blocked the second, but Mai was no lightweight and her third rendered him unconscious.
Down the junction she rushed. Another aisle opened up. She glimpsed the letter S. She ran that way and soon came to W. She was lost among the box aisles. She thumbed her way until she found the small box marked “Wells,” an unassuming cardboard drawer that might hold the secrets to unlocking a shadowy organization and a killer. Mai emptied out the contents, replaced the box carefully, and stuffed Wells’s research into her backpack.
Then she crouched and waited, letting her senses stream in every direction. It was always best to hold your nerve and wait, to scout out your aggressors rather than rush in headlong, hoping for the best.
They were advancing up the main aisle. They couldn’t stop the smoke from getting into their throats, even with their training. It was just too thick, too acrid. Mai backed away in a crouch, hugging the floor, staying low as she exited her aisle and began to swing back around in a wide arc toward her original position.
She wasn’t a woman who usually relied on hope. But this was a fast, fluid and high- risk operati
on. Her hope was that the descender wire hadn’t been found. An image of the building’s floor plan was firmly fixed in her mind, seen as she descended only minutes ago. Now she deftly negotiated her way around a long wooden table littered with cups, plates and utensils and surrounded by dozens of abandoned chairs. One of the guards, a man with red cheeks and streaming eyes, passed within a few feet of her, but her crouching, rigidly immobile figure never registered on his radar. To help her cause, there suddenly came the banging of many fists on the main warehouse door and then some shouting to get back.
The SAS would be through in seconds. No doubt they had weapons, but even if they hadn’t, they would quickly jury-rig some kind of device that would open the door. And then the smoke would quickly dissipate.
But Mai was fleet of foot and reached the stationary black line of the descender in seconds. With a quick movement, she hooked it to her harness and pressed the button. The machine took her up toward the rafters, now above the heads of the searchers below.
And out into the cold night. Smoke filtered through the gap behind her. Mai spent twenty seconds replacing the roof components and wedging them tight, then slid back onto the brick wall.
Belmonte was crouched at the far end, waiting. “Poetry in motion.”
They quickly dropped to the pavement, draping themselves in the deep shadows. Drake and Alicia were already waiting up ahead.
Mai nodded in answer to Drake’s questioning glance. “I took everything. If Wells had anything on this Shadow Elite group or your wife’s killer, it’s right here. All that’s left is to read it.”
The Englishman almost smiled.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the dark and haunted places below our chaotic world, there are evil men who contemplate diabolical deeds. It’s not that there is no light in their lives; it’s that they feel great joy in bringing darkness to others. The more limitless their power, the more it consumes them, eating through their heart and soul until only an icy, uncaring shell remains.
Russell Cayman had been a child once, a blank slate. But not even being left to die in a ditch by his junkie parents had turned him into the man he had become today. Nature or nurture might have molded him differently, but he had had neither. Instead, the system swallowed him whole and churned him out, a child forgotten, a child alone. A vulnerable adult who the government could manipulate with deceit and trickery.
Now he was a machine, but ironically, a machine working for the people who owned the very government that had beguiled him. Down here, in the dark pits of the earth, he felt at home. The lone reminder of his life were the men tramping around the tombs. If they were to depart, he might very well lay down in one of the coffins, in the arms of Kali or Callisto, finding a comfort and a solace amongst the long-dead, evil gods that he had never experienced in life.
He directed his men. He supervised the clearing of the floor areas around the eight altars so they could receive the eight pieces without obstruction. He reviewed the points that might come up in his forthcoming call to the Norseman—the boss of bosses.
But his eyes lingered on the tombs. On their Spartan, uncluttered perfection. He needed that lack of disorder to calm his mind. He had been told that the tomb of Amatsu lay at his back, a deity literally called the God of Evil. In a quiet moment, Cayman ventured inside and used all of his strength to crowbar open the lid. It didn’t move far, but an ancient dust blew out straight up Cayman’s nostrils.
The protector of the Shadow Elite breathed deeply. A soft susurration rustled around the roughhewn room. Cayman could quite happily die here. He bent over the edge and reached blindly inside. Something clunked over in a dark corner. His sharp eyes saw nothing. A tiny whirlwind skipped across the floor, stirring dust and debris, originating from nothing and imploding a moment later as if it had never existed.
Cayman’s fingers closed over hard bone. It was cold and rough. The edges were sharp and might have cut him had he been given time to press his wrist to them.
But an alien beeping noise tore him back to the present. The sound of his watch alarm.
It was time to return to the surface and call the Norseman.
Cayman withdrew his arm with a depressed sigh. The feel of the old bones still stayed with him as he headed back out of the darkness and into the sunlight. The perfect tomb clutched at his heart, but the Shadow Elite’s clutches were far tighter and went much deeper. Once he had followed an old protocol and checked his perimeter, then locked himself inside one of the military choppers and switched on its frequency blocking system, he finally used an untraceable sat-phone to contact the Norseman.
“Where are we?” No greeting, no compromise, just the deep melancholic tones demanding a status report.
“The pieces are on their way here,” Cayman said, equally blunt. “There have been no problems to date. The tomb is prepared.”
“What of the escapees?”
“Dispersed. Undoubtedly trying to thwart us again. Their kind will never leave well enough alone. But our discipline will win the day.”
“Your discipline,” the Norseman said after a pause. “That is why you are our disciple and our word. It is your discipline that will hold your unruly men together and win this day.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s not a compliment, Cayman.” The Norseman sighed. “It’s a threat. Do you see?”
“Yes.” Cayman kicked himself for not remaining focused. With half a brain still consorting with Amatsu in his tomb, the ex-DIA man was no match for someone as formidable as the Norseman. Claiming to be a descendant of the great exploring Viking Eric the Red—and who was there to refute him?—the Norseman was a larger-than-life figure who had inherited untold wealth and the senior position in the Shadow Elite council upon his father’s death. Since that time, decades ago, the Shadow Elite had not stagnated or regressed. They had taken great strides forward in securing their already redoubtable position.
“They may know about the train.” The Norseman was always pragmatic. “They may even try to stop us. It is always their way, to flounder and thwart. The Elite are gathering in Vienna right now. You know where.”
“Where they have always gathered.” Cayman was used to the Norseman’s chatter. He believed the great leader liked to hear his own thoughts spoken aloud and used Cayman as a sounding board.
“The old place. Grey. Aldridge. Thomas. Leng. And young Holgate—always the upstart. But his deportment has changed of late. It is something I will be addressing once I reach Vienna.”
“You’re not there?” Cayman immediately kicked himself for the stupidity of the question. If one of his own men had asked that kind of question, Cayman would be tempted to shoot him on the spot.
But the Norseman was seemingly lost in expressing his thoughts. “I’m at home. The Prague fortress is impregnable. Not even an army could get in here. Once I know the pieces have been activated, I will depart for Vienna. Now tell me, Cayman, has the Wells thing been cleaned up?”
“Yes, sir. All checked and clean. No leaks there.”
“Good. And Drake?”
Cayman hesitated. “Drake?”
“We know him of old. You know that. If he were ever to find us—”
Cayman was truly stunned. He had never heard even the slightest expression of fear in the Norseman’s voice before. The ex-DIA man thought back to Drake’s prowess in the tomb and quickly revised his opinions.
“If he shows his face again, sir, I will obliterate it.”
“We cannot fail then.” The Norseman’s voice came as close to happiness as was possible for one such as him. “Short of a miracle, the pieces can’t be stopped. The entire world will cower before us. Our rule, already absolute, will be preserved forever.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hayden and her team made Zurich train station by the skin of their teeth. Once inside, even as she ran and scanned the big blue boards for their platform number, Hayden was struck by the polished cleanliness of the station. The vast floor seemed to sh
ine, the arched alcoves that led to retail outlets looked cozy, warm and inviting, quite the opposite of most train stations she’d ever visited. Bizarre and colorful balloons hung from the ceiling. Tourists dressed in all manner of clothing drifted and bumped past each other, focused on their own schedules. The noise level swelled and decreased as groups marched past them.
Karin was first to spot it. “Singen!” She raced off in the direction of the platforms and Hayden and the rest rushed after her, painfully aware they had only minutes to make the train. When they found the big engine burbling loudly, the CIA agent heaved a sigh of relief.
Karin sent a questioning glance.
“Just get on,” Hayden shouted. “We’ll worry about the ‘where’ later.”
A red and white stripe ran for a few carriages at the point she jumped on to the train. She noticed a huge green Starbucks logo as she leapt through the door. The craving for a double-strong Caramel Macchiato hit her like a bullet, but at that moment, there was the sound of the doors locking and the engine’s note strengthening. They were on their way.
Dahl spoke up immediately. “We have one hour,” he said, “to find the pieces and stop them reaching Singen. Let’s move.”
Hayden stepped up. She led the way through the first carriage and then, as if in odd answer to her prayers, the Starbucks logo appeared once again and she was suddenly walking through a coffee shop right there on the train. A fully functioning outlet.
Ben’s voice could be heard from the back. “I never heard of a Starbucks on a train before.”
The Barista popped up from behind the counter with startling efficiency, making both Dahl and Kinimaka flinch and reach for weapons they had decided not to risk carrying through the busy station.
“It’s a trial train,” she said, blond hair tied fiercely back. “Built here in Zurich.” The lilt in her voice betrayed her pride. “If it works— it could go global.”
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