Theatre of War (Matt Drake 28) Tenth Anniversary Novel

by David Leadbeater

  Drake followed Dahl, who set off at a sprint. The others joined seconds later. They soon reached the rolling ridge, which was dotted with irregular boulders, giving the team plenty of cover from which to perform a quick recce.

  As the surveillance photos had already shown, Devil’s Junction was composed of two random rows of buildings fronting a wide dirt street, something that reminded Drake of old towns in Westerns starring John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

  The buildings were wood-paneled, ramshackle and beaten by decades of weather. A raised deck sidewalk ran along both sides of the street; although, he noticed, there were no railings to which you might tether your horse. The windows, interestingly, were mirror-like and brand new.

  It was the only giveaway.

  Drake saw no one. The earth was hard and littered with sharp stones.

  Dahl rose and slid down the hill, completely exposed. Drake followed, keeping his gun trained below. The lack of activity was disconcerting, giving the impression that maybe the Devil’s protégé might be working from elsewhere. But somebody was continuing to inhabit this place. The earlier surveillance photos proved it.

  “Which building first?” Cam asked.

  A bloody good question. Drake saw nothing obvious. The tire tracks winding through the dirt were random, the faint boot prints scattered. First contact here was vital. It would alert everyone to their presence.

  Would the Devil have built his own abode? A place kept just for him? From what Drake knew of him the answer was yes. Reaching the bottom of the hill, he crouched at the rear of the nearest row of buildings, temporarily safe once more.

  He glanced over at Hayden. “Did you see anything?”

  “Nothing obvious. I guess we’re gonna have to get lucky.”

  Drake waited for the expected Alicia comment and felt temporarily aggrieved when it didn’t come. Their team was short, of course, and less secure because of it.

  “What are you waiting for?” Dahl asked. “A fish and chip van? Come on, let’s hit these bastards hard.”

  Drake shouldered him aside and ran into Devil’s Junction.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Splitting up, they approached the rear of every building on their side of the street, one by one. Drake jumped up onto a deck, kept his head low, and sidled up to a window. A quick look inside revealed an empty bedroom complete with two separate single beds. Both beds were squared away, hinting at a potential ex-military presence. Dahl, next door, reported a similar finding over the comms. Kenzie, two buildings away, did the same.

  Hayden came back with a different report. “I’ve got what looks like the equivalent of a soldier’s mess. And eight men, unarmed, dressed down, clearly done for the night. Drinking. Lots of pizza. I think a couple of flash bangs and some zip ties should neutralize all eight.”

  “Sounds like Alicia’s perfect night out,” Drake said, “Get ready for my signal.”

  Cam and Shaw both reported sightings. Drake and Dahl decided to back them up and nullify all the soldiers inside, while Kenzie watched the street.

  Two minutes later they were ready.

  “Watch your back,” Drake told her. “There has to be some kind of overwatch.”

  It made more sense that the overwatch would be computerized and that the person in charge—this mysterious Devil’s protégé—was tied up in something far more important than staring at CCTV cameras. Like... maybe... the second attack...

  Drake went with Cam, who broke a rear window and lobbed in a flash-bang grenade.

  Drake smashed through the front door seconds later. The first man he clubbed over the head, the second he kneed in the groin. All the men were staggering with their hands clapped over their ears, some on their knees, others sprawled on the ground.

  Drake knelt over six men and tied their hands as Cam stood over him, keeping watch. White smoke swirled thickly around them and billowed out the open front door. A quick search of the room revealed no weapons.

  When they’d finished, Drake inched back to the door and stared out across the street. One by one the others came back with their own positive outcomes. Drake couldn’t believe that three flash-bangs hadn’t been overheard by someone.

  Across the street he counted eight buildings. Low lighting burned in three of them. Others, one that looked like a convenience store and one that might be a grocery depot, were backlit, as though maybe just their freezers and fridges were still illuminated.

  Drake hesitated for another few seconds, trying to peer into every window, but Dahl stepped out of his own door and walked along the decking all the way to Drake’s.

  “What you waiting for? The Milky Bar Kid?”

  “Nope. A dumb Swede to draw their fire.”

  Dahl leaned against the door frame and cast an eye over the buildings that faced them. “It is odd, isn’t it?”

  Drake shrugged. “Complacency. Boredom. Their boss died months ago. Maybe this new boss isn’t as ruthless, but the pay’s still good.”

  “Speculation isn’t going to stop the attack,” Hayden told them. “Are you ready?”

  Everyone gave an affirmation. Drake braced himself and ran across the dirt street, zeroing in on one of the lit buildings. A stiff evening breeze swept along the wide thoroughfare, peppering his body with tiny grains of sand. His boots crunched to a stop at the foot of the decking running alongside the full row of buildings. Only his head was above the decking.

  Still nothing.

  Drake didn’t like it. The fact was, if the Devil had still been in charge here, they’d have encountered almost impossible resistance by now. Maybe his demise had depleted the guard. Maybe all that was left were the dregs.

  Either way, Hayden called the next move. They rolled up onto and across the decking, coming up against the front façades of the buildings. As one, each person raised their head and took a quick look.

  “Clear,” was repeated up and down the line.

  “They can’t all be clear,” Drake said. “Try again.”

  They shifted position for different angles and rose once more. The same negative results were returned.

  Drake sank to his haunches with his back against the wall and stared across the street and at the surrounding shadowy shapes of mountains. “Doesn’t make sense. I guess we’re in the wrong place.”

  “Only one thing for it,” Hayden said. “Instead of splitting up and thinning out our enemies as per protocol, we all hit the building from which the heat spike was spotted. Ready?”

  They were. They jumped down from the boardwalk so that their boots wouldn’t resound against the planking, and ran three doors down. The building in question was run down—at least on the outside—accessible only through a covered passage where a steel door sat about halfway down. It was a single-story, elongated building that jutted out into the desert and, for all intents and purposes, gave an impression of abject desolation. The worst building in the little town.

  Drake checked for security cameras. So far, he’d spotted none, but now two concealed cameras came into view opposite the steel door. It was the first clear sign that this building was something other than it seemed.

  “Go,” Hayden said.

  The team burst into action. Dahl ran to the steel door, slapped an explosive strip onto its surface, and backed off. Drake and Kenzie stayed close.

  The strip detonated, blowing the door off its hinges and sending it smashing back into the building. Smoke swirled around the new gap. Dahl leapt toward it, ducking as a figure stepped out.

  Drake saw a broad man carrying an Uzi, and opened fire. Even then the man managed to squeeze his trigger, but his volley of shots went awry as he fell backward to land dead on the floor.

  Dahl rolled to his feet, angled low, and peered through the shattered doorway.

  Drake hugged the side of the building, approaching him.

  Dahl fired a quick burst.

  Another man yelled out and collapsed.

  Dahl jumped up and ran into the building.

  Dra
ke was a foot behind, Kenzie following him. Inside, Drake saw a single, enormous room like a narrow aircraft hangar filled with tables and desks and, at the far end, an incredible array of computer equipment.

  Between them and that though, were three men.

  They formed a row, guns up, and opened fire on full-automatic.

  Drake dived and rolled as the air was sliced apart above him, coming to a stop behind a cheap wooden desk, very aware that it wouldn’t stop a bullet. He lay on his stomach and peered through the nest of table and chair legs, seeking out the shooters. A quick burst sent one of them to the floor.

  Dahl winged another.

  The third shot Kinimaka as he burst into the room, the bullet striking his Kevlar vest and sending him slamming back into the door frame. The building shook. Kinimaka’s own bullet had taken the shooter in the throat.

  Hayden steadied the big Hawaiian as he fell to his knees, gasping.

  Cam and Shaw entered last and darted along the side of the building, between chairs and desks, as they headed for the far end.

  Drake picked his way forward, pausing as Dahl and Kenzie joined him.

  A figure sat before an incredible computer array, rows of tables filled with connected computer screens. Drake counted a collection of six screens joined by a huge central monitor, all high-def and state of the art. Several other desk- and laptops sat adjacent to the main arrangement.

  “I guess this is the nucleus of the place after all,” Dahl said.

  “The Devil’s throne room,” Hayden said softly. “But who’s that?”

  The figure had their back turned to the SPEAR team. It wore all black, including a hood. Its fingers flew across several keyboards, leaping from one to the next, refreshing screen after screen.

  “Hey,” Hayden shouted. “Stop that right now. On your feet.”

  The figure ignored her.

  Drake suppressed an urge to shoot at the screens or hard-drives which sat like black ingots on the floor, stack after stack. However, he did fire a shot into the wall above the figure’s head.

  A second passed. Then, the black-clad figure rose out of its chair, upending it. The figure whirled. Drake saw a woman’s white face, blue eyes so bright they could have cut glass, and a small dagger clasped in each clenched hand. Drake levelled his weapon.

  “What’s your plan then? Stick us all with daggers?”

  Hayden, Cam and Shaw rushed forward. The woman flicked her wrist, sending two daggers toward their faces. The pinpoint accuracy of the throws forced Hayden and Cam to dive left and right.

  But Shaw had knives of her own.

  Backed by Kenzie, the Native American flung her own knife and darted in. The woman spun out of the way and came around holding two more daggers which she threw at Shaw and Kenzie. Both dodged as they ran. Shaw jabbed an elbow at the woman and then a knee. Both attacks were blocked.

  Hayden was trying to get around the fight because it seemed the woman was trying to protect whatever program was running across every screen.

  Drake and Dahl approached.

  The woman kicked Shaw in the ribs and then withdrew another dagger, aiming it at Hayden but refraining from flinging it.

  “Wait,” she breathed. “Wait for one moment.” Her accent was English, her tones well educated.

  “No.” Hayden ran at her.

  The woman stepped to one side, granting access to the full computer array.

  “You’re too late,” she said. “The entire program is in the ether.” She waved above her head. “Disseminated across the Internet. Even now, a thousand remote computers are waking up, whirring and spreading an unstoppable infection.”

  “The second attack?” Hayden hesitated. “But it’s physical. Roads. Bridges. Infrastructure.”

  “A thousand computers,” the woman’s face was ecstatic, “with a thousand instructions. Your capitulation is inevitable.”

  “What?” Dahl turned his gun on the hard-drives, blasting the hard plastic casing and metal innards to bits. Sparks, flames and sharp debris shattered against the back wall. Computer screens smashed and exploded as Drake lent his gun to the onslaught.

  All the time the woman laughed.

  “You are too late,” she said. “It’s already done. It was done more than half an hour before you slid down that hill. Yes, I watched you. Yes, I knew you were coming for me. The Devil taught me how to destroy and humiliate your enemies, to shatter their hope. You let them grasp a little bit of victory before utterly breaking them. He taught me well. My name is Selena Blade.”

  “On your knees, Selena,” Hayden said. “We’re taking you in.”

  Her words sounded hollow, especially to Drake. Where could they take her? They had no easy access to authority.

  “My job is done,” Selena said. “America will fall, and there is nothing you can do.”

  The other screens inside the room, those perched randomly on the room’s desks, blared into life.

  Selena turned and ran for a rear door the team hadn’t noticed until now.

  The moment she dashed through it, a low-yield explosive went off, sealing it shut behind her.

  Drake was left staring between the door and the images on the screens. “What the hell do we do now?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Annabelle Watts left the arms of her lover late that afternoon, she had no idea it would be the last time she’d ever see him. That last luxurious, naked embrace, warm beneath soft satin sheets, that wrench when she pulled on her discarded clothes, that quickly blown kiss of goodbye—it was all a swish and daring routine.

  Annabelle crossed the hotel parking lot to her car, taking in the beautiful, hot Floridian sunshine, climbed in and set off on her way back home. The journey west from Winter Park to Lakeland didn’t take long, and passed in a kind of overawed slumber. Annabelle basked in the memories of the last three hours and looked forward to three more next week.

  It wouldn’t happen. Not because her husband would find out, but because the world was about to change... and she’d never see it.

  She arrived home in good time, showered and dressed, then sat down to wait for Jack to arrive. When he did so an hour later, he barged through the front door as usual, already talking at her, already moaning about his hard workday, his harsh confrontations and suspicions of backstabbers, his tales of woe long since turned wearisome and falling on deaf ears.

  Jack changed, grabbed a drink, and checked his iPhone for notifications without ever really seeing her.

  Annabelle sometimes wondered if she was sat naked when he walked through the front door, exactly how long it would take for him to notice. She waited patiently for him to pause his spiel, to stop re-examining his phone, and actually see her with real and present eyes.

  It didn’t happen.

  Annabelle had already clipped back her golden-blond hair. Now she readjusted the formless pantsuit she wore and spoke up. “Jack, we have to talk.”

  “Ah, crap,” he said. “I totally forgot. It’s date night, right?”

  Annabelle blinked. She’d also forgotten but for different reasons. She was about to offer to cancel their plans but then thought that a nice little restaurant would make a far better—and safer—place in which to break the bad news than their secluded home.

  If Jack stormed out, she had money and credit cards of her own with which she could secure a cab and hotel room. She didn’t think that would happen—Jack was a sentimental kind of guy—but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

  They left the house at seven just as the sun spread across the horizon in a vista of crimson hues. The restaurant—their usual—was only a forty-minute drive away, but tonight Jack wanted to get there and back faster because he fancied a “real drink to drown his sorrows” after he got home. Jack took the quicker I4, the big interstate that stretched east to west across Florida.

  Annabelle was about to ask him to change his mind, to go their usual way, but refrained. She didn’t want to upset him this early in the night.r />
  Darkness fell as they made their way along the six-lane interstate, weaving in and out of slower cars to shave a couple of seconds off their journey.

  Jack was quiet, still broody.

  Annabelle had donned a nice white skirt and formal jacket—maybe in a last-ditch attempt to elicit a response from her husband—but Jack never glanced her way. The darkness outside was a reflection of the darkness inside his mind, somewhere he chose to live the majority of his days.

  Four bright-red motorbikes came roaring past just three minutes before their junction. Jack cursed and flipped them off, speeding up a little as if thinking about giving chase. He didn’t, but he was clearly aggrieved.

  Especially when the motorbikes slowed down a few cars ahead.

  It was a mess now, the traffic all crammed up and stretching across every lane. Red taillights flashed ahead. An enormous eighteen-wheeler then slammed by to their left, hurtling up along the median and bringing the first murmur of alarm from Jack.

  “What the hell... that guy’s crazy—”

  Whatever else he was going to say was lost in the flaming blaze of a mighty explosion as first the bikes detonated and then the massive truck. The ground shook, the concrete and foundations literally ripping apart as tons of explosives destroyed the interstate.

  Something that was repeated around the country.

  *

  Shaun Olliver sat at the wheel of his truck, several large cannisters of liquid explosive crammed into the back, just over his left shoulder. He leaned forward, stuck in traffic but getting closer to his destination with every second.

  When the message had clicked into his email earlier—the message declaring his particular task was a go—he’d felt a sense of jubilation the like of which he hadn’t experienced since he saw a deer hit by a truck several years ago. He’d started to salivate, to shake. His thoughts—usually slow—had zoomed around inside his head like little, jumbled missiles. He was going to be a part of this. Of the worst day in history. Of mass murder. His name would be remembered for generations.