Brothers In Arms (Matt Drake 5) Read online

  Alicia strode up to the car. “Ya think anyone noticed us?”

  Romero laughed. Drake was used to her and rolled his eyes. “Don’t encourage her.”

  Lomas and his second-in-charge, Tiny, strode up, leathers creaking. “One thing you can be sure of. . .getaway’s gonna be right pretty.”

  Drake felt a stab of guilt. “Seriously, if you have good friends or loved ones here, you might wanna consider giving them a pass. At the very least we’re going to get in a firefight. The Russians might have warned them we were coming. I can’t guarantee everyone’s safety here, and I won’t promise to be able to save them if they get in any major trouble.”

  “Message understood, SAS.” Lomas grunted, sharp eyes again betraying the scruffy, disheveled-looking exterior. “We know the risks.”

  “And I ain’t SAS,” Drake mumbled, though for some reason he flashed back to Alyson and her hard-spoken certainties that he would never be anything other than a soldier.

  “Bah. You guys are like our gangs. Once a brother always a brother. No mind. . .” Lomas held out a hand. “Let’s go fuck up some kidnapper’s day.”

  Drake shook it. The leaders threaded back through the assembled gang and walked right up to the open gates of the business, ignoring the amazed stares of a few passersby. Drake stopped by the gates. The front yard was small, just an acre of bare concrete for parking cars and dominated by a large Portakabin. He glimpsed the top of a gantry crane rising above the Portakabin and guessed the rear yard was where the bulk of the business lay.

  “Balls out?” Alicia suggested.

  Drake shook his head as Romero choked, clearly not understanding the phrase. “It’s still not entirely clear we have the right address. There’s not even a sign in the yard stating their alleged business.” He eyed Lomas. “You two up for a stroll?”

  A minute later Lomas and Alicia wandered into the empty yard. Together they walked boldly up to the cabin door, leaning on each other to help hide weapons and create an innocent appearance.

  Alicia reached out to turn the handle, then stopped suddenly. With a quick body shunt, she hit the deck, pulling Lomas with her in an awkward heap. “It’s wired!” There was a moment of expectation and then a relative anti-climax as a small blast sent the door flying outward.

  Problem solved, Drake thought. He signaled the charge. The ex-SAS man, the marine, and twenty-two leather-jacket-and-blue-jean-wearing bikers tore across the parking lot, pulling weapons from every pocket, pouch and waistband as they ran. Following a quick signal, they split into two streams, going left and right down the side of the cabin.

  “Assholes must be waiting in back,” Romero said as Alicia and Lomas joined them.

  No one responded. They all pealed around the side, ready now. Drake got a glimpse of railroad tracks, big containers and a few small cranes, and then the entire vista opened up into an enormous yard. Myriad train tracks and a few old carriages dominated the scene, but the huge blue gantry crane to the right and the steel girders stacked below drew the eye. Drake immediately saw movement on the gantry walkway and in between the girders and yelled a warning.

  But it was the man standing ahead with legs apart and aiming an RPG in their direction who really bothered him.

  The weapon clicked, and the missile took flight with a supercharged hiss. Drake flung himself headlong, firing as he scraped along the ground to make sure the man didn’t let loose any more rockets. The RPG went high, slamming into the surrounding wall and exploding. The only damage to the biker gang came from bricks landing on their hastily covered shoulders and heads.

  “Cover me!”

  Alicia scrambled across the ground, spying the discarded rocket launcher and a spare shell. Drake immediately opened fire on the girders, seeing his bullets spark and clang off the rusted metal. He bought Alicia half a minute, which was all she needed to load, aim and fire the weapon.

  The rocket hit hard, exploding and smearing fire all across the face of the iron. Big girders caromed left and right, stacks toppled over, landing on top of those sheltering behind and below. The screaming began.

  Drake slipped behind a container, running its length, Romero and several others at his back. Near the far end, he got a good view of the gantry crane and spotted a man in a suit running up its integral ladder.

  He raised an eyebrow. “That’s strange.”

  Romero peered around him. “Ya know what? I bet the Russkies told ’em there’d be just the two of us. They’re not expecting a mini-army. Explains the small door charge and the man with the RPG. Rush job.”

  “Kudos to Mother Russia.” Drake sprinted forward, firing at anything that moved. “Clear the yard, but leave me some alive!”

  He raced up the metal steps two at a time, at first surprised by the instability of the crane structure, but then ignoring it. The suit climbed ahead of him, overweight and puffing. Drake caught up rapidly just as the man reached the top.

  “Sit down.” A club over the head with the rifle butt made the man do just that. Drake viewed the length of the gantry, saw half a dozen kidnappers sitting among the struts and aiming guns at his friends below. The height momentarily disoriented him, but then his training took over. He peppered the platform with bullets. Kidnappers yelped in surprise, most losing their grip and tumbling to the yard below. Others fell dead. Only one stood defiantly, aiming his weapon back at Drake.

  “I got your boss.” Drake rolled his eyes in the direction of the groans. “Give it up, pal.”

  The man shrugged, ponytail falling across one shoulder. “He’s not the boss.”

  Drake advanced across the metal bridge, ignoring the slight sway of the structure, and the noise of the creaking, swinging crane. The two men stared down the V of their sights at each other.

  “Come to think of it,” ponytail said, “I didn’t like the bastard anyway.”

  He squeezed the trigger. But Drake was ready. With anticipation born of superhuman ability, he threw himself off the gantry just as the kidnapper pulled the trigger.

  Alicia fired from below, winging the guy and making him fall to his knees, gun clattering.

  Drake fell through space. The jaws of the crane came up quick. He let go of his weapon, reached out and grasped the cold steel as his body rushed by. For a second his hands gripped, arresting his fall, but then with the smooth surface offering no purchase his fingers simply slipped away and he continued his fall.

  Straight down to the hard concrete.

  With milliseconds to prepare, he curled his body, realizing his back was about to take the brunt of the fall. The distance from the crane to the ground wasn’t that far but. . .

  . . .then he hit.

  *****

  Alicia saw him coming. Lomas, Tiny and Dirty Sarah were pounding up the gantry steps toward the kidnappers, so she fixed her attention on the falling man. When he landed, she held her arms out and slipped her body under his, letting the impact be absorbed by the both of them.

  It still hurt like a mother.

  Drake groaned against her chest. After a moment, Alicia realized she wasn’t badly hurt and neither was he.

  “Fucksake, Drake,” she whispered. “You should know by now. There’s easier ways to get on top of me.”

  Drake was well enough to chuckle into her breasts. “Yeah. But I was all out of Nutella.”

  *****

  As always, time was against them. The area around the girders had proved to be the main hiding place for the kidnapping gang’s hierarchy. When the RPG destroyed it, most of the men had died, but a few wounded and dying still lay crying in the dirt.

  Drake found no compassion in his heart. Whatever small consideration for enemies had existed inside him had been cleaved away the day Kennedy Moore died. Now, he threw one wounded man against the other and ignored their pleas and the aching of his own bruised bones.

  “I know you kidnap Europeans and Americans,” he said. “Adults. Some homeless, some down-and-outs. If I find out you kidnap kids, I’ll bring a fucki
ng army down on you and paint the earth with your blood and crushed bones. Do you understand me?”

  The men lying before him blinked. Before this, these men had been tough, brutal and dangerous. Now all they could feel was their torn and crushed flesh. All they could see was their own slaughter. The men nodded. One of the two suits they had rounded up wailed; the other sat with blood pumping from his thigh, trying to maintain a ruthless expression on his face.

  “Alright. I want to know all about this kidnap operation. The entire chain. Where the orders come from. Your feeding grounds. The whole lot.” He checked his watch. “Oh, and I want it in the next four minutes.”

  He glanced up at Lomas. “Prep the bikes. We’ll be leaving in six.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Dahl flung his body headlong down the passageway that led to the arms room as armed gunmen burst through the front door. The others were ahead of him. He’d sent them there a few minutes ago and then waited to arm a few “surprises.”

  Bullets slammed into the new plaster-coated walls around him. Boot heels pounded the freshly laid floorboards. Doors were smashed in. At this rate, their new HQ was soon going to become their old HQ.

  Dahl rolled to his feet. Komodo passed him a prepped weapon. “We have about four seconds,” he said. “Get your damn vests on” His eyes bore into Ben and Karin especially. When his eyes fell on Lauren Fox and Mike Stevens, the truck driver, he sighed. “Wrong place, wrong time, people. Sorry.”

  Then he turned, fell to one knee, swiveled and fired as the first of the enemy came to the corner. His bullet sent the man reeling backward. Blood sprayed the walls by his side. He dove forward. The next man tripped right over his sliding body. Komodo finished him off with a headshot, aware that even civilians wore vests these days. Dahl slid his body around on the polished floor, hitting the far wall with his legs and then pushing off hard. . .

  . . .coming back onto one knee, gun nestled comfortably on his right shoulder, firing with care and precision.

  Bullets thumped through walls all around him. One even nicked his vest, but his aim didn’t waver. He was a big man, an expert soldier trying to balance his courage with skill, and set forth making a mess of the approaching enemy team.

  The black-clad enemy force collapsed in the narrow hallway, men in front falling and tripping men behind. Some were compelled to clamber over their dying colleagues. But at last, one of the stragglers took a chance and hurled his body straight at the Swede. Both men grappled and smashed through the plaster wall, making a ragged new hole into the interrogation room.

  Komodo stepped up. The corridor was littered with Dahl’s victims, but there were still half a dozen men struggling forward. Komodo let them come, destroying the first’s face with a devastating elbow, twisting the second around in a headlock and breaking his neck, at the same time taking a round in the vest that jolted him, but only succeeded in putting extra fire and venom into his actions.

  Then, the unexpected happened. The plaster and timber wall that separated the arms room from the main OC was kicked in. A merc crashed through, black armor covered in white powder and wood shavings, and was now behind Komodo, among the civilians.

  Ben scrambled back on his hands, face suddenly a mask of terror. The kid was lost, reliving something dreadful. But not this moment. He was back at the third tomb with the blood of the dying soldier on his hands, traumatized and unable to act.

  It was Lauren Fox who stepped forward, closely followed by Karin as she saw the merc’s weapon swiveling toward Komodo. Lauren grabbed the arm that held the gun, expecting the man to jerk the weapon toward her. She released her hold when he did, letting his momentum swing the barrel harmlessly past and jabbed at his throat with stiffened fingers.

  He gurgled and staggered, but the man was no pushover. Luckily, Lauren didn’t expect him to be. She already had a follow up planned. A swift knee to the groin. But her attack struck something hard and strangely rubbery.

  Shit, she thought. If that’s his balls, he’s a freakin’ alien.

  “They protect those.” Karin stepped past. “But not from this.” Pressing her body against him, she fired three swift shots with a handgun pulled from the arms cache. The merc went limp, slipping to the floor.

  Lauren turned around. “Give me one.”

  Komodo twisted, taking the weight of a merc who’d launched himself at the ex-Delta man. With a shrug of his muscled shoulders, he sent that man on his way right into the external wall this time—the one made of bricks and blocks and solid mortar. The crunch was sickening. The man bounced back, still twitching.

  Dahl reappeared through the ragged gap into the interrogation room. Hanging shards of plaster collapsed all around him. He peered up the corridor.

  “Well. That’s that sorted,” he said matter-of-factly. “Anyone fancy the cinema next? I hear the new Die Hard’s previewing.”

  Komodo’s eyes were only for Karin. He pulled her in a tight embrace. It was Lauren who stepped over to Ben.

  “Hey, kid. It’s over. It’s done.”

  Ben’s eyes took on a little focus. For a second his jaw worked but no sound came out. “He. . . he died in my arms. I have. . . his blood on my hands. Right here.” And he held both hands out, palms up, shaking like a man with epilepsy.

  Lauren back away. “Kid, I ain’t no shrink. But I’ll tell ya this—you’re in the wrong damn business if you can’t handle a freakin’ gunfight.”

  Karin pushed her way past. “He’s been through a lot,” she whispered. “He’ll be okay.”

  Dahl fixed Komodo with a stare. “You know what, my friend? They’re still building the escape route out of here. Not finished. There’s only one way out.”

  Komodo started picking his way through the tangle of arms and legs and pools of blood. Dahl followed, motioning for the others to follow but at a distance. Karin and Stevens had to drag Ben up from the floor to get his legs moving. The haunted look still sat like frozen death in his eyes.

  As he walked, Dahl constantly patted the pockets of his dead enemies. He didn’t expect to find wallets, IDs or any other kind of credentials and wasn’t disappointed. He called Hayden on his cell.

  “We’re okay,” he said in answer to her quick question. “You?”

  He listened as she related her own experience. “Alright. Well, we need a safe house now, Hay. You got one lying around anywhere?”

  Her answer surprised him, but shouldn’t have. Hayden Jaye was among the top half dozen operatives he’d ever worked with.

  They passed the OC, checking the space carefully for any snipers or stragglers, but the enemy had either given up or were all dead. Dahl found it difficult to believe they’d seen the last of them. There was only one reason an enemy force would be sent against a new government facility.

  Someone with power, money, and a stomach full of guilt was getting scared. The game was now well and truly on. This could only be their endgame.

  *****

  Outside, the traffic flowed and the day moved past as if nothing had happened. Dahl stopped abruptly when he found Sarah Moxley lying unconscious or dead on the grass. Two other bloody bodies lay next to her along with a shattered camera and discarded rucksack.

  Komodo moved ahead to fetch the vehicles. Dahl dropped to his knees. Sirens wailed as they approached the HQ. The woman’s eyes began to flutter.

  “You okay, miss?” Dahl patted her gently.

  The woman glared up at him. “I missed it, didn’t I? Three weeks!” She sputtered. “Three Goddamn weeks I’ve been camped out here and I friggin’ missed it.”

  Dahl held her as she struggled to sit up. “I wouldn’t do that yet—”

  But she had already seen them. “No. Are they. . .? Oh no.”

  “I’m sorry.” Dahl pulled her close as the sobs wracked her body. For now, there was only grief, but soon would come the terrible guilt.

  But it was all random, all chance. Happened all the time. The merc who dealt with her had simply smashed her head with a
rifle butt instead of slitting her throat with a knife. The rhyme and reason of it never even entered the equation.

  An ambulance pulled up, followed by a phalanx of cop cars. Komodo sorted the classifications and red tape out whilst Dahl held Sarah Moxley, Karin held Ben, and another day of maneuvering and intrigue began in Washington.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Mai Kitano had been alone with Smyth on the Korean island for over four days. She came up with the phrase “alone with Smyth” and smiled to herself, relishing something for the first time since Drake left. It was bad enough being left alone with the irascible marine, but being alone after her recent time with Drake, and with the nuisance of being hunted all over the island, elevated the problem to “thorny.”

  In truth, avoiding the Korean patrols wasn’t a hardship for either of them. They were both trained well beyond the level of their hunters and found no trouble in leaving no signs of their passing. The island was big enough to accommodate all of them.

  Now, however, Mai had decided enough was enough. They had gotten nowhere in four days of waffling with Dai Hibiki and it was time to confront and take down this entire operation.

  “Just you and I?” Smyth had growled.

  “I’ll do it myself if I have to.” Mai had strode off among the trees, mind made up, already planning her route back to the lab and what she would say to Hibiki at their loosely prearranged meeting.

  They could no longer sit by and wait for something to happen. It was time to act.

  Now, Mai and Smyth lay on the cold, hard ground, concealed amidst a thorny tangle of brush, casting their eyes over the facility they had come to know so well. A stiff breeze whipped spray and sea salt over them like so much frosting.

  “There.” Mai saw Hibiki ambling over to the trees, cigarette in hand, and shuffled forward until he came into earshot. “Staying safe, nakama?”

  “Something has happened.” Hibiki took a long drag and then flicked ash at the breeze. “All hell has broken loose in the U.S. it seems. The big players are getting out.”