Blood Vengeance

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

During the flight to Death Valley, Drake gave Mai a call. It was early morning in Tokyo, but the Japanese woman didn’t sound at all sleepy.

“It is not easy,” Mai told him the opposite of what he wanted to hear, “But I have friends in Tokyo too. We will take down the Clan together.”

“You called in some help?” Drake whistled softly. “Must be bad.”

“The Clan are international murderers. Global assassins. They are formidable.”

“Well,” Drake murmured. “So long as it’s not Dai Hibiki. I’d almost rather have you working with Smyth than that guy.”

“Really?” Mai laughed lightly. “Are you so jealous of all my admirers, Matt?”

“No.” Drake said it quickly and venomously, making her laugh out loud once more. Through the connection, Drake heard the sound of her text message tone and then another quieter laugh. He glanced suspiciously over at Smyth as the man’s own very realistic gunshot text alert went off.

“Seriously, mate. Are you for real? You’re texting my bird while I’m actually talking to her?”

Mai instantly quit laughing. “I am not your bird.”

“Sorry, love. It’s just a saying.”

Smyth scowled. “It’s been a rough couple of days.”

Drake relaxed. “That it has.” He sighed. “That it has.”

“And you have nothing to worry about where Hibiki is concerned,” Mai went on. “He is dating my sister.”

Guy’s a player all right. Drake shook his head. First Mai. Now Chika. “What’s his secret?”

“Do you really want to spend this call discussing Dai Hibiki’s assets?”

Drake blinked. “Not when you put it like that, no. What’s your timescale?”

“The Coscon is today. The plan is to go there first, seek out the Yakuza, and then head to the village. It should all be over by tonight.”

Drake remembered the original Coscon and the now world-renowned events that had occurred there. He hoped today’s episode would turn out far less dramatic but, knowing Mai, it was unlikely. He could spend an hour saying all the things he wanted to say to her but knew there were no words, not between soldiers such as they. The meaningful things went unsaid, but were no less heartfelt.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

“Aye, lad,” Mai said in a terrible mock-Yorkshire accent. “That y’will.”

He cut the connection. In more ways than one, Mai did not sound herself. He forced his attention back to the mission. Ahead, and soon to be below them, lay Death Valley, the lowest, hottest, driest area in North America, with the spectacular Panamint Mountains ranged along its western border. To his right, Dahl was just finishing up with his wife, Johanna. To his left, Kinimaka was talking softly to Kono, his sister. Karin leaned in to Komodo, whispering softly. Alicia fended off the calls from her biker gang, every member of which had wanted to accompany the SPEAR team on this desperate mission. If Death Valley had been closer to Washington, Drake knew they would have organized their own transport and found a way to help. But not this time.

They were heading into the Blood King’s trap.

Kinimaka’s cell chirped. He quickly checked the screen, blanched, and ended the call with Kono. His first words chilled every heart in the cabin.

“She’s what?”

The Hawaiian’s face fell even further, desperation never so plain on a man’s features. When he ended the call he took a few minutes to collect himself.

No-one spoke.

Finally, Mano Kinimaka looked up. “She died. Hayden died and they managed to revive her. Another surgery. But she’s failing…” his voice broke. “Failing bad.”

The pilot’s voice cut harshly through the grief. “Choppers are coming in hard from the left, folks. We’re under attack!”

Dahl sniffed and whispered. “About bloody time.”

Out of the searing light they came, three matt-black helicopters without munitions, but when doors had been torn off to allow groups of gun-toting, harnessed men to hang upright in the empty gaps, what need did they have of integral armament?

Drake hung on as their own chopper veered away. His view of the sky became a view of the ground: scorched desert and barren badlands, plus a brief glimpse of the small facility from which the Blood King had escaped a few days ago.

How did a man plan a campaign like this from prison?

With crucial aid, he thought, with one or more key figures backing you. Somebody had helped grease the wheels. Somebody had helped procure a drone which had turned out to be the main facilitator of Kovalenko’s escape. And drones, Drake knew, didn’t exactly come easy. Not even for a man like Dmitry Kovalenko.

He needed to consider the whole picture, including Jonathan Gates’ death. Someone was benefiting immensely from all this. The SPEAR team just had to figure out who.

The chopper swooped nose first, almost sending Drake’s stomach through his mouth. A wave of bullets flew through the space they had just vacated. Alicia swore as the ground rushed up to meet them, but then the pilot tugged on the collective, taking the chopper out of its dive. In another second he had jerked the machine sharply to the right, but even so the edge of a fresh wave of bullets clanged off the bodywork.

Alicia twisted and turned, trying to keep track of their enemy, cursing them with every breath. Dahl regarded her curiously.

“You okay, Al? You seem a little… jumpy. Not like yourself.”

“I’m fine, Torsten. And did I say you can call me Al?” She blinked, then shook her head, realizing what she’d said.

Dahl smiled. “Got you. God, you’re easy.”

“So it’s been said, but rarely to my face.”

Drake stared at them as bullets peppered the chopper’s body. “Wait. What’s this? Something new?”

Dahl nodded, holding onto a strap with his right hand and swaying with the sharp movements of the chopper. “My idea. All you have to do is trick someone into speaking a song title.”

“Where’d you learn that?” Drake poked. “Shiny-arse school?”

“It’s a damn sight better than Dinorock.”

Drake didn’t answer. Ben Blake had been his main Dinorock conspirator, Mai his second. Now one was dead and the other in the fight of her life. The open wounds were as raw as they were painful. Drake closed his eyes tight and whispered a silent prayer for Ben. He could barely imagine the lad’s eyes without life; unseeing, all thoughts and memory and purpose, all his experiences, lost and forgotten forever. Goodbye, my friend, Drake said to himself. I’ll maybe see you soon.

There was no worse a death than the end of hope. Throughout his life, Drake felt like he’d always fought an uphill struggle with hope. As a child, the battles with his dad had all been about ‘becoming better’, taking responsibility and striving to be the best. This was almost before he’d started school. Had he joined the army to please his father, or to get away from him? Drake didn’t know for sure, but in his heart suspected it was the latter. It didn’t matter now, of course. His father was long dead, his mother too. Later, his adversities had been with the army itself: fighting promotion, fighting shiny-arse rich boys for their privileges, fighting himself to overcome weakness and be the very best, fighting the enemy.

All his life.

More recently, the fight had become more personal. Since the Odin thing had happened, Drake had actually found himself able to take charge of the fight, instead of watching it happen to him. It felt good. But the line between personal battle and personal tragedy was a thin one and, it seemed, an unavoidable one.

The battle continued. He had the worst feeling that it would continue for the rest of his life. Would he ever find peace? Maybe… but Kovalenko and Coyote needed to be taken care of first. The road to Coyote had always been a dead end, but recently he had uncovered the slimmest of leads — Zoya, Zanko’s crazy grandmother, had once been in contact with the world’s greatest secret assassin. Nothing more. It was barely a straw, but one that needed to be clutched.

Soon…

Now Dahl smiled cheerfully as the chopper swooped lower and lower through its evasive strategies. Alicia whirled and spun, keeping her eyes firmly on the enemy. Komodo gripped a strap with one solid fist, the other arm held like a rod of iron across Karin’s stomach to help keep her from falling around the cabin despite her belts. Smyth sat expressionless, like a man waiting to appear on stage and show off his outstanding skills. And Kinimaka… well, the huge Hawaiian conveyed a mixture of emotion. One expression displayed raw will and hatred — he wanted to finish this whole endless grisly battle with the Blood King and move on. The next radiated pure longing — he wanted to be with Hayden, sat by her side, holding her hand and never having to let go.

Drake wondered if it could ever be that way between him and Mai. We’re such specialist soldiers, can we ever let go?

A chopper, matt black in color, suddenly dipped into their flight path ahead, weapons blasting. This time the strafe of bullets shattered the windshield and riddled the outer cockpit, making the pilot execute another emergency dive.

“Going down!” He screamed the words. “Brace for impact!”

The chopper dived hard and its occupants shouted, grunted, complained or set their faces to stoic; whichever method they used to gather their courage. Even Dahl put two hands to the straps, but the grin remained genuine. Screw Six Flags, this was his kind of ride. Three choppers dived after them, deadly birds of prey lunging through the skies, never once letting up their raking lines of fire. The pilot hauled up as the salt flats dramatically enlarged, the nose of the chopper and the stomachs of its occupants lifting a little, but the first impact was still a heavy one, its force shattering overstressed steel. The landing skids tore away. The nose cone crumpled. The chopper bounced and rose, leaving a deep cleft in the earth and a wide spray of white salt in its wake. Drake’s head struck a metal strut and he cursed. Alicia mumbled something about the impact being unable to do much harm. The chopper bounced again, rending the tail boom and part of its rotor from the rest of the body. It began to slew, the front digging in, but thankfully by then its lessening speed meant it didn’t start to roll over. It came to a shuddering halt, obscured by rising clouds of dust, salt and churned-up earth.

Smyth was first to react. “Don’t know ‘bout you guys, but I ain’t goin’ out as no sittin’ duck.”

He kicked open the side door and swung himself out. Drake pounced next, eyes already scanning the surroundings as he jumped to the ground. Kovalenko’s birds blasted overhead, full to the brim with mercs and commandoes and whatever other killers-for-hire his men had managed to purchase since Christmas. He ran forward, giving the rest room to escape and tracking the birds as they changed direction.

“Get ready,” Smyth said, taking aim.

But the birds suddenly lost momentum, started to hover, then began to lose altitude. They were landing.

Smyth stared, letting his rifle hang loose. “Thought they’d at least have tried to take a few of us out.” He looked at Drake. “Isn’t that Kovalenko’s way? Sacrifice the many to slaughter the few?”

“He’s all about the spectacle,” Drake said. “But I have to agree—”

“It’s not about that,” Dahl said as the rest of the team came up behind them. “Whilst we were playing Wall of Death in the back, our pilot here had full view of the rest of the valley. Tell ‘em, Lewis.”

The pilot nodded. “Coming along the road. Cars. Many armored vehicles. A truck or two. Heading along here.” He pointed to the thin snake of road cutting through the flats. “Maybe five, six miles out.”

“He has an army,” Drake said. “Close to the prison. I guess that makes sense. There’s any number of ghost towns and abandoned businesses out here, not to mention old ranches, Indian villages, gold and silver mines. Christ, you could easily hide a small militia outside the National Park.”

“Been doing your homework?” Alicia leaned in.

“Always do. Kovalenko’s men could have gathered the bulk of his weapons and intel systems there. I wonder if he controlled the drone from around here?”

Everyone turned to Karin. The girl with the genius level IQ shrugged. “How the hell should I know? I’m no weapons expert. I guess it’s possible. Depends on the operating system.”

“Look,” Smyth growled. “Can we concentrate on what we can actually see for a minute? You think that’s possible? We got three choppers full o’ mercs comin’ in and a mobile army as backup. What’s the plan? This area ain’t called a salt flat for fuckin nothin’, you know.”

Drake cast his eyes across the dusty white hexagonal salt crusts, dotted here and there with brush, and in the distance some gentle curves of desert sand leading to craggy, contoured and severe looking mountains. They could call in the cavalry at any time, but it would be all for nothing if Kovalenko wasn’t around.

“What’s that?”

Drake followed the line of Karin’s finger along the blacktop, now spotting an irregular line of green trees at the top of a small rise and, beyond them, what looked like white walls and red roofs. “What is that?”

Lewis, the pilot, broke out a map of the area. “Yeah, it’s Garner’s Castle. I thought as much. Built in 1922 as a holiday home for the rich, now it stands as a tourist attraction, though closed throughout the winter season. Sometimes called the mansion, fortress or castle of the valley, it actually does resemble a castle, though I have no idea as to its functionality.”

Alicia shoved him. “You go to college?”

“Leave him alone.” Dahl pushed her out of the way. “It’s a good hike. If we want to make it in time we should get going.”

Drake surveyed the rest of their surroundings whilst Komodo and Kinimaka did the same. The arid plains were almost featureless and in keeping with the name of the region. Nearby Badwater Basin had the lowest elevation of any point in the northern USA; it was below sea level, whereas only eighty four miles to the northwest, Mount Whitney, the highest point, raised its jagged head. Other place names like Dante’s View, Hell’s Gate, Furnace Creek and the Devil’s Golf Course confirmed the adverse nature of the area.

“Let’s go. And don’t forget, we need to look as though we’ve been ambushed.”

Dahl sniffed at that. “I think we were.”

With constant glances back to the newly grounded choppers and along the blacktop road, the team ran hard for Garner’s Castle, the last outpost in their terrible battle with the Blood King.