Blood Vengeance

CHAPTER NINE

Matt Drake glared at Torsten Dahl across the beer-stained table.

“Face it, mate, you’re English. Everyone thinks you’re English. You sound English. You act English. Maybe not a Yorkshireman.” Drake shrugged. “But nobody’s perfect.”

Dahl threw back the last of his pint. “So you think I’m almost perfect?”

“Didn’t say that,” Drake pointed out as he sipped at a Pepsi Max. He glanced around. The quiet pub they’d entered half an hour ago had become decidedly busy in the last five minutes. Couples crowded the bar. Some were shouting. Others sat staring into space. Drake picked up on the air of shock and disbelief.

“What the hell’s going on over there?”

But Dahl was like a dog with a bone. “Do you think Mai’s perfect?”

Drake flicked his attention back to the Swede. “What?”

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Mai upped and left and wouldn’t take you with her.”

“Is that why you invited me here? To talk? Shit, I coulda been watching prime time.”

“You know exactly why I invited you,” Dahl said quietly. “You’re pissed off with her. But, mate, I have to say… she knows what she’s doing. If she wants to do something alone, neither you, me, or the entire Swedish Special Forces can stand in her way.”

Drake chortled. “The Swedish Special Forces couldn’t catch an escaped monkey, let alone handle Mai.”

Dahl took the barb with a fixed smile. “Don’t be pissed off at her. It’s obviously something she has to do.”

“Heard that before,” Drake said. “Doesn’t mean it’s right.”

Dahl shrugged. “Well, matey, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong either.”

Drake stared into his glass for a moment, ignoring the rising noise around them. “Honestly? It’s the danger she’s willingly walking into. These wankers who think they own her… they’re worse than the fucking Yakuza. Far worse.”

“We should be with her.” Dahl sat back. “I agree. Look, if she does this her way, she’s free. If she doesn’t, it will never end.”

“You missed the option where she’s dead.”

Dahl looked away, not wanting to push the issue of Drake and his woman. For the first time, the tumult around them registered on his radar. He sniffed the air. “I smell trouble.”

Drake nodded and slipped off his chair. Together the two men drifted closer to the bar, joining the ever-increasing crowd.

What they saw shocked them to the core. Drake felt his mouth dry up instantly, and found he couldn’t move a muscle. Dahl’s gasp of disbelief was audible.

The picture on the TV screen was an aerial view of central Washington DC. The Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial shone, and then the view centered in. Flashing lights, black vans, and cop cars jammed the display. An inset showed a portrait of their boss, Jonathan Gates, and the red ticker across the bottom spelled out the words: Secretary of Defense killed in Washington DC.

Drake backed away, fighting off a black cloud which threatened to overwhelm his vision. He turned to Dahl, but found that the words just would not come. Their eyes locked and expressed all that needed to be said.

Dahl pointed at the way out. By the time they reached the saloon-type exit doors, the Swede had found his voice. “Do you have your ID?”

Drake nodded.

“We can drive straight there.”

Again Drake nodded as a dark maelstrom of scenarios whirled through his head. They knew Gates had been seeing Sarah Moxley at the Hotel Dillion tonight, but what the hell had happened? Outside, the streets were strangely quiet, eerily so. The population of Washington, it seemed, were clustered around their TVs. Dahl led the way to their parked car and set off at pace.

“He was a good man,” Dahl said into a thick silence broken only by the car’s purring engine. “The kind of man you could admire. The type of politician you could follow. A rare leader.”

“Who would do this?” Drake blurted without expecting any kind of answer. The list was endless — from an opportune civilian whacko to a disgruntled general to the more likely terrorist scenario.

“We’ll find out,” Dahl said, slowing the car as he approached a road block. “And then we’ll stuff their fanaticism so far down their bloody throats it’ll hopefully choke ‘em.”

They ended up running half the way to the restaurant. Both men checked their phones, but although Drake had received a missed call from Hayden, neither of them could raise the rest of the team. It was most likely because the SPEAR HQ was going crazy and being run ragged, but Drake didn’t like it and neither did Dahl. They would have kept trying, but the checkpoints grew more regular the closer they came to the restaurant, each one more stringent than the next. When they finally reached the scene, Drake stood back, appalled.

The whole façade of the famous, respected restaurant had been blown out. Shattered glass littered the sidewalk all the way to the curb. Tables were upturned and broken. The two men didn’t enter the restaurant, but lingered on the fringes, eyes drawn toward the two inert bodies lying in the center of the room.

Drake took one more moment to grieve, then packed it away. He swallowed hard and began to look around. “That’s odd,” he said.

Dahl nodded. “I saw them on the way in. Secret Service. Two of them.”

“I thought they only protected the President.”

“They do. But Coburn was speaking across the road.” Dahl rolled his eyes to the right, surveying the ground in between. “I don’t like the look of this, Drake.”

Drake cast his eyes over the bodies. The woman sitting in a chair near the bar, held there along with other witnesses, looked familiar.

“Sarah?” he called. “Is that you?”

She looked up, and a wave of gratitude swept across her face. She hobbled painfully as she tried to walk over.

A cop walked up to her. “Wait right there, miss.”

“Could we just have a moment?” Drake picked his way through the debris and tapped the cop on the shoulder.

“Who the hell are you?”

The Yorkshireman flashed his badge. “Part of Gates’ team.”

A look of respect entered the cop’s eyes. “Alright. Sure. Take your time. But she ain’t gonna be cleared to leave for a while.”

Drake enfolded Sarah Moxley in his arms. The sobs that wracked her body brought his own grief bubbling back to the surface. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m so sorry.”

“He… he was a good man. He didn’t deserve this. There are so many others—”

Drake put a finger to her lips. “Don’t finish that thought,” he said. “You might regret it later. Do you know the assassin’s identity?”

“They’ve told us nothing.”

“Once we get going on this,” he said, “The bastards who planned it will have nowhere to hide. Trust me.” He didn’t care that he’d told himself he’d never make that promise again. Not after this.

But Moxley suddenly pulled away. Tears streaked her face and her lipstick was smudged, but her eyes bored into him with a mix of intellect and fear. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“The Blood King did this. At least, he organized it. The killer said as much before someone saved my life by shooting him.”

Drake felt the bottom of his world fall out for the second time in thirty minutes. He pulled further away from Moxley and held her at arm’s length. “Are you sure?”

Her expression conveyed the words she couldn’t speak. Drake fished out his phone and looked at Dahl.

“Call your family,” he said. “Kovalenko ordered this.”

Dahl went white, turning away as he made the call. Drake pressed a speed dial number and waited for the call to connect. The seconds passed by like hours, each one cleaving a year from his life.

“Hello?” Mai’s voice, at last, thirteen hours ahead.

Drake told her everything.

“Oh, my God. Poor Jonathan. But I have to call Chika and Dai. I have to go. Matt, thank you, but I have to go.”

Drake understood. His next call was to Ben Blake. In his experience, the young man never parted for more than half a minute with his phone and always answered. He waited expectantly, but this time it just rang and rang. Drake checked his watch. It was early morning over in the UK. Maybe…

“Hello?”

“Ben? Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry, sir. This isn’t Mr. Blake. This is Chief Inspector Mills of the West Yorkshire Police. Who am I talking to?”

The world swayed, but Drake clung to hope. “This is Matt Drake. I’m Ben’s friend. I currently work for the US government. Is Ben okay?”

There were a few seconds of silence. “Right, sir. You’re in Mr. Blake’s contacts and I can see old text messages and calls made between you. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Drake, but Ben Blake was murdered a short while ago. He was killed alongside his parents and two other men, who we believe were active members of the British Army. Do you have any knowledge of this?”

Drake didn’t even feel his legs give way as he crashed to the floor.