Last Man Standing

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Drake checked his wrist. “Damn, I’ll never get used to not wearing a watch.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you with a timepiece on your wrist,” Dahl said.

“Not since I left the regiment,” Drake said. “Long time now, mate.”

“Are you hinting?” Mai asked lightly. “I don’t take hints very well.”

“Hear, hear,” Alicia mumbled.

The rumbles and bursts of arms had died away. The team had considered rushing to the aid of the locals, but had decided the four remaining assassins and the upcoming arrival of Coyote was the greater priority. Dahl was engrossed in his big piece of plastic.

“I have two signals now at the castle,” he said. “Neither moving. On the one hand these two could have become trapped by each other, neither wanting to make the first move, which is kind of ironic. On the other they could both be dug in waiting for somebody to test them.”

Alicia made a pretense of shielding her eyes and looking up at the castle. “Let’s not disappoint them.”

Drake agreed. “It’s oh two hundred hours. Most of the town is asleep. The castle is a safe place to fight.”

“Let’s hope none of the local youths think so too.” Alicia followed Dahl up a narrow alleyway.

“If they do,” Drake’s disembodied voice said behind her. “It’ll either kill ‘em or cure ‘em.”

Up they went until the alleyway opened onto a wider road, bordered by houses and garages. It was the kind of street where the front windows of a house practically sat above the sidewalk, not good for the privacy of residents or would-be skulkers. The four of them passed swiftly, soon reaching the top of the hill and approaching the castle walls.

The battlements were high where they still stood intact, cracked and crumbled in other places. A shallow moat encircled the walls. Drake spied a gate to the left. Dahl pointed to the right.

“Walls are so damaged over there we could sneak across.”

Drake nodded. “All ways in are compromised,” he said. “We make the best of it.”

It was all they could do. None of them wanted to be here, forcibly pitted against hardened killers, but it wasn’t in any of them to lurk and hide. Leave that for prowlers, cutthroats and gutter rats. Drake led the way across a deteriorated, jagged wall, squeezing between the broken stones and slipping down the other side onto a well-cut sward of grass. Instantly, he crouched down in the shadows cast by the wall, surveying the area. The castle was almost circular, its walls irregular. A tall keep sat in the middle, broken-down but with its remains standing on top of a high hillock. A manmade wooden switchback staircase led to the top. Beyond it was a delve in the earth, almost like a wide drain, that led to an original barred grating and several seemingly irregular portions of inner wall, most of them covered in rustling foliage.

Drake cast around, feeling exposed. Dahl crouched next to him, tracking device in hand. “If they’ve seen us,” the Swede said. “Surely they will move.” He checked his watch. “Twelve minutes is up.”

He switched the screen on, taking in the flashing dots. “Still two in the castle. Almost on top of each other, but the scale is relatively small. One of them—” he glared hard at the screen. “Is in the very center of the castle.” He looked up at the high keep. “There.”

Drake searched through the gloom at the top of the grassy hill. To make matters worse the battered remains of the structure up there offered many low walls to hide behind and two tall, jagged rocky rectangles.

“Any clues?”

“Hey, Mai’s the bloody ninja,” Alicia hissed. “Send her up. I’d be amazed if she doesn’t come down with the assassin’s head and another small child. Ah, screw it.”

With that Alicia started up the steep slope. Instantly, the challenge was accepted. From the murk above a heavy, sudden boom rang out, a deep, resonating twang like an industrial strength rubber band being fired and Drake saw something lift into the night.

“What the hell—”

“Move!” Dahl shouted, recognition in his voice. “It’s a Net Gun.”

Drake scrambled. He did not want to be there when the thing landed. Like a spider’s web it arced through the night, tiny weights attached to its edges, dozens of individual threads glistening with a barely lighter shade of dark as they flew toward them. The net seemed to soar for ten minutes, hanging in space, but only seconds passed before it thunked down hard. Drake and the others were clear, an outside strand slipping over Alicia’s foot but not catching.

“He’s had time to set up a good defense,” Dahl said.

And then the assassin at the top of the hill proved it. Manic laughter rang out and small glow sticks were thrown haphazardly down the hill. Following them came actual bouncing bombs; grenades already primed and thrown at irregular intervals so they exploded at different times.

The team scrambled for cover. One grenade exploded near the top of the hill, sending up a shower of sod and dirt. Another rolled for several more seconds, its boom resonating through the ground. Yet another passed by the team, detonating behind them. Drake hugged the ground as it discharged its deadly firepower, then looked up.

“Crap. There’s more!”

And still they came. Chance wouldn’t stay forever on their side. Drake pointed to the sturdy wooden bridge that led to the staircase up the hill and ran for it, seeing Mai at his side. Dahl had already broken the other way, circumventing the mound, heading for the assassin’s blind side, and Alicia had taken off after him.

Drake reached the relative safety and impenetrable darkness underneath the bridge and stairway. Another explosion shook the castle’s foundations. Solid timber planks shook and dislodged flurries of debris, raining it over their hair and shoulders. Drake didn’t stay put for long. They had to keep moving forward.

Mai grabbed his shoulder and pointed. The stairway led to the very top of the hill and provided great cover. Drake nodded. Their quarry would not guess how fast they could be. He set off, head down, scanning the ground as much as the dismal light would allow. Stones and clods of earth dislodged in his wake. Mai stepped lightly at his back. Behind and to their sides even more grenades were detonated. Twice, fragments of earth spattered under the bridge, stinging their exposed flesh. The structure shook, but held firm. Drake reminded himself that Dahl and Alicia were most likely assaulting the keep from another angle. The assassin would know he was under attack.

He’s had plenty of time to plan this.

What else could they do? Time was their enemy. Coyote was coming. The townspeople might even soon be dragged into this, and then all bets and potential outcomes were thrown into a highly volatile mix. Add some kind of terrorist response unit to that…

Drake ran harder, almost fell, but caught himself on a solid wooden support. A grenade bounced so close they heard it skipping along the turf to their right. It detonated seconds later.

The stairway juddered. Drake and Mai were thrown to the ground. Drake rose immediately, soil and bits of grass streaming from his shoulders. “Damn, that was—”

Mai hissed a warning before he heard it. Grenades tossed under the bridge, rolling toward them.

Before they could react, the bombs exploded. Drake pushed his body down as far as the soft, yielding earth would allow. But that was only a precaution; he knew the rolling, bumpy terrain above them would help shield the blast.

The real problem was the stairway collapsing all around them.

Timbers, spars and support columns groaned and twisted, planks crashed to the earth or flew into the air depending how close they were to the blast radius. Reinforcement joists cracked. A spear of timber drove hard into the ground three feet to Drake’s left. He dashed that way, crablike, knowing through instinct that Mai would break right. A thick length of six-by-two slammed down onto his trailing leg, landing face-side first so that the impact was lessened. Nevertheless, Drake felt the blow in every nerve, issuing a deep grunt. When an ominous crack sounded above he rolled blindly, in a sudden snapshot seeing his hand caught underneath collapsing planks, amazed when they smashed down to either side of his wrist, leaving him untouched.

He rolled on, into the open. The stairway collapsed behind him, toppling and crashing down even as more grenades exploded within it, sending new splinter- and plank-filled plumes high into the air, and far and wide. Drake rolled to his knees immediately to get his bearings, a little shocked to see he was three-quarters of the way up the hill, only twenty strides from the top.

Above and to the right he could see Mai, already pounding the grass, fleet of foot as if nothing had happened.

He pushed up, tired of this game of king of the hill. In that moment the figure of a man appeared at the top.

“Duster’s me name! Blimey, come and get me!” he cried. “Killin’s me game! Chow down on this, ya Yorkshire twat! ‘Nuff said.”

Drake barely heard the insult, not that he could have translated it particularly well. He’d already seen the three-cylinder backpack strapped to Duster’s back, the long lance of the gun aiming toward him, and the horrific potential of what was about to happen.

“Flamethrower!” he cried at the top of his lungs.

This would be no old, out-of-date model, this would be a contemporary killing machine. In the movies, flamethrowers were depicted as having a short range, mostly to preserve the actors’ safety. In real life they could extend a spout of flame almost eight meters. Drake threw himself back down the hill, hearing a whoosh of flame at his back. The plus points of a man using a flamethrower meant that his mobility was impaired and the weapon’s burn time was severely limited. All this gave Mai and Dahl and Alicia more of a chance.

But Duster would be aware of that.

Trying to second-guess a killer of this caliber was like galloping through a littered minefield, but again the team had no choice. Drake felt the hot air at his back, swiveled and watched as the flame expended itself. Then he was up again, covering the scorched earth and stamping in between the mini-fires that lit up the dark for yards around. Mai had already reached the summit. Drake saw Duster’s figure and heard his rant.

“Wotcher, me old friend! What ‘ave yew got fer me? Sorted!”

Duster had unstrapped the cylinders, letting the bulk fall heavily to the floor, and now threw the lance toward Mai. Then, like a cowboy, he whipped out two guns from twin holsters at his sides, firing each one quickly, dramatically and with an unmistakable flourish.

Mai threw herself sideways, bullets passing inches above her body. Drake knew even she couldn’t survive another salvo from Duster’s trusty weapons. He hurled the only weapon he had — his knife — toward the assassin. Forced to act quickly, its arc wasn’t good; it clashed against Duster’s arm handle first, but at least gave the man a moment’s pause.

A shot rang out. That would be Dahl firing his handgun. The noose was closing.

Duster grinned. Drake cringed when he saw it.

What…?

Duster threw some kind of miniature flickering flame. Instantly a circle of fire ignited all around him, shooting up over six feet high. Drake figured the circle was about ten feet across, giving the man ample room to move. But flames wouldn’t stop bullets.

Dahl fired again, but Drake was able to distinguish nothing through the flames as he reached the top of the hill. The asshole had probably gone to ground. With that thought barely completed, the night erupted again, this time in the form of more bouncing bombs.

Not aimed at Drake’s team…

They exploded at the bases of the various crumbling walls that ringed the top of the hill. Though ruined, they were in parts still quite tall and now came crashing down. Three high walls collapsed, rolling gently before tumbling faster and faster. Dahl was under one, Mai another. The Swede saw the danger and pounded away, head down, but even so it was his instincts that kept him alive. As the plummeting wall descended toward him he threw a forearm up, deflecting the heavy block that would have split his skull. The rest of the blocks smashed down inches behind his fleeing ankles, shaking the earth with their destruction.

Duster cackled through it all.

Mai picked up top speed almost immediately, anticipating the trajectory of the crumpling edifice. The blocks never came near her, but at the end of her sprint she tucked herself into a ball and simply launched herself into the flames.

Drake gawped. “No!”

He ran closer, as near as he dared go, squinting and sweating as a wall of heat pushed him back. The height of the flames had decreased; they were dying down. Just at the edge of his line of sight he saw Torsten Dahl following Mai’s lead, barreling toward the searing curtain and leaping through.

Drake stepped back. “Bollocks to it.”

With a short run up he too dared the blaze. Sharp, sizzling tongues licked at him from every angle, hungry for flesh. A brief crackling sound struck his ears, striking a fervent desire inside that the sound wasn’t his own burning flesh.

He landed on two feet, still running, hot but alive, charred maybe, but still on mission. Duster was in the process of rising from his prone position. Mai angled toward him. Dahl came from another angle.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Drake managed, panting.

“Got tired of waiting,” she said.

“Wotcher,” Duster cried, madness in his voice as he stood up to the odds. “Bin waiting to try this little baby out f’meself fer weeks. Now it’s bagged me five million quid.”

Drake saw in his hand a black plastic box and beneath his thumb a tiny red button.

Mai sprang for his throat.

“No!”