The Blood King Conspiracy

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Dive!” Drake screamed, hoping everyone got the message. He felt Ben hit the deck by his side, groaned as Kennedy landed on his legs, and thanked his lucky starts it hadn’t been Kinimaka. Explosions ripped through the ship. Soldiers died on both sides, twisting and yelling as they collapsed.

Drake grunted again as one of the enemy landed on him, having bore the brunt of the shrapnel that was heading his way. Still, a few shards tore through Drake’s skin, causing a searing pain that he ignored.

He pushed to his knees. They had to get to the life-rafts. Their survival depended on it. But around the corner of the steel radar column they hit serious obstructions. Marines were taking cover among the girders, both at deck-level and further up amongst the tree-like stanchions. Bullets pinged from surface to surface faster than a man’s eyes move at a women’s beach volleyball tournament.

Bradey was in the midst of it, firing and shouting orders through his radios, trying to hold together a makeshift team of some of the best men in the world who, in a matter of minutes, had been sent reeling.

That was the key factor here, Drake thought. Not skill or bravery, but shock and awe — the Americans being played at their own game on their own soil. By Christ, there would be some repercussions.

The life-rafts were effectively cut off. And the battle behind them was only getting fiercer and closer. Drake knew the only way to protect his people was to fully engage in this fight. He fired his weapon at the men slithering down the ropes. Enemy bodies fell and crashed to the deck. The sound of breaking bones made even the hardest man wince. Some bad guys paused in mid-fall to level their weapons and fire a few bursts in Drake’s direction, but their aim was spoiled by the sway of the ropes.

Kennedy snatched up a gun and started firing.

Ben ducked behind them as a metal sleet drove above their heads. Luckily, the raucous sound of his mobile ringing distracted the enemy more than Drake and his friends.

“Sis?” He answered it without thinking. “Karin? Yeah, yeah, not bad. Look-”

Drake dived left, hitting the deck in a roll and came up firing. More bodies somersaulted from the skies, trailing fountains of blood, and came crashing down amongst their own brethren below.

“No,” Ben was saying, “I’m in the States. Look… what? What’s wrong with seeing Hayden?”

A man had surprised Kennedy, sneaking up behind her amidst the turmoil and strong-arming her around the neck. She struggled, bucking and kicking fiercely, suddenly reminded of her contest with Thomas Kaleb in the battle arena, reminded of that rank smell, those evil, blood-smeared hands. How he touched her. How he drooled on her…

Fight!

The inner voice, so loud and commanding, was pure self-preservation. She lifted her body, using her attacker as a fulcrum, and then swung all her weight backwards, still holding the light machine-gun.

Her heels crashed into his shins, making him buckle but not relent. The butt of her gun jabbed his ribs. The back of her head, on the return swing, then smashed against his forehead with stunning force.

The man staggered away. Kennedy turned and mercilessly opened fire, sending his body reeling against the bulkhead.

Ben was on his knees, eyes a centimetre away from deck, looking for all the world as if he had found a new breed of insect on a still, sunny day in the calmest meadow. “Karin. I hear you, but Hayden’s alright. She’s good for me-”

The soldier Kennedy had shot landed face down beside him, broken and bloody. The knife he had been holding but never gotten the chance to use bounced off Ben’s head and struck the floor.

“She’s CIA,” Ben said with a dollop of sarcasm. “Not Marine Force Recon!”

Drake allowed himself to join the fray again instead of keeping half an eye on Kennedy’s struggle. The deck was crowded now, much of it covered in pitch battle. One thing was obvious to Drake — the cavalry, by now, would be well on its way.

So that pointed to another, more-important thing — the attackers and Boudreau, if the sadistic murderer was indeed behind this — would have planned for all this. Thus they would more than likely already have secured the device.

All we have to do is hang on, he thought. We can’t escape, we just have to live.

“That way.” He pointed back past the door they had come through. There was a corner bulkhead and a storage bin over there — meagre coverage but better than their current position.

They scooted across. Drake made to grab an opponent who was in their way, but Mano Kinimaka beat him to it, bulldozing past and ramming a stiff arm into the guy’s head. It was instant lights-out for their adversary, and a better way out for him than Drake had been planning.

As he ran, Drake sought to help his fellow soldiers by firing single shots at their rivals, relieving pressure, saving lives, backing the team. His own mobile had vibrated twice, and that meant either Wells or Mai, or both.

Another explosion, and this time fire and frag blasted past the corner they had just vacated. A member of Bradey’s SOG squad tumbled into view and lay without moving.

“Watch that corner,” Drake instructed as he now moved carefully to the starboard side of the ship and peered over the railings. If he had been expecting aircraft carriers, a deadly armada or swarms of choppers he was hugely disappointed. Beyond the choppy, wide seas and the foggy shore in the distance there was nothing to see. He had to assume Boudreau’s assault and getaway crew lay to the port side.

How on earth were they ever going to escape?

Hayden was breathing shallowly beside him. She nudged his shoulder. “It’s the same set-up as back at the safe house, Matt. Overwhelming surprise. I tell you, there’s more than one insider helping them here.”

“Stunning,” said Drake shaking his head. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. Look, Hayden, we’re soldiers, but they’re not.” He nodded at Ben and Kennedy. “We need to help the marines from here and just survive. Boudreau’s men have to depart soon.”

“With the box!” Hayden looked like she was about to head below decks.

“Lost,” Drake said. “For now.”

Ben’s voice was starting to rise. “Karin! I’ll call you back. You just can’t talk to me like that!”

Hayden’s eyes held a depth of pity that suddenly made Drake scared for Ben. “He’s a great kid,” the ex-soldier said quickly. “His family mean the world to him.”

“As my father meant to me,” Hayden returned. “But he’s gone, and all I have are some memories of him. Funny, how such loving feelings can fade with time, leaving you knowing you had them, but not remembering the overwhelming depth of them.”

“Your father,” Drake said. “He was CIA wasn’t he?”

“James Jaye. J.J.,” Hayden said with pride. “If I do nothing else with my life I will honour his death.”

Ben was well and truly in second place with this one, Drake thought. How naive of him to think of them as the happy couple, living among the roses and not sensing the coming blight.

Kinimaka now hunched down beside them. “So,” he said. “What are we looking at?”

“Water, water everywhere and not a boat to sink,” Drake said before rising to his feet. Kinimaka just stared. Drake took a moment to shoot two adversaries who dared to peer around the bulkhead and then checked his weapon.

Three-quarter empty. “Where the hell are the marines?” he wondered aloud.

Then Hayden screamed, making Drake almost squeeze the trigger in alarm. A chopper had been drifting towards them, inch by inch, and now as it came within their warning range a man had leaned out and started shooting.

“Boudreau?” Drake guessed.

“The very motherfucker,” Kinimaka growled. “Fruit-bat crazy, that one. Pure fruit-bat.”

A great claxon went off, louder than the shooting and the fighting and the death-cries of wounded men. It could only mean one thing. They had the device. Then ropes unravelled heavily from the chopper and struck the deck like big boa-constrictors all around them. All of a sudden men were abseiling down.

Were they trying for Hayden again?

Drake fired the machine-gun one handed, scooping up a knife with the other and walking towards the landing zone. Dead adversaries plummeted to the ship’s deck, bouncing hard. Hayden emptied her clip too quickly, panic affecting her aim. This arsehole Boudreau really had her traumatized, no doubt his intentions when he so brutally executed her men.

Kinimaka walked with them, waiting for the hand-to-hand. He didn’t have to wait long. Their enemies bounced lightly and sprang forward. Drake allowed one to land on his knife, then twisted and slashed another across the throat. He caught a blow on his chest and fired close-up, sending a man skidding back into his comrades, scattering and confusing them.

A knife flashed.

Drake let it pass through the gap between his arm and his chest without even blinking. The knife-wielder’s expression change from smug to terrified in a millisecond. It changed to agony one millisecond later.

Kinimaka was at his side, an intimidating presence if ever there was one. Boudreau was leaning out of the chopper, being held up there only by his men, spittle flying from his lips.

“Get him!” came the mad scream. “Can’t you fucksticks see him? He’s fuckin’ big enough!”

Mano? Drake thought. They were after Mano Kinimaka? Not Hayden?

“He’s desperate,” Kennedy’s voice came from close by. “The Blood King must have given him another chance.”

More men came at them. Drake understood better now why they weren’t shooting. They wanted the Hawaiian alive. Never mind, it would accelerate their downfall.

He front-kicked one man in the chest, heard ribs break. To his left and right, Kinimaka and Hayden used close-up fighting techniques. Boudreau’s team was good, and the melee soon turned into a stalemate, helped at Drake’s end by the limited corridor of attack his enemies were afforded by the bulkhead.

Again the claxon sounded. “Fuck you!” Boudreau’s voice rang out, a madman on the verge of losing his last, tentative grip on reality. “Fucking useless meatheads!”

And he started shooting indiscriminately. Several of his men went down. Blood slathered the deck. Boudreau laughed. “Fucking,” he fired, killing a young mercenary with red hair. “Useless,” he fired again, sending another bullet into another subordinate. “Meatheads!” He fired twice more. Two more men collapsed, one with a hole in his head and his blood spattered across the rest of the living.

“Get back! Are you deaf as well as useless?”

The remaining men started to jog towards the port side. They must have some kind of makeshift disembarkation apparatus over there.

Which is why they were defending that area so ruthlessly against Bradey and his men.

Drake let them go. He had no interest in chasing down fleeing men. The chopper above them with its crazy occupant veered upwards and began to climb.

Hayden was staring at Kinimaka. “What gives, Mano. Why’d that monster want you?”