The Gates of Hell

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Drake sat with his friends in one of the light Hawaiian Police Department helicopters and tried to clear his mind as they flew fast toward Claude’s ranch. The skies were littered with similar choppers and heavier, military ones. Hundreds of men were in the air. More were en route across land, traveling as fast as they could. A large part of the police and military had had to remain behind in Honolulu and the Waikiki area just in case the terrorist attacks actually materialized.

The Blood King was dividing their forces.

The satellite image showed a lot of movement at the ranch, but much of it was camouflaged so it was impossible to tell what was really going on.

Drake was determined to put his feelings for Kovalenko on hold. Gates had been right. The hostages and their safety were the crucial points here. Some of the most astonishing sights he would ever see opened up below and around him as they flew toward the North Shore, but Drake was using every last bit of his will to focus. He was the soldier he had once been.

He couldn’t be anything else.

To his left, Mai was talking briefly to her sister, Chika, double-checking her safety and sharing a few quiet words whilst they could. It was no secret that they could be starting an all-out war or heading into a prepared war-zone.

To Drake’s right, Alicia spent the time checking and re-checking her weapons and equipment. She had no need of explaining herself. Drake had no doubt she would extract her vengeance.

Hayden and Kinimaka sat opposite, constantly keying their throat mics and firing off or receiving updates and orders. The good news was that nothing had happened on Oahu or any other island. The bad news was the Blood King had had years to prepare for this. They had no clue as to what they were walking into.

Ben and Karin had been left back at HQ. Their orders were to wait for the asset’s email and then prepare for the somewhat terrifying eventuality that they might have to journey beneath Diamond Head and perhaps breach the Gates of Hell.

A tinny voice came over the choppers sound system. “Five minutes to target.”

Like it or not, Drake thought. We’re in it now.

The helicopter swept low over a deep valley, an incredible sight as it flew flanked by dozens of other choppers. This was the first wave, made up of Special-ops soldiers. Every other US military marque was ready to assist. Air force. Navy. Army.

The voice came once more. “Target.”

They rose as a unit.

Drake’s boots hit the soft grass and he was instantly under fire. He had been the next to last man out the door. The unlucky marine still repelling down took a full burst in the chest and died before he hit the ground.

Drake flattened himself. Bullets whizzed over his head. Dull impacts struck logs next to him. He fired a salvo. Men to either side of him crawled through the grass, using the natural undulating terrain as cover.

Ahead he saw the house, a two-story, brick affair, nothing fancy but no doubt serviceable for Kovalenko’s local needs. To the left he spied the ranch area. What the—?

Scared, unarmed figures were running toward him. They were running to left and right, every which way. He heard a hiss over his earpiece

“Friendlies.”

He snaked forward. Mai and Alicia branched off to his right. At last the marines got their act together and began to announce a coordinated fire pattern. Drake started to advance faster. The men facing them began to retreat, moving away from their concealment and running for the house.

Easy targets

Drake now rose with the attack force and picked off men as he ran, gun up. He saw a captive leaping through the grass, heading for the house. They didn’t know the good guys had arrived.

The captive suddenly twisted and fell. The Blood King’s men were taking pot shots at them. Drake snarled, lined the shooter up in fine targets and blew the bastard’s head off. He fired intermittently, either pinning down or routing men so others could finish them off.

He was searching for Claude. Before they had vacated the chopper, they had all been shown a photo of the Blood King’s second-in-charge. Drake knew he would be directing things from behind the scenes with an escape plan worked out. Probably from the house.

Drake ran now, still scanning the area, firing occasionally. One of the bad guys rose up from behind a hillock and charged at him with a machete. Drake simply dropped his shoulder, let the man’s momentum carry him right over and sent him crashing to the ground. The man grunted. Drake’s boot smashed his jaw. Drake’s other boot stood on the hand clutching the machete.

The ex-SAS man leveled his gun and fired. And then moved on.

He didn’t look back. The house was ahead, looming large, the door slightly ajar as if inviting entry. Clearly not the way to go. Drake blasted the windows out as he ran, aiming high. Glass exploded into the house.

More captives were streaming in from the ranch now. Some stood in the tall grass, simply screaming or looking shell-shocked. As Drake glance at them, he noticed that most of them were sprinting at pace, flying along as if fleeing something.

And then he saw it, and his blood turned to ice.

The head, the unbelievably huge head of a Bengal tiger, bounced through the grass in easy pursuit. Drake couldn’t let the tigers catch their prey. He ran toward them.

Pressed his earpiece. “Tigers in the grass.”

A flurry of chatter came back. Others had spotted the beasts too. Drake watched one of the animals leap onto the back of a running man. The thing was enormous, savage, and in flight, the perfect image of mayhem and slaughter. Drake forced his legs to go faster.

Another gigantic head broke the grass a few yards ahead. The tiger was on him, leaping, its face one huge snarl, its teeth bared and already slicked with blood. Drake hit the deck and rolled with every nerve in his body alive and screaming. Never before had he rolled so perfectly. Never before had he risen so quickly and accurately. It was as if the fiercer opponent had brought out the better warrior in him.

He whipped the gun came around and fired a bullet point-blank into the tiger’s head. The beast fell instantly, shot through the brain.

Drake didn’t take a breath. He leapt quickly through the grass to help the man he had seen brought down seconds earlier. The tiger was poised above him, roaring, its huge muscles straining and rippling as it dipped its head down to bite.

Drake shot at it hindquarters, waited for it to turn, and then shot it between the eyes. It landed, all five hundred pounds of it, atop the man it was about to eat.

Not good, Drake thought. But better than being mauled and eaten alive.

Screams and shouts blasted through his earpiece. “Fuck me, these bastards are huge!” “Another, Jacko! Another at your six!”

He studied the surrounds. No signs of tigers, just terrified captives and spooked troops. Drake sprinted back through the grass, ready to take cover if he caught sight of any adversary, but in a matter of seconds, he was back at the house.

The front windows had been breached. Marines were inside. Drake followed, his wireless Bluetooth beeper marking him as a friendly. As he stepped across the broken sill, he wondered where Claude would have situated himself. Where would he be right now?

A voice whispered in his ear. “Thought you’d left the party early, Drakey.” Alicia’s silky tones. “At your two.”

He saw her. Partially hidden by the wall cabinet she was pawing through. Christ, was she checking out his DVD collection?

Mai was behind her, gun in hand. Drake watched as the Japanese woman raised her weapon and pointed it at Alicia’s head.

“Mai!” His desperate tones shrieked in their ears.

Alicia jumped. Mai’s face twitched into a slight smile. “It was a gesture, Drake. I was pointing at the alarm interface, not Alicia. Not yet.”

“Alarm?” Drake grunted. “We’re already inside.”

“The grunts seem to think it’s also connected to the big warehouse out back.”

Alicia stepped back and aimed her gun. “Fuck if I know.” She fired a salvo into the cabinet. Sparks flew.

Alicia shrugged. “That oughta do it.”

Hayden, closely followed by Kinimaka, came back into the room. “Barn is shut tight. Signs of booby traps. Tech boys are working on it now.”

Drake smelled the wrongness of it all. “And yet we stroll in here so easily? This—”

At that moment there was a commotion at the top of the stairs and the sound of someone descending. Fast. Drake raised the gun and glanced up.

And froze in shock.

One of Claude’s men was coming down the stairs, slowly, one arm locked around the throat of a female captive. The other arm had a Desert Eagle pointed at her head.

But that wasn’t the extent of Drake’s shock. The sinking feeling came when he recognized the female. It was Kate Harrison, the daughter of Gates’ ex-aid. The man who had been partly to blame for Kennedy’s death.

This was his daughter. Still alive.

Claude’s man jammed the gun hard against her temple, making her screw her eyes up in pain. But she did not cry out. Drake, along with a dozen others in the room, leveled their guns at the man.

And still it felt wrong to Drake. Why the hell was this guy upstairs with one captive? It almost seemed as if—

“Go back!” the man screamed, eyes pin-balling wildly in every direction. Sweat ran from him in thick droplets. The way he half-carried, half-pushed the woman meant all his weight was on his back foot. The woman, to her credit, wasn’t making it easy for him.

Drake calculated that the pressure on the trigger was already half way there. “Move away! Let us out!” The man heaved her down another step. The special forces soldiers moved alright, but only to slightly more advantageous positions.

“I’m warning you, assholes.” The sweaty man breathed heavily. “Get out of the fucking way.”

And this time Drake could see he meant it. There was a desperate look in his eyes, something that Drake recognized. This man had lost everything. Whatever he was doing, whatever he had done, had been done under terrible coercion.

“Back!” the man screamed again and roughly pushed the woman down another step. The arm around her neck was a rod of iron. He kept every part of his body behind her so as not to present a target. At one time he had been a soldier, most likely a good one.

Drake and his colleagues saw the wisdom of retreat. They gave the man a bit more room. He moved down a few more steps. Drake caught Mai’s gaze. She gave a slight shake of her head. She knew too. This wasn’t right. This was…

A diversion. Of the most atrocious kind. Claude, no doubt under the order of Kovalenko, was using this man to distract them. Archetypal Blood King behavior. There could be a bomb in the house. The real prize, Claude, was probably making good his escape from the barn.

Drake waited, perfectly poised. Every nerve in his body stilled. He lined up the shot. His breathing stopped. His mind went blank. Now there was nothing, not the rigidly tense room full of soldiers, not the terrified hostage, not even the house and the valet that surrounded it.

Just a millimetre. A crosshair. Less than an inch of target. One move. That’s all he needed. And stillness was all he knew. Then the man pushed Kate Harrison down another step, and in that split second of movement, his left eye peered around the woman’s skull.

Drake burst it apart with one shot.

The man whipped back, collided with the wall, and slithered past the shrieking woman. He landed with a bang, headfirst, gun clattering behind him, and then they saw his vest, his stomach.

Kate Harrison screamed, “He’s wearing a bomb!”

Drake leapt forward, but Mai and a big marine were already leaping over the side of the staircase. The marine grabbed Kate Harrison. Mai leapt past the dead mercenary. Her head swiveled at the vest, at the readout.

“Eight seconds!”

Everyone ran for the window. Everyone except Drake. The Englishman sprinted farther into the house, darting down the narrow hallway toward the kitchen, praying that someone had left the back door open. This way he would be closer to Claude when the bomb went off. This way, he stood a chance.

Through the hallway. Three seconds gone. Into the kitchen. A quick look around. Two more seconds. The back door — closed.

Time up.