The Swords of Babylon

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Drake and the rest of the team piled into the nearby vehicles and took only a few moments to find two sets of keys. The third was nowhere to be found, probably thrust deep in the pocket of someone still falling to their deaths down the bottomless pit of Babylon.

But two were enough. The team raced hard for the vague stack, reloading weapons and readjusting vests and straps as they got closer. The vehicles bounced along the rough terrain, sometimes travelling hard up slopes, other times barreling down the other side, but rarely staying straight.

“The bastards can see us coming a mile off,” Alicia said, handing Drake a pair of binoculars.

“As soon as we’re within range, split up,” Drake said. “That’ll give ‘em two targets to worry about.”

Hayden’s voice crackled in his ear. “My thoughts exactly.”

Drake ducked as bullets clattered around the vehicle’s framework. The ride wasn’t bulletproof, but it was still built of good quality, sturdy steel and the chassis gave them some protection. As they drove closer, they saw that the Russians had erected a makeshift slide, built out of wooden poles and boarding, rough but robust enough to cope with several heavy artifacts being slid down to the desert floor.

“Well,” Drake admitted. “It’s better than dragging them down by hand. Bet Zanko didn’t think of that.”

More bullets clanged off the bodywork. Hayden’s vehicle peeled away to the left, circling the embankment. Sparks flashed as they too came under fire. Drake drove through the camp — nothing more than a large tent, several crates and a heavy-duty truck. The windshield exploded as he neared the bottom of the slope, but he was where he wanted to be.

Quickly, they all piled out, taking cover behind the vehicle. Drake had positioned it so that it was directly underneath the Russians’ line of fire, ensuring they had to peer out and down the slope to find a target. The first man who did lost a head, courtesy of Dahl’s pinpoint accuracy.

The team set off running around the hill. At various points, they left a person behind, ensuring numerous inroads up the short but steep slope.

Then they waited for Hayden. It only took a minute for her voice to fill the airwaves. “Check. We’re all good here. Send in the bird.”

Drake watched the skies. Camp Babylon wasn’t far and had been on stand-by, awaiting the order to join the SPEAR operation with a fully-tooled-up Army Sikorsky Blackhawk. Orders had been secured through Karin and Gates in D.C. The chopper had instructions to strafe the top of the mound, and force the men up there to abandon their positions.

Then a voice, like thunder, roared down from up high, “Matt Drake! Are you down there? Is it you, my friend?”

Drake said nothing. Let the big, hairy bastard wonder.

“Ahhh, don’t be like that! So you lost. It is no big deal. Everyone loses to Zanko!”

Drake spied the bird in the distance before he heard its rotor wash. His lips curled. Zanko was about to lose big time.

The distant thud of the chopper became obvious. Hayden spoke up, “Let’s get ready for this.” The entire team popped up as Razin’s men redirected their attentions to the oncoming helicopter. Of all the men up there, three had made the mistake of rising too high in their panic. Drake, Dahl and Mai made them pay.

Then the chopper swooped overhead, engines roaring, a wicked, almost prehistoric bird of prey, bristling with Hydra rockets and Hellfire missiles. Its main guns opened fire with a resounding roar, staccato bursts thumping around the top of the ancient hill. Drake saw two men flail immediately, puppets animated by hot lead, jerking and toppling head-over-heels down the slope. Pandemonium reigned above. Shouts, commands and cries for help, all suddenly drowned out again as the chopper let loose a second salvo.

“Go.” Hayden gave the order a moment after the noise of the guns died away. Drake sprinted up the hill, saw a group of men milling around on the edge above and fired several shots. The chopper backed away, still hovering. Drake switched his run to a zigzag pattern as someone tried an opportune potshot down the hill. To either side of him, several meters apart, both Mai and Alicia ran hard. The team would assault the short rise from all angles.

Hayden whispered one more time in his ear as Drake crested the rise, “Remember, it’s imperative we discover the location of the Great Sword.”

Drake hit the dirt as a contingent of men fired. Bullets whizzed overhead. He rolled, trusting his team to assail them from another angle. Within seconds, the volley was over. Dahl and Kinimaka were amongst them. Drake took a moment to get his bearings. The widespread but low knoll stretched away from him in an almost rectangular pattern. If this was the lower reaches of the real Tower of Babel, then the foundations must be unimaginably huge beneath him. Any real archaeological mysteries within may have already been ransacked by Hussein’s men, but then again, maybe not. The Iraqi ruler hadn’t been known for his smarts.

Drake saw an excavated area near the right side, partly obscured by half a dozen men. Amongst them he saw Razin and then Zanko. The Russians looked like they were leaving. Then the group parted and a loner stepped out, grenade launcher balanced across his shoulder. Before Drake could aim and fire, he had let loose a missile that flashed across the gap between it and the chopper, passing dangerously close to its undercarriage.

Hayden jumped on the comms. “Back off. We’ve got this now.”

The chopper whirled away. The Russians mistook it for victory and cheered. The team pointed out their mistake by peppering them with bullets. Razin looked like he was hit and Zanko stepped over him.

Drake pressed forward. From out of nowhere, a Russian attacked his flank, tackling him at shoulder height. Drake stood his ground and shrugged the man off, quickly using the butt of his gun to render him unconscious.

They needed survivors.

Then Zanko threw Razin bodily across his shoulders. Drake heard the bellow he aimed at his men even from where he stood.

“Cover our escape! Die if you have to, but make sure we are clear first! Take them!” Zanko threw four shiny weapons amongst his remaining men. The Swords of Babylon were his safety net.

Only four.

Drake dropped to one knee and squeezed off three quick rounds. Through his rifle sights he saw Zanko flinch once before leaping off the hill. Drake cursed. One bullet would barely faze the monster. And if the entire team was up here, then Zanko and Razin might indeed get away. The swords were imperative at this point.

Gunfire crisscrossed the hill. The Russians were unprotected but well-armed. Hayden and her team could not risk rushing in. No one wanted to die today. One by one, the defenders fell, at least one of them shot in the stomach so that he would survive, at least for a short while.

Drake lined the last of them up in his sights. “Drop your weapon! There’s a way out of this, pal. At least listen to me.”

“I never say where Zanko go. You think I am stupid?”

“No. No. It’s not Zanko we want. It’s the sword he took from the pit. That’s all.” Drake inched forward as he spoke. The last man was now covered on all sides.

“That is all?” The Russian’s face was livid and spittle flew from his lips. “Are you fooking crazy? There are worse things,” he panted. “Worse things than Zanko.”

Drake was momentarily stunned. “Like what?”

“She asked for the Great Sword so he sent it. Days ago. It is no longer here.”

Dahl stepped closer. “She?”

“No, never! Never!” As he screamed his last word, the Russian fired, not even bothering to aim his gun. Death by soldier, it seemed, was preferable to revealing the name of the woman Zanko had sent the Great Sword to.

Hayden cast about the top of the dusty hill. “Let’s see if any of these other clowns will talk to us.”

With the battle over, Hayden recalled the chopper and used its occupants to help secure a perimeter. Razin and Zanko had vanished so completely, Drake wondered if they had a hidey hole in the area. The pair of them were slippery enough, he knew, and unlikely to have revealed its location to their men. Nevertheless, the four swords were added to the two they’d already liberated and all set on the ground, inscription side up.

Akerman and Patterson cooed over them like grandparents over a newborn. Akerman again voiced the concern that the language differed from the one he’d been deciphering in the tomb. “But,” he pointed out hopefully. “The properties are very similar. We should start as soon as we’re able.”

Drake stared down at the weapons, stunning yes, but hardly a weapon that might save the world. “You sure these things can stop Odin’s doomsday device?”

Patterson looked stressed. “Alexander crafted them for that purpose. They are the Swords of the Seven Veils. Priceless. Given place of honor at Alexander’s deathbed. The real message is on the swords themselves — the inscriptions, but I can tell you now — it will center on the many earth energy vortexes scattered around the world.”

Hayden stopped at his shoulder. “C’mon, Drake. It’s hardly more surprising than when we first found out the gods were once real.”

“Still.” Drake stared up at the skies. “I sometimes get the feeling I’m just a main character in a story, y’know? Prancing around and not really getting anywhere.”

“Shit.” Alicia heard and laughed. “No one would be daft enough to make you the main character, Drakey. They’d choose me to help give the story a big pair of bollocks.”

Drake shook his head, trying to purge his mind of the idea, and turned away. He desperately needed some downtime and maybe a touch of Mai-time. He saw her now, staring off into space yet again as if expecting someone to materialize out of the dust and the shimmering heat-haze that stretched across the horizon. It looked like she was chatting on her cell.

Hayden broke out the team’s satphone and put in a call to Gates, through Karin, on the speakerphone. The Secretary sounded surprisingly upbeat at first.

“I’m sure you have nothing but good news for me, Hayden.”

“Well.” Hayden paused. “We have six of the seven swords, sir, so at least that’s something. We’re working on the inscriptions now. No luck yet.”

“I thought you had that language expert. Akerman, isn’t it?”

“He says the inscriptions don’t quite match the ones in the tombs.”

Gates sighed. “Of course they don’t. We really do have nothing here. You should also work on a plan for a last case scenario.”

Hayden flicked a glance across to Drake. “We should?”

“Yes, if you can find out what needs to be done if it comes to fight or flight. Hayden.” He went quiet for a long moment. “I’m counting on you.”

“Thank you, sir.” Drake studied her, wondering why she didn’t question the odd moment, but then she’d been dealing with Gates a lot longer than he. “Has Cayman resurfaced yet? Or his boss?”

“No. It feels a little like the calm before the storm here in Washington. All the main players out there are still jockeying into position. We don’t know their agenda. They won’t reveal their intentions until they’re good and ready.”

“Still,” Hayden brooded. “It infuriates us all, knowing they’re up to something so terrible and we’re powerless to stop them.”

“That’s what makes you the best team for the job,” Gates said. Drake tuned out as the Secretary continued and crossed over to Dahl and Kinimaka, who were crouched over a twitching body.

“Get what we need?”

Dahl turned around, his eyes wide. “I’m not entirely sure. If we’re to believe two out of two men, questioned separately, then the seventh sword has been sent to Zoya.” The Swede hesitated.

“Where the hell is Zoya?”

“Not a ‘where’, a ‘who’. Zoya is Zanko’s grandmother.”

Drake’s face fell. “Fuck off, Dahl. This isn’t the time—”

“I’m not joking.”

Kinimaka turned equally shocked eyes his way. “He’s not joking.”

Drake chortled, drawing attention from the others. “Zanko’s grandmother. And you believe them?”

Dahl’s gaze was speculative. “I get the feeling that although this is Razin’s operation, Zoya can start calling the shots at any time. Grandmother or not, it seems Razin has a very powerful sleeping partner.”

“Fine. Fine. I guess someone related to Zanko might not be quite what you expect. And in any case, we need that sword. You get an address?”

“Of course.”

Drake saw Alicia approaching. The expression on her face made him bite his tongue in order to stop the insult that was about to fly out. “Don’t say it.”

Alicia tried to grin but didn’t make it. “I only came back to help get you outta jail, Drake. Lomas needs me.”

“We need you. The world needs you.”

Now Alicia did laugh. “Don’t be a dickhead. You’ll be fine.” Her gaze turned to Mai. “Both of you.”

Drake took her in his arms, surprised at how soft her body felt in his embrace. You fought alongside someone so long, you watched them kill, bleed and struggle, you occasionally tended to forget they were just a girl.

Maybe that was part of why she was leaving.

“I hate saying goodbye to you,” he whispered into her ear. “Twice in two weeks is two times too many.”

Alicia grunted. “Bet you can’t say that again when you’re drunk.”

“I don’t get drunk anymore.”

She pulled away. Drake held on. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. We’re family now, Alicia. You, Mai, me. Those idiots over there.” He pointed out Dahl, Hayden and Kinimaka. “You ever need us. Just say the word.”

Alicia’s lips moved against his throat. “My family ripped apart when I was eight. My dad started beating up my mum, and me when I stood up for her. I was too weak to do anything about it, so when I got older the first thing I did was join the Amy. I got out of there. My dad forged my fire, but the Army molded it into an art. All these years, Matt, I’ve just been fighting my dad.”

Drake swallowed hard. He couldn’t believe that here, in Iraq, atop the ancient Tower of Babel, Alicia Myles was finally opening up to someone. “Is your dad still alive?”

“He died of alcohol poisoning four months after my mum died of an overdose. Believe me, he was the lucky one.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you for my new family, Matt. I will try to visit.”

“Make sure you do.” Drake cleared his throat, averting his eyes until he felt he had some control. Alicia would join the crew on the chopper and head back to Camp Babylon, and from there back to Lomas and his biker crew. The rest of the SPEAR team would depart soon in the two vehicles that remained intact.

He sat down hard in the dust. Goddamn, he needed a rest.

The first thing Mai did in the aftermath of the battle was to check her phone. Sure enough, a message had been left. It was from Dai Hibiki, and the contents could not be good. She cast around first to make sure she was alone, walked closer to the edge of the mound, then ignored the message and hit the call-back button.

Hibiki picked up so fast he might have been sat on the receiver. “Mai? Where are you? Are you alright?”

“What is it?”

Her friend’s voice quavered half a world away. “The name of the man searching for you. It’s… it’s—”

“Gyuki?”

Hibiki’s silence affirmed her worst fear.

The man known only as Gyuki was her old clan’s personal wetwork expert, a fact that alone substantiated his skills. Every member of her old clan were all experienced ninja assassins on a par with Mai’s own skillset — but Gyuki was the man they turned to when the shit really hit the fan.

Hence, Hibiki’s trepidation. “No fiercer opponent exists in this world.”

“And what does he want?”

“According to my source,” Hibiki swallowed drily. “Blood vengeance.”