The Swords of Babylon

CHAPTER FIFTY

Drake and Mai took Yorgi and Patterson with them on the short hop to Moscow. This time, Karin paved the way through Jonathan Gates to guarantee that local reinforcements were committed to the op. Karin revealed that President Coburn had actually spoken with the Russian Prime Minister to help get things moving. A group of Russian Spetsnaz troops were on hand as Drake stepped from the warm interior of the plane out into a brisk Russian chill. Their commander had already been briefed of the operation’s importance, and gave his full cooperation in perfect English, before standing aside and waiting expectantly with his men.

“This address,” Drake held out a piece of paper. “Is where Zoya lives. It’s just outside Moscow. Do we have transport?”

An hour later, they came to a stop along a country road, about a mile before the concealed gateway that led to Zoya’s house. Aerial photographs received by the Russian commander’s tablet computer showed a heavily forested area, inside which lay a rudimentary house, haphazard in shape as if it had had several impromptu extensions added through the years. The team was expecting heavy resistance.

As the driver brought their vehicle to a stop, the commander wordlessly handed over his tablet to Drake. On the screen was a recent picture of Zoya, Zanko’s grandmother.

Even Mai did a double-take. Drake whistled. “Fuck, she’s even bigger than Zanko.”

“This is not a good woman,” the commander, named Svechnykov, told them. “She has come under suspicion of the politsiya many times, and is also on Interpol’s ‘persons of interest’ list. But nothing sticks to her.”

“I know the type,” Mai said, with a little shudder. “All too well.”

Drake had been thinking hard about the assault. They had enough troops for a three-pronged attack. With no time to waste, they started deploying men. A stiff breeze whipped up and rustled the trees, tall sentinels observing and whispering their age-old secrets.

“The sword,” Drake said as the men divided. “Is imperative. Everything else is secondary. Even Zoya.”

By his side, Mai checked her gear as religiously as ever, but Drake noticed the faraway look on her face. The sooner they got this Babylon business out of the way the better, then Mai and he could concentrate on her problems. Assuming, he thought morosely. They all survived this time.

They stepped lightly, skirting the road and trees, coming upon Zoya’s gate within minutes. Drake motioned toward the ‘plastics’ man. This was a full-scale assault. He smiled. There would be no pissing about with lock picks.

Ten seconds passed and a controlled explosion signified the start of the raid. Drake hugged the inside wall for a few meters before following the tree line just off the main driveway, heading for the front of the house. Zoya’s hideaway sat deep inside the property, shielded from all but the most insistent of prying eyes. For about one minute there was almost total silence, just the swishing and creasing of men’s fatigues and packs, the barest sound of boots skimming the undergrowth.

Then all hell descended upon them. A barrage of bullets whickered through the trees a millisecond before the clattering tumult of gunfire rang out. Drake hit the dirt as a confetti of shredded leaves and branches fluttered around them. Mai rolled behind a wide, gnarly trunk. It soon became obvious that the shots were coming from above. The defenders were in the trees.

The Spetsnaz returned fire. Immediately, several bodies crashed through the green canopy, bouncing off the floor with the sound of shattering bones. A Russian soldier took a bullet to the shoulder and twisted around, cursing in pain. Drake sprayed the treetops, eliciting another scream. He saw bodies moving among the trees, so the defenders were also mobile. The tree growth was so dense it was enabling the men to jump easily from branch to branch.

“Fucking monkeys,” the Spetsnaz commander murmured, and loosed a deadly salvo, his bullets creating a new hole through the foliage to the blue skies. “Least we can’t hit one of our own.”

With that, the soldiers rose and fired several volleys. Drake and Mai scrambled hastily past the skirmish, staying low. Two soldiers followed. Mai was about to break from behind another tree when the ground before her feet started to crack, crumbling vertically down. Her body swayed. Drake dived and grabbed her around the waist, wrenching her back. They landed hard, bruised and scraped, but alive.

One of the soldiers whistled, speaking in Russian. Drake pushed away from Mai and crawled over. The Japanese woman had almost tumbled into a crude trap, a handmade pit with a forest of sharpened stakes at its bottom. Instantly, Drake transmitted a warning to Svechnykov. The word went out — proceed cautiously.

As they advanced, a six-foot-high palisade of sharpened timbers appeared through the trees ahead, the barrier effectively turning Zoya’s home into a fort. Before Drake could take stock, a thud signified the landing of an enemy right behind him. He whirled to see Mai step up and whip a knife across the man’s throat, then force him down to bleed out in the undergrowth.

The heavy sound of gunfire reverberated behind and all around them. Drake nodded as the two Russian soldiers pulled out grenades and motioned toward the fence. “Do it.”

Making himself small, he felt Mai burrow in beside him. A loud explosion tore apart the air. Bits of tree and bark, fencing and soil thudded down all around. When Drake glanced up, he saw a ragged hole had been blasted through the palisade and, further on, he could see the front of the structure that Zoya called home. The windows were shuttered, the door barred. Nothing showed itself near the house.

The soldiers crept forward. More projectiles thudded into the trunks of trees and mounds of dirt around them, and Drake saw that the tree-defenders had moved closer. He cleared them out again, spraying indiscriminately until several began to tumble. Then he rose and moved fast.

“Go!”

As they neared the shattered palisade, a mid-size guard tower became visible, positioned off to their right. Drake swore. He had seen official military compounds worse defended. They saw movement — one man taking and returning fire to his left. The other team had advanced that far then. Using the distraction, Drake inched along, climbing carefully over the jagged bits of fencing and advancing further into Zoya’s nightmare compound.

Drake tuned in all six senses and called on every ounce of his training to monitor all directions. Mai moved soundlessly a step behind, now fully engaged. He trusted her judgment to the max, even when she was at half speed. She uttered no words of warning—

— and Drake’s heart almost stopped when the buried mine detonated a few feet before him. The explosion hurled an unlucky soldier high into the air, limbs suddenly as limp as a ragdoll’s, discharging an energy wave riddled with fragments to every side. Drake was partially sheltered by a tree, but even the second soldier who stood out in the open only suffered partial wounds. Zoya’s landmine was of old Russian manufacture, and built primarily to take out the poor man who triggered it rather than those around him.

Drake cursed and quickly surveyed the land to the left and right. A barely distinct channel ran in both directions, following the line of the palisade.

“Got it.” Mai stepped to the right. Drake nodded, rose and let loose his weapon, aiming along the left-hand curve, detonating a string of land mines. Multiple explosions made the ground tremble. Plumes and mushroom clouds of dirt and foliage blasted higher than the trees. The Russian commander appeared through the dense foliage, running hard, his men only yards behind.

“Crazy bitch!” He spat, wiping his brow. “Who would have thought…”

Drake stepped away and kept moving. It was the only way to stay alive. Stay sharp. “You’ve clearly never met her grandson.”

They moved as fast as they dared. Drake saw the second team lob a grenade at the guard tower in the aftermath of the landmine explosion, toppling it, and running through the debris, closing in on the house. He saw one man caught in a snare loop, the rope snapping around his ankle and lifting him upside down into the air, swaying helplessly until someone either found a way to release him or a sniper took him out. In another second, a horrible clash and scream from his left made him pause.

“Mantrap,” the Spetsnaz commander breathed. “We saw two more back there.” He barked an order for one of his men to attend the victim, then turned back to Drake. “We have entered a house of horrors, no?”

“Yes.”

They rushed to the edge of the foliage that ended six feet from Zoya’s front door. Drake’s forehead creased. Was Zoya even here? He pointed out the shutters and door, indicating a multiple strike. The second team was about to hit the side of the house. Hopefully the third team was striking at the rear, but Drake didn’t have time to check as the Spetsnaz soldiers assailed their target.

Then the front door opened with a crash, literally flying back and smashing against its hinges, before tearing half away and hanging lop-sided. From out of the doorway emerged a king-size nightmare — Zoya, the grandmother of Zanko, almost seven feet tall and wider than the door itself, cut-off vest showing arms that were thicker than some men’s legs, a machine gun held easily in each paw-like hand.

“You fuckers!” she screamed. “Mother—”

The rest of her rant was lost as two Spetsnaz soldiers closed in on her. Drake cursed silently. They should have just shot and wounded this malicious brute, but chose instead to take her alive. It was their mistake. Drake never would have believed it if he hadn’t seen it, but Zanko’s crazy grandmother simply batted both special forces soldiers aside with her enormous arms. It must have been like being hit by a tree-trunk. Both men flew back, landing hard, rolling and then lay without moving. The woman boomed out a laugh reminiscent of some jungle animal’s distress call and swiveled both machine guns around.

“Oh shit!”

Men scattered like leaves in a storm. The heavy thudding berserker sound of high-caliber machine gun fire sent Drake’s heart into his mouth. Zoya’s cackling screech was even louder. “This is me!” she bellowed. “This is what I was made for!”

Even the trees shuddered under fire. One younger specimen groaned and collapsed, blasted apart, toppling in the direction of the house and smashing against the roof. Drake saw two men risk a glance out of their hiding places, only to be torn to bits. He sat with his back against the thick base of an old oak, reloading as splinters chipped off the tree and flew past him. Mai knelt between his legs, facing him.

“Didn’t see this one coming,” she said.

“Yeah, but we should have.”

Drake fired blindly around one side of the oak, Mai the other. Drake could see the Russian Spetsnaz commander pinned down behind a log, its entire length being chewed away by bullets. Drake sneaked a look around the tree and could barely believe his eyes. Zoya stood like a grotesque statue, unmoved, bleeding from at least three places, rock-solid and radical, the very expression of fanaticism taken to the extreme.

He looked back at Mai, barely believing his next words. “Grenade.”

To her credit she only blinked twice. Then she unhooked a Russian-made grenade, pulled a suspicious face at it, and lobbed it around the big tree.

“Let’s hope it works.”

Drake followed its flight, feeling hopeful, but Zoya spotted it immediately and roared as if the very noise would create a barrier. She let her guns drop to her side and lumbered toward the grenade as it flew at her.

Then she drew back her foot…

Drake gaped. “Fuck’s sake! She’s going to volley—”

… and kicked out. Zoya’s giant foot flew at the spinning grenade so powerfully her boot soared off, arcing up among the trees.

But she missed the grenade.

Drake ducked back in. Zoya’s elephantine bellow drowned out even the grenade’s initial blast, but ended abruptly as fragments shredded her body. A mammoth crash and sudden silence led to a dozen men popping their heads up.

Drake primed his gun. “Russian football.” He shook his head. “Never was up to much.”