The Tomb of the Gods

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Mai was in full flow and no one dared interrupt her. “This group.” She spat the word. “Targeted Wells so they could get an informer into the British army. They convinced him they were the ruling body of the world, that they controlled the British government. Not only that — it was Cayman who recruited him and convinced him that all governments did the Shadow Elite’s bidding. I think Wells took patriotism just a bit too far.”

“Weak men always have big secrets,” Alicia said with a knowing smile. “Cayman will have had dirt on Wells, be sure of that.”

Drake tried to stick to the facts they knew. “So Cayman is DIA, yes? Working undercover for the Shadow Elite. If that’s the case, then we have to assume the CIA and the White House have similar moles, as well as every other agency in the world.”

“Which is why Gates can’t take the risk and the time to vet everyone above and around him,” Mai said. “Which then leaves us out here, exposed and alone.”

“But it also puts us right in the middle of the game,” Drake said with a little smile, filling a little plate with chorizo sausage, patatas bravas, olive oil and bread. “We know where Cayman is. We know what the Shadow Elite want. Now all we have to do is find them.”

“Vienna,” Belmonte pointed out. “You were rather close to these bastards before. Do you recall anything pertaining to operation Doubledown?”

Drake took a few moments to think. Time tended to turn hazy around Alyson’s death. He shook his head. “Sam might remember something. I can’t.”

“We could travel there,” Mai suggested. “Call your pals and get them to meet us. We’re still well within the window they gave you.”

“It’s a plan. But it’s a bloody stretch, Mai. Especially with Hayden and the guys straining their bollocks off to acquire those eight pieces.”

Drake checked his mobile, despite knowing that every method of contact was cranked to the highest level. “Thought we’d have heard something by now.”

“Risky mission,” Belmonte said, a faraway look in his eye. “People die.”

“People die crossing the road or in car accidents,” Drake said savagely. “I wonder who this Coyote is.”

“That’s another mission,” Alicia said. “For another day.”

“Whatever happens,” Mai said, “the Shadow Elite cannot be allowed to continue. I work for one of the best intelligence teams in the world, and I’ve never heard of them. Yet they’re the puppet masters. If they held our best interests…” She shrugged. “Maybe watch them from afar. But men who covet such weapons of mass destruction should never be allowed to rule.”

“Fuckin’ right,” Alicia said. “At least me and the sprite agree on one thing.”

“The sprite and I.” Drake instantly corrected her.

“Don’t encourage the bitch,” Mai said pointedly. “She’s hard enough to tolerate. At the moment I only want to kill her once a day”

Belmonte looked between the three. “So I’m sensing some friendly history here?”

“Fuck off, Belmonte.” Alicia picked at the food. “A thief like you wouldn’t know the first thing about friendship, only liaisons.”

Belmonte banged the table with his glass. “Don’t presume to know me.”

Alicia turned her gaze on him. “But I do know you, Daniel, as you often point out. I know you so well.”

“I care for people. Cared.” The thief sighed and shook his head. “I think the only bad thing that’s ever happened in my life is going to be the worst thing that ever happens in my life. I don’t even know why I’m with you people any more. What good will revenge do me?”

Drake tried not to stare at the bar. “I’ll let you know. Soon.”

“I’m not like you, Drake. I’m a man of stealth and finesse, not of action and brawn. I’m no hero. Never will be.”

“A hero should be defined by their actions in a given moment.” Mai sounded as if she was reciting an old Japanese proverb. “Not by what they do normally, or don’t do.”

It was at that moment when Drake’s mobile started to ring. He reached out quickly and grabbed it, looking surprised.

“Karin?”

The young woman’s whisper conveyed tension, fear and urgency. “We’re captured. They’ve got us. All of us. I…” A pause. “I’m going to try to leave my phone on…”

Then silence. Drake looked up. “We need to move now. Hayden’s team has been captured. Let’s go.”

Without looking back, they raced into the unknown to help their friends.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Hayden battled to focus her thoughts, as her exhausted body protested in every way. The concussion of the blast had knocked her momentarily unconscious, but it had done worse to her equilibrium. It had made her sick, made her have to grope through a sludgy mist to remember where she was. It had done the same to Dahl and Komodo, leaving Kinimaka, Ben and Karin slightly better off, but still with stability issues.

Now she lay bouncing around the hard metal floor of a van. The movement of the vehicle, being driven fast around bends and over bumps in the road, did nothing to hasten her slowly returning sense of balance. Her eyes were a few inches off the floor.

Her arms were tied behind her back, her ankles too. Dahl and Komodo rolled listlessly beside her as the journey went on. She was vaguely aware of Karin wrestling a hand free, then a brief conversation before the blond girl locked her phone and thrust it deep into a pocket.

Some time later, as she drifted, the van slowed and began a stop-start motion. She heard curses from up front. They were stuck in traffic, maybe traveling through a city or around one. Her head was starting to regain some of its sharpness. She still had no idea how long it had been since the train crash that followed the shocking explosion. She could never have guessed that the Shadow Elite would plant explosives in one of its own train carriages, but it was a lesson she had now learned and would always remember. She hoped to God no civilians had been hurt.

Ben’s voice drifted through the thinning fog. “Hayden. Hayden, are you alright?” A dull monotone she’d been aware of for some time, but unable to process.

Her nose cracked against the rust-spotted metal floor, bringing tears to her eyes yet again. “Not…not really.” She managed to mumble.

She felt huge relief when the voice of Torsten Dahl spoke up. “Do we know where we are or where we’re going?”

Negative replies came back. Karin spoke softly. “I managed to call Drake and leave my phone on so he can track us. The battery should last a while. But the back window’s blacked out. They’d know if I scratched at it.”

“Untie us.” Hayden knew the fuzziness in her head explained why Karin hadn’t already tried.

“With what? We’re secured with plastic strip ties and the van’s empty. And—” she murmured, “they’ve been checking on us.”

The van lurched around a bend. Hayden rolled, crashing into Kinimaka. She was vaguely aware of the Hawaiian piling into Komodo and pinning the poor Delta man against the side of the van. Not a great position to be caught in.

“Sorry, bud.” Kinimaka said.

A panel in the front bulkhead suddenly slid back and a man appeared. He was bald, clean-shaven and mean-looking. A scar extended across his forehead. “I hear wagging tongues,” he said. “And I don’t want to. The Norseman wants to see you, but he didn’t say anything about your tongues. Keep it quiet. We’re almost there.”

The head vanished along with the East-European accent. Hayden felt a shockwave travel the length of her body. She turned to lock eyes with Dahl.

“The Norseman?” She breathed.

“End of the line,” Dahl said. “The leader of the Shadow Elite wants to punish us for ruining his plans. No prizes for guessing what happens after that.”

“Sure thing, but it’s what happens during it that bothers me more.” Hayden struggled to rip her hands free of the bonds, but got nowhere. She thought about the civilians, Ben, Karin and Gates behind her. She thought about what these terrible men might do to them.

Please, Drake, she thought. Come for us.

At that moment, Matthew Holgate, the sixth and youngest member of the Shadow Elite, was being served a light lunch at an upscale restaurant inside Vienna’s Museum of Natural History. The menu was short and never varied, but that didn’t matter. They knew what he wanted. He spent a brief few minutes chatting with the amiable waitress and then turned to his waiting coffee.

Staring into its black depths, he saw a reflection of himself floating there, confined. A symbolic image. Not long ago, Holgate had been one of the world’s richest playboys, a man with a house, five cars and a dozen women in every major city around the globe, a setter of trends and even a philanthropist. Behind all that lurked the Shadow Elite, a group he had figuratively belonged to since the day he was born, his father’s son. Actively, he had belonged for decades, loving its limitless power, basking in its unaccountability, relishing the times when its leader — the melancholy Norseman — allowed them to play games with random people’s lives. Even in a jaded rich man’s world, there was nothing quite like picking a person or a family and subjecting them to endless indiscriminate torment.

It helped reinforce the group’s belief in their own power, the Norseman said. The end always justified the means. So if there was just another peasant family on the scrapheap who would notice?

But recently, a chance event of its own had transformed Holgate’s life. The world at large knew it as the recession. But Holgate knew what it really was — the big decision-makers had decided that the world was advancing too fast and needed to slow down, that progress was moving too quickly, that common men were simply becoming too affluent, their lives too painless. A decision had been made at the top, a level below the Shadow Elite, who had discussed its meager worth to the group but decided to allow the period of austerity to happen. It wouldn’t affect them. It would actually help to reinforce their positions and extend the scope of their powers and their games.

But then, in his blind arrogance, Holgate had been caught in one of the big bank crashes. After that he’d lost much more in property value slumps. He’d invested heavily in hedge funds and start-up businesses that simply vanished.

All so quick. All that virtual wealth wiped away. When he realized the extent of his actual paper wealth, he almost threw himself off the top of his exterior Italian-carpeted marble staircase and onto the roof of his gleaming black Maserati MC12 supercar. But deliberation saved him. He’d thought about his fellow Elite members and believed they’d help him. It was only later, when broaching a few carefully crafted questions, he realized they would certainly crucify him, their lifelong colleague, if they ever found out.

And then the whole Odin thing happened. The Shadow Elite had convened more times in the last two months than in the previous two years. Holgate sat and listened, and gave his input without really getting too involved, constantly aware that his five brothers might, at any time, find out about his bankruptcies.

But, like the predator that lies in wait ready to strike, the answer had come to Holgate in the form of the eight pieces of Odin. So crucial. The heart of everything.

Holgate smiled as the waitress placed his warm food on the table. Then he picked up an untraceable mobile phone he’d recently been given by one of the most dangerous men in the world.

When the call was answered with a curt, “Ya?” Matthew Holgate took the first steps down the diabolical road that was his master plan.

“I can get them. It’s all in readiness. Now, how many of the world’s richest, craziest terrorists can you actually gather together in one place?”

He paused for a beat.

“That many? Good. Now sit back and listen.”

Hayden braced herself as the van skidded to a sudden stop. Laughter, deep and coarse, came from the front and then two doors banged. Shouts echoed outside the van. Then the back door was pulled open and a man started laughing.

“Trussed up like turkeys. And here it is, not yet even Christmas.”

She heard yells and guessed her colleagues were being pulled out of the van by their feet and allowed to crash to the ground. Again, she wrenched at her bonds and helplessness washed over her as she felt her own ankles grabbed and her body slid roughly over the van floor. There was a moment of weightlessness and then the hard earth rushed up to meet her, face-first. More laughter rang out. The laughter of many men.

Quickly, she rolled over. The harsh sunshine beat down at her face, making her eyes water. After a moment a shadow blocked out the light. “Up.”

Strong arms looped underneath her armpits and dragged her to her feet. She stood there for a moment, swaying, unused to the new position and trying to let the queasiness subside. Dahl stood next to her, casting around furtively, Kinimaka and Komodo beside him. Beyond them she picked out Gates, Ben and Karin before dropping her eyes again, feigning shakiness.

A boot kicked her in the spine, making her stagger and cry out in surprise. Dahl turned in anger, but found himself facing the business end of a shiny Heckler and Koch. Hayden pushed past him, nudging him as she went. Time for that later.

They had been brought through a gate into an inner courtyard. The Norseman’s mansion surrounded them on all four sides, built of old brick and stone, studded with bespoke windows and doors. The gate itself was a sturdy structure flanked on either side by massive stone pillars and a guardhouse. The surface beneath their feet was bits of tiny white gravel; the sky above their heads was cloudless and bright blue. Men stood around in easy poses, every one toting some kind of automatic weapon.

No way out, she thought, then berated herself. There was always a plan. And a plan B. The only obstacle was her fear.

A boot again connected with her spine. This time she stood her ground, turned, and stared hard at the wizened mercenary doing the kicking. “Untie me,” she said evenly, “then try it again.”

All the while hoping he didn’t know about her knife wound…

…but the older hard-case just grinned, showing a mouth full of black teeth and gaps and a tongue missing an inch-square chunk. He motioned her onward, bringing his rifle to bear.

Hayden used the interlude to analyze their surroundings some more. The Norseman’s mansion not only surrounded them on four sides, but rose three stories high. Wherever this place was, no doubt it resided among similar dwellings in an affluent area. From her vantage point, Hayden could ascertain no clues to their location.

She turned back again, walking toward a long brick wall. Her comrades had already been lined up against it, facing the courtyard. She too took her position at the end of the line.

Twelve men stepped forward and raised their weapons.

No! Her mind screamed. It was too soon. They hadn’t even met the Norseman yet. Why bring them all this way just to shoot them on arrival?

The sound of a dozen rifles being cocked rang out across the sunlit courtyard. Hayden stared instant death in the eye with one last incredulous thought.

I didn’t even get time to talk to Ben.

Drake thought fast on his feet, faster than at any other time in his life. The immediate goal was to find a GPS tracker, something they could sync with Karin’s recurrent signal and home in on. With Belmonte’s expertise, it was a simple job, but required them to return to the “hot zone” around the airport’s warehouse district they had just vacated. Drake didn’t think twice. He led the way, purchasing the tracking device and returning to the airport in less than half an hour, just in time to catch the next plane to Prague, a journey that would take them less than seventy minutes.

Drake didn’t waste a single one. “I have two plans,” he told them. “A and B…”

Hayden didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she stared down the unwavering gun barrel, defiant to the last. Her thoughts became internally focused, her perceptions dulled. Time stretched before her like a piece of elastic, taut with expectation.

A balloon drifted through the skies above the courtyard, blood-red, with its long string dangling and twisted as if pulled directly from a child’s hand.

The movement caught everyone’s attention. When Hayden flicked her eyes back again, she was startled to see that a man had threaded his way through the gun barrels.

The Norseman. He stood before his soldiers, long blond hair rustled by the breeze, craggy face drawn in what some might have thought was sympathy, but Hayden knew amounted to nothing more than circumspect disinterest. It was the attention a young psychotic might give to a fly caught in the web of an approaching spider.

“Odin,” he said. “He was the Father of the Gods. As I am the father of our council. We are alike, Odin and I.”

Hayden shifted uncomfortably. Beside her Dahl managed a guffaw.

The Norseman’s face tilted. “My wealth goes back to the days of the Vikings. My wealth’s origins are the oldest known. I am descended of Beowulf, though the doubters would have you believe he never existed. The great poem — written in 800 CE, but only rediscovered in the seventeenth century tells of a real king and a real land. But Beowulf, they say, did not exist. Well here—” He tapped at the soil with his foot, the foundations of his home. “I have proof that he existed.”

“And that he fought a monster?” Dahl said with sarcasm.

“We all fight our monsters. I only said Beowulf was real, not Grendel.”

“You are the Norseman,” Hayden said, still shocked despite herself.

“The man behind it all.” His face gave no expression. “The shadow that rises above the Shadow Elite. Yes.”

“And you would use the doomsday weapon?” Hayden asked.

“Use?” The Norseman sucked at the word as if it was a mint toffee. “Use? Such an ambiguous word. Yes, I would use it, my dear, but in what way do you mean?”

“To destroy the fucking world.”

The Norseman’s eyes barely blinked. “Don’t be so fucking stupid. Why would I do that? Why would I destroy that which I own?”

Dahl laughed. “Because you’re crazier than batshit, mate.”

Hayden winced. She heard Ben’s sharp intake of breath and even Komodo swallowed hard.

The Norseman didn’t waver. “The doomsday device will be used as our security net. Once in place, it will never need to be called upon.” Then his eyes went far away. “But imagine. Imagine if one day it was let loose. Fire and water, storms and lightning and thunder, earthquakes and mega tornadoes engulfing the world. What beauty. What an end!”

Hayden knew he wasn’t kidding around. This man didn’t have it in him to joke.

“Odin faced Ragnarok,” the Norseman told them. “With his sons by his side, he marched into battle. He faced monsters. Real monsters—”

“No.” Dahl interrupted the most powerful man on the planet. “He didn’t.”

The Norseman fixed a hooded gaze onto the Swede.

“I saw Odin’s bones,” Dahl said. “I touched them. I saw where he lay down and died. He certainly didn’t die fighting on any battlefield. Ragnarok,” he said softly, “is the real myth.”

“He’s right,” Gates spoke up for the first time. “Ragnarok is now, not back then. Odin averted it once by making the gods die. But the finding of his shield started a chain reaction that had to end with the discovery of the third tomb and the doomsday weapon. It’s now our choice. We decide. It is mankind’s decision to save or destroy itself. The words are written in the Icelandic tomb.”

“You refer to the day of reckoning.” The Norseman studied the US Secretary of Defense impassively. “But it is all moot. Do you remember the Cold War? The days when the Russians and Americans pointed a thousand nukes at each other and waited for fate to take its course? A bad time, even for us. We can’t possibly control every single itchy finger and one slip, one moment of rage, could’ve plunged the world into nuclear war. But now…we will be the only superpower, and we will hold all the weapons.”

“What if we call your bluff?” Gates ventured.

“We are the Shadow Elite,” the Norseman said simply. “If one voice rises against us, it shall be quieted. If many voices rise against us… then we’ll wipe the fuckers off the map.”

The Norseman stepped back then and took a long look at them. Hayden held her head high. The Norseman turned away and passed through the line of rifleman.

As one the weapons steadied, aimed, and held still.

A voice said, “Fire!”

The sound of gunshots, screams and bullets impacting against brickwork ruined the peace of an idyllic winter’s day.

No sooner had the plane landed than Drake and his friends were fighting past other passengers and racing to get through customs. If anyone thought them rude, they certainly didn’t speak up. But then their hard faces would have put off all but the hardiest or oldest of complainers.

Outside the airport, into the bracing cold, the four could relax a little. Drake waved at a taxi and pulled out the tracking device that Belmonte had expertly cobbled together.

“Still strong,” he said.

Mai, next to him, studied a map of Prague. “Dejvice.” She reeled off a suburb of the old city and the taxi took off at pace. As they rode, they reviewed the plan. It was rough, it was risky, but it was the best improvisation they could come up with under this kind of time limit and pressure. Drake was certain their friends would be killed today. It was just a matter of when.

“And the eight pieces of Odin?” Mai said.

“Are secondary,” Drake said again. “Our friends come first.”

“We should at least try—”

“Mai,” Drake said forcefully, “I’m sorry. But you lost your say when you acted alone. You risked it all to save Chika. Now it’s my turn.”

Alicia turned bright eyes on the Japanese woman. “Hey. Look at it this way — a bitch who fucked up like you did — normally they’d just put you down. This way, you get a second chance.”

“Put me down?” Mai echoed. “And who’s going to do that? You?”

“I’ll put you both down if you don’t quit.” In reality, Drake knew they were only mentally preparing themselves for the fight and the violence to come. He threw a glance at Belmonte.

“You’d probably be better off staying in the car. The other car, if you know what I mean.”

The thief nodded. Drake’s plan was verging on suicide, but it was all they had. At that moment, Drake’s mobile rang, an old Dinorock tune, something about smoke on the water.

Drake listened for a moment, and then his face fell. “Oh no,” he said. Then, “And there’s no chance that—?”

The Englishman listened some more. The news did not look good. At the end he nodded and turned the mobile off. “That was Sam. His team can’t meet us here in time. Balls.”

“Doesn’t change the plan one bit,” Alicia said with some relish.

Drake nodded. “They’re heading straight for Vienna. They will meet us all there later. Assuming…”

“We survive,” Belmonte finished with a shake of his head. “Oh dear.”

“Whatever happens, mate”—Drake turned to him—“You have to meet them there and tell them everything. If we die, the pieces of Odin will be in the wind.”

Drake closed his eyes. “I just wish we knew if they were all alright.”

Hayden’s hands, still held together with plastic ties behind her back, were roped loosely together and passed through a metal ring that had been built into the uneven brick wall at her back. The rope was tied. Her team, all shaken but alive, were lined up beside her.

So it was to be psychological torture to start with, at least. The firing squad had been accurate enough. Their bullets had smashed into the wall above their heads, showering masonry and hot jacket fragments over them. The Norseman’s face hadn’t even twitched. Then they had been dragged roughly inside the mansion and pushed into an unfurnished ground-floor room. Concrete floor. Brick walls. A large drain in the middle of the floor.

A killing room, easy to clean afterward.

Now, men with grins on their faces dragged big industrial hoses into the room. Normally used for sluicing, they were now aimed at the captives. Hayden braced herself for the impact. Then more men crowded in behind them, some holding machine guns, others equipped with an odd-shaped weapon. Large barreled and stubby, it somehow looked more menacing than the Heckler and Kochs.

“Rubber ball gun,” Dahl said without emotion. “Hits harder than most men. Probably best to duck.”

Hayden eyed the Swede tied beside her. “Options?”

Before he could answer, the Norseman’s soldiers got started on their version of fun. The hose was switched on, slithering straight as the water surged through. Two men held the nozzle, unable to contain their mirth as a deluge of water jetted out and struck the helpless captives full-on. Hayden was blasted in the face and her head smashed back into the wall, making her see stars. The force of the water stopped her breathing. She felt like she was drowning, standing up.

Gasping for breath, she swallowed water, whipping her head from side to side and trying to turn away. But the stream of water was inescapable and terribly powerful. The last breath of air was forced out of her lungs. She had faced water-boarding before, but it had nothing on this. At the edge on consciousness, she heard the boom as the rubber-ball guns began firing.

The unmistakable sound of Ben’s voice, screaming, reached her ears.

She swallowed more water, coughing, unable to get rid of it all in the face of the unyielding current. Then, when she had just passed the moment of surrender, the stream passed on to the next person — Kinimaka.

Hayden hung her head, almost spent. Her knife wound was throbbing again, the pain cutting through the cloud of helplessness that surrounded her. She gave thanks that one of the rubber balls hadn’t struck her yet, for if one was to impact with the wound…even CIA discipline and all the training in the world might not stop her from begging for mercy.

So she hung from her bonds, showing defeat, feigning vulnerability whilst fighting hard to get her breath back and willing strength to return to her body. Again, she tested the plastic ties, hopeful the water might have loosened them. But if anything, it appeared to have tightened them, making the edges cut into her already-bruised skin.

Despair invaded and sought to occupy her heart. Her head fought against it, seeking an escape route, but deep down the terrible truth could no longer be denied.

There was no way out of this one.

She allowed her head to swing sideways and saw the water cannon had just reached Karin. Would the deluge damage and destroy her mobile phone? If it did, they were in for a long, painful and hard-fought death.

Drake studied the mansion where his friends were being held until he had pinpointed Karin’s exact position. The place blended right in with every other property around here. They were built right on the street, as if coveting every ounce of space they were allowed with minimal gardens, but imposing outer walls, high and almost unscaleable. Narrow, curtained windows looked out at street level, with the larger double-panes on the second and third floors. Drake couldn’t even see a door. Maybe there was one around another side, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t about to knock. He knew his plan was risky and fraught with assumptions, but the situation required an immediate and extreme response.

“There.” He pointed out the exterior wall to Mai and Alicia, then left them to it. With Belmonte alongside, he prowled the nearby streets for two of the likeliest vehicles. Within five minutes, he had spotted a grey Land Rover and a powerful Toyota saloon. He pointed them out to Belmonte.

“Ready?”

“No, but I’m game.”

Hayden raised her head at last. A rubber ball caromed off the wall next to her right eye, the man who fired it laughing like a maniac and quickly reloading so he could try again. To left and right her companions tried to make themselves less of a target by scrunching their bodies up, but they were all drenched, and most of them had been hit in the most painful parts of their bodies.

“We’re here all fuckin’ day!” One of the mercs laughed and then brayed laughter like a strung-out donkey. He aimed and fired, his shot true. The rubber ball slammed into Komodo’s ribcage, but the big Delta soldier never flinched.

Hayden sighed at his stupidity and saw Karin do the same. Damn soldier boys and their macho displays. The mercenary’s laughter continued. “Now there’s a challenge I accept. Believe this, bud, every hero I ever knew is long dead.”

Dahl tried to flick his drenched hair to the side. “Good, lad. I’d have done the same.”

“Then we’ll all die as fools,” Hayden whispered fiercely. “We have to be smarter than these animals, not stoop to their level.”

“Suggestion?”

Hayden despaired. “Don’t you have a plan? The great Torsten Dahl. The mad Swede. Whaddya say?”

“I say—” Dahl held up his ripped, bloody and free hands. “Let’s go shove their fucking heads up their arses.”

The mad Swede ran like the Devil rode his heels. Mouth wide, shrieking, with blood flying from his waving hands and water all around him, he charged down over a dozen armed men. In seconds he was among them, destroying the side of one man’s face with a savage elbow and kicking a second so hard he didn’t stop tumbling until he hit the back wall with enough force to knock him senseless. Hayden used the chaos to twist her own wrists again, but the pain of the ties ripping through her flesh made her cry out. How the hell could Dahl stand it? The man had to be superhuman. She saw Kinimaka and Komodo trying the same, faces contorted but full of desperate determination, and then Komodo wrenched a wrist free.

At that point, the whole place went crazy.

The Norseman strode in through the far door, shaking his head when he saw the melee and calling for more guards to come from the seemingly endless warren of rooms that made up his mansion. To his credit, he stood his ground, watching events unfold. Then, as if by great magic, Mai and Alicia suddenly appeared behind him, having gained entry through a ground-floor window. The Norseman immediately flung himself behind a unit of guards.

Suddenly, the tables were turned. With Dahl, Mai and Alicia free and able to battle, there wasn’t a mercenary group in the world that would stay confident. The women bounded into the room, dealing wounds and injuries out as if they were distributing presents. Hayden gave up her struggle with the bonds, worn out with stress and pain of her wound, and waited for Komodo to find a weapon that would free her.

The Delta soldier broke free and fell to his knees. Groaning, he scrambled quickly to one of the men Dahl had left in his deadly wake, frisked the body and came up with a standard-issue knife.

The Norseman advanced farther into the room, unarmed, unfazed, his craggy face betraying not even the slightest hint of emotion. What did he know?

Hayden leaned forward as Komodo reached over and sawed through her bonds. She was in no condition to fight, but stumbled forward anyway, hoping to at least take one enemy out of the fray. Mai and Alicia had made their way over to Dahl, targeting the mercenaries with the deadliest weapons first and killing them.

The sound of gunfire ricocheted around the large space. One of the hoses was still running, sending water gushing up against a wall and rebounding back in a mini wave. Dahl slammed a man’s head into it, rendering him unconscious, and left him to drown.

Behind Hayden, Komodo freed Kinimaka. The large Hawaiian grunted his thanks, hurdled a fallen mercenary to reach her side and held out a steadying hand. “You should fall back.”

“You givin’ me an order, Mano?”

“Yes, boss, I am. Now get behind me.”

Kinimaka stood strong as a mercenary lined him up in his sights. The shot exploded from the big gun, the rubber ball impacting with bruising force against Kinimaka’s thigh, but eliciting nothing more than a disdainful grunt. Kinimaka reached out and grabbed the mercenary by the neck, lifting him off the ground. The mercenary jammed the barrel of the gun under Kinimaka’s neck.

The two men stared at each other, inches apart.

Hayden scooped up a small handgun and shot the merc between the eyes. Kinimaka sent her a grateful wink. “Mahalo.”

“Any time. You do me, I’ll do you. So to speak.”

Kinimaka blinked in surprise, but then turned abruptly as a sudden hubbub filled the room, loud even over the noise of fighting and shooting and screaming.

Hayden stared too. Her hopes fell. A second substantial group of mercs swarmed into the room, all armed and looking hungry for blood. The Norseman crossed his arms and leaned against a wall. Game over.

A dozen guns fired at once, aimed high in an expression of strength and intent. Dahl paused in mid-flow, a mercenary in each hand. A deadly hush fell slowly over the room, the sudden silence ringing in their ears.

The Norseman stared at Mai and Alicia. “I commend your efforts. Breaking in here alone would make you worthy of being part of my team. But this—” He indicated the dead and dying mercenaries by their feet. “Proves your worth tenfold. But alas, your heroism is pointless. You see, there are no heroes any more. Not in this world. Your desperate plan B has failed.”

Alicia stayed poised, ready to move. “Actually, we’re plan A. He’s plan B.”

And then there came an almighty crash like the destruction of a mountain, and Matt Drake smashed through the far wall behind the wheel of a speeding Land Rover, utter determination carved into his face like foundations in bedrock. Falling masonry, plaster and crushed timbers rained all around the speeding vehicle, along with the smoke of a dozen mini-explosives Belmonte had placed to weaken the wall.

Everyone scattered. The Norseman hurled himself out of the way, pretty spry for an older guy. One of his men got clipped by exploding rock, the big block crushing his skull before he could even blink. Mai and Alicia hit the deck; the rest of Hayden’s team followed suit a split-second later. The revving of the mighty engine was the sound of a deadly behemoth in the room, and it was out for vengeance.

As soon as the big vehicle lost its momentum, Drake dived out the door, scooped up a couple of discarded machine guns and started firing, a weapon in each hand. Spurts of fire burst from the barrels. Mercenaries folded and pirouetted where they stood, blood painting the floor and the walls around them.

The Norseman crawled amidst the bodies, brick dust and blood clinging to him. His flight, his anonymity, was all that mattered to him now. He didn’t even try to find a firearm. Dahl continued where he’d left off, grabbing the two stunned mercenaries again and slamming their heads together. Then, with a grunt, he discarded their bodies. No more would they take pleasure in the pain of others.

It was Hayden, soaked, bloody and limping, who reached down to grab the Norseman by the scruff of the neck. Roughly, she jerked his head upward until their eyes met.

“You see? There are still heroes in this world.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Hayden hauled the Norseman to his feet by his hair. The old man struggled and cried out, but not a single sympathetic eye turned his way.

“We should kill him,” Belmonte said, slipping from the back seat of the ruined Land Rover. “He instigated everything that’s happened. It all started with this evil bastard.”

“He’s valuable,” Hayden said, reverting to her CIA perspective. “Imagine the secrets he knows.” She looked at Jonathan Gates. “Right? We might discover who we can really trust.”

The Secretary of Defense nodded wearily and sat down heavily amidst the rubble. “We will. Just give me a minute.”

Hayden threw the Norseman at Dahl and strode over to her boss, still limping. “Are you okay, sir?”

“Just tired,” Gates said. “All this globetrotting seemed like a good idea at first. I fear I may have lost track of my mission objective. To form a chain of clean, reliable and trustworthy individuals all the way to the White House.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Hayden settled beside him with a smile. “Now we have the Norseman, that task will be much simpler.”

“If we handle it right.”

“Yes,” Hayden agreed. “If we handle it right.” As the adrenalin subsided, the pain in her side increased. She still had some painkillers in her pocket and popped a few.

Ben dropped to her side. “You alright, Hayden?”

His girlfriend looked over his shoulder toward the men in the room. “I will be when the drugs kick in.”

Dahl pinned the Norseman against a wall and held him there. Alicia appeared at his shoulder, studying the leader of the Shadow Elite as if he were a bizarre relic.

“Anything to say, you crispy old fuck?”

“I demand to speak to my lawyer?”

Alicia looked surprised, an unusual expression for her. “If you weren’t such an evil wanker, I’d actually respect you for that.”

But then, Drake pushed his way past and leaned in, lightly head-butting the man. “Tell me.” He growled. “Was it you? Were you the bastard who saw me coming and ordered her death?”

The Norseman stared at him for a minute and then said, “Wells, your unit Commander, suggested her death would…divert your attentions. So yes, as leader of the group, I take all responsibility for allowing that to happen.”

“And Coyote? The man who killed her. Who is that?”

“You think it was a man…”

“I’m sorry,” Mai interrupted. “I really am, Matt, but we have a more pressing need. The world is still at risk. Where are the eight pieces of Odin? Tell us now, and your future might have less of a sharp edge to it.”

“I have survived this long,” the Norseman said, “by carefully weighing all my options and trusting my instinct. I will survive longer by telling you this — the Shadow Elite have their HQ in Vienna”—he gave a respectful nod to Drake—“as you almost discovered many years ago. I can give you the address. The eight pieces and the heads of all the other families will be there.”

Now Dahl spoke up. “Why would the eight pieces be in Vienna? You need them to kick start the doomsday device, don’t you? And why did that twat Cayman originally take them from Iceland to Stuttgart?”

“Do not think you are the only people who have a plan B. We too have contingencies. As the governing body of this planet, we have a new plan now, as anyone with an IQ over one hundred would anticipate.”

“Which is?”

“We will try the threat first, as we always have. It’s worked for thousands of years. It will work again. But…” He gazed without expression. “If we are forced, we will provide a demonstration. Vienna is close enough to Singen to be perfect for our ways and means. And…” He shrugged. “The base at Stuttgart was a similar way station. Just a more convenient resting place along the way.”

“Your new plan sounds like a backward step to me,” Drake said.

“It is the step that I originally advocated,” the Norseman told them. “But I was overruled by the council. Now, using the fiasco you set in motion, I have exerted my authority.”

“Fiasco?” Hayden said numbly. “We stopped you from using that fucking device. Did you even stop to think that once you got your rocks off by triggering it, you might not be able to stop it?”

The Norseman blinked, showing emotion for the first time.

“Your arrogance,” Hayden said, “your superior, disgusting egotism astounds me. You think that because you are all-powerful, that you can second guess Odin?”

“The gods were once real,” Dahl snapped at him. “Even now, you are too self-important to see that. Even now.”

“Our families have governed this world for far longer than you can imagine,” the Norseman told them. “When the world was new and unexplored, we were already wealthy. The global, navigated map only strengthened our hold. Our ancient families belong to the six foremost families in history.”

“You think you are gods?” Drake snapped. “Is that it?”

“Gods of men.” The Norseman almost smiled. “Of that I am sure.”

“We are wasting time that we don’t have,” Mai said urgently. “You’ll give us this address in Vienna and you will give us something more.”

“And what is that?”

“At least three different ingress points.”

“Well, my map drawing days are long gone—”

Drake gripped his neck. “Don’t worry, old man. You start making up right now for all your past sins. You’re coming with us.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Russell Cayman crouched like a big black spider in the corner of a shadowy tomb. He sang softly to himself, a spine-tingling litany that catalogued his life and all his woes. If any mercenary thought it a disturbing sight, none dared comment. But they did leave him there, eerie and troubled.

The pitted and scarred tomb beside him belonged to Amatsu, the God of Evil. Where Cayman did not believe in magic or fantasy or lingering spirits, he did believe that an old and terrible trauma might leave some kind of residue in the present. Stamped in time.

As if it were sunlight, he basked in its warmth. He had recently received orders that he and his men were to remain at the tomb for the foreseeable future, guarding it from the inquisitive and the downright nosey. The Shadow Elite’s ghost network would take care of any curious authorities.

Deadly force must be used at all times.

Cayman and his men had no problem with that. It was what they were paid for. Now all they had to do was wait.

Cayman was convinced. The eight pieces of Odin had always been destined to be returned to the third tomb of the gods. Was there even a weapon or a person powerful enough to stop it happening? Sooner or later, by pure hand or foul, through good deed or ill, they would return to their rightful resting place and fulfill their bright and terrible destiny.

Matthew Holgate strolled the sculpted gardens of Schonbrunn Palace, eyes blind to the great fountains, statues and seventeenth-century architecture that stood all around him. He meandered his way slowly toward the gloriette, each step a chore and a burden on his heart as he thought about what was to come.

His ancestors had been flourishing in Vienna even when this spectacular palace was being built. No doubt they had known its owners, its designers, and all of its occupants since. Now Holgate was about to destroy the family heritage. The legacy of centuries turned to ashes and dust.

He thought about the people his family had known. The kings. The princes. The presidents and prime ministers. And then, he thought about the utter scum he was being forced to contend with now. Men of no conscience, of no moral scruples whatsoever. Men who had been raised so hard and so ruthlessly that their hearts were made of black ice.

Not to say the Shadow Elite might boast about their grand humanitarian principles, but at least every leader of the six families bore some fragment of humanity.

Holgate was terrified in so many ways. He was terrified of walking this path alone — the first time he had ever had to do so — of not being able to go through with the deal, of the consequences of failure or disloyalty to his new benefactors. He didn’t have a buffer — a Russell Cayman — he was a one man bring-and-buy sale.

And, most of all, he despaired of what would happen once the wrong man bought the right weapon.

But time marched on, and the rest of the Shadow Elite were running out of it, though they did not know it yet. Holgate turned to stare at the enormous fountain and, beyond it, the spectacular gloriette, his normally pale face aglow in response to the biting cold, his haunted gaze caught and held by the blood-red haze in the sky, a telling and silent accusation.

And then his phone rang. Unbuttoning his long black coat and reaching for an inside pocket, he took out the chirping mobile. “Yes?”

“We have made the arrangements,” a heavily accented and clearly educated voice said. “The bazaar will be ready on time. Many, many…attendees, my friend. You had better get this right.”

“It will be right,” Holgate said quickly. “Just send me the men you promised.”

“They are already there.” The man reeled off a contact number. “Waiting for you. My part is done. Again, my friend, even one of these attendees would not hesitate to destroy a city to reach just one man, and you have invited more than two dozen to your bazaar — along with their bodyguards. For all our sakes, do not fuck up.”

The connection was severed. Holgate started at the blank screen for a while and then at the bright-eyed faces of passing tourists.

Do not fuck up.

It wasn’t one man destroying a city that caused Holgate’s blood to run cold. It was that man having the capability to destroy the world.

Then don’t do it, he thought. Walk away. Tell the Norseman. Christ, even alert the authorities.

But the proud leader of one of the six families just couldn’t subject himself to such exposure. He was, after all, privileged. A god among men. He was allowed such quirks of character.

Everything would soon start to go his way. It always did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Drake stared unseeing at the wintry, sun-struck streets of Vienna as Karin followed the detached directions of the inbuilt sat-nav to the place where the Norseman promised the Shadow Elite had kept their headquarters for thousands of years.

All those years ago, Wells had issued the order to kill Alyson. Time had enabled Drake to get past her death, but with the commencement of the Odin cycle it had cruelly thrust the details back into his face. That — and more.

Drake hadn’t just lost Alyson in that crash. He had also lost his unborn child. Beyond strife, hunger, injustice and torture, there was one nightmarish absolute — a parent should never have to bury their own child, unborn or not. Now, Drake dwelled on what might have been and how his life might have been different, and had to physically shut down the pain that rose inside. A soldier’s hard wall of indifference and denial struggled to intervene and compartmentalize the suffering.

Around him the streets of Vienna started to darken. Bright, colorful lights shone out warm and inviting against the night. Drake saw young children dressed in bobble hats and mittens, wrapped up with scarves, running between the shops, their parents struggling to keep up and keep an eye out for them. He saw the impressive architecture of a sprawling museum, its ancient facade artfully lit by a modern light show. He saw businessmen and secretaries, tourists and salespeople boiling up from the underground, many then darting across the wide roads whilst trying to avoid the metal bullets that flashed everywhere without thought — a cyclist rarely stops in Vienna.

Somewhere nondescript and unknown, they pulled over to the side of the road and accepted three men into the car. The men were hard-looking and rugged and carried big black holdalls. Sam, their leader, gave Drake a nod.

“Sam,” the ex-SAS man greeted his old friend and his team, “thanks for joining us.”

“Nowhere else to be, matey.”

Beyond that, the throng thinned, but the old buildings with their eye-catching construction continued. A meandering park opened out to the right where, Belmonte told them, a superb restaurant sat right in the middle. A place frequented by and saved for the locals, cheap and delicious, not touted to the rich tourists. Still more streets and more sets of traffic lights and apartment complexes, and then they were in a tree-lined neighborhood. Even farther and the gateways became less frequent until…

The Norseman said, “Slow down. That is the place.”

Drake observed a narrow gateway, lined on all sides with the requisite high trees. A razor-wire topped fence would no doubt stand behind the tee-line. He pressed a button to lower the electric window.

“Aye up. Well, you’d better not be lying to us, big man. The penalty for lies around here is slow and painful, and not something you usually come back from.”

Mai raised an eyebrow at that one. “A date with Alicia?”

Even the Englishwoman grinned. “You’re closer to the truth than you think.”

Drake expected Belmonte to chirp up next, but the English thief was not himself these days. He said nothing, just stared out the front window, tapping the wheel. Drake turned in his seat. The second car had pulled up behind them. The rest of the Shadow Elite and the eight Pieces of Odin awaited them.

With care, stealth and help from the Norseman, the team walked right through the front gates and melted quickly into the darkened grounds. No one challenged them at the gate, but then the Norseman had input the combination with his face just a few inches from the camera. The possibility existed that he had, in fact, entered an “intruder” alarm code, a set of numbers used to allow entry, but at the same time triggering a silent alert. Mai, Alicia and half the team slipped to the left, Drake and the others to the right.

And then they moved quickly, always alert, eyes peeled for guards and traps or any signs of movement ahead. They crept carefully for some time through the trees and ornamental gardens. The Shadow Elite’s mansion was cloaked in a shroud of deep privacy. Then, after Drake began to wonder if there actually was any building ahead and that maybe the Norseman had sacrificed himself for his brethren, he saw the main road make a sweeping right curve up ahead.

And right on the cusp of that bend, standing as tall and wide and impressive as any house in Vienna, the secret headquarters of the group who ruled the world sat in silence.

Lights blazed from almost every window.

Dahl muttered, “Not exactly green warriors, are they?”

Drake dropped to one knee and dragged the Norseman up alongside him. Wetness soaked up from the grass through his trousers. His weapon clunked as it rapped the old man on the head. “Is that normal?” He hissed.

“No.” The Norseman looked shocked. “It certainly isn’t.”

“And the front door?” Mai asked. “Does it normally hang off its hinges like that?”

Drake looked closer, marvelling at the Japanese agent’s eagle eye. The front door was small, overhung by a big arch and hidden partially behind a pillar, but the angles of the framework looked all wrong.

“Good spot.”

“Something…” the Norseman began.

A gunshot echoed from inside the house. The Norseman drew in a sharp breath. “No. Oh no…”

Drake signaled and the group exploded from the trees like a well-primed and organized unit. Mai and Alicia flanked him with Dahl covering the rear and dragging the Norseman along. On the other side, Hayden and Kinimaka took point, with Komodo and the SAS team following and fanning out. Immediately behind them and staying impressively low came Karin and Ben, Gates and Belmonte.

Drake reached the house and took a quick gander through the nearest window before flattening himself against the wall. He shook his head. Nothing. Mai checked the next, and Alicia the next. Both women shook their heads.

“Front door.”

Drake skipped past the windows until he reached the open door. He saw the thick wood had been hacked at and chewed through by bullets. The frame and concrete surrounds were pitted. Even the ornamental window above the door and the lintel had been pockmarked by flying lead.

“Not professionals then,” Alicia said.

“Which makes it worse.” Drake looked inside the house and quickly stepped back. “Spray and prey mercenaries are easy to come by, but hell to keep under control. Let’s move.”

The Norseman grunted something, sounding genuinely concerned for his five cohorts, but Dahl cuffed him and told him to shut his mouth if he valued his teeth. Inside the place, old paintings hung from the walls and rich furnishings sat upon Persian and old Egyptian rugs. The sculpted ceilings sported hanging chandeliers. First-rate sculptures of mythical and ancient beasts lined both sides of the corridor. Drake guessed they would not be reproductions. When he looked more closely, one painting depicted ancient Babylon with all its depraved delights, another Sodom and Gomorrah in immoral glory. Still another showed the devils of hell, corrupting young people whilst business-suited men stood and sipped whisky from crystal tumblers and watched, naked from the waist down.

“This?” Dahl growled into the Norseman’s face. “This is how you live whilst so many struggle and die?”

Drake checked the first room. Hayden cleared the one on the opposite side of the immense hallway. Their ears were tuned for the slightest sounds. From somewhere up ahead, they heard low groans, a scream, and an order shouted in a guttural, foreign voice. It seemed to float from the back of the house.

Another room cleared, and then a fourth. Hayden and Kinimaka stepped into a fifth, this one with a wider entranceway and two enormous doors — the kind that were generally opened by waiting doormen. After a tense moment, when neither of them instantly emerged, Drake glided over to the entrance.

Hayden’s back was to him, rigid. Kinimaka hung his head. Drake, already fearing the worst, stepped past the big Hawaiian to appraise the room.

Horror froze his feet.

They had been nailed to the walls. Four members of the Shadow Elite, arms outstretched and legs bent in the crucifix position, their palms and feet shot through with heavy duty bolts right into the walls themselves. Rivers of blood ran down the priceless tapestries, furs and drapes that hung around them, pooling on the floor. The men’s eyes bulged, their groans weak, full of pain.

The rest of the team filed into the room. Not even Ben and Karin made noises of surprise or regret on seeing the men. Live by the sword… taste the blood of innocents…die screaming, asshole.

No one moved to help the men. They hadn’t been up there long. Drake’s main concern now was over the individuals who had done this and the whereabouts of the eight pieces of Odin. He turned, weapon ready and eyed Sam and the SAS team, who had stayed to cover the hallway.

Sam nodded. All good.

He edged out. The voice of the Norseman stopped him. “What? You have to—”

Dahl smashed a fist into his mouth. “We have to do nothing. You should be thinking up ways of staying useful because as soon as you become obsolete…you’re going the same way as your ancestor Beowulf and the Vikings.”

“And what does that—?”

“Into the fucking ground. Now shut up.”

The Norseman didn’t even flinch from the blow, just stared at his colleagues with, at last, some emotion in his face. He seemed almost on the verge of tears.

The team fanned out into the hallway and advanced. Four more rooms were cleared and now they heard only silence. Drake cursed inwardly that they had arrived too late, but moving forward now without care would only get one of them killed.

He turned to the Norseman. “We heard a gunshot. Someone still has to be here. What’s back there?”

“A large room that leads to the rear gardens. The French windows are extensive, designed to give a full view of the—”

“Dahl,” Drake said. The Swede silenced the Norseman with another punch.

Drake moved as fast as he dared. He noticed a bloody trail that extended along the wall at shoulder height. Could one of the intruders be injured? If they were, it was most likely due to being shot by one of their own men.

He stopped at the closed door and signaled for readiness. Kinimaka kicked it in and Drake leapt through first, closely followed by Hayden. Before him stretched an entire wall of glass doors and, beyond that, a spectacular view.

But it was the immediate sight of a crawling, bloodied man with a knife in his back and a gun in his hand that grabbed their attention.

“Holgate!” The Norseman tried to leap forward, but Dahl clamped a huge arm around his throat.

“Wait.”

“Is he one of you?” Drake hissed without taking his eyes off the room, the man, and the spectacle beyond the windows.

“Yes. Matthew Holgate. The youngest member of our group.”

Mai, Alicia and the SAS team flowed around Drake, taking point and responsibility for observing their perimeters. Drake dropped to the floor next to the man just as a coughing fit wracked his body.

“What happened?” Drake asked.

Holgate jumped and turned his head, trying to bring the gun around. Drake disarmed him with no regard to his wounds and repeated his question.

“They…they jumped me.” Holgate coughed. “They made me watch—” He coughed again, screwing his face up in pain. “Whilst they…crucified…my friends. The only friends I have known.”

The Norseman fell to his knees beside Holgate. “What happened here? Look, it is I. You have to tell me what went wrong tonight.”

“Wrong?” Holgate spat the word as if it contained poison. “Everything has been wrong for years. But you? You never noticed. Your plans…your precious, flawless plans had to be executed. Day after day. Week after week.” Holgate groaned and tried to reach around his body for the knife.

Drake grabbed his hand. “Probably best to leave that alone, dickhead.”

The Norseman reached out too, but Dahl clamped his hand like a vice. Holgate took a moment and then continued, “You never knew.” He suddenly hissed, and his eyes burned like fire as they turned on the Norseman. “You never even knew when I lost it all. You were unapproachable, a statue of ice in a suit and a tie. You failed me.”

The Norseman fell back, staring in horror. “I? What? You lost your fortune? The family’s fortune? Impossible.”

Mai reported from her position near a set of French doors. “We have movement out here. I see men among the trees behind the rink.”

Drake tore his attention away from the exchange between the two Shadow Elite men. The question was — did they need to give chase?

“Wait,” he interrupted Holgate. “The eight pieces of Odin. Do they have them?”

Holgate’s face went whiter than snow. His lips moved, but no words spilled from his mouth.

“Do they have the pieces?” Drake wanted to throttle the man.

“Yes.” The admission was like a death rattle.

“And where are they taking them?”

Absolute fear blanketed Holgate’s eyes. “They double-crossed me.” He rasped in disbelief. “They leave me with nothing.”

“Where are they taking them?” Drake almost reached for the knife.

“To an arms bazaar!” Holgate cried out. “A vast terrorist market. The pieces are set to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”

Drake was on his feet in an instant. “Go!” he shouted. “We have to stop them!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Mai and Alicia moved in sync, slipping out of the partially opened door and onto the patio beyond. Drake now allowed himself to take in the full spectacle of what lay beyond the windows.

The top half of the immense garden had been turned into an ice rink, its surface glistening under halogen floodlights. All around it trees were decorated with Christmas cheer and illuminated by hanging strings of lights. Artificial snow lay on the ground, scattered loosely and in heaps everywhere. The old men had created a winter wonderland for themselves only, a lonely, crazy vision.

“Freaks,” Hayden muttered as she came up alongside Drake, the ever-present Kinimaka looking concerned at her side. “Drake, I’m not buying this. Those guys out there — they’re amateurs. And we’re being told that they found and massacred the Shadow Elite?”

Drake looked back at Dahl. “Stay with them, please. We need to know what happened here.”

Dahl nodded. Drake moved carefully out of the house and into the crisp, cold night. His SAS pals shadowed Mai and Alicia as they skirted the high curb that surrounded the ice rink, heading for tree-cover. Ahead, among the trees, Drake saw a man appear. At first, he looked shocked. Drake took a second to line up a shot and fired, but the man screamed out a warning a split-second before the bullet smashed him off his feet.

Now other men darted fast between the trees, firing hard. Some looked back, and others moved forward and shooting blindly over their shoulders. Drake hit the deck with the rest of his team, shielding their bodies behind the curb, but not one single bullet impacted anywhere near them.

“Go?” Sam checked with Drake.

It was tempting. A strong, fluid team like theirs could rip through a horde of terrorists in seconds…but if just one of those wayward bullets struck lucky…

But the eight pieces of Odin were heading for an auction to be attended by the world’s richest and deadliest terrorists. Something had to give. A soldier was a soldier because he risked everything for the country and the people that he loved. A hero was a hero because he felt the fear and went in anyway.

“Fuck it,” he said. “Hit ’em.”

As one they rose and ran in double formation around the circumference of the ice rink, firing precisely and constantly. Two of the fleeing men were hit and went down hard, skidding in the artificial snow. Bullets scudded off tree trunks and through leaves, shattering multi-colored lights and bringing the heavy ropes of trimmings cascading to the floor. Enormous ice sculptures were hit and chipped, some toppling over and smashing to pieces as they landed.

Drake used the excellent tree cover to dart forward without stopping. Quickly he caught sight of the terrorists’ rear guard and squeezed off half a dozen shots. Men fell screaming, falling among scattered tree lights and bringing even more heavy trimmings to the floor. Drake quickly sped past them, taking point with Mai, confident his team would mop up and ensure that those who fell but weren’t really dead were soon made that way.

He crouched in the snow, breathing lightly, reloading. The flakes crunched as Mai dropped to his side. It was so quiet around them he could hear her low breathing. He peered through the laden branches, pushed a paper lantern aside.

“Like old times?” Mai said.

“You and me?” Drake said. “I guess so. Very old times.”

“Still strong and warm in my memory, Matt.”

He paused for a second to stare at her. There had been no signs, no warning that she still felt that way. “Whoa, and you’re telling me now. Right now.”

Mai fired as a head popped up. “We’re both soldiers. This is what we do. And well, it’s almost Christmas. What better time could there be?”

With that, she sprang up as fresh as if this were her first day of conflict and dashed to the next tree. Drake ducked down as a bullet whistled past surprisingly close and then rose up, firing. A second later, he rejoined Mai.

“My feelings for you never changed,” he told her. “Not once through all the years. But seriously, before we look at that, I have to finish all this.” He paused.

“For Alyson?” Mai charged again, and now Drake ran with her, half a step behind. Terrorists were fleeing ahead of them, their colorful clothes easy targets, their cries better than homing beacons.

“Yes, for Alyson.” Drake panted, firing and talking and scanning for prey. “And for Kennedy. This whole Odin thing is what dragged her in. It’s how we met. I want it all behind me before I even try to move on.”

“Fair enough.” Mai hurdled a fallen terrorist, skipping off his back as he tried to rise, firing between her legs and into his body. “I’ll still be here…” She shrugged as she landed like a cat. “For a short while.”

They had come through the thick of the trees by now and were nearing the rear of the garden. Drake could spy the high stone wall between branches. With quickness born of years of warfare, he spied an enemy muzzle poking around a tree trunk, spun and fired, sending the muzzle flying and the man who held it straight to hell.

Terrorists milled around ahead, gathered at the foot of the wall, some already climbing the half dozen rope ladders that had been thrown over. Mai fell to one knee and started to pot them, like ducks in a shooting gallery, but Drake searched frantically for any signs of the objects they were pursuing.

No, he thought. A false trail? No way. These people weren’t that clever. And Drake was pretty sure their own presence had come as a surprise to the terrorists. But still…

Then, with a thunderous sound that might spell the doom of the world, there came the roar of a powerful engine starting up. Drake knew it immediately for what it was. The getaway vehicle.

They were already escaping with the eight pieces!

“The wall!” he cried. “Hit the wall with everything you’ve got!”

Hayden and Kinimaka and the SAS team ran together and let loose a wall of lead. Terrorists crumpled to the ground where they stood. Those who tried to return fire died just as quick or were knocked aside by their falling comrades. Men fell backward from the walls, plummeting like empty sacks, crushing those beneath. Deadly chips of rock blasted back as bullets riddled the stonework, stitching ragged lines across the pitch-face blocks.

Drake didn’t hesitate. He reached the base of the wall and flung himself at the nearest swinging ladder, grabbed a rung and started climbing. A terrorist climbed above him, just nearing the top of the wall. Drake quickly closed the gap and wrenched the man off the wall, hearing his scream as he cartwheeled through the air and crunched solidly against the ground.

He was vaguely aware of Mai on the rope next to him, keeping pace. He was also faintly surprised that he was in front of her, but then the roar of the terrorists’ getaway vehicle and the sight from the top of the wall jolted all other emotion except terror from his body.

The vehicle, a dark colored van with what sounded like a performance engine, shot off down the darkened boulevard that backed on to the mansion. Within a second, it was turning at a junction, skidding a little, and then powering away along an unseen road.

A line of some half-dozen terrorists had been left behind and were pointing their weapons right at Drake and Mai on top of the wall.

Then they opened fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Drake leapt off the wall the instant he saw that the unpitying black eyes of six muzzles were fixed on him. By the time the terrorists opened fire, he was already in free fall. The bullets whizzed over the top of the wall, some catching its top ledge and sending fragments of stone showering down around him.

He let go of the gun. His questing hand reached for and caught the swinging rope ladder. He clutched at it, felt his palms burn, but seized it even harder. Abruptly his fall was arrested; his shoulder muscles complained and his back hurt as he swung into the wall. With a swift kick, he planted his feet on the springy rungs and safely climbed back down to the ground.

Hayden was in his face. “What happened?”

“Twats got away,” Drake said. “The pieces are gone.”

“And we have no one out there,” Hayden hissed. “Because we’re all in here! Shit!”

“The secretary, Gates, has been seeking out local assets for days,” Kinimaka said. “So has Komodo. They have men prepared to fight. We need them now.”

Sam looked at Drake. “The regiment has two teams within an hour’s flight,” he said.

“Put them on standby,” Drake told him and started back toward the house. “Dahl also has plenty of local assets. But first of all, we need to find out where they’re going and when they plan to make the sale. This kind of event would be bloody impossible to change.”

“Right.” Hayden kept pace with him as they tramped through the snow back through the trees to what used to be the Shadow Elite’s mansion, now their crypt.

A strained silence surrounded the team as they trudged around the floodlit ice rink and approached the open French doors. The sense of foreboding was strong, as every man and woman imagined what a committed terrorist might do with a doomsday weapon.

Dahl met them at the door. “You failed? Trust a bloody Yorkshireman to fuck it all up.”

Drake couldn’t even muster the willpower for a retort. He pushed past the Swede and the Norseman, straight up to the still prone Holgate, who was being attended to by Komodo with Ben, Karin and Gates looking on.

“He still conscious?”

“Barely.”

“Wake the twat up.” Drake growled. “Don’t care how. We only need him alive for a minute or two.”

The Norseman immediately protested. “Excuse me! There is a lawful—”

Dahl’s fist stopped the rest of his tirade. “You keep opening it, I’ll keep filling it. No problem.”

Within a minute, Holgate was squirming and protesting loudly. Drake nodded in satisfaction. “Good enough.” He crouched until he could whisper in the man’s ear. “Now, you live or die,” he said. “And if you don’t care, then we can make you die easy or die hard. It’s our choice. You get it? For years, centuries, you people have written and played with the law. Bended it to your whim. But now…now we are the law. There’s nobody around to help you, Holgate.”

Defeated eyes turned toward him. “Aldridge? Grey? Leng?”

“All dead.” Drake didn’t care. “And they suffered badly, Holgate. How do you want to die?”

“The Shadow Elite—” the Norseman began haughtily, but then started choking.

“There is no more Shadow Elite.” Drake heard Alicia sigh. “Get it through your thick Viking skull.”

Holgate must have heard it too, for tears formed in his eyes. “My fault.” He whispered. “All my fault. I led the terrorists here. They were supposed to help me steal the pieces of Odin and transport them to the Czech Republic but, instead, they double-crossed me.”

“Shocker,” Drake murmured. “Tell me more.”

“I was bankrupted, my assets dissolved. But the group would never accept that. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t even considered possible. Our families have succeeded through even the darkest days of the last thousand years.”

“And you bolloxed it all up,” Drake said. “I get that. But I don’t give a shit, see? What I want to know is where they’re staging this bazaar, how many terrorists are involved, and when is it happening? Quickly now, Holgate, before I let my team take turns shooting bits off you.”

“An old, deserted town in the Czech Republic. A ghost town. Tomorrow — three p.m. their time.

“And how many?”

Holgate shuddered as, for the first time, he stared Drake right in the eyes.

“Yes?”

“All of them.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

With the fight of their lives beckoning the very next day, it seemed only fitting they should spend this night, perhaps their last as a full team, relaxing together. Going up against so many at the same time made the possibility of them all surviving the battle slimmer than a razor’s edge.

Belmonte chose a Vienna hotel he was accustomed to and rented out a dozen rooms all on the same floor. The thief was spending money like it didn’t matter anymore, and maybe it was partly his way of atoning for Emma’s death. Giving up that which he loved the most.

Or—almost loved the most.

One thing was clear. Belmonte had suffered a life-changing event and would never be the same. All his priorities had changed forever.

The Hotel Imperial stood in five-star luxury, lit up against the night like a golden treasure at the end of a dark, perilous path. The lobby was an opulent, inviting mix of the deepest colors, rich reds and gilded edges, dark oak frames and a bright, shining chandelier above it all. To the right of the domed revolving door stood a tall, sparkling Christmas tree, adorned with splendid trimmings and sparkling lights. Large, beautifully wrapped presents sat all around its base.

“Oh, how the other half live,” Alicia said, stopping and looking around. Even the snappy Englishwoman pulled her coat tighter to hide her shabby clothes. Whilst Belmonte paid, the rest of the team hung around the lobby, staring at the hotel’s well-to-do occupants wheeling hand luggage around and chatting amongst themselves. After a while the master thief signaled them and they climbed a great red-carpeted stairway lined by heavy oak paneling, overseen by another outsized chandelier. At the top they were faced with marble pillars and a warmly backlit statue, above which hung an old, expensive-looking painting.

“This way.” Belmonte took off, picking his way down another plushly-appointed corridor before stopping and waving his arm. “Down there. Three-oh-five to three-sixteen. Take your pick.”

“Just one thing.” Alicia wasn’t ever one to express her thanks the right way. “My room had better have a pair of those fancy friggin’ slippers and a bathrobe.”

Belmonte slid his entry card into the lock. “I thought you’d be more interested in the complimentary massage service.”

Alicia’s eyes widened. “Damn right.”

The group began to drift off, looking to chill out for the first time in what seemed, to Drake at least, months. He chose a room, shouted, “Lobby in thirty for anyone who cares,” and entered his room alone.

Put his back to the door and closed his eyes.

It was said that when loved ones died, they went up to heaven as angels, there to watch over you. He sent up a silent prayer.

Only trouble was — he didn’t know whether he wanted to live or die.

Karin practically dragged Komodo into her room, saving the prim and pedantic image for someone who actually gave a shit. Within seconds, the two were naked and stepping into the hot, powerful shower. Within fifteen minutes, they were still naked, but now under the thick, luxuriant bed covers half-way through round two. Before they finished Karin turned the tables on the big American, straddling him, and shouted, “Jesus Christ you had better find a way not to leave me this time!” before he flipped her over again and put his mouth close to her ear.

“Whatever it takes.”

Hayden beckoned Ben into her room as the young man paused awkwardly in the corridor, an unsure expression plastered on his face. When he got her approval, his face lit up. He pushed past her, confidence restored.

“Bloody hell! I know it’s only been a few days but it feels like months since we were alone together.”

Hayden walked over to the window that was literally surrounded by thick drapes. She pushed aside the net curtain. Outside, she saw a busy pavement and a street choked with traffic. Nothing changed, she thought. It might as well be L.A. or Washington D.C. Didn’t matter where you were. The architecture might be smarter, the trees older, but the song always remained the same.

“I can’t believe we missed the Wall of Sleep’s first gig,” Ben was saying disconsolately. “Remember? The Festival of Storms in Leeds. Pretty Reckless and Evanescence. And, of course, the Wall—”

“Stop,” Hayden said quietly.

Ben didn’t hear. “But I guess I really rocked it by finding that tomb underneath Singen, eh?”

Hayden turned her thoughts back through the last few months to the time she had first met Ben and Drake in Washington DC, and had been drawn to the young man’s enthusiasm, his intelligence and wit. She had seen the man who was inside. She had felt some kind of urge to bring him out. She had taken on the challenge…and felt that she owed him now.

Her mind’s eye flicked over Mano Kinimaka, sitting alone in a room down the hall, the ever-present guard at her side, and how he somehow seemed to be on her mind more and more of late. But that was his job — to protect her. It was the care and worry in his eyes that confused her.

She turned back to the room, back to Ben. In his boyish way, he was still appealing. She took a moment to dry swallow twice the amount of painkillers she had been prescribed. The wound in her side throbbed almost as hard as the wound in her heart. The knives that stabbed her seemed like a physical extension of her state of mind.

She was wounded, both physically and mentally.

She sat down on the bed next to Ben, careful not to touch him, but remaining close. Now was not the time for drama.

Tomorrow it might not even matter.

Alicia spent a few minutes in the shower. The water hit her hard and fast, almost like a soothing massage in itself, but she was not one to dwell on luxuries. She quickly stepped out, toweled off, dried and redressed, took a few solitary minutes to stare at her hotel room and then headed down to the bar. Life was too short to spend it alone, staring at four walls and an empty bed.

The first drink she ordered was a Jack and coke. By the time she was staring at her fourth, a large figure had thudded down into the seat next to her.

“Mano Kinimaka.” She eyed him speculatively. “You really are one big bastard, you know that?”

“You heard of the big Kahuna? My mom used to call me the fucking huge Kahuna.”

Alicia laughed. “Looking to get shitfaced?”

“Looking for…distraction.”

“Oh yeah? What you got in mind?”

“Let’s get one thing straight from the outset, Myles, you stand no chance with me.”

Alicia threw him a little pout. “Her wounds go deeper than the length of a knife blade, mate. She’s damaged, that one.”

“We’re all damaged. You should know. And I really don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t.” Alicia slammed the remainder of her glass back in one go. “Maybe we should ask Belmonte. He knows her quite well, or so I’m told.”

“Fuck off.” Kinimaka half-rose from his chair.

Alicia put a hand on his arm. “Stay. Please.” When Kinimaka reluctantly reclaimed his seat, she went on. “I’m an abhorrent bitch. I get that. I don’t hold back.”

“I can’t see why Drake keeps you around to be honest.”

“Drake? Well, because he knows exactly what he’s getting, see? These other people — Mai, Gates, even Dahl — they all have their own self-righteous agendas. I mean, look at Mai exchanging that device for her sister. But with me—” She ran the back of her hand from her head down her body to her toes. “What you see is what you get. And what I think is exactly what I will tell you. No secrets, no schemes.”

Kinimaka asked the bartender to leave the bottle. He placed it carefully between them. “Hayden’s my boss. There can be nothing between us.”

“Bollocks. Things change all the time. I’ve shagged most of my bosses.”

Kinimaka shook his head, but couldn’t stop the laughter. After a moment he was shaking and snorting. He held up a neat shot, clinked Alicia’s glass and downed it in one.

The bartender thoughtfully brought over another bottle.

Torsten Dahl prowled the room that seemed to have become a temporary command center. The SAS boys were talking quietly among themselves at the same time as guarding the Norseman, and Jonathan Gates picked his way delicately through the less trustworthy until he finally reached men he could put faith in on the phone.

Commanders. Generals. Old-school leaders. The stalwart captains of unknown crews, men who did not seek glory but earned it every day. The law of misfortune would not put many of their available men within a day’s journey of the Czech Republic, but he was betting anyone lunch at the White House that he’d bag more than a few.

It was too early to start examining who was and who wasn’t part of the Shadow Elite’s conspiracy ring. Their limited resources were best employed now in regaining the eight pieces of Odin.

Sam, the leader of the SAS team, had contacted two more teams in Europe, both of whom were willing to make the trip.

Now Dahl paced back and forth, calling in every favor that he’d ever earned in his considerable career. His Statsminister was doing the same. Sweden was relatively close to the Czech Republic by plane.

At last, Dahl closed his phone. “Tomorrow,” he announced to the room, “we will have a small army.”

“The Czechs might not be too happy at the sight of all these foreign soldiers invading their soil,” the Norseman barked at him from his small corner of the room.

“Then they shouldn’t allow terrorists to host arms bazaars in their country, should they?”

Dahl paused for a moment. His eyes took on a faraway glaze and the makings of a brief smile formed on his lips. He calculated the time back in his homeland. He inspected the room and its security one more time.

A moment, he thought. Just a moment. On this night of all nights, he deserved it.

He stepped out into the corridor, found the stairwell and sat down on the top step. Quickly he dialed a number. To his right a big rectangular window looked out over a benighted street where fairy lights glittered like wishes.

The phone was answered immediately. A woman’s voice. “Hallå?”

“It’s me.”

“Torsten. Oh, it’s good to hear your voice. Are you coming home?”

She sounded so hopeful, so sure. Dahl kept his voice neutral. “Not yet.”

But she was his wife, his life-companion, and he could never keep anything from her. “You come home,” she said. “You don’t do this. Do you hear?”

Dahl was silent for a moment. His wife knew him better than that. “Are they still awake? Are they there?” He kept his voice soft to keep it from breaking.

The other phone clunked down. After another second he heard a dual squeal, the slapping of bare feet at full pace, and then his two young kids were on the line, tripping over their own words in their eagerness to speak.

He let them talk, drinking in the wonder of them, basking in the delight they took from life and wishing it could always be that way. Childhood flew past in a moment, and each moment he spent sharing it with them left him wanting more. But at the same time, he wanted to protect them with an unquenchable fierceness, in a way they would never hear about. A child sees through the eyes of his parents, so let those eyes be full of pride and happiness, not sorrow or regret or anger.

He sat there, a great soldier with eyes full of tears, and listened to the sound of his children being happy.

Karin climbed out of bed, slipping into a luxurious bathrobe as she padded over to the window. “I’ve never felt particularly special,” she said, not looking at Komodo. “But even when I remember the darkness of my past, I feel beautiful with you.”

Komodo knew her now, knew about the shattering event in her childhood that had shaped her as an adult. “You lost your faith,” he said. “You nurtured the loss. You’ll never have to do that again.”

Karin turned quickly, arching an eyebrow. “What are you, Trevor? A shrink or a guru?”

He jumped off the bed and hugged her. “A little of both.”

Karin held him tight, staring sightlessly over his shoulder. “And what about tomorrow?”

She felt him shrug. “To part-quote an episode of Buffy, ‘Tomorrow, we save the world. Again.’”

“And then?”

“We’ll save each other. I’ll prove to you that people beyond family can be trusted. You’ll think of a way to keep me in bed. ”

“To keep you with me. Somehow.”

“Yes. But for now—” He gently disengaged from her and began searching for his cell phone. “I have an army to help build.”

One by one he began to search out contact details for his closest comrades.

Alicia didn’t hesitate when Belmonte showed his face in the bar. She invited him to join them, and together Kinimaka, the thief and she drank too much, talked too much and stared down the hooded stares of would-be elitists. Alicia coaxed them both out of their shells — Kinimaka over Hayden and Belmonte over Emma. The Hawaiian was dithering, waiting for the right time with his boss — a time that would never come. Belmonte had indeed nurtured and trained Emma to be his shadow and his replacement, but somewhere along the wild path of her tutoring had fallen completely for her sharp wit, her beauty and her fearlessness. He was lost without her.

“An angel with skills, balls and a bloody face.” He described her, and Alicia found herself wishing she’d seen more of the thief’s assistant. Maybe they could’ve been friends.

Alicia confessed her need for companionship. She couldn’t stand to be alone with her own thoughts. The night terrors overwhelmed her.

Into a dark corner they finally retired, still drinking and talking nonsense, becoming more than colleagues, chatting away the night and any fears it might hold, chasing the dawn towards the new day, comrades in arms and minds.

As one, they were fearless.

Matt Drake watched as the Vienna skyline started to lighten. Dawn was approaching fast — the start of a brand new day that might very well end with the world being a terrifyingly different place.

“Every civilized government in the world should be involved in this,” he said, unable to hide his frustration. “But because this bloody Shadow Elite’s got their claws into everyone, we can’t call on anyone. When I was in the regiment, Mai, it seemed a whole lot easier.”

“You were a pawn, a robot programmed to follow orders. Now you’re a man fighting against the raging machine. It’s a harder fight.”

“I need sleep.” He moved away from the window.

Mai watched him from where she had spent the night, curled across a plush armchair. “Like me, Matt, you’ll sleep when you’re dead.”

That raised a tired smile. “Bon Jovi? I forget sometimes that it was you and I who invented Dinorock.”

“And like you and I and the dinosaurs, it appears to be dying out. Everything these days is Gangnam Style.”

Another smile. “We won’t die today. None of us will. We’ll take their armies out and tear the eight pieces from their broken fingers. And we’ll do it Yorkshire style.”

“Or in Alicia’s case— doggy—”

“Woah. This feud between you two? It has to stop. After a while it tends to grate. We three actually work well together.”

Mai shrugged. “Maybe. But however you look at today, it’s almost over anyway. We’ve already neutralised the Shadow Elite. Once the eight pieces are safe, all this ends and those of us who survive…will have some tranquility.”

Drake looked at her for a long time, realizing the truth of her words. Ever since he had started the search for the bones of Odin, his life had been like traveling on a hellish rollercoaster, designed by the devil and crewed by his demons. To think, in another day or two it would be all over.

The eight pieces secure. The Shadow Elite gone. Wells out of the picture. The Blood King behind bars that would never officially exist.

That would leave one thing — an assassin called Coyote.

But first things first.

“About time we started our charge,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The quad-engine Boeing C17 Globemaster cargo plane touched down hard and taxied roughly along a patched and potholed runway in a remote corner of the Western Czech Republic. The transport had landed as close to the bazaar’s staging area as possible to avoid arousing suspicion, but the soldiers still faced an hour’s march at a brisk pace to reach the target area in time.

Dahl and Gates between them had managed to secure the big plane — currently tied to a commercial and civilian release at Vienna International Airport. The money they and their governments offered ensured a swift and quality response from its operators.

In total, about sixty people had made the flight, the majority of them army personnel. Nowhere near as many as Drake wanted, but significantly more than he’d had yesterday. Among them were eleven members of the SAS, a group of Delta soldiers, members of Torsten Dahl’s SSG, and a few old friends Gates had somehow dragged in.

The men had been pulled from various operations. Some were on special exercise, others babysitting civilians. One knot had been guarding a company of scientists conducting experiments. Still others had been stuck on extended surveillance posts.

They responded immediately to the desperate call of the men they respected most.

But they still needed a leader. Most had looked to Dahl. But Dahl had looked to Drake.

The Englishman struggled to hide his shock. “Pull the other one, you fruitcake.”

“This is your operation, Drake. Always has been.”

Not even a second passed before he started talking. The plan lived and breathed inside him anyway, as it did for every mission, always evolving. By the time he had finished, the team wore looks of satisfaction, even if they all did still seem a little worried.

Drake counted himself lucky. The downside to this mission was enormous. They didn’t have an aerial view of the topography. They didn’t know how many men they were up against. They didn’t know exactly where the pieces would be kept. They didn’t know the firepower of the enemy. A terrorist was an unknown quantity on a good day, but this…the list went on.

But Drake had been winging this since he started back in York, when an Apache helicopter had interrupted a catwalk show. Now it seemed an age ago, but in fact, was a mere few months. He was more than ready to finish with Odin and his bloody bones.

The plane taxied to a halt, bouncing hard. The instant it stopped, a green light came on and the rear loading bay door started to descend. Men ran out into the cold air, moving fast to secure a temporary perimeter. The team leaders checked their compasses to get a bearing. Drake followed Mai and Alicia off the plane, followed by the rest of his team, including all the civilians. They were coming along; every hand would be welcome and needed today.

The icy air hit Drake in the face. Quickly, he tugged his jacket higher, checked his small pack and weapons, and watched as everyone else did the same. Gates and Hayden had secured arms and ammo from a CIA facility at Vienna airport along with some essential extra items — grenades, RPGs, Kevlar vests, communications, water and even some pouches of rations.

Hayden put herself beside Drake as they headed out. “You know I’m really in charge, right?”

Drake saw a half-smile on the American’s face. “Oh aye. How’s the side?”

“Fuckin’A. If I’d swallowed any more painkillers, I’d be seeing Santa and his fuckin’ reindeers arriving behind us.”

“Might come in as useful backup.” Alicia put in from behind them “Still probably best not to get stabbed again this time.”

Drake led them up a steep, grassy slope to the outskirts of a small wood. “Through here for the cover,” he said and clicked his mic. “All clear?”

The answer came back, loud with excess static.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s march.”

The teams separated a little as they marched through the dappled forest, each group sticking to their own. It took extraordinary circumstances and even more extraordinary men to bring rival squads like this together and Drake was glad those men were on his side. The circumstances he wasn’t too happy with. He cast a quick glance back to assure himself of the Norseman’s position, being escorted by two SAS guards. Though the old man had been genuinely shocked at Holgate’s betrayal and his secret group’s massacre, he’d still be trying to scheme a way out of this.

They trudged for a while, staying sharp. Drake found his thoughts turning inward. Responsibility for his friends and the team weighed heavy across his shoulders, but no terrorist could ever be allowed to own such a terrible weapon as the one devised by Odin and his equals. To think that the quest for the tombs, the crazy chase after the Blood King, the search for Wells’s secrets, had all led him to this- trekking through the bitingly cold and remote Czech countryside with the dark shadows of mountains far ahead being nothing less than the environs of Transylvania.

The com chirped in his ear. He pressed the chest mic. “Yes?”

“Beyond the wood the ground starts to rise,” a discordant voice reported. “There are dwellings at the top of the hill.”

“The village?”

“If the coordinates are right — yes.”

“They’re right.” Drake thought of Holgate’s terror at the end. “Are the houses tightly packed together?”

“Yup. And the village appears to be deserted.”

“Good. Wait for us.”

The view from the outskirts of the wood struck Drake with a sense of lost hope and desolation. Yellowed, dead grass carpeted the minor hill. Around its potholed summit stood haphazard structures, dilapidated and ruined, with chunks missing from their walls as if a great Transylvanian monster had rampaged through, destroying everything in sight.

And it had, of course. The civilians — the women, the children — were long gone to some unknown fate. The evil men who had wiped out their town had left their mark and simply moved on to the next without even a look back. Men like these would never show remorse.

Drake thought about the kind of men now gathering beyond the rise. Fanatics yes, but worse than that — well-organized fanatics with deep pockets. He clicked his mic. “Move out.”

The team moved, at first like a newly made machine that needed oiling and grinding into shape, but these men were the ultimate professionals, and immediately began to adjust to each other. The lead SAS team topped the rise first. Drake saw one of them suddenly lash out, and as he ventured higher saw a lone terrorist fall, his neck broken. The team melted between the buildings. Drake, Mai, Alicia, Dahl and the two CIA agents made up the middle group with the civilians — Ben, Karin, Gates and Belmonte bringing up the rear, now with Komodo and a two-man Delta team as guards.

Drake reached the grassy summit and pressed himself hard against a cold, concrete wall. Its edges were sharp where a grenade had blasted it, its surface pockmarked where bullets had raked it many years before. Whilst he paused, he listened. The sound of men came from somewhere ahead, not near, but conversation and laughter buzzed along with the trembling wind.

Mai tapped his shoulder. “Up.” She knotted her hands. Drake used them as a step and waited for her boost. When it came, he propelled his body up and over the edge of the flat roof, landing horizontal and staying absolutely still for a minute. The same thing was happening on houses to left and right and in front. Tiny bits of grit and sharp gravel cut into his hands and scraped a low but harsh protest as he crept cautiously forward, head so low his nose was less than an inch from being cut to ribbons.

He reached the edge of the roof, facing west, and raised his head cautiously above the concrete lip. Immediately below he saw another SAS trooper take out a second wandering guard. The terrorists’ perimeter was thin here, but it wouldn’t be long before someone made a noise that carried too far.

Ahead, beyond the houses, the ground sloped down to what would have been the center of the village. A paved plaza had been built there, once a meeting place for the villagers, now a market square for extremists. Drake took time to raise a pair of compact Steiner Rangefinder binoculars and not only study their gathered enemy, but also to use the inbuilt laser to accurately distance the various elements he could see.

Several knots of men stood in conversation or wandered around the square. They seemed to be milling around a dozen different spheres of interest. Drake refocused and, between bodies, recognized some stacked crates that bore the imprint DBA Kinetics and another that read, simply Kord.

They were high-end machine gun companies. Countless crates stuffed to the hilt. Enough weaponry to start and finish a small war.

A small adjustment and he was looking at a consignment of Vektor Grenade Launchers. Still another and there was a huge fuss around a pile of anti-aircraft missiles. Each stall was numbered. Drake let the binoculars drift a bit, taking in the view beyond the plaza. The ground sloped away towards the flat plains. A wide, tarmacked road cut an ugly path down to the terrorists’ staging area.

Here, Drake saw numerous choppers under heavy guard, several trucks and large drums of what he thought might be oil. Other vehicles — some high-end cars, a military Humvee. And a sizeable tent, more than likely the auction area.

He saw no sign of the eight pieces of Odin. Surely, they had to be in the tent. But, truth be told, he didn’t know. And the large mass of men assembled down that slope and among the choppers beyond daunted even him.

Several rows of large containers lined the summit to his right, just where the houses ended. Since the terrorists couldn’t have brought the containers with them, he deduced that they must have something to do with the old village, or with whoever moved in afterward and then vanished.

Slowly, he shuffled back and slid down to the ground. Dahl, Hayden and Sam came up to him. “Not good,” Hayden reported, her voice higher than usual probably due to the painkillers. “The plaza is not heavily guarded, but the way beyond — that’s just batshit crazy.”

“More than a hundred,” Dahl agreed. “And surprisingly sensible. It’s their escape route and the site of the auction. The leaders will be conducting their deals in private on the plaza. Nobody wants a talkative guard eavesdropping on their dealings now, do they?”

Sam looked worried. “Matt, even our team would have trouble getting near that tent.”

“Let’s look at it another way.” Drake shrugged. “The bastards will be over-confident, smug and proud, as terrorist leaders often are. That’s our advantage.”

“It may be,” Dahl said. “But none of that helps us sneak past over a hundred well-placed guards.”

Drake met the Swede’s eyes. “Who said anything about sneaking?”

It was a moment before Dahl caught on. “Fucking hell, you’ve got massive balls, mate, I’ll give you that.”

“Scarily big,” Drake agreed.

“Wait, hoaloha.” Kinimaka forgot himself in his surprise. “You mean to attack them. Them?” He waved a hand in the tent’s general direction.

“Not strictly attack,” Drake said gently. “More like storm.”

“Are you tripping cos you’re not getting your daily diet of fish and chips or something?” Kinimaka blustered. “We can’t—”

Hayden moved close to Kinimaka and stopped him with a tender hand placed on the shoulder. The Hawaiian almost jumped out of his skin and turned, wide-eyed, to stare at his boss.

“It’s alright, Mano,” she said quietly. “You should listen to him. He’s our leader.”

Drake squatted with his back to the wall and looked up, immensely moved to see all the people who he regarded as his “team” gathered round at this last moment. Mai and Alicia sat beside him. Hayden and Kinimaka dropped to their knees to listen. Ben and Karin and the haunted Belmonte had crept to his other side. Komodo — the soldier who had gamely chased down the Blood King with him — sat with Karin. Jonathan Gates stood behind Komodo, grim determination radiating from posture, his face and his eyes.

And Torsten Dahl, the mad Swede, gazed at him with something like utter respect, love and unreserved faith, a hard-earned quality in any man of combat, let alone one as capable as Dahl.

Drake held up an imaginary glass. “We could go home this minute,” he said. “The terrorists won’t care. The world would never know. Or we could hang around and not back down. Raise a glass to freedom and stuff our way of life down these bastard’s throats. We’ve stuck it out this far together…”

Drake met every eye, every concerned flicker. “When our dreams die…” He pictured Alyson and Kennedy, but most of all he saw the person he had most wanted to know, but had never known. The person who had lived but never known life — his unborn baby, Emily. “We want to die. Or drink. We realize there are worse things than hell. But I’m still here — and I’m around to tell you this — the last few months have more than hurt us, they’ve kicked us hard in the bollocks, but they brought us here. Together. Right now, with that doomsday weapon less than a mile away.” He stood up, hefting his rifle. “So let’s go show these terrorist clowns what the term balls to the wall really means.”