Weapons of the Gods

CHAPTER NINE

“Am I the only one wondering why this guy’s here?” Drake asked.

“Deserters end up all over the world,” Alicia responded. “And so do war heroes that can’t cope.”

“Two opposite ends of the spectrum right there,” Drake said.

“Don’t judge anyone, Drake,” Mai said. “You should know that, my friend. Smile and accept how people are, even if you don’t like it, because there could be a pain lying behind their eyes that you could never imagine.”

Drake inclined his head, acknowledging the small reprimand. In truth, this situation was different, but many people kept their own demons barely leashed and there were far worse things than being shot at.

“Not happy,” he said grumpily.

“Well, that’s because Dahl chose you to be the decoy.”

“Yeah, and why’s that? I think he’s been secretly scoffing down on the sausage sarnies.”

Alicia glared. “Don’t be mean. If Dahl’s comfort eating it’s because of that Kenzie bitch.”

“You two still not getting along?” Mai asked sweetly. “Funny that you see every other female as a challenge, Taz.”

“Not you, Little Sprite. You’re less of a challenge, more of an experiment.”

Mai stiffened, fists clenching. Drake got between them. “Stop it,” he said. “Get used to our situation being awkward, and move on. And besides, I’m more worried about being in the middle of you two than I am being a decoy.”

“Good to hear that,” Dahl said over the comms. “Because it’s time to go.”

Drake stared at the women, then shook his head. “Bloody comms.”

Alicia looked like she didn’t care, and Mai was already getting down to business. The trio waited inside the hide, waiting for the moment to leave. It came quick, with Dahl and Luther peppering the valley rim with bullets. Drake raced out and to the right, head down and keeping his center of gravity low. The sniper only had time to squeeze one wild shot off, the bullet flashing past Drake’s left, before Molokai and Kinimaka opened fire from elsewhere, using the cache they had found in the hidden cave.

Bullets snarled up the hillside near where the sniper lay, huge gouts of grass and clods of dirt erupting several feet into the air. Drake gained the far slope and raced upward, leaping from mound to mound. Molokai and Luther kept firing and then Hayden’s voice barked loudly in their ears.

“Out of the cave! Out of the hide! Get away now.”

It was expected. They couldn’t be sure that the sniper hadn’t booby-trapped his belongings, so they played it safe and got clear. They hauled ass around the valley rim, heading for Drake. The Yorkshireman gained the top of the slope, finding level ground — the sniper could be anywhere from thirty steps ahead of him to a hundred. So far, he had seen nothing.

Tricky.

Alicia and Mai jumped out of the hide and made their way to the valley floor, one spotting and the other firing. They were Drake’s best hope of staying alive.

He continued at speed, handgun drawn in case he needed to adjust quickly. From left to right, the terrain looked the same. It was a surprise then when the flat earth itself shifted ten meters in front of him, and he understood what he had to do.

Dug himself a hide, and then a small tunnel to the edge of the valley from where he sees all. Ingenious.

It would be the man’s downfall. And this was no capture mission. They didn’t have the time; other weapons were out there and the murdered souls of the Enlargo sure as hell wouldn’t mind. Drake plucked two grenades from his webbing and launched them into the air.

“Heads up,” he told the team and rolled to the ground.

Two explosions and a large displacement of earth followed. Drake saw a figure caught in the wave of soil that spilled down the slope. He was on his feet before the upwelling had even reached its zenith, racing toward the valley rim, showered by falling dirt. Others stood at the edge and in the lee of the valley. Alicia and Mai dashed toward the explosion.

Drake scrambled down. Upturned earth lay everywhere, in piles and in pouring rivulets. A figure was struggling amongst it, a figure covered in earth and wearing camo fatigues. Drake grabbed him, spied his weapon, and threw it aside before hauling the man upright.

A fist connected with his nose, staggering him. He hadn’t expected a man who’d just been blown up and fallen over five meters to be quite so spry. He brandished his handgun but the man ignored it, too far gone to care. Drake saw only the whites of his eyes as he leapt, but heard the report of Alicia’s gun. The bullet struck the man in the ribs, sending him to the ground. Drake took aim between the eyes.

“Stay down, pal. You have any friends out there?”

A heavy wheeze was all he got in return. Everything pointed to this man being a loner, though — from the single size and style of clothes, the utensils and old photographs they had found in the cave to the solitary weapon that had been firing at them. Alicia and Mai arrived and stared down at him.

“What’s your name?” the Englishwoman asked.

Mai bent down and held her hand over the bullet wound, trying to staunch the flow. Her face betrayed the knowledge in her brain. When Hayden and the others ran up she shook her head.

“I… I am…” The sniper seemed to be trying to make an effort to sit up.

“What is it?” Mai supported him with her body.

“George… Mclean…” he said, in pain. “SBS. I’m glad you came.”

Drake felt surprise. “How the hell did you end up here?”

But Mclean was fading. Mai held him as life drained from his body but he did manage a few more words. “The things I saw… I had to get away. It… changed me. No help. Sailed here… and stayed.”

The body slumped; Mai let him fall to the floor. The team stared at him and away from him, thinking of all the crimes of war and the sins of the war makers. It was hard to feel sorry for a killer, but maybe they could feel sorry for the man he’d been before being ordered to a distant battlefield.

“Let’s go,” Hayden said. “Back to the chopper.”

“What about the bodies?” Mai asked, meaning the Enlargo crew.

“We’ll call it in, of course,” Hayden said. “But right now, we have to get the key back to Cambridge.”

The network they had set up involved a hand-picked SAS team and several contacts placed around the world. SPEAR would hand off the artifact to the SAS who would then dispatch one man to place it in the hands of a facilitator, someone with the resources to get it sent back to the UK, where Cambridge would store it at a secret location. The network were very hands on — and known to each other, friends from way back. As Cambridge said — a small net of trusted individuals, some relationships stretching back to school years, was the most appropriate and beneficial thing he could offer them.

The pilot fired up the helicopter as the team climbed aboard. Drake saw the stress carved into everyone’s face. Yes, they had taken the prize today but were left with conflicting emotions around what they had seen and heard. As the chopper took flight and the island began to recede, Luther walked over to his pack and pulled out a bottle of rum.

“I think we all need this.”

As they headed for the rendezvous with the SAS team, Hayden sought to distract her colleagues with talk of the weapons of the gods, and what, if any, significance they might have. She pulled out the Key of Hades and turned it around and around in her hands.

“You know what gets me?” Alicia said briefly. “Clearly, that thing is a key and fashioned to fit into something. I mean, what could it be?”

“Something Hades wanted to keep private,” Kenzie said. “Unlike you and your feelings.”

Yorgi jumped in before Alicia could react. “An incredibly complex key. I doubt even I could pick the lock it fits.”

“I could,” Molokai said, holding up a grenade. “My ugly friend here never fails.”

Luther’s mysterious brother rose then and slipped off his great coat. Drake couldn’t help but stare, not having seen the man so relaxed before. The coat rattled, presumably with weapons, and emitted constant puffs of dust. Molokai threw it into a corner. Underneath he wore a flak jacket over a camo jacket, the webbing stuffed with armaments and survival gear of all kinds. When he unwrapped the scarves that covered his face, Drake let his eyes drift away.

“Leprosy is treatable,” Molokai said to the whole team. “A multi-drug therapy is used. I’m lucky because the disease was spotted early and treated quickly. But I still have some lesions, sores.”

Drake understood the man’s words would probably be a one-time offer to the team. Just something to assuage the naturally curious. The right side of Molokai’s face was a mass of small bumps that gave the skin a scaly appearance, stretching from his jawline to the ridge of his eyebrow. There was no terrible disfiguration, no misshapen mass. Molokai folded the scarf carefully and patted it as he put it down. Another pall of dust billowed into the air.

“We really need to put you through a washer dryer,” Alicia commented. “All of you.”

“I am just a man,” Molokai said quietly. “In case you were wondering.”

Drake guessed he was referring to the air of mysteriousness he kept active around him and, truthfully, he did wonder about the man’s story. Perhaps another day.

Hayden was holding the key aloft. “Our second weapon,” she said. “But we can’t simply expect to find more. Tragedy aside, this job was easy and took way too long. There are five more weapons left.”

“Do we know what and where?” Dahl asked as he meticulously checked his weapons.

“There’s the Dagger of Nemesis and the Chain of Aphrodite. The Waters of Neptune and the Flail of Anubis. And the Forge of Vulcan. Whitehall — the place in London where the DSF is housed and from where they run all the Special Forces teams — are using worldwide contacts to track the weapons twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Our advantage here is pretty good — as we know all the weapons were stolen at some point, and that’s how they survived the destruction of the tombs.”

“And a shame none of the gods were stolen,” Luther said. “I’d have enjoyed comparing bone structure.” He flexed trunk-like arm muscles.

“Actually.” Dahl raised a finger. “One of the gods was stolen. The skeleton of Kali. Remember? Kali was the goddess of death. A man named Russell Cayman became obsessed with her. He stole her skeleton and has never been heard from since.”

“That’s messed up,” Molokai said. “Truly. You couldn’t write this stuff.”

“No, that’s interesting,” Luther admitted. “I’d track that lunatic down.”

“Yeah, me too.” Molokai nodded. “Just for the pre-battle chitchat.”

Drake listened as Molokai rattled off more words than he’d spoken since they met. It didn’t last long, both of them lapsing into brooding silence as quickly as they’d spoken up. Hayden continued with her description of Whitehall’s search for the weapons.

“Nothing they’re doing is transparent,” she said. “It has to be subterfuge under subterfuge, which is why it’s taking so long. Tempest have moles everywhere, and definitely some in the British government, maybe in MI5 or even the DSF. Only Cambridge and Bennett know the real objectives.”

Hayden received a text then, looked surprised and spent a few minutes digesting it. Drake guessed it was something acute by the narrowed eyes and the depth of severity on her face. It was into an expectant silence that she spoke.

“I just received a message from Kimberly Crowe who finally heard from Lauren. It seems… ah, it seems Nightshade was instrumental in engineering the theft of General Gleeson’s personal computer. Lauren is fine, and the computer yielded at least one thing. We have the location of Tempest’s secret chamber meeting place. Lauren will now try to get close to President Coburn with the information.”

“Nightshade?” Luther asked.

“Never mind,” Smyth said.

“That really ups the ante,” Drake said. “It’s also another clear shout to get moving.”

“My thoughts too,” Hayden said.

“What did you have in mind?” Luther asked.

“Split the team,” Hayden said. “Who’s with me and who’s with Drake?”

Long moments of banter passed in which Alicia waited for Mai to decide and Kenzie waited for Dahl to choose. Smyth asked about Lauren, but Hayden could literally give him nothing.

“She’s okay,” the ex-CIA agent repeated. “Just hang on to that.”

It was several moments later that Drake voiced the obvious. “All this seems a bit premature, don’t we have two objects to find?”

“It does,” Hayden said. “And we do. Whitehall identified two weapons at the same time by tracking the chain of criminality. One in the States and the other in Greece. Say your goodbyes, people, ’cause we’re gonna be hitting the ground running.”

“And fighting,” Mai said.

“Yeah, and that,” Hayden said. “Tempest will be all over this too.”