Brothers In Arms (Matt Drake 5) (8 page)

Three guards shoved inside, eyes registering shock at the scene that greeted them, but no real surprise. Drake understood. Doku was a weirdo. But then the guar
ds saw Drake and brought their weapons quickly to bear.

Too late.
Drake crushed the first’s larynx with a palm chop, damaged the second’s eyes with a two-finger strike, and incapacitated the third by head-butting his nose almost through the back of his skull.

Mai landed deftly beside him. “Not bad,
soldier boy. But I could teach you a trick or two. You ready?”

“For what?”

“Me!” She leapt into his arms, screaming hysterically.

Drake got the idea.
With a swiftness born of excitement and determination, he barged his way out the door and into the brightly lit hallway. Mai spun in his arms and kicked the door shut behind them. “That way!”
Drake carried the sobbing girl past a gaggle of guards, threading a path through milling guests and inebriated hangers-on, listening hard as Mai mumbled directions into his chest. It wouldn’t be long before Doku’s men found them and then the game would be up.

Mai screamed a bit too loud. Drake squeezed her hard. “Careful.”

“Ooo, I like that. But, my new friend, we’re here.”

“Oh.” Drake dropped her and faced a solid wooden door. Mai used the key. The lock turned. Within half a second, they were inside. Several banks of monitors greeted them, all with live video feed. Of course, many were hooked up to the private rooms, but just as many scanned the common rooms and the grounds.

Mai produced a matchbook. Drake stared at her, but didn’t dare ask. Her sinful smile said it all. She
picked up a chair and proceeded to smash every screen in sight. Drake followed suit. It wouldn’t completely disable a state-of-the-art security system, but it would incapacitate it long enough for them to escape. Mai exited the room, flicking a match. Drake tried to keep up. The corridor stretched both ways before them, empty for now.

“Do you want me to pick you up again?”

“Maybe later, after we’re clear. But for now stay close.”

She
pulled him along the corridor, past a series of rooms, some with doors flung wide open to show ornate furnishings and fancy four-poster beds. When they reached the windows at the end, Mai pulled up short. “Oh.”

Drake’s heart jolted. “Whaddya mean
—
oh?”

“Plan A and Plan B may have become muddled. We ran the wrong way. This was where we ended up
at the end of Plan B.”

“You mean the
fuck it
part?”

Mai peered through the window. “Yes. The
fuck it
part.”

Drake stepped forward. He saw a
thirty-foot drop straight down to the swimming pool. Mai was staring at him. “The water’s lovely and warm.”

Drake heard shouting in the halls adjacent to them.
It wouldn’t be long. “Plan B,” he said for the first time in his life. It wouldn’t be the last. Mai ran into a nearby room, a streak of tanned limbs and white designer nylon. She returned a moment later with a heavy desk lamp and launched it through the window with all her might.

“We couldn’t just open it then?”

“All locked. No keys. Doku doesn’t afford his guests much freedom.” Mai flicked away the shards and perched barefoot on the wide sill. “It’s been wild, Drake. See you at the bottom.” She paused and ran an eye over his clothes. “You stripping?”

Drake coughed, almost choking. “Bollocks to that.”

Mai laughed and threw herself backward, a free spirit, crazy-good at her job. Drake wondered how anyone so young could be so expert. Did the Japanese train them from birth? Wasn’t that the way they used to train Ninjas? He’d read somewhere that the Ninja clans had all but died out—with only a handful left.

Without
another thought, he climbed onto the sill, recognizing that their escape counted on them remaining unseen, and threw himself out into the warm night. A heartbeat of nerve-wracking tension zipped by and then he crashed feet-first into the churning waters, trusting Mai to give him space, shooting down until his shoes clipped the bottom of the pool and then kicking back up as hard as he could.

He broke the surface spluttering, wiping streaming water from his eyes.
Mai floated easily beside him, laughing. She pointed to the pool ladder and struck off powerfully. Drake pursued her hard, now laughing himself, and followed her up the ladder. Mai took a second to appraise the area and then sprinted for some nearby trees. By the time she stopped, panting, they were lost among the thick trunks and hanging boughs. Fire blazed from the top floor of the mansion they had left.

Mai pulled him along for a few more minutes until they broke free of the trees and emerged near a shallow lake with a smooth, sandy beach.
Moonlight glittered across its flat surface. When Mai’s toes touched the lapping waters, she used a judo throw to set him on his back. He didn’t resist.

She climbed on top of him. “This is one relationship I think should be consummated immediately, Mr. Drake.”

That was his first experience of Mai Kitano.

The caves were dark, musty, full of cobwebs and debris, dirty-smelling and unconnected. Apart from shelter from a storm, they offered the castaways nothing. After a cursory check, Drake and Mai soon realized their time would be best spent elsewhere. They took some time circumventing the mountain from the height of the highest cave, but even up there, at that time of the morning, the hanging mist refused to relinquish its secrets.

“B
astard gets thicker by the day,” Drake said, dubiously. He shielded his eyes, squinting. Mai turned her nose up at him.

“
Whoa, you stink, my friend.”

“Well, thanks. Guess I forgot my Lynx.”

He led the way down the mountain, head still pounding in a turmoil of mixed feelings. He’d become very conscious that Mai had been leading the way since they’d been shot down, much like she had led the way when they first met. He ploughed down the steep mountainside until he reached the foothills and then the forest. Of course, he knew where they were going long before he admitted it to himself. It was a foregone conclusion, had been for some time.

The lake glistened invitingly,
sparkling with promise. Mai regarded him innocently from beneath hooded eyes. “Remember the first time we discovered a lake together?”

“Vividly.”

She unzipped her jacket, the sound loud in the stillness, and shrugged the heavy material off her shoulders. It fell to the ground with a thunk. With her hands above her head, she stripped off her vest. In another minute, she had unbuckled her trousers and stepped out of her underwear.

Mai Kitano stood before him naked. It was a sight he remembered well, a sight he would never forget. He watched as she turned and sauntered into deeper water, at length turning to face him once more.

“You joining me?”

“Fucking right I am.” He rushed into the lake, crashing face forward, not even bothering to take off his clothes.

And when he reached her, it seemed like the past had merged with the present.

Walter Clarke had been traveling for days along what he liked to call his “east coast run.” A grueling schedule to be sure but, when finished, a run that gave him three days straight with his family.

He sat inside his car for a minute, listening to the sound of the hard-worked engine tick
, and watching the sun settling vibrantly across the Vermont skies. Then, closing his heavy, black briefcase and shoving whatever insurance documents spilled out carelessly under the front seat, he cracked open the car door and climbed out.

Cool, fresh air greete
d him. Walter breathed deeply. Time for some wonderful downtime with the kids. He hadn’t had this much free time since he’d stayed—

The light footfall startled him. He spun, expecting a playful
neighbor or his buddy Chris to be sneaking up behind. But the sight that greeted him made him think he’d inadvertently stumbled onto the set of
The Walking Dead.

A tall, spare man stood six feet away. Walter gasped. The man’s eyes gave him a
thousand-yard stare; his movements were robotic, but the big handgun never wavered. Walter stared down the wide, cruel barrel and wondered what he’d ever done wrong.

“You’ve got the wrong
—” he started to say, but the weapon boomed and Walter Clarke knew no more.

Lights went on in houses close by. Curtains twitched.

The residents who dared to peek out forever wished they hadn’t. They were front-row witnesses as the zombie-like shooter took his own gun, placed it over his heart, and pulled the trigger.

*****

Hayden rubbed tired eyes, increasingly frustrated by the lack of anything concrete in this case. Both she and Kinimaka were starting to wonder if Senator Turner’s attempted assassination had indeed been the random act of some nutjob. But other elements of the case didn’t add up. Chiefly, Dai Hibiki’s forewarning. Drake’s unofficial shooting down. The perp’s demeanor. An autopsy had found no chemicals in his body, no puncture marks in his flesh, no signs of foul play.

A mystery.
Much like another mystery they had all contemplated frequently over the last few weeks—why the hell had Russell Cayman removed Kali’s bones from the third tomb of the gods in Germany? Despite a huge effort, the man and the bones were nowhere to be found. But he’d resurface, they all agreed. He’d resurface with a plan.

Hayden sat down, momentarily stumped. She was just about to announce her intention to take a couple of hours off when
all hell broke loose. Ben squawked and Karin hit her desk hard. “Red flag,” she cried. “Putting it up on the monitor.”

Hayden stared as a police report flashed up on screen.
A man in Vermont has been shot dead about an hour ago.
Nothing unusual there
, she thought. But what did raise the hairs on the back of her neck was the description of the shooter. The same MO, the same appearance, the same outcome. If Hayden hadn’t recently seen Michael Markel lying on a slab, she’d have thought he might have reanimated and done the deed himself.

Fire shot through her nerves. “Mano. Alicia.
Dahl. Take a look at this. Looks like it’s about to kick off big time.”

The mist lifted on the sixth day.

Drake and Mai, Romero and Smyth, immediately hotfooted it to the mountain and scrambled as high as relative safety allowed.
The rockface was crumbled and shale-strewn, but offered several sturdy ledges to use as viewing platforms. They each took a side.

When Drake
stopped, he took a deep breath and then stared hard out to sea. He saw something that almost made him stumble and fall off the mountain. Vestiges of a hanging fog bank still clouded the view but there was no doubt about what he was seeing.

“Here!”
he shouted. “And hurry the fuck up!”
Within minutes, they joined him, panting and looking expectant.

There, a few miles distant, stood a second island
. This one clearly larger, but still hard to make out. But it wasn’t the island especially that made them all gawp.

It
was the large warship docking in its natural harbor.

Drake watched intently.
The warship wasn’t all that big compared to, say, an American aircraft carrier or
Arleigh Burke
-class destroyer, but it looked capable nonetheless. And without being up to scratch on his languages, it was also pretty clear that the long red banner with the glyph-like white characters stretched across its rails, and the hanging red and blue flag with the red star, that this baby hailed from Korea—of the northern variety.

Romero whistled. “Now there’
s a fly in the ointment.”

Mai pursed her lips. “Not really. That’s the island we were aiming for initially.” She smiled. “The mission
’s far from over, my friends. Hibiki is on that island along with everything he spoke about.”

“And now we have a ride.” Drake eyed the warship.

Smyth grunted angrily. “We have to get there first. And then overpower a shitload of the little bastards. Not quite that easy, SAS.”

Mai shook her head. “For you, maybe. Now, get your gear and pack up whatever food and water we have.
Hide the Zodiacs. We should do this before our strength gives out. We should do this now.”

“And when we get there?” Smyth grumbled.

“That’s when the fun starts.” Drake winked and started to make his way down the mountain. “It’s a long way home, guys. Time to stop tossing it off and get hustling.”

Hayden stepped out of the new HQ for a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, she stepped straight into the path of Sarah Moxley, pain-in-the-ass news reporter extraordinaire.