Matt Drake 07 - Blood Vengeance (8 page)

C
ould a person dodge more than one bullet? More significantly, could a person raised and trained as a Ninja dodge more than one bullet?

Mai
Kitano employed lightning reactions, moving before her would-be killer even had a pound of pressure on the trigger. She could afford that small luxury. She knew exactly where he was aiming. She flung Chika to the ground and used the momentum of her throw to roll into a handstand and spin away. The gun boomed and the bullet flew between her flying heels. She landed in cat stance and sprung even as he realigned his aim, using the trunk of a wide tree for her next point of cover, but knowing she could not stay there for fear of the man turning his aim toward Chika. She paused for a heartbeat, allowing her inner calm and breathing to take over and speed up her reactions.

Mai
knew she needed to be seen as the main threat. A second bullet slammed into the tree. Mai realized she was out of time. Chika was alone and totally exposed out here. Mai quickly stepped into view, ready to try her luck, prepared to take a bullet and still fight on to reach the shooter, already fine-tuning the zigzag run that would best preserve her life, when a white cop car shot past her vision and screeched as it swung broadside at the man with the gun.

The killer whirled, eyes wide, but it was too late. One minute the
smug victor, the next the victim of a crushing incident, he lay across the hood of the car, held in place only because the vehicles were so close together. The gun slipped from between his fingers and clattered noisily to the road.

Mai stared as Dai Hibiki jumped out and beckon
ed both her and Chika over. “Hurry. You don’t have much time.” His gaze was turned up toward Chika’s window.

Mai stopped right in front of him.
“How the hell did you get here so quick?”

Hibiki smiled at Chika. “
When you called I was already on my way here.”

Matt Drake
assessed the hell, the horror and the stunned confusion that held sway over the center of Washington DC and clamped a hand on Dahl’s shoulder.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“We have to get this right.
Open your friggin’ eyes. Not one man out here knows what he’s bloody doing.”

Dahl stopped
, taking in the various scenes playing out around them. Dead ahead, people staggered out of the brightly lit front entrance of the Hotel Dillion amidst the sounds of gunfire. From the left, the two Secret Service agents were sprinting hard
toward
the hotel, shouting at a bunch of cops to follow them. The cops looked bewildered, their attention divided between the snarled-up traffic, the hordes of angry pedestrians, the scene of Gates’ murder and the frantic Secret Service agents. In the midst of all this mayhem, it had to have crossed every cop’s mind that even the agents might not be who they appeared to be. And to the right, the wide street stretched into a nightmare vision of floodlit chaos, the road snarled and jammed up, hordes of men and women thronging every available space, all the way to the White House.

“Jesus Christ,” Dahl breathed, standing still for a minute.
“This is just crazy. It’s like . . . the end of the world.”

Men
, women and officials rushed all around them. Strident, purposeless cries cut the air, nothing more than blunt knives. Sirens squalled like errant gusts of wind. And the aimless and the shocked stood all around, dumbfounded, staring at nothing.

Drake ignored it, and tried to contact
Hayden again. When he got no answer he decided to try Karin. The phone rang twice before it was picked up.

“Matt? Thank
God, are you okay?”

Drake let out a long breath.
There was no way to steal himself for this next conversation. And as badly as he wanted to know what was happening at their end, he knew he had to tell her everything he knew first.

“Karin
—”

“The whole fucking world
’s gone crazy, Matt. Romero’s dead. Hayden’s dying. We’re in hiding. And I can’t get hold of Ben, or Mum and Dad. Why can’t I get hold of them?”

Drake felt the cent
er of his very being wobble.
Romero? And . . . and Hayden?
He wanted to speak, but found his tongue just wouldn’t work. All of a sudden the craziness around him didn’t matter anymore.

“Fuck me
,” he said at last, and suddenly found himself sitting down right there in the midst of the mayhem on the city street.

Lost.

“Matt? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so blunt. I’m so glad you’re okay. How are the others?”

Drake ignored the
half-hysterical flurry of questions. “It’s bad news, Karin,” he said with heavy emotion. “Ben and your Mum and Dad . . . they’re gone. They were killed.” The last word came out so thick with grief Drake started to cough.

Karin screamed at him. She cried and denied him until her voice drifted away and another came on the phone.

“Drake. This is Smyth. Komodo, Karin and Kinimaka are incommunicado right now. You need to get over here, bud. We could do with you and that crazy Swede about now.”

Drake nodded to himself. “What happened?”

“Fuckers hit the HQ hard, man. Didn’t give us a chance. Must’ve been watching it for weeks. We’re lucky any of us got outta there alive.”

“And Hayden?
Romero?”

Smyth drew a breath.
“They got hit,” he said irritably. “It happens.”

Drake relayed the news to Dahl as the Swede squatted next to him. “Where are you, Smyth?”

“Gray’s Military Hospital. I haven’t the slightest idea where it is. It’s pretty well guarded and they’re working on Hayden right now. Got a bad feeling though, Drake, like . . . safe ain’t safe anymore. Something don’t feel right, you know?”

Drake did. If the Blood King
’s men could find the SPEAR team’s HQ, he felt they sure as hell could track them to a hospital, military or not.

“We
’re on our way.” He was about to end the conversation when the phone bleeped to warn him of another incoming call. Drake checked the caller ID and was shocked to see the bat phone symbol flashing, the one he had assigned to Jonathan Gates’ most secure emergency line. It had never rung before.

His mouth dropped open yet again. “Smyth. Wait. Just wait.”

Quickly, he flipped over to the new line, answering, “Yes? This is Matt Drake.”

An official
-sounding voice spoke in hard impassive tones. “We’re calling all active agents from every agency together right now to attend a crisis meeting at the Hotel Lewison Park, Conference Room 1B.”

Drake noted Dahl answering the same call. “What
’s this about?”

“Go there now. The VP will address you.”

“Now? I—”

The connection broke. Drake stared at the phone.
VP?
he thought.
As in Vice President?
His phone had a tracker, so they would know he was close by the Lewison. For a second, he just stared at Dahl.

“Can Kovalenko really do all this?”

“I don’t know.” Dahl pointed out the Lewison, not a hundred yards away. “But that’s one call we can’t ignore.”

Drake explained the
situation to Smyth and told him they would be in touch as soon as they were able. “What happened to the President?” Smyth asked.

“I don
’t know,” Drake said. “But I think we’re about to find out.”

Mano Kinimaka
sat down heavily in the plastic seat, aware but not caring that its legs were splayed dangerously close to collapse. Before him, Hayden struggled to turn her head on the pillow, her pasty white face scrunched up in pain. The hospital had done a good job of patching her up, but the bullet had taken a heavy toll on her strength.

Kinimaka wiped his eyes.

Slowly, Hayden’s lips moved. Kinimaka caught a whisper. “What is it, Mano?”

The big Hawaiian
stared at the far wall. “My mom,” he said in a voice that sounded like he had a mouthful of knives. “Kovalenko got to her.”

Even in her critical state, Hayden struggled to sit up. Her gasp of pain alerted Kinimaka and dra
gged him back from the brink of shock. “Stop.” He moved over to sit on the bed and leaned over, feeling the entire apparatus shift and hugged her hard. “Stop, Hayden.”

“Is she
. . . ?” The feathery whisper was like a dream voice in his ear.

“Okay?” He spoke into the bed cover, his voice muffled. “No. They murdered her. Th
at bastard murdered my mom.”

Hayden kissed him softly. Kinimaka felt tears flood his eyes and shook his head. “It ain
’t worth it. All this shit we put ourselves through? It just ain’t worth it anymore.”

“I know.
And with Jonathan gone, what will we do?”

Kinimaka turned his head so he could look into his girlfriend
’s eyes. The sparks that had twinkled there, glittering by-products of an energetic vivacious heart, were now dulled almost to obscurity. The pallor of her skin spoke of her nearness to death. But she wouldn’t give in. Still, she fought.

Kinimaka steeled himself, using her
strength to rally his own resilience and courage. “You are my mentor,” he said. “And my idol. You always will be, Hayden Jaye.”

Her attempt at a smile broke his heart again. When the phone rang he slammed it to his ear without once breaking their eye contact.

“Yes?”

“Mano.
This is Agent Collins, your CIA liaison for LA. It’s about your sister, Kono. You just rang to check on her?”

Kinimaka
could barely bring himself to speak. “Yes.”

“She
’s fine and under close guard. Without going into too much detail, Mano, we got there just in time.”

“Thank
. . . you,” he managed, “Agent Collins.”

“Don
’t thank me,” she said. “It was your call that prompted the op. Thank yourself.” The agent hung up; tough, strict and to the point.

Hayden brushed his hair with a shaking hand. “She
’s okay?”

“Yeah.
She’s fine.”

“Thank God.”

Kinimaka looked up, then around the room; for the first time noticing the lack of security, the open undraped windows, the well-lit office blocks that surrounded the hospital, the tree-lined entry road.

“God ain
’t here for us today,” he said, standing up. “We’re going to have to look after ourselves.”

The Blood King
poured himself a precise shot of vodka, expecting very little from the relatively famous French brand and receiving exactly that. He tipped the shot back in one go, the way his Russian fathers and forefathers had always done. He yelled out a toast, as was his ritual.

“To freedom,” he said, speaking to Gabriel and the other mercenaries about the room. “Let us hope it tastes better than this fuckin
’ vodka, dah?”

The men saluted. The Blood King chased the shot with a salty pickle, obtained from the in-room mini bar.
“Gods,” he said, spitting the bits out. “I have tasted better prison food.” He stared at the quiet occupant in the room. “How about you? What exactly is your poison, Mr. President?”

Coburn eyed Kovalenko with disdain. “You won
’t get away with this.”

“I won
’t? But I already have, Mr. Pres. I already have.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“Ah, sixty-four million dollar question. But that number is so out of date in modern times, yes? Let’s see, how much did it cost you to become President? Six hundred and sixty four million, perhaps?”

“You
’re crazy, Kovalenko.”

“So they tell me,” the Blood King said wryly.
“Too many years at sea playing the salty dog. Same as Blackbeard, yes?”

“So you still think you
’re a pirate? You won’t be able to disappear this time, Kovalenko.”

The Blood King poured a second shot,
contemplating the President’s words and weighing them against the recent pleasurable scene he’d witnessed in the hotel’s lobby when his men had decimated Coburn’s Secret Service detail. This was something new for him, weighing someone else’s opinion against his own. After so many years of fulfillment without consequence it was actually a breath of fresh air. But he had discovered the ability in prison whilst recruiting Mordant and Gabriel to the cause, and had found, to his surprise, that other people had clever ideas too.

But the Americans were weak
at their heart and unimaginative. They had allowed a covert enemy force to plant an operative deep inside their capital city’s Department of Transport—to the point where he been able to pull off a one-time infiltration of their secretive hi-tech VIP traffic control system.

All lights
green,
was the maxim, meaning ‘clear the way for the particular dignitary’, but not this time. On this occasion, the saying had become an absolute—all lights, all roads.

And there was
still something
far
better to come.

Kovalenko thr
ew back the shot, toasting under his breath, this time to his lieutenants and the men they had selected. The Secret Service agents had ordered the lobby to be evacuated, but had been understandably uneasy, and when armed men had stepped forward from several different parts of the room two of them had choked, others had died instantly, three had thrown themselves at the President, and the rest had simply started blasting away.

No mind,
Kovalenko thought. It didn’t matter. They had all died. Coburn was unharmed, and even that hadn’t been a prerequisite of the op. The Blood King had shot several wounded men in the head, satisfying his blood lust for that part of the day. At last, life felt right again, almost worth living.

“What
do
you want?” Coburn said again, interrupting his reverie.

“What do you get man who has everything?” Kovalenko said in his thick Russian accent.
“A president?” He chuckled. “Heads of men who have betrayed him? Imprisoned him? Well, that will do to start.”

“You
’re still pursuing this damn vendetta? So that’s why you killed Jonathan. We should have ended you when we had the chance.”

Kovalenko looked a little surprised. “
I see you are a fighter, not a whiner, yes? Well, it is good. I would hate to have to cut out your tongue so soon.”

Gabriel caught his attention. “Dis ting is ready,
mon. You want it over dere?”

The Blood King grinned and moved
over to sit by the President. From his waistband, he produced two huge guns and set them down on the table. The suite was situated on a high floor, prepped weeks ago before being cleared out for the inevitable Secret Service sweep. It was perfect for their needs, and just one of many rooms their enemies might figure they were occupying.

Gabriel
positioned a large-screen laptop on the table before him. The Motion Eye—its webcam—was already activated.

“Will this stream live?”

“When y’ push de button.” Gabriel indicated the enter key. “You will broadcast to YouTube, and after that Hulu, UStream, Blinkx and a hundred others. De right channels have been informed dat a broadcast be imminent.”

“They will not try to shut it down?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Unlikely. Dey need dis information. Dey might try to censor it. Gag us. But the American news channels, dey are bold, mon. Dey will sink dere claws in. Dey will get dere story.” Gabriel smiled widely, making the President’s eyes widen. Kovalenko didn’t blame him. The African was one scary, unhinged, but absolutely brilliant fellow and had shown his proficiency time and time again whilst plotting Coburn’s downfall from prison, through intermediaries to powerful men on the outside.

Men who were just starting to rise in ways of their own.

Kovalenko tossed back one more toast. “To Blood Vendetta.”

Then he hit the enter key and positioned the webcam
’s eye so that only the President and he could be seen. As a broad smile broke out over the Blood King’s face, he calmly and noisily loaded his guns as the nation watched.

He stared into the camera the whole time and spoke only four words. “Come and get me.”