Matt Drake 11 - The Ghost Ships of Arizona (24 page)

Beyond the ledge the choppers flew and fired hard, loosing as much firepower as possible before the storm came in and forced them to the ground. Drake guessed they were clearing an area on this side of the valley to land. A bullet flashed past his right shoulder. Perfect aim in the midst of real battle was impossible, but that went both ways. He fired back and succeeded only in making his opponent flinch. They came together hard, both men flexing muscles and slamming foreheads, locking together and rolling to the ground, sand erupting all around them. The team ran hard, skirmishing among the dunes, falling down shallow valleys and then scrambling back to the top. Dips and mounds characterized the ground between them and the valley’s rim. A crazy merc let loose an RPG in their direction. The rocket flew between Dahl and Kinimaka, its vapor trail singeing their clothing. Dahl laughed but Kinimaka blanched.

“Come on, man,” Dahl said. “That wasn’t even close.”

“Too close for me. Men weren’t meant to ride rockets.”

“Not even you?”

“Especially not me.”

Dahl bounded up to the individual, separated him from his rocket launcher and then slapped him across the face with one of its grenades. A satisfying crunch signified that the threat was ended. Dahl knew this battle covered too small an area to make RPGs effective so hurled a remaining grenade at his next opponent, causing as much shock as pain. When two more mercs came at him he swung the rocket launcher like a baseball bat at both of them, cracking heads.

Smyth had taken a bullet to the vest, nothing major. Yorgi helped to cover for him until he could focus again. Hayden saw it all, ranging around the periphery. She saw the overall battle—Drake, Alicia, Dahl and Kinimaka cutting through their quarry like a wedge; Smyth and Yorgi picking off stragglers and back-stabbing cowards; the Blackhawks pounding shell after shell into the sand like five hammers of God; the storm now looming only a mile away and growing bigger and bigger, a tornado of sand and debris, stealing the light from the sky like an irresistible thief. The sound of its coming was starting to overpower even the clatter made by the choppers. To her right ran the crumbling ridge and below it the trapped galleon. Mercs even stood atop the wooden deck, firing, probably guessing correctly they would not be fired upon.

Drake used Alicia’s bent back to gain momentum for a flying kick, dislocating a merc’s jaw. The man collapsed. A boot to the back of the neck ensured he would stay that way. Dahl stumbled down one side of a dune—almost comically at first—but then Drake topped the same rise and saw half a dozen mercs waiting below. Calling Alicia he dived after Dahl, backing up the Swede and crashing into their enemies all at the same time. The tangle fooled him for a split-second—he ended up grabbing Alicia’s thigh to the sight of a highly arched eyebrow, then thrust it away and punched a merc right on the nose.

“Get down.”

They rolled, they snared other arms and legs. Bullets flew through short spaces. Alicia grunted as one took her in the gut. Its firer jumped on her, expecting an easy finish, but was amazed to find his teeth showering down onto the sand, and then his face planted in the desert up to his ears like a new conifer. Alicia hadn’t let the bullet slow her down.

Dahl kicked and Drake fought. With their adversaries finished they tramped back up the slope. Darkness, it seemed, had fallen.

“Shit, this is gonna be bad.”

Drake’s words were lost as the storm hit. In truth, it didn’t fall fully dark. The whirling sand was shot through regularly by patches of sunlight, and the heavy breeze blew it all away. Around them, the general area was still visible. Together they struggled toward the valley’s edge.

Hayden watched the choppers come down. Four drifted over the valley with its incredible trapped galleon, firing as they came, soldiers crowded at the doors, preparing rappel lines. Mercs lined up at the valley edge and fired back, bullets flashing and clanging off black metalwork and bulletproof cockpits. Bullets then tore among them - their bodies tumbling down the side of the valley, some smashing into the ship’s deck. Sand and blood pursued them in steady streams, some flows staining the whole side of the valley.

All four choppers cleared the mercs and spun to set down in an area at their backs just as the storm swept in. The fifth chopper dived to avoid a missile but not fast enough. The grenade detonated on impact, fire bloomed around the fuselage, and the entire craft bucked. Men leapt free, hitting the sand and rolling. One soldier slipped halfway down the side of the valley, one gloved hand arresting his fall after a hundred feet. Hayden imagined he’d spend the remainder of the battle climbing back to the top. The chopper wasn’t so lucky, crashing down in a fireball and tumbling down the cliff, chunks of metal and smoldering ruin bouncing in its wake. The four intact choppers disgorged their occupants, eight fully armed men from each. Gunfire shattered the roar of the oncoming storm.

“Go for the boat!” Hayden heard Drake’s voice.

Drake angled toward the barely visible valley edge. Several rolling dunes lay before him. Sand propelled by wind tore at his face, pushing him back. Head down, he almost missed the attack of a merc, but heard the loud panting and twisted his shoulders at just the right time. The merc flew off and tumbled away, hopefully lost underneath the piling sand. His inner radar warned him that he’d been turned around.
Shit, which way is bloody up?
Alicia loomed at his side and took his arm, but Dahl was nowhere to be seen.

Stick with the agreed course.

Drake saw another figure, unmistakably a mercenary dressed in combat fatigues, and fired two head shots. The guy went down. Multiple bursts of gunfire could be heard as the pitch of the storm waxed and waned, the wind blasting and receding and spiraling into the upper skies. Ahead, a huge mass became evident and so did their intentions.

“It’s the mercs,” came Dahl’s calm voice from Drake’s side, almost making him cry out in shock. “They’re massing.”

“What? And for fuck’s sake, Dahl, make your presence known next time. I coulda hit you.”

The Swede smiled tolerantly. “No,” he said. “You couldn’t.”

“Forget that,” Alicia said. “Where’s the bloody army?”

“Do I look like a friggin’ sand monkey?” Dahl spluttered. “How the hell do I know?”

“Shit, I thought you were better than that, Dahl.”

Ignoring the Swede’s shocked and unhappy expression, Alicia smirked to herself and moved away. Drake followed her, grinning. The land sloped sharply downhill and then rose back up. The trio moved carefully, eyes slitted, guns at the ready and fully loaded. By Drake’s calculations the valley edge could only be forty feet ahead but then he could be wrong. He wondered briefly what had happened to Kinimaka and the others, but knew they had to take care of themselves. The mass ahead solidified and, as the swirling sands briefly parted, revealed dozens of tightly packed mercenaries, all with guns at the ready.

Oh fuck
.

Most of them saw the trio and instantly opened fire, raking the air with death. Dahl flung himself headlong, hitting a slope and rolling out of sight. Drake flung himself at Alicia, grabbing her around the waist and registering two bullets slamming into her before they were landing hard and then rolling, rolling, rolling far too fast and for far too long.

It couldn’t be the cliff edge. But Alicia was screaming, and it was impossible to stop.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Amidst the great storm, Alicia shrieked, a sound most unbefitting of her. Drake held her tightly as they tumbled, refusing to let go and quite possibly lose her forever. End over end, side over side they fell, sand erupting from their every revolution. His embrace was unbreakable and he could feel her cheek pressed tightly to his own. Just as he imagined they might roll that way for eternity they struck bottom and rolled level for a few more revolutions. The world still spun, rotating around and around inside his head. Alicia panted against his cheek. Down here, the fury of the storm had abated somewhat.

Drake rose to his knees, still holding Alicia, and opened his eyes. They had stumbled down the side of a valley, now completely cut off from the fight and faced with a hard slog back to the top. Luckily, he couldn’t feel any breakages or even bruising. Some people would pay good money for a trip like that.

The thought reminded him of Alicia. It wasn’t like the blond woman to just lie in his arms. Gently, he cupped her face and pushed her head back until he could focus. Alicia’s eyes were closed.

“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

He wiped a smudge from her forehead. Alicia’s eyes fluttered open. “Matt?”

“Aye love. It’s me.”

“Are we . . . alive?”

“I bloody hope so. I’d hate for this to be the afterlife.”

She pulled away and checked her body. Drake remembered two bullets striking her almost simultaneously and felt his heart suddenly take a great lurch.
Oh no . . .

Two tattered holes gaped in Alicia’s clothing over her new body armor. The blonde grimaced at the sight and then stared at Drake.

“I should be dead.”

“I guess we all should be. Ten times over. Maybe someone somewhere just
likes
us.”

“Matt.” Alicia again used his first name, something unheard of, and more than unnerving. “I should be dead. Long before now. I shouldn’t be here.”

Drake began to worry that she might have banged her head. “Lean over,” he said, struggling to his knees. “Let’s take a look.”

“What?”

“At your head. I’m not sure your brain’s intact.”

“All my life I’ve been running. All my life I’ve been barely surviving.”

Drake met those blinding blue eyes and felt a deep shiver of fear. This wasn’t at all right.
Ghosts,
he thought.
Ghosts do exist out here in the desert and they’ve made her . . . take stock. Pause.

The world was about to explode.

Alicia struck at him, the punch glancing off his chin. Drake saw stars. “I shouldn’t be alive!” she cried. “Don’t you see? I
don’t want
to be alive!”

Drake threw himself into the very core of it. “Of course you do. You’re a good person. You save lives and deserve to live yours. Properly!”

“Fuck you!” Alicia swung at him, two blows, the first a diversion and the second feeling like it took a chunk from his ribs. Drake gasped for air and folded. “No . . .”

Alicia leapt on top of him, her hands around his throat. Instantly she began to squeeze. “You think it’s fun being me? Do you? Every decision a bad one. Every new move questionable and tainted.”

Drake knew she would kill him. Alicia was imploding and exploding at the same time, running on destructive auto-pilot, and facing the crisis of her life. This was all-out war, the fury of the storm above reflected in the storm exploding within Alicia Myles.

“Move on. Move ahead. Never stop . . . never stop running. That’s my creed. That’s my motto.”

“No,” Drake managed to gasp. “Alicia Myles is ‘One Life, Live It’. That’s you.”

“What I pretend it to be! You think I’m living my life or running from it? Don’t be a fucking bell end.”

Alicia bore down on his throat and Drake saw a deeper, more alarming blackness. His only thought was that she would not stop. She would kick and pound his dead corpse if it came to that until something got worked out. Slamming his hands up he connected with her face and managed to loosen the grip, then inserted a hand beneath hers. He rolled, pressing hard on her body, then rolled back. He squirmed, bent her fingers as hard as he could. Alicia yelped and jumped back. Drake hung his head, panting, barely surviving.

“None of this is your fault, Alicia. Don’t you remember? Your dad was a drunk, a fucking weakling who shrank rather than stepping up and taking responsibility for his kids. Your mother didn’t fight him. They both failed you. The Army took you away but then it failed you too. Made you keep on running. It’s been coming a long time—this reckoning.”

“But the memories.” For a moment Alicia crouched there like a starving predator, eyes wild. “Nothing calms them, soothes them except the next experience. Nothing keeps them at bay. Moving on is all I have.”

“But then they return even worse. You must face them and fight them and then kill them. Like you would any adversary.”

Drake threw his body to the side as Alicia pounced again. His right hand jabbed at her ribs to give her something to think about, maybe to take some of the violent ardor out of her. She sucked it up and gave only a feral grin in return.

“Give me some more of that.”

He should have known better.

Alicia kicked sand at him, then flung herself into a flying head-butt straight at his solar-plexus. Drake collapsed again, feeling the energy drain away. Next, a punch drew blood from his gums and snapped his head sideways.

“Stop. Not like this,” he gasped.

“What? You want me on top?”

Alicia jumped onto his lap, grabbed both his ears and wrenched them hard. Drake squealed and then threw both of them to the side; the battling duo tumbled together along the bottom of the narrow valley, spitting curses into each other’s faces.

Drake couldn’t help but think:
It was always going to come to this.

Alicia halted their tumble, dragged him up by the vest, and threw him past her. Drake yelled in alarm as he smashed into what felt like a solid brick wall.

“Moving on is what it is,” Alicia shouted in his face. “But I never move on. Not in here.” She jabbed at his forehead. “In here I’m still fifteen and having the shit scared out of me every day. In here I’m always facing a drunk with quick fists and trying to prove that I’m not scared. That’s how I am. That’s me. How do I get past that?”

She threw a clenched fist at him. Drake dodged and her knuckles struck brick.

“Ow!”

Drake ducked around her, gaining a little space. As he moved he took stock of their surroundings. Above, a small V of sunlight revealed how far away the top of this narrow valley was, before it vanished in the face of the ongoing storm. Sand rained down onto his face, hair and shoulders in a constant shower. All around stood what remained of a small, tumbledown structure, an old gray, brick-built shelter, its walls short and stubby and its roof all but caved in. Drake darted into the ruins, happy to have a wall at his back.