The Bones Of Odin (Matt Drake 1) (12 page)

Inside the cars the action was almost as hectic. Dahl, at last, got the call from the Swedish Prime Minister, who had finally reached a friendly FBI suit and received clearance to enter the Museum
if
they got there first.

Dahl turned to their driver. “
Faster!”

Ben handed Dahl a map of the museum, complete with the Wolves’ location.

More information filtered through. Black-and-whites had arrived. Rapid Response teams were being notified.

Drake reached Wells. “Sitch?”

“We’re outside. Cop-cavalry arrived two minutes ago. You?”

“Twenty away. Give us a shout if anything happens.” Something caught his eye, and he fixed on something outside the window for a moment. An intense feeling of
déjà vu
sent shivers dancing across his ribs as he saw a huge billboard proclaiming the arrival of the fashion designer, Abel Frey, in New York, along with his stunning cat-walk show.

That’s mad, Drake thought. Truly insane.

Ben had awakened his sister in the U.K. and, still breathless at their mode of transport, managed to enrol her for
Project Valkyrie -
as he called it. “Saves time,” he told Dahl. “She can continue the research whilst we’re in there saving those Wolves. Don’t worry, she thinks it’s because I want to photograph them for my degree.”

“Lying to sis?” Drake frowned.

“He’s growing up.” Kennedy patted Blake’s arm. “Give the kid some space.”

Drake’s mobile chirped. He didn’t have to check the caller I.D. to know it was Wells. “Don’t tell me, mate. The Canadians?”

Wells laughed softly. “You wish.”

“Eh?”

“
Both
the Canadians
and
the Germans, using separate routes. This war’s about to get started without you. ”

Dahl said: “A Rapid Response SWAT team is three minutes away. Frequency is 68.”
Drake glanced out of the wide window. “We’re here.”

*****

“Central Park West entrance,” Ben said as they exited the cars. “Leads to the only two sets of staircases that ascend from the lower level all the way to the fourth floor.”

Kennedy jumped out into the morning heat. “Which floor houses the Wolves?”

“Fourth.”

“Figures.” Kennedy shrugged, and patted her midriff. “Knew I’d end up regretting those holiday pastries.”

Drake hung back as the Swedish soldiers ran hard at the museum steps. Once there, they started to un-sling their weapons. Dahl stopped them in the shadow of the high entrance, the team flanked by circular pillars.

“Tweeters
on.
”

A dozen
‘Checks!’
sounded out. “We go first,” he looked hard at Drake. “You follow. Grab these.”

He handed Drake two cylindrical objects the size of lighters, and two ear-pieces. Drake twisted the cylindrical barrels to 68 and waited until both started emitting a green light from their bases. He handed one to Kennedy and kept the other for himself.

“Tweeters,” he said to the blank looks. “It’s the new ‘friendly fire’ aid. Friendlies are all tuned to the same frequency. Look at a colleague and you get an annoying chirp in your ear, clock a bad guy and you hear nothing . . ..” He fitted his ear-piece. “Not foolproof, I know, but it helps in situations where you’ve got a lot going on. Like this.”

Ben said: “What if the frequency clashes with another?”

“It won’t. It’s the newest Bluetooth technology - adaptive spread-spectrum frequency hopping. The devices ‘hop’ through seventy-nine randomly chosen frequencies within pre-assigned ranges -
together.
Has a range of around two hundred feet.”

“Cool,” Ben said. “Where’s mine?”

“You and the Prof get to spend some time in Central Park,” Drake told him. “Tourist stuff. Chill, mate, this is gonna get hairy.”

Without another word, Drake spun to follow the last of the Swedish soldiers through a high archway into the museum’s murky innards. Kennedy followed closely.

“Could do with a gun,” she mumbled.

“
Americans
,” Drake intoned, but then smiled quickly. “Relax. The Swedes should mop up the Canadians, double-quick.”

They reached an immense Y-shaped staircase overseen by arched windows and a vaulted ceiling, and hurried up without pause. Normally this staircase would be crammed with wide-eyed tourists, but today the whole place was eerily silent.

Drake paced himself, and stayed vigilant. Scores of dangerous men were racing through this vast old space right now. It was only a matter of time until they converged.

Up they ran, their boots echoing loudly off the high walls, squeaks of static from their throat-mics resonating with the building’s natural acoustics. Drake was concentrating hard, recalling his training, but trying to keep a close eye on Kennedy without appearing to. The civilian and the soldier continued to conflict inside him.

Approaching the third floor, Dahl motioned an ‘ahead-slow’. Kennedy moved close to Drake. “Where’s your SAS buddies?”

“Hanging back,” Drake said. “After all, we don’t wanna commit overkill now, do we?”

Kennedy stifled a laugh. “You’re a comedian, Drake. A real funny guy.”

“You should see me on a date.”

Kennedy missed a beat then said: “Don’t presume I’d accept.” Her right hand went habitually to smooth out the front of her blouse.

“Don’t
assume
I was asking.”

They started up the final staircase. As the lead soldier approached the last curve a shot rang out, and a chunk of plaster exploded an inch away from his head.

“Down!”

A fusillade of shots peppered the walls. Dahl crawled forward on his stomach, making a series of motion with his hands.

Drake said: “The scarecrow method.”

One soldier fired off a quick volley to keep their enemy busy. Another took off his helmet, hooked his rifle into the strap, and inched it forward, into the line of fire. They heard a faint rustle of movement. A third soldier popped up from cover below the staircase and nailed the sentry between the eyes. The man fell dead without getting a shot off.

“Nice,” Drake liked the well-planned movements.

They ploughed on up the stairs, weapons ready, as they fanned out around the arched entrance to the fourth floor, then peered cautiously into the chamber beyond.

Drake read the signs. This was the hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs.
Christ
, he thought. Wasn’t the bloody
T-Rex
kept in here?

He sneaked a glance inside the room. Several professional-looking dudes in civvies were looking busy, all equipped with some kind of heavy machine-pistol, most likely a ‘spray and pray’ Mac-10. The T-Rex stood before him though, rearing in nightmarish majesty, the enduring epitome of nightmare even millions of years after its extinction.

And walking right past it - clipping smartly past its jaws - was Alicia Myles, that other deadly predator. She was shouting in her signature fashion: “Keep it on the clock, boys! One fuck-up here and I’ll personally de-ball every last one of you fag-hags! Hurry it up!”

“Now
there’s
a lady,” Kennedy whispered mockingly from a millimetre away. Drake became aware of her understated perfume and slight breathing. “Old friend, Drake?”

“Taught her everything she knows,” he said. “Literally, at first. Then she went way past me. Weird Ninja-Shaolin shit. And she’s never been a lady, that’s for sure.”

“Four on the left,” a solider reported. “Five on the right. Plus the woman. The Odin exhibit must be near the back of the room, maybe in its own alcove, I don’t know.”

Dahl took a breath. “Time to move.”

EIGHTEEN

NEW YORK NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM

The Swedes burst out of hiding, firing with precision. Four Canadians dropped, and then another, three of them flying back into a glass exhibit which, in turn, toppled and crashed to the floor with a noise like an explosion.

The remaining Canadians spun and fired in place. Two Swedes screamed. One fell, leaking blood from a head wound. The other collapsed in a writhing heap, clutching his thigh.

Drake slithered into the room across the polished floor, and crawled behind a massive glass display of giant Armadillos. After checking Kennedy was safe, he raised his head to peer through the glass.

Saw Alicia kill two running Swedes with two perfect shots.

From beyond the T-Rex now appeared another four Canadians. They must have been in the alcove where the Wolves were on display. They had odd leather-harnesses strapped to their bodies and heavy-duty rucksacks on their backs.

And more Mac-10’s. They sprayed the room with bullets.

The Swedes dived for cover. Drake hit the floor, making sure he snaked an arm around Kennedy’s head to keep her as low as possible. The glass above him shattered, fragments spraying the area and pattering down on them. Armadillo fossils and replicas burst and disintegrated around them.

“Mop up quick, huh?” Kennedy muttered. “Yeah, right.”

Drake shook himself, scattering glass shards everywhere, and checked the outer side-wall of the museum. A Canadian had fallen there, and Drake had marked him immediately.

“Already on it.”

Using the shattered display unit as cover he shuffled over to the prone guy. He pulled at the Machine Pistol, but the man’s eyes suddenly snapped wide open!

“Jesus!” Drake’s heart hammered faster than the hands of Noah when he built the Ark.

The man grunted, eyes wide in pain. Drake recovered quickly, wrestled the weapon away, and clubbed him into oblivion. “Bloody zombie.”

He spun on one knee, ready to spray, but the Canadians had retreated beyond the ribbed belly of the T-Rex. Damn! If only they hadn’t altered its stance recently, making it walk less erect than previously. All he could see were a few disembodied legs.

Kennedy scooted next to him, sliding to a stop by his side.

“Nice slide,” he said, bobbing left and right, trying to see what the Canadians were up to.

At last, he saw movement between three cracked ribs and gasped in disbelief. “They have the Wolves,” he breathed. “And they’re smashing them to pieces!”
Kennedy shook her head. “No. They’re
breaking
them into bits,” she pointed. “Look. See the rucksacks. No one said all the Pieces of Odin had to be intact, did they?”

“And it’s easier to carry them out in bits,” Drake nodded.

He was about to move to the cover of the next exhibit, when all hell broke loose. From the far corner of the room, through a door proclaiming ‘Vertebrate Origins’, a dozen screaming banshees stormed. They whooped, they fired wildly, they laughed like geeks overdosing on multi-double-Yaeger’s at spring-break.

“Germans are here.” Drake said drily before hitting the floor.

The T-Rex shook madly as a lead fusillade smashed through it. Its head drooped, teeth gnashing as if the violence around it had pissed it off badly enough to come back to life. A Canadian flew backwards amidst a cloud of gore. Blood sprayed all over the dinosaur’s jawbone. A Swedish trooper lost his arm at the elbow and flailed about screaming.

The Germans piled in, manic.

From outside the window nearest Drake came that familiar
whump whump
of helicopter rotor blades.

Not again!

At the edge of Drake’s peripheral vision, a creeping team of SWAT figures stole towards him, all darkly dressed. When Drake glanced that way, the Tweeters went crazy in his ear.

Good guys.

The Canadians went for it, causing mayhem. They burst from underneath the giant belly of the T-Rex, firing frantically. Drake grabbed Kennedy’s shoulder.

“Move!” They were in the line of flight. He pushed Kennedy away, just as Alicia Myles ran into view. Drake raised his weapon, then saw the massive German, Milo, barrelling in from the left.

In one mutual second of pause, all three lowered their weapons.

Alicia looked surprised. “I
knew
you’d get into this, Drake, you old fuckeroo!”

Milo stopped dead. Drake glanced between the two. “Shoulda stayed in Sweden, dog-breath.” Drake tried to goad the big man. “Missing yer bitch, eh?”

Bullets laced the air around them, not penetrating their tense cocoon.

“Your time will come,” Milo whispered thickly. “Like your little boyfriend there, and his
sister.
And Parnevik’s.”

And then the world returned, and Drake was instinctively ducking a millisecond after he saw Alicia fall unaccountably to the ground.

An RPG missile blasted through the belly of the T-Rex, sending knives of bone scything in all directions. It swept across the hall, straight through one of the side windows. After a heavy pause there was a gigantic explosion that shook the room, and then a tortured sound of ruined metal and shrieking joints.

Metallic death crashed into the side of the National History Museum.

Drake flattened himself on top of Kennedy as the helicopter’s momentum made it rotate into the museum’s wall, causing a cave-in of heavy debris. The nose smashed right through, sending rubble forward in undulating heaps. Then the cockpit hit the collapsing wall almost vertically, the pilot seen yanking on the cyclic stick in mad panic before being smeared like a fly inside his own windshield.

Then the rotor blades struck . . . and sheared off!

Spears of flying metal created a kill-zone inside the room. A six foot long spike made a whickering noise as it flew towards Drake and Kennedy. The ex-SAS man flattened himself as much as possible and then felt the top part of his ear shorn off before the scythe sliced off a piece of Kennedy’s scalp and embedded itself three feet into the furthest wall.

He lay stunned for a moment, then whipped his head around. The helicopter had stalled and lost momentum. In another moment it slipped down the side of the Museum like Wile E. Coyote slides down the side of the mountain he’s just hit.

Drake counted four seconds before the resounding crunch of heavy metal rang out. He took time to survey the room. The Canadians hadn’t broken stride, even though one of their own had been chopped apart by a rotor blade. They had reached the side of the room, four guys with heavy rucksacks as well as Alicia and one covering fighter. They were deploying what looked like abseiling units.