The Bones Of Odin (Matt Drake 1) (30 page)

The first shots were fired, bouncing off the lead cars. When the convoy came to a grinding halt, Drake opened his door and rolled. They hadn’t used air support because Frey might have RGPs. They needed to move away from the cars quickly for that same reason.

Get in, and turn the land of the PIG into a bacon factory.

Drake ran for the thick shrubbery that grew under a ground floor window. The SAS team they had sent in thirty minutes ago should have secured the nightclub area and its ‘civilian’ guests by now. Bullets flew from the chateau’s windows, peppering the gatehouse walls as vehicles flooded inside. The coalition force returned fire with a vengeance, smashing glass, striking flesh and bone, and chipping the stone facade into mush. Shouts and screams and calls for reinforcements rang out.

Chaos reigned inside the chateau. An RPG screamed from a top floor window, crashing into Frey’s own gatehouse and imploding part of the wall. Rubble cascaded down onto the invading soldiers. Machine-gun fire was returned, and one German mercenary toppled from the top floor, screaming and tumbling until he struck the ground with a horrendous crack.

Dahl and another soldier fired a burst inside the front doors. Their bullets or ricochets took out two men. Dahl ran forward. Hayden was somewhere in the melee behind him.

“We need to get inside this hellhole!
Now!”

More explosions shook the night. A second RPG delved a massive crater a few feet east of Drake’s Hummer. A shower of dirt and rock plumed into the sky

Drake ran, crouch style, staying below the criss-crossing tracery of bullets that riddled the air above his head.

The war had truly begun.

*****

The crowd betrayed its thirst for blood before Kennedy and Kaleb even touched. Kennedy circled carefully, her toes squeezing the dirt, her feet testing for rock and earth, moving erratically so as not to be predictable. Her brain struggled to make sense of all this, but already she’d spotted a weakness in her opponent - the way his eyes drank in the figure that her formless pantsuit conservatively covered.

So that was one way to kill a killer. She concentrated on finding another.

Kaleb made the first move. Spittle flew from his lips as he lunged at her, arms flailing. Kennedy batted him away and side-stepped. The crowd bayed for blood. Someone threw red wine on the earth, a symbolic gesture of the blood they wanted spilled. She heard Frey, the sick bastard, egging Kaleb, the heartless psychopath, on.

Now Kaleb lunged again. Kennedy found her back against the wall. She’d lost concentration, distracted by the crowd.

Then Kaleb was on her, his bare arms around her neck - his sweaty, disgusting . . .
bare arms.
The arms of a killer . . .

. . . of atrocity and death . . .

. . . smearing their putrid filth all over her skin. Warning bells tolled in her mind.
You have to stop thinking like this! You have to focus and fight! Take on the fight and the fighter, not the legend you have created.

The eager crowd howled again. They banged their bottles and glasses against the fence, braying like beasts, yearning for a kill.

And Kaleb, so close after everything that had happened. Her hub of concentration was shot, blown to hell. The monster rammed a fist into her side whilst pulling her head against his chest. His dirty, sweaty bare chest. Then he hit her again. Pain exploded in her ribcage. She staggered. Red wine showered down over her, thrown from above.

“That’s it,” Kaleb taunted her. “Get down where you belong.”

The crowd roared. Kaleb wiped his disgusting hands in her long hair and laughed with a quiet, fatal malice.

“Gonna piss all over your corpse, bitch.”

Kennedy fell to her knees, briefly out of Kaleb’s grip. She tried to shuffle away from him but he got tight hold of her pants. He was pulling her back towards him, grinning like a death’s head savage. She had no choice. She unbuttoned her pants, her formless figure-concealing pants, and let them slide down her legs. She used his instant surprise to squirm away on her backside. Stones raked her skin. The crowd bayed. Kaleb lunged forward, got a hand into the waistband of her underwear but she kicked him savagely in the face, the underwear twanging back just as his nose twanged sideways, bloody and broken. She sat there a moment, looking up at her nemesis and finding herself unable to look away from his blood-flecked, leering eyes.

*****

Drake rolled through the fancy doorway into a massive entry hall. The SAS had indeed secured the nightclub area and were covering the grand staircase. The rest of the chateau wouldn’t be so friendly.

Dahl tapped his breast pocket. “Blueprints show the vault room to our right and into the far east wing. Don’t second guess anything now, Drake. Hayden. We agreed that’s the most logical place for Frey, our friends and the Tomb to be.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Hayden dead-panned.

With a force of men scrambling behind him, Drake followed Dahl through a door into the eastern wing. Once the door was opened, more bullets strafed the air. Drake rolled and came up firing.

And suddenly Frey’s men were among them!

Knives flashed. Hand-guns fired. Soldiers went down to left and right. Drake rammed the barrel of his gun against the temple of one of Frey’s guards, then let the weapon swing into firing position just in time to put a bullet into the face of an attacker. A guard thrust at him from the left. Drake skirted the lunge and put an elbow in the guy’s face. He bent down over the unconscious man, picked up his knife and threw it end over end into the head of another who was about to cut the throat of a Delta commando.

A gun fired next to his ear; the weapon of choice of the SGG. Hayden used a Glock and an army-issue knife. A multinational force for a multinational incident, Drake thought. More gunfire erupted from the far side of the room. Bring on the Italians.

Drake rolled flat under an enemy’s sideswipe. He flung his body around, legs first, sweeping the guy off his feet. When the man landed heavily on his spine, Drake ended his life.

The ex-SAS officer stood up and spied Dahl a dozen steps ahead. Their enemies were thinning now - probably just a few dozen martyrs sent to wear down the invaders. The real army would be elsewhere.

“Good for a warm up,” the Swede grinned, blood around his mouth. “Now
come on!”

They went through another door, swept a room clear of booby traps, then another room, where snipers took six good men before they were eliminated They eventually found themselves facing a high rock wall complete with loopholes through which machine-guns rattled. At the centre of the rock wall was an even more formidable steel door, reminiscent of a bank vault.

“That’s it,” Dahl said as he ducked back. “Frey’s viewing room.”

“Looks a tough bastard,” said Drake, sheltering at his side, holding up a hand as dozens of troops ran to his side. He looked for Hayden, but failed to see her slim frame among the men.
Where the hell had she gone? Oh, please, please, don’t let her be lying back there . . . bleeding . . .

“Fort Knox tough,” a Delta commando said after taking a goosey.

Drake and Dahl shared a look.
“Grapplers!”
they both said at the same time, sticking to their ‘speed and no fucking around’ policy.

Two big guns were passed carefully up the line, soldiers grinning as they watched. The powerful guns, like rocket launchers, both had a solid steel grappling hook attached to their barrels.

Two soldiers were sprinting back the way they had come with optional steel cables cradled in their arms. The steel cables attached to a hollow chamber in the launchers’ ass-end.

Dahl double-clicked his Bluetooth connection. “Say when it’s a go.”

Seconds passed, then the answer came.
“Go!”

Covering fire was laid down. Drake and Dahl stepped out, launchers poised on their shoulders, took aim, and squeezed the triggers.

Two steel grappling hooks shot out at rocket-like speed, embedding themselves deep into the stone wall of Frey’s vault before bursting through the other side. Once they encountered space, a sensor triggered a device that deployed the hooks themselves, making them clamp hard to the wall on the other side.

Dahl tapped his ear. “Do it.”

And even from down here Drake heard the sound of two Hummers slammed into reverse, cables attached to their reinforced bumpers.

Frey’s impenetrable wall exploded.

*****

Kennedy kicked out in warning as Kaleb shambled towards her, catching his knee and making him stagger. She used the moment’s respite to scramble to her feet. Kaleb came again and she slapped his ear with the back of her hand.

The crowd above her bleated in pleasure. Thousands of dollars-worth of rare wine and fine whisky showered down onto the dirt of the arena. A pair of women’s lacy knickers floated down. A man’s tie. A pair of Gucci cufflinks, one bouncing off Kaleb’s hairy back.

“Kill her!” Frey screamed.

Kaleb came at her like a freight train, arms spread, guttural sounds coming from deep in his belly. Kennedy tried to skip away, but he caught her and lifted her bodily off her feet.

Airborne, Kennedy could only cringe in anticipation of the landing. And it came hard, rock and earth slamming into her spine, driving the air from her lungs. Her legs kicked, but Kaleb came inside them and planted himself atop her, elbows first.

“More like it,” the killer grunted. “Now you’ll squeal.
Eeeeeeee!”
His voice was manic, a pig’s slaughter screeching in her ear.
“Eeeeeeeeeee!”

Searing agony made Kennedy’s body convulse. The bastard was an inch away now, body lying on hers, lips dripping saliva onto the cheeks, eyes like hellfire, squirming his crotch into her own.

For a moment she was helpless, still trying to catch a breath. His fist slammed into her belly. His left hand was about to do the same when it paused. A heartbeat of thought, and then it snaked up to her throat and began to squeeze.

Kennedy choked, gasping for air. Kaleb giggled like a madman. He squeezed harder. He studied her eyes. He bore down on her body, pinning her with his weight.

She kicked out with all her might, knocking him to the side. She was well aware she’d just received a pass. The bastard’s twisted needs had saved her life.

She snaked away again. The crowd jeered at her - at her performance, at her dirty clothes, at her scratched ass, at her bleeding legs. Kaleb rose like Rocky from the edge of defeat and spread his arms, laughing.

And then she heard a voice, weak but spearing through the raucous cacophony.

Ben’s voice:
“Drake’s coming, Kennedy. He’s coming. I got a
text!”

Dammit . . . he wouldn’t find them here. She couldn’t imagine he’d search this area of all the places in the chateau. His most likely target would be the vault room or the cells. It could be hours . . ..

Ben still needed her. Kaleb’s victims still needed her.

To stand up and shout when they couldn’t.

Kaleb ran at her, reckless in his egotism. Kennedy feigned terror, then planted her back foot and sent an elbow slam straight into his onrushing face.

Blood spouted all over her arm. Kaleb stopped as if he’d run into a brick wall. Kennedy pushed her advantage, hammering his chest with her fists, punching his already broken nose, kicking at his knees. She used any method she could to disable the executioner.

The crowds roar increased but she barely heard it. One swift kick to the balls sent the asshole to his knees, another to the chin flipped him onto his back. Kennedy fell into the dirt beside him, panting through exhaustion, and stared into his disbelieving eyes.

There was a thud close to her right knee. Kennedy looked over to see a broken wine bottle embedded neck up in the dirt. A merlot, still dripping its liquid red promise.

Kaleb swung at her. She took the blow on her face without flinching. “You need to die,” she hissed. “For Olivia Dunn,” she wrenched the broken bottle out of the ground. “For Selena Tyler,” she poised it above his head. “For Miranda Drury,” she added, her first blow shattered teeth and cartilage and bone. “And for Emma Silke,” her second blow took his eyes. “For Emily Jane Winters,” her final blow made mincemeat of his neck.

And she knelt there in the bloodied earth, victorious, the adrenalin firing up her veins and pounding through her brain, trying to claw back the humanity that had momentarily deserted her.

FORTY-FOUR

LA VEREIN, GERMANY

Kennedy was ordered back up the ladder at gunpoint. The body of Thomas Kaleb was left twitching where it was to die.

Frey looked unhappy, speaking into a mobile. “The vault,” he rasped. “Save the vault at all costs, Hudson. I don’t
care
about anything else, you idiot. Get off that damn couch and do what I pay you for!”

He ended the connection and stared at Kennedy. “It appears your friends broke into my house.”

Kennedy gave him sly eyes before turning them on the gathered elite. “Seems like you fools are gonna get a little of what you deserve.”

There was quiet laughter, the tinkle of glasses. Frey joined in for a moment before saying: “Finish your drinks, my friends. Then leave in the usual way.”

Kennedy summoned some bravado, enough to give Ben a wink. Damn it though, if her body didn’t ache like a bitch. Her ass stung and her legs throbbed; her head ached and her hands were covered in sticky blood.

She held them out to Frey. “Can I clean this off?”

“Use your shirt,” he sneered. “It’s no more than a rag anyway. No doubt it mirrors the rest of your closet.”

He waved a hand in the royal manner. “Bring her. And the boy.”

They exited the arena, Kennedy feeling the exhaustion and trying to still her spinning head. The ramifications of what she’d done would live with her for decades, but now wasn’t the time to dwell. Ben was at her side and from the look on his face clearly attempting a form of telepathic encouragement.