Authors: David Leadbeater
Drake evaluated the scene as the jungle shuddered.
Black choppers with bristling rocket pods hovered to left and right, ascending slowly, their engines roaring. Men hung out of the open doors, searching it seemed for any target to take a pot shot. One whirling bird let loose a missile which streaked among the trees and exploded, sending gouts of flame toward the wavering canopy. Drake saw the pavilions falling; shards and larger beams of timber erupting and tumbling in every direction.
The river’s surface was utter chaos—every predator known to man battling to take a bite out of the other. Caimans lined the far banks and floated dangerously just above the water. One dragged out a man as Drake watched, its jaws clamped around his midriff, his pin-wheeling arms punching the ground in agony. Skiffs and barges, speedboats and dinghies raced every which way, many colliding, most hampering the getaways. Ramses’ own speedboat started to nudge around to find an angle.
Drake and Dahl met each other’s eyes.
“Is it time?”
Drake grinned and set off fast, the Swede struggling to catch him. Alicia gave chase too, her muttered comment only just reaching their ears.
“Oh shit, what now?”
The pair pounded down the length of the dock, timbers bouncing and fire at their backs, terrorists with automatic weapons all around them. Drake fired his Glock again and again, dropping guards where they stood and making a beeline for the end of the dock.
Mai loped along with them. “No boat for us out there,” she said. “Just gators.”
“They’re not gators,” Dahl observed as he ate up the ground. “They’re caimans.”
“Oh, excuse me. So why are we running straight at them?”
Dahl shrugged. “Drake made me do it.
Geronimo, motherfucker
!”
Both men hit the end of the dock and then jumped, sailing out at full stretch over the churning waters. Alicia and Mai, also running at full tilt, could hardly pull up and followed.
Drake came down hard on the foredeck of a drifting speedboat, scrabbling for a handhold. Dahl landed inside the craft, the white leather seat cushioning his fall. Within a second he was reaching over the windshield for the Yorkshireman.
“Need a hand?”
Then Alicia arrived, knocking him aside, and Mai hit the back end. Drake slithered and slipped across the polished prow, finding a grip for his fingers inside an ornamental venting. An enormous barge spun them around as it bashed their front end, its guards staring across the waters and not even seeing them below deck line. Alicia found herself in the driver’s seat and rammed the vessel into gear. A jerky instant take-off sent Drake skidding up the prow to within Dahl’s reach. He clambered into the boat and then they were threading through heavy traffic.
Alicia guided the craft in pursuit of Ramses, piloting them between barges and skiffs lined by desperate men. Bullets whizzed between them and wreckage burned on the river. Bodies and boats floated alongside, flames licked at their hull as they parted blazing debris. Alicia opened the throttle again, lifting the prow and churning water at their backs. An avenue opened ahead. The Englishwoman spun the wheel, aiming the speedboat left and right. An overturned dinghy blocked her way.
“There.” Mai pointed at another gap.
Alicia steered the speedboat through. Ahead, Ramses’ men were similarly impeded. The enormous figure stood facing the front, not even deigning to take a look back at his burning epitaph. Akatash watched Drake.
As they powered down the river, Dahl and Drake took up rifles and loosed some major firepower into the escaping barges. Large caliber rounds blasted through windows, portholes, door and bows. Guards fell sprawling to their deaths. Drake ducked as a volley was returned.
“What the hell?” Alicia cried out. “You’re attracting their attention.”
But Mai knew what they were doing. “This is about what’s right. We do this for free, any day of the week. A dead terrorist can’t plot a bombing now, can he?”
Alicia slowed the craft as it passed a larger barge. “Good point. Give ’em a hundred or so slugs for lunch, boys.”
Drake and Dahl peppered the boat with lead, then threw grenades through the holes. Huge explosions erupted behind them and detonated over the width of the river, reverberating back and forth and causing the trees to shake. Caimans slid into the water and other river creatures gathered to feast as the barges began to sink. Cheers went up from surrounding boats a moment before Drake and Dahl turned their weapons on them.
Two RPGs streaked by overhead, exploding out of sight. A whirling chopper screamed away, banking sharply and rising toward the gap in the canopy that snaked above the river. Another dogged their movements as if trying to get a bead on them. A third set down hard on the far bank, disgorging men who appeared to have been ordered to obliterate a particular barge. Alicia cursed them for their greed and viciousness and then turned her attention back to Ramses’ escape and rapidly began to close the gap.
Drake saw a figure amid the tumult, a running black streak on the opposite bank and knew that Beauregard ran with them. The Frenchman approached the recently set-down chopper, a slice of darkness sent out of the forest to grab a little retribution. As they approached Ramses’ craft Akatash shouted orders and then simply wrenched an RPG from the hands of a legionnaire, aimed it at their speedboat and fired all in the blink of an eye.
The rocket flew unerringly, straight at them!
They reacted instantly and as one. Even under fire, guiding the boat and picking off the enemy the team were fully aware of their surroundings. Drake had already spied a third racing speedboat and knew it approached them from the right-hand side. Without a second’s hesitation he threw himself off their boat and into the other, holding his breath as he fell through thin air and hoped he’d gauged the distance correctly.
The team came down hard, smashing the new speedboat momentarily beneath the waters and making it spin around. At that moment their old speedboat erupted, destroyed timbers arcing all around. One of the men who’d occupied the new boat fell out; the other faced the Mad Swede.
“Jump,” Dahl growled. “Or die.”
The man chose the former, and maybe the latter too depending on his luck. Dahl jumped on the throttle and increased the engine’s revs at the same time as assessing the state of his teammates.
“We all okay?”
Drake rubbed bruises and Alicia flicked away blood. Mai traced the new scar mostly healed on her face, a new chapter to her story, and one she hadn’t yet told Drake. The speedboats again closed together as Ramses’ pilot hit even worse traffic.
“See that?” Drake pointed out the jam ahead. “Like York at bloody rush hour. Nothing’s going nowhere.”
Alicia raised her own gun. “And for once—that’s our gain.”
Akatash was trying to load another rocket, but then came under increased fire. Seeing the crush of vessels ahead, Ramses yelled into a handheld radio.
Almost immediately the hovering chopper banked and zoomed overhead, settling above Ramses’ position. Two rappel lines flickered down, harnesses strapped to ends that brushed the deck.
Dahl glared at Drake and Alicia. “What are you waiting for? Shoot!”
The Yorkshireman fired, but then Akatash ordered his own men to lay down some cover. Bullets impacted dangerously close and Dahl spun the wheel in an evasive maneuver. Then, both Ramses and Akatash secured the harnesses around them and began to be hauled up toward the chopper. The bird itself rose fast as they came up, escaping the river and any danger.
Drake stayed low. “There,” he said. “Go there.”
Dahl wrenched the wheel in the direction of Beauregard and the chopper that had put down earlier. “Your boyfriend,” he said to Alicia, “must work on some kind of telepathic link. Either that or he’s an android, programmed to think laterally.”
“He’s not my boyf—” Alicia began.
Drake interrupted. “You really think he anticipated this?” He gazed up at the escaping Ramses as they approached the muddy bank.
Dahl shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now, because one thing’s for sure—that Prince of Terror is about to meet his match.”
Drake paused as their radio crackled to life. “You all okay?”
Hayden shouted down the line. “We have Price. Do you have Ramses and Webb?”
“Not really, no.”
“Not
really?
What the hell does that mean?”
“It means it’s a work in progress.” Drake flashed on the fact that when he’d seen Beauregard running along the riverbank the man had most definitely been alone.
Maybe he’s stashed Webb in a tree or something?
A baboon’s den, hopefully.
“Drake,” Hayden asked. “Where do we stand?”
He explained quickly as they approached the waiting chopper. Dahl, Mai and Alicia ran ahead to help Beauregard mop up the remaining terrorists. “We’re about to set off in pursuit,” he said. “Can you grab some transport?”
Back along the docks, he remembered, two separate choppers out of many remained untouched, as their owners fought and died alongside them or became caught up in the conflagration, searching for another way out.
“Damn right we can,” Hayden snarled. “Get that bird up in the air now, Drake, and chase Ramses down. If he escapes the world will pay. Once we’re airborne I’m going to have to speak to the President.”
Drake clambered aboard the commandeered helicopter. “We’re on our way.”
Hayden settled back as Smyth piloted the chopper into the skies. Still not safe, a missile arced up toward them but mercifully fell short. Gunfire clattered off their underside. The chopper was top-heavy, but it was sturdy and new and bore the extra weight without complaint. Through the cockpit window she saw Drake’s chopper rise fast, an enemy combatant clinging to the landing skids until he lost his grip and fell away. Mai leaned out of an open door and picked off would-be snipers on the ground below. Hayden looked over the expanding scene—shocked and saddened by what she saw.
Raging fires littered the forest floor and climbed trees. Branches sizzled as the flames passed from tree to tree. Figures ran to and fro, groups and individuals seeking refuge or trying to escape. Several four-wheel drive trucks sped down various trails, bouncing and flinging around their occupants in their haste. The snake of the river was a battle zone, almost blocked out by plumes of black smoke, cluttered with sailing craft and warring parties. Hayden realized that some of the locals might have helped ignite the fuse down there, but it was a massacre nevertheless. The site of the last bazaar was now a searing ruin, all of its structures destroyed and its tents ablaze.
Hayden turned to her sat-phone, aware innocents might still be hiding down there. Slaves from all walks of life had been bartered for and traded at this travesty, some might have been in servitude for a while but others had almost certainly been recently kidnapped. Local vermin might soon move in so Hayden called the authorities who could aid them first, reeling off coordinates as fast as she could.
Smyth chased two helicopters above the jungle canopy. An excess of blue skies stabbed at her eyes.
Hayden keyed in another number. Three minutes later she was on the line to the President of the United States.
“Sir,” she said with fear, with trepidation, but mostly with regret. “I have some terrible news.”
“Is it Price? Did you get the bastard?”
“We did, sir. He’s here now. But that’s not the bad news.”
“All right. Go on.”
Hayden closed her eyes, trying to tear her mind’s-eye away from the horrific scenario she was about to describe.
“The last Pythian, Julian Marsh, purchased a suitcase nuke at the bazaar. He’s on his way to New York with it, he thinks as a means of blackmail. Ramses has ordered all of his terrorist sleeper cells to find Marsh once the bomb is inside the city—and set it off.”
Coburn didn’t respond for almost a minute. Hayden didn’t question it, she knew why. There was no easy way to digest this information.
“Does he have the capabilities to smuggle the weapon in?”
“We’re talking the Pythians, sir. Look what they have done so far.”
“What’s the timescale?”
“Sir,” Hayden sighed. “It may already be there.”
“Oh, good God.”
“But nothing will happen without Ramses’ say so. And we’re in pursuit right now. We’ll deal with him, sir, and then head straight to New York.”
Coburn sighed loudly. “I’ll make sure we’re prepared at this end. Where are you headed now, Jaye?”
Hayden glanced at the instruments. “On a course for the coast, sir. Probably Peru.”
Drake sat beside Beauregard as he piloted the chopper in pursuit of Ramses. Behind them, Hayden had been concentrating solely on starting some kind of mobilization among the US government rather than their quarry. Perfectly understandable since the nuke remained an unknown and they had Ramses in their sights. An endless canopy of green terrain passed beneath, trees as far as the eye could see. Beau informed them that they were flying in a straight line toward the Peruvian coast, but beyond that they had no clear idea where they were headed. The team took the time to relax and reload, though their stores of ammunition were starting to dwindle.
An hour passed, and then Hayden came back on the line, explaining that she’d done all she could to protect New York. They simply had to bag Ramses and then hightail it immediately to America’s east coast to aid in the hunt. She also told them she’d contact the nearest friendly airbase and arrange whatever backup she could to help them deal with Ramses.
Hayden began to sign off, but then stopped. “Oh, and Drake? One day you’ll have to explain Kenzie’s story to me and why she chose to run with me rather than you.”
“She’s still with you?” Drake was shocked.
“Umm, yeah. Is there a reason she shouldn’t be?”
“Just be careful,” Drake said. “Watch her.”
The jagged shadows of mountains appeared ahead and Ramses’ chopper started to descend.
“We’re in business,” Drake told Hayden. “He’s headed down.”
“And he knows we’re here. Be careful, no heroics.”
Dahl tapped Drake on the shoulder. “Was that directed at you? Or me?”
“Both. Why?”
“Well, it’s my normal state. Does she really want me to change this?” He stared at his own figure in the window’s reflection.
Alicia was gazing at Mai. “That’s a helluva scar you have there, Sprite. What did you do—lose a battle with your shaver?”
“Is that a way of intimating that I have facial hair?”
Alicia shrugged. “It’s not a criticism.”
“Well that would be a first, coming from you.”
The team quieted as Ramses’ chopper suddenly swooped toward the oncoming peaks. Winds buffeted them, attacking from both sides and shrieking like Valkyries. Beauregard weaved between peaks, following Ramses’ line to perfection. Drake experienced a little nausea as the close proximity of the mountains revealed just how high they were much more theatrically than flying across a roof of green leaves.
The lead chopper dived hard and then leveled out, still falling down the side of a vertical cliff face. Peering hard, Drake finally saw their terminus, a sprawling gray structure that sat upon a lower peak, overlooking the valley below.
“A castle,” Drake said. “The man’s full of surprises.”
Beauregard sent their own chopper hot on the heels of the first. As the castle walls grew clearer and the highest tower approached Drake saw men positioned along the battlements.
“Evade!” he shouted. “Now!”
Legionnaires fired up from below, automatic weapons chattering as Ramses landed in the small courtyard. Beau pulled hard on the cyclic stick, wrenching the chopper aside, but the combined force of gravity and heavy shells sent the helicopter into free fall. Drake gripped the sides of his seat and braced his entire body. Dahl breathed heavily. Another flurry of fire and holes appeared in the metalwork. Beau worked hard to haul up the controls, trying to bring the nose up. The engine suddenly cut out and a terrible silence filled the cockpit, accompanied by the whine of free fall.
Beau’s last movement was a shuddering heave on the cyclic stick.
Drake grimaced as the rock came up fast and the chopper crashed against the walls of the castle.