Matt Drake 8 - Last Man Standing (11 page)

Karin
took only a moment to review Crouch’s request and then rose quickly to her feet.

“Let’s go.”

Komodo held up a hand. “We should communicate with Washington. They may be able to help.”

“Do it on the way.”

Karin forced all thoughts of death and tragedy from her mind. The only way she could help her friends was to give them her full attention, allowing every thought process chance to live and develop and breathe on its own. The demands of cyberwarfare were huge, both on the brain and the subconscious, affecting not only instant cognitive reaction but also those thought processes that matured in the background, usually developing at length into the idea that won you the endgame.

Karin started the car, a rented Mini Cooper, and swerved out into traffic. Horns honked. Karin fiddled with the satnav whilst Komodo called DC. Luckily, the traffic lights through Leeds city
center were frequent enough that they didn’t need to pull over. Karin took the route past a statue called the Black Prince and accelerated up Kirkstall Road.

Komodo spoke at last.
“Smyth? What’s going on?”

Her boyfriend listened as Smyth unleased a veritable tirade. Karin cold hear the furious tones clear enough, especially as Komodo had to lif
t the phone away from his ear.

“Safe
house got hit.” He shook his head, translating Smyth’s bluster. “Everyone’s safe. Kinimaka fought an . . . elephant, I think. Smyth did all the work. Saved the day. Fell off a building . . . the usual.”

Komodo stopped the man in his tracks with a few choice comments a
nd brought him up to speed. Smyth’s rejoinder was surprisingly heated.

“What the hell are the Brits up to
? They having Terrorist Amnesty week or something?”

“Coyote has prepared and planned this with the Blood King’s help and money
,” Komodo said. “If the man can kidnap President Coburn he can sure engineer the shutdown of a town for twenty four hours.”

“Damn Russkie
,” Smyth said. “Bastard’s in the ground and still haunting us.”

Komodo agreed, but didn’t say so out loud. Instead he explained Karin’s new role as she shot past a Vue cinema and restaurant area, then negotiated a series
of bends. Soon, the main road was left behind and darkness closed over the car. Even the streetlights were sparse. Komodo didn’t like it, and ended the call saying he would get back to the DC team.

“Where the hell are we?”

Karin shrugged. “Almost there. I trust Crouch. Don’t you?”

Komodo grunted. “Drake does. But the man’s been compromised for years. How’s that affecting him right now?”

“Dunno. Maybe when this is over he and Michael can sit down and talk about it.”

Komodo wondered at her brusque tone but ignored it. “Well, it’ll take more than a coffee at Starbucks
with Crouch to convince me, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

Karin stopped the car outside a nondescript warehouse. The place was in darkness, streetlights out for blocks around, surrounding businesses either closed down or shut for the night.

A man glided out of the shadows ahead. For all intents and purposes he looked like a local security guard, even to the apparent paunch at his waist. The only things that gave him away was the chiseled face and observant eyes; the hand that never left his pocket. He signaled to Karin to turn the car headlights off.

Komodo climbed out of the car.

“Stop,” the guard said, carefully listening to a walkie-talkie and watching the big American.

“Karin Blake?”
he asked.

“Not me, dude. She’s in the car.”

Not impressed, the guard turned away. “Follow me.”

Tyler Webb
took his seat at the head of the table to chair the second meeting of the Pythians. It came hot on the heels of the first, only days apart; the frequency not a part of his future intentions but necessary to start with.

“We are the Pythians
,” he said. “Welcome.”

His five partners looked suitably smug.

“News,” Webb said, sipping from a fluted champagne glass. “What do we have?”

“The grand entrance we spoke of.” General Stone spoke up first. “The ‘house on the hill’ scenario is
favored by all and will take a few weeks to prep. Are we pushing ahead?”

Webb was so surprised
that they’d all agreed that he caught every eye. Nobody looked away. Stone’s scenario was somewhat ruthless, but still, their entry into the game should be a memorable one. “How many casualties?”

Stone shrugged. “No more than three hundred.”

“Set it up,” Webb said. “But keep the casualty rate down. I don’t want an international manhunt to be our first contact with the greater populace. We should show restraint as well as great viciousness when required.”

“The only question is
—where? Maybe I’ll stick a pin in the map.”

Webb looked to Robert Norris, executive of SolDyn. “
Where are we with Pandora?”

Norris bit delicately into a canapé. “Mmm, exquisite. Please congratulate your chef de cuisine for me.”

Webb waited patiently.

Norris got the hint. “Our web spreads well. Manpower is growing. The London plague pit is confirmed but its location still eludes us. More of the puzzle is required, I fear, to narrow it down.
At least two other plague pits or sites do exist—in Paris and the US. I still ponder over the US site, though it is apparently confirmed. These other pits are purportedly ancient . . .”

Nicholas Bell, the builder, laughed, spraying a chunk of tasty canapé across the table in front of him. “America didn’t just pop up when the
Redskins wanted it to,” he said, practically choking. “Bubonic plague’s been in and out for centuries. Still is.”

Several members regarded the builder with distaste. Webb didn’t blame them. His antics weren’t exactly in keeping with the group. Only General Stone came close to the commoner’s low status and even he knew when to adopt the correct protocols. Webb wondered again about resigning the builder to video calls only.

Still,
he thought.
The man does offer some amusement.

“As before,” he said. “Work harder. Pandora is everything for now. It will assert our stranglehold on the world. Anything else?”

Clifford Bay-Dale, the officious prick and energy lord, spoke over the top of Miranda Le Brun, the oil heiress. She allowed it with a bored smile.

“How about some of those perks you mentioned, Webb? I believe the shadow rulers of a pl
anet should be receiving bonuses by now.”

“We are not the shadow rulers yet
,” Webb said. “Work first, play later. There is much hard work still to do, Clifford.”

Bay-Dale frowned. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to him before that his requests could be denied.

Webb swept the table with questioning eyes. “Are we together on this?”

Miranda Le Brun spoke for all of them. “The Pythians are here to stay.” She
continued in her wearied tones, “There comes a time when those with wealth and power find they have nothing left to learn. No more to discover. No new experiences nor encounters to enjoy. I think, within this group, new horizons may open up. My expectations are high.”

Webb smiled. He couldn’t have put it better himself, thought did not fully share Le Brun’s views. The sum of his life’s ambitions were in this group. He was not only committed, he would die to protect it.

“Our day has already begun,” he said. “The world just does not know it yet. Put the first strike in position. Oh, and how did Beauregard do in the UK?”

General Stone smiled.

Kinimaka
finally breathed a huge sigh of relief. The effort caused him pain; soreness and aches that throbbed from bruise to bruise like phone calls pinging around a network, but he felt the last few hours had answered several worrying questions in the affirmative.

Following the safe
house fiasco Robert Price, the new Secretary of Defense, had taken personal charge of the SPEAR team’s safety. At first, Kinimaka had felt a jolt of alarm, Smyth had been slightly more vociferous and Hayden’s eyes had pinched a little, but they all knew this moment would come sooner or later.

“Better sooner,” Hayden had told them. “But don’t let your guards down.”

Following a clever extraction and a journey in the back of a dark van equipped with medical necessities for Hayden, they arrived at their new destination.

Kinimaka saw it as he opened the van door. His mouth fell open. Smyth voiced his thoughts precisely, “You’re shitting me.”

Hayden actually sat up. “Now that’s more like it.”

The Pentagon loomed before them, an imposing concrete structure that, in the flesh, looked nothing like it did on television
, which was usually an aerial view. Of course, close up, most visitors only got to see two sides at any one time, some only one.

Inside
, they were assigned a room for Hayden and an adjoining office. Kinimaka lost count of their floor number, so concerned was he for his girlfriend. In the end, Hayden had to shoo him away. Kinimaka flinched as he straightened his body.

“Go get some pain killers or something.”

“Yeah, and a new penis,” Smyth said snappishly. “Your boss has taken charge of your last one.”

Hayden snipped at Smyth too. “I’m still in charge, Smyth, so fall into line. I won’t listen to that kind of insubordination. Got it?”

Smyth only smiled. “Good to see you’re recovering so fast,” he said.

Hayden put down the file she’d had her nose in ever since the Secretary of Defense handed it to her
, on his way out of the room. “Take a look,” he’d said. “Could be your next assignment.”

Hayden flapped the file. “Wait, Mano, just a few minutes. This is important. While we’re offline, so to speak, other agencies have been monitoring the kind of events that might have fallen within our radar.
This
is the biggest yet. We’ve heard talk—” she made a face. “More like
chatter
that an organization called The Pythians is starting to make a few waves. Now, we’ve heard the name before, I know, but never attached to anything more than conjecture. Mystery. It’s all been a little cryptic.”

“Until now?” Kinimaka asked.

Hayden shrugged. “Nothing concrete. But the NSA reports chatter has increased in
all
the world’s hotspots regarding the Pythians. That means something. CIA are poking around too.”

“Is that it?” Smyth asked.

“NSA believe they’re recruiting. For what, we don’t know. Figures that have been approached and then rebuffed the offer, and there are only a handful we could find, make mention of being able to take their pick of three destinations—London, Paris and California.”

“For what?”

Hayden sighed. “I guess we’ll find out. That’s all.”

Kinimaka, heading out of the door, stopped
in mid-stride as their new internal line began to ring. Very few people had gotten the landline number yet; indeed the circle had been intentionally limited to a select few.

SPEAR members. Robert
Price and other high-ranking figures. The people guarding Kono.

“Yes?” Smyth was there first. “What is it?”

The man’s face fell as he listened. He held the receiver out to Kinimaka. “It’s the FBI in LA. It’s about Kono.”

Kinimaka’s stomach flipped. He snatched at the phone. “What happened?”

“Mano? It’s Special Agent Collins. I’m sorry to say that another attempt was made on Kono’s life earlier today. She-—

“Is she okay?” Kinimaka all but screamed.

Collins breathed. “She’s fine. We took them all out,” she paused. “With a little help. But we saved her. You owe me a dance, Mr. Kinimaka.”

Kinimaka sat down hard. “Oh, thank God. Thank
you.
And what do you mean—a little help?”

“Ever hear of Aaron Trent?”

Kinimaka surfed his brain waves. “Trent. Trent? Wasn’t he part of that CIA group that was disavowed?”

“You got it. Well, Trent, he owes me
more than a few dances too and lately he’s finally gotten around to settling up. I received the alert from Kono’s detail and headed over there, but by the time we arrived on scene half of our team were wounded or dead. Aaron came with me—”

Kinimaka blinked. “Was that wise?”

“Oh, he’s good,” Collins confessed. “When I first got this LA gig I thought it was all about busting his team’s balls, and I came through, believe me. But they’re good people. Hard. Clever. Dependable. Damn, I wish half my colleagues were a quarter as good.”

“Good to know.”

“So, we come upon the scene and the whole house is going up in flames. Masked men can be seen through the windows. I head for the front door. Trent just races and leaps through the shattered window, lands and neutralizes two men before I get to him. The third I pop and we’re heading for the stairs. At that point Kono herself comes flying down, on fire. Flames literally blazing up and down her entire back.”

Kinimaka closed his eyes, distraught.

“Trent jumps on her, putting her out with his coat and his body. I shoot over the top of their hunched forms, taking down man after man. They collapse down the stairs, already catching fire. We back out. Trent throws Kono over his shoulder. I fend off an overgrown brute with a goatee. We head outside, grabbing what’s left of our team. At the start of the driveway we come under fire, bullets hammering the ground around us from the second floor windows. We’re trapped for as long as those goons realize the house is burning down all around them, until they get the message that they’re actually gonna die screaming.” She paused and took another breath.

“Still,” she breathed. “Doesn’t help us. We’d be dead in about two more minutes. The goons have autos trained on us. The only reason they haven’t hit us is because they’re fucking useless shots and we’re crouched down low like a row of husbands during a brothel raid. All is lost. And then
. . .”

Kinimaka’s eyes were wide. “Yes?”

“The rest of the Disavowed show up like fuckin’ super heroes. Silk and his new woman, a cop called Brewster, and Dan Radford. They peppered that house with 16mms, round after round, obliterating the goons from the face of the earth. Man, I’ve lost count of the number of battles I’ve fought with those guys, but they always take it to the max.”

“Thank you
,” Kinimaka whispered. “Thank them for me. Is Kono with you now?”

“No, she’s at Radford’s place. Don’t worry, he’s back with his wife. Again.”

Kinimaka didn’t know what to say. His most heartfelt thanks wouldn’t do this justice. Instead he gave her what he could. “Whatever you guys need. Anywhere. Anytime. Just ask. The SPEAR team is well connected in DC . . . for now,” he added as an afterthought. “Don’t hesitate to call me.”

Collins laughed. “I won’t.”

Kinimaka replaced the receiver in its cradle and looked around. “Kono was attacked again but she’s okay. By the Great Kahuna’s balls I’ll be glad when this is all over.”

Hayden checked the time. “Won’t be long
,” she said. “I wonder how they’re doing.”