Matt Drake 8 - Last Man Standing (18 page)

Karin heard the door open for the hundredth time that night. She heard the faint rustle as Komodo turned around. She heard the voice of Sergeant Pearson.

But this time it was different.

Low. Harsh. Crawling with concern. Quickly, she tore her gaze away from the computer screen and the point of SaBo’s latest attack to listen.

“Now?” Komodo cried out. “Here?”

Pearson’s answer was rushed. “As I said. We have no time. Arm yourself, man.”

Karin felt her mouth go dry. It sounded like
. . . like . . .

At that moment
, Pearson’s head blew apart. Red sprayed the wall beside him, dripping like melting hieroglyphics. The sergeant’s body toppled through the door. Komodo caught it in time to whip the man’s gun from his holster, taking his tally to two, and pulled out his extra clips. Before he could try anything else or even utter a word of warning, the door itself blasted open, slamming back against its hinges and the other wall.

The first protagonist barged in, getting tangled with Pearson’s body and falling to one knee. Komodo stood calmly over him, firing one bullet into the back of his neck. The second was just behind. Komodo timed it to perfection, waiting for the exact moment in which to push
-kick the open door closed on the man’s onrushing face.

A scream signified success.

Komodo back off a little. He didn’t want to fire through the gap, and give his enemy reason to shy away from their attack and start lobbing in some form of incendiary device. Karin kept silent as his training kicked in. She trusted him completely, and almost turned back to her computer work.

Then she wondered how these goons had found them.

Has to be . . . oh no!
She scanned the screens, following each minute line of code and all the representative grid lines. And then she saw it. The faintest of pulsing lights, signifying a low signal. But something SaBo could use.

The bastard had beaten her.

Used her. Here, in her own back garden. Literally, the place she grew up. Where her parents had died. Where Ben had died.

She coughed hard, choked. She would never give in. she killed the signal and ignored SaBo’s instant request for a chat. The hacker would want to gloat. Of course he would. Well, she could give him something to take his mind off cheap victory.

The virus was ready. It was in place, just awaiting the command.

Behind her, Komodo
grunted heavily as a man landed on his back. This was in addition to the man already grappling him around the waist. The only reason they hadn’t fired was their unwillingness to hit each other. A third waded in.

Karin quit her post and ran to her boyfriend’s aid. Yes, as she knew from before, civilian martial arts training was tame compared to military training, but it was all she had to offer.
And it held the element of surprise.

She struck hard and fast, jabbing the kidneys of the man holding Komodo’s waist and the ribs of the one clinging to his back. Her side-kick connected beautifully with the face of the third, unbalancing him and turning his hard sprint into a drunken lumber.
This coolness under assault, this bravery gave Komodo all the time he needed to get back on top, heaving one opponent over his shoulders and then stamping on his face. Another received a crushing double-handed blow to the top of his skull. The third caught a bullet.

Karin hopped back to the computer screen unperturbed. She
finally unleashed her beast, watching it prowl, stalk and charge. The strands that led to SaBo’s field system started to unravel, fraying by the second. She imagined the panic on the other side, the computer genius struggling to take it all in.

Another minute and she would take him down.

Komodo flung a hard drive at the next man that came through the door. Then, assuming his brief honeymoon period was over—all the mercs couldn’t be that stupid surely—he took the fight to them, stepping over the threshold and outside the cyberwar room. The scene could be much worse. Only three more enemies faced him, all caught by surprise; two actually in the process of arguing with their leader.

Komodo raised his weapon and fired. Both rebels were knocked back hard by head shots
, clattering over desks. The boss gained precious seconds in which to get off a shot. Komodo didn’t have chance to dodge out of the way, and felt it whizz past his cheek. Interesting; if he’d darted to that side the bullet would have taken his face off. He rapidly closed the gap and grabbed hold of the last man’s gun arm, twisting it roughly.

“Hate fuckers like you
,” he grunted and broke the arm. “You killed Pearson for nothing. And how many others?” He squeezed the broken joint until the man screamed himself into unconsciousness, and then bound the wrists with tape he found in a drawer.

“Let the British deal with you.”

Karin saw her virus sidetracked at the last moment and felt her heart drop through the floor. It couldn’t be.
No!
Sunnyvale was depending on her. As were the town’s civilians and the huge attack team. Not to mention Drake. The CCTV and signal-jamming SaBo was employing simply had to be taken down.

Would SaBo purge his system?

No. The old hacker was too wily for that, plus he probably didn’t want to be executed by Coyote’s men for his failure. Karin saw his setup as the eyes and ears and defense mechanism for Coyote’s army of mercs and its total destruction as a major lifesaver for all the British forces.

And Sunnyvale’s SPEAR team’s last desperate hope.
It was all they had left.

Could she do it? The odds were certainly against her, racked high in SaBo’s
favor. She
had
to get inside.

Komodo returned. “Thanks for the help b
ack there.”

Karin held up a hand, barely daring to breathe.

One last chance,
she thought.
One . . . last . . . chance . . .

Something clicked
in front of her. Confused, she leaned in closer, hardly able to believe what she was seeing.

“Oh my God,” she breathed as all her screens lit up. “Look at the bloody hotel. We may be too late!”

Kinimaka
slammed the phone down and met Hayden’s questioning eyes.

“Still nothing
,” he said. “All they know is that the tournament’s still on. Drake and the rest are inside some hotel. And the Brits are about to charge.”

Hayden rubbed at tired eyes. “Talk about a clusterfuck. But
give Karin time. That girl will come through.”

Kinimaka nodded. “I’m sure she will. The Hawaiian in me wants to lay back and hang loose, you know
? The friend and comrade wants her to hurry the hell up.”

“My dad felt the same about me.”

Kinimaka’s face fell. “Hay, I’m sorry. It’s all just a little frustrating. We’re usually on the front lines, you know? Fighting alongside the team. I feel a little . . . redundant.”

Hayden stared down at her prone body, covered by a hospital sheet. “Join the club.”

As if on cue, Smyth burst into the room, cellphone in hand. “Just got a call. You know we’re still monitoring world events through our old HQ link? The system the CIA boffins set up? Well, we got a damn big hit. If the team were together we’d be all over this . . .” Smyth paused as several pings rang out from his cell.

Kinimaka frowned. “Is that more?”

Smyth looked a little embarrassed. “Not really. I may have sent one or two texts to Mai during the last few hours. Now that Karin’s taken down part of Sabo’s jammer it seems they’re going through.”

Ping! Ping
. . . ping . . . ping . . . ping . . . ping . . .

“One or two?” Hayden asked with a straight face.

“Well, whatever,” Smyth went on crossly. “Point is this: Watch!”

Kinimaka leaned forward as Smyth proffered the cell, careful not to let his bulk get in Hayden’s eye
line. He saw a room he recognized being invaded by men that moved fast and proficiently. He didn’t believe his eyes.

“But that’s
—”

“Our
old
HQ,” Hayden finished for him. “Shit, it doesn’t matter that the place got shot to shit. Someone’s after the hard drives and the information stored on them. How old is this video, Smyth?”

“It’s not
,” Smyth barked. “It’s real time.”

“You gotta go! You gotta go now. Why the hell anyone would want those drives I don’t know, but we have to stop them. Jonathan
—” her voice broke a little. “Jonathan had them installed in tandem with his own system so he could work from both his office and the HQ. Maybe it’s
his
drives they’re after.”

Smyth headed for the door. “Already on my way.”

Kinimaka took out a cell of his own and followed. “Doesn’t feel right,” he mumbled. “Calling for back up. Just don’t feel right.”

***

Kinimaka raced through the streets of DC, acutely conscious they were headed back to the place where Romero died. Smyth would be even more aware. The traffic was thankfully sparse, the journey short. Smyth kept an eye on their surveillance camera through his phone link. Kinimaka reported on the progress of the backup team.

“We’ll
get there first,” he said. “By two minutes.”

“Long enough to count against us
,” Smyth rasped back. “Can’t wait.”

“Agreed.”

They pulled up alongside the curb and jumped out. Smyth ran around to the back, popping the trunk and raiding the underfloor weapons’ box for firepower. He handed Kinimaka a machine gun and a Glock, clips, a flak-jacket and smoke bombs.

His cellphone continued to ping.

Kinimaka inclined his head. “Might be best to turn that off, buddy.”

Smyth growled, but complied. The
two men went off at a dead run, knowing what to expect. Both of them had visited the old HQ recently to collect any data the global tracking systems might have picked up.

They hadn
’t expected the facility to be invaded over a week after being destroyed.

The back stairs led directly into the common room, the place where they
’d all met to talk. Smyth crouched at the topmost landing.

“You ready?”

Kinimaka nodded. “Do it.”

Smyth rose and paced forward at a controlled rate, gun held alongside his chin and pointed toward the enemy. He slipped inside the main door
then paused, holding his breath. Kinimaka slid along beside him. They were ghosts, impressions of light and dark, mere shadows that flitted to and fro and made no noise.

Men hunched over computer terminals before them. Some were down on their knees. Smyth and Kinimaka stood silently over them, unseen, and performed a quick head count.

Outnumbered eight to two.

Smyth made the kill sign. Kinimaka nodded. They were not about to issue a warning to a superior number of mercs
that had just broken into a secret, information-laden building armed with semis. Smyth fired first, his suppressed weapon making a popping sound and efficiently making three holes in three foreheads.

He moved as he worked. Kinimaka eased away to the right, keeping the positions of the remaining mercs at the front of his mind.
Two double taps and another two bodies dropped. One of the mercs backed away, weapon pivoting, but Smyth took him down with a slightly messy neck shot.

Two left
.

Kinimaka drifted again, stealing the distance between his adversary and himself away. Through a gap in the desks he saw a body, firing instantly. The man dropped. He looked over to Smyth, saw his comrade give a thumbs up.

“Got ‘em.”

Kinimaka rose. “Careful. I shot
the last one in the collarbone. We need information.”

Smyth grinned. “Me too! That means we got one each to interrogate. Hey,
not bad for CIA, man. Not bad at all.”

Kinimaka was experienced enough to understand such praise
coming from an ex-Delta force soldier was rare and hard-earned. “Mahalo.”

“Right
,” Smyth snarled at his captive. “Let’s see what we’re up against.”

Kinimaka
didn’t have to work hard to show his prisoner that he was a tad unhappy. Leaving Hayden alone—she actually had a CIA honor guard outside her room—the rest of his team in peril; the recent deaths and fighting the man-monster earlier that day, had all left him feeling more than a little edgy.

“I’m gonna ask you once,” he growled, for once having a reason to make his bulk as large and intimidating as possible. “Why are you here? Who do you work for?”

The merc didn’t even try to resist. Broken and reset bones were murder in his game. They slowed you down and got you killed. “Dudes’ just recruited me,” he blabbed. “Through some friend of a friend. No real IDs shown on either side. Man, it was real hush-hush, you know, but paid a boatload. All I know is I work for a group called the Pythians and they’re bad shit, man. Real bad.”

Kinimaka stared at him. This group, the Pythians, had been flagging up a lot recently. Of course, they wouldn’t advertise their name if they didn’t want people to know it. In warfare, you were always going to lose men to seizure and subsequent interrogation.

So what did that tell him?

“The guys
in my unit talked a lot. Said they were a new group but big. Nobody knows who they are. Y’know, like the fuckin’ Templars, or something. Wanna rule the world, you know?”

“I know the type
,” Kinimaka said with a touch of dry sarcasm. “What do these Pythians want?”

“Who knows, man? World peace? Civil war? Cats in space? Fuckin’ fruit
bats the lot of them. The guys told stories of Pandora’s Box, the Lionheart and some mega-dude called Saint German, or something. All sorts of secrets, myths and crap. This Saint German guy is involved in the greatest mystery of all time.” The merc spat. “Like I said—fruit bats the lots of them.”

Kinimaka knew the man was blabbing without giving a single thing away. “And here?”
he asked. “What exactly did you come for?”

Now the man’s eyes dropped, the shoulders tensed. All the telltale signs of resistance. Kinimaka said nothing, but moved one step forward and planted his enormous boot on an outstretched hand.

“Hey.
Hey
! Wait, I’ll talk. It’s my first mission. I don’t owe these bastards crap. The objective was the hard drives but one in particular. The bosses—they wanted the one that the Secretary of Defense used. You know, Jonathan Gates?”

“Yes. I know.”

“No clue why. I kinda liked the dude myself.”

Kinimaka removed his boot. “Keep talking.”

The eyes dropped again. “I don’t know any more, man!”

“Do you
want
to hear the sound of your own bones breaking? Is that what you want?

“All right, all right. The op wasn’t a smash and grab, it was an information steal, you know? A download. They wanted us to grab everything on Gates’ computer that related to Stone.”

Kinimaka squinted. “Who?”

“Bill Stone. General Bill Stone. The army guy.”

Kinimaka stared at the merc.
The army guy.
The very man Gates had suspected to be involved in the hijacking of the original Odin doomsday weapon before it got blown sky high; the man Gates believed was traitorous in some if not all ways.

The man Lauren Fox had been about to work her own particular brand of magic on.

“What else?”

“That’s it, dude. I swear. Christ, isn’t that enough?”

Kinimaka moved away to confer with Smyth, both men tying the hands and feet of their captives before retreating. A quick discussion revealed their men spoke similar tales, probably with the odd tequila-induced embellishment.

Smyth tapped his weapon on the floor, handle first. “So what now? We can’t exactly take this to the new Secretary. Our first act shouldn’t be to accuse a
General of treason.”

Kinimaka indicated the pile of hard drives. “These idiots did our job for us. We take the drives. Let’s see what Jonathan compiled first. And maybe
. . .” He paused and tapped at his phone.

Smyth narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Give me a minute. Hi, this is Agent Kinimaka.” He reeled off a set of security codes, finally being put through to an inner switchboard. “Find Lauren Fox on a secure line for me,” he said.

Smyth looked interested. “The hooker?”

“She’s
not
a hooker.” Kinimaka said without thinking, then clicked his tongue loudly. “Well she
is
a hooker. But she’s
our
hooker. Ergo—she’s not a hooker.”

“Fuck me. I have no idea what you just said. Is that a Hawaiian proverb, man?”

Kinimaka blinked, remembering Hayden asking him the same thing once before during their original encounter with the Blood King. “I don’t do proverbs, Smyth. I’m saying Lauren is part of the team so leave her alone.”

“Oh, right. Well
, next time just spit it out, okay?”

Kinimaka tuned him out as Lauren came on the line. “Listen
,” he said quickly. “We’re secure, so speak freely. Jonathan once asked you to spy on . . .
somebody.
You didn’t do it. Is the window still open?”

H
e knew the line was secure, but this was a source currently inside the Pentagon he was calling, after all.

Lauren didn’t reply for a while. Kinimaka could hear her breathing.
“I think so,” she said at length. “At the time I thought not. But he hasn’t stopped calling, trying to set something up. I’m pretty confident that my cover wasn’t blown.”

“Pretty confident?” Kinimaka said doubtfully.

“That’s what I said.”

“You believe you can set something up?”

“You mean—set
him
up?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Hey, I’m a New York girl. I got confidence coming outta my ears, Mano. Come by the Pentagon sometime. We’ll talk.”

“Sounds good.”

Kinimaka punched the end button and surveyed the room. “Let’s get this thing started.”