The Gates of Hell (Matt Drake 3) (21 page)

“Step carefully,” he said. “In pairs. And keep your minds off the filth and on the way ahead, ’less you wanna try that new sport ‘abyss-diving.’”

Ben joined him on the first moving shelf. “It’s so hard to concentrate,” he moaned.

“Think of Hayden,” Drake told him. “That’ll get you through.”

“I
am
thinking of Hayden.” Ben blinked at the nearest statue, a writhing threesome of tangled heads, arms and legs. “That’s the problem.”

“With me.” Drake stepped warily onto the second sliding shelf, already gauging the movement of the third and fourth. “You know, I’m so glad I spent all those hours playing Tomb Raider after all.”

“Never thought
I’d
end up being the sprite in the game though,” Ben muttered back and then thought of Mai. Most of the Japanese intelligence community likened her to a character in a video game. “Hey, Matt, ya’ don’t think we’re really asleep, do ya? And this is all a dream?”

Drake watched his friend tread carefully onto the third shelf. “I never had a dream this vivid.” He didn’t need to nod at their surroundings to make his point.

Now, behind them, a second and third group of men had started their painstaking journey. Drake counted twenty shelves before he reached the end and jumped off, thankfully, onto solid ground. Thank God, his pounding heart could take a breather. He watched the exit archway for a minute then, satisfied they were alone, he turned back to check the others’ progress.

Just in time to see one of the Delta men wrench his gaze away from the gaudily painted ceiling—

And miss the shelf he was about to step on to. He was gone in a split second, the only reminder that he’d ever been there was the terrified shriek that followed his fall.

The entire company stopped and the air trembled with shock and fear. Komodo gave them all a moment and then urged them on. They all knew how to survive this. The fallen soldier had been a fool to himself.

Again, and more warily now, they all started to move. Drake fancied for a moment that he could still hear the soldiers scream, falling forever into that limitless chasm, but shrugged it away as hallucination. He focused on the men once more just in time to see the big Komodo take the same fall.

There was one desperate moment of flailing, one angry, regretful cry about his terrible lapse of concentration and the big Delta team leader slipped over the edge of the shelf. Drake cried out, almost ready to leap to his aid but woefully sure he couldn’t possibly make it in time. Ben screamed like a girl—

But this was because Karin simply dived after the big man!

Without hesitation, Karin Blake left all the highly-trained Delta team staring in her wake and leapt headlong at Komodo. She had been in front of him, so her momentum should help push him back onto the concrete slab. But Komodo was a big man, and heavy, and Karin’s point-blank leap barely moved his bulk.

But she
did
move him slightly. And that was enough to help. Komodo managed to turn, as Karin gave him an extra two seconds of air-time, and clamp hold of the edge of the concrete with vice-like fingers. He clung, desperate, unable to haul himself up.

And the sliding shelf moved agonizingly slow toward its left-hand perimeter, at which point it would disappear, taking the Delta team leader with it.

Karin took firm hold of Komodo’s left wrist. At last, the other members of his team responded and grabbed his other arm. With a huge effort, they hauled him up and over the slab just as it disappeared into its hidden runner.

Komodo shook his head into the dusty concrete. “Karin,” he said. “I will never look at another woman again.”

The blond ex-student dropout genius grinned. “You guys with your straying eyes, you will never learn.”

And cutting through Drake’s admiration came the realization that this third level of ‘hell,’ this chamber called
lust,
was nothing more than a depiction of man’s age-old affliction with the wandering eye. The cliché that if a man was sitting in a café with his wife or girlfriend, and another pair of pretty legs walked by—he would almost certainly look.

Except down here, if he looked he died.

Some women would have no problem with that, Drake mused. And not unreasonably, either. But Karin had saved Komodo and now the pair were even. It took another five minutes of anxious waiting, but at last the remainder of the team made it across the sliding shelves.

They all took a breather. Every man in the company made a point of shaking Karin’s hand and commending her bravery. Even Ben.

Then a shot rang out. One of the Delta soldiers fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. All of a sudden, they were under attack. Half a dozen of the Blood King’s men poured out of the archway, guns blazing. Bullets fizzed through the air.

Already on their knees, Drake and his team hit the deck, reaching for weapons. The man who had been hit stayed kneeling and took another four rounds to the chest and head. In less than two seconds he was dead, another victim to the Blood King’s cause.

Drake dragged his loaned M16 assault rifle up and fired. To his right one of the statues was riddled with lead, alabaster chips sent zipping through the air. Drake ducked.

Another bullet whistled past his head.

The entire team was prone, calm, and able to take careful aim with their rifles balanced on the ground. When they opened fire it was a massacre, dozens of bullets riddling Kovalenko’s running men and making them dance like bloodied marionettes. One man bulldozed his way through, miraculously unharmed, until he met Matt Drake.

The ex-SAS man leapt to meet him head-on, leading with a devastating head-butt and a quick series of knife-strikes to the ribs. The last of Kovalenko’s men slipped into that place all evil men ended up.

Hell.

Drake motioned them on, sparing a regretful look for the fallen Delta team member. They would collect his body on the way back.

“We must be catching the bastard up.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Hayden faced off against Ed Boudreau and the world melted away.

“Pleased to kill you,” Boudreau repeated the words he’d said to her once before. “Again.”

“You failed last time, psycho. You’ll fail again.”

Boudreau flicked a glance down to her leg. “How’s the thigh?”

“All better.” Hayden stayed on the balls of her feet, expecting the lightning attack. She tried to steer the American so his ass was against the barn wall, but he was too wily for that.

“You’re blood.” Boudreau mimed licking his knife. “Tasted good. I think my baby here wants more.”

“Unlike your sister,” Hayden growled. “She really couldn’t take any more.”

Boudreau exploded toward her. Hayden had been expecting it and sidestepped neatly, leaving her blade for his cheek to run into. “First blood,” she said.

“Foreplay.” Boudreau lunged and retreated, then came at her with several short slices. Hayden parried them all and finished with a palm strike to his nose. Boudreau staggered, tears coming to his eyes.

Hayden instantly pressed the advantage, thrusting and slicing with her knife. She backed Boudreau up against the wall, then retreated for one beat—

Boudreau lunged.

Hayden ducked under and jabbed the knife into his thigh. She withdrew as he screamed, unable to keep the sly grin from creeping into her eyes.

“Ya feel that, fuckstick?”

“Bitch!”
Boudreau went crazy. But it was the crazy of a fighter, of a thinker, of a seasoned warrior. He drove her back with thrust after thrust, taking crazy chances, but retaining just enough power and speed to make her think twice about stepping in. And now, as they ploughed backward, they collided with other knots of fighting men and Hayden lost her balance.

She fell, scrambling across a fallen man’s knee, rolled and came up, knife ready.

Boudreau melted away through the crowd, the grin on his face turning to a leer as he tasted his own blood and brandished the knife.

“Be seeing you,” he shouted over the din. “I know where you live, Miss Jaye.”

Hayden kicked one of the Blood King’s men out of the way, snapping the man’s leg like a twig as she cleared a path to Boudreau. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mai, clearly the game-changer in this battle, fighting unarmed against men with sharp weapons, the battle too close up for gunplay, and leaving them heaped at her feet. Hayden gaped at the dead and dying that twitched all around her.

Even Boudreau, she saw, did a double-take when he followed Hayden’s gaze and saw the legendary Japanese agent in action.

Mai eyeballed Hayden. “Right behind you.”

Hayden sprinted at Boudreau.

The Blood King’s top psycho took off as if a Hawaiian mongoose was snapping at his heels. Hayden and Mai pursued. Mai dealt a devastating blow to another of Kovalenko’s men as she passed, thus saving another soldier’s life.

Beyond the barn lay an open field, a helipad complete with chopper, and a narrow jetty where several boats lay at anchor. Boudreau sped past the chopper, heading for a big speedboat and didn’t even break stride when he leapt on board, tumbling through the air. Before Hayden could even make it past the chopper, the big boat was already burbling away and starting to inch ahead.

Mai began to slow. “That’s a Baja. Very fast, and with three men already waiting inside. Those other boats are sedate by comparison.” Her eyes drank in the chopper. “Now that’s what we need.”

Hayden ducked as a bullet whizzed by them, barely noticing. “Can you fly it?”

Mai favored her with a ‘are you
really
asking me that question?’ look, before stepping onto a skid and jumping inside. Before Hayden got there, Mai already had the main rotor spinning and Boudreau’s boat let out a mighty roar as it surged off down the river.

“Have faith,” Mai said softly, displaying the legendary patience she was known for as Hayden ground her teeth in frustration. In a minute, the machine was ready to fly. Mai finessed the collective. The skids left the ground. A bullet thudded into the pillar beside Hayden’s head.

She flinched away, then turned to see the last of the Blood King’s men collapse under fire. One of the Hawaiian special forces soldiers gave them a big thumbs up as the chopper began to dip and turn in preparation to pursue the speedboat. Hayden waved back.

Just another crazy day in her life.

But she was still here. Still surviving. The old Jaye motto crept back into her head.
Survive another day. Just live.
Even at moments like this, she sorely missed her dad.

In a minute the chopper wobbled and swooped off in hot pursuit. Hayden’s stomach was left somewhere back at the camp and she gripped the handholds until her knuckles hurt. Mai didn’t miss a beat.

“Keep your pants on.”

Hayden tried to take her mind off the hair-raising ride by checking the state of her weapons. Her knife was back in its holder. Her only remaining gun was a standard-issue Glock, not the Caspian she had favored lately. But, what the hell, a gun’s a gun, right?

Mai flew low enough to catch spray on the windscreen. The big yellow boat powered through the wide river ahead. Hayden saw figures standing in the back, watching them get closer. No doubt they were armed.

Mai dipped her head and then looked hard at Hayden. “Guts and glory.”

Hayden nodded. “All the way.”

Mai punched the collective, sending the chopper in a vicious dive, on a collision course for the yellow Baja. Predictably, the men stood around its flank fell back in shock. Hayden leant out of the window and squeezed off a shot. The bullet went hopelessly wide.

Mai passed her a half-empty M9. “Make ‘em count.”

Hayden fired again. One of Boudreau’s men shot back, the bullet pinging off the chopper’s canopy. Mai zigzagged the collective, sending Hayden’s head crashing off a support pillar. Then Mai dived again, aggressive, giving no quarter. Hayden emptied the clip of her Glock and saw one of Boudreau’s men go flying off the boat in a spray of blood.

Then another bullet hit the chopper, followed by a flurry of others. The big machine presented a big target. Hayden saw Boudreau at the wheel of the boat, knife held firmly between his teeth, firing up at them with a machine pistol.

“Oh,” Mai’s shout was an understatement as black smoke suddenly billowed out of the chopper and the engine note changed drastically from a roar to a whine. Without guidance, the chopper began to weave and jerk.

Mai blinked at Hayden.

Hayden waited until they were over Boudreau’s boat and threw open her door as the chopper came down.

She looked into the very whites of Boudreau’s eyes, said,
“Fuck it,”
and leapt out of the falling helicopter.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Hayden’s free fall was short lived. It wasn’t far down to Boudreau’s boat but she struck the man a glancing blow on the way down before she crashed to the deck. The air wooshed out of her body. The old wound in her thigh screamed. She saw stars.

The chopper spiraled down into the rushing river about thirty feet to the left, the thunderous sound of its death drowning out all cohesive thought and sending a gigantic wave across the speedboat’s bows.

A wave powerful enough to alter the very course of the boat.

The vessel lost its velocity, sending everyone flying forward, and began to tip. Then at the end of its forward momentum, it rolled right over to land belly up in the white water.

Hayden held on as the boat tipped. When she went under she kicked hard, aiming straight down, and then struck out in the direction of the nearest bank. Cold water made her head ache, but soothed her aching limbs a little. The tug of the current made her realize just how tired she was.

When she surfaced she found herself near the bank, but facing Ed Boudreau. He still had the knife clamped between his teeth and snarled when he saw her.

Behind him the wreckage of the steaming helicopter began to sink beneath the river. Hayden saw Mai chasing Boudreau’s two remaining men to the muddy shore. Knowing she would not survive a water fight, she struck out past the madman and didn’t stop until she hit the bank. Thick mud oozed all around her.