David Leadbeater - Weapons of the Gods

Drake crawled among the clothes and peered through.

A wide road and sidewalks separated them from the poorly maintained frontage of a street hotel, signs unpainted for years and windows unwashed. The front door was closed. Police cars lined up outside as if waiting at a drive-thru, but their occupants were crouched behind wheels and doors, guns drawn and waiting. Two large vans could also be seen — Drake guessed at least one of them was a communications vehicle, the other probably concealing a strike squad. The entire area was lit not only by streetlamps but by portable floodlights, giving it a stark, ghostly feel. Drake saw no movement at the hotel’s windows.

“Still negotiating,” Hayden reported.

“The only question,” Luther said. “Is will they kill the hostages to cover up Tempest’s attack on the safe, or to cover up their escape?”

“Both,” Mai suggested. “They have eight hostages.”

“But Egyptian SWAT will go in at the first loss of life,” Molokai said. “They have to.”

“Maybe we can diffuse it all,” Kenzie spoke up, “by finding the flail first.”

“Listen,” Hayden said bluntly. “What is happening to the hostages is not something we can influence. Or change. And you can bet your butt that no Egyptian SWAT team is gonna accept our help. So, it’s on with the op, no questions.”

“I’ve bet my butt a few times,” Alicia said wistfully. “Always lost.” She looked around. “Maybe I wanted to.”

Drake removed the hem of an electric-blue skirt from his shoulders. “Thanks for sharing,” he said. “The bank’s on this side then?”

“Next door,” Hayden said. “The vault is one floor down. Are you ready?”

Kinimaka struck and then caught an entire arm of clothing one second before it fell to the floor. “Wait. What if they’re already inside?”

Molokai grunted. Luther explained. “We want them to be inside, Waikiki. We ain’t got any other way of getting in without making the noise of a thunder god.”

“Waikiki?” Kinimaka frowned. “I’m from the North Shore.”

“Even better.” Luther crawled out of the racks of clothing. “Follow me, North Shore. Strictly speaking, my own tendency would be to come at this big, blast this mother out of the water, but I fear for those hostages. Let’s not make it worse.”

Drake was surprised at the big warrior’s low-key thinking. “Lead the way.”

Dahl appeared alongside him, wearing the electric-blue skirt like a headdress. “We following the god of blood and war now?”

“Sorry, mate, I can’t talk to you looking like that.”

“Like what?” Dahl was unaware of the accoutrement.

“Like a pretty Disney princess.” Alicia pulled the material tight around his ears and blew a kiss. “Princess Torsty.”

“Fuck off.”

“That’s more like it. C’mon.”

Retracing their steps, they approached the bank’s rear entrance. Molokai reached it first and held up a closed fist. Drake joined him at the front. The sides of the bank jutted out from the main façade, forming a pillar from behind which they could peer. The bank’s rear doors had been breached but no alarms were ringing. A guard lay dead on the floor, just inside, surrounded by a pool of blood. Somehow, they had made him open the door.

Drake knew there were hundreds of ways to coerce a guard — from threatening to kill a passerby to abducting a family member. No scenario was out of the question for Tempest. The inside of the bank was well-lit, seemingly empty apart from the dead guard lying behind his desk, and open-plan all the way to the front.

“It’s tricky,” he said. “We’ll have to be careful the street cops don’t spot us.”

They established the location of the vault and its access stairs through Cambridge and then made ready.

“If they’re already down there it’s gonna get noisy,” Alicia said.

“Then bring your ear muffs, honey,” Hayden said, breathing hard. “ ’Cause Alexandria’s about to get real loud.”

Hayden wasn’t wrong.

Chaos and bedlam fell upon them, almost as if Luther himself was a jinx, attracting a turmoil of death and destruction. Drake pushed open the rear doors and then Cambridge was shouting in their earpieces, warning them that Whitehall had intercepted a communication from the bank with the message: Engage.

The noise began. Drake heard and saw what happened next as an elongated moment in time, a slideshow of dreadful events. First, the terrorists struck hard. Windows across the entire second floor of the hotel burst out amid flames and a roar of detonation. The cops outside ducked, yelled and the vehicles rocked as glass and debris shattered down among them. A second explosion soon followed.

At the same time there came a muffled whump from directly below. The mercs were blowing the safe.

And then, as the SPEAR team crowded past him, the bank’s highly polished, white-marble floor partially collapsed right in front of them. Cracks appeared at first and then a rough hole the size of a Smart car just fell away.

“What the—” Alicia approached it.

Drake went with her, equally perplexed. They waited a moment, staying low so that even their silhouettes wouldn’t be seen from the outside. Kenzie had a genius moment and switched the interior lights off at the precise moment of the second explosion.

“I think they cocked up down there,” Alicia whispered.

Drake peered into the hole very carefully, allowing his eyes to take in the scene half a meter at a time. A wall had been blasted apart, its edges now standing ragged and damaged. Within that wall stood a wide door with a gray wheel at the center, the entrance to the vault. The door was unmarred.

“They totally screwed the pooch,” Alicia said. “Backward, forward, and upside down. Shit.”

Two mercs lay dead on the floor, another wounded. Four more stood around scratching their heads. Drake heard noise from outside the bank and saw the Egyptian strike force jumping out of the van and storming the front of the hotel. Cops drew beads on the windows with their guns. Fires raged. The street was a wreckage-strewn battleground.

“I hate that we can’t help,” Dahl said.

“That’s what we’re trying to change,” Hayden answered, looking down. “Are they trying again?”

Drake saw that they were. “We should retreat,” he said. “Fast.”

Seconds later a lesser explosion could be heard across the road just as a slight blast came from below. Drake covered his ears, being close, and prayed that the entire floor wouldn’t collapse. By the time he looked up a chorus of cheering started to ring out from below.

Second time lucky.

Maybe not.

He sprang forward, gun up, the rest of the team at his side. They reached the hole seconds later, just in time to see the four men below pulling open the vault door. One slipped inside whilst the others stood guard near the descending staircase.

Drake looked from the staircase to the hole. Dahl crawled up beside him. “Whaddya think, Yorkshire Terrier?”

“I think we should throw you over first, then use your belly as a soft-landing pad.”

Dahl grinned. “How about we all go together?”

“Oh, no. I…”

But then Luther and Molokai were alongside and grinning all too familiarly. The Mad Swede had them hooked. With barely a pause the three men arranged themselves around the hole, giving first dibs to Dahl, whose idea it had been.

“See ya downstairs, Yorkie,” Luther said.

Drake groaned. Now even he was saying it.

Dahl leapt in first, knees tucked in, holding his weapon carefully as he fell through the air. Molokai and Luther were right behind him. Without an instant of pause Drake and Alicia followed them.