“What the hell—”
“Move!” Dahl shouted, recognition in his voice. “It’s a Net Gun.”
Drake scrambled. He did not want to be there when the thing landed. Like a spider’s web it arced through the night, tiny weights attached to its edges, dozens of individual threads glistening with a barely lighter shade of dark as they flew toward them. The net seemed to soar for ten minutes, hanging in space, but only seconds passed before it thunked down hard. Drake and the others were clear, an outside strand slipping over Alicia’s foot but not catching.
“He’s had time to set up a good defense,” Dahl said.
And then the assassin at the top of the hill proved it. Manic laughter rang out and small glow sticks were thrown haphazardly down the hill. Following them came actual bouncing bombs; grenades already primed and thrown at irregular intervals so they exploded at different times.
The team scrambled for cover. One grenade exploded near the top of the hill, sending up a shower of sod and dirt. Another rolled for several more seconds, its boom resonating through the ground. Yet another passed by the team, detonating behind them. Drake hugged the ground as it discharged its deadly firepower, then looked up.
“Crap. There’s more!”
And still they came. Chance wouldn’t stay forever on their side. Drake pointed to the sturdy wooden bridge that led to the staircase up the hill and ran for it, seeing Mai at his side. Dahl had already broken the other way, circumventing the mound, heading for the assassin’s blind side, and Alicia had taken off after him.
Drake reached the relative safety and impenetrable darkness underneath the bridge and stairway. Another explosion shook the castle’s foundations. Solid timber planks shook and dislodged flurries of debris, raining it over their hair and shoulders. Drake didn’t stay put for long. They had to keep moving forward.
Mai grabbed his shoulder and pointed. The stairway led to the very top of the hill and provided great cover. Drake nodded. Their quarry would not guess how fast they could be. He set off, head down, scanning the ground as much as the dismal light would allow. Stones and clods of earth dislodged in his wake. Mai stepped lightly at his back. Behind and to their sides even more grenades were detonated. Twice, fragments of earth spattered under the bridge, stinging their exposed flesh. The structure shook, but held firm. Drake reminded himself that Dahl and Alicia were most likely assaulting the keep from another angle. The assassin would know he was under attack.
He’s had plenty of time to plan this.
What else could they do? Time was their enemy. Coyote was coming. The townspeople might even soon be dragged into this, and then all bets and potential outcomes were thrown into a highly volatile mix. Add some kind of terrorist response unit to that…
Drake ran harder, almost fell, but caught himself on a solid wooden support. A grenade bounced so close they heard it skipping along the turf to their right. It detonated seconds later.
The stairway juddered. Drake and Mai were thrown to the ground. Drake rose immediately, soil and bits of grass streaming from his shoulders. “Damn, that was—”
Mai hissed a warning before he heard it. Grenades tossed under the bridge, rolling toward them.
Before they could react, the bombs exploded. Drake pushed his body down as far as the soft, yielding earth would allow. But that was only a precaution; he knew the rolling, bumpy terrain above them would help shield the blast.
The real problem was the stairway collapsing all around them.
Timbers, spars and support columns groaned and twisted, planks crashed to the earth or flew into the air depending how close they were to the blast radius. Reinforcement joists cracked. A spear of timber drove hard into the ground three feet to Drake’s left. He dashed that way, crablike, knowing through instinct that Mai would break right. A thick length of six-by-two slammed down onto his trailing leg, landing face-side first so that the impact was lessened. Nevertheless, Drake felt the blow in every nerve, issuing a deep grunt. When an ominous crack sounded above he rolled blindly, in a sudden snapshot seeing his hand caught underneath collapsing planks, amazed when they smashed down to either side of his wrist, leaving him untouched.
He rolled on, into the open. The stairway collapsed behind him, toppling and crashing down even as more grenades exploded within it, sending new splinter- and plank-filled plumes high into the air, and far and wide. Drake rolled to his knees immediately to get his bearings, a little shocked to see he was three-quarters of the way up the hill, only twenty strides from the top.
Above and to the right he could see Mai, already pounding the grass, fleet of foot as if nothing had happened.
He pushed up, tired of this game of king of the hill. In that moment the figure of a man appeared at the top.
“Duster’s me name! Blimey, come and get me!” he cried. “Killin’s me game! Chow down on this, ya Yorkshire twat! ‘Nuff said.”
Drake barely heard the insult, not that he could have translated it particularly well. He’d already seen the three-cylinder backpack strapped to Duster’s back, the long lance of the gun aiming toward him, and the horrific potential of what was about to happen.
“Flamethrower!” he cried at the top of his lungs.
This would be no old, out-of-date model, this would be a contemporary killing machine. In the movies, flamethrowers were depicted as having a short range, mostly to preserve the actors’ safety. In real life they could extend a spout of flame almost eight meters. Drake threw himself back down the hill, hearing a whoosh of flame at his back. The plus points of a man using a flamethrower meant that his mobility was impaired and the weapon’s burn time was severely limited. All this gave Mai and Dahl and Alicia more of a chance.
But Duster would be aware of that.
Trying to second-guess a killer of this caliber was like galloping through a littered minefield, but again the team had no choice. Drake felt the hot air at his back, swiveled and watched as the flame expended itself. Then he was up again, covering the scorched earth and stamping in between the mini-fires that lit up the dark for yards around. Mai had already reached the summit. Drake saw Duster’s figure and heard his rant.
“Wotcher, me old friend! What ‘ave yew got fer me? Sorted!”
Duster had unstrapped the cylinders, letting the bulk fall heavily to the floor, and now threw the lance toward Mai. Then, like a cowboy, he whipped out two guns from twin holsters at his sides, firing each one quickly, dramatically and with an unmistakable flourish.
Mai threw herself sideways, bullets passing inches above her body. Drake knew even she couldn’t survive another salvo from Duster’s trusty weapons. He hurled the only weapon he had — his knife — toward the assassin. Forced to act quickly, its arc wasn’t good; it clashed against Duster’s arm handle first, but at least gave the man a moment’s pause.
A shot rang out. That would be Dahl firing his handgun. The noose was closing.
Duster grinned. Drake cringed when he saw it.
What…?
Duster threw some kind of miniature flickering flame. Instantly a circle of fire ignited all around him, shooting up over six feet high. Drake figured the circle was about ten feet across, giving the man ample room to move. But flames wouldn’t stop bullets.
Dahl fired again, but Drake was able to distinguish nothing through the flames as he reached the top of the hill. The asshole had probably gone to ground. With that thought barely completed, the night erupted again, this time in the form of more bouncing bombs.
Not aimed at Drake’s team…
They exploded at the bases of the various crumbling walls that ringed the top of the hill. Though ruined, they were in parts still quite tall and now came crashing down. Three high walls collapsed, rolling gently before tumbling faster and faster. Dahl was under one, Mai another. The Swede saw the danger and pounded away, head down, but even so it was his instincts that kept him alive. As the plummeting wall descended toward him he threw a forearm up, deflecting the heavy block that would have split his skull. The rest of the blocks smashed down inches behind his fleeing ankles, shaking the earth with their destruction.