Drake clicked his teeth. “That was some time ago now, but the death threats are constant and very real. I thought they might forget about me. Us! I guess all those terrorists will want some kind of reckoning.”
Mai’s face took on a fatalistic expression. “Enemies may get older, but they never forget.”
“Can we focus on now?” Dahl said. “This Blackbird person is going to start dishing out pain again very soon.”
Alicia pointed to nearby houses where doors stood open and windows were smashed. “Looks like he dragged people out from their houses.”
“Which limits the hostage count,” Drake said. “We still need a visual.”
“So what do we do?” Dahl wondered.
“What we always do,” Drake answered. “We go save the day.”
The condition of the supermarket gave them more answers. The front door was shattered, hanging off its hinges. The windows around it were also smashed. No alarm wailed, so they had to guess Blackbird had managed to improvise a bypass. Through the wrecked frontage the team observed three people pressed up against the glass windows at the far side of the supermarket, hands and faces touching the panes.
“Front’s clear,” Drake said. “And even more clearly a trap.”
“No time to wait. No chance to negotiate,” Mai said. “What to do?”
“Take out the hostages,” Alicia said quietly.
“What?”
“They’re his only leverage. So let’s take ‘em out.”
“How? And when you say ‘take out’…”
Alicia spun her two handguns and proceeded to break cover and walk out into the open. “Like this. Bye bye hostages.”
And she opened fire, aiming at the very window where the hostages stood. The whole pane fractured and smashed before collapsing like a waterfall. Pieces littered the pathway, a sudden sharp tide. The hostages shrieked and fell back inside, away from the danger, quickly diving to the floor.
Alicia was among them in seconds, Drake and Mai backing her up. Mai pulled the hapless trio outside and handed them off to Dahl.
Drake and Alicia took point, crouching in the sudden stillness and sensing the very air of the place. Racks of shelves stretched away toward the rear of the place, full of produce and materials. The faint night-time illumination lent a stark aura to the large space, making it feel even more unfriendly.
A trolley rolled slowly down one of the aisles. Drake noticed the package nestled inside a moment before Alicia.
“Down!”
They hit the deck. The package exploded a few seconds later — not a massive explosion but a charge filled with enough firepower to have taken them out had it struck true. Drake rolled as one of the supermarket shelves toppled, sending hundreds of items tipping and toppling to the floor. A stand of paperbacks and DVDs tumbled too, hitting the main row of cash registers. Several of the tills must have been left on, as Drake heard the ding of barcodes being registered.
He shifted. Blackbird, clad in pure black, was already racing along the top of the next row of shelving, bent almost double. Startled by the sight, and by the shape, he took a moment to process the attack.
By then Blackbird was airborne, moving too fast for him to react in time. The masked figure was on him and all he could do was raise an arm to ward off the inevitable attack. Collapsing under the weight of his opponent, he managed to squirm out from underneath. Blackbird was fast, swiveling and striking all in one single movement. Drake again caught the blow.
Alicia struck at Blackbird from behind.
The masked assassin turned. Drake heard the words, “Crazy Englishwoman,” emerge from their opponent’s mouth and thought, Welcome to Alicia’s world. Blackbird struck time and time again but Alicia countered every blow. Drake saw steel flash in the Israeli’s hand — he was plucking a blade from a pocket hidden at the base of his spine — and he cried out a warning.
Alicia flipped away. Mai stepped in.
The ex-ninja held her gun steady. The Israeli’s disembodied voice sounded surprised. “I thought you the most honorable opponent, Mai Kitano.”
“Not tonight,” Mai said. “There is too much at risk.”
Drake tried a new tack. “Surrender to us now. And we’ll let you live.”
“I think not. A British prison would not suit me, and your treatment can be as rough as any I have encountered.”
Drake held up his hands. “Bollocks to this. What the hell are you gonna do?”
A self-satisfied grunt came through the mask. “I thought you’d be better prepared, SPEAR Team. Didn’t you know? Blackbird never fights alone.”
Even as the words were spoken, black ropes slithered from the unlit heights of the supermarket ceiling, slapping against the floor seconds before masked figures abseiled down. Drake and Mai and Alicia suddenly found themselves beset by five more able opponents.
All hell broke loose.
A melee of unbelievable proportions erupted across every aisle of the building. Drake leapt at Blackbird. Mai engaged three of the newcomers, and Alicia sprinted at the remaining two with an exultant snarl on her face. Here was battle and bloodshed, hand to hand, fist to fist, the outlet for all her agonies.
Drake pushed Blackbird back down the first aisle. Mai hit her adversaries so hard and with so much guile that all four of them careened into the high shelving itself, toppling it backwards so that the entire length crashed heavily to the floor. Piles of cans and bottles and cereal boxes spilled and surged in all directions. Assassins landed amidst exploding heaps of cereal and busted open carbonated drinks, sprayed with a mixture of soda, orange and fruits of the forest.
Mai picked her way toward them.
Alicia threw a heavy can at her first opponent, a little stunned when the figure just nutted it aside.
“Wow. I’m impressed.”
She then hefted an unboxed on-sale slow cooker and hurled that in the same direction. “See how you get on with that, motherfucker.”
Drake tussled with Blackbird across the floor. The pair rolled across a heap of broken glass; luckily the Israeli was beneath him and was the one grunting in pain. Drake pressed his advantage, freeing his hands with a sudden jerk and then striking at his opponent’s weak points. He was momentarily surprised to find those areas reinforced by the special suit.
He shouldn’t have been. This was Mossad after all.
Blackbird came back with several deadly blows. Drake repelled them all but found himself driven back against one of the tills. Quickly, he jumped and skimmed across the conveyor belt bouncing his feet off the cash register and rolling aside. By the time Blackbird caught him he was up again, more prepared than previously.
Alicia’s first adversary had succumbed to the slow-cooker attack. Her second came at her fast, but appeared to be put off by having to pick his way through an uneven jumble of groceries. Alicia didn’t let it faze her one bit. She had fought harder opponents in worse places then this. She trampled through the mishmash, trusting her inner balance and training to make the necessary adjustments. Using the clutter to her advantage, she kicked cereal boxes at her opponent’s masked face, then dove in low, took the guy’s legs away and smashed his nose against the floor. With a limitless supply of weapons at hand, Alicia upended a two liter bottle of Pepsi over the mask whilst holding the head in place.
“Cola-boarded,” she said speculatively. “Wonder if it’s a world first?”
Mai was falling back toward Drake, beset by the three assassins. Two of them moved stiffly, clearly carrying injuries, but they were competent enough to carry the fight to Mai.
Another row of shelving toppled, smashing to the floor and emptying its contents in a wide, messy spread. One of Mai’s assailants was caught underneath, groaning as their leg was trapped. An errant metal strut glanced off Mai’s head, drawing a bead of blood and momentarily distracting her. Instantly, the other two leapt. Mai battled them off, but fell to her knees.