Drake pushed Blackbird as hard as he could, aware of his companions’ own struggles, but the Israeli was no slouch, matching him blow for blow and strategy for strategy.
They needed an edge.
As if hearing the silent call, a large figure suddenly filled the broken supermarket doorway.
“So what’s all this?” Torsten Dahl said. “Looks like I’m missing out on all the fun.”
The Swede pelted forward like a runaway juggernaut, taking one of Mai’s remaining opponents by surprise. The guy just stood there and let the Swede ram him, as if disbelieving he would actually go through with it. Dahl laughed as he collided with the assassin.
“You don’t play chicken with the Mad Swede,” he said. “What the hell happened here? Blackbird clone himself or something?”
Drake let loose a flurry of blows. “Something like that.”
“Hey.” Alicia moved up behind the Israeli. “You’re out of boyfriends.”
Dahl motioned to Mai that she should join them, and she faced her last opponent with a grin. When the man charged him, Dahl wrenched a piece of shelving away from its metal housing and smacked him on the side of the head with it; a batter striking a home run.
The last of Blackbird’s assistant assassins dropped like a stone.
Drake gave the man a moment. “You’re a tough bastard, I’ll give you that. But you’re alone now. Time to give it up.”
Around them, the devastated store creaked and groaned. Precarious piles shifted. Blackbird held out his hands.
“I give up.”
“Why are you here? What’s Mossad doing mixed up in all this?” Mai asked.
Blackbird shrugged. “I personally just wanted to try my hand against the best team in the world. Mossad? It looks at the bigger picture. The global account. Stupendous and very dark things are starting to happen in the wider world, my friends. Power-hungry men that would rule us — all are taking sides and making plays. It has already begun.”
“What things?” Drake asked.
“This group, the Pythians, and others, believe much is connected. Pandora. The Lionheart. Pyramids. Triangles. It all leads to the greatest, most mind-blowing discovery of our time. Actually, of any time. Even more staggering than your gods.”
Drake remembered the Pythian name. He’d considered them a continuation of the Shadow Elite, nothing more. “These guys have some kind of master plan?”
“They do.” Blackbird nodded. “But I have said too much already. Now is not the time. Will you free us?”
Drake had been aware that Blackbird’s cohorts were rising, and that they all stood immobile, non-threatening. The other Israelis hadn’t even brought a knife to the party.
“You endangered innocents. Terrorized them.”
Blackbird chuckled. “Thieves,” he said. “Do you think we would be so amateur as to smash that door? Did the Swede let them go?”
Drake glanced at Dahl, who spread his hands. “It seems so.”
“Well, they won’t come back in a hurry.”
Drake made the decision. “And neither will you. Leave now. Leave the town, leave the country. But stay in touch. We might be able to help each other.”
“We will speak again.” With that Blackbird and his team vacated the supermarket. Drake looked around.
“Didn’t see that coming.”
A new figure entered through the broken doors. Drake almost launched an attack before seeing it was Michael Crouch, back from the field.
“Why on earth are you all standing around?” he asked. “Don’t you know? It’s oh six hundred hours. Coyote has joined the fight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Coyote made ready, and entered the dark streets. The field had been narrowed, the cream had risen to the top. Only SPEAR, Beauregard, Crouch and possibly Blackbird remained, though Coyote suspected several unscripted antics had been played out amongst some of the contestants throughout the night.
It mattered not. The endgame was coming. And Coyote was on the hunt.
She checked her equipment, particularly the tracking device. An accumulation of dots were flashing over by the supermarket, but they were already on the move. Her own device was a little more sophisticated than the others — enabling her to upload data onto the system. Such was her intent now as she stopped among the town’s many gravestones under a coal-black sky.
“As promised,” she whispered to the night.
The tournament’s most lucrative take-down (her own choice of course), masked the screen and tapped in a few commands. At first she’d been reluctant to trial Tyler Webb’s nano-vests, but when Kovalenko had failed the first test run in the tunnels beneath DC, Coyote had risen to the new challenge. Granted, they were strapped this time to the bodies of four unfortunate civilians instead of President Coburn, but that hardly mattered to her. Webb was influential, powerful, and intent on ruling the world. Coyote would gain the most formidable asset of her career if she tested them for him.
Of course, why me? Why here and now? She harbored the smidgen of an idea that she was being tested, as Webb tested all his allies, rather than the vests.
She tapped out a quick message on her burner phone, then sent it via text to the remaining contestants.
Coyote engaged. Nano-vests live. Look for the four green dots. Two hours to detonation — what fun!
That should get Drake tripping. The Yorkshireman was a big fan of the innocent, he hated getting anyone dragged in that shouldn’t be there. And he had every right to feel that way, of course. Many people that loved military men and women were innocent, and many of them died.
Coyote flashed back once again to the night his wife died. Coyote tended and nurtured an inner garden — or pit of despair — where all her worst regrets were buried. Alyson Drake was one of the biggest. And it wasn’t simply her death, or the accident of it; there was much more to the entire incident than that.
It was the only time as Coyote that Shelly Cohen had thought about giving up her evil persona. The closest she ever came. A last flirtation with redemption. The decision hung in the balance, a guillotine hanging by a frayed thread, and when the blade dropped it mapped out the rest of her life.
Good or evil?
Fate had taken all choice away from her. Shelly Cohen became Coyote forever on that horribly significant night. The façade had consumed her, eating away morals like a maggot devouring flesh. Now, the flashing green dots before her represented just that — dots. A means to an end. They were about as human to her mind as the piece of plastic they transmitted from.
Real people? She killed real people for breakfast.
With the text message sent, Coyote regarded her own tracking device. Another improvement was that hers updated in real-time, not every twelve minutes as the SPEAR team and Beauregard’s did. She watched now as four red dots moved quickly toward one of the green ones. How predictable. How admirable.
How insane.
The name of her tournament was Last Man Standing. It was time to claim the title.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Torsten Dahl read Coyote’s text message with a shake of his head. The sheer madness of some people blew his mind. True, he had earned the nickname ‘The Mad Swede’ after performing more than one death-defying feat of bravery in the heat of battle, but this was a whole different league. This was psychopathic and murderous, not even warfare. If this Coyote had ever possessed a heart, it had long since crumbled to ash.