“But that’s—”
“Our old HQ,” Hayden finished for him. “Shit, it doesn’t matter that the place got shot to shit. Someone’s after the hard drives and the information stored on them. How old is this video, Smyth?”
“It’s not,” Smyth barked. “It’s real time.”
“You gotta go! You gotta go now. Why the hell anyone would want those drives I don’t know, but we have to stop them. Jonathan—” her voice broke a little. “Jonathan had them installed in tandem with his own system so he could work from both his office and the HQ. Maybe it’s his drives they’re after.”
Smyth headed for the door. “Already on my way.”
Kinimaka took out a cell of his own and followed. “Doesn’t feel right,” he mumbled. “Calling for back up. Just don’t feel right.”
Kinimaka raced through the streets of DC, acutely conscious they were headed back to the place where Romero died. Smyth would be even more aware. The traffic was thankfully sparse, the journey short. Smyth kept an eye on their surveillance camera through his phone link. Kinimaka reported on the progress of the backup team.
“We’ll get there first,” he said. “By two minutes.”
“Long enough to count against us,” Smyth rasped back. “Can’t wait.”
“Agreed.”
They pulled up alongside the curb and jumped out. Smyth ran around to the back, popping the trunk and raiding the underfloor weapons’ box for firepower. He handed Kinimaka a machine gun and a Glock, clips, a flak-jacket and smoke bombs.
His cellphone continued to ping.
Kinimaka inclined his head. “Might be best to turn that off, buddy.”
Smyth growled, but complied. The two men went off at a dead run, knowing what to expect. Both of them had visited the old HQ recently to collect any data the global tracking systems might have picked up.
They hadn’t expected the facility to be invaded over a week after being destroyed.
The back stairs led directly into the common room, the place where they’d all met to talk. Smyth crouched at the topmost landing.
“You ready?”
Kinimaka nodded. “Do it.”
Smyth rose and paced forward at a controlled rate, gun held alongside his chin and pointed toward the enemy. He slipped inside the main door then paused, holding his breath. Kinimaka slid along beside him. They were ghosts, impressions of light and dark, mere shadows that flitted to and fro and made no noise.
Men hunched over computer terminals before them. Some were down on their knees. Smyth and Kinimaka stood silently over them, unseen, and performed a quick head count.
Outnumbered eight to two.
Smyth made the kill sign. Kinimaka nodded. They were not about to issue a warning to a superior number of mercs that had just broken into a secret, information-laden building armed with semis. Smyth fired first, his suppressed weapon making a popping sound and efficiently making three holes in three foreheads.
He moved as he worked. Kinimaka eased away to the right, keeping the positions of the remaining mercs at the front of his mind. Two double taps and another two bodies dropped. One of the mercs backed away, weapon pivoting, but Smyth took him down with a slightly messy neck shot.
Two left.
Kinimaka drifted again, stealing the distance between his adversary and himself away. Through a gap in the desks he saw a body, firing instantly. The man dropped. He looked over to Smyth, saw his comrade give a thumbs up.
“Got ‘em.”
Kinimaka rose. “Careful. I shot the last one in the collarbone. We need information.”
Smyth grinned. “Me too! That means we got one each to interrogate. Hey, not bad for CIA, man. Not bad at all.”
Kinimaka was experienced enough to understand such praise coming from an ex-Delta force soldier was rare and hard-earned. “Mahalo.”
“Right,” Smyth snarled at his captive. “Let’s see what we’re up against.”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Kinimaka didn’t have to work hard to show his prisoner that he was a tad unhappy. Leaving Hayden alone — she actually had a CIA honor guard outside her room — the rest of his team in peril; the recent deaths and fighting the man-monster earlier that day, had all left him feeling more than a little edgy.
“I’m gonna ask you once,” he growled, for once having a reason to make his bulk as large and intimidating as possible. “Why are you here? Who do you work for?”
The merc didn’t even try to resist. Broken and reset bones were murder in his game. They slowed you down and got you killed. “Dudes’ just recruited me,” he blabbed. “Through some friend of a friend. No real IDs shown on either side. Man, it was real hush-hush, you know, but paid a boatload. All I know is I work for a group called the Pythians and they’re bad shit, man. Real bad.”
Kinimaka stared at him. This group, the Pythians, had been flagging up a lot recently. Of course, they wouldn’t advertise their name if they didn’t want people to know it. In warfare, you were always going to lose men to seizure and subsequent interrogation.
So what did that tell him?
“The guys in my unit talked a lot. Said they were a new group but big. Nobody knows who they are. Y’know, like the fuckin’ Templars, or something. Wanna rule the world, you know?”
“I know the type,” Kinimaka said with a touch of dry sarcasm. “What do these Pythians want?”
“Who knows, man? World peace? Civil war? Cats in space? Fuckin’ fruit bats the lot of them. The guys told stories of Pandora’s Box, the Lionheart and some mega-dude called Saint German, or something. All sorts of secrets, myths and crap. This Saint German guy is involved in the greatest mystery of all time.” The merc spat. “Like I said — fruit bats the lots of them.”
Kinimaka knew the man was blabbing without giving a single thing away. “And here?” he asked. “What exactly did you come for?”
Now the man’s eyes dropped, the shoulders tensed. All the telltale signs of resistance. Kinimaka said nothing, but moved one step forward and planted his enormous boot on an outstretched hand.
“Hey. Hey! Wait, I’ll talk. It’s my first mission. I don’t owe these bastards crap. The objective was the hard drives but one in particular. The bosses — they wanted the one that the Secretary of Defense used. You know, Jonathan Gates?”
“Yes. I know.”
“No clue why. I kinda liked the dude myself.”
Kinimaka removed his boot. “Keep talking.”
The eyes dropped again. “I don’t know any more, man!”
“Do you want to hear the sound of your own bones breaking? Is that what you want?
“All right, all right. The op wasn’t a smash and grab, it was an information steal, you know? A download. They wanted us to grab everything on Gates’ computer that related to Stone.”
Kinimaka squinted. “Who?”
“Bill Stone. General Bill Stone. The army guy.”
Kinimaka stared at the merc. The army guy. The very man Gates had suspected to be involved in the hijacking of the original Odin doomsday weapon before it got blown sky high; the man Gates believed was traitorous in some if not all ways.
The man Lauren Fox had been about to work her own particular brand of magic on.
“What else?”
“That’s it, dude. I swear. Christ, isn’t that enough?”
Kinimaka moved away to confer with Smyth, both men tying the hands and feet of their captives before retreating. A quick discussion revealed their men spoke similar tales, probably with the odd tequila-induced embellishment.
Smyth tapped his weapon on the floor, handle first. “So what now? We can’t exactly take this to the new Secretary. Our first act shouldn’t be to accuse a General of treason.”