This was his daughter. Still alive.
Claude’s man jammed the gun hard against her temple, making her screw her eyes up in pain. But she did not cry out. Drake, along with a dozen others in the room, leveled their guns at the man.
And still it felt wrong to Drake. Why the hell was this guy upstairs with one captive? It almost seemed as if—
“Go back!” the man screamed, eyes pin-balling wildly in every direction. Sweat ran from him in thick droplets. The way he half-carried, half-pushed the woman meant all his weight was on his back foot. The woman, to her credit, wasn’t making it easy for him.
Drake calculated that the pressure on the trigger was already half way there. “Move away! Let us out!” The man heaved her down another step. The special forces soldiers moved alright, but only to slightly more advantageous positions.
“I’m warning you, assholes.” The sweaty man breathed heavily. “Get out of the fucking way.”
And this time Drake could see he meant it. There was a desperate look in his eyes, something that Drake recognized. This man had lost everything. Whatever he was doing, whatever he had done, had been done under terrible coercion.
“Back!” the man screamed again and roughly pushed the woman down another step. The arm around her neck was a rod of iron. He kept every part of his body behind her so as not to present a target. At one time he had been a soldier, most likely a good one.
Drake and his colleagues saw the wisdom of retreat. They gave the man a bit more room. He moved down a few more steps. Drake caught Mai’s gaze. She gave a slight shake of her head. She knew too. This wasn’t right. This was…
A diversion. Of the most atrocious kind. Claude, no doubt under the order of Kovalenko, was using this man to distract them. Archetypal Blood King behavior. There could be a bomb in the house. The real prize, Claude, was probably making good his escape from the barn.
Drake waited, perfectly poised. Every nerve in his body stilled. He lined up the shot. His breathing stopped. His mind went blank. Now there was nothing, not the rigidly tense room full of soldiers, not the terrified hostage, not even the house and the valet that surrounded it.
Just a millimetre. A crosshair. Less than an inch of target. One move. That’s all he needed. And stillness was all he knew. Then the man pushed Kate Harrison down another step, and in that split second of movement, his left eye peered around the woman’s skull.
Drake burst it apart with one shot.
The man whipped back, collided with the wall, and slithered past the shrieking woman. He landed with a bang, headfirst, gun clattering behind him, and then they saw his vest, his stomach.
Kate Harrison screamed, “He’s wearing a bomb!”
Drake leapt forward, but Mai and a big marine were already leaping over the side of the staircase. The marine grabbed Kate Harrison. Mai leapt past the dead mercenary. Her head swiveled at the vest, at the readout.
“Eight seconds!”
Everyone ran for the window. Everyone except Drake. The Englishman sprinted farther into the house, darting down the narrow hallway toward the kitchen, praying that someone had left the back door open. This way he would be closer to Claude when the bomb went off. This way, he stood a chance.
Through the hallway. Three seconds gone. Into the kitchen. A quick look around. Two more seconds. The back door — closed.
Time up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Drake opened fire even as he heard the initial explosion. It would take a second or two to reach him. The kitchen door shattered under multiple impacts. Drake ran straight at it, firing all the time. He didn’t slow, just hit it shoulder first and tumbled out into the air.
The explosion zoomed after him like a striking snake. A tongue of fire blasted out of the door and the windows, exploding up into the sky. Drake was rolling. The fire’s breath touched him for an instant and then receded.
Without breaking stride, he was up and running again. Bruised and battered, but terribly determined, he dashed for the big barn. The first thing he saw were dead bodies. Four of them. The techs Hayden had left behind to gain entry. He stopped by them, checked each one for signs of life.
No pulse and no bullet wounds. Were the damn walls electrified?
In another moment it didn’t matter. The front of the barn exploded, shards of timber and tongues of fire shooting out in a spectacular detonation. Drake hit the deck. He heard an engine roar and looked up just in time to see a yellow blur blast through the shattered doors and fly powerfully down the makeshift driveway.
Drake jumped up. It was probably heading for a hidden chopper, plane, or some other bloody booby trap. He couldn’t wait for backup. He ran into the half-demolished barn and looked around. He shook his head in disbelief. The deep shine of polished supercar glimmered in every direction.
Choosing the nearest, Drake wasted valuable seconds looking for a key and then saw a set of them hanging outside an interior office. The Aston Martin Vanquish started with a key and power button combination, which though unfamiliar to Drake, spiked his adrenalin when the crazy roar of the engine kicked in.
The Aston Martin shot out of the barn with a squeal of tires. Drake aimed it in the direction of what he hoped was Claude’s speeding car. If this was another round of misdirection, Drake was fucked. As might be the whole of Hawaii. They desperately needed to capture the Blood King’s second-in-command.
Out of the corner of his eye, Drake spied Alicia skidding to a stop. He didn’t wait. In his rearview, he saw her run purposefully into the barn. Jesus, this could get messy.
The yellow blur ahead began to look like a high-end supercar, something reminiscent of the old Porsche Le Mans winning coupes. Near to the ground, it hugged the curves of the road, bouncing like it ran on springs. Unfit for the rough terrain, but then the makeshift road became fully paved a few miles up.
Drake gunned the Vanquish, setting his weapon carefully on the seat behind him and listening to the Bluetooth squawks hopping around his brain. The operation at the ranch was still in full swing. Hostages were being recovered. Some were dead. Several pockets of Claude’s men were still holed up in strategic positions, pinning the authorities down. And there were still half-a-dozen tigers prowling around causing mayhem.
The gap between the Aston Martin and the Porsche closed to nothing. The English car was far superior on the bumpy road. Drake nudged up right behind it, contemplating pulling alongside when, in his rearview mirror, he saw another supercar closing in.
Alicia, at the wheel of an old Dodge Viper. Trust her to go for something with muscle.
The three cars blasted across the rough terrain, hugging the bends and slewing back out onto the long straights. Gravel and dirt plumed around and behind them. Drake saw the paved road coming up and made a decision. They wanted Claude alive, but first they had to catch him. He was very careful to keep listening to the earpiece chatter just in case someone broadcast they had caught Claude, but the longer this chase went on, the more confident Drake became that the man in front was the Blood King’s second.
Drake picked up the gun and blew out the Aston’s windshield. After a moment of dangerous skidding, he regained control and fired a second burst at the fleeing Porsche. Bullets strafed its rear end.
The car barely slowed. It flew onto the new road. Drake opened fire as the Le Mans racer accelerated, bullet casings littering the leather seat beside him. It was time to aim for the tires.
But right then one of the choppers blasted past them all, two figures hanging out of the open doors. The chopper swung round ahead of the Porsche and hovered sideways. Warning shots dug chunks out of the road in front of it. Drake shook his head in disbelief when a hand came out of the driver’s window and started shooting up at the helicopter.