Hayden immediately took charge of Lauren and flew down the stairs, Kinimaka at her heels. Smyth and Crouch followed closely, then Karin, screaming into her comms to alert Caitlyn.
Drake knew they could scream all they wanted. Without an antidote Lauren was dead.
He stayed put with Dahl, Alicia and Mai. The old soldiers. Waiting for any chance they might get. Russo joined them. Everyone expected Dudley to order his escape at any moment but the irrational Irishman hung around.
Drake eyed Dahl. “He’s madder than you.”
“I’m not entirely sure I approve of that statement.”
“Oh, yeah, now I remember. You dropped out of private school because it was too… what? Cliquey? Snobbish?”
“I dropped out of a private school. They’re not all like that. And I don’t really want to talk about it, particularly not now.”
“When this is over then. Over a pint?”
“Ah, Drake, I have to say sitting in a bar with a glass of milk just doesn’t do it for me.”
Drake stared through wreckage as bullets smashed into the sky deck again, a spotlight for Dudley’s riotous fury.
“Next time it’s beers all around. Believe me.”
“Is that wise?”
“Mai isn’t dead, Dahl, not like Kennedy, and I’m not an alcy. I can handle it.”
“Of course you can. I was just… um, are the two of you okay?”
Drake smiled a little at the big soldier’s clumsy attempt at sympathy. Truth be told it had come out a hundred times better than anything Drake could have tried. Soldiers like them never became all warm-hearted, most showed their respect and love for their adopted families through time-honored traditions such as cutting sarcasm and caustic wit.
“Tell you later,” he said at last. “We’ll get drunk together, you and I, Alicia and Mai. And right the world. Who wouldn’t want to be at that table, involved in that conversation with us?”
Dahl pointed to the skies. “It’s a deal, my friend. So long as we survive this.”
His last word was accentuated as a Greek military chopper joined the fray. Dudley must have seen it coming, but still chose to remain. As the chopper flew over the ship’s deck Dudley’s men fired on it. The chopper swooped and evaded, men hanging on inside. Its front end rose a little and a missile flew from its underbelly. Drake heard an explosion and then a rain of metal and fire spilled onto the deck. Men crawled through the debris, screaming.
“Jesus Christ!” Russo yelled.
“Keep your knickers on, Robster.” Alicia patted his arm.
“The laws of damnation and luck tell me that wasn’t Dudley’s helicopter,” Dahl said just as the Greek chopper swung hard left, raked by a volley of lead. Metal pings raked its entire right side. Drake saw a skid strike the side of the deck and the huge vehicle bucked forward, nose-diving hard. More bullets shattered its back end. Men leaped clear of the rearing vehicle, slamming into the deck and rolling, some instantly peppered by bullets.
In another moment the helicopter dropped over the side of the deck, smashing into the sea. Dahl was on his feet and sprinting the moment it was out of sight, four comrades at his heels.
“We have to save those soldiers.”
Outside, the fires burned bright and pure chaos slammed into Drake’s every sense, almost overwhelming.
But he did notice one thing as he stooped to help the nearest soldier.
Dudley’s chopper was already a speck in the sky. The madman had escaped and he’d taken two aerosolized boxes with him.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Drake and Dahl had had enough. The Pythians had left nothing but death and crisis, heartbreak and devastation in their wake. The world was reeling. Since day one his team had been on the back foot, always playing catch up, but now, after all that had happened this day, the Yorkshireman and the Swede were about to take the bull literally by the balls.
They were going to squeeze until they got answers. And then there was Smyth, distraught over Lauren; Alicia always up for the destruction of a madman’s dream; Hayden and Kinimaka, ever the professionals, but like coiled vipers when backed into a corner; Mai, having taken a back seat until now, starting to wonder if she could have helped prevent what had happened to Lauren. And Crouch’s team too — Caitlyn, distressed at the news and moving mountains with her investigative knowledge; Russo and Healey, barely able to holster their guns, and Michael Crouch — the man with the wherewithal and the contacts to get anything done.
A fully fuelled jet. A shower on board. A quick, energy-laced meal and they were well on their way back to Washington. Drake wished he could have joined Mai in the shower, if only to liberate a little tension, but the Japanese woman remained distant. Alicia offered to join him, but since she’d already offered to join Russo and Caitlyn too he decided to completely ignore her, not even offering a rejoinder.
But he remembered the good times. Perhaps long ago now, but they had been great together once. Drake and Myles. Their stories, their exploits, their wild times together in and out of war would fill a book. Several books.
Christ it was so long ago. Far away now, like most of the best memories of his life. Of course, as he’d learned over time, you only realized you were living the best times of your life when you lost them. Never go back. The idea rang true for Alicia Myles, but not necessarily for him. He had returned to Mai, returned to England and to the place where Alyson died, returned to Coyote.
Has it helped?
Truth be told, he didn’t know. But one absolute remained unexplored. Before all that, before everything, there was the SAS, the Ninth Division and Alicia Myles. Looking back, he thought, you usually romance your memories. You remember them better than they actually were.
But not always. Sometimes they really were as good as you remembered them.
He watched out the window as Washington DC unrolled below and geared himself up for what was soon to come. Now wasn’t the time to vacillate, now was the time to storm across their enemies’ field of play, decimating their forces.
The moment the wheels bounced and squealed on American asphalt he rose to start doing exactly that.
“Do you have a location?” Hayden used a black walkie-talkie, holding the case to her lips.
A man’s voice came back, clipped tones conveying a no-nonsense attitude. “We have eyes on. Founding Farmers. Been there forty minutes, looks set for the night.”
Drake was listening in. “Hope he bloody well gets gut-rot from his last meal as a free man.”
The team, with Alicia’s new crew as crucial backup, hastened through DCs clogged arteries, updated constantly by the team on site. Drake experienced a little déjà vu. The last time he’d driven along these streets, a time that now seemed a long time ago, was when he’d chased the Blood King to the Foggy Bottom metro and saved President Coburn’s life. By the time they pulled up close to the restaurant known as the Founding Farmers, only a block away from one of their previous HQs, he felt totally lost. That started up a longing for the old streets of York where he’d started anew and met Ben, and that brought him full circle to the fact that they were here now, fighting hard, whilst most people in these parts basked in a healthy spring; forced to put an end to yet one more murderous son of a bitch’s apocalyptic plans.
Quickly they moved into position. When they were ready Hayden took a glance around the now admittedly overlarge team. “So who doesn’t he know?”