“Before today I never even heard of the goddamn Pythians.”
“You will,” Coyote said. “Very soon. Their agenda is global and lengthy.”
Mai waved her pistol. “Are you giving up?”
Coyote smiled a little wistfully. “Shelly will never let you take me alive.”
Drake looked around: At the battle behind them that still raged; SAS troops darting in and out of enemy positions; police officers crouched behind the dead, using their bodies as shields as they picked off more of their opponents. A central stall caught fire as he watched, hanging prizes melting and popping. A food stand fell over, crushing an unlucky merc. Mud glistened across the entire scene. Beyond where the big wheel had stood was a rollercoaster and now, spectacularly, its central supports buckled, making the entire metal track warp.
The mercs had seen that they were losing, dying. Death didn’t offer a pay packet, nor a second chance or day release. Not like the British penal system. Some of them were already surrendering.
“I don’t see a way out for you, Shelly.”
“Coyote,” the woman growled. “Call me Coyote.”
And she stepped back, pulling her jacket wide open, to reveal the nano-vest buckled to her chest. The light in her eyes was crazed but the look on her face was almost blissful.
“I’m so glad my torture is at an end,” she said and detonated.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Drake flew backwards, slammed off his feet by the blast. Blood and other things struck his body and face as he went airborne. Coyote’s lone hand slapped his cheek, thwarting him for the last time. Even as he bounced to the ground he knew that, in her final moments, Shelly Cohen had returned and made Coyote take that all important step back.
Any closer, and they would all have been dead.
His first job was to check on his teammates — all of whom were stunned and blooded but in good shape — and then turn to check on Alicia. The sight of her straddling Beauregard didn’t really surprise him. He did a double-take when she threw a punch at the injured man though.
“You still softening him up?”
“Quite the opposite,” Alicia said. “I think he likes it.”
Mai groaned.
Alicia climbed off the prone Frenchman. “You gotta see this thing, Mai. The tights really don’t do it justice. It’s huuuu—”
Three soldiers mercifully approached them just then, shutting Alicia up as they waved their guns. Crouch raised his hands and diverted them, no doubt establishing protocols.
Dahl surveyed their surroundings. “Well, we lost Coyote and captured Beauregard. The Frenchman is a link to the Pythians. Could be worse. I wonder what happened to the hacker.”
Drake clicked his tongue. “We learned only what they wanted us to learn,” he said. “It’s how and when we find out why that worries me.”
Crouch turned to them. “We all have a rather large amount of explaining to do, but we’re good here. Carry on.”
Drake motioned for a phone. “We’ll call Karin and Komodo and catch up with the guys in DC.” He turned to Mai. “Surprised you haven’t heard from Smyth.”
“Phone’s on silent,” she said, fishing it out and then making a face. “Oh hell. Looks like he’s filled it up.”
“Damn. Well, we’d better call them first.”
Drake made the call. As he did so he turned full circle and surveyed the fiery skies and the scorched earth; the place where his long-held nemesis, Coyote, had died; the bruised and bloody SPEAR team and Mai Kitano — his old past and future.
Full circle indeed.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
A short while later, Matt Drake found himself seated in the quiet corner of a large, old-fashioned pub in the center of York.
The place held memories for him. Nostalgia seeped through the walls. He had taken Alyson here. Even met Ben Blake here. Pain, sorrow and the memory of old mistakes hung like the shadows of ancient ghosts inside, but there was a certain happiness too. The pub held infinitely more good memories than bad.
On this day he sat with more friends. Mai, Alicia and Dahl. Michael Crouch. Karin and Komodo. Mai was upbeat but still reserved, the shadow that had followed her back from Tokyo well and truly returned. Alicia currently existed in a state of extremes — one moment buoyed by excitement and cracking one-liners and looking dangerous, the next hanging her head glumly as she thought no doubt of Lomas and the bikers, and where the path to her home might now lie.
Crouch imparted more news than he was probably allowed to. Karin and Komodo reported all they knew and told them of SaBo’s fate. The hacker had fled at the first sign of trouble and hadn’t resurfaced. Drake didn’t worry. In this game they came across the same people again and again, and when they next met SaBo — they owed him a little personal hacking time of his own.
Hayden, Kinimaka and Smyth had reported in. The Pentagon appeared to be their new home. Drake rolled his eyes. Could they be under closer scrutiny? Especially now that Kinimaka and Lauren Fox were in the early phases of launching an entirely new operation against General Stone.
He had a feeling they were standing at a crossroads. The way back was littered with mixed memories and defining moments. The roads either side led to nowhere; a stagnant invariable path to dissolution. It was the way ahead that offered a vista of possibility. Only in moving forward and facing new challenges could Matt Drake hope to survive.
And on the road ahead something big was looming. Something immeasurable, on the grandest scale yet.
He wanted to be there for that party.
“Not thinking of retiring now are you?” Crouch asked, noticing the depth of his concentration.
“Furthest thing from my mind,” Drake said. “Coyote is dead. That lifts a weight from my shoulders, yes, but I actually pitied her at the end. I wanted Shelly back. If anything, I miss that girl.”
Crouch smiled pensively. “Me too.”
“Other things are coming,” Drake said. “It will never end.” Mai had spoken a similar sentence to him a long time ago, back when Kennedy was still alive.
“I know. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about.”
Drake sensed something coming. “Of course, Michael.”
“The Ninth Division is no more. Defunct. Of course, a new department will stand in but I have no interest in that. All my life I’ve wanted to pursue a dream, an ambition. It appears that now I’m in a position to do exactly that.”
Drake smiled. “Sounds good. What kind of dream?”
Now Crouch looked slightly embarrassed, the first time that Drake had ever seen him so. “It’s okay,” the Yorkshireman said quickly. “You don’t have to—”
“No, no,” Crouch said quickly. “I want to. I have to, actually. You see all my life I’ve had this, largely secret, love for archaeological mysteries and ancient unsolved riddles. I guess you could call them cold cases, but ice-cold really. Frozen over. I’m not talking about old gods or Alexander the Great or the plagues of Egypt. I’m talking Aztecs, Incas, Mayans — the civilizations that came and went and left a million stories behind. Even the pirates, the stories they traded and told were pure gold dust.” Crouch was speaking faster and faster, warming to his subject. “Real, living treasures that you can touch and discover. I want to form a team dedicated to searching for these treasures… and I have a backer.”
“You do? That’s fantastic.”
“He provides the money. We get paid a wage. A good one. I have so many government contacts both here and around the world I need a book the size of the Bible just to keep track of them. Wheels can be greased, favors met.”