He’s going to annihilate her in, oh, four minutes, tops.
I’ll take that. Raise you another ten, Pierre. What do you say?
Seven. I wager she’s stronger than she looks. And, well, she’ll be a mite pissed don’t you think?
What the hell were they talking about?
Kennedy felt a rude kick to her buttocks and stumbled into the room. The assemblage laughed. Frey trotted quickly after her.
“People!” He laughed. “My friends! This is one fine offering, don’t you think? And she’s going to give us one fine night!”
Kennedy stared around, intimidated despite herself. What the hell were they talking about? Stay prickly, she remembered Captain Lipkind’s favourite saying. Stay on your game. She tried to focus, but the shock and the surreal surroundings threatened to undo her.
“I won’t perform for you,” she muttered at Frey’s back. “In any way you expect.”
Frey turned towards her and his knowing smile was startling. “Won’t you? For something precious? I think you overestimate yourself, and your kind. But that’s okay. You can think not, but I think you will, dear Kennedy. I really think you will. Come.” He gestured her forward.
Kennedy stepped to the circular rail. About twelve feet below her was a circular pit, dug unevenly out of the earth, its floor dotted with rocks, its walls clad in dirt and stone.
An old-fashioned gladiator arena. A fighting pit.
Metal ladders were hauled beside her and lifted over the rail into the pit. Frey indicated that she should climb down.
“Not a chance,” Kennedy whispered. Three guns were levelled at her and Ben.
Frey shrugged. “I need you, but I seriously don’t need the boy. We could start with a bullet to the knee, then an elbow. Work around and see how long it takes for you to do my bidding.” His hellfire smile persuaded her that he’d be glad to prove his words.
She gritted her teeth, spent a second smoothing her pantsuit down. The affluent mob inspected her with interest, as they might a caged animal. Glasses were emptied and nibbles nibbled. Waiters and waitresses flitted among them, unseen by them, refilling and refreshing.
“What’s with the pit?” she bartered for time, seeing no way out of this and trying to give Drake every precious extra second.
“This is my Battle Arena,” Frey said obligingly. “You live in glorious memory or you die in shame. The choice, my dear Kennedy, is in your hands.”
Stay prickly.
One of the guards nudged her with the barrel of his pistol. Somehow she managed to muster up a positive look for Ben, and reached out for the ladder.
“Wait,” Frey’s evil eyes glinted. “Take her shoes off. That’ll fuel his bloodlust a little more.”
Kennedy stood there, humiliated and enraged, and a bit bemused as one of the guards knelt before her and removed her shoes. She swung onto the ladder, feeling unreal and detached, as if this bizarre encounter was happening to a different Kennedy in a far-flung corner of the world. She wondered who this he person everyone kept referring to actually was.
It didn’t sound good. It sounded like she would have to fight for her life.
As she descended the ladder, whistles went up from the crowd and a potent wave of bloodlust curdled the air.
They shouted all manner of obscenities. Bets were staked: some that she would die in less than a minute, others that she would lose her thong in under thirty seconds. One or two even offered her encouragement. But more gambled that he would desecrate her dead body after he had pulverised her.
The richest of the rich, the most powerful scum on Earth. If this was what wealth and power got you then the world was indeed broken.
All too quickly, her bare feet touched the hard earth. She dismounted, feeling cold and exposed, and looked around. Opposite her a hole had been cut in the wall. Currently it was covered by a set of thick bars.
A figure trapped on the other side of those bars suddenly came rushing forward, smashing into them with a bloodcurdling shriek of fury. He shook them so hard they bounced, his face little more than a twisted snarl.
But despite that, and despite her bizarre surroundings, Kennedy recognised him in less time than it took to think his name.
Thomas Kaleb, serial killer. Here, in Germany, with her. Two mortal enemies placed in the Battle Arena.
Abel Frey’s plan, hatched back in New York, come to fruition.
Kennedy’s heart leapt, and a sheer rush of hatred arrowed from her toes to her brain and back again.
“You bastard!” She cried, seething. “You absolute bastard!”
Then the bars shot up, and Kaleb leapt towards her.
Drake exited the helicopter before it touched down, still a step behind Torsten Dahl, and ran towards a lively hotel that had been commandeered by a joint coalition of International forces. A mixed army to be sure, but a determined and capable one.
They were 1.2 miles North of La Verein.
Army and civilian vehicles were convoyed up outside, engines burbling, at the ready.
The foyer was a mass of activity: commandos and Special Forces, intelligence agents and soldiers all grubbing up, cleaning up, and gearing up.
Dahl made his presence known by jumping on to the hotel’s front desk and hollering so loudly everyone turned. A respectful silence fell.
They already knew him, and Drake, and the rest, and were well aware of what they had achieved in Iceland. Each and every man here had been briefed by a Video-link beamed between the hotel and the chopper.
“We ready?” Dahl shouted. “To take this bastard down?”
“Vehicles prepped,” a Commander shouted. They were all deferring to Dahl for this operation. “Snipers in place. We’re so hot we could restart that volcano, sir!”
Dahl nodded. “Then what are we waiting for?”
The noise level climbed a hundred notches. Troops filed out of the doors, slapping each others’ backs and agreeing to meet for beers after the battle to bolster bravado. Engines started to roar as the assembled vehicles drove away.
Drake joined Dahl in the third moving vehicle, a military Hummer. Through the last few hours of briefings he knew they had about 500 men, enough to deluge Frey’s small army of 200, but the German held the higher ground and was expected to have plenty of tricks.
But the one thing he didn’t have was the element of surprise.
Drake bounced along in the front seat, gripping his rifle, his thoughts focusing on Ben and Kennedy. Hayden was in the seat behind them, tooled up and kitted out for war. Wells, with his serious stomach wound, had been left at the hotel.
The convoy rounded a sharp bend and there was La Verein, lit up like a Christmas tree against the darkness that surrounded it and before the black cliff face of the mountain that towered above it. Its gates were wide open, demonstrating the insolent audacity of the man they had come to dethrone.
Dahl keyed the mic. “Last call. We’re going in hot. Speed will save lives here, men. You know the targets and you know our best guesstimate of where Odin’s coffin will be. Let’s stick it to that PIG, soldiers.”
The reference stood for Polite Intelligent Gentleman. Heavy on the irony. Drake held on with white knuckles as the Hummer shot through Frey’s gatehouse with barely an inch to spare on either side. The German guards started raising the alarm from their high towers.
The first shots were fired, bouncing off the lead cars. When the convoy came to a grinding halt, Drake opened his door and rolled. They hadn’t used air support because Frey might have RGPs. They needed to move away from the cars quickly for that same reason.