Alicia helped Kenzie up. Cops were rushing toward them. Drake couldn’t help but wish they would stay away. This could be a bloodbath. He tried to rise, and managed it on one leg.
Olga gripped Smyth by the throat and flung him away. Kinimaka shook his great head, now at Olga’s feet, and delivered half a dozen incredible blows to her thick thighs.
She punched Kinimaka in the head, laying him out. She took Drake’s next attack and flung him backward, though blood fell freely from her ears, her right eye and innumerable cuts and contusions over her forehead. A hole had opened up in her stomach where Smyth shot her and Drake wondered if that might be the way to stop her.
Mai caught Olga’s attention. “Look at me,” she said. “Look at me. I have never been beaten.”
An expression of interest crossed the bloody mien. “But you are no bigger than one of my sweat glands. Are you Supergirl? Wonder Woman? Scarlett Johanssen?”
“I am Mai Kitano.”
Olga lumbered forward, kicking Smyth and an approaching Alicia aside. Mai crouched. Olga lunged. Mai danced away, far away, and then pointed at Olga’s right shoulder.
“And whilst I distracted you, my friend Yorgi will destroy you.”
Olga turned shockingly fast. “Wha…”
Yorgi steadied the rocket launcher across his shoulders, made sure the last grenade was mounted correctly, and then fired directly at Olga’s body mass.
Drake ducked.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
In the aftermath, the SPEAR team vanished. Whisked away from the scene after handing off the bio-weapon, they were driven through the heart of the unnaturally quiet city to one of the FBI’s more rural safe houses. It was a ranch, necessarily small for security, but a ranch nonetheless, with its own house, stables and coral. Horses were kept to sell the illusion, and a ranch hand to train them, but he too worked for the Feds.
The team were so unbelievably happy to arrive at the safe house, and even happier to separate and shut the doors to separate rooms. To a person they were beat, weary, battered, bruised, bleeding.
Blood soaked them all, contusions and woolly-headedness too. Those that hadn’t been knocked unconscious wished they had; and those that had, wished they’d been able to help. Drake and Alicia walked into their room, stripped, and headed straight for the shower. A red-hot burst of water helped wash more than blood away. Drake helped Alicia and Alicia helped Drake in the places where their arms were just too covered in bruises to help.
The team weren’t broken, but they had been somewhat beaten.
“Always somebody out there—” Drake gasped as the water smashed into him full flow “—who can take you down.”
“I know.” Alicia piled handfuls of liquid soap into her palm. “Did you see the way Dahl bounced off her?”
Drake started to cough. “Oh, no, please. Don’t make me laugh. Please.”
It didn’t feel off to Drake, that he might find humor so soon after what he’d just witnessed. The man was a soldier, trained to deal with trauma and heartache, death and violence; he’d been doing it for most of his life, and soldiers coped differently. One of those ways was in camaraderie with their colleagues; another was to always look for the lighter side of things.
When possible. There were some situations that brought even a soldier to his knees.
Now Alicia, cut from the same cloth, recalled Kinimaka’s tussle with the immense Olga. “Shit, it was like Godzilla’s baby versus Godzilla. Bloody Mano was more shocked than hurt.”
“He sure can take a head-butt.” Drake grinned.
“Not!” Alicia laughed and they soaked for a while together, willing the pain away.
Drake later vacated the shower, donned a bath sheet, and walked back into the bedroom. A sense of unreality hit him. An hour ago they’d been at the very center of Hell, immersed in one of the hardest and bloodiest battles of their lives, now they were washing up on a Texas ranch, surrounded by guards.
What next?
Well, the bright side was they had won three of the four corners of the earth. And three of the Four Horsemen. The Order had concealed four weapons, so by Drake’s admittedly slightly incoherent, fuzzy and wholly unsure calculation, that left just one. He laughed at himself.
Shit, I hope I got that right.
Footsteps sounded at his back and he turned.
There stood Alicia, fully naked and glistening with water from the shower, her hair plastered across one bruised shoulder. Drake stared, and forgot about the mission.
“Bloody ’ell,” he said. “So there are times when seeing two of you is a good thing.”
She padded over and removed his towel. “Do you think we have time?”
“Don’t worry,” he said with a smile in his voice. “This won’t take long.”
Later, and after they’d found and tried to avoid every bruised part of both their bodies, Drake and Alicia donned fresh clothes and wandered down to the vast kitchen. Drake wasn’t sure why they chose the kitchen; it seemed the natural place to congregate. Failing sunlight slanted in through the picture windows, turning golden and burnishing the wooden floor and kitchen fittings. The place was warm and smelled of freshly baked bread. Drake sat on top of a bar stool and relaxed.
“I could spend a month here.”
“One more Horseman,” Alicia said. “And then we take a break?”
“Can we do that? I mean, it’s not like the bell-ends of the word take a break, love.”
“Well, we have to answer to Crowe anyway,” she shrugged, “about Peru. And Smyth may have problems. We shouldn’t be away on a mission when a member of our family is in trouble.”
Drake nodded. “Aye, agreed. And then there’s SEAL Team 7.”
“Someday,” Alicia sighed, sitting on a perch next to him, “our holiday will come.”
“Ey up, look what the cat dragged in!” Drake cried, sighting Dahl.
The Swede eased his way through the door, stepping carefully. “Bollocks, I’m trying to walk but am seeing double of everything.”
“You think walking’s tough?” Drake said. “You wanna try shagging.”
Dahl felt his way to a bar stool. “Someone fetch me a drink.”
Alicia slid her bottle of water across. “I’ll go get another.”
Drake eyed his friend worriedly. “You gonna have to sit the rest of this out, mate?”
“In truth, it’s getting better by the minute.”
“Oh, ’cause I remember you sitting out the fight with Olga.”
“Piss off, Drake. I don’t ever want to remember that.”
Drake chortled. “As if we’re ever gonna let you forget it.”
The rest of the team emerged in dribs and drabs and, twenty minutes later, they were all sat around the breakfast bar, nursing coffee and water, fruit and bacon strips, and more wounds than they could count. Kinimaka wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye and Smyth couldn’t hold anything in his right hand. Yorgi was immensely subdued. Kenzie couldn’t stop complaining. Only Mai, Lauren and Hayden seemed their normal selves.
“Y’know,” Hayden said. “I’m just happy we’re all through that together. It could have been much worse. The atropine did its job. Any after effects, guys?”
Yorgi, Smyth and Kenzie blinked. Kenzie spoke for them all. “I think Olga beat the after effects away.”
Hayden smiled. “Good, because we ain’t done yet. Those teams who didn’t attend Fort Sill and Dallas were searching for the final clue. Luckily, the DC think tank and the NSA were able to keep tabs on the main players.”
“SAS?” Drake guessed.
“Well, the Brits, yes. Followed by China and whatever remains of the French—”
“SEAL Team 7?” Dahl asked.
“Unknown, undeclared, and unsanctioned,” Hayden said. “According to Crowe.”