“Duh,” Dahl said.
Drake grimaced and pulled out a small electric screwdriver with a universal bit. Quickly, he undid eight bolts and let them drop out. He was faced with two small control panels the size of car satnav screens, a keyboard panel, and an array of flashing white symbols.
“Cyrillic,” he said. “Of course it is.”
“Can this day get any worse?” Alicia shouted across.
The Yorkshireman hung his head. “It bloody will now.”
The truck picked up speed, heading for the roller door. The British came in tight formation from the rear of the warehouse. The guards spread out all around them.
The nuke flashed, fully live, awaiting the launch code or the kill code.
Drake knew they had to move. He knew they couldn’t move. The only thing he didn’t know — who would die first?
The guards rushed first, firing. Drake was a large target, and unmoving, bullets flashed past Alicia, striking the warhead. For a second Drake’s life passed before his eyes, then Alicia felled one guard and Mai another. He saw more coming though and knew more came from their blind side. The white symbols flashed, a cursor blinked and waited.
“Do you think the guards might detonate?” Smyth said suddenly, quietly. “Could that be their orders?”
“Why would they die?” Kenzie asked.
“We’ve seen it before,” Kinimaka said. “Families receiving huge payouts, needed medical attention or desperate relocation when their family head dies. If they belong to a mafia or a triad for instance. It’s possible.”
Drake knew they couldn’t stay lucky much longer. Alicia managed to loosen a strap as the truck rolled along. Hopefully, the driver would see. But then would he care? Drake saw no other option.
He raced down the flatbed, toward the back, waving his arms madly.
“Wait! Stop, stop. Don’t shoot. I’m English!”
Dahl’s grunt said it all, no words needed.
Drake dropped to his knees at the back of the truck, the tail fin of the nuke to his left, hands in the air and facing the oncoming five-man SAS unit completely unarmed.
“We need your help,” he said. “There’s too much at stake for us to wage war.”
He saw a younger man switch to comms, saw two older men fix onto his face. Perhaps they would recognize him. Maybe they knew of Michael Crouch. He spoke again.
“I’m Matt Drake. Ex-SAS. Ex-soldier. Working for an international team of Special Forces called SPEAR. I trained at Hereford. I was trained by Crouch.”
The name registered, all of it. Two of the five weapons were lowered. Drake heard Alicia’s voice over the comms.
“You could mention my name too.”
He winced slightly. “Probably not the best idea, love.”
Mai and Alicia kept the guards at bay. Seconds passed. The British SAS soldiers fired on more approaching guards, ducking behind oil drums used to fill up the flat bed. Drake waited. The man with the radio finally finished.
“Matt Drake? I’m Cambridge. We met earlier. What do you need?”
Happy day, he thought. The SAS are on board.
“Help us secure this warehouse, stop this truck and neutralize that nuke,” he said. “In that order.”
The British jumped to it.
Splitting and running down both sides of the flatbed they picked off the oncoming guards, working beautifully as a team. Drake saw it and reveled, remembering the older days. There was a fluid grace to the movement of the team, a regal bearing and an implacable confidence. He’d thought SPEAR was the best team in the world, but now…
“Drake! Mai cried. “The nuke!”
Oh yeah. He raced back to the control panel, stared at the screens, the keyboard and the digits.
“Geeks?” he asked. “Do we know the code?”
“It could literally be anything,” someone answered.
“That’s not exactly fucking helpful, ya bloody bell-end.”
“Sorry. If we knew the identities of the Order we could try their birthdays?”
Drake knew he was talking to a man that didn’t care. It was a man they’d conversed with earlier, the obnoxious asshole.
Lauren shouted up, “You mentioned the Order. If they were here, they probably programmed the nukes. I can’t believe they wouldn’t leave a note of the codes.”
“Maybe there is no code, babe,” the asshole said. “Remember the signal you loosed by opening Geronimo’s grave? Maybe that happened here too, and armed the nukes.”
Drake stood back. “Shit, are they armed?”
“Fully. The flashing white symbols you see are numbers on countdown.”
Sharp ice water flooded his body and he could barely breathe. “How… how long?”
A cough. “Sixty-four seconds. Then you and your bastard brethren are history. The Order will forever reign supreme! They live through me! I am the Order!”
A scuffle and a large amount of shouting followed. Drake watched the seconds passing on his wristwatch.
“Hello? You there?” a young voice asked.
“Hi, mate,” Drake murmured. “We have thirty one seconds.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Your friend Lauren mentioned the Order. Well, they must have a kill code. And, since everything else is a part of the text, I just had a check through. Remember? It reads ‘the only kill code is when the Horsemen arose.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Drake wracked his brain, but could think of nothing but the descending second count. “Arose?” he repeated. “Woke up? Resurrected? Think how the Order thinks? How the Nazis meant it. If a Horseman arises he—”
“Is born,” the young voice said. “It’s their dates of birth, maybe? But it can’t be. Those eighties-era nukes usually have a three-digit kill code.” He sounded desperate.
Nineteen seconds until destruction.
Kenzie spoke up. “Three digit, you say? Usually?”
“Yes.”
Sixteen.
Drake looked around at Alicia, saw her crouched beside a strap, trying to unfasten it and shoot a guard at the same time. Saw her hair, her body, her amazing, astonishing spirit. Alicia…
Ten seconds.
Kenzie then shouted up, an affirmation of Dahl’s belief in her. “I have it. Try seven hundred.”
“Seven — oh — oh. Why?”
“Don’t ask. Just do it!”
The young techie gave Drake the Cyrillic number symbols and the Yorkshireman hit the buttons.
Four — three — two—
“It didn’t work,” he said.
CHAPTER FORTY
“Yeah,” Kenzie came back. “It did.”
Of course, she’d disarmed their own and Lauren had disarmed theirs. Drake looked down the body of the nuke to Mai, where she stood in front of another keypad. All six nukes had been disarmed.
He stared at his watch. “We were at less than a second,” he said.
All around the SAS made short work of the guards. Alicia undid a second strap and the warhead shifted slightly. Drake felt it picking up speed as it approached the roller doors.
“Anyone stopped their truck yet?”
“I’m on it!” Kenzie cried. “Literally!”
“Not a chance,” Kinimaka said. “The French are everywhere the guards aren’t. It’s a riot in here.”
Drake watched the SAS dealing with the guards; Alicia tugging at another strap and Mai flinging a guard against the truck’s rear tire.
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” The SPEAR team were unbelievably stretched.
“I can see something else going on,” the young tech began. “I—”
Their link to Washington went dead.
“Say again?” Drake tried.