“The Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club.”
“Seems that he is heading for a boat,” Dahl commented.
“It’s not right,” Drake panted. “He’s leading us into something.”
Alicia snorted. “Duh.”
As they passed the spotlessly white entrance building, leaping the red and white barriers, as they pounded beneath overhanging trees, as they dashed through an empty car park, now bathed in the club’s bright lights, Karin’s heart-wrenching scream cut across the airwaves. Drake stumbled and slowed, Dahl imitating him. Alicia took a breath that lasted almost half a minute.
Their world quaked.
Dahl brought his hands up to his scalp, scratching furiously. Drake saw it as a gesture of terrible stress and forced his own attention back to their situation.
“Let’s finish up here,” he said quietly. “And then go see our friend.”
Hibiki had caught up to them. He raced on, face set, as they crossed the car park and turned toward the doors to an inner sanctum that held a heart-shaped pool, a bar and other luxuries. Dudley smashed through an obviously already unlocked door and disappeared. Drake powered after him, close now, spurred on by the heartbreaking news and the Irishmen’s own smirking faces.
Skirting the pool, they hurdled a fence and were then running along a causeway, alongside the water and a line of bobbing yachts, the open sea right in front of them at the causeway’s end.
More boats were moored there.
“Stop and fight you cowardly arseholes!” Dahl cried at the top of his voice.
“Oh yeah, dude, that’ll do it.” Alicia sighed.
But the four Irishmen then leaped unaccountably to their right. At first Drake thought they were jumping into the calm waters but then their boots came down on the deck of a yacht and they set off running again.
“Balls,” he said. “Not another freakin’ obstacle course.”
From deck to deck, prow to prow, Dudley ran and jumped. The yachts were set relatively close together, making progress easier, but the row stretched for as far as he could see ahead, maybe twenty to thirty vessels. What is this guy’s plan?
“Twat it,” he shouted. “When in Rome.”
He jumped to the side, both feet slamming onto a yacht’s deck and then continued to run. Similar noises at his back attested to the other three doing the same. His expensive shoes didn’t afford him the best grip, but he wasn’t about to go barefoot. He vaulted a ship’s rail, bridging a wide gap where water churned below, and hit the deck of the next yacht at full speed. Alicia yelped as she skidded behind, but quickly righted herself. Another polished white deck and another leap and then another until only a dozen remained.
Ahead, Dudley turned around, hand held high.
“Now, soldier boy. Now it’s time to die.”
There was no time to think, no time to adjust their course or even slow down. Drake spied a black object in Dudley’s hand, possibly a cellphone or transmitter and, for better or worse, was instantly reminded of the man’s role in the destruction of Mu.
Daisy chain bombs. Oh shit!
Dudley pressed a button. The roar of an explosion shook the night. Drake staggered as the very deck of the yacht he was crossing heaved up and splintered. Timber blew apart beneath his feet. Spars shifted and exploded. Metal, carbon fiber and glass convulsed under intense pressure.
But he did not stop running, and neither did his teammates. Their pace took them beyond the bomb’s initial range of damage and then they were jumping high, airborne as debris swirled at their back, and then landing again at full sprint onto the next yacht.
Which exploded.
The deck shattered, the sound of the bomb filling their world. Solid ground fell away before Drake’s shoes. A blast furnace shot through the air at their backs. Mustering every ration of speed, he sprinted on, not seeing them but knowing his team sped along beside him, still alive, still fighting with every ounce of their being. Again they cleared the destroyed vessel, pushed toward the next by a not so gentle hand, the blast hot on their heels. Another landing and another explosion, the whole row of yachts daisy chained by bombs and blasting apart in rapid succession.
Dudley landed on the far causeway when Drake still had four yachts to go.
Dahl reached his shoulder, urging him with competitiveness, with sheer spirit. Alicia panted a string of curses at his back. Hibiki was head down, his clothes spiked by debris. All around the sprinters a blizzard of shattering fragments raged; decks heaving, hulls reeling and prows sinking. The one thing that saved them was that the bombs had been secured inside the yacht’s cabins, not where they ran. Still, a flurry of lethal carbon fiber shards pursued them, nicking at their necks and faces. An intact steering wheel whickered by at incredible speed, passing inches in front of Drake, an object that might have taken his head from his shoulders. Dahl glanced across as they leaped to another deck, the mad Swede’s eyes alight with exhilaration. Another lurch and another blast, Drake almost stumbling to his death. With only two yachts to go the explosions were coming quicker, timed to take them all out at the end, but the SPEAR team would never give in.
As Alicia tripped — a guard-rail rapping her shins — Dahl reached down in mid-sprint, yanked at her arm and dragged her along through the continuing detonations, moving so fast she couldn’t quite regain her feet. Drake bounded and soared, bouncing from one point to the next until the causeway lay dead ahead and if it had been any narrower he would have hurdled right off the far end.
Still, he hit hard, tumbling across the concrete and tearing most of his clothes, smashing his head against the ground. Blood flowed but it was a mere trickle, a graze across his forehead. Hibiki came down in front of him; Dahl and Alicia behind, the Englishwoman forced to cry out as her knees struck first.
Dahl remained standing.
Faced off by four angry Irishmen. Dudley stepped forward as Drake struggled upright. Malachi crouched as Dahl grinned. McLain and Byram gave surly acknowledgements to Alicia’s obvious pain. Hibiki pulled a splinter the size of a dagger from his arm.
A strong sea breeze cooled their skin for one moment as the dying echoes of the final explosion rang across the bay and clouds of exploded debris floated down from the skies, gliding and spinning, hanging and twisting all around them.
“This is the last of the 27-Club,” Dudley growled like a hurt but terribly dangerous lion. “Givin’ yer some payback.”
Then Dudley ran in, bounding through a cloud of swirling debris and draped in sharp slivers and shards. Alicia stepped before Drake, in the same cloud, taking on the leader of the 27-Club as she had done once before, determined to defeat him again. Drake faced off with Malachi. Dahl and Hibiki shared McLain and Byram. The combatants came together, trading blows, knuckles finding flesh and boots striking bone, foreheads smashing down into noses.
Drake glanced behind Dudley at the fast-looking motor launch at anchor. Chances were the Z-box was hidden in there. Now that Dudley’s explosive plan with the yachts had failed, he was defending it. When Malachi lunged at him he gave the man a double blow to the side of the head. Anyone else would have fallen, reeling, but this man danced back up, clearly agonized but grinning through bloodied teeth.