“Move.”
Komodo’s command started the team’s offensive. The back of the white van burst open and three men jumped out, racing across the sidewalk and up the garden path. Tyler stepped out from concealment and dragged his opponent down to the ground, executing a perfect choke hold. Karin heard desperate struggle and frantic grunting noises, but it didn’t last long. Herrera joined Tyler and, between them, the two Delta soldiers trussed the Russian up tighter than a Christmas turkey.
Karin watched through Tyler’s head-cam as Komodo passed them on the path. The tiny camera swiveled to watch Komodo, Smyth and Romero press on through the half-open door. Then Komodo’s head-cam showed an empty hallway, paintings on the wall, the steep stretch of a staircase, a washing basket full to overflowing. The comms system picked up coarse laughter coming from down the hall. Komodo signaled, and the three men headed that way. Komodo’s gun barrel made controlled movements from side to side. Karin quickly checked the overview. Still clear, but a paperboy was making his way down the street.
A bull-like man emerged from the room at the end of the hall, surprise written almost comically across his face when he spotted the three armed soldiers approaching him. Immediately, the testosterone kicked in, outweighing the intelligence by at least five-to-one, and he reached around the back of his waist for a gun, shouting.
Komodo’s weapon bucked. The bull hurtled back against the frame, changing the paint from white to vivid red. Komodo pushed on. A shot was fired blindly from inside the room, burying itself into the wall.
“Tyler, Herrera, check upstairs,” Komodo whispered into his comms.
“One in the kitchen,” Romero reported. “Unfriendly.”
Smyth had checked the rest of the ground floor. “All clear.”
Komodo turned quickly. “Finish it.” He moved fast down the hall, tracking Tyler and Herrera up the stairs. “Smyth,” he said. “Don’t forget the garage.”
“On it.”
Karin watched as Romero’s helmet-cam kicked back heavily. The man fired heavy rounds through the kitchen’s plaster walls, leaving holes the size of side-plates. A brief scream signaled that the coast was clear.
Smyth ran inside, double-tapping the Russian to be sure. The inner connecting door that led to the garage was slightly open. Karin watched him approach it swiftly, but carefully. He nudged the door wider with the barrel of his weapon.
“Contact,” he murmured under his breath. “The wife’s here and not alone.”
As if to verify, a high-pitched command rang out, “Get back! You come no closer to me!”
Karin winced. The last remaining Russian stood behind Audrey Patterson, one arm across her throat, the other holding a pistol to her head. The woman looked terrified and tears streamed down her face.
Smyth moved forward, probably hoping to force the assailant into the classic mistake and move the gun away from the hostage in order to point it at the bigger threat. But the Russian didn’t comply.
“I shoot!”
The gunshot rang out, deafening through the comms. Karin saw Audrey Patterson shriek and go limp, but the bullet had only shot past her forehead.
“The next goes in!”
Komodo grunted as he joined the scene. Karin watched as four head-cams fanned out into a semi-circle. The fifth was aimed at the rough concrete floor, creeping slowly.
“Nowhere to go, fucker,” Smyth said with typical testiness. “Put the pea shooter down.”
“You let me go!”
“End of the line, Boris,” Smyth growled. “Be a good Russkie. You don’t want to end up smeared across the walls like your friends back there.”
Komodo stepped forward. “Calm down,” he said softly. “Both of you.” Karin wasn’t entirely sure if he meant the Russian and Mrs Patterson, or the Russian and Smyth.
“What do you want?” Komodo asked. “You let her go. We’ll talk.”
“Leave. You get out of garage, we drive away. I push her out when clear.”
Smyth snorted. Karin felt every muscle in her body tense, every nerve ending stand on edge as the fifth head-cam, Tyler’s, focused on the treads of a tire and stopped. He had to be only three feet away. Now he would wait.
Komodo stepped to the side this time. The Russian followed him, gun wavering. “Why don’t we all just calm down,” Komodo said. “Point that gun away from Audrey’s head and we’ll talk.”
“Alright!” the Russian screamed. “I aim it at you!”
It all happened very quickly and clinically. Tyler got the signal from Herrera, stood and fired twice. The Russian’s head exploded, spraying the professor’s wife and the side-wall. The woman collapsed to her knees, hysterical but alive.
Smyth and Romero rushed to help her.
Komodo addressed the comms. “Mission complete,” he said. “Be back soon.”
Karin checked the overview again. The paperboy had disappeared. The houses were all quiet. She would inform the authorities that they could move in. The peace and quiet of suburbia would live to see another day.
With time to spare, she fished out her cell phone and speed-dialed her parents’ number, wondering how life was treating them over in Leeds. After that, she would call Ben.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
“This could be the fight of our lives,” Mai Kitano commented.
Drake crawled through the desert, ignoring the morning sun that beat down hard on his back, weapons ready. Their packs were comprehensively packed, even to the tools they might need for entering the dreaded pit. But, for now, Drake’s eyes were fixed firmly on the prize ahead.
The three large camouflaged tents that belonged to the ragtag group of Razin’s men pillaging the ancient pit of Babylon and, if they survived that, the Devil’s Tower, the Tower of Babel, where Zanko and Razin hunted for ancient treasure.
“Nah, no worse than the battle around the coffee machine first thing every morning.”
Alicia crawled at their sides, equally tooled up. “I’ve had harder times pulling my bike leathers on.”
Mai eyed her. “But not so many taking them off, I bet.”
Hayden, Dahl and Kinimaka approached from another angle, the two groups connected by a hardy communications system. Their objective — acquire all the swords at all costs. Ominous events were afoot in the world, and this was the team’s only viable link to them.
The Russian perimeter was loose, made complacent by weeks of indolence. Judging by their careful surveillance, it seemed the Russians had a complement of around a dozen men, including two bosses — a man and a woman, neither of whom were Zanko or Razin.
They will have stationed themselves at the Devil’s Tower, Patterson had guessed. Whilst their men acquire the remaining swords. Patterson, Akerman and Yorgi had been left back at the all-terrain vehicles for this little jaunt. The civilians would only cause distraction.
Alicia blew a gust of sand out of her mouth. “Oh yeah, I’m lovin’ this.”
Drake surveyed the tented area through a pair of high-powered binoculars, identifying the positions of the guards. “Aye, it’s bloody hot out here. Could be worse though. At least we haven’t come across one of those mental camel spiders yet.”
Alicia swiveled her entire body. “What?”
“Y’know. Six, seven inches. Move at ten miles an hour. Jaws like a croc. Those camel spiders.”
“So I’m lying here up to my tits in sand, and now you mention them. Thanks.” She cast around as if expecting one of the beasts to pop up out of the dunes.
“The scorpions are worse.” Kinimaka’s voice came over the comms. “I just crawled over one. Luckily, I squashed it, I think. They might survive a nuclear strike, but there ain’t no surviving the mighty Mano.”