Mai gave nothing in return. Kenzie glanced over with speculative eyes. “So nothing has changed, eh Alicia? Maybe, just maybe, one day, you will need me to help save your life.”
“Unlikely.”
“Then… we shall see who mocks who.”
“I will never—”
Drake shut it down. “On mission,” he grated. “We have world security threats to deal with.”
Kinimaka’s and Dahl’s boats were now darting amongst the mercs’. The Swede broadsided one, sending it veering into a third, glass fiber and steel falling away. Kinimaka slammed into the rear third of another, making the front end spin around and sending three mercs flying, akimbo, into the river’s hungry belly.
An enemy vessel swung around and came at Dahl hard. Drake was close now, almost touching the Swede’s stern. A head-on crash was looking likely. More sacrifices by Amari, though this pilot was clearly a regular merc.
Dahl braced and Kenzie slipped down into her seat. Mercs cried out frantically and Drake slowed. Hayden appeared to the right, running broadside. As the vessels almost came together, Hayden’s yellow boat collided with the back of the mercs’, physically wrenching it aside. Dahl’s boat shot through the clear water and Hayden swung a long right to rejoin the chase, her prow tattered but holding up.
The mercs were dead in the water, capable only of waiting to be picked up.
Drake closed in on the rear of the next boat as Alicia fired her H&K. Smyth let loose his Glock, and Mai picked mercs off one by one. Above, choppers had started to crowd the skies and motor boats pounded the waves in pursuit. Ahead, Amari led the charge after Webb with the set face and shouted threats of a fanatic.
And Webb himself, crouched low, was already mixing together the first component of the alchemical mixture that the Scroll of Leopold and Saint Germain’s strict roster of clues revealed was the only true way to prepare the greatest treasure ever imagined — the elixir of life.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The great swell of the Mississippi River had never seen nor heard the like of it. As soldiers, Drake and the SPEAR team stood often at death’s door. Most of the time they cheated it. But there were no illusions in Drake’s mind. Nobody cheated death forever.
Nobody.
A final chapter was coming, maybe not this year but soon enough, when they would all stand and die together. He did not fear it. A man or woman couldn’t live this life forever and he just couldn’t see himself willingly resigning. So what was the alternative?
Skipping now from swell to swell, he counted off the boats. Webb’s, and then six of Amari’s and four of their own. All battered. The waters were vicious and deadly. Amari’s mercenaries swept wide every now and then to squeeze off several submachine gun rounds, spiking the air with lead. Kinimaka and Dahl swept with them, picking off the odd body but making very little headway.
The mighty river curved gracefully to the right and then the left, a vast curvature of undulating water bordered by grass banks and levees, docks and busy yards. Its enormous width spanned their horizons, its murk growing only darker as the sun passed its zenith. Drake studied the skylines ahead and to the sides, always conscious that Webb had a plan and potential reinforcements.
How does he intend to escape?
Rotors chopped above and motorboats raced behind, all loaded with different versions of law enforcement. One of the mercs tried lobbing a grenade at Dahl’s boat but it fell short and succeeded only in soaking the Swede and the Israeli. Dahl shot the man through the shoulder and nobody tried it again.
“Can’t you make this thing go any faster?” Alicia complained. “We’ll be on here all day at this rate.”
“Oh sure,” Drake said. “I’ll just flip the switch on the nitrous.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Shit, one day we’re gonna have to get you down for a Fast and Furious fest.”
“Isn’t that what we do every night? Sometimes twice?”
Drake shook his head slowly. Alicia gripped his shoulder tight. To their right the boat containing Hayden, Mai and the Secretary of Defense skimmed the surface of the Mississippi. Drake saw Kimberly Crowe crouched down low, her two bodyguards around her. Yes, she had somehow managed to insert herself into the midst of all this mess, but he couldn’t knock her courage.
“Can you transfer the Secretary out?” he asked Hayden through the comms.
“Maybe,” came the reply. “But I’m loathe to start the maneuver when we’re blind as to what comes next.”
“Send the choppers in,” Dahl said. “Blast ’em all out of the water.”
Drake saw Hayden nod. “I think it’s coming to that.”
Another one of Amari’s boats broke away, this one bowing to the left and coming right around. It sped hard at Drake’s boat, its arrow-shaped prow aiming to cut him in half, but at an order from Hayden one of the SWAT choppers swooped low and opened fire. The boat exploded into detonating fragments, still coasting forward as it shattered. A plume of fire and smoke marked its death.
Drake didn’t give it a second glance. Webb was turning.
“Wait. What’s he doing?”
Beyond Amari, the lead boat appeared to have left it extremely late to turn, so sharp was the angle Beau made it achieve. The whole vessel canted sideways, the spray curling out from underneath.
The SPEAR team reacted instantaneously, following Beau’s maneuver, then Amari began shouting orders across the rolling swells. The movements put Drake’s boat alongside one of the mercs’. Alicia fired her gun twice, sending two mercs into the Mississippi before return fire was made. Bullets slammed into their hull and glanced across the windshield. Drake swerved to the side. Alicia held on and wounded another merc. The boats came together hard, slamming hulls with a crash that left widening cracks and a flood of water.
“We’re going down,” Drake said.
Alicia stared at the foam filling the boat and her boots. “Now I have wet feet. Fucksake, Drake, get a grip.”
The Yorkshireman swore. He was skimming along at full speed as the water poured in, not only into the boat but into the engine too, aiming for a sandbar that bordered the place where Beau was headed. A merc leaned out, handgun raised, but Alicia knocked it aside as they closed up once more, smashing him in the face for good measure. Drake flicked a glance off the horizon and spotted exactly what Beau was speeding toward.
“We need to get ashore anyway, guys. The water is killing the engine.”
Kinimaka’s voice hit the comms at exactly the same time. “Guys, is that a private airport?”
“Has to be,” Smyth growled. “It sure as hell ain’t public. Lauren can barely see it on the map.”
Makes sense, Drake thought. In a perfect world Webb’s short hop over the Mississippi from the French Quarter couldn’t have been easier. And then… airborne. Private flights meant questionable flight plans and the potential for disappearing completely, depending where you landed.
Alicia fired again. Water covered Drake’s boots, and the boat wallowed. He flicked at the throat mic.
“We’re about to crash. Or sink. Or both.”
Dahl replied. “Stop whining. Just send us a bloody postcard.”
Drake wrestled hard with the wheel, steering them straight at the sandbar. The hull struck hard, the momentum sending them airborne. Water streamed off the boat as it cleared the raised finger of sand, many meters higher than the pursuing merc boat. Drake saw a SWAT guy leaning over the skids of his helicopter, sighting on the merc boat, and firing as he flew past. The bullet took out the pilot and sent the boat veering madly. Drake’s came down hard.