The Lost Kingdom (Matt Drake Book 10) Read online

  The Lost Kingdom

  (Matt Drake #10)

  By

  David Leadbeater

  Copyright 2015 by David Leadbeater

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher/author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase any additional copy for each reader. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Thriller, adventure, action, mystery, suspense, archaeological, military

  Other Books by David Leadbeater:

  The Matt Drake Series

  The Bones of Odin (Matt Drake #1)

  The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake #2)

  The Gates of hell (Matt Drake 3)

  The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake #4)

  Brothers in Arms (Matt Drake #5)

  The Swords of Babylon (Matt Drake #6)

  Blood Vengeance (Matt Drake #7)

  Last Man Standing (Matt Drake #8)

  The Plagues of Pandora (Matt Drake #9)

  The Alicia Myles Series

  Aztec Gold (Alicia Myles #1)

  The Disavowed Series:

  The Razor’s Edge (Disavowed #1)

  In Harm’s Way (Disavowed #2)

  Threat Level: Red (Disavowed #3)

  The Chosen Few Series

  Chosen (The Chosen Trilogy #1)

  Guardians (The Chosen Trilogy #2)

  Short Stories

  Walking with Ghosts (A short story)

  A Whispering of Ghosts (A short story)

  Connect with the author on Twitter: @dleadbeater2011

  Visit the author’s website: www.davidleadbeater.com

  Follow the author’s Blog http://davidleadbeaternovels.blogspot.co.uk/

  All helpful, genuine comments are welcome. I would love to hear from you.

  [email protected]

  Dedication

  This one is for my family

  CONTENTS

  Other Books by David Leadbeater:

  Dedication

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Callan Dudley was the youngest member of the 27-Club—a seven-strong gang of crazy Irishmen whose sanest known act in eight years was to make a blood pact that, when they all finally came together again in Hell, they would dance a healthy jig on the Devil’s balls.

  His brother, Malachi, at thirty five, was the oldest.

  Callan Dudley hadn’t seen his crew in about a year. Though they were a gang they didn’t exactly run together. At least, not in several years. The members drifted apart, did their own thing for a while, then came together somewhere down the line, in some merciless, dark rat hole of a public house where even the vermin stayed out of the dark corners for fear of being killed and eaten by the patrons. There they partied loud and cursed violently and drank themselves into a rare, dreamless stupor.

  Dudley’s time with the Pythians had been diverting at least, at times even entertaining. The mercs he ran with were assholes to a man, in the game solely for money and motivated only by their own greed. Every last one of them deserved to die and rot in Purgatory, forgotten even by their own whore-bag, soulless mothers. His enemies, however—now they were a different matter.

  Alicia Myles, the female who had beaten him at his own game, sprang to the forefront of his mind. Truth be told she was never far away. And the rest of her comrades. He would be learning more about them very soon.

  First things first, however. There was the small matter of his recent incarceration and the imminent transportation to a so-called American ‘black site’. Not that they had officially told him anything, but he kept up with the times. If he allowed this to happen the black site would be the least of his worries.

  So what to do? Escape. Sure, but that wasn’t easy when you were clapped in enough iron to take down Tony Stark. Time was his enemy. Not opportunity, you could create those. Not guards, he could destroy those. And not environment, the place didn’t matter. It was the precise when of it all that would carry the day.

  Dudley bunched his muscles when the irons were applied. Stared the guards down as they escorted him along a white-walled corridor. Called their mothers bitches and whores as was expected. None of it mattered. On the surface he was just another dangerous Irish asshole prisoner, seeing the light of day for the last time. Underneath he was as watchful as a starving predator. The corridor led to a low-ceilinged, underground parking lot. Black sedans, SUVs and 4x4s stood everywhere, many of them with engines running and filling the area with their noxious exhaust fumes.

  The guard to his right—bright-eyed, young, relatively new to the game since he looked about twenty five and hadn’t been knee-deep in mayhem since the age of eight—turned to him.

  “Take a last look around, dipshit. This’ll be the last thing you ever see that ain’t got a set of bars in front of it.”

  Dudley headbutted him. It was expected.

  The guard fell away, his free hand coming up to cup his bloodied nose.

  “Be thankful it weren’t yer feckin’ balls got crushed,” Dudley snarled.

  Men dragged him further into the parking lot and toward a nondescript SUV. The only thing different about it was the blacked-out windows but sometimes, that one singular feature was more than enough. Dudley held in the smile. Maybe it sported government plates too? No matter, the target was already painted on the roof.

  Settling in, Dudley allowed the seat belt to be fastened and two burly guards to flank him in the back. Two more climbed into the front: driver and passenger. The latter, a bearded seasoned individual turned to face him.

 
; “Go along to get along,” he said. “If you need to speak address me as Guard Winston. We ain’t here to damage you. Nod if you understand.”

  Dudley nodded, happy to conform. A bag was thrust over his head, making it hard to breathe. The vehicle started and drove up a sharp incline, then out into traffic. Cruising the streets of DC, probably headed up toward Silver Springs or Bethesda. Dudley retained a clear sense of direction, not that it mattered too much at the moment.

  Events were out of his hands.

  The transport continued in silence until Guard Winston radioed in their progress about an hour into the journey. By then they were navigating country roads, slowing for tight bends and passing no traffic in either direction. Dudley used the time to reflect on what he considered to be a rather storied past. What had led him to this exciting juncture in life?

  Family. Of course. His father had been Irish Mob, killed by the British. Uncles? Still engaged in the fight. Mother? Rotting away in some undisclosed, hateful English town someplace with her new prick of a husband. One day Dudley dreamed of taking the entire 27-Club to visit both of them, just for the night.

  Party time.

  Dudley was ready, though even he was shocked by the ferocity of it. The distinctly unlikely chance that the Pythians were engineering his escape dissipated to nothing as soon as the first explosion occurred. This was 27-Club discretion and refinement if ever he’d experienced it.

  The first explosion rocked the car, sending it up onto two wheels, just as the driver was steering wildly and trying to brake. Dudley was jerked against his seat belt, at the same time trying to wedge himself between the two rear guards to minimize injury. The car flipped, crashing down onto its right-hand side with a crunch of metal and screams from the guards. At forty miles an hour it scraped along the asphalt, rapidly decelerating. Dudley hung on as best he could, still sandwiched. The guards grunted and shifted, well-trained despite their non-Irish affiliations and knowing full well what was coming next.

  By the time the second explosion went off, the car was already bouncing. Dudley imagined the mines had been laid in holes dug out of the asphalt, then roughly covered over again until the target vehicle passed over. How had the lads known the route? Well, when all this blew over the Americans would probably find one of their guards was missing, unable to get out of bed because he was strapped down and full of holes.

  Dudley crushed the man below him without mercy, trying at the very least to impede his shooting arm. Metal crunched, rasped and grated all around him, fragments of glass lashing at his face. The back end of the vehicle came around, smashing into a hillside verge. All of a sudden the front end whipped around. Dudley was thrown forward, the front of his head leaving the back far behind and seeing stars.

  At last, the SUV ground to a halt.

  The follow-up assault was instantaneous. Though he couldn’t see their faces, or anything at all, Dudley just knew the boots he heard stomping outside belonged to the craziest lads in the business.

  The boys are back!

  With that thought blasting through his head he began to lurch to and fro within the confines of the seatbelt, smashing between the seat in front and the headrest at back. At least one guard turned their attention toward him.

  “The hell you doin’, man?”

  “Gettin’ in the feckin’ mood, man.”

  Dudley smashed his head even harder.

  Guard Winston kicked out the windshield with his feet, ensuring his firearm was at the ready. The black boots out there disappeared from sight. The car’s driver looked over at Winston.

  “Whaddya think?”

  “Can’t hang around here all day. The distress button’s been pressed. Now let’s get ourselves free.”

  Dudley leaned on the guard below as those in the front seats crawled clear of the wreckage. Up on their knees, casting around, they said nothing. The third guard elbowed Dudley.

  “I’m gonna crawl into the front. When I do I want you to pull clear of Guard—”

  Gunfire rang out, shocking in the silent aftermath of the crash. Dudley saw Guard Winston and the driver fall, faces and eyes staring right at him, now void of life. And a good riddance to you. Now the guy next to him was fidgeting like a man on Speed, straining to see in four directions at once.

  “I wouldn’t bother,” Dudley said. “You’ll be dead soon too.”

  That was when the guy got a bright idea. Instead of trying to save himself he grabbed Dudley by the neck, thrust his head down, and shoved a handgun into his ear.

  “You want him? Then show yourselves. Or I’ll blow his head off!”

  “That’s our wee brother,” a splendid Irish twang rang out. “You hurt him I’ll rip yer eyes out.”

  Dudley’s mood soared. Malachi! His older brother, reunited at last in bloody murder. His only hope now was that the rest of the 27-Club were here and they could make it a new chapter to be proud of.

  “Callan, me wee brother. Yer there?”

  “Fire top and bottom,” he said. “They got me in the middle.”

  With not a moment’s hesitation, shots rang out. Bullets ripped through the SUV, the lower one coming perilously close to his own forehead. Blood splashed over him, but not his own. The handgun that felt like it had become part of his ear didn’t go off in any kind of reflex action.

  Score one to the lads for that! Lucky bastards!

  Dudley waited patiently for his release. Soon, he heard heavy breathing and the grunting of two men. A pair of hands dug under his belt, releasing it, then the two men helped drag him clear of the wreckage.

  No words were spoken. Homecomings weren’t made to a man clapped in irons and wearing a mask. When the keys had been located and manacles removed, the hood was whisked away.

  “Callan, me fella. How are ye?”

  Malachi’s grinning visage popped up before his eyes.

  “Better for seein’ the lads, to be sure. You ready to do some real mischief, lads?”

  Six familiar faces surrounded him, all grinning like maniacs now their bloodlust was up. Boyle, Daley, McLain, Byram and Brannan needed no introductions.

  “Yer wanna take these Pythian eejits and fill them full of holes?”

  Dudley grinned at McLain, the passion in the man’s voice igniting his own violent ardor. “Not yet,” he growled. “First I want to murder this woman what took me down called Alicia Myles. Then we’ll murder her again just for fun, and the team who helped her. We can use the Pythians’ help with all that.”

  “Grand, grand,” Malachi said. “Let’s get started.”

  Dudley couldn’t help but smile even wider as he kicked the corpses aside and armed himself. “Damn, I’m looking forward to this.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mai Kitano awoke to the sound of deep, thrumming engines. Disorientation overcame her for a moment and then the acute stabbing pain in her stomach brought it all back.

  The hotel room. The Yakuza. Hikaru shooting her in the stomach; the second bullet slamming into the carpet by her head. The dragging and the lifting, the intense pain. The knowledge that she never should have left the safety of the suite of rooms provided by the Americans. And Matt Drake?

  Damn. She had pushed him away, now look where she was.

  A plan had been forming in her mind, a plan to revisit Tokyo and seek out the surviving girl from Hayami’s family. Emiko, wasn’t it? That was her name. Find her and lay all your sins out before her.

  She knew now how ridiculous it all sounded. Yes, her primary motives were selfish—she was doing it for her own peace of mind. But . . . that didn’t stop her needing to do it.

  Then the Yakuza changed all that. Hikaru had grown a set, come to DC and confronted her. Granted, the set he’d grown hadn’t allowed him to confront her without an entourage of armed goons, but then why should he?

  Mai remembered the agony of being shot in the stomach, the knowledge that such a death was extremely painful. Nevertheless, she would have endured it all night just to keep a certain, sp
ecial knowledge away from Hikaru.

  That Grace had been sleeping in the next room. The Yakuza never found out.

  Now, coming to in the gently rolling, malodorous room with a single bare light bulb and cracked wooden shelves; with a no doubt locked metal door and no windows; with a single desk full of papers and small glass bottles and syringes and tubes, Mai Kitano found she couldn’t move more than an inch.

  Her arms and legs were strapped to a bed. After a moment she determined that she still wore pants, thankfully, and boots and the tank top she had gone to bed in. The pain of trying to sit up seemed to wrench her stomach apart, making her groan. Somebody had done a decent job down there, removing the bullet and patching her up.

  Where the hell am I?

  The situation was awkward. Yes, she had been in worse and escaped without a scratch but never with a fresh bullet wound. Ideally, she needed time to heal—even a few days would help.

  Not enough.

  She knew that and told her inner voice to shut up. The man who had taken her would reveal all, she was confident of that. His egotism ensured it. All she had to do was get better until he did.

  Again she lifted her head as much as she was able, fighting the pain. Beyond her feet stood a medicine cabinet and beside that a drinks globe. Interesting set-up. Boxes were piled in one corner of the room, some torn open to reveal such diverse items as bandages, condoms, bottled water and designer aftershave.

  The door rattled, opened and a man walked in. Mai saw instantly that he was Japanese, grubby and worn down.

  “Ah, you are awake. I will fetch water.”

  Mai sipped for a while and then said. “Where am I?”

  “On board the Genkai Hida.”

  He spoke with such matter-of-factness that Mai wondered if she’d been told before and forgotten.

  “And we’re bound for . . . ?”