Devil's Island Read online

  “I can try,” Kinimaka said. “But that was the only thread on the web. My guess is certain keywords like ‘the devil’ self-delete after a certain time has passed. I could be more forthcoming, more open, but that could be asking for big trouble.”

  “I like big trouble,” Dahl said. “Let’s do that. Now.”

  They shaped up to move off, but a voice stopped them.

  “Wait. I can help.”

  Hayden turned to see the older merc, Ray Harrison, a step behind. The smile on his face lifted her heart.

  Harrison sent a shifty glance back toward the bar and then urged them to move away. “Hurry,” he said. “I don’t have long.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Alicia Myles followed Harrison and the others across a busy road onto Salou’s sandy beach. A deep blue stretched across the horizon.

  Harrison led them to a bar and grabbed a seat. “Mai Tai,” he told the waitress. “Two umbrellas.”

  Alicia settled in next to him. The others stood or sat around, ordering bottled water. The yellow beach before them was strewn with deck chairs and untidy sun worshippers, their belongings cast over wide areas. It was a long time since Alicia had sat on a beach, watching the sea. She couldn’t even remember how that felt—the sense that everything was okay with the world, that nothing bad would ever happen, that nothing she could see or passed in the street would harm her.

  She looked away from the horizon, away from the unknown adventures that it might contain. “Ray, was it?” she asked. “Tell us what you know.”

  “I know a guy.” Harrison paused to sip his Mai Tai, smacking his lips afterward. “Wow, that’s good. Yeah, so I know a guy. He was injured on the island.”

  “And why do we need to talk to him?” Dahl asked.

  “Listen . . . you people can’t land on Devil’s Island and expect to survive more than a day without the knowledge this man can give you. Please believe me. I see you . . . I see you all. I get that you’re experienced, smart, at the top of your game . . .”

  Alicia patted Kinimaka’s arm. “Don’t worry, Mano. He’ll get to your specialty in a minute.”

  Harrison hadn’t stopped talking. “. . . your group is a good size to infiltrate and survive the island. But my friend—he survived that place for ten years. He lived with the Marauders as a spy and then at the castle. He saved my life once or twice down the years. The only time I reciprocated was when he broke his leg on the island. The Devil was ready to throw him from a cliff. I said I’d take him away and make sure he stayed quiet.” Harrison spread his arms. “Which I did.”

  “Why would you want to help us?” Alicia asked. “Your friends don’t seem overly arsed.”

  “Truthfully,” Harrison said, “they told you everything they know. But if you really have friends trapped in that place . . .” He shuddered. “There are a thousand ways to die, and none of them pleasant.”

  “Would your friend have a map?” Hayden asked.

  “He has everything. Like I said, he lived with the Marauders so mapped every inch of the island. And then he lived at the castle. He’s the only man alive that will be willing to help you and, well . . . he needs money to stay off the grid.”

  “And why do you want to help us?” Drake asked.

  “The man they call the Devil is . . . horribly, horribly evil. He lacks all conscience and has no morality. There are some men that shouldn’t be allowed to exist on this earth—no matter the cost—and he ranks near the top of that list. Also, I value friendship.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t wish your friends the same fate that I’ve seen others succumb to.”

  “There are worse things than this Devil,” Dahl said softly. “We have seen many of them.”

  Harrison nodded. “Some are on this very island,” he said. “Including the lava pits. The caves.” He turned away. “You have no idea of evil, my friend. No clue. Not until you see the . . . things . . . he genetically modified.”

  Alicia repressed a shiver. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I can’t speak of it.” Harrison’s face had turned bleach white under the red-hot sun. “I can’t even think about it.”

  “All right,” Hayden stepped in, “this friend of yours. Can you call him? Tell him to expect us?”

  “Yes, yes.” Harrison fought to recover. “I’ll do that. He’s based in Kuala Lumpur. Can you make that today?”

  Hayden frowned. “It’s a twelve-hour flight minimum,” she said. “I’d say that puts us at tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll tell him to expect you.” He took a scrap of paper offered by Dahl and wrote down an address. “He likes code words too. Anything preferable?”

  Alicia jumped in. “If you’re not living on the edge . . . you’re taking up too much space.”

  Harrison turned to her. “I like that. Okay, I’ll make it happen.”

  The team rose and readied to leave. Alicia paused a moment and bent down to whisper in Harrison’s ear.

  “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Tolley,” was the answer. “Mick Tolley.”

  * * *

  Alicia used the long flight to review the events of the last few weeks. After plucking the weapons of the gods from the greedy hands of Tempest, they had spent a few balmy days in London, taking their time storing the weapons in a secure vault and enjoying some downtime. It had been a kind of bliss. A few days alone with Drake, followed by a team get-together and then more time alone. It reminded her of all that she was missing, made her wonder if their lives were on the right path.

  But then Luka Kovalenko made his attack, and everything changed. Again. They would never be the same—not least because of the deaths of Lauren and Smyth. And now—when Kovalenko’s initial attack had been thwarted—the President saved—they were still without Mai, Luther, Karin and Dino. Devil’s Island didn’t sound like a nice place, but Alicia would take it in her stride.

  Could she and Drake ever find a true, peaceful happiness?

  We have to make changes. But it could be done. She saw the same question carved into Hayden’s face now that she’d regained her true love. For Mano, that love had always been there. She knew Dahl and Johanna needed time to sit down and face their issues head on. She saw Kenzie still clinging to hope that the Swede might propose a future with her. Life had pounded them all to a pulp, forcing these emotions upon them but giving them no way to properly experience them.

  Alicia craved a future with Drake now more than ever. She wondered how Mai and Luther would turn out. The opportunities were endless. And then there was Chika Kitano and Dai Hibiki, and Grace. What came next for them?

  I stopped running for Drake. It changed my world. I found other ways to cope. The past is in the past and I won’t allow it to destroy my future.

  Drake, at her side throughout the flight, said very little. Maybe he too was working through some issues. And, Alicia thought proudly, these are issues we can work together. Not alone. We’re a family and we’ll support each other through it all.

  The thought lifted her spirits so much so that she turned to the Yorkshireman. “Wanna earn your mile-high badge?”

  Drake grunted. “Here? I think the others might object. Maybe not Kenzie but—”

  “There’s a bathroom, idiot.”

  “Wait a minute.” Drake turned his head to look at her. “The question implies that you’ve already earned yours.”

  Alicia winced guiltily. “Ah . . .”

  “And what makes you think I haven’t earned mine?”

  Alicia’s eyed widened. “Have you?”

  Drake leaned in, whispering. “That’s for me to know and you to wonder about, love.”

  “Don’t you want to know if I’ve earned mine?”

  “Alicia,” Drake patted her knee, “I’ve reconsidered, and the only question I now have is—how many times?”

  She laughed, and they fell into silence again. It gave her time to assimilate up-to-date thoughts into deliberations over a new life, and what might come next
. If the past had been about chasing horizons and the creed one life, live it; the new one was a little slower, a lot better, and infinitely scarier.

  When you were running, seeking constant change, basing your life on what happened now and what came around the corner next, then the future wasn’t important. It didn’t matter if you lived or died mostly because . . . you had nobody who counted on you and nothing to lose.

  But when you started thinking about a future, hundreds of issues raised prickly, inquisitive heads . . . there was mortality for a starter, she thought. She’d never imagined wanting to live into middle-age. There was fighting for the people who loved you, and never letting them down. Steering younger ones to make the right choices.

  Staying put to stare a problem down the throat.

  Alicia thought about responsibility and sighed. It was a hell of a lot harder than fighting a battle.

  They didn’t get to see a whole lot of Kuala Lumpur—or KL, as Hayden called it. The airport was generic, similar to a thousand more around the world. Once in the city proper she stared out of the grimy windows of their taxi as they were driven down a narrow road with market stalls to both sides, constantly slowing and often stopped by the flow of locals.

  “Hot out there,” Dahl said from the far left of the car. Alicia didn’t answer. She was thinking about Mai and the others, even now being thrown around some distant ocean or fighting for their lives on Devil’s Island. The only good news was that the Pacific was in this general direction, so every mile they traveled narrowed the distance. But, even for her, that was a stretch.

  To their right, the buildings and general skyline was dwarfed by the Petronas Twin Towers, a 451-meter-tall pair of glass- and steel-clad skyscrapers and once the tallest building in the world. With the skies just starting to darken it shone like a beacon of wealth over all those that struggled by below.

  Alicia looked away, keeping her eyes focused on the windshield. Soon, they pulled over and stopped behind the other taxi, idling in the street. The pedestrian flow parted around them as if they weren’t there.

  “Here,” their driver said in English, pointing out of his window. “There.”

  Hayden thanked and paid him. The team met before a two-story, clapboard building, just another façade in a long, almost endless row. There was a door on the ground floor and a staircase to the right that led to a door on the next one. Hayden led them toward the staircase.

  “Harrison should have called ahead,” she reminded them. “But be prepared.”

  It went without saying. Sometimes Alicia wondered if Hayden spoke the obvious just to remind herself she was their leader but, hey, they were all happy with that scenario, so why speak out? It was loud out here, with heated conversations, the movement of people, and the expectant calls of street vendors all vying for supremacy.

  Kinimaka climbed the stairs first, the others wincing as the wooden steps groaned with his passing, and hammered at the door.

  Seconds later, it opened. Alicia saw a man that looked to be in his fifties but was probably younger, with a thick beard and a lustrous head of hair. He squinted at them as if his eyesight had recently failed, or perhaps he’d lost his glasses.

  “Are you Mick Tolley?” Kinimaka asked.

  “I might be,” he responded. “Who are you?”

  Alicia stepped forward. “If you’re not living on the edge,” she said. “You’re taking up too much space. Let us in.”

  “There’s a lot of you,” he croaked. “Harrison didn’t say there’d be a lot of you.”

  Kinimaka hesitated. Hayden moved to his side. “Would you prefer if just a few of us entered?”

  “No, no,” the man moved inside. “Get yourselves in here. Just don’t expect it to be comfortable.”

  Alicia entered fifth in line and felt a little sympathy for the guy. You’d be hard pressed to swing a bag of shopping around. Tolley perched himself on a stool whilst Hayden and Kinimaka got the only couch. Everyone else either looked for a wall to lean against or stood in the middle of the room.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see us,” Hayden said. “It can’t be easy—hiding from a man like the Devil.”

  Tolley scratched his beard. “What do you know of him?”

  “Honestly, not much. Only that he’s a scary guy without morals and that he likes to inflict pain.”

  Tolley sat back and reached for a half-eaten sandwich. The team waited for him to finish his bite. “I’m a thriller writer,” he said. “On and off, but even I wouldn’t dare to imagine—or recreate—the atrocities this monster has committed. I knew nothing of them when—as a seasoned merc—I first went to the island. Me and a dozen others. We thought we’d seen it all, heard everything. We were so wrong.”

  He paused to swig from a bottle of water. “The things we found on that island, the stories we heard . . . it scared us. Yeah, all of us. Grown men shivering in the night. You must understand the difference in mercs to accept that—there’s your steady, dependable mercenary and then there’s your military trained psychopath. Luckily, I rolled with a group of the former.”

  Hayden leaned forward, eyes intent. Kinimaka voiced the question in her eyes.

  “What the hell did you find on that island?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tolley tried to hide his fear. “Let me start with the Devil. He runs the island. Employs about a hundred mercs at a time and likes to keep them there. The smaller the turnover, the quieter his secret island stays. The sea journey, in and out, is made without access to windows. He lives in a large castle. There are captives on the island that he uses as slaves.”

  “This man shouldn’t be allowed to live,” Dahl muttered.

  “You think that’s the worst of it? Not even close. The Devil earned his name through thirty years of unique, bespoke murder. The darkest, most atrocious murders ever carried out. Say you want a family or board member killed, but it has to look like an accident. The Devil is the man you call. He’s initiated riots that killed hundreds, local wars, traffic pile-ups, gang violence, terrorist attacks so that, each time, he could kill one single person.”

  Alicia struggled to get her head around that. “Is that even possible? Surely someone would know.”

  “They may suspect.” Tolley shrugged. “The authorities, I mean. But they can’t prove it. And would they confirm the existence of this monster to the general population, or would they say the plane that went down was destroyed by another nation? Or a pilot committing suicide? Or that a shooting was initiated by a crazed gunman unpopular in his youth? What do you think?”

  “Do they know who he is?”

  “They’ve never even seen his face. He visits the scene just once. He monitors everything remotely; employs a small team he trusts to offer up scenarios. And when he’s ready he initiates the plan, whether that be stoking the locals, killing a key gang member, infiltrating an airline or simply organizing a car accident.”

  There was a long silence. Tolley finished his sandwich and drank more water. He didn’t offer any of his supplies to the group and Alicia didn’t blame him. There didn’t seem to be much to go around.

  After a while, Tolley himself broke the silence. “And now he has a new target,” he said. “Someone he’s working on right now.”

  Alicia wondered if it might be one of the SPEAR team, but that thought didn’t make sense. They came under fire almost daily. It wouldn’t require a cleverly engineered “accident” to kill them.

  “What target?” Dahl asked.

  “I don’t know. But he’s been planning it for almost two months now.”

  “Maybe we can ask him when we see him,” Kenzie said. “That’d be nice.”

  Dallas smiled. “Again, I’m so in tune with your thinking.”

  “I have this.” Tolley rose and crossed to a battered chest of drawers, taking out a thick sheet of paper. “It’s a map of the island.”

  “Perfect.” Drake took it and held it up. Alicia saw a ragged coastline, border markings and other features cle
arly indicated.

  “It’s as well-defined as I can make it,” Tolley said. “Some of the topography may be off—I recalled part of it from hearsay—but I believe it’s pretty accurate.”

  “Thank you,” Hayden said. “It could save our lives.”

  “You’ll need more than a map. You have four clans to get past, and I’d advise the quiet approach. You have the mountain. The genetic experiments. And then the castle itself and a hundred mercs before you even reach the Devil. Or your friends.”

  Alicia pricked her ears up at that. “What do you know?”

  “Right.” Tolley looked at the floor for a moment. “This is where I start risking my life. You must promise me you will kill the Devil. I mean wipe that bastard from the face of the earth. I’ve researched you—Team SPEAR. I know you’re good. I know about your successes. I’m risking everything on you.”

  “It won’t be a doddle, pal,” Drake told him. “But we’ll do our very best to take the wanker out.”

  Tolley smiled faintly. “Thanks . . . I think. I escaped the island due to injury. My team didn’t. They were either killed there with the clan infighting or persuaded to see the Devil’s view of life, losing their humanity. My mission has always been to avenge those good men. To that end . . . I have a friend on the island.”

  Alicia’s spirits rose. “Finally, some good news.”

  “He’s in deep,” Tolley admitted. “Hard to contact. And it’s beyond risky. Honestly, we were at a dead end before you guys showed up.”

  “Tell us what he’s told you,” Hayden said.

  “Well, your nemesis—Luka Kovalenko—is on the island. Went there right after leaving Paris. He believes the Devil works for him but . . .” Tolley grimaced. “I doubt that very much. Anyway, Mai Kitano and the other three will be in the so-called Devil’s Catacombs. They’re here.” He stepped across the room and tapped the map in Drake’s hands. “That’s the mountain and beneath it are the catacombs. There are exits here . . . and here. Notice it’s just north of the castle and the dock area which is good, but it’s also where the genetics live.”