The Blood King Takedown Read online

  He sat alone, a man, an island. Dahl had rediscovered the vitality that divorce, hardship and indecision had sapped. He’d found the man he used to be just waiting. There was a freedom to him now, a wild confidence. As a man or woman grew older, they collected baggage created by the trials of life. It was a fact and it was accepted. But, sometimes and rarely, they managed to find a way to cast that baggage aside, to see it slough away like dead, unwanted skin. Dahl had reached that eye-opening pinnacle. He could start again.

  The Swede sat ready, gun positioned across his thighs, eyes closed in concentration.

  Hayden leaned in to Kinimaka. “Looks like we’ll never get that Florida villa, Mano.”

  “Who knew they would be so expensive? With all the land Florida has . . . couldn’t they build cheaper?”

  “Yeah, they could. But then their bosses would have to sell a yacht or something.”

  Kinimaka put a large arm around her and hugged. “Are you ready for the Blood King, Hay?”

  “You kidding me? This is the first time we’ve been able to get the jump on him. Those three nukes aren’t even supposed to have detonated yet. I mean, I guess he has protocols where his men have to check in but . . . shit, it feels good to be in front for a change.”

  “And not have the President’s life to worry about.” Mano laughed.

  Hayden grinned. “That makes a nice change too.”

  She turned away, listening to the stream of information rattling through her comms. This was backup data. Nobody outside her team, not even their drivers, knew where they were headed.

  Mai Kitano sat between Luther and Molokai, close enough to be touching her boyfriend’s knee but still feeling some distance between them. Maybe it was the tension, the enormity of the task they were facing. Maybe it was the nuclear device. Mai tended to think it was something else. Luther was distant for a reason these days, just the last few weeks, and she believed she knew what it was.

  Luther wanted his own team.

  He’d been in sole charge before and had made a distinct reputation for himself. He was known as the best of the best among the Army Rangers. Now, he fought with a group of alphas, one of the team. He loved it, but he wanted more. At least . . . that was Mai’s opinion.

  If Luther left the team, he’d probably take Molokai. That would leave them undermanned. They’d need fresh blood and that would upset the dynamic, at least for a while. Mai had no doubt that Luther would stay until both the Blood King and the Devil were neutralized, but after that? She wasn’t sure.

  And that unsettled her too.

  Mai didn’t want to end up alone. She’d lost men she loved along the way, lost them to violence and circumstance. Lost them to her own desire to assuage the demons of her past. The fact that she’d grown to love Luther proved that she could find love again even after a heartrending breakup.

  But do I really want to go through it all again? Can I trust it?

  A decision faced by thousands a thousand times a day the world over. Mai forced it to the back of her mind as Hayden rose to her feet and grabbed a ceiling strap to steady herself.

  “Two minutes out,” she said. “We’re here for the Blood King, but we’re here for the nuke too. We’ve neutralized any chance that someone might betray us by keeping Kovalenko’s location secret. Are you ready to take this man out?”

  Shouts resounded inside the van, deafening. Hayden waved for quiet. “This is our chance to take out the man who’s plagued us, who’s killed our friends, who poses the greatest threat to the world of any person alive. Today, we make the world safer for us and for the children.”

  Drake yelled out his agreement. Alicia was at his side, punching the air. Kenzie rapped on the bulkhead that separated her from the driver, and gave him the order to pull over. The van jerked to a halt, followed by a short silence.

  “Let’s do this,” Hayden said.

  Drake followed Mai out into the street. They ran single file down a back alley, fitting between dumpsters and wedged-open doors. The sky and their vision were shot through with drizzle. Droplets collected on their helmets and exposed hands. Drake checked in front and up above. The part of the buildings’ facades he could see was clear. High rises towered above them, a thousand faceless windows masking 10,000 nameless officer workers who had no idea that men and women they would never know fought to keep them alive on the rainswept streets below.

  Drake paused at the end of the alley behind Mai and Molokai. Hayden squeezed through to the front. Their enormous target sat right in front of them.

  Madison Square Garden.

  This was where the Blood King planned to detonate a low-yield nuke in about four hours, according to the Intel the captives had passed on. The Garden was closed—there were no events for a few days. Kovalenko was inside, having procured the space in his usual manner: threats, money and blackmail.

  Drake studied the arena. The casualty rate would hardly be affected by the place being closed. It sat above the vast hub of Pennsylvania Station and in the heart of Manhattan. The tall, round edifice towered above the street.

  Hayden rushed across the road, followed by her team. Drake ignored the stares of passersby. They passed under the broad entrance to the arena and approached several sets of glass doors. Luther went in first, using a door giving access to the box office. Kinimaka approached the faces at the counter, flashed an ID badge, and ordered them to leave. The rest of the team ran further into the arena.

  “Security?” Hayden asked.

  “Bought off,” Drake said. “Has to be.”

  “Or dead,” Kenzie said.

  Drake followed Hayden and Kinimaka as they rushed for the security center. They paused outside and forced the door. The first thing that struck them was the stench of death, the second the sight of four dead bodies. Drake ignored the carnage as he hurried across to a bank of monitors.

  Together, they scanned the screens.

  Dahl saw it first. “Screen Five.”

  Drake swiveled his head. The screen presented a wide view of the arena—from the higher, circular stands all the way down to the central basketball court. Many of the seats on the far side were taken up by dozens of figures. Most carried guns. Other figures walked between the aisles or down the long flights of stairs leading to the center court.

  “I’m counting thirty. Maybe more,” Kenzie said.

  Drake pointed. “There,” he said, “at the center of the court.”

  He’d recognized Luka Kovalenko immediately, even knelt as he was, bending over something on the floor. The Blood King was in the very center of the basketball court with his back to the cameras.

  “I didn’t believe it was true until now,” Hayden breathed. “But we have him.”

  “Not quite.” Kenzie indicated his guardians.

  “We attack full force,” Hayden said. “And call in backup to surround the shit out of this place.”

  Three minutes later half their number were headed up to the Garden’s highest level. The other half ran in the opposite direction. Drake stayed where he was, waiting outside a rectangular entryway to the arena, poised to make a run down the long, narrow flights of stairs leading to the floor. Three minutes later the signal came.

  “Ready.”

  They breached. Drake ran in first, followed by Alicia and Kenzie. Cam came last. They emerged into a vast space, temporarily unbalanced by the height and the steepness of the stairs and the shortness of the steps. Drake put his head down and descended as fast as he could.

  On the opposite side, a team led by Dahl did the same.

  They dropped a quarter of the way toward the arena floor before being spotted. Men sat in the bleachers started shouting and pointing. Weapons were raised at Dahl’s team, who were attracting all the attention.

  Drake’s team opened fire.

  Their bullets sprayed across the width of the arena, striking the backs and sides of the Blood King’s protectors. Bodies fell. Drake found that he couldn’t descend at speed and aim at the same time
so paused on a step, lined his enemies up, and squeezed the trigger of his HK. Alicia and Kenzie did the same. Cam shouted that he’d cover them by watching the arena floor.

  Drake saw ten of the Blood King’s men fall before they caught on that they were being attacked on two sides. After that they went to ground, diving among the seats and taking cover. They remained at a disadvantage, being beset from two higher points with limited cover. Nevertheless, they twisted and turned, and fired back.

  Drake let Alicia and Kenzie cover him as he ran down ten steps, then stopped and fired. Taking turns that way, they closed the distance between themselves and the Blood King on the arena floor below.

  Luka Kovalenko glared up at them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Drake was three-quarters of the way down the arena steps when he was forced to stop. Over the other side, Hayden, Mai and their colleagues were similarly placed. The return fire was slowing them now, pinning them down. The Blood King’s men had attained some good cover.

  At the center of the arena, still kneeling on the basketball court under the glare of countless lights and underneath the enormous scoreboard, the Blood King scowled up at them in defiance. He held a silver container in his hands and thrust it above his head.

  “Run away!” he shouted as the shooting died. “Because if I trigger this—we all die!”

  Drake had a clear view of the device. It was housed in the same way as the other three. Would a shot to the forehead nullify the threat or did Kovalenko have something else up his sleeve?

  Seconds passed. The Blood King’s face twisted sarcastically. His eyes were lit up with rage. But even so, Drake didn’t think he’d detonate. The Blood King—like his father before him—was obsessed with personal vengeance and that didn’t include being killed in the process. Luka would want to live to revel in his gloriously terrible victory.

  “Drop it, asshole,” he shouted down the steps. “Your future’s about as bright as the arse end of a donkey.”

  Luka frowned in confusion and rose to his feet, still clutching the device. Drake had already noticed that Dahl and Luther had vanished from the bleachers across the arena but didn’t like to think where.

  The Blood King held up a revolver and pointed it at Drake. “Stay right there.”

  Drake deliberately walked down one more step, goading the asshole. There was bad history between them. All of them. Meeting his archenemy again had set a slew of old, buried emotions into play, none of them good.

  “I’ll happily blow your fucking head off.”

  “Like my father’s?” Luka asked, snarling.

  “Aye, like your dead father’s.”

  “I remember how your Lauren and Smyth died,” the Blood King said with an evil grin. “My men filmed it for me. I have it saved right here on my phone if you like.”

  Drake fired. His weapon barked out. The bullet flashed past Kovalenko’s head, barely an inch away. The Blood King almost dropped the nuke.

  “Bastard,” he swore. “Are you insane?”

  Then he showed Drake a dead man’s trigger, attached to the nuke by a wire and held in his left hand.

  Fuck me. I almost . . .

  . . . almost . . .

  “Fucking pussy,” Alicia said. “Put the bomb down and fight us fairly.”

  “Not my style, Miss Myles. But I do have further plans for you. And for that murdering bastard Coburn. He’s not coming out of this alive.”

  Drake’s patience ran out. “Enough of the chatter. Make a fucking move, Kovalenko.”

  The Blood King had no room to maneuver, but Drake knew his snake-like mind, his penchant for destruction on a scale that could barely be imagined. For this man, there was always a way out.

  Dahl’s voice came over the comms. “I’m ready.”

  Drake frowned and looked back over his shoulder.

  Alicia spread her arms and shrugged. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

  Drake didn’t like the sound of it at all. Apart from the fact that the mad Swede hadn’t explained his idea, anything Dahl came up with usually sat on the wrong side of sanity.

  “On three,” Dahl said.

  “Wait,” Drake hissed. “What are we expecting to happen? The guy’s got his finger on a dead man’s trigger down there.”

  “Two,” Dahl said.

  Drake abandoned reason. Alicia ran to his side, Cam a step behind. Across the arena Hayden and the others were inching their way down, keeping the Blood King’s men confined to a small space. The faint sound of approaching sirens was audible. The Blood King’s head lifted, as if he had an intuition that something was about to happen.

  “One,” Dahl said.

  It was one of the longest seconds of Drake’s life. The nuclear device glinted at him under the arena’s bright lights. But when all was said and done—he trusted Dahl with his life.

  Good job really.

  “Go,” Dahl said.

  The Blood King held the silver canister aloft in one hand, brandishing the dead man’s trigger in the other and yelled out an order to his men. “Attack! Attack and kill them!”

  He was ordering them to die; to throw themselves at bullets while he escaped. And his men complied. They rose in their dozens from under seats and around corners, from exit passages and the boxes higher up that ringed the arena. They had been hiding in there too, waiting for the Blood King to commit them to battle.

  Hayden whirled where she crouched, firing up and behind in the direction of the private boxes. Kinimaka and Kenzie kept firing below. Molokai tried to pick off well-hidden stragglers. Bullets sliced across the arena, hitting bodies, smashing chairs and windows to pieces, thudding into signs and masonry and concession stands.

  Drake didn’t wait. He raised his gun and picked off two enemy fighters. Alicia did the same. Cam was staring upward.

  “Is that . . . is that Torsten Dahl?”

  Alicia flicked her eyes upward. “Well, it ain’t fucking Superman.”

  Drake almost cringed. Dahl and Luther had flung themselves off the scoreboard hanging over the arena, right above the Blood King’s head. They rappelled down at speed, attached to long ropes, heading for the Russian.

  The Blood King had no idea they were coming.

  Drake had seconds to track their progress; to see the lighting gantries and their network of support arms hidden in the ceiling. Dahl and Luther must have crawled across it all to reach the scoreboard. He grabbed the Blood King’s attention by firing a bullet close to his feet.

  Kovalenko sneered at him. His lips moved but Drake couldn’t hear anything over the roar of gunfire. Men were leaping over chairs and using their backs to jump from. They were climbing walls, running down aisles with guns firing. Hayden and the others were taking them down, but had their hands full.

  Drake stared open-mouthed as Dahl and Luther hit the Blood King.

  They came out of nowhere, bouncing down and releasing their rope harnesses as their boots touched the basketball court. Luther grabbed Kovalenko around the neck and bent him backward. Dahl took hold of the right hand holding the dead man’s switch, twisted it and then strapped the trigger firmly to Kovalenko’s hand using duct tape, securing the device to its owner. Finally, Luther took the silver canister containing the mini-nuke and they cuffed the Blood King’s hands behind his back so he couldn’t reach the tape or the trigger.

  The process took fifteen seconds.

  Kovalenko couldn’t help but maintain the nuke’s trigger in the safe position.

  Drake ran down to the court, laying down cover fire to keep Kovalenko’s men neutralized. The others followed, unleashing a hail of bullets. Drake descended two steps at a time and soon reached the center of the court.

  “Well done, mate. You are one mad bastard.”

  Dahl grinned. “Thank you.”

  Alicia pointed off to the left. “Exit.”

  “Yeah, let’s get gone.” Drake had wanted to eye the Blood King at this range, to get a feel for the man’s character up close, but
that would have to wait. Through the comms he told Hayden their intentions and how they intended to keep their enemies at bay.

  “Do it.” Hayden said.

  Drake, Alicia and Cam hurled grenades at their enemies and took advantage of their sudden panic to make their move. Return fire became sporadic as Kovalenko’s men dived for cover as the bombs exploded.

  Drake didn’t wait to find out what they would do when they recovered. “Move.”

  Pushing Kovalenko ahead they ran for the ground floor exit, bleachers stretching up on all four sides. Hayden and her crew joined them as they reached the open doorway. It was bright and hot down on the court, the lights heating everything up.

  “We did it,” Hayden said, looking around. “All of us. We captured him and stopped the nuke. And we’re still breathing.”

  Drake shared her joy. It was justice. Justice for Lauren and Smyth, and for all the others Kovalenko had cruelly murdered. Justice for the city of New York, for the whole world. The most wanted man on the planet was theirs.

  The Blood King laughed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Drake grabbed the Blood King by the collar and hurled him against the wall.

  “That hurt,” Kovalenko said, his arms still cuffed behind him.

  “Good,” Hayden said. “What’s the joke?”