The Curse of Medusa

“I don’t give a rat’s arse who you are!” Mikey lunged for the shotgun on the table, grabbing the stock with the tips of his fat fingers but not quite getting hold of it. It slipped from his hand but he never knew it. Lea watched in horror as the two men opened fire on him and filled him full of lead. The bullets tore through his jacket and exploded in his chest and throat, propelling the large Irishman back through the open door and blasting him down on the gravel drive where he landed with a sickening crunch.

“No!” Kyle screamed, reaching for the same shotgun. He was closer and more agile, and managed to grab hold of the barrel and pull it toward him before the two men turned their weapons on him too. They drilled dozens of needless rounds through his body until he resembled a human pin-cushion, collapsing to the floor in a cloud of gun-smoke when the men had finally finished.

“Same happens to you two if you try anything, oui?”

Lea was too stunned to reply, and despite his extensive experience in the military, even Devlin could barely believe his eyes.

“Give me the file, Miss Donovan.”

“How do you know who I am?” Lea said. “Who are you?”

“I know exactly who you are, Irishwoman. You think I do a job tracking down Henry Donovan’s research files and not find out about his daughter? Bringing the notes to my employer will make me a very rich man, but there is a great bonus. I know a man in the Far East named Luk who is going to pay me a small fortune to deliver you to him… Now — get up slowly.”

“Mr Luk?” Lea’s stomach turned with nausea as she recalled his torture chamber back on Dragon Island.

The man pointed the gun at the door and Lea rose slowly from the table.

“We’re going outside,” the man said. He pointed the gun at Devlin. “You, sadly, are staying in here.” Without saying another word he shot Devlin in the darkness. Lea screamed as she watched her former CO collapse to the floor wordlessly.

The other gunman, the one who had not yet spoken, began to pour petrol around the inside of the kitchen and up the outside walls of the cottage. He took a final drag on his cigarette and casually flicked it at the small cottage.

Lea jumped back as the flames raced up the side of her childhood holiday home and began to eat their way inside like a pack of hungry wolves. “You bastards…” she tried to say, but it came out weaker than a whisper and sounded not angry, but pathetic. She tried to run inside to save Danny but the men held her back.

She turned to the man, her heart full of hate and rage. It was then she saw they both had tattoos on their arms — tattoos of a specific kind of burning grenade she had seen somewhere before.

“Bonne nuit, Miss Donovan,” he said.

She felt the butt of a submachine gun smash into the side of her head and then everything went black.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The streets of New York, now unsettlingly far below, flashed by as Hawke strained to keep a grip of the drone’s skid, but it was getting harder with every passing second. He glanced behind him to see the Perseus was now ablaze, with most of the top deck and bow on fire and black smoke rising into the air over the Hudson River. It was surrounded by military and coast guard choppers.

Slowly he clawed his way back up over the skid and then scrambled inside the drone, strapping himself inside the pilot’s seat. He deactivated the auto-pilot but nothing happened.

“Scarlet, are you receiving this?”

“Sure.”

“I take it from the bonfire you caught up with Kiefel?”

“Let’s just say he’s enjoying his hobby from a new perspective.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means he’s decided to go into marine biology.”

Hawke looked confused. “Forget it — you can tell me later. Listen — we have a problem. The weapon is on a timer and the drone’s autopilot can’t be disconnected. I think the only way to disarm it is to hack it. I need you to patch me through to Ryan, in a hurry.”

“You mean you can’t disable it yourself?”

“You could say that, yes.”

He heard her sigh. “If you want a job doing then call the SAS,” she mumbled to herself. “I’ll be with you in a second, Josiah.”

“Not unless you can fly five hundred feet into the air, you won’t.”

“Oh, please don’t tell me you were stupid enough to hang on to the skids when that maniac took off?”

“Something like that.”

“You total prat.”

“Well, thanks for your unwavering support and respect, but right now I’m in a slightly precarious position, so please just get me Ryan.”

Seconds later, Ryan was patched through.

“Joe, what’s up?”

“Mate, need some help.”

“Yes, I heard. Scarlet just told me something about you being trapped in a helicopter drone loaded with a deadly weaponized bacteria?”

“That just about sums it up, yes.”

Then he heard Alex’s voice. “You don’t have to do this to impress me, Joe.”

“Yes, as amusing as your jokes may be, can I remind you all that I’m currently in a drone five hundred feet above Manhattan with the world’s deadliest cargo underneath my arse!”