Viper Nine Read online

  ‘Wells, get back in here,’ Driver yelled, hoping he’d hear over the comms. ‘We’ve got an idea.’

  Indeed he did hear, sliding into the backseat and ditching an empty clip. Driver outlined the plan. He nodded. Baptiste stepped on the accelerator as she got in position to take the shot.

  As they sped onto the empty bridge, Baptiste accelerated alongside the van. Driver raised her pistol. She had the shot. The big man at the wheel in her line of sight. But as she pulled the trigger, the SUV braked hard and fell back.

  Driver looked at Baptiste for explanation. He had none. ‘What the—?’ he said, working the pedals.

  Without warning, the wheel spun to the right out of his hands.

  The SUV flipped mid-air and tumbled across the bridge.

  The whole thing was a dizzying blur. Driver bounced off the roof and landed in the backseat, glass flying and metal crunching with bone-shuddering force.

  Wells ended up on top of her, pinning her to the roof of the car. It landed heavy one last time before coming to a stop on its roof.

  Driver lost all feeling. A hand to her head came away bloody. She forced the air in and out of her lungs, pushing the shock out of her system.

  As her senses sharpened, Driver felt the sting of the cut to her head.

  She looked around and saw movement. Wells attempting to crawl over the broken shards lining the ceiling of the SUV. She checked herself over. Felt relief as her limbs moved as normal, with no obvious wounds to her body.

  Baptiste was a different story, fastened into his seat and upside down with his head against the wheel.

  The deflated airbags had only done so much. He was in trouble. Driver crawled forward on her hands and knees. She felt for a pulse on the Russian’s neck. It was there, but faint. And much as she called his name, there was no waking him up.

  Wells put a hand on Driver’s arm. He had his pistol in hand and a keen eye on the view out of the upturned SUV. Driver peered through the window and saw the second van appear on the scene. It pulled up ahead of them, reversed in their direction and came to a stop.

  ‘This way,’ Wells coughed, tugging on Driver’s trouser leg.

  She turned to see him backing out through the window on the other side of the SUV.

  ‘But Baptiste,’ she replied, her own voice weak, still struggling to breathe.

  ‘No time,’ Wells replied, dragging her by the foot.

  Driver turned and crawled across the crumpled roof, but as she squeezed through the far window, two masked men jumped out of the front of the parked van.

  With P12 rifles cocked, they took aim at the rear of the SUV.

  Driver scrambled for cover, heavy-duty flak missing by a whisker.

  She hid on the other side of the SUV, realising she’d lost her gun in the crash. Wells was unarmed too. And Baptiste was a sitting duck, if he wasn’t fading into death already.

  With surrender their only hope, Driver picked herself up and helped Wells to his feet. They rose from behind the upturned SUV, their hands in the air. She saw the lead van parked in the distance, as if watching the execution.

  The masked pair paused, waiting for the signal to fire. Driver shared a last look with Wells as one of the men put a finger to his ear.

  That was it. Permission granted. He nodded to the other and they stepped forward to fire.

  Chapter 19

  A rumble of tyres, the thunder of a V8 turbo-diesel and a flash of solid green steel. It all happened so fast. An armour-clad Humvee appearing out of nowhere, an act of divine intervention.

  The two-tonne beast drove straight through the firing squad and into the van, smashing it sideways through the barrier of the bridge. The Humvee slammed to a stop an inch from doom, as the van and broken bodies disappeared over the edge.

  Driver moved to the broken barrier and saw circular white swells where the men and their transport had hit the water.

  The Humvee backed up, its front grill painted in blood.

  As Pope, Lim and Rios climbed out, Driver felt her heart resume beating. She went to thank Pope, yet he seemed more interested in the welfare of Baptiste.

  Of course, Baptiste.

  Driver joined Pope and Wells in attending to the Russian. But his door was stuck, a dark gash to the top of his forehead dripping blood as he hung upside-down.

  Wells yanked at the door, giving it his all. Pope grabbed a handful of mangled steel and together they prised open the door.

  Driver thought on her feet and ran around the other side of the wrecked SUV. She crawled in over broken glass and reached for her phone, lying loose on the crumpled roof.

  She put a call into Geneva. ‘Baptiste is hurt bad.’

  ‘How bad?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Bad enough,’ Driver replied. ‘We need an air ambulance. You got my coordinates?’

  ‘Mo’s on it,’ Anna replied. ‘Who should I say you are?’

  ‘Tell them an almost-truth. We’re Europol agents, pursuing terrorists.’

  ‘Hang tight,’ Anna replied.

  As she ended the call, Driver watched Wells and Pope lay Baptiste flat on the ground, Lim folding her jacket and tucking it under his head as a pillow. She felt his pulse. The concern in her eye said touch and go.

  Driver looked into the distance, where the lead van sped away with the stolen warhead on-board. It disappeared into the surrounding green hills, dotted with tiny white houses. She tapped on the camera on her phone and brought up the image of the older man with the hateful eyes.

  Was he really Viper Nine’s leader or just another henchman doing their bidding? Whatever his involvement, the look in his eye was chilling. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered to the image staring back at her.

  * * *

  Kovac leaned out of his open window and watched as the chaos on the bridge shrunk into the distance. The chase was over. Their pursuers out of the game, but the woman and her team still alive. As the van left the bridge and climbed the winding road into the surrounding hills, he returned to the inside of the van and wound up his window.

  Kovac turned in his seat, only one of his foot soldiers from the operation left alive and daylight punching its way in through a string of bullet holes.

  Not that it mattered. They had what they came for and he had plenty of other men at his disposal. His key people were alive, including his hacker-in-chief, Jana.

  ‘Good work back there,’ Kovac said.

  Jana started in her seat, as if taken by surprise by the praise.

  ‘You find anything on the woman yet?’ he asked.

  ‘The blonde? Still working on it.’

  ‘What’s taking so long?’ Graf asked in his baritone Bavarian.

  Jana shook her head as she worked on her laptop. ‘There’s no record of her. It’s like she doesn’t exist – never existed. Same goes for the others.’

  ‘Well, now they know who I am,’ Kovac said, squeezing the headrest with a large, wrinkled hand until the anger passed.

  He regained his composure and resisted the temptation to fly into one of his rages. Taking it out on his remaining disciples wouldn’t help his cause. Yet this was not part of the plan. The Serb was convinced he’d covered every angle in his long, meticulous preparations. The operation was months in the planning and years in the execution. The thought that he’d made a mistake, that he had a blind spot – it was a tough pill to swallow.

  For a control freak like Kovac, an unknown entity was the worst thing that could have happened.

  He consoled himself with the sight of the warhead. The authorities would soon know his identity. But that’s all they would know. He was still the one in control. Still the one in power. And if the plan worked… No, when it worked, all the world, all of history, would know his name.

  Chapter 20

  Rios and Lim joined Pope in the Humvee. They couldn’t be there when the air ambulance arrived. It was too much to explain. Too incriminating, considering a few miles back there was a military base full of fallen soldiers.
r />   Driver felt sure the Viper Nine assault team would have cut the CCTV feeds. Or at least she hoped so, her focus drawn to the muggy skies over the vast stretch of lake where a pinprick appeared on the far horizon.

  The chop of the rotors announced its arrival before the bright-red air ambulance came into view.

  It circled overhead, blowing Driver’s hair into her face. The helicopter lowered with care in the middle of the road as police cars arrived on the scene to block traffic either side of the bridge.

  Wells crouched low to Baptiste, his broad back acting as a buffer to the wind. Driver stepped forward and met a pair of paramedics halfway to the chopper. She announced herself as an undercover Europol officer. She adopted the same Germanic English her mother used to speak in and Driver would mimic as a child.

  Being British, Wells didn’t have the problem of an American accent and the paramedics bought the story. It wasn’t their place to ask, their only concern attending to the wounded Russian.

  The paramedics, a fifty-something brunette woman and a diminutive, bearded man, had Baptiste on a stretcher in minutes. As they strapped him into a gurney in the rear of the idling helicopter, Driver and Wells hitched a ride.

  The pilot lifted high off the deck, the rotors making white spiral patterns on the surface of the deep-blue water.

  As they left the wreckage of the SUV behind, Driver felt an unease in the pit of her stomach. They hadn’t wiped down the SUV. Had they left something behind? Wouldn’t it be better to lay low for a while?

  No, it was selfish to think that way. Baptiste was in bad shape and Viper Nine were still at large – only now with a nuclear weapon in their possession.

  The helicopter pulled clear of the bridge and accelerated through a valley walled by green hilltops.

  Driver felt the back of her neck. Jarringly stiff. The shock of the crash was wearing off. In its place, the pain. She looked again at Baptiste, then Wells, seated opposite her by the window. ‘You think he’ll make it?’

  Wells shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He glanced back at her. They held eye contact a moment, the two of them at least talking again. At least that was something.

  * * *

  ‘We’re his partners,’ Driver said, answering the doctor’s questions. ‘Undercover, so no badges.’

  ‘You need to get checked out yourselves,’ said the doctor, a lanky six-five with a brush of white hair.

  ‘We’ll be okay,’ said Wells. ‘What can you tell us about his condition?’

  Driver joined Wells and the doctor in staring through the open blinds covering the window of the recovery room.

  ‘It’s hard to tell until he wakes up,’ the doctor replied. ‘He’s lucky there were no broken bones.’

  ‘What do you mean, wake up?’ Driver asked. ‘Is he in a coma?’

  ‘Self-induced,’ the doctor replied, with hands in pockets. ‘It’s the body’s way of protecting the brain following trauma. It can be a result of injury, increased pressure, or while it flushes out toxins caused by the stress.’

  ‘You’re saying he could have brain damage?’ Wells asked.

  ‘It’s too early to tell,’ the doctor continued. ‘But let’s be hopeful, yes?’

  He put a hand to Driver’s back and left them with a sympathetic half-smile that suggested he wasn’t. ‘Speak to the triage nurse and get yourselves checked out.’

  The doctor loped off along the corridor, leaving Driver and Wells to re-enter the room. As they stood by the bed, she wondered how to broach the subject of the animosity between them.

  Driver still didn’t understand the problem. Could Wells have been so upset with him over the Kravchenko hit? No, it wasn’t like him.

  She opened her mouth to speak, only to hear a knock on the door. It was Rios, followed into the room by Pope and Lim. The Mexican had picked up tulips and a cheap box of chocolates somewhere along the way.

  ‘You ditch the Humvee?’

  ‘In a supermarket car park,’ replied Pope, a worried look on his face. ‘Is he gonna be okay?’

  ‘They don’t know yet,’ Driver replied. ‘Doctors can’t say.’

  The Australian moved to Baptiste’s side. ‘Come on, you Russian bastard. Who else am I gonna take the piss out of?’

  Driver smiled to herself, almost touched by Pope’s concern. The buzz of her phone in her jacket pocket interrupted the moment, drawing her out of the room and into the privacy of the hospital corridor.

  It was Gilmore. ‘I heard from Anna. Is he okay?’

  ‘He’s alive, for now.’

  ‘And the weapon?’

  ‘We lost them.’

  ‘Goddamn it,’ Gilmore said, as Pope attempted to read a French newspaper to the comatose Baptiste. It was a horror show, the man tripping over every mispronounced word in a broad antipodean accent. The two dialects mixed like oil and water.

  Driver turned and listened to Gilmore’s instructions. ‘Return home and lay low,’ he said, ‘until further orders.’

  ‘Lay low? You should have seen the guys we were up against. These are high-level operators. We’re talking serious tradecraft. This whole thing could be another Vesuvius op.’

  ‘And so what if it is?’ Gilmore replied. ‘Our only source of intel would be McNeil who, may I remind you, is being held in a secret location, if he’s not already dead.’

  ‘You’ve got contacts inside the agency,’ Driver said. ‘You could do some digging.’

  ‘And you think he’s gonna roll over after Rome?’ Gilmore replied. ‘Besides, it’s too much of a risk.’

  ‘Then I need to stay here with Baptiste,’ Driver insisted.

  ‘That’s even more of a risk. You need to stay off the grid. Baptiste would say the same.’

  ‘And what about you?’ Driver asked, double-checking the corridor for eavesdroppers. ‘What’s going on in D.C.?’

  ‘They’ve got me here as some kind of consultant,’ Gilmore continued. ‘I’m playing along for now.’

  ‘Well in that case, here’s something you can use,’ Driver said. ‘I think we may have got a visual on the leader. I’ll send you his image.’

  ‘Do that,’ Gilmore said. ‘And don’t fight me on Baptiste.’

  ‘Who says I’m fighting?’

  ‘You know what you’re like,’ Gilmore continued. ‘I’ve gotta go. The President’s calling us back in.’

  Driver laughed. ‘So you finally made it to the White House, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, the basement,’ Gilmore replied as the line went dead.

  Driver re-entered the room to find Lim snatching the newspaper from Pope. She perched herself on the side of the bed and read the fashion column in fluent French, her sweet, delicate accent faultless.

  Driver expected nothing less from a former contract killer, agency-schooled in multiple languages.

  Yet, rather than wake Baptiste from his slumber, Lim’s readings were putting Pope to sleep in one of the pale-blue guest chairs.

  ‘Someone wake Sleeping Beauty,’ Driver said, tucking her phone away. ‘We’ve got our orders. We’re heading back home.’

  ‘And then what?’ Wells asked.

  ‘We sit and wait,’ Driver shrugged.

  ‘With a bunch of guys running loose with a nuke?’ Rios asked, arranging the tulips in a vase. ‘Don’t you want to get the motherfuckers?’

  ‘Of course, but with what?’ Driver replied.

  ‘She’s got a point,’ a resigned Wells agreed, much to her surprise. ‘We need to find out who this guy is in the photograph. Plan from there.’

  ‘Besides, Mo may have cracked the rest of the files by now,’ Driver added. ‘Either way, we can’t stay here. It’s a matter of time before the police catch up.’

  Pope stirred and rose from his chair. ‘And what about Baptiste?’

  Driver looked over the unconscious Russian, a white padding to his head and a serene expression on his cut and bruised face. ‘You can’t arrest a man in a coma.’

  Chapter 21

 
; Washington D.C.

  The room was a mess of tired bodies, laptop screens, papers and empty paper cups stained brown from strong coffee.

  The ventilation did its best to rid the room of the smell of fear and frustration as Gilmore paced to the far end of the conference table. Schneider was out of his jacket with shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows. He hunched over his laptop with elbows on the polished oak and a hand shielding his ledge-like brow.

  Gilmore slid his phone under Schneider’s nose, the image of Driver’s suspect on the screen.

  ‘What’s this?’ Schneider asked.

  ‘The question is who,’ Gilmore replied.

  ‘Spit it out, Bryan.’

  ‘It could be the leader of Viper Nine. A major player at the very least.’

  ‘Who’s your source?’ the CIA Director asked, studying the image.

  Gilmore remained unmoved. ‘I still have contacts. I can’t say who.’

  ‘Anything you can tell me?’ Schneider sighed.

  ‘Yeah, my contacts say this man is behind the Belgian incident.’

  Schneider’s face creased up even more than usual. ‘The what?’

  By the way the President reacted to a whisper in his ear from his Chief of Staff, Gilmore had a feeling the entire room was about to find out.

  Schneider pulled a seat out to the right of him, vacated by an analyst. Gilmore took his place at the table as the room fell to a hush.

  The agency director turned in his seat and grabbed a passer-by at the elbow. Gilmore glanced at the young man’s ID badge. He was part of the Watch Team, the White House unit responsible for running the situation room, day-round, year-round.

  ‘Get this on the big screen for me, will you?’ Schneider asked him.

  The man picked up a pen and scribbled a number on the corner of a sheet of paper. He tore it off and handed it to Schneider. ‘Text it to me.’

  Schneider handed phone and paper to Gilmore, who forwarded the image as the room settled down. The young man acknowledged receipt and hurried to his station.