Deadlock (14 page)

Fight
, a calm voice said inside his head, snapping Otto back from the brink of unconsciousness.

He saw an oddly shaped piece of debris falling towards him, his oxygen-starved brain taking a second to recognise the shape. He grabbed at the fabric strap attached to the object as it fell past him. It snaked past his fingertips, barely within reach as he made one last desperate lunge for it. He caught hold of the strap and pulled the heavy black weapon dangling from the end of it towards him. Otto grabbed the grip of the sub-machine gun, aiming it straight at the glowing red lights of the Moray’s forward sensor array and pulled the trigger. He felt the weapon jerk in his hand as it fired and the Moray’s head disappeared in a cloud of bubbles and sparks, fragments of its delicate tracking equipment tumbling away through the water. He felt the machine’s grip on his legs loosen and with his last reserves of strength he pulled his legs free from its limp coils and kicked for the daylight above. He surfaced in the middle of a blazing debris field, taking an explosive gasp of smoke-filled air that nevertheless, in that instant, tasted sweeter than any he had breathed before. He looked around and saw Darkdoom turning his boat around in a tight half-circle fifty metres away, before straightening the wheel and roaring back down the canal towards Otto. He raised one arm, waving frantically to attract their attention, hoping that they would be able to spot him through the smoke billowing from the blazing wreckage of the police boat that blocked the canal behind him. The boat slowed as it approached and Raven leant out over the side, seizing Otto’s outstretched arm and hauling him back on board.

‘Are you OK?’ she said, quickly looking him over for any obvious sign of injury as Darkdoom turned the boat back in the other direction and steered them past the burning debris and out into clear water.

‘I’ll live,’ Otto said, taking several deep breaths.

‘Not far to the lagoon,’ Nathaniel said, as they raced along between the ancient buildings that bordered the canal. ‘Next right, Diabolus, and then straight on.’

Behind them, another two sleek, high-speed boats shot out from an adjoining canal and continued the pursuit.

‘Looks like we’ve drawn a crowd,’ Otto said as they raced beneath a bridge filled with tourists watching the drama unfolding in front of them. What the people on the bridge could see, but Otto and the others could not, was the pair of long dark shapes that rocketed along beneath the surface just behind them. A few seconds later Darkdoom’s boat emerged from the shadows of the buildings surrounding them and out into the open waters of the Venetian lagoon.

‘I still can’t establish contact with the Megalodon,’ Darkdoom yelled, pushing the throttle all the way forward. ‘I think something may have gone very badly wrong.’

‘Well, we need extraction now, one way or another,’ Raven replied, looking back at the pair of powerboats still pursuing them across the lagoon. The water in the bottom of the boat was now nearly half a metre deep and the extra weight was causing them to slow inexorably.

‘You should know I always have a contingency plan, Natalya,’ Darkdoom said. ‘We just have to stay ahead of our pursuers for a couple more minutes.’

A split second later the water to the left of the boat exploded and a Moray drone flew out of the water and straight at Darkdoom. Raven moved in a blur, the crackling purple blade of her katana sweeping through the air and slicing the machine cleanly in two from nose to tail, one half falling into the water sloshing around the bottom of the boat and the other slipping over the side. At the same instant, the second Moray flew out of the water on the opposite side of the boat and hit Raven squarely in the back knocking her over the side and into the lagoon. Darkdoom slammed the throttle backwards, bringing the boat to a rapid stop as Otto ran to the rear of the boat and looked down into the water. He saw nothing but the faintest glimmer of purple light that seemed to flicker and fade away as he watched. Darkdoom’s hand went to the throttle again as he turned and looked back at Otto. The closest of their pursuers was now only fifty metres away.

‘We can’t leave her,’ Otto said.

‘Nor can we afford to be captured,’ Darkdoom replied. ‘I’m sorry, Otto.’ He pushed forward on the throttle.

‘No,
I’m
sorry,’ Otto said, reaching out with his abilities and blocking the electronic signal from the throttle to the engines. Within just a few seconds their boat was flanked by the two remaining powerboats that had pursued them through the Venetian canals. On each boat, besides the helmsman, there was a pair of men wearing body armour and dark glasses, all with sub-machine guns raised and aimed at the occupants of Darkdoom’s boat.

‘No sudden moves, fingers interlaced behind your heads,’ one of the men barked. ‘You’re all now prisoners of the United States Government.’

‘I wasn’t aware we’d reached international waters,’ Darkdoom said calmly, glancing at his watch for a split second as he raised his hands and then slowly placed them behind his head as instructed. ‘I wonder how your friends in the Italian security services would feel about this?’

‘I guess we’ll just have to make sure that they never find out,’ the agent replied. He turned to the man next to him. ‘Cuff them and bring them on board. I’ll call it in.’

The two Artemis Section boats edged closer to Darkdoom’s vessel as the first agent put a single finger to the side of his neck and spoke into his throat mic.

‘Yeah, this is Able Seven. We have the Malpense boy, the male we spotted in St Mark’s Square and another unidentified elderly male in custody. No sign of the woman though. I can see the retrieval choppers now.’ In the distance Otto could just make out two helicopters flying low over the water of the lagoon, heading straight for them.

Decryption of their communications is now complete,
H.I.V.E.mind said inside Otto’s head.
These men are agents of a branch of the Central Intelligence Agency known as Artemis Section. They report to a director of operations whose name is Flack.

Behind the agents Otto saw a hand reach up and grab the rail that ran along the side of the Artemis agents’ boat. The agent who was talking on the radio started to turn towards the hand clutching the rail; in a second he would spot it and they would be out of options. Otto’s mind raced for a moment and an idea formed in his head.

‘Let us go,’ Otto said calmly, ‘or Flack’s dead.’

There was a sudden look of surprise on the lead agent’s face as he turned back towards Otto, which was swiftly replaced by a look of suspicion.

‘What are you talking about, kid?’ the agent asked, keeping his gun trained on Otto as his colleague leant over and grabbed the rail of Darkdoom’s boat, pulling the two vessels together.

Behind the two agents Otto saw a second hand on the rail.

‘I have an operative in position right now,’ Otto said calmly. ‘All I have to do is give her the signal.’ Otto reached out with his abilities, searching for the capacitor inside the throttle assembly of the other Artemis boat behind him.

‘Oh yeah,’ the agent said with a sneer, ‘and what kind of signal might that be?’

‘This kind of signal,’ Otto replied and sent a mental command to the throttle capacitor in the boat behind him. The Artemis boat’s engine roared, catching its helmsman completely off guard. He was pitched backwards, tumbling across the deck, knocking his fellow agents flying as the runaway speedboat powered away across the water, hopelessly out of control. At the very same instant Raven leapt over the side of the stationary Artemis boat, taking advantage of the distraction to surprise the three agents on board. The two agents wielding the sub-machine guns were the first to go down in a flurry of swift kicks and punches. To the helmsman’s credit he managed to get his own pistol halfway out of his shoulder holster before he too joined his unconscious companions out cold on the deck.

‘You look like hell,’ Darkdoom said with a wry smile as Raven took a deep breath. Her tactical harness was gone and her body armour was torn to pieces down one side. She had a long gash that ran down the upper half of her right arm and another similar wound in her thigh.

‘Do me a favour, Diabolus,’ Raven said. ‘Next time you build yourself something like that thing and its brothers, give them an easily accessible “off” switch, would you?’

‘They
were
designed to be tamper-proof, you know,’ Diabolus replied, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yeah? Well, they weren’t me-proof,’ Raven replied. ‘And you owe me a new pair of swords. Give me a hand.’ She put a hand under each of one of the unconscious agent’s arms and dragged him over to the side before rolling him on to Darkdoom’s swamped boat. In the distance they could see a small armada of Venetian police boats heading in their direction.

‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the American ambassador’s office when the Italians figure out who these men are,’ Darkdoom said as he climbed aboard the Artemis boat.

‘I always say that it’s not really been a good day if you haven’t caused a major diplomatic incident by lunchtime,’ Otto said with a grin.

Otto had just helped Nathaniel across on to the Artemis boat and Raven and Darkdoom were halfway through transferring the last unconscious agent over to their own slowly sinking vessel, when a voice crackled over the agent’s radio.

‘Able Seven, this is control,’ the voice said. ‘Did you say that you could see the retrieval choppers? Because they’ve only just dusted off – they won’t be with you for another ten minutes.’

Raven and Otto exchanged a quick glance and then turned and looked at the approaching helicopters. They were much closer and it was now obvious that they weren’t designed for transporting personnel. They were clearly gunships, probably the very same ones that would have taken them out at Nathaniel’s home if Otto had not realised Gretchen’s deception in time.

‘I think we need to go,’ Otto said.

‘Yup,’ Raven replied with a nod.

Seconds later, they were bouncing away across the lagoon, weaving between the sandbanks and mudflats that made navigation of the vast tidal pool so difficult. The boat was no match for the speed of the gunships though and they were relentlessly gaining ground. It would only be a matter of seconds before they were within firing range.

‘I hope you have something up your sleeve, Diabolus,’ Nathaniel said, as they raced towards the gap in the sea wall that led out into the Adriatic Sea. Out here, on the open water, they were sitting ducks.

Darkdoom glanced at his watch and then pulled a small earpiece from his pocket.

‘Confirm position,’ Darkdoom said. He listened for a response and nodded. ‘Confirm targets, fire when ready.’

Nothing happened for a moment and then Otto, Raven and Nathaniel ducked, flinching as a pair of air-to-air missiles seemed to appear out of thin air just ahead of them and screamed past over their heads straight towards the two gunships. Otto watched as the two pursuing helicopters broke off their pursuit, banking hard as they recognised the danger, but they never had a chance. The burning wreckage of the two gunships tumbled slowly into the lagoon as ahead of the boat there was a shimmering in the air and a giant loading ramp dropped down in mid-air, hitting the surface of the water in a plume of spray. At the top of the ramp Otto could see the interior of the Leviathan’s cavernous cargo hold, the rest of the giant dropship’s enormous airframe was rendered invisible by the thermoptic camouflage that covered its armoured skin.

‘You and your toys, Diabolus,’ Raven said with a sigh, shaking her head.

‘Like I said,’ Diabolus smiled, ‘backup plan.’

‘Most impressive,’ Nathaniel said, eyebrows raised.

Darkdoom pushed the throttle forward as the Leviathan dropped further, its cargo deck flooding with water as its giant invisible turbines kicked up clouds of spray, which in turn revealed the faint outline of its huge hull. Darkdoom steered the boat straight on to the flooded deck and moments later the Leviathan lifted back into the sky, Darkdoom’s men running forward and stabilising the beached boat as the water ran off the deck and back into the lagoon below. The huge loading ramp sealed shut as the Leviathan continued to climb and Darkdoom, Otto, Raven and Nathaniel got out of the boat.

‘Drop this thing in the ocean once we’re a few miles out,’ Darkdoom said to the deck chief, gesturing towards the Artemis vessel. ‘Who knows what sort of tracking devices it has on board. Best not to take any chances.’

The four of them walked across the cargo bay and up the stairs leading to the Leviathan’s command centre. The room was bustling with activity as the operators at various terminals around the room tried to extract any pertinent information from the confused radio chatter that was filling the airwaves of the city below.

‘What happened to the Megalodon?’ Darkdoom asked as he walked to the centre of the room.

‘We found her automated distress buoy and we’ll have Remotely Operated Vehicles on site shortly, sir,’ one of the operatives reported. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it appears she’s gone down with all hands.’

Darkdoom looked down at the floor for a moment and took a deep breath.

‘How did it happen?’ Darkdoom asked, trying in vain to keep the fury he felt from his voice.

‘We’re not sure, sir,’ the crewman replied. ‘The last telemetry we received from her indicated a catastrophic breach of her fire-control systems, which would tally with the fact she appears to have launched the Moray drones with you and your companions assigned as the primary targets. It seems that she then suffered an on-board detonation of her remaining munitions.’