CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

 

 

 

Payne and Jones heard the drones before they could see them.

It started as a soft hum, carried across the island by the steady breeze, but as the machines got closer to shore, the noise transformed into something menacing, as if a swarm of killer bees had decided to attack Finland.

Jarkko glanced toward the sky. “What is that?”

Jones cursed as he searched the horizon. “Drones.”

Payne clutched his assault rifle. “I don’t remember drones in your briefing.”

Jones kept searching. “Really? Because I covered every contingency in great detail. Maybe you couldn’t hear me from the back of the room.”

“Yeah, that must be it.”

Jarkko looked at Jones. “Jarkko don’t remember this. What is plan for drones?”

“Good question,” Kaiser said as he finally reached the others. He was flanked by two muscular bodyguards. One was carrying a briefcase, just to complete the ruse.

“Easy,” Jones said. “If you see a drone, shoot it.”

Because of the swirling wind, it was tough to locate the direction of the sound. They kept searching from their position in the center of Island 1, but their vision was obscured by the rolling hills and interior defense walls that surrounded them. Payne ran from the path and climbed onto a wall to their east. Like an abandoned temple forgotten by time, the cut stone was covered with a thick layer of moss.

Payne touched his earpiece. “Archer, can you hear me?”

Archer replied from his sniper post in the church on Island 3. “Barely. I’m getting all kinds of interference. What about you?”

Payne answered. “That isn’t interference. Those are drones.”

“Drones? From where?”

Payne grimaced as he turned in a circle. “We were kind of hoping you could tell us that.”

“Oh,” Archer blurted. Since the church was built on top of a steep hill, he had the best vantage point of Islands 1 and 2. If he couldn’t see the drones, then they were most likely coming in behind the church from the north. “I can hear the fuckers, but I can’t—”

A loud roar filled Payne’s comm, temporarily garbling his communication with the sniper. When it returned, Archer was in the middle of shouting a warning.

“—buzzed right past me! They’re coming in low and hot!”

“From which direction?” Payne demanded.

“They flew past the shipyard and over the bridge to Island Three!”

A moment later, Payne could see them to the northeast.

 

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Known as octocopters because of their eight fully functional propellers, these unmanned aerial vehicles had greater uplift, power, and acceleration than the smaller quadcopters and hexacopters that were cheaper and more commonly used by the public. The octocopters were also much louder. Not only could they reach dizzying heights, but they were incredibly agile and could fly through strong wind, which was crucial around Suomenlinna.

Unfortunately for Blokhin, he had neglected to factor in one crucial thing when he had suggested their use on this particular mission. Due to the limited range of consumer drones, Blokhin and his team of hackers had been forced to leave the comfort of their warehouse in Moscow for a boat in the Gulf of Finland where they would control the crafts with touchscreens.

Four of the drones were being used for aerial surveillance.

But the fifth one had been equipped with a special surprise.

 

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Payne spotted the drones as they rounded the corner and skimmed the water near the isthmus between Islands 1 and 2. He raised his rifle and was prepared to shoot, but before he could, the flock scattered and zigzagged across the sky in multiple directions.

One headed north. One headed south.

Another soared across the island to the west.

A fourth one climbed vertically and remained in the east.

Payne focused his aim on that one, since it was closest to his position on the stone wall, but it was like trying to track a hummingbird in a hurricane. The wind was swirling, and the drone was darting back and forth, as if it knew it was being hunted.

Payne remained patient, waiting for the perfect moment to pull his trigger—when his attention drifted to something that wasn’t there. He had counted five drones when they had first appeared, but now he could only account for four.

He glanced behind him and saw a group of men standing in the center of the island where their “transaction” was supposed to occur. Jones was with Jarkko. And Kaiser was there with two of his bodyguards. All clustered in one place.

In a flash, Payne knew what was about to happen.

“Move!” he shouted as he jumped off the wall. “Get away from there!”

With a rifle in his grasp, Jones had been tracking the drone to his west when he heard a shout from behind. Due to the loud buzzing of the propellers, he couldn’t make out the words. He turned around and saw his best friend sprinting toward them from the east. He was frantically waving his arms for them to move.

That’s when it clicked for Jones, too.

With no time for words, he grabbed Jarkko by the arm and pulled him toward the west as the fifth drone plummeted toward earth. Confused by the shouting, Kaiser’s bodyguards assumed the threat was coming from somewhere on the island itself, so they shifted their focus to the surrounding terrain.

Meanwhile, Payne kept running toward the target.

Kaiser realized what was about to happen a split-second before impact. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew he was about to get run over by a muscular locomotive that was coming at him full steam. So he let his body go limp to absorb the impact.

Payne buried his shoulder into Kaiser’s gut like a linebacker sacking a quarterback, but instead of tackling him to the ground, Payne arched his back and kept his knees pumping as he scooped the lifeless man off the ground and kept on running.

A second later, the kamikaze drone came crashing down.

 

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Armed with an explosive payload, the device erupted on impact, sending shrapnel in every direction and creating a massive fireball that could be seen by the neighboring islands.

Having piloted the killer drone himself, Volkov grinned as he tossed the controller to the ground. Volkov would have preferred to slit Kaiser’s throat with a knife, but he still got plenty of satisfaction watching him and his men get blown to bits on the tiny screen—even if that meant he had destroyed a potentially key piece of evidence to finding the treasure in the process.

In his mind, a long-distance kill was still a kill.

And all of his goons had watched him do it.

That was how to earn respect in Russia.

By getting your hands dirty.

Volkov and nearly two-dozen henchmen had done all of their prep work on the far side of Vallisaari, a large island just to the east of Suomenlinna. But now that Volkov had landed the first strike, it was time to unleash the next wave of his attack.

With a nod of his head, four men started the engines on their rigid-hulled inflatable boats. Made of flexible tubes, the watercrafts were lightweight but high-performance and could hold up to six men each. Filled to capacity with armed Russians, three of them took off for the island complex, while the fourth one waited for Volkov.

Once he climbed aboard, they headed across the water as well.

 

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Payne felt the explosion before he saw the damage.

The force of the blast threw him violently to the ground in a tangle of body parts, some of which weren’t his. Temporarily disoriented from the concussive sound, Payne sat dazed in the grass as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

Two bodyguards were engulfed in flames. They screamed in agony as their skin bubbled off before they finally gave in to the pain. One after the other, they fell to the earth like trees in a forest fire, amidst the rubble of the device that had fallen from the sky.

Payne blinked. Then he blinked again.

Then he heard his name.

Not once. But twice.

And it came from underneath him.

So Payne rolled to his side to see who it was.

Kaiser was staring up at him with his one good eye.

He was just as dazed as Payne.

But he definitely wasn’t dead.

“Jon!” Jones shouted as he staggered over to his friend. He had been farther from the impact than Payne but was still hearing bells. “Can you hear me?”

Payne opened and closed his jaw. “That depends. Are you humming?”

Jones dropped to one knee. “No.”

Payne shook his head. “Then I can’t hear you.”

“Good. I’m deaf, too.”

Payne looked over at Kaiser, who was still trying to process what had happened. He just sat there staring at his dead men as Jarkko tended to him. “Is he okay?”

Jarkko nodded. “Dazed, but fine.”

Jones glanced over. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but Finland sucks.”

Jarkko shook his head. “This is not Finland. This is Russia. That is why Jarkko hate them so much. They come to Jarkko’s country and take what they want—hurt who they want. They have been doing this for years. And Jarkko is fed up. It is time to make them stop.”

Payne leaned over and grabbed his rifle. “Fuck it. I have nothing better to do.”

Jones nodded. “Me, neither.”

“Good,” Jarkko growled. “Then let’s kill those commie bastards.”