Seventh (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Cade hoped that keeping it simple would help. The warrior was slow, but he wasn’t stupid. He was also incredibly strong.

  “We need to move, brother. If they catch us, you will go back to prison. And I will join you…”

  He nodded, apparently now very aware of the need to act swiftly and in unison.

  “Get the truck about a hundred metres down the road and put it across both lanes. When you’ve done that, get back to me.”

  He did exactly as he was told. Meanwhile, Cade bundled the dying Golf driver back into the driver’s seat. He was almost dead, and certainly beyond help. Cade had no sympathy. He quickly checked his pockets, the door bins, visors and the glove box. Empty.

  He decided it was pointless asking him any questions as the damage he had caused prevented him from saying a word. He was about to shut the door when he heard a faint buzzing sound. He stopped and drilled down on the source. It was a phone in the driver’s back pocket. He leant him forward and removed it.

  He slid his thumb across the screen of the Galaxy. Incredibly, it had no PIN. His luck just possibly had changed.

  Three missed calls, one voice mail. It could wait.

  He checked the hatch area. Empty.

  He switched the ignition to the right and started the Golf; he turned the steering wheel to the left and released the handbrake. It started to roll, gaining momentum until it broke through the low-level shrubbery on the edge of the verge. It hurt him to watch it begin its last journey – a great car, just a poor driver.

  It commenced a hundred-foot descent into the valley below, a tree-lined area known locally as bush. It was dense and unforgiving; the further down the hill the vehicle travelled, the more it became enveloped into the shadowy canopy and in just a few moments it had disappeared. By the time the authorities located it, the driver would be completely beyond medical intervention. If indeed they ever did.

  “OK boss, I’m here. I did good yes?”

  “You, my man did bloody good. Now, the same with the Transit. Get him into the driver’s seat. He’s dead OK, no need to worry, his spirit was bad, it’s gone and he can’t hurt you. Here, catch the key.”

  The Ocean Harvester caught it deftly, then picked the unidentified male up with one hand, placed the other onto his chest and lifted him into the driver’s seat. He followed Cade’s instructions to the letter, turning on the ignition and turning the heavy steering fully to the left.

  “Now get him into the passenger side!” He indicated to the road worker who was still unconscious, a vivid wound still bleeding on his forehead. The Samoan didn’t realise it, but his initial action had not only stopped Cade from being shot – it had also fractured the man’s skull.

  Once they were both in the cockpit area Cade issued another instruction.

  “Now push brother, push.”

  Between them they got the vehicle rolling, slower than its German counterpart, but rolling nonetheless.

  The faceless voice started to shout again and struck the door panels aggressively.

  Cade checked his watch. Twelve minutes. Incredible. It felt like hours. He knew where the local police had to travel from and just hoped they weren’t any closer. He could not believe his good fortune that another car hadn’t joined them from behind.

  The Transit picked up speed. The rear occupant started to hammer on the side panels and began to yell something which the Samoan could not understand. It sounded ‘foreign’. To Cade it was instantly familiar – Romanian, and it wasn’t very pleasant.

  The muffled, heavily accented voice soon began to plead with Cade.

  “Let me out and I will not tell anyone, you will be OK. Do it now or I will kill you.” Cade thought the initial offer was quite charitable, but the latter confirmed to Cade at least, that he was dealing with another member of the team, not some unfortunate kidnap victim.

  “You heard the man? Now push!”

  As with the Golf, the Transit soon gathered pace, but its weight ensured that it careered down the hillside in much more spectacular fashion. It was probably travelling at about twenty-five when it hit a large rock and began to tip, inertia soon ensured that it rolled onto its roof and slid down the incline, faster and faster until it too disappeared from view. En route to the forest floor, a number of significant branches demolished the windscreen and bonnet.

  Unlike Hollywood the vehicle did not burst into flames, it just came to a halt among the dark, dank undergrowth that began to consume both vehicles almost instantly. Tree fern fronds wrapped their velvety fingers around the new arrival. The impressively wide trunk of a native Kauri tree jammed against the rear doors entombing the rear occupant who, along with his driver, now fell silent.

  It wasn’t unusual for vehicles and even light aircraft to disappear into this terrain and to never be seen again. Occasionally and often only by pure luck one might surface many years later when discovered by a hunter.

  “Get back to your truck. Say that I ran into the back of you, you are not injured and that we are exchanging details. Say that I am going to contact your boss and tell him it was my fault. OK?”

  He kicked a few branches across the verge, covering the exit marks of both vehicles. He looked at the front grill of the TT – it was buckled, the offside headlight was shattered, leaving polycarbonate crystals on the surface of the road. The back of the car was practically unmarked.

  “Boss.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m scared. Scared that they will take me back to prison.”

  “E te iloa a’u?” He asked the Samoan if he knew him – at least it was as close as his basic Samoan would get to the question.

  “Yes, you are good man; you own the restaurant with Big Stan.”

  “That’s right Filemoni I am good and I will look after you. Trust me like you have never trusted a man before? I cannot explain here, but I will look after you – and your family. OK?”

  The warrior nodded.

  Cade slipped the Glock from his waistband and after a gentle wipe of the grip and slide threw it as far as he could, down into the canopy below. It dropped so far he never heard it land.

  He put his hand out in front of him. The warrior took it and then pulled Cade into his chest, typical of an island greeting, albeit one heavily influenced by the USA. They were in that modern male embrace when a silver Toyota Corolla came around the corner, no doubt a rental, followed by a local highway patrol car which whipped around the tourists and pulled up behind them, the first patrol car on the scene. The driver pulled his vehicle across the road and illuminated his federal bar.

  He got out and as he did so, he announced his arrival to his communications operator. His distinctive blue uniform with matching blue body armour and a high visibility yellow tabard was completed when he placed his forage cap onto his suntanned head.

  “G’day. What’s happened here, folks? Anyone injured?”

  The warrior looked at Cade.

  “Good morning, thanks for coming officer, appreciate you’ve probably travelled a long way – I tried to ring to say we were both OK. no-one’s fault, the driver here stopped to let a tourist vehicle through – he was on the wrong bloody side – and it all happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to stop. My car is damaged, the truck is obviously fine. I guess we are both lucky?”

  “Indeed. Bloody lucky mate. I’ve known of cars going off these edges and never being found.”

  He rubbed his bearded chin and had a brief look around. He observed a sprinkling of glass on the road surface, among which were a few flakes of black paint, almost invisible to the untrained eye. The tailgate of the truck was so dirty and rusty that he wasn’t surprised to see a lack of evidence.

  “OK, here’s what I’m going to do. Normally I would be looking at issuing you with a ticket for careless, Mr?”

  “Cade, Jack Cade.” They shook hands.

  “OK, Mr Cade as I say a ticket – but given the circumstances I’m prepared to give you an official warning, no-one hurt, no damage to th
e truck, the only damage I can see is to your vehicle. I take it you have exchanged details?”

  “Of course, I’m fully insured, so if the company needs to claim it can. The driver has all my details too.”

  Cade looked at the Samoan.

  “Again my friend I am so sorry, I just couldn’t stop. You sure you are not injured?” It was fair to say that a locomotive would have struggled to injure him, he was so vast.

  “No, boss, I’m fine, thank you for everything.” He looked at the officer, “Can I go now, boss? I have things to deliver.”

  The officer nodded approval.

  Cade shouted, “Mate – if you need anything you know where to contact me – anything at all.”

  The warrior smiled for the first time in a while and walked pensively back to his truck. ‘Thankyou boss.’

  The officer took a basic photograph of the scene – he’d have to submit a straightforward crash report and with his current workload it would be as basic as it could be. Clearly this was one to file as quickly as possible.

  The traffic was starting to back up behind the Corolla and as he was as keen to open the road as he was to get his breakfast the constable got back into his Holden Commodore and cleared the job with his communications centre.

  As he was about to drive away Cade shouted to him. He looked in the side mirror to see that Cade was holding a stop/go sign.

  “This was in the middle of the road officer, probably what the other vehicle swerved to avoid?”

  “Yep, happens now and then, they leave all sorts of crap behind, do me a favour, throw it onto the verge by your car and I’ll get someone from Highways to come and pick it up. Thanks. Drive safely.”

  Cade assured him he would, as he walked once more through the longer grass, erasing evidence as he did so.

  He got back into the Audi, turned the key, it started first time. He shuffled awkwardly, realising he still had the ASP in his right-hand pocket. He removed it and placed it back into the glove box. He looked over his right shoulder, indicated, saw a courtesy flash of the Commodore’s headlights and then drove off down the hill towards his destination. The Highway Patrol vehicle followed him.

  Within seconds the Commodore driver illuminated his red and blue lights, Cade slowed, instantly thinking that somehow he had missed something, something critical. Instead, the officer indicated right and accelerated fiercely to overtake him, the twin exhausts rasped as the car changed to third and with a wave the officer was gone, off to his next call of duty, his previous commitment now a number on a computer waiting for his sergeant to file, his breakfast getting colder by the minute.

  Chapter Seven

  A few kilometres ahead of the Cayman a familiar yet sinister apparition appeared on the lesser-used Puketui Valley Road, a detour which allowed access to the small village of Puketui and mirrored the winding path of the beautiful Tairua River.

  The four-wheeled ghost whispered to a stop, allowing the driver a commanding view both right and left. Evoking beauty of a different type, the vehicle, a black Rolls Royce Wraith – the most powerful Rolls Royce in history, sat quietly, its potent 6.6 litre twin turbo-charged V12 engine barely audible above the nascent breeze that encouraged the nearby forest to life.

  Behind the Pantheon grille sat a 624 bhp engine, more than capable of powering the 2800 kg beast from standstill to sixty in 4.6 seconds.

  The two-door leviathan contained four people, none of which were visible as the heavily tinted glass denied the casual observer a view into the opulent cockpit.

  In the left rear seat, a beautiful woman sat, flicking idly through her iPhone. Five-foot something with distinctive features and a shocking head of black hair she was, most people agreed, the epitome of attractive.

  She dressed beautifully too; a Stella McCartney outfit, black, sensational and completely inappropriate for the current terrain, her matching black shoes lay on the cream carpet. Sitting next to her was a male, in his thirties, shaven head, much of which was scarred and a mathematically perfect jaw. He wore dark grey clothes; shirt, trousers and shoes, the only hint to fashion being an Omega Seamaster wristwatch with a black face, white hands and a distinctive orange bezel.

  The driver was around fifty. He had hair that at one time was raven black, but now so faded down the centre he resembled a skunk. And he hated how people reminded him of the fact. He had black soulless eyes. One, the left, had a glassier appearance than the other, it was almost too perfect. His left eyelid was deformed, burnt and cruelly twisted. Unlike his colleague, he didn’t wear a watch. He hated being reminded of the fact that he had to live another eighteen hours until the dawn of a new day, when once more he was expected to exist again. He had money. He had, at some level, power, enough to cause concern among even confident men but this was never enough to quell the overwhelming and almost constant desire to step off a precipice or in front of a fast-moving vehicle.

  He was once advised, quietly, that he made a drizzling start to a Monday morning in January, without an umbrella, actually look appealing.

  Sinister, muscular and malevolent – he epitomised the cinematic image of a very bad person. He had not always been that way, many years before he had been described as a weakling, puny or even diminutive, albeit he didn’t know what it meant.

  He smoked, much to the annoyance of the front seat passenger.

  As he raised his hand to inhale the smoke, his cuff rode slightly revealing a vivid scar underneath which lay the remnants of a blue mark.

  The Passenger was more than just along for the ride. To anyone watching it was clear that he was in charge and despite saying very little everyone in the car knew this to be the case. He wore a charcoal Viktor & Rolf suit, which would have seen little change from two thousand dollars. Underneath he had a pink Bertigo Puyol shirt, again expensive and as with the car, very flamboyant – arrogant almost but undeniably stylish. His ensemble was completed with a pair of Ray-Ban aviators: classic eyewear that never left his face.

  The male leant gently back into the ivory leather seat; his head resting onto the illustrious double R logo. He looked forward, his face reflecting back at him in the dark veneer. It was beautiful, the work of a master craftsman and yet as sinister as the occupant. A subtle stainless steel pinstripe followed the contour of the dashboard, drawing the observer’s eye to the monitor lid.

  The lid which opened to reveal the on-board computer system, was inlaid with a replica of the Spirit of Ecstasy – the feminine icon so familiar to the marque. The whole experience cocooned the occupants in a state of luxury, of incredible comfort and safety. It was for all intents and purposes a gentleman’s club, an ocean-going yacht and a symbol of intense wealth – an icon for the uber-rich and stylish.

  The female slipped her phone into the side pocket and sunk into the supremely comfortable seat, its supple, seamless leather encouraging her to sleep. As she slipped into a darker world, she ran her fingertips over the Canadel panelling. Each delicately curved section felt exquisite to the touch, each oriented at exactly fifty-five degrees. Behind her shoulders the leather was joined by chromed bullet tips, gathering the material together, hinting perhaps at the immense speed of the vehicle. It was attention to detail, beyond which most mere mortals could only dream.

  It was such a pity that the occupants lacked the overwhelming class and sense of breeding of their anthracite carriage.

  The Passenger moved his right hand towards the rotary controller. Mounted in the central section of the vehicle the controller’s crystal glass surface allowed him to run his index finger across it, in doing so inscribing a letter, a letter that allowed him to commence a search on the advanced satellite navigation system, search of an address, a technical issue on the vehicle or a phone contact. To a man who paid such an obscene amount for his suits, it impressed him enormously.

  He ran his digit over the glass, with three simple strokes painting a letter A onto the surface.

  The phone started to dial, the signal soon leaving New Zealand
and racing across the globe.

  “Salut Alexandru…it is me.”

  “Salut Stefan, how are you my brother? I hear the weather is wonderful where you are, you should stay a few days more, perhaps?”

  “This would not be necessary, my friend. Our work here is soon done. I have but one regret.”

  “And that is?”

  “That I must give this very special car back to its owner!”

  The faceless male laughed, he knew The Passenger would enjoy the car; after all, he had one of his own except his was the polar opposite of the obsidian monster, being almost entirely white.

  “Leave it at the airport, my brother; put the keys on the roof, whoever finds it can have it. Let us hope it is someone who will appreciate it. Clear the on-board memory and physically wipe it clean. We can always get another.”

  In the Romanian city of Craiova, the Jackdaw pressed the red button on his cell phone, disconnected The Passenger and rolled over in his palatial bed to finish what he had started. The two sixteen-year-old girls on either side of him appeared not to care what happened next. They were sheltered, fed, given alcohol and the level of drugs in their system quickly allowed them to forget about the brutal reality of their naked existence.

  If they were any older than eighteen, he simply lost interest.

  The Jackdaw lit an American cigarette, laid his head back on the sumptuous pillows and cackled like his ornithological namesake as his female concubines went about their work feasting upon him and in doing so earning another meal, another bed for the night and another sordid infusion of Class A drugs.

  In the Rolls Royce, The Passenger dropped a small pair of Nikon binoculars onto his lap.

  “She is coming. Wait. Wait. Go on my word, and not a second before!”

  The Wraith was now poised like a cobra waiting to deliver its final cargo of venom, but The Passenger had a plan that would make everything appear to be normal, above board and realistic, at least as ‘normal’ as things could be, given what was about to happen.