“Wish I could say the same,” Blunt grumbled.
“You feeling okay?”
“General Fortner has an urgent message for me. Those are never good.”
Blunt ambled back to his room and placed the call to Fortner.
“Thanks for getting back to me so quickly,” Fortner said after he answered.
“What’s so urgent?”
“I just saw a kill order for Brady Hawk, and I thought you’d want to let him know.”
“Who signed it?”
“The president.”
Blunt unleashed a string of expletives. “I guess saving the life of that sorry pathetic excuse for a leader was only worth a slight reprieve in his vendetta against Hawk.”
“Did you expect Michaels to suddenly be filled with gratitude? That man is about as self-absorbed as they come, and he’s going to ruin our country if he gets his way.”
“If he thinks killing Hawk is going to solve all his problems, Michaels has another thing coming. He’s also got a short memory, too, if he thinks murdering Hawk is going to be easy.”
“From what I’ve seen in the field, Hawk can handle himself. I don’t know any Special Forces agent who would hold the upper hand against Hawk, and I know some damn good ones.”
“It still worries me,” Blunt said. “All Michaels has to do is fabricate some evidence against Hawk like he did before, and the whole world will be looking for Hawk. He’s good but nobody could last long when you’re on every criminal watch list with every known law enforcement agency in the world.”
“There has to be another way to bring Michaels down first,” Fortner said. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. You always do.”
“You have far more confidence in me than I have in myself.”
“You faked your own death once, and now you walk around a free man.”
Blunt chuckled. “You say this as I’m holed up in a safe house hiding from my own government.”
“Well, until recently, you were.”
“Yes, but here I am now, and it’s not a good place.”
“Things can change quickly. You ought to know that as well as anyone by now.”
“Usually for the worse.”
“Look, if you need my help with anything over there, I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do from here in Europe, but I will do whatever I can.”
“I appreciate that. Any word on Samuels?”
“Still the same. He’s in a medically induced coma right now, but the doctors are monitoring his healing process.”
“So, no updated prognosis on his survival?”
“Nope,” Fortner said. “Docs are optimistic but still concerned.”
“Thanks, Van . . . for everything.”
“Any time, J.D.”
Blunt hung up and returned to the kitchen.
“So, was it the good news you were expecting?” Hawk asked after he looked up from reading The Post.
Blunt shook his head and topped off his coffee.
“Not good at all, especially for you.”
Hawk wrapped his hands around his mug and stared at Blunt.
“What do you mean?”
“Samuels is still in a medically induced coma and his prognosis for survival hasn’t changed.”
“He’s got to pull through.”
“I think he will. But that wasn’t the only bad news.”
“What could be worse than that?”
“Fortner told me that he saw a kill order for you.”
“A kill order? So, what’s new?”
“Michaels signed it.”
“Ungrateful bastard,” Hawk said. “I save his life and this is how he repays me.”
“Don’t disparage ungrateful bastards by comparing them to Michaels,” Blunt said.
Hawk grinned. “I’m not sure who dislikes the president more—me or you.”
“If he gets his way, I’m sure you’ll edge me out in that department.”
“Well, I’m not going to let that happen.”
Alex sauntered into the kitchen, her hair still matted to her face.
“Why are you two carrying on like this so early in the morning?” she asked.
“Too much bad news before breakfast,” Hawk said.
“Don’t hold out on me. What’s going on?” Alex said.
“Samuels is in a medically induced coma, and he’s still about 50-50 for survival,” Blunt said.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You have to start my day off like this?”
“That’s not all,” Hawk said.
“It’s Michaels,” Blunt said. “We just learned that he issued a kill order for Hawk.”
She scowled. “I would curse but I have a rule against doing that until I’ve eaten breakfast.”
“That’s okay,” Hawk said. “Blunt has done enough swearing for all three of us this morning.”
“So, what are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to disappear, for the good of the team,” Hawk said.
Alex shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’re stronger together.”
“Yeah, but as it stands now, if they find me, they find you,” Hawk said. “You don’t honestly think they’re going to just let you go on your merry way, do you? If they’re focused on capturing me and you remain well hidden, at least you’ll both be safe.”
“It’s sound thinking,” Blunt said. “But if they catch us, they’re going to use us as bait to draw you out.”
“I’ll just have to get to them first,” Hawk said.
“Them?” Blunt asked. “It’s not like this will be a single agency hunt. Everyone will be looking for you.”
“I’ll disappear.”
“And then what?” Alex asked. “Just wait for Michaels to leave office?”
“If I have to, though I have other plans.”
Blunt cocked his head to one side. “Such as?”
“Such as plot my revenge on Michaels.”
“You already did that one,” Alex said. “And he survived it. Politically, the man is made out of Teflon.”
“There are other means to exact revenge and take someone down.”
“Even while you’re in hiding?” she asked.
Hawk nodded. “The less I tell you, the better.”
He glanced at his watch and threw back his coffee.
“Now, I’ve gotta run,” Hawk said. “I still need to do one last thing before I vanish.”
“Where are you going?” Alex asked.
“Where I said I would go yesterday. I’m gonna go see Lee Hendridge.”
* * *
HAWK LEFT THE SAFE HOUSE on foot just after 8:30 a.m. He walked three blocks, doubling back several times before entering a Metro station and catching a train to Georgetown where Hendridge lived.
Hawk tugged his hat down low and used his sunglasses to conceal his constant scanning of the surrounding passengers. One man stood out to Hawk, which made him antsy. Two stops from his destination, Hawk got up and stepped off the train just as the doors started to close. The man Hawk had noticed followed him.
Hawk maintained a steady pace, searching the dark corridors of the station for a place to evade the man. After several turns, Hawk found an unlit hallway that had several closed doors. Hawk jiggled the handle on one and found it unlocked. Inside were electrical components for powering the station.
Hawk left the door cracked in hopes that he’d draw the man into the room. As Hawk anticipated, the man entered the room, gun drawn. Hawk kicked the gun loose before the man could make eye contact. The man responded by landing a combination of body punches, but Hawk fought back with a devastating throat punch followed by a sharp kick to the man’s abdomen. Hawk finished him with two more kicks to the head, knocking the man out.
Hawk decided to exit the station and walked several blocks to the next one before re-entering the Metro system. Once aboard the train, he took off his hat and glasses, removed his jacket, and walked from the front to the back in an effo
rt to throw off anyone trying to follow his movements on security cameras.
Once Hawk found Hendridge’s apartment, he slipped inside as a woman was leaving to walk her dogs. He walked through the lobby and waited for the elevator. When it opened, he stepped in alone and pressed the button for Hendridge’s floor. The elevator whirred as it jerked Hawk up 14 stories.
After Hawk got off the elevator, he strode down the hallway and knocked on Hendridge’s door. Half a minute passed before Hawk knocked again. Finally, Hawk heard footsteps shuffling toward him from the other side. Hendridge opened the door and shook his head.
“I’m not interested in speaking with you,” he said. “I thought I made that clear yesterday. I don’t have time for your bullshit story.”
“This is important,” Hawk said. “If you’ve ever wanted to write something that mattered, this is it.”
“I’ve already done that, thanks to you. Seriously, I do appreciate you helping me make my career, but I’m not interested in jeopardizing my life again.”
“What are you working on?” Hawk said as he pushed his way past Hendridge into the apartment.
Hendridge closed the door. “I’m serious, Mr. Hawk. I am entrenched in this story and don’t have time to be unearthing any more conspiracies at the moment.”
Hawk walked over to the kitchen table, which was covered with pages of notes. He glanced at the computer and scanned the words on the screen.
“This is big,” Hawk said.
“Mr. Hawk, please,” Hendridge said. “Please stop looking at that. And I’m serious when I say that I need you to leave. They’ll kill me if they see me talking to you.”
“Nobody is going to kill you,” Hawk said. “Stop being so paranoid.”
“My paranoia is totally justified. Now will you please leave?”
Hawk glanced up at Hendridge. “What I’ve got is even bigger. Just hear me out, okay?”
Without waiting for an answer, Hawk launched into a truncated version of President Michaels’ plan to get the Federal Reserve Board to relinquish its control and turn it over to him.
Hendridge’s eyes lit up for a moment.
“That’s definitely some Pulitzer-worthy material there, but I’ll need more evidence to substantiate your claims before I start slinging them around in the paper.”
“I can get that for you, but you need to work fast on this before Michaels upends our entire economy and hands the power over to the Russians.”
“The Russians? They’re behind all this?”
“They’re the one pulling the strings right now—and as soon as Michaels green lights the U.S. joining the one world currency movement, the Russians are going to pull the rug out from underneath our entire country. We’ll go from being one of the wealthiest nations to one of the poorest overnight, and we’ll be beholden to the wishes of the Russians.”
“You’re leveling some serious accusations,” Hendridge said. “Are you sure you can get me evidence to prove all of this?”
“Positive,” Hawk said.
“Get it to me as fast as you can and I’ll talk with my editor about cobbling together this story as fast as possible. But I can assure you they’re going to want to move slowly on this. Plenty of legal ramifications if all your allegations aren’t true.”
“I understand. Just push hard to get your editor to run this the moment it’s ready to go.”
Hawk headed toward the door and stopped, spinning around to address Hendridge once more.
“Is everything okay?”
“I’m tired—and I think someone is out to get me.”
Hawk shrugged. “It’s the nature of the business, I suppose.”
“No, I think someone is trying to kill me. I hear strange noises when I’m on the phone. Some of my friends have told me that they’ve been questioned about me by some suits.”
“I feel your pain. Just be vigilant and keep doing what you do. Our freedoms depend upon serious journalists like yourself.”
“Be careful out there.”
“You do the same.”
Hawk exited the apartment and only went a few steps before he heard Hendridge’s deadbolt click behind him.
As he approached the elevators, one of them dinged and doors slid open. A man in a dark suit brushed past Hawk and kept his head down.
“Excuse me,” Hawk said.
The man didn’t look up. Hawk sensed something was wrong.
“Hey, sir,” Hawk said, “I’m talking to you.”
The man glanced over his shoulder at Hawk but kept walking.
Hawk didn’t waste another second. He broke into a dead sprint and hit the man from behind with a flying leap, sending the pair crashing to the ground. Hawk rolled up onto his knees and delivered two ferocious punches to the man’s head. The man scrambled to his feet and kicked Hawk in the chest. On the man’s second kick, Hawk grabbed the man’s foot and spun him around, knocking him off balance and sending him crashing against the wall.
The man then unholstered his gun and warned Hawk to stay put.
Meanwhile, Hendridge opened his door and shouted from down the hall. He clutched a gun and trained it on the man in the suit.
“That’s enough,” Hendridge said. “I suggest you leave right now.”
The agent dropped his guard for a second, just long enough for Hawk to kick the gun out of the man’s hand. After two more punches, Hawk subdued the man, knocking him out cold.
Hawk looked back down the hall at Hendridge.
“Good work,” Hendridge said.
The faint smile on Hawk’s face faded as he noticed another man in a dark suit, who’d just entered the hallway from the stairwell.
“Look out,” Hawk said.
By the time Hendridge turned around, the man was only a few feet away. He shoved Hendridge into his apartment and locked the door behind him. Hawk grabbed the agent’s gun and rushed down the hall. But before Hawk reached the apartment, he heard a single gunshot.
Hawk stood frozen, realizing that if he attempted to break into the apartment, he’d be walking into a kill zone. Instead, he decided to make a quick exit. He wiped his prints off the agent’s gun and placed it in his hands. Hawk then used the stairwell to exit onto the street.
He put on his sunglasses again and pulled his hat down over his eyes.
“Damn you, Michaels,” he muttered to himself.
CHAPTER 31
DISAPPEARING WASN’T HAWK’S FIRST CHOICE when it came to addressing the news that President Michaels had put out a kill order. During his Navy Seal training, he’d learned the finer points of going dark if his situation ever required it. And while he knew what details needed to be attended to in order to achieve a vanishing act, he wasn’t keen on the idea. He’d suggested it but only because it was the only way to make sure Alex and Blunt remained safe.
After the incident at Hendridge’s apartment, Hawk found a consignment shop and purchased some clothes. He needed every advantage he could in avoiding detection by Washington’s vast network of cameras that government law enforcement agencies all had access to. Hawk then spent the rest of the day dirtying up his clothes and changing his appearance. He dyed his hair blond and then sought out some of the areas in the city where the homeless congregated.
Hawk needed the better part of the afternoon to identify a strategic public park that appeared to have a significant homeless population. He spent the night staying warm by a fire that a couple of guys had built in an old oil drum. Using a coat he’d purchased as a blanket, he finally fell asleep.
When he awoke in the morning to a chorus of birds singing in the tree overhead, he decided to take a walk. He walked by a newsstand and froze, stopping to read the headlines.
Federal Reserve Board Mulls Dissolving Amid Growing Concerns
But it was a smaller headline below the fold that Hawk found more intriguing.
NY Times Reporter, Pulitzer Winner Commits Suicide
Suicide? Unbelievable.
He found a pay phone and pl
aced a call to Blunt’s secure line.
“You know I haven’t had my coffee yet,” Blunt said as he answered.
“They killed him,” Hawk said, ignoring Blunt’s grouchy greeting.
“I already read this morning in the paper. How’d they do it?”
“Bastards ambushed him. They sent two agents. I stopped one in Hendridge’s hallway outside his apartment, but Hendridge came out with a gun when he heard the commotion going on. When he did, another agent who used the stairwell snuck up behind him and forced Hendridge back inside before shooting him.”
“CIA?” Blunt asked.
“That’s what they looked like to me.”
“Damn. That kid didn’t deserve that.”
“They’re going to do the same to us if we aren’t careful. And that’s why I’m calling to say goodbye. I’m going off the grid and I’ll contact you once I figure out a way to regain our freedom.”
“There’s only one way that’s going to happen.”
“I know. Tell Alex I love her and I’ll reach out once I have a better idea of how I need to do what needs to be done.”
“Good luck, Hawk. And be careful.”
“Always.”
Hawk hung up and headed to the bus station. He needed to get out of the city. He needed to get out of the country.
Then he needed to plot his revenge.
THE END
Click this link to get INTO THE SHADOWS, the next book in the Brady Hawk series.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to so many people who have helped with the creation of this project and the entire Brady Hawk series.
Brooke Turbyfill has been a fantastic help in handling the editing of this book.
I would also like to thank my advance reader team for all their input in improving this book along with all the other readers who have enthusiastically embraced the story of Brady Hawk. Stay tuned ... there's more Brady Hawk coming soon.
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Brady Hawk 09 - Seek and Destroy Page 15