by Rob Jones
She looked around the rear seats and saw Lexi Zhang trying to unbuckle Scarlet’s belt and free her from her seat. The SAS captain was unconscious with blood trickling from a gash on her forehead. “Joe!” Kim called out in the darkness. “Joe, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he called back. “I think I hurt my shoulder, but the good news is my astonishing good looks are not compromised in any way.”
“Good to hear your voice,” she said, smiling at his joke but not responding to it. “What about Reaper?”
“Bad news I’m afraid.”
She felt her heart leap. “What?”
“The crash hasn’t made him any less ugly.”
“Joe!”
“He’s fine too, but he’s out cold. How’s everyone in the back?”
Ryan said, “Cairo’s out too, but Lexi’s fine.”
“Nine lives,” the Chinese assassin said as she kicked open the starboard door and started to haul Scarlet out of the chopper.
Kim unbuckled her belt now and started to climb. “We’ve got a fuel leak, Joe.”
“I know, I can smell it – plus the Oracle will have sent an armed force out to finish us off. We need to get out of here right now.”
Hawke grabbed his equipment bag, climbed out of the pilot’s seat and ran around to the other side. He saw the pool of jet fuel getting larger by the second and knew one spark would send them all hurtling into the next world. He opened the door and unbuckled Reaper’s belt. Pulling the heavy Frenchman from his seat, he dragged him out into the jungle to where Lexi had taken Scarlet. Kim and Camacho were there too, frightened and angry in equal measure, but unharmed.
“That right there,” Lexi pursed her lips. “Was one fuck of a landing.”
“My pleasure,” Hawke said, crouching down to Scarlet and checking her pulse. “She’s coming around.”
“And Reaper too!” Kim said.
Scarlet groaned as she looked up at Hawke. “What the hell happened?”
“We had a slight hitch with the end of the flight,” Ryan said.
“A slight hitch?”
Hawke shrugged and gave her a look of apology. “Kruger blew our rotors off with a grenade.”
“Ah.”
“You got knocked out, but you seem okay to me.”
The Frenchman rubbed his head. “What happened?”
“You were knocked out, Reaper,” Kim said.
“You hear that?” said Lexi. “Look, over there!” She pointed into the trees south of the crash site. “I see headlights.”
Reaper was now also on his feet, brushing mud and dirt from his jacket and jeans. “Sounds like quads to me.”
“Sounds more like trouble to me,” Hawke said.
“There they are!” Kim said.
Hawke knew what to do. “Don’t do anything until I give the order.”
“But they’ll be here in a minute or two,” Camacho said. “We can get away.”
Reaper started to trudge into the darkness of the jungle to the west. “Let’s get out of here then!”
“No.” Hawke stopped him. “Thanks to Kruger, we’re at least a mile short of where we need to be to assault the villa. We need those quads!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Danny Devlin had enjoyed better days. Chained to a wall in the dungeon of a freak like the Oracle while a meat mountain with medieval weaponry padded over to him was not his idea of the perfect evening.
Boboc grunted and swung the mace.
Devlin ducked and the spiky iron ball smashed into the wall behind his head and blasted a chunk of stone into the room.
“Are you not going to whisper sweet nothings into my ear first?”
Another swing of the mace, closer this time. He actually felt the chain connecting the ball to the handle swipe past his face.
“OK,” Devlin said. “So now I know how you really feel about me…”
He stepped fast to his right and flicked up the manacle on his right wrist, sending the chain whipping up like a skipping rope. It sailed through the air just as he thought it would and when it came back down he pulled it around Boboc’s head and snapped it tight as hard as he could.
The chain-links cut into the flesh on the giant’s neck and Devlin whipped it around a second time creating a kind of metal noose which he pulled on with all his strength. The man grunted in response and dropped the mace, bringing his fat hands up to try and prise the chain away from this throat.
Devlin sighed with disappointment. “So you can dish it out but you can’t take it.”
Boboc’s mouth worked silently as he gasped for air. The powerful man spun around and threw Devlin back against the wall.
He started unravelling the chain from his neck, so the Irish Ranger knew he had to act fast. Reaching down he grabbed the mace and swung it hard at his enemy, catching him square between his shoulder blades with the heavy spiked ball. The bones in the man’s back splintered like old pottery and he opened his mouth wide to scream hard and loud.
Devlin wrenched the mace ball from Boboc’s back in a jet of blood and bone fragments and swung it again. It was a heavy, tough weapon to manipulate but Devlin was no slouch. He twisted his upper body to increase momentum and brought the spiked ball smashing into the back of the choking man’s skull.
Boboc fell forward like a freshly-cut tree falling over, smashing his face into the stone floor with a toe-curling crunch as his nose and cheek bones shattered.
Devlin took the mace and then reached into the man’s pocket and found the keys. Freeing himself he leaned forward and checked Boboc’s breathing, but there was nothing. “Just staying on the safe side, you big ape.”
Then he walked across the dungeon and slipped through the door, locking it behind him as he checked the corridor for any sign of the guards who might have overheard the festivities back in the cell. Nothing. “Good,” he said. “Hold on, Lea. I’m on my way!”
*
Hawke waited until the men were almost at touching distance from the chopper and then fired at the pool of jet fuel at its base. The men saw the trap a millisecond before the fuel ignited. They turned to run but the explosion swallowed them whole and burned their fleeing bodies to a crisp before they could take two steps.
With fire consuming the chopper’s twisted, gnarled wreckage in a fierce blaze, the other men backed up on their quads and turned away from the carnage. Spotting Hawke in the tree line, one of them alerted the rest of his team to his location and immediately headed for him.
Hawke darted back into the shadows of the jungle, allowing the men a long enough view of him to draw them in. As they approached, Lexi and Reaper opened fire on them and took another two of them out blasting them clean off their quads. The riderless machines spun out of control, one of them piling into the burning wreckage and the other smashing head-on into a tree trunk and spinning over on its side.
“There’s another one!” Ryan yelled.
One of the quads turned sharply to the right and sprayed an arc of dirt and leaves into their faces. The man riding it lifted an MP5 and fired a long burst of rounds at them. The bullets slammed into the earth and ripped chunks off nearby trunks filling the air with splinters and misty clouds of palm sap.
“Take cover!” Hawke yelled.
He leaped into a trench and slid to a stop in a pile of rotten coconuts. Scrambling to the top of the trench, he returned fire, aiming squarely at the quad’s fuel tank. He squeezed the trigger and emptied the magazine all over the man who had just tried to kill them.
The rounds snaked up the path behind the quad, blew out the two rear tires and then hit the target. The tank exploded in a ferocious storm of ignited gasoline and black smoke, blasting the quad into the air like a toy and propelling the rider into a palm trunk. He struck it with his back and slid down dead onto the jungle floor.
With the last of the men dead, they climbed on the quads ready to take off toward the villa in the center of the island when Scarlet’s phone buzzed. She
took the call and they all watched as her face dropped.
“That was Rich.” She put her phone in her pocket. “He says the Five Eyes are meeting in a hotel in Miami Beach.”
“Mon Dieu!” Reaper said. “Now there’s a target worth hitting.”
“What’s Five Eyes?” Ryan asked.
Hawke fired up his quad and raised his voice. “It’s an alliance of the intelligence agencies of the main English-speaking countries – America, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It started after World War II when they created the ECHELON surveillance network.”
“Right.”
“They hold covert meetings every now and again to discuss stuff they don’t want hacked or compromised. These meetings are so classified that only the very top tier of the governments know about it – presidents, VPs, prime ministers, you name it.”
“Woah.”
“Exactly,” Scarlet said. “Usually it’s just intel agency officials but this time the heads of state are involved.”
“And the Oracle just happens to be in the vicinity!” Kim said.
Camacho swore loudly. “This is the mother of all assassinations!”
“Has Rich warned them?” Hawke asked.
“He’s contacted a friend in MI5 who has briefed the British contingency, but they’re not seeing it as a credible threat. They’ve swept the hotel and blocked all local airspace.”
“So how can Wolff touch them?”
“That’s what we have to find out and fast. They’re not going to cancel a meeting of this level and importance and airlift everyone out until we can give them evidence of a solid terror attack.”
“You told them there’s an airship in the middle of this island, right?” Hawke said.
Scarlet nodded. “His MI5 contact has said that the Americans are very clear about defending the meeting. The second that airship crosses into prohibited airspace they’ll blow it out of the sky. Their view is the president is safe and so are the other leaders and officials.”
“I can see their point,” Camacho said. “They get threats all the time and if they canned everything they were doing every time they got one they’d never get anything done. They’ve looked into it, done their checks and they’re satisfied the president’s not at risk. If all Wolff’s got is an airship, I don’t rate his chances up against a couple of F-16s.”
“But this is Wolff we’re talking about,” Scarlet said. “He doesn’t make mistakes like that. He’s up to something and if they’re not going to cancel the meeting and airlift the president to safety then it’s up to us to stop it!”
“Plus the bastard’s got our friends,” Reaper said. “This cannot go unpunished.”
“No,” Hawke said coldly. “It’s not going to. Everyone, with me.”
*
Devlin stalked through the complex in search of Lea. He was sure the Oracle would be keeping her close to him, so he headed for what he guessed was the center of operations – the main villa in the center of the island.
He heard voices up ahead in an office and thought he recognized the sound of Wolff arguing with Kruger. Creeping along a corridor with the mace in his hand, he was approaching the door to the office when the game changed.
The serrated blade of a combat knife pushed into the soft flesh of his throat.
He stopped dead in his tracks. Could he swing the mace around and hit this guy before he drew the blade across his throat? No chance. “All right, you got me.”
“You shouldn’t give in so easily, Danny.”
He breathed a sigh of relief.
Lexi’s voice.
“What the hell, Lex?”
Scarlet stepped out of the shadows too. “You need to take five to change your pants, Danny?”
“Fuck off, Sloane.”
Hawke said, “Good to see you, Danny – but where the hell’s Lea?”
“You Know Who’s got her. We were both in some kind of torture cell when he and his South African lapdog showed up and took her. They said they were going for a little flight, so I guess they’ve gone to the airfield. I haven’t seen Blankov since we arrived.”
A terrific explosion ripped through the pool house just outside the window, blasting the roof off and blowing out the windows. The shockwave expelled smoke and glass splinters away from the window at high-speed as a massive fireball bloomed up above the complex.
Then another explosion, and a third.
“What the hell’s going on?” Camacho said.
Hawke punched the wall. “Scorched earth policy,” he said. “He’s pulling out and making damn sure he leaves nothing behind. I’d say every building on this island is rigged to blow, so we need to get the hell out of here!”
They sprinted from the office suite just as the room exploded. The power of the detonation lifted them from their feet and flung them into the swimming pool. They crashed through the burning wood and plastic from the pool house that was bobbing about in the surface of the water and sank to the bottom.
Hawke twisted around in the water and looked up to the surface. He saw black smoke, fire and pieces of roofing timber slowly falling back to earth. They splattered all over the surface of the water while pieces of metal shredded past them to the pool floor.
When the worst of the fallout was over he swam to the surface. The others followed his lead and they assembled on the surface of the pool, swimming to the edge through the wreckage.
Ryan saw it first and pointed it out to everyone else. “Up there! The airship!”
Hawke glanced and saw it. Smooth and silver and with the word Anshar painted on the side.
“Babylonian creator deity,” Ryan said.
“Fuck it, he got away,” Scarlet said.
Devlin cursed. “And he still has Lea!”
Hawke pulled himself out of the pool. “I don’t bloody think so.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The sprint from the fountain in the center of the villa compound out to the swimming pool took seconds. The Athanatoi left behind as a rear-guard sniped at them from hidden positions but they ran like devils toward the jetty.
“Almost there!” Hawke yelled, ducking as a bullet traced over his head and buried itself in the side of one of the huts.
“I beat my personal best for fleeing psychos!” Kim said, glancing at her watch.
“I see the boats!” Ryan said.
They sprinted along the side of the main swimming pool until they reached the end of the island and found what they were looking for. A long, sun-bleached jetty stretched out into the ocean and moored at the far end were a number of airboats.
“Just what the doctor ordered, no?” Reaper said with a grin.
Hawke looked around. “We need some cover fire guys, or we’ll get shot to pieces before we get fifty yards from the shore!”
The rest of the team moved into a defensive position and started firing on the Athanatoi as Hawke heaved the mooring line off the post and jumped down inside the boat. Ryan was looking at him expectantly.
“What?”
“I’m coming with you.”
Hawke’s hesitation said it all.
“Kruger’s up there, Joe!”
Hawke climbed into the seat, flicked a small switch to his right and pushed the ignition button. The propellers burst to life behind the prop cage and the entire boat started to vibrate in the water. “Are you girls going to stand there all day or shall we get going?”
Devlin looked at Ryan and then back to Hawke, shrugging. “What the hell – I renewed my life insurance just last week!”
They leaped down into the boat as Hawke steered it away from the jetty and increased speed. Pushing the stick forward turned the boat to the right and pulling back on it turned them to the left. Speed was controlled by an accelerator pedal on the floor in front of his seat and now he opened the throttle fully and the airboat’s bow pitched up as they zoomed across the water.
Devlin and Ryan were standing either side of the prop cage, hanging on with one hand while
the rest of the team fired on the guards back on the jetty. “Evasive manoeuvre!” Devlin yelled.
“Hang on!” Hawke said and steered hard to starboard, almost sending both his friends into the alligator-infested water.
Thanks to the cover fire provided by their ECHO teammates, the Athanatoi’s bullets blasted off course to the left, plowing into the sea and kicking up little foamy splashes in the airboat’s wake. Devlin and Ryan returned fire from the boat, blasting one of the men off the jetty and sending the others scrambling for the cover of the Oracle’s yacht.
Up ahead over the water the Anshar was still low enough for him to grab hold of the tether line, but it was gaining altitude all the time and if they didn’t reach it soon they would lose their final chance to get on board. Then the tether line started to retract.
*
The Anshar gathered speed as it lifted away from Copperhead Key. The Oracle stood front and center in the bridge, directly beside the captain. Blankov was on his other side and Kruger was behind him, gripping Lea in his arms. An ashen-faced Athanatoi hurried through the cockpit door and approached the men on the bridge. “We’re being followed!”
“What do you mean, being followed?” said the Oracle.
“An airboat, sir.”
“Hawke!” The Oracle scowled at him and walked over to the portside window. “But I don’t see anything.”
“He’s almost directly behind us, Oracle, but he can be seen from the rear viewing deck.”
The Oracle looked at the pilot. “Is there any way he can get on board?”
The pilot shook his head. “No. The tether lines are fully retracted, sir.”
“Increase altitude at once!” he snapped. “This is Joe Hawke we’re talking about, after all.” He turned to Kruger and glared at him. “This is your fault, Kruger. Are you totally incompetent? I ordered you to kill that man!”
“Yes, sir.”
The Oracle pulled a Walther PPQ from his jacket pocket and lifted it until the muzzle was pointing at the South African’s right eye. He held it there for a second and watched the sweat break out on the arms dealer’s creased face. Just one bullet, through the eye… the man would be dead.