“It’s time to go,” Thomas said. “We’ve been tasked with getting you out of here.”
“Listen to him, Hawk,” Alex said.
“What exactly do you propose?” Hawk asked.
Thomas grabbed Hawk’s bicep and gave it a tug. “Come with me.”
Hawk started to walk with Thomas. “Look, you can still get out of here. I’m not sure the CIA even knows you’re here.”
“All the better for us. We hold the tactical advantage in so many ways right now.”
“Except firepower.”
“This isn’t worth you losing your careers over,” Hawk said, protesting Thomas’s insistence on helping. “You have no idea who’s involved in this operation because you probably never would’ve agreed to it.”
“I’m an Army Ranger. I don’t really get to disagree with any assignment. I’m just given a set of operational directives, and the number one goal on my list is to protect you.”
“Well, consider yourself relieved of duty. I’d rather you escape without the CIA even knowing you were here.”
Thomas shook his head. “It’s the CIA. You don’t think they’ll figure out we’re here eventually? We can’t hide forever because you know they’re going to tear this place apart.”
“I’ll go deal with them.”
Thomas smiled wryly. “It’s a little late for that, to be honest. I had some of my guys guard the front door, and I’m sure they’re engaging in a friendly conversation right about now.”
“I’ll handle them. You take the rest of your team, and get Alex out of here. I don’t want her to catch the brunt of this.”
Thomas sighed. “Fine. I’ll honor your request. Just do what you can to protect my men. Just let them know it’s a zulu bravo command. That’ll signal I’ve passed command to you.”
“Roger that,” Hawk said as he dashed back toward the front of the house.
He peeked out the window before entering the courtyard. Two Humvees were parked directly in front of the house, the manned gun turrets pointing at the two Army Rangers who’d refused to put down their weapons. Next to one of the Humvees, an agent trained his gun on one of the guards and urged them to comply.
This is gonna be a blood bath.
Hawk swung the door open and walked out with his hands raised in the air in a gesture of surrender.
“It’s zulu bravo, gentlemen,” Hawk said. “Lay your weapons down. I’m going to make sure you get out of here alive.”
“That’s our job,” one of the Rangers said.
“Not any more. Now, stand down.”
Reluctantly, the two Rangers set their weapons on the ground.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Mr. Brady Hawk,” said the lead agent as he approached. “Nice work here, but we’ll be taking you in—and we’ll also be taking credit. It’s not every day that we take down a weapon’s dealer, a terrorist leader, and a traitor.”
“So far, you’ve only one out of three.”
The agent stopped. “What are you talking about?”
“First, I’m not a traitor. And secondly, Karif Fazil is who knows where now since we had to suspend our search for him to deal with your interference in this operation.”
“I hate to break it to you, but this has been our operation all along. But nice touch getting the Rangers involved. Some general’s head is going to roll after the president finds out about this.”
Hawk noticed movement out of the corner of his eye but kept his gaze focused on the agent now standing just ten feet away.
“You talk too much,” Hawk said.
“And you need to drop your weapon,” came a voice from behind the agent. He spun around to see Thomas holding a gun. “Drop it now.”
Hawk glanced at the two Humvees, both flanked by a pair of Rangers on each side. The agents manning the turrets raised their hands in surrender.
The lead agent followed suit but then darted toward Hawk and jammed a gun to his head.
“I don’t think so, Sergeant,” the agent said. “Now, put your weapons down or I’m going to kill Mr. Hawk.”
CHAPTER 24
THE TENSION OUTSIDE Malik Bashir’s mansion was palpable. Hawk remained stiff, the end of the agent’s gun pressing harder with each passing moment. Scanning the area for any movement, Hawk didn’t see anything but Rangers and CIA agents refusing to blink.
“I said drop your weapons,” the agent growled, breaking the silence.
The front door to the house swung open.
Alex rushed out with a rifle trained on the agent. “If you don’t drop yours right now, those will be the last words you’ll ever speak. Are we clear here?”
The agent raised his hands and crouched low, setting his weapon on the ground.
“Secure the combatants,” Thomas ordered before nodding at Hawk. “I’m resuming command.”
Hawk snatched the agent’s gun and tucked it into the back of his pants. He turned toward Thomas.
“Thank you for your help.”
Thomas smiled. “Sorry I lied to you. I never relinquish my directives so easily, but I didn’t have time to convince you I had a plan. It worked better without you having any knowledge of it.”
“And Alex? Was she part of the plan?”
“It was partially her idea,” Thomas said. “I’ll make sure to note that in my post-op report.”
Hawk walked toward Alex, who’d just lowered her gun. “You need to be more careful.”
“I think that’s sound advice . . . for yourself. If you took it some time, maybe I wouldn’t have to end up saving you.”
Hawk forced a smile. “I told Blunt I’d take care of you if you entered the field.”
“Well, you’re doing a pretty lousy job. Fortunately, I can take care of myself. Now, let’s get moving. We’ve got work to do, especially if we don’t want President Michaels trying to spin this operation so he can take credit for it.”
Hawk and Alex worked with Thomas and the rest of the Rangers to tie up the CIA agents. They placed them inside Bashir’s panic room, anchoring them to the wall.
Hawk gave a little extra tug on the bindings of the lead agent. “Nothing personal. I hope you understand.”
“You’re gonna regret this,” he snarled.
Hawk yanked once more on the rope. “I do have a list of regrets, but this will never be on it. You can count on that.”
Thomas poked his head in the room. “You done here, Hawk?”
“Everyone is secured. What next?”
“Come with me.”
Thomas led Hawk to the storage facility. “This is where the magic happened. And we’ve got to empty this place in half an hour. My team is putting the missiles into the customized tankers. We’ve got one more truck to load, and then we’ll be done. There’s a C-130 scheduled to land in about an hour some twenty miles from here at a relatively unused airfield.”
Hawk nodded toward a stack of wooden crates in one corner of the room. “What about those?”
“We’re going to call the Saudis and give them a heads up about it, maybe even let them take credit for busting Bashir and confiscating some of his weapons. It’d be our olive branch to prevent a diplomatic dispute. I’m sure President Michaels will appreciate that.”
“He’d probably rather have the credit.”
Thomas grinned. “Of course he would. But where’d be the fun in letting him get away with that?”
Hawk chuckled and then walked over to the lone remaining tanker to assist with the loading process. Once they finished, Thomas asked Hawk and Alex to drive one of the tankers to the landing strip.
Hawk climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. After a few moments, the tanker coughed and sputtered to life.
“You ever driven one of these things?” Alex asked.
“Once, but not by choice. I was trying to escape these guys in Peru and—”
“Never mind. I’m not in the mood to hear a story right now.”
Hawk furrowed his brow and looked over a
t Alex. “Is everything all right?”
“You’re so perceptive, Hawk.”
“Look, I’m just trying to help. If you don’t want to talk, that’s fine. But you don’t have to bite my head off.”
She sighed and stared out the window as Hawk joined the convoy exiting Bashir’s complex. Biting her lip, she looked as though she might say something several times before deciding against it.
“Alex, I want you to feel like you can talk with me about anything, okay? Tell me what’s bothering you?”
Taking a deep breath, she paused before answering. “I don’t know. It’s just this,” she said oscillating her index finger between them. “Us.”
“What about us is it that’s bothering you?”
“I kind of need to know where things stand, though I’m afraid of what you’re going to say.”
Hawk focused on the twisting road in front of him as it wound down the mountain. Looking at her would suffice as a simple acknowledgment, though he was unsure how she might react in the moment.
“Are you afraid I’m going to reject you?” Hawk asked. “If so, I can promise you that will never happen.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid of what it will mean moving forward for our partnership with Firestorm.”
“How will it change?”
She forced a laugh. “How will it change? How will it change? I know you, Hawk. In fact, I know you well enough to understand exactly how it will change. You’ll put the mission at risk to protect me.”
“I already do that—and I’m not apologetic about it. That was the stipulation Blunt made to me when he relented and allowed you to work some in the field. However, he’d still prefer you following me on a satellite feed from the safety of an office in Washington or a place offsite.”
“And you don’t see anything wrong with that?”
Hawk shook his head, his gaze still trained on the taillights of the truck in front of them. “I do what I do because I love my country, but even more so because I don’t want someone to have to suffer the way I did.”
“But your suffering was contrived, just an elaborate ruse to get you back onboard with special ops.”
“It felt real—and that’s all that matters as it pertains to my motivation for protecting you . . . and everyone else when we pursue people like Malik Bashir or Karif Fazil. We’re making the world a better place, safer from their terror.”
“But are we really making a difference?”
“I know what you’re saying. It feels like a game of whack-a-mole sometimes, but if we just left it alone, we’d be overrun with pests—pests with violent intentions. However, just know that if we’re together or not in the future, my loyalty is going to be to the people on my team.”
“Live to fight another day, huh?”
Hawk nodded. “It’s why I was able to let Fazil go this time. I want to hunt that bastard down so bad and kill him myself, but there are some things that are more important, such as making sure no terrorist ever gets their hands on these missiles.”
“Probably a good call, though I don’t feel easy about putting them in President Michaels’s hands either.”
“Well, as soon as we’re done with this, we’re going to go deal with him.”
“You want to go back to Washington after this?”
“There’s nothing I want more. I want to clear my name and expose Bozeman and Michaels’s dirty little game. They almost got away with this, but I’m going to make sure everyone knows what they’re up to.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
Hawk shrugged. “Probably not.”
CHAPTER 25
Three days later
Washington, D.C.
HAWK AND ALEX TUNED the radio to a local news talk station as they drove from Reagan National Airport to a place Hawk rented for a month. They hadn’t traveled far down the Beltway before they came around a corner and were greeted by a sea of red brake lights.
“Welcome back to Washington,” Alex quipped. “This city sure knows how to remind you of the things you hate the most about it.”
Hawk drummed his fingers on the steering wheel before something arrested his attention on the radio. He turned the volume up.
We just received some breaking news that long-time weapons dealer Malik Bashir was killed in a raid by Saudi Arabia’s Special Forces. According to Omar Khan, a spokesperson for the Saudi Arabian Minster of the Interior, Bashir had been conducting business and hiding in a home carved into the Asir Mountains. Troops penetrated the compound and gathered thousands of kilograms of munitions as well as some small amounts of biological weapons.
The news is welcome, though politically intriguing, after President Michaels last week accused the Saudi Arabian government of failing to become a fully engaged partner with the west in the war on terror. Michaels tried to claim credit for the raid during his weekly radio address, which was widely panned by pundits on both sides of the aisle.
Meanwhile, in other news, the latest Rasmussen Poll shows Michaels’s approval rating dipped about two points this week, landing him at a shade under eighteen percent. In a phone survey conducted with more than 1,000 respondents, Michaels’s numbers continue to plummet, leaving many strategists wondering if he’ll even be able to salvage his Presidency in time to emerge from his own party’s primaries in the coming election cycle.
Alex turned the volume down and let out a long, slow breath. “Hawk, I don’t like this.”
“What exactly is it that you don’t like about Michaels’s self-imploding and not getting a shred of credit, despite his best efforts, for the work that we did in Saudi Arabia?”
“I know that’s all well and good, but it’s certainly going to fuel his desperation. There’s no telling what he might try to do to us.”
“That’s exactly what I’m hoping for. Desperate people rarely act rationally. All we need to do is push him to a point where he ultimately chooses to go too far with us. And when he does, we’ll let the whole world know about it.”
“That is, if we survive.”
“When we get back to the apartment, let’s call Blunt and ask him what he thinks about the move.”
“Sounds good, but I want the record to show that I warned against this before anyone else did.”
Hawk laughed softly. “Your warning will be duly noted in the record.”
A half-hour later, they pulled up to the apartment, which they’d be renting for the month. It was a small studio apartment over a detached garage in the back portion of an elderly widow’s property. Her younger son greeted them and put them through the paces of signing for the property and explained all the idiosyncrasies of renting from his mother.
“No loud parties,” the son said before adding quietly, “though I doubt she’d be able to hear you.”
Hawk and Alex both laughed politely.
“And no taxidermy either. Dead animals with bulging eyes freak her out some—and you don’t want my mother freaking out.”
“And why is that?” Alex asked.
“Let’s just say when she gets angry, she kind of loses control of her sensibilities.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Something about a gold fish, a blender, a cat, and a second story window—I’ll let you use your imagination about what happened with that interesting combination.”
Alex shook her head. “Sorry I asked.”
“Don’t be. Any story relating to Mother has some strange ending like that. It’s actually better to tell tidbits as opposed to going into great deal about everything that occurred. Now, let me show you a few more things.”
The woman’s son finished the tour, presented them with the paperwork, and handed over a pair of keys once they signed.
“Good luck,” he said as he walked away.
With wide eyes, Alex looked at Hawk. “Let’s hope this doesn’t take an entire month.”
“Agreed.”
They entered the apartment and called Blunt on a secure phone, placing it i
n speaker mode.
“I’ve been expecting your call,” Blunt said after he answered.
“You must have had more faith in the plan than we did,” Hawk said.
“Speak for yourself,” Alex said.
Blunt chuckled. “General Fortner filled me in on what happened. He got the nice feather in his cap of getting Malik Bashir’s stockpiled ballistic missiles.”
“You two make quite the team when it comes to planning an op,” Hawk said. “Though I must confess, it was far from perfect.”
“You’re alive, right?” Blunt shot back.
“Thanks to Alex, we all emerged unscathed,” Hawk said.
“There were a few CIA agents who might disagree with you, from what I hear.”
Hawk shrugged. “Perhaps I could’ve been a little gentler with them, but I’m not a big fan of having my own government poke guns in my face and threaten me.”
“You won’t hear me complaining,” Blunt said. “You got the job done.”
Alex shook her head. “Not all of it. Fazil managed to escape.”
“Nevertheless, the most important aspect of the mission was accomplished. Those missiles aren’t getting into Fazil’s hands . . . or anyone else’s for that matter.”
“We still have a job to finish here in Washington,” Hawk said.
“If you’re thinking about making a run at President Michaels, I’m with you,” Blunt said. “However, you must be careful. He’s dangerously close to coming unhinged right now. And if he captured you, he’d spin it as a win for his administration. You have to know that.”
Hawk nodded. “I’m aware of the risks, but I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life.”
“And frankly, neither do I,” Blunt said. “I’m ready to put an end to this charade. But we can’t just do what we really want to do to him.”
“Why not? We’d be doing this country a favor.”
Alex scowled. “Hawk, we can’t mete out justice that way. It’d be quite hypocritical for us to claim we fight for justice and freedom, while trampling on the rights of an American citizen.”
“You’re right, Alex,” Blunt said. “We can’t let our emotions detract us from the ultimate goal of our mission, which is to see Michaels removed from power.”
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