Full Blast (A Brady Hawk novel Book 4)
Page 14
“Good work, Hawk,” Blunt said. “I saw what you did yesterday.”
“It was in the news already?”
“Don’t worry. Nobody has identified you publicly yet, so your cover is probably safe for now. But it’ll be impossible to remain incognito forever. This is the age of social media, and any idiot with a phone can essentially turn into a television reporter from yesteryear.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Well, don’t let it stop you from doing a damn fine job like you did with this latest threat.”
“If you hadn’t heard about it …”
“We can’t dwell on the what-ifs in life, good or bad. What happened, happened. Now we must move forward, casting a suspicious eye everywhere. But that’s the nature of what we do, Hawk. We can’t trust anyone. And I mean anyone.”
Hawk rolled over on the couch. “So, I doubt you called this morning just to tell me that.”
“No, unfortunately, I didn’t. I need you and Alex to get to Morocco as soon as possible.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Yes, but it’s not something I can talk about on the phone. I’ve got another assignment for you. And this time, the stakes are just as high as they’ve ever been.”
“Morocco, huh?”
“Tangiers to be exact. I’ve already booked you a pair of tickets since my pilot is on another assignment. You can pick up your boarding passes at the gate.”
“What time does this flight leave?”
“Three hours from now, so you need to hurry.”
Hawk hung up and sighed. He sat upright and rubbed his face with his hands.
Am I dreaming? Couldn’t Blunt have given us a couple of days off?
As a former Navy Seal, Hawk knew that terrorists didn’t take time off in their scheming and plotting. And terrorists all recognized that the best way to unleash an attack was right after the U.S. was reeling from another one. Citizens might be more diligent, but the government was going to be stuck in a seemingly eternal cycle of answering questions and looking for answers as to how to prevent it from ever happening again. Hawk took a deep breath and stood up. His hard work was just beginning—and if Blunt needed him in Tangiers, then that’s where they’d go.
Hawk knocked on the door to his room, waking up Alex.
“Got to get moving,” he said. “Blunt booked us tickets for a flight to Tangiers in less than three hours from now.”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “I’m getting up and getting ready.”
Hawk smiled, happy that his getting ready consisted of throwing a few clothes into a bag and putting a hat on.
As he was walking out the door, his phone rang again. This time, it was Thomas Colton.
“Brady, it’s your fa—it’s Thomas Colton. I wanted to congratulate you on a job well done yesterday.”
“Thanks. Just doing my job,” Hawk said.
“Well, you went above and beyond. I’m glad you’re okay and nobody was hurt.”
“Actually, somebody was hurt yesterday.”
“Who? That terrorist scum?”
“He wasn’t exactly a willing participant,” Hawk said. “He wanted to walk out, but Al Hasib makes sure their operatives don’t get cold feet. You would’ve thought his recruits understood that by now.”
“They’re weaponizing people?”
“It’s more or less what they’ve been doing for years—except now if you protest, they detonate for you.”
“Sick bastards,” Colton said.
“That’s why I do what I do,” Hawk quipped.
“And that’s why I do what I do, too.”
Hawk bit his tongue. He appreciated using Colton Industries’ state-of-the-art technology, but he hated when it fell in the hands of evil people. After seeing all the destruction wreaked all over the globe, Hawk wasn’t convinced that one side ever truly held the moral high ground in a conflict.
“We do what we can, right?” said Hawk, who couldn’t have kept a straight face if he said that in Colton’s presence. But over the phone, he got away with it sounding genuine.
“Good luck, Son—I mean, Brady,” Colton said. “This is hard for me.”
“I know, Mr. Colton. I know.”
***
AT DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Hawk sauntered up to the counter with Alex to claim their tickets. The lady who assisted him was surprisingly helpful and pressed his tickets into his hand once he showed her their fake passports. He turned to look at Alex.
“Have a nice flight, Mr. Young,” the customer service representative said.
He smiled at her and then turned to Alex.
“You ready?” he asked.
Alex nodded.
“Morocco, here we come.”
Hawk stopped by one of the bars and ducked inside when he saw a cable news program showing a video of President Michaels.
“Check this out,” Hawk said to Alex.
They both stood and watched Michaels deliver his speech. The title above the scrolling updates recapping the highlights of his address to the American people was a title that made Hawk sick: President Michaels Discusses Terrorism Threats.
“Yesterday, one our secret operatives thwarted an attack on Nationals Park,” Michaels said. “As leading dignitaries from G-8 nations converged upon Washington, terrorists attempted to inflict more pain and suffering on the American people for no reason. Next week, I will be giving Congress a bill that I believe will help tighten our borders and keep our country even safer from attacks like these from even being conceived on our soil.”
Alex turned to Hawk. “Seen enough yet?”
Hawk shook his head and sighed. “Welcome to the United Nanny State of America.”
“Michaels needs to be stopped,” she whispered.
“In due time, Alex. In due time.”
As they hustled along toward the terminal, Hawk’s phone buzzed with a text message. He looked at the screen and read the message.
He told Alex to go ahead without him.
“Are you crazy, Hawk?” she asked.
Hawk cleared his throat hard, hoping that she got the hint that she wasn’t to refer to him by his real name in such a public setting.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Young?” she corrected herself.
“To answer your question, yes, I am crazy,” he said. “But I will make it there before the cabin door shuts, okay?”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
“When nature calls …”
She kept walking, refusing to acknowledge his last comment with nothing more than a flippant hand wave.
Hawk looked down at his screen again and reread the message:
“We need to talk. Go into the next family restroom on your right. – ET”
Hawk knew it was her—Emily Thornton. That was the signature way she signed all her text messages. If she wanted him to call her, she would simply text him with the message “ET”. Hawk laughed, understanding the code as “phone home”. No one else could know that about them. It had to be her, though if he was honest with himself, it wasn’t the wisest decision he’d ever made. Someone else could ambush him in there and leave him for dead.
But he was too curious. Alex was convinced she saw Emily at the Searchlight headquarters a few days earlier. There were too many unlikely events happening so close together for Hawk to simply chalk it up as coincidence. It had to be Emily.
Hawk checked his surroundings before twisting the door handle and tugging on it to gain entry. He hurried inside and prepared for an assault—but there was no need.
Emily Thornton was standing against the back wall.
A flood of emotions washed over Hawk. He’d been processing the fact that she might actually be alive for a while since Alex first shared her hunch with him. But when he actually saw Emily, he didn’t know whether to kiss her or punch her lights out.
“Emily, I-I.” He paused. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Shut up and let me do the talking,” she said. “I don�
��t have much time, so I need to make this quick. But there’s something you need to know.”
CHAPTER 40
HAWK HUSTLED ONTO THE PLANE, dragging his luggage behind. He stuffed his bag into the overhead bin, cramming his jacket next to it. A lady across the aisle watched closely as he played Tetris with the luggage to make everything fit so the door would close.
“Don’t you wish the airlines and luggage makers would get together on the size of bins and carry-on bags?” he said to her.
She forced a smile and returned to reading her book.
Hawk settled into his seat and latched the belt across his lap.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it,” Alex said, flipping the pages of the inflight magazine without looking up.
“There are some things you can’t rush,” he said.
“Who texted you?”
“An old friend.”
“Do I know this old friend?”
Hawk shook his head. “I don’t think so. Just an old colleague of mine. It was no big deal.”
Alex shoved the magazine back into the seat pocket in front of her and looked at Hawk.
“So, how do you propose we pass the time on this flight since we can’t really talk about work in public?”
Hawk smiled. “If only we had a Bollywood movie to watch.” He reached down and pulled out his briefcase, which contained a laptop and several DVDs.
A grin broke across Alex’s face. “If only,” she said, grabbing the DVDs to inspect the small collection.
Hawk slipped his ear buds in as Alex took hold of the laptop and set up the movie. He leaned back and closed his eyes, more confused than he’d ever been. He didn’t know what to make of his conversation with Emily. It could change everything. But he tried not to think about it. He just wanted to go to sleep and revel in the victories he’d accomplished over the past week, though it didn’t necessarily feel that way.
Hawk and Alex kept the Jordanian Prime Minister from orphaning his daughter, while Hawk watched a man die for his son in a roundabout way. The man exploded right before he made impact with the water. A second or two later, and the bomb never would’ve detonated. But there was a stadium full of people who didn’t die at the hands of Al Hasib, a fact that should’ve put Hawk in a celebratory mood.
But he didn’t feel like doing anything. He wasn’t sure what was going on—or what was right side up in his topsy-turvy world. He’d even started to lose faith in the very government he believed in, or at least he lost faith in the people running the government.
Hawk had to do the only thing he knew how. He had to keep fighting.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to so many people who have helped with the creation of this project and the entire Brady Hawk series. Morocco is one of my favorite places I've ever visited and loved setting some scenes in the book there.
Krystal Wade has been a fantastic help in handling the editing of this book, and Dwight Kuhlman has produced another great audio version for your listening pleasure.
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.
NEWSLETTER SIGNUP
If you would like to stay up to date on Jack Patterson's latest writing projects with his periodic newsletter, sign up here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JACK PATTERSON is an award-winning writer living in southeastern Idaho. He first began his illustrious writing career as a sports journalist, recording his exploits on the soccer fields in England as a young boy. Then when his father told him that people would pay him to watch sports if he would write about what he saw, he went all in. He landed his first writing job at age 15 as a sports writer for a daily newspaper in Orangeburg, S.C. He later attended earned a degree in newspaper journalism from the University of Georgia, where he took a job covering high school sports for the award-winning Athens Banner-Herald and Daily News.
He later became the sports editor of The Valdosta Daily Times before working in the magazine world as an editor and freelance journalist. He has won numerous writing awards, including a national award for his investigative reporting on a sordid tale surrounding an NCAA investigation over the University of Georgia football program.
Jack enjoys the great outdoors of the Northwest while living there with his wife and three children. He still follows sports closely.
He also loves connecting with readers and would love to hear from you. To stay updated about future projects, connect with him over Facebook or on the interwebs at www.IamJackPatterson.com and sign up here for his newsletter to get deals and updates.
Full Blast
© Copyright 2016 Jack Patterson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First eBook Edition 2016
Cover Design by Books Covered
Published in the United States of America
Green E-Books
PO Box 140654
Boise, ID 83714