The man jumped back to yell. Hawker reached to grab him, but before he did, Megan brought the knife edge of her right hand down on the back of the man’s neck.
It didn’t knock him out. But it shocked him just long enough for Hawker to spin him around in a hammerlock and clap his hand over the man’s mouth.
Hawker’s voice was a harsh whisper as he spoke into the man’s ear. “Make so much as a sound and I’ll rip your goddamn arm off and shove it down your throat. Got it?”
The man nodded quickly.
“Good. Just walk and keep quiet. We’re getting out of here, and you’re going with us.”
He motioned for Megan to lead the way.
Hawker kept the man’s arm pressed tight against the middle of his back. He seemed resigned to the fact that he had no chance of escape. It soon became obvious that that’s exactly what he’d wanted Hawker to think.
Halfway to the steps, just as they passed the freight elevator shaft, the man suddenly dropped to his knees, spinning down and under, freeing himself from the hammerlock.
Surprised, Hawker stumbled over him and almost fell. The man put all his weight behind an uppercut that hit Hawker flush in the scrotum. Hawker wheezed and buckled to the floor, feeling the pain move through him like red heat. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
Somehow, a knife materialized in the man’s hand. Hawker managed to roll away just as the man dove at him. The blade of the knife clanked hard against the steel floor.
Using her submachine gun like a club, Megan swung down at the man’s face. He smacked the weapon out of her hands and grabbed her by the blouse, trying to jerk her down onto the blade of the knife.
Her shirt ripped open as buttons scattered across the floor. It freed her of the man’s grip—and saved her life.
It also gave Hawker just enough time to fight his way to his feet.
He kicked the knife out of the man’s hand, then clubbed his jaw closed with a sizzling right. The man whoofed with pain as he slid backward across the floor.
Hawker was immediately on him. He dragged him to his feet. The man hit him twice in the temple with a weak right hand. Hawker ignored it. He buried a left into the man’s stomach, then knocked his throat crooked with a smashing right fist.
The man backpedaled toward the second-floor wall. But he never hit.
For a microsecond, Hawker couldn’t figure it out. The man seemed to disappear before his eyes.
But then he heard the gagging scream, and he knew.
The elevator shaft. He had fallen down the elevator shaft.
“Let’s get out of here,” Hawker whispered hoarsely.
There were shouts behind them as they ran down the stairs. Hawker led the way, gun poised coolly in his right hand.
“If we can just get outside, we’ve got it made,” Hawker yelled to Megan. “The only thing between us and the car is a door.”
Hawker learned all too quickly how wrong he was.
As they got to the base of the stairs and headed through the cavernous darkness of the factory, the front doors of the building opened with an electronic hum. A moment later, a van came wheeling through.
The headlights of the van swept the building’s interior, catching Hawker and Megan in midstride. The van immediately jolted to a halt, and men spilled out. From the corner of his eye, Hawker could see more men coming after them, down the steps.
“Take cover!” he yelled to Megan. “We’re going to have to make a fighting retreat.”
As they dove behind a gigantic steel press, Hawker noticed absently that the woman’s blouse was still open. In the stark white light of the van, her breasts appeared marblelike; full and firm beneath the sharp cones of her nipples.
Gunfire began to ricochet around them. Hawker dropped to his belly, and the Uzi rattled like a spinning chain, hot in his hands.
Two men coming from the second floor grabbed at their ruined faces and fell over the railing to the cement below. A man who had been standing behind the door of the van suddenly dropped to the ground, writhing in agony. Hawker realized that Megan had been firing, too.
Hawker yelled “Hey!” to get her attention, then made a leap-frog motion with his hand toward the back of the factory. “And we’ve got to make it quick—before they realize what we’re doing. You’ll go first.”
She nodded. “Just say when.”
Hawker rolled out, spraying the men with automatic weapon fire. When he had them pinned down, he yelled, “Now!”
Immediately, Megan sprinted toward the rear of the factory. When she had found cover, Hawker punched in his only fresh clip for the Uzi and ducked away from the curtain of fire which screamed through the mill.
Most of the fire was coming from behind the van. But the Bas Gan Sagart men were beginning to spread out, trying to circle them. Hawker knew he had to waste a bunch of them at once, if they were to have any hope of escape.
He could see Megan’s face from where he sat crouched behind the steel press. Her expression was grim but calm. She gave him a questioning look. When Hawker had readied himself, he nodded. Immediately, she began spraying the van with 9mm slugs. When the Bas Gan Sagart men ducked, Hawker stood to his full height and pulled the pin of an incendiary grenade. He gave it a full two-count before he hurled it overhand at the van.
There was a minisecond of silence between the rapid-fire volleys of Megan’s Uzi. The moment was punctuated by a scream of fear as the grenade rolled under the van, and the men on the other side saw it.
Then there was a deafening explosion, and a brief corona of smoke and light billowed above the fresh stink of burned flesh.
Two men came tumbling out from behind the van. Their clothes burned on them in a bright white blaze. Their screams were terrible to hear.
The incendiary grenade Hawker had thrown was filled with 750 grams of thermate, or TH3. For nearly a minute, the thermate would burn at a withering 2,150 degrees Celsius.
There were more screams behind the van. The screams quickly turned to moans as the thermate seared their flesh—and then their lives—away.
As Hawker sprinted to cover behind Megan’s position, he wondered absently if the burning men had been the ones he had heard laughing about Jimmy O’Neil’s own death by fire.
He hoped so.
As he raced past Megan, she lifted her submachine gun as if to shoot him. Hawker ducked forward as her weapon spouted fire. Immediately to his right, one of the Bas Gan Sagart soldiers who had been sneaking up to ambush him gagged and jolted backward as his heart pumped blood through the holes in his chest.
Hawker was about to nod his thanks to her, but the movement of two dim figures at the rear of the building drew his attention.
As a head appeared over a dark clump of machinery, Hawker immediately dropped to his stomach and opened fire. A chunk of the head was catapulted backward.
The dead man dropped to the ground without a sound.
Hawker waited and watched. He had seen two men, not one.
Megan was drawing more fire behind him now. He wondered how long she could hold out. If she could just give him time to secure the area at the rear of the factory, they’d have a fair chance of making it out. It would be a race, but, for once, the odds would be in their favor.
Hawker began to crawl toward the clump of machinery where the dead man lay. Amazingly, one of the headlights of the van still burned through the haze of smoke that enveloped the building. The intense heat of the grenade had radiated throughout. That, combined with the stink and the low moans of the dying, made it seem all too much like a man-made hell.
Grimly, Hawker vowed he would not die here, not with a woman as spectacular as Megan Parnell at his side.
There was a bullet waiting for him. Someplace. Sometime. That he well knew.
But not here. Not like this. And not before he had had his time with Megan.
He still couldn’t figure out where the second man had hidden. It was as if he had disappeared.
Hawker crawled around the m
achinery. The ruined head of the man he had just shot was a seeping, dark blob an arm’s length away from him.
Hawker gave a final look around, then decided to stand.
Just as he got to one knee, something hit him from above. The impact was so great that, for a timeless moment, he thought he had been shot.
But then he realized it was the second man. He had been hiding on top of the machine and had jumped Hawker as he passed beneath.
The collision knocked Hawker to the ground, and his Uzi went flying. He struggled to his feet, then froze as the man jammed the barrel of a thick automatic in his face. He heard the hammer click back.
The man was breathing heavily. “You’re a dead man, motherfucker,” he wheezed.
Hawker held a small metal ring out to him. “If I’m dead, you’re dead, asshole,” he said easily.
“What’s … what’s that?”
Hawker held out his second and last thermate grenade. The fuse cover was held on only by his index finger. “It’s the pin to this. If I go, you go, too.”
The man’s laughter was forced and nervous. “You ain’t got the balls, buddy.”
Hawker smiled and let the fuse cover fall to the ground. “That’s where you’re wrong—buddy.”
“Hey, you’re … you’re fucking nuts!” The man took two frenzied strides and dove for cover. Hawker whirled and threw the grenade at the back wall of the building. It banged off the cement foundation and exploded in a brilliant white light, blowing an opening in the wall.
In one smooth motion, Hawker drew the military Colt .45 and drilled two slugs into the man as he lifted his head to see if Hawker had been blown up by the grenade.
“Megan!” he yelled. “Now!”
She sprinted toward the gaping hole in the wall as Hawker’s .45 pounded off covering fire.
When the clip was empty, he ran after her, the two of them fleeing into the fresh night air and the cover of darkness, sprinting for their lives and away from the hell they had helped create.…
The few Bas Gan Sagart members who pursued them turned back when they discovered that both Hawker and the woman could shoot on the run.
The terrorists obviously didn’t like fighting when the odds weren’t heavily stacked in their favor.
Hawker didn’t indulge in back-street routes now. He took the shortest way possible back to the Mercedes. It seemed to take forever, but they finally made it to the car lot. Hawker unlocked the door for Megan and, with a quick glance over his shoulder, jumped behind the wheel and squealed out into the empty street.
It was 2:12 A.M.
Megan was breathing heavily. He noticed that her hands shook as she hid the Uzi on the floor behind them.
“Do you happen to have a cigarette on you?” she asked.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Neither do I. But I think I’d make an exception tonight.” She began to feel under the seat, hunting for something.
“What are you after?”
She smiled suddenly and held up a pint bottle. “This. Dear Jimmy always kept a wee touch hidden away—for hot days and emergencies, you see.”
“I’d call this an emergency,” Hawker agreed. Megan took a long draw from the bottle, then handed it to Hawker.
He let the whiskey slide hotly down his throat, then gave the bottle back to her. “You all right?” he asked.
“While we were fighting, I was too busy to be scared. I’m making up for it now.”
“The next time you tell me it’s too early to do something, I’m afraid I’ll have to listen.”
She shook her head emphatically. “No,” she said. “You were right. We had to take the chance. I should have done it before, but I was … afraid.”
“Can’t blame you,” said Hawker. “Did you recognize any of those guys?”
“I saw Thomas Galway and maybe Phelan, too. I think they were among those who came running down the stairs after us. But they took pretty good cover the moment we started firing. I didn’t see them again.”
“No chance of their being dead?”
“No. That would be nice to think, that we had ended it all with one fell swoop. But I’m afraid not. They stayed behind cover the whole time. Like the cowardly murderers they are, they left the fighting and the dying to their men.”
Hawker’s hands grew white on the steering wheel. “Next time,” he whispered. “Next time we’ll get them.”
“Right now, all I want to do is have a shower and get into some … different clothes.”
He watched her as she tried to hold her torn blouse together with one hand. Even so, Hawker could see the heavy rise of her breasts. He made no secret of the fact that he was looking.
Her face colored. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you all right? That fellow hit you pretty hard.”
Hawker cringed just thinking about the shot he had taken between the legs. “I may need a long soak in a warm bath—and my voice may be an octave or two higher—but I’ll live.”
She chuckled and seemed to relax for the first time. “I’m glad.” She smiled. “I’d hate to see half the pretty young ladies in Chicago forced into mourning.”
Hawker reached out and pulled her toward him. She fought him for a moment, then let her head rest against his shoulder. “I don’t care about the pretty young ladies in Chicago,” he said. “I care about you.”
She pulled away from him. “Don’t, James. Please.”
Hawker touched her face tenderly. “I’m going to tell you something, Megan. I’m going to say it because I have to say it. But once I’ve said it, I’ll never say it again unless you ask me to. I love you, Megan. From the very first moment I saw you, I’ve loved you. I know I’m talking like some passion-crazed schoolboy, but I can’t help it. There’s something about you, Megan … it’s like I’ve known you all my life. You feel it, too. You may not admit it, but it’s true. I can see it in your eyes.”
She sighed and was quiet for a time. “Yes, dear James,” she said finally. “It is true. And I feel it perhaps even more strongly than you do.”
“Then why in the hell can’t you just let go, Megan? To hell with Bas Gan Sagart; we ruined them tonight, even if we didn’t get Galway and Phelan. And to hell with my work and your IRA.” Hawker looked straight ahead, eyes frozen on the road as he spoke, almost as if talking to himself. “I’m sick of the smell of death, Megan. And I’m sick of hopeless causes. Sure, the world needs its fighters. Too many people are running scared. But we’ve done more than our share.”
He reached out and took her hand. “Mrs. Hudson told me I should be raising a family, and she’s right. But I’ve never really felt ready until I met you, Megan. We have the chance to make something good of our lives. It’s not too late, you know. We could leave all this behind and go someplace; someplace where we could make a fresh start. Florida, maybe. Or southern Ireland, if you like.” He squeezed her hand and released it. “Think it over, Megan. We’d make some awfully beautiful babies.”
She sniffed, and Hawker realized that she was crying. “It can never be, James,” she said softly. “But I will think about it—I promise. When both Phelan and Galway are dead.”
“Are they so damn important?” Hawker demanded fiercely.
“They are to me, James. When they learned the IRA wanted them out of Ireland, their last act of violence was against my own family.”
“You?”
“It was me they were after, but I wasn’t there—and God curse me for being away. They made do with my sixteen-year-old sister. They raped her, James. They attacked her like animals. Galway, Phelan, and MacDonagh. And I can’t rest until they pay for their terrible deed.”
thirteen
The two of them spent the next two days resting. Megan had a liking for long walks through the city. She said the color of the leaves reminded her of autumn in Ireland.
Sometimes Hawker would jog along beside her. But more often, she insisted on going alone. She always returned brighter and happier than before, her face glowi
ng as if enjoying some private joke.
They were cordial—even affectionate—but in the fashion of old friends. She was at her best when they submerged themselves in long rambling conversations over tea at night.
It was only then, it seemed, that they could put all the tension of their mission, and the awkwardness caused by Hawker’s proposal, behind them.
Hawker was both surprised and pleased by the number of similar interests they had. After the death of her son and husband, Megan had enrolled in Trinity College in Dublin, majoring in biology. Hawker had majored in law enforcement, but biology was his minor. And, like Megan, he had a student’s interest in natural history.
They were both fond of chess. They both disliked playing cards. They both loved old movies, but neither of them liked television. Their tastes were similar in dozens of other instances. And it didn’t stop there. More than once, they would both turn and begin to say exactly the same thing at the exact same time, then laugh uproariously.
The more he came to know about her, the more confident Hawker was that she was as close as he would ever come to finding his perfect mate. And he was even more determined to convince her of it.
But he promised himself not to broach the subject again. If she wanted to talk about it, she would have to bring it up.
And he knew that would never happen until Thomas Galway and Padraic Phelan were dead. He didn’t blame her. Hawker understood her grim determination to destroy Bas Gan Sagart.
It was more than just the mad fixation of someone possessed by a political cause.
It was a personal quest. The destruction of Phelan and Galway was a mission of personal honor.
Once when she was out, Hawker spent an hour making phone calls.
He called Felicia Beckerman to see how she was getting along. She sounded subdued but clearly happy to hear Hawker’s voice. Felicia had just gotten back from the funeral. Her emotions seemed to ride a roller coaster even as they talked.
Their evening together had been a delight, she said. The rabbi had been curt to her at the funeral. She was thinking about leaving Chicago, maybe take a world cruise—would Hawker like to come? There had been more questioning by the police concerning Saul’s death. How long had she known Hawker? Had she ever seen before the three men Hawker had killed? Was Saul involved in anything illegal? She was anxious to see Hawker again, she said. Her nerves were shot, and she could use another night of escape.
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