Brady Hawk Series, Books 4-6

by R. J. Patterson

  She kept typing on the computer until she hit the return button.

  “See,” she said. “It’s sending. Are you happy now? You can drop the weapon.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hawk said. “You were aiding and abetting Al Hasib. And nothing gives me pause when it comes to killing you.”

  Moxie stood and faced him directly. “Come on, Hawk, have a heart.”

  He watched her eyes dart to the side, alerting him to the guard who’d been ordered to remain sitting in the other room. Hawk sensed the man taking another swing. Instead of standing his ground, Hawk ducked, resulting in a wild and empty swing by the guard, who almost screwed himself into the ground after he failed to make contact.

  Hawk spun around and delivered a punch to the man’s throat and two shots at point-blank range to his chest.

  “It takes a big man to shoot an unarmed man two meters away,” she said as she watched the guard struggle to breathe.

  “It takes an even bigger woman to betray a man and her country—all for a few measly million dollars. The price is always high, isn’t it?” Hawk said. “Too bad we never truly consider the cost.”

  He put three rounds in her chest and watched her slump to the floor.

  “Nice work,” Alex said. “Now get the hell outta there.”

  “Roger that,” Hawk said as he swiped Moxie’s computer off the kitchen table and headed for the exit.

  “You knew her so well, yet you shot her,” Alex said. “How could you do that?”

  “She made it easy for me,” he shot back. “She was working with Al Hasib. I can only withstand so much treason from a person.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Zurich, Switzerland

  BLUNT HAD NEARLY FINISHED his nightcap when his phone buzzed with a call from Alex. For the past few hours, he’d been going over the details of his plan to expose The Chamber. He was still laboring over every little point as he settled into his leather chair and propped his feet up on the ottoman. He finally answered his phone.

  “I hope you have good news,” he said.

  “Really good news, sir,” Alex said.

  “Go on.”

  “Hawk eliminated Moxie.”

  “I hope not before he got all our money back.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Every last cent.”

  “Good,” Blunt said. “Is Hawk okay?”

  “He’s got a nice bruise on his face, but other than that he’s fit as a fiddle. Do you want us to hold onto this list?”

  Blunt threw back his glass, draining the remaining drops of liquid. “I’d prefer you destroy it, but not until you’ve run a thorough digital forensics examination of the drive. I want you to look at those files and see if there’s a way you can hack Black Wolf and corrupt his computer to make sure he doesn’t try this stunt again.”

  “I think I can do one better than that.”

  “Oh? Don’t hold back.”

  “How about I expose who he is?”

  “If he’s smart, he’ll likely have a dead man trigger, sending out embarrassing information on top political figures if he sees prison time.”

  “You think a little dead man trigger is going to stop me?”

  Blunt chuckled. “That’s why I hired you, Alex. You’re the feisty little bulldog I expected you’d be.”

  “I aim to please, sir,” she said.

  “That’s what I like to hear. And on that note, I want you and Hawk to meet me in Zurich tomorrow. We have an opportunity to expose The Chamber, but it’s a very tight window—and I don’t know when we’ll get this chance again.”

  “How tight of a window are we talking about? We were thinking about taking some time off. This grind is starting to wear us both down.”

  “We’ll have an opportunity in less than forty-eight hours. I understand you might need some time off, but chances like this don’t come along very often. I’ll forward you the details for our meeting location. Is that understood?”

  “We’ll be there, sir.”

  Blunt hung up the phone and got out of his chair. He poured himself another drink and started draining it before standing over his plans again. After slamming his glass down on the table, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He leaned forward, spreading his hands and resting his palms face down on the flat surface.

  “Okay, Katarina, I’m coming for you,” Blunt said aloud. “And you’re never even gonna know what hit you.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Vienna, Austria

  HAWK TOOK HIS SHIRT OFF and tended to several of the wounds he’d suffered from his seemingly endless fight card over the past day. Tangling with Thor was enough to wear on a man, even if Hawk managed to avoid letting his nemesis get the best of him.

  “Let me get that for you,” Alex said.

  Hawk sat still and stared at his battered body in the mirror. “If you insist,” he said. “Was Blunt happy that we got his money back?”

  “Yeah, he wants us to meet him in Zurich ASAP. He’s got a plan to take down The Chamber and said we have a forty-eight-hour window to do it in.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He casually asked me to put away the most prolific hacker of the past five years, exposing him so he ends up in prison—all while rendering his dead man trigger worthless.”

  “Just another day at the office for Blunt. It’s almost like he thinks we’re little genies in a bottle that he can rub and make us come to life.”

  “You’re not?” Alex asked, feigning shock with a slack jaw.

  Hawk’s eyebrows flashed upward. “I’m trying to keep that a secret,” he deadpanned.

  Alex ran some warm water and drenched a washcloth before dabbing Hawk’s purple-hued skin. “I’m afraid that cat’s out of the bag if Blunt knows.”

  “Who are you kidding? Blunt knows who you dreamed about when you were in high school and what you did in those dreams.”

  Alex wrinkled her nose. “Do you have to make everything so creepy when you talk about him all the time?”

  “Creepy or just excellent spy craft? If I had to choose, I’d pick the latter.”

  “You would. You’re just as creepy as he is.”

  Hawk smiled softly. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Take it however you wish, but that doesn’t change the fact that it rates extraordinarily high on the creep factor list.”

  “Seven or eight?” Hawk asked.

  “I’d give it a nine and a half.”

  “As creepy as Darr?”

  “That’s what we finally need to do tonight?”

  “What? Watch Darr? You know I still have nightmares about that movie.”

  “No, watch a Bollywood flick,” she said as she rinsed the washcloth. She wet it again and placed it back on Hawk.

  Hawk shrugged and ran his fingers along the collar of his shirt. “That’s a good idea. Relax for the evening before we dive back into Blunt’s twisted world?”

  “I like it,” she said.

  Hawk nodded and smiled before freezing. He placed his index finger to his lips, gesturing for Alex to be quiet.

  She looked on as Hawk flipped up his collar, which revealed a small bug.

  Hawk placed the bug on the nightstand and motioned for Alex to join him outside. She followed him into the hallway.

  “Who did that, and when did you think that happened?”

  “It’s Thor. I did the same thing to him when we were fighting.”

  “How in the world did you pull that off?” she asked in a hushed tone.

  “We were both trained by the same man in the art of espionage,” Hawk said.

  “But why did you think that might be helpful?”

  “Well, if he somehow escaped, I figured you’d be able to track him down and avenge my death.”

  “Really? You actually considered the possibility that you might fail?”

  Hawk nodded. “I always think I might fail. It’s what keeps me alive.” He looked pensively down the hall, appearing to stare vacantly.<
br />
  “Hawk,” she said, waving her hand in front of his face. “Earth to Hawk.”

  Hawk snapped out of his trance. “I’m still here. Just trying to figure out the best way to proceed.”

  “I’d start with being present.”

  “Cute,” he said. “Go grab your computer, and lets talk downstairs. I’ve got an idea.”

  Hawk waited in the hallway while Alex retrieved her computer. Less than a minute later, she returned and they headed downstairs.

  After she opened her computer up in a vacant conference room, they both sat down.

  “So, what’s this all about?” she asked.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Thor is trying to kill me. I think he’s working for The Chamber, but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that he’s going to continue to pursue me until he takes me out.”

  “Or you take him out first.”

  “That’s the goal anyway.”

  “And you have a tracker on him?” she asked.

  He nodded. Hawk proceeded to give Alex the address of a website used to monitor the tracker.

  She pounded out the address on her keyboard, and a few clicks later, she opened the page that showed where the tracker was located.

  “You’re not going to like this,” Alex said.

  “No,” Hawk said, shaking his head. “Blunt’s not going to like this.”

  Alex furrowed her brow. “What do you mean by that?”

  “We’re going to follow Thor,” he said. “I’m also afraid the Bollywood movie will have to wait. First thing in the morning, we’re going back to Washington.”

  ***

  HAWK AND ALEX hastily packed and headed to the airport. There was a midnight flight direct to Washington. It would have them back in the nation’s capital by noon the next day.

  Hawk had asked the lady at the front desk of their hotel for a large swath of cotton. Hawk pared down a toilet paper roll before placing the bug in the middle of the roll and securing it on both sides with the cotton. Hawk didn’t want to lose his edge of surprise, nor did he want to miss out on the opportunity of putting Thor in a relaxed posture. As long as Thor didn’t find the bug Hawk had placed on his archrival.

  On their way to the airport, Hawk drove on, lost in thought. He’d been used to being the one hunting down others. Being the hunted gave him an uneasy feeling.

  Alex broke the silence. “What’s gnawing at you? You’ve been rather quiet for the past half hour.”

  “Just thinking about Thor.”

  “What about him?”

  Hawk rubbed his chin and scowled. “We used to be on the same side. Some might even have considered what we had a friendship, though I would’ve classified it more as a strong acquaintance.”

  “You never shared any heartache? Never talked about women?”

  Hawk shook his head. “No, we did some of that. It’s just that our friendship never really had a chance to go anywhere. We were practically pitted against each other from the moment we set foot on Blunt’s little camp of horrors.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’m still not sure if Blunt was trying to test us or kill us. By the time we were through, I wasn’t sure which one it was.”

  “So, what happened between you and Thor?”

  “Well, there were actually three of us. Zeus was there, too.”

  Alex snickered. “How’d you escape without the nickname of a mythological god?”

  “I guess being legally named after a bird of prey was good enough for Blunt.”

  “What was Blunt’s code name? Jupiter?”

  “That would cover all our top gods in every major mythology story line, wouldn’t it?”

  She grinned. “I got into mythology after studying Latin in high school.”

  “It might help us with code names, but it certainly didn’t help us for the rigorous test that Blunt threw at us.”

  “He was the insufferable taskmaster?”

  “I had to jump off a fifty-foot cliff into fifteen feet of roiling water, which wasn’t even the most harrowing challenge.”

  “And which one was that?”

  “We had to scale a two hundred-foot structure without a harness.”

  “Free climbing?”

  Hawk nodded. “More like a death wish. He didn’t even tell us that he had an emergency net available in case we fell. We only found out about it when Zeus slipped.”

  “So, where did things go south with Thor?”

  “We had one exercise where we were unarmed and had to navigate through a forest teeming with soldiers at night. Thor and I had avoided detection, which is more than I could say for Zeus, who fell into a trap the soldiers had dug and couldn’t get out on his own. Anyway, Thor and I were creeping along in the dark about twenty meters apart when he motioned for me to join him. I asked him if he had a plan of attack, and he suggested we switch sides. He wanted to go farther out from my position. I refused, and five minutes later, he stepped on a beaver trap and was caught. The trap chewed his leg up pretty good, too. And he blamed me for it. Blunt later told us that’s what he used to distinguish between us since we were both in such close competition.”

  “And he never got over it?”

  “Apparently not,” Hawk said. “His mission to assassinate me is personal for him. He’s got something to prove to me and Blunt. And if he succeeds, I obviously won’t be around to feel shame, but I know he wants to rub Blunt’s nose in it.”

  “Good thing you’re not going to let that happen,” Alex said, rubbing Hawk’s hair playfully.

  Hawk forced a smile and drove on. His only hope was that Thor hadn’t figured out that he and Alex were becoming more than just partners. It made everything they did more dangerous, a fear of Blunt’s coming to fruition.

  But Hawk was determined he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

  And he was going to make sure Thor’s vendetta ended before he—or Alex—suffered a painful loss.

  CHAPTER 30

  Washington Dulles International Airport

  Washington, D.C.

  THOR WONDERED IF SOMETHING happened to his listening device when everything went suddenly silent. He’d been gleaning helpful information for several hours, tracking Hawk’s every move. Even after the sound stopped transmitting, the bug continued to relay Hawk’s location. And while Thor was worried, he dismissed his concerns when the GPS signal showed Hawk at the Vienna International Airport. That is until it appeared as if Hawk was traveling to Beijing.

  Damn it. He found the tracker.

  Thor had used his computer hacking skills to gain access to the airport’s closed circuit feed and security surveillance archives. He had managed to find Hawk and Alex, despite their best efforts to hide their faces, and caught them boarding a flight to Washington, D.C., due to arrive at 10:00 a.m. the next day. It’s why Thor was milling around the Dulles Airport terminals.

  Checking his watch, Thor slipped down to the customs entry and kept a lookout for the duo he was looking forward to taking down. When he finally saw them, they looked tired and listless. It would’ve been an opportune time to take them out if he hadn’t been standing in such a public place. But he wouldn’t need to wait long.

  Thor kept his head down, jotting notes on his phone as if he were texting someone. He looked up beneath his baseball cap every few seconds to make sure they were still in view and to keep tabs on their movements.

  Once Hawk and Alex exited the airport, they hailed a cab. Thor used a shotgun mic to pick up on their intended destination. Alex gave the driver her address, and the car drove off.

  Thor, who’d been standing by his vehicle, slipped inside and followed them. He’d loaded up his supplies earlier and was prepared for a long night. The only obstacle that remained would be for him to get to his perch unnoticed. That meant waiting and watching for a few hours from the parking deck across the street from Alex’s apartment. Thor eased onto the gas and remained a safe distance behind.

  His phone
buzzed, and he answered it.

  “Thor speaking,” he said gruffly.

  “You sound like you need some sleep,” said the man on the other end.

  “Did you call me up to needle me about my voice or to encourage me, Bozeman?” Thor asked.

  Harry Bozeman was a former CIA field agent who’d started working for The Chamber several years ago. He was supposedly dead, something everyone in the CIA accepted as fact, even though his body had never been found. In full view of his partner, Bozeman staged his death with a sniper shot, plummeting from the top of a building in Paris while meeting an asset they’d supposedly turned. The asset shielded Bozeman before the two-man army crawled their way to the stairwell entrance and raced downward before exiting the building.

  Thor had been familiar with Bozeman’s story, but it was more spectacular to hear him share he escaped using a parachute in a daring freebase sky diving episode. After hearing many of Bozeman’s tales, Thor wondered why Bozeman had ever left active field duty. His exploits were legendary in the CIA, though tarnished in the eyes of some due to his reckless handling of the asset and the fact that getting made led to Bozeman’s death. But since Thor had learned the narrative about Bozeman’s exit from the CIA, the stunt only made Bozeman more worthy of admiration.

  To top off everything Thor appreciated about Bozeman was his obsession-like quest to take down Hawk.

  Bozeman chuckled at Thor’s grumpy response. “You’re only proving my point,” Bozeman said. “Just relax, okay? We’re on the same team.”

  “I know, I know. Sorry,” Thor said. “Just a little jumpy. That’s all.”

  “I always got jumpy when I was about to accomplish a long-standing goal—and to be honest, I share in your jumpiness.”

  “It will be nice to finally see Brady Hawk put in his place—the grave.”

  “In a grave, bottom of the ocean, in a hundred pieces on a canyon floor somewhere. It makes no difference to me. I just want him out of the picture so we can move forward with our plan without having to worry about him meddling in The Chamber’s affairs.”