Joe Hawke Series Boxsets 3

by Rob Jones

  The thought rose in his mind like a ghost drifting through a misty graveyard. Had they failed at the Seastead? Yes, maybe they had, he thought. They had allowed the Oracle to flee into the storm and take the Mictlan idol with him, and if that wasn’t bad enough they had let Kruger slip away with Ryan as a hostage as well. He was safe now but it could have ended with his death, just like it did for Maria.

  He wished he could shake the thought out of his head forever, but that would mean forgetting about her altogether.

  Scarlet leaned forward in her seat and switched off the radio so their conversation was private. “You’re thinking about Maria?”

  He turned to face her, startled. “Yes… how did you know?”

  “You looked so angry all of a sudden. I know you, Joe.”

  Hawke didn’t know how to answer. Like with Sophie and Olivia, he held himself personally responsible for Maria’s death. Eden might be the head of the ECHO team, but Hawke was the man in charge in the field and he felt the pressure of it more with every mission.

  Now he had to move Maria into the growing list of men and women who had died under his command, and it was starting to get to him. He found himself increasingly uncertain if he wanted to lead the team, just at exactly the same time as Eden had been knocked out of the game and landed in hospital with a life-threatening injury. If there was a way for him to fight through all of this and find any peace, then he didn’t know how to do it.

  All he knew how to do was push thoughts like this aside and focus on the task at hand. There was no strategic success without tactical success. The ghost of a smile played on his cut lips as he recalled his training back in the marines. But it worked, and now his head was full of Ziad Saqqal, Dirk Kruger and the peculiar Rajavi. They didn’t have much to go on, but they never needed much, and this was one mission that everyone was going to survive.

  He felt Scarlet glaring at him and turned to see her smiling. She looked good when she smiled, but it happened so rarely that he barely recognized her.

  “What?”

  “You’re all right for a stupid bastard, did you know that?”

  “Thanks, I think…”

  “Welcome.”

  “How’s Jack?”

  “Camo? He can survive being ridden hard and put away wet, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Not exactly what I was getting at.”

  “If you’re referring to the boring stuff, then yes… I think we could have a future. He’s nowhere near as annoying as you.”

  “I’m so pleased for you,” he said. “Still thinking about quitting?”

  “If I had half a chance to think about it, I might,” she said, lighting a cigarette. She blew the smoke out. Hawke coughed and opened the window an inch.

  “You don’t mind?” she said, already on her third drag.

  “No, just thinking about the drag on the chopper.”

  “Problem is,” she said, totally ignoring the point, “I never seem to get that chance. We finish a mission, go back to the island, have a shower and then there’s another sodding crisis.”

  “I’m starting to understand that little feature of ECHO life. It’s like being trapped in a revolving door.”

  “Exactly, darling. Poor Jack doesn’t understand.” She turned to face Hawke again. “He asked me to quit ECHO, did you know that?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Says we’re too old to be fighting bad guys and that we should put our heads together and find somewhere nice to retire.”

  “And what did you say?”

  She flicked the half-smoked cigarette out the window. “I said he’s a cheeky shit and I’m not that old.”

  “About the retirement thing.”

  “Ah – well… I didn’t know what to say.”

  With the bright Peruvian sunshine beaming into the cockpit, she folded her arms, yawned and closed her eyes. “Wake me when we get there.”

  “You got it.”

  “That’s presuming Ryan knows where the sodding place is, of course.”

  Yes, Hawke thought… that’s presuming Ryan knows where the sodding place is.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Tiger kept his songbirds in little bamboo cages. The cages hung from a Chinese plum tree in the corner of his garden. Some preferred teak cages, but this was too showy for Tiger. Tiger liked to keep things simple. A bird does not sing because it has an answer, he thought, but because it has a song.

  He cocked his head almost robotically as he cooed at a Sichuan Bush Warbler and tapped his forefinger on the bamboo bars. He sighed and sat back on his bench, surveying his garden. It was a modest affair in Beijing’s Shunyi District. Here in the northeast quarters he was happy enough in his little villa and the pollution was much lower than further in the city. That was important to him, and especially important to his songbirds.

  Over his wall he heard some people arguing about prices in the flower market. This was all normal enough and rarely disrupted his contemplation as he sat in his beloved Chinese garden. It was here where he did his most precious thinking, among the bamboo, plums and pear trees. Last year he had planted a pomegranate tree but it had failed to shoot. Another crease to iron out, but now he had a job to do.

  Zhang Xiaoli was a problem, but perhaps Zhou Yang was thinking more of his reputation than any security risks. He had worked with Xiaoli several times and he found it hard to imagine her spilling Chinese state secrets to Westerners. Half of him thought it was more likely she had infiltrated them with a view to gathering intel and then returning to the fold. Yes, that sounded like something she might do. She had the devil in her somewhere, he knew that. Spying on new friends and flying back to the nest like a good little songbird would not be beneath the Dragonfly.

  But orders were orders, and Zhou had been very clear. She was to be hunted down and killed, and all of her new friends must share the same fate. He sighed and closed his eyes. Rat would be easy to recruit. He was called Rat for a reason and wouldn’t turn down the chance to kill. Pig would also not represent too many problems. Thanks to some pretty chunky mahjong gambling debts he would be grateful for the extra cash. Then there was Monkey. He wondered not only if he could find Monkey, but if it was a good idea in the first place. Monkey was highly unpredictable and difficult to manage. But he was also the very best at what he did.

  “Daddy!”

  He turned to see the little girl. She was growing so fast, now just a couple of months past her fifth birthday.

  “Darling, how are you?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “And how was school today?”

  “Boring.”

  Behind her in the kitchen he saw his wife. She was unpacking a grocery bag of vegetables but stopped to smile at him. She didn’t know what he did. She thought he worked in the payroll department at the Ministry. It was better that way.

  His daughter skipped back up the garden path and disappeared inside the house.

  He nodded his head at some long-vanished thought and returned his attention to the songbirds as he started to plan Agent Dragonfly’s assassination.

  Orders were orders.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Paititi

  Hiding deep in the jungles of Madre de Dios, seventy-five miles northeast of Machu Picchu, the vague outline of a ruined city slowly made itself visible to the team as their choppers began to descend. A casual observer might have seen nothing but a jumble of odd shapes and dismissed it as natural, like the Pyramids of Paratoari, but Hawke knew different. Among the tangled vines, orchids and rubber trees far below was the Lost City of the Incas.

  “Told you I remembered,” Ryan said.

  “Take a look at it,” Hawke said through the comms. “It’s built around an extinct volcano.”

  “So it is,” said Lexi. “At least we hope it’s extinct.” She stared down at the amazing sight of Paititi and almost couldn’t believe her own eyes as she looked at the ruins and roads of the Lost City. Only in a jungle nearly twice the siz
e of India could such a place go undiscovered for so long.

  “Do volcanoes still erupt around here?” Scarlet asked.

  They heard Ryan laugh over the comms. “This is Peru. Yes.”

  As Hawke piloted the helicopter slowly toward what he silently hoped would be their final destination, his mind was on more than the volcano. Somewhere down there, Dirk Kruger and his thugs were hard at work on their mission to loot the famous lost treasure, and the ECHO team was badly depleted and in the middle of nowhere with zero support should things go wrong. Factoring in Ziad Saqqal and his circus of biowarfare nutcases only amped things up to an even more insane degree.

  He had lost too many good friends in this struggle, and the thought of failing any more members of the team weighed heavily on his mind. He flared the Bell’s nose and slowed to a hover as he searched for somewhere to land among the rainforest-covered ruins.

  He lowered the collective, reducing power to the engine and brought the chopper slowly down into the jungle landscape, landing in a small clearing just a few hundred meters from the eastern slopes of the volcano. In this terrifyingly vast landscape he had given up trying to see any sign of Saqqal or Kruger but suddenly a bright flash in the trees to his north startled him. He looked again and saw the sun reflecting off the South African’s helicopter. Two rebels were standing around it and smoking, presumably under orders to stay and guard the chopper.

  “You owe me a hundred sols, Cairo,” he said smugly through the comms.

  She looked at him and furrowed her brow. “How so?”

  With one hand on the cyclic and the other on the collective, Hawke jutted his chin in the direction where he had seen the flash. “Over there, to the north – Kruger’s parked his air-crane up.”

  She peered through her mirrored aviator shades before lifting them up for a second look. “Oh, bugger it. I was certain the stupid twat was going to get lost.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something” Hawke said.

  “What?”

  Lea spoke up over the comms from the other chopper. “She won’t pay up. I’m telling ya now.”

  “I’m sure she will,” Reaper said.

  “Ah, get out of it,” the Irishwoman said with a laugh. “She’s tighter than a camel’s arse in a sandstorm. You’ll not get any silver out of her.”

  “I can’t say this doesn’t hurt,” Scarlet said. “I’ve always paid my debts.”

  Then Lexi’s cool voice drifted over the comms. “So where’s the money?”

  “Yeah, Cairo?” Hawke said. “Hand it over.”

  Scarlet rolled her eyes and surrendered, pulling a squashed, folded purple banknote out of her jeans pocket and pushing it inside Hawke’s shirt pocket with pursed lips and a withering glance. “Happy now?”

  “Funnily enough, I actually do feel a little better.”

  Before she had a chance to reply they were on the ground, and Hawke was powering down the chopper and unbuckling his seatbelt.

  They climbed out of the chopper and waited while Reaper landed the Mi-171 beside the Bell and then wandered over to meet the others. Lea took a long deep breath of the mountain air as she took in the sunshine. The ruins of the city were a few hundred yards in front of them now, and looming high above it was the volcano.

  “Right, let’s get going,” Hawke said. “It’s not far to reach the volcano.”

  Scarlet lowered her sunglasses over her eyes from her forehead and looked up. “Shit – did I just see some smoke coming out the top of that thing?”

  Hawke sighed. “No, now give it a rest.”

  “This is pretty amazing,” Lea said, marvelling at the ruins. “Don’t you think, Ry?”

  Ryan said nothing.

  Hawke knew what she was trying to do – pull him back into the team, back into the mission… but it was pretty obvious Ryan wasn’t interested. They had all had longer to adjust to Maria’s loss, but Ryan had only been hit with the news a few hours ago, and he was closest to her. The best play was to leave him alone.

  Lexi stared up at the ruins ahead of them. “I can’t believe we discovered the Lost City of the Incas.”

  “Don’t get cocky,” Hawke said. “Technically Dirk Kruger and his scumbags discovered it because they got here first.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “No matter who got here first.”

  They kept up the pace, hacking their way through the jungle with their machetes and making about as good time as anyone would in the circumstances. A tropical rainstorm skirted them to the west and for a few moments they were surrounded by a heavy, humid drizzle, but it quickly passed and they went on unhindered.

  They made their way over to the ruins, scanning the area for any sign of Kruger’s thugs, but with no sign of them they continued into the heart of the Lost City. As they got closer they saw there was nothing among the ruins except the broken down stones of the buildings – crumbling limestone and bromeliads crawling over granite blocks.

  “I don’t mean to be a spoilsport or anything,” Scarlet said. “But this place isn’t exactly brimming with gold and emeralds.”

  “No,” Lexi said, also disappointed. “It’s like someone got here before us.”

  “Maybe they did,” Reaper said with a shrug of disinterest. “Enough people have looked for the place over the centuries. All the stories we heard about from explorers are just the failures, peut-être? Maybe the ones who really found it kept the treasure as well as the secret. In which case, mes amis, les carottes sont cuites, non?”

  “Eh?” Hawke said.

  “It is a fait accompli. There is nothing we can do about it.”

  Lea sighed. “At least it means that old bastard Kruger never got his hands on any of it.”

  “But what a waste of time, not to mention money,” Scarlet said, and kicked a rock out of the way with the toe of her boot.

  “We don’t know anything about the place yet,” Hawke said, trying to keep things together. “We keep going.”

  Scarlet spun her head around and drew her gun in one liquid move that took less than a second. “Did you see something move over there in the vines?”

  “Like what?” Ryan said, anxious.

  “I don’t know. I thought I saw something move.”

  “It’s nothing,” Hawke said. “Keep going.”

  They passed another few hundred yards of crumbling homes and winding side streets and with each step the volcano that loomed above the houses grew larger and larger in their view.

  They stopped as the hill became a steep incline. “This is the base of the volcano,” Lea said.

  “A tunnel!” said Lexi.

  “No, it’s no tunnel,” Ryan said running his hand over the wall.

  “You mean someone carved this?” Lea said. “Holy crap.”

  “No, not that either. This is a lava tube. It’s a conduit created when molten lava continues flowing beneath lava that has already hardened. It’s called a pāhoehoe flow, from the Hawaiian for smooth lava.”

  “It certainly looks more promising that those knackered old ruins behind us,” Scarlet said, peering inside the tube.

  “It’s a tunnel that leads inside a frigging volcano,” Lea said. “This is not promising.”

  “Tube, not tunnel,” Ryan said.

  Hawke pulled out the Maglite and shone it into the lava tube. As he cast the beam down to the sandy floor he grinned and nodded his head. “I see Kruger and our Syrian friends have been this way – footprints.”

  They made their way into the volcano, noticing an increase in the terrific humidity as soon the breeze could no longer reach them. They followed Kruger’s scuff marks until they reached a steep incline in the lava tube.

  After scrambling up through the tube they reached a square antechamber constructed of smooth, granite blocks. It was empty with a sand-covered floor and there was one door directly opposite them.

  “Looks like the rooms in the Egyptian pyramids,” Ryan said. “Definitely man-made.”

  “Let’s
keep going,” Hawke said. “We can look at this on the way out.”

  They went through the far door and after walking along another short tunnel they emerged into sunlight again. Stretching out ahead of them around the hole leading to the magma chamber in the bottom of the volcano was something that made them all speechless.

  “The Lost City!”

  “Shit!”

  “Buggering hell,” Scarlet said. “It’s made of gold.”

  “It really is some kind of utopia,” Ryan said.

  “A utopia with Saqqal and Kruger in it,” Reaper said cautiously.

  Scarlet started off down the slope toward the golden, vine-covered buildings. “So let’s go and join the party.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As they walked into the city, they were mesmerized by the stunning metropolis stretching away from them in every direction. It was a wonderful, terrible ghost town and they walked in silence for a long time. The sunlight shone in through the vent in the top of the volcano and sparkled and glittered on the golden, jewel-encrusted walls. It held Lea like a hypnotist’s watch, and she couldn’t lift her eyes away no matter how hard she tried. She didn’t even want to.

  “In all my years of doing this,” she said quietly. “I have never, ever seen anything like this place.”

  “I want to marry it,” Scarlet said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Reaper said.

  “Why is that ridiculous?” she replied, transfixed by the immeasurable beauty and wealth before her. “I read about someone who married his car once, and I want to marry this city.”

  “But imagine the prenup,” Lexi said with a sideways glance.

  Slowly they made their way through the old streets as they twisted and meandered their way deeper into the abandoned city. Ancient ruins loomed either side of them, their crumbling architecture a sad testament to their incredible age.