Joe Hawke Series Boxsets 4

by Rob Jones

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Believe it and hurry the hell up!” Devlin said.

  She pulled a strange, heavy black object from the bag and set it down on the cobblestones. “What the hell is this?”

  Scarlet said, “It’s a jet-powered hoverboard, a bit like the Flyboard Air but with its own proprietary software and turbojets. Its top speed is one hundred miles per hour, it has a ceiling of ten thousand feet and can fly for fifteen minutes before running out of fuel.”

  “Am I dreaming this?”

  “No,” Devlin said. “And to be fair it’s more of a nightmare.”

  Hawke fitted a small pack onto his back. “There’s enough A1 kerosene in these packs to last around ten to fifteen minutes and after that you’re hitting the deck. How high you are when that happens is up to you, but I’d recommend no more than ten feet. These remotes control the throttles and after that just follow my lead.”

  “Are you insane?” Lexi asked. “We’ll never get away on these things!”

  “We’ll never get away any other way,” he said. “The perimeter was completely sealed the moment the alarms went off. Besides, where’s your spirit of adventure?”

  Lexi sighed and shook her head as she stepped onto the board and secured her boots inside the straps. “I saw someone doing this on YouTube once,” she said, turning cynical eyes onto Hawke. “He had a parachute.”

  “No room for parachutes.”

  Soldiers tumbled out of the courtyard door and saw them. They raised their guns and started firing.

  Hawke fired his board up first and the four miniature, jet-powered turboengines burst to life. Rising up into the air he turned and fired on the men with his Glock, forcing them to take cover.

  Scarlet and Reaper were already powering their jetboards into the air behind him, hands on their weapons and spinning around to fire on the men. Hawke thought Lexi was having some trouble with her board, but Devlin covered her while she fired it up and got it moving. Breaking a Chinese citizen out of a government facility like this would lead to some serious questions at the highest levels, especially if anything went wrong and they were already on the wrong side of most governments.

  Lexi was higher in the air now and Devlin was just a few seconds behind her, wobbling about as he fought to control the jetboard while simultaneously firing on the soldiers.

  They gained speed rapidly, the 250 horsepower jet turbines easily lifting them up to the elevation of the outer perimeter wall. Another alarm declared loud and clear that they were leaving the compound. Searchlights lit them up like Christmas trees as they flew over the top of the outer wall and headed down toward the street.

  Hawke was in the lead, racing down from the top of the wall and slowing up around twenty feet above the street. Below him, soldiers poured out of the main gate and sprinted after them with rifles.

  He flinched as a bullet traced past him and then another struck the casing on one of the jetboard’s four turboengines. The soldier who had fired on him was still giving chase, stopping every few yards to raise the rifle and take another pot shot.

  The five-strong team now converged around fifty feet in the air as they continued to flee. Below them, a motorbike raced out of the main gate and headed in their direction. Tiger was driving it and Monkey was riding pillion, armed with two PLA-issue P19 semi-automatic pistols.

  He teased some more speed out of the jetboard, suddenly shooting up into the air once again and leaving Tiger far below in his wake. Lexi was at his side now, deftly manoeuvring the jetboard as if she’d spent half her life flying one.

  “Zàijiàn, you bastards!”

  Spinning around in the air, she raised her weapon and opened fire on the soldiers sprinting across Tiananmen Square. Spraying them with rounds, she forced them to take cover behind their vehicles, but in the distance, she saw at least another half a dozen PLA trucks giving pursuit.

  We’ll be lucky to get of this with our lives, she thought, then saw Tiger and Monkey speeding up on their bike and continuing to pursue them.

  “This is not good!” she screamed. “They’re gaining on us!”

  “What’s the plan, Hawkster?” Scarlet asked.

  With only a few minutes of kerosene left before the jetboards fell out of the sky, Hawke knew there was only one plan. “We get back to our car and get to the rendezvous point as fast as we can!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hawke steered the jetboard down to Tiananmen Square until he was no more than two or three feet off the ground. “Get down low!” he yelled. “Harder for them to see us.”

  The rest of the team followed him and descended until they were almost the same height as the crowd of people now scattering from them in every direction. Most were scared, some were bemused and others simply filmed all they could on their phones.

  The jetboard engines roared. CCTV cameras swivelled. Somewhere in the distance they heard a helicopter. Tiger revved his bike and closed the gap as Monkey raised both guns cowboy-style and fired on the ECHO team with a vengeance.

  Hawke twisted around and returned fire while still flying away from them. Reaper and Scarlet made the same manoeuvre. Devlin and Lexi raced ahead toward their Maxus D90 SUV which was still where they had parked it earlier.

  Out of rounds, Hawke clicked the release and the empty mag fell away onto the square. He smacked a second one into the grip and emptied it all over the pursuing Zodiac men and their bike. Hitting either of the assassins would work for him, but if he missed and hit the fuel tank there was the possibility of it killing or injuring innocent bystanders.

  He raced backward through the night, hot wind whipping at his hair as he fired again on his pursuers. Empty jackets spat from the ejector port and clattered to the ground below. The gun kicked back in his grip with each shot, but holding the throttle remote meant firing one-handed and the bullets were going everywhere except where he wanted them.

  Tiger’s Kawasaki growled like a hungry beast, accelerating easily with the twist of the throttle as he weaved in and out of the terrified crowd. Monkey fired again, almost hitting Reaper. Somewhere behind them they heard the sound of the helicopter engine grow louder and then police sirens and lights on the streets to the east and west of the famous square.

  “Ever heard the phrase we’re in deep shit, Hawke?” Devlin said.

  “Keep going!” Hawke shouted back to him. “We have to get to the Maxus before the fuel runs out in these engines.”

  The chopper was even louder now but still no sign of it. Tiger was closing in and not far behind were at least half a dozen cop cars and PLA jeeps. Hawke suddenly found it easy to imagine being in a Chinese laogai, or gulag, for the rest of his life.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw the Maxus. He slowed the board gently and it rapidly lost altitude. The rest of the team also brought their boards to the ground and leaped off.

  Hawke joined them dived into the Maxus D90. Firing it up, he wasted no time in flooring the throttle pedal and steering away from the kerb. The enormous Chinese SUV growled in response and lurched forward like a hungry tiger as the Englishman slammed his door shut and buckled his belt.

  Soldiers crawled from everywhere like ants, but this time they were armed with automatic rifles. Hawke saw a handful on the right emerging from a set of concrete steps. Unable to get away from them before they fired, he frantically spun the wheel and plowed the two-thousand kilo monster right through them.

  One on the side managed to dive away and fire off a few rounds before he crashed back down the steps. One smashed into the grille and disappeared beneath the SUV and the third tried to leap away but was too slow. He bounced up over the hood and smashed into the windshield leaving a chaotic array of spider-web fractures all over it and obscuring Hawke’s view.

  The SBS man wanted to slam the brakes and send the man flying off the hood, but by now the other soldier on the concrete steps had gotten himself back together and set up an offensive firing position. Tucked away behind the rei
nforced concrete he was now firing on the D90.

  “Swerve!” Lexi yelled.

  Hawke spun the wheel and the man flew off the car. They all heard the rounds spraying across the tailgate as they made their way toward the rear window. Seconds later all the glass on the back of the SUV blasted out in a shower of lethal shards and sprayed into the back of the car.

  “Holy shit!” Lexi screamed.

  “Bastard’s a good shot,” Scarlet said calmly. “Shame to do this, really.” She smacked a fresh mag in the grip of her Glock, popped her seatbelt buckle and turned in the rear seat. Lifting the weapon into the aim she rested it on the top of the seat and squinted down the sights. “Steady as you like, Joe.”

  She fired on the shooter and hit him with the first round. It neatly punctured the center of his forehead just an inch below the line of his helmet. In his death throes, he released the assault rifle and fell back down the concrete steps without a scream. Scarlet turned back and winked at Lexi as she was buckling her belt back up. “If only you could fight like that we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  Lexi snarled. “Why, I ought to….”

  “Go to shooting lessons?”

  Lexi leaned forward, ready to fight, but Reaper gripped her by the wrist. “We’re family,” he growled, turning to Scarlet. “Reunited. Now, kiss and make up.”

  Hawke sent the Maxus screeching into a sharp bend and stamped on the throttle when they were back on the straight.

  Scarlet laughed. “Kiss and make up… you wish, darling.”

  “Yeah, you wish,” Lexi said.

  Now Reaper laughed. “See, you’re already on the same side!” He checked his gun and pushed down the window. “This is nice, n’est-ce pas?” Leaning outside with the wind flapping his bandana, he started laying down some fire on an army MengShi 4x4 on their tail.

  Hawke saw the MengShi gaining on them and wrenched the steering wheel hard to the left to take the next bend. “Your friends,” he said to Lexi. “They’re not very nice people. They’re so keen to get you back they’ve recruited a Fiery Thunderbolt.”

  “A what?” Scarlet said.

  “It’s a recon chopper,” Lexi said. “And they’re not my friends.”

  Running alongside the Maxus around five hundred feet in the air on their left was a Harbin Z-19 attack helicopter. Hawke craned his neck to peer up at the chopper. “Good stuff. We’ve got rockets, we’ve got gun pods and we’ve got Hongjian air-to-surface anti-tank missiles. Can I interest anyone in some clean underwear?”

  The chopper spun around like a black angel of death, flying sideways as the pilots aimed the pod-mounted 23mm machine gun at the fleeing SUV and opened fire on the ECHO team. The rounds chewed into the asphalt behind them and chased them at high-speed as they raced south along Qianmen Street.

  Ripping over the busy junction at Zhushikou West they tore past Temple of Heaven Park and continued south, but shaking the hunters off their tails was proving to be harder than they had thought.

  The Harbin chopper was now directly overhead and rotating on its axis so it was now side-on to the fleeing Maxus. The door opened and a man they recognized as Zhou leaned out with a megaphone. Behind him he saw Pig. “Pull over or we will kill you!”

  “Looks like we’re running out of options, Joe!” Reaper said.

  “What have you got us into?” Devlin said with a grin. “I could be in Flynn’s right now taking the top off a pint of black, you know?”

  Hawke smiled back. “Nothing I can’t get us out of – and I’ll share that pint with you when all this is over.”

  Scarlet sighed. “I wonder what it feels like to be hunted by half the Chinese Army?” She turned to Hawke, deadpan, her words dripping with sarcasm. “Oh wait, it feels like this.”

  “I’m doing my best, Cairo.”

  They approached a large concrete and steel bridge supporting the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway. In the distance to the west Hawke saw the unmistakable outline of a Fuxing Hao high-speed bullet train racing along the line. Its sleek steel hull glinted in the arc lights of the railroad line.

  “This is going to get ugly,” he said.

  Scarlet flicked a glance at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Behind us,” he said, nodding toward the rear-view mirror. “The Z-19 is opening fire on us!”

  The chopper swooped down until it was below the top of the buildings lining Singin Street and let rip with its nose-mounted GPMG. Rounds ripped along behind them like dancing devils, savaging the asphalt road service and ricocheting up into the air six ways from Sunday.

  “This is too close!” Lexi said. “It’s over!”

  The bridge approached them at lightning speed.

  “They’re firing another missile!” Hawke yelled. “Hold on to your arses!”

  Above them on the bridge, the train gathered speed on its journey to Shanghai.

  Hawke sucked in a breath and spun the wheel hard to the right sending the Maxus lurching over onto two wheels. They squealed loudly and black rubber smoke billowed up in their wake as the Hongjian air-to-surface missile ripped underneath them and smashed into one of the bridge’s concrete stanchions.

  “Holy shit!” Lexi yelled, covering her face with her forearm.

  Hawke spun the wheel hard to the left and brought the Maxus crashing back down onto all four wheels. The axles creaked and groaned as the heavy vehicle swerved all over the road. He fought hard to correct the skid and avoid the collapsing bridge up ahead. “Look out!”

  After a supercharged explosion, the section of the bridge directly above the destroyed support column now collapsed in a massive smouldering heap of crumbling concrete and an enormous cloud of smoke and dust. They all saw the bent, broken rails twisting down from the tracks, pointing like the gnarled fingers of a gravedigger at a freshly dug grave.

  “The train!” Lexi yelled.

  “It’s going too fast!” Devlin said.

  Reaper shook his head. “That thing goes over four hundred Ks per hour!”

  The train derailed and crashed down off the bridge and plowed down into the burning void created by the missile. For a few seconds the thick black smoke obscured it. When the wind cleared the smoke, they saw the train was wedged nose-first in the gap and the carriages behind it were buckling up on their couplings. Alarms blared and people screamed as Hawke spun the Maxus across two lanes and ripped under the one remaining clear section of the bridge.

  The chopper saw it too late.

  The pilot tried to pull up but they were going too fast. By the time the smoke cleared they were almost on top of the bridge. They struggled to pull up in time but in their zeal to destroy the fugitives they were going too fast.

  When the Z-19 collided with the wrecked bridge it exploded like a grenade. Burning jets of kerosene sprayed out like a fireworks display as the crumpled airframe crashed into the asphalt just a few meters from the smashed train.

  “What the fuck just happened?” Scarlet said.

  Reaper shrugged. “Hawke’s at the wheel, so nothing unusual.”

  “Zhou and Pig just got roasted,” Lexi said.

  Devlin shook his head, his heart pounding in his chest. “Holy Mary Mother of Christ, that was nuts!”

  Lexi closed her eyes. “Innocent people will have died on that train.”

  “We didn’t do that,” Hawke said flatly. “And where the hell’s the MengShi gone?”

  “You can’t see it anymore?” Scarlet asked.

  Devlin turned in his seat and scoured the street behind for any sign of their pursuers. “It’s not behind us anymore!”

  “Look out!” Reaper yelled.

  The MengShi had peeled off and taken another route to get ahead of them and now it was pulling out of a side street.

  Hawke stamped on the brakes but it was too late. The front of the Maxus smashed into the rear of the MengShi and spun it around one-eighty. Clipping the other vehicle sent them into a spin and by the time Hawke brought it under control he saw some police up ahea
d had thrown a stinger across the road to bring the fun to an end. As they plowed past the crumpled MengShi, their front tires ripped open on the stinger and instantly deflated.

  He struggled with the wheel to keep the vehicle level but their speed was too great. The Maxus swerved violently to the left, smashed through a barrier and piled down an embankment at the side of the highway.

  In the space of just a few seconds they tipped over and rolled down the rest of the slope at speed. The roof crumpled down and the airbags fired off. Reaper cradled his head in his arms while Scarlet tried to tuck her head down between her legs. Lexi screamed and covered her face and everyone held on for their lives until they came to a smoking, steaming stop, upside down at the bottom of the highway embankment.

  Hawke managed to unbuckle his belt as Reaper kicked out the shattered windshield with his riot boots. Twisting in the battered, twisted SUV, he saw Scarlet struggling to unbuckle Lexi’s belt. The Chinese assassin was out cold, just like Devlin.

  “It’s jammed!” Scarlet now frantically tried her door. “And the bloody petrol tank’s on fire, Joe!”

  And then it exploded and lit the night with white-hot flames.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Unlike in the movies, the explosion did not instantly destroy the entire vehicle, but was instead limited to the tank and now flames spilled out of it and covered the rear of the Maxus.

  Hawke quickly scanned the interior of the car to check his team. Reaper was good to go. He was still struggling with his belt as he finished smashing the shattered windshield out. Devlin was still out like a light and Scarlet was woozy and continuing her struggle with the door. Lexi was unconscious and bleeding from the mouth and nose. Her window had cracked with the force of the roll down the slope and exploded in her face. She was lucky to be alive.

  Reaper immediately produced a combat knife and slashed his belt in two. He crawled out through the windshield and ran around to the back. He opened Devlin’s door, crawled inside and slashed open his belt before dragging the Irishman out behind him, away from the smoke and flames.