by Rob Jones
Smoke filled the interior of the Maxus as Scarlet crawled out through Reaper’s open window and joined him as he tried to resuscitate the former Ranger.
Hawke was next out, crawling out through the shattered windshield and working hard to clear his lungs of the toxic smoke. He got to his feet and turned in the night to see Lexi still trapped in the back seat, strapped in by her belt and hanging upside down in the burning vehicle.
With cold sweat running down the back of his neck and over his back, Hawke didn’t hesitate to run into the fire. The sight of Lexi inside a burning car slowly filling with noxious smoke shocked him but his training banished all emotion as he worked out the best way to get her out.
The door was jammed. The gas vapor burned like a storm from hell. He shielded his face from the intense heat of the fire as he lifted his boot and smashed the remaining glass in the rear window. He kicked it three more times until it broke out of the frame completely and then he was able to lean in and hack Lexi’s belt in two with his knife.
The flames roared in the night, engulfing the entire rear section of the car now, burning the seats and carpet and roofing felt. Black smoke poured from the interior of the destroyed Maxus as Hawke dragged Lexi from the back and hoisted her into a fireman’s lift.
Pounding away from the vehicle, he just reached the safety of the concrete traffic barrier when Tiger swerved the Kawasaki to a halt at the top of the embankment. Monkey jumped off and slid the bolt on his gun with a howl of insane laughter. Tiger killed the engine and pulled his own weapon.
Devlin regained consciousness and got to his feet. “What the hell?”
“You got knocked out,” Reaper said.
“You never said a word the entire time,” said Scarlet. “I preferred you that way.”
Behind them, the highway flashed with the blue lights of countless emergency vehicles. A PLA jeep skidded up behind the Zodiac’s motorbike and a dozen soldiers leaped out the back and started running down the embankment.
Over Hawke’s shoulder, Lexi started to come to, coughing and moaning incoherently. “Where am I?”
“What sort of food do you get in Chinese gulags, Lex?” he asked.
“What the fuck?”
“Humor me.”
“Pork broth, without the pork,” she said woozily. “Why?”
“No reason, just hang on tight!”
They started sprinting away from the devastation of the crash site with the soldiers at their heels. Tiger and Monkey stayed higher up the embankment and fired off a few pot shots. Their rounds pinged off the hot asphalt around Hawke’s boots as he ran with Lexi over his shoulders.
Scarlet and Devlin pounded the pavement beside him while Reaper spun around and let off a few rounds from his gun. Tiger and Monkey ducked down behind the traffic barrier at the top of the embankment and the soldiers scattered and sought cover wherever they could find it before returning fire.
The rounds from the more powerful rifles chewed into the concrete and snaked their way closer to the ECHO team. “Over there!” Hawke yelled.
They jogged down a second shallower embankment and found themselves back in civilization. Neon signs hung from shabby buildings and steam poured from vents in the sides of restaurants.
They burst through the door of the closest building. A small room with yellow-painted walls and a number of greasy tables around the outside. A man with a meat cleaver looked up with confused eyes from his work of parting a chicken. He lifted the heavy blade over his head and started shouting in Mandarin.
Still over Hawke’s shoulder, Lexi called back and an argument began. The man lifted what was left of the bloody chicken up with his other hand and started screaming some more. Lexi laughed and hurled back more abuse.
The Englishman considered the situation and wondered if he’d run into an episode of the Outer Limits.
Devlin scratched his head. “What the holy fuck is going on?”
“I take it he’s not going to serve us then?” Hawke said.
Lexi laughed. “You don’t want to know what he’s saying.”
Reaper turned from the front door. “Tell him the People’s Liberation Army want to see his menu.”
They ran past the screaming man through a door into the rear. In the kitchen now, steam and smoke filled the air again, but this time the flash of woks and the smell of ginger and chili replaced the smell of burning car seat stuffing.
“Which way?”
A chef snatched a knife-sharpening steel and held it up as a weapon.
“Hang on,” Hawke said. “Why am I still carrying you, Lex?”
She shrugged. “I thought you were just being an English gentleman.”
Hawke twisted his mouth and dropped her from his shoulders. “Your ride is over.”
“If I knew it was a ride I’d have dressed for the occasion.”
He looked at her. “Really? Here and now?”
The soldiers teemed in through the door and flooded into the kitchen. Still no sign of Tiger and Monkey, Hawke noted, but this was plenty enough trouble as it was. The fight kicked off when Reaper snatched up a wok and piled into three men beside one of the industrial-size stoves.
Smashing the cooking pan into one of their heads, he swung it back in the opposite direction and panned another of the soldiers a second later. Both men fell back onto the stove, plunging their hands into the gas flames and screaming in pain as Reaper headbutted the third man and finished him with a bone-crunching haymaker.
The man fell back and crashed into more soldiers like a bowling ball colliding into a dozen pins. One of them scrambled to stop himself going over and reached out to grab something to stop his fall. He hit the handle of another wok and flicked it up into the air, spraying himself and his colleagues with hot oyster sauce and Sichuan peppercorns.
Lexi and Scarlet were taking out their frustrations on some soldiers closer to the man with the sharpening steel who was now running from the kitchen with fear on his face. Devlin was pounding another soldier in the corner, holding him up with one hand while landing punches on his jaw with the other.
Hawke scanned the room for another way out when he saw a door behind some industrial refrigerators. It was at the other end of the enormous island that ran down the center of the kitchen. It seemed to lead to a downward staircase and he thought it looked good as a possible escape route, but then Tiger and Monkey burst through it with their guns and started firing on him.
He slammed himself up against the wall behind the refrigerator and called out to his teammates, alerting them to the arrival of the Zodiacs. Searching the enormous kitchen for their locations, he saw Reaper first, deep in the brawling mob. Catching sight of his skull and crossbones bandana, he called out to him.
“Zodiacs, Reap!”
The Frenchman spun around. “And just as I was getting bored, too!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Reaper didn’t hesitate and quickly launched himself into the assassins, lashing out with tightened fists and razor-sharp elbows as he worked his way through the soldiers to get to the Zodiac men.
They fired on him, hitting a soldier in the heart and killing him on the spot. The soldiers reacted fast and badly, drawing their weapons and raking the two assassins with a vicious fusillade.
Tiger and Monkey were the hardest trained men in the country. They took cover behind the island in the center of the kitchen and calmly reloaded. When they fought back against the soldiers it was a bloodbath and seconds later not a single one of the PLA men was still alive. Their cooling corpses slid down to the kitchen floor beneath walls covered in blood. Tiger and Monkey reloaded and turned their guns on the ECHO team and the traitorous asset. They would kill them all.
Reaper had a different strategy planned. He pounded across the kitchen and vaulted over the island. His tactical Foreign Legion-issue boots smashed down on the tiles with a heavy thumping noise as he turned on the assassins.
Tiger swivelled around to look up at the invader, unable to believe
he’d had the nerve to do what had just happened. Monkey excitedly slapped the floor with his free hand and laughed like a madman.
Reaper grabbed hold of Monkey’s throat and hurled him back into the wall beside the staircase. The Zodiac assassin smashed into the plaster at an awkward angle and tumbled down into the stairwell, smashing his head on the banister rail as he went.
For a second, the Frenchman thought the job was done, but then he saw something that shocked him to the core. Monkey sprang up over the banister like he had the power of flight and raced toward him, a knife drawn in the air.
Reaper never flinched. He ducked, swung around and landed the bottom of his clenched fist in the middle of Monkey’s face. The assassin swooned for a moment as his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. He was a fast and experienced martial arts warrior but the former legionnaire had caught him by surprise. He fell to the floor and rolled out of sight under the island.
Reaper scanned the room for the vanishing Monkey. “C’est quoi ce bordel!”
A few steps away, Hawke swung a powerful right-hand cross at Tiger, but his opponent was too fast for him. He ducked, easily dodging the blow and fought back with a lethal hook kick, smashing Hawke’s legs out from under him and sending him tumbling over backwards.
“Need a hand, buddy?” Devlin said, wiping blood from his mouth.
Hawke gave him a look. “Not right now, thank you.”
Tiger attacked again, launching himself at maximum velocity at the fallen Englishman, but Hawke rolled away to the left, leaving Tiger’s punch smashing into the floor tiles beneath him.
Monkey rolled out of the island at the other end of the room and leaped to his feet behind Lexi. Cockily, he tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned he winked.
Even with her damaged hand, her reaction was ruthless and she started pummelling him in the stomach. She moved so fast he had no chance and she cursed as she beat the wind from his lungs, never letting up long enough for him to get his breath back and return fire. The murder of her parents at the hands of these men had raised a hatred inside of her she never realized she could feel and now she fought with a ferociousness never before seen by the ECHO team.
Now, her work was nearly done. She grabbed hold of the semi-conscious, dazed Monkey by his hair and walked him backwards to one of the stoves. Pinning him up against the work surface, she started gripping his throat.
The assassin squirmed as she squeezed ever tighter on his throat. His face started to turn purple and when he pleaded for mercy, his voice was weak and hoarse. He begged her in Mandarin to release him.
“I will release you only to hell!” she spat back at him, tightening her grip even further. One glance at her mutilated, bloody hand was enough to keep her resolve to kill him clear in her mind.
He kicked and flailed until a fat blue tongue popped out of his mouth and his eyes looked like they were about to explode. “Die, you piece of shit!” She slammed his head down under the surface of a pan of filthy old cooking oil and held him there. He kicked and squirmed some more. “You killed my parents, you son of a bitch!”
His head burst out from the oil and he gasped for air.
“No! Tiger killed your parents!”
Lexi felt rage burn inside her and she pushed his head under again. “Die, you bastard!”
Scarlet reached out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. “He’s dead, Lexi. You killed him.”
She looked down and saw Monkey’s limp body slide down to the floor. She had killed him.
Tiger saw it too and fled from the chaos into the night.
Lexi watched him vanish. “He killed my parents, Joe!”
Hawke watched him go. “I’m on it!”
He pursued him hard, smashing his way through the door. The stairs he had seen turned out to be a fire escape leading down to a car park at the rear of the restaurant. He pounded down the metal steps three at a time. Beijing was towering all around him. The sound of sirens was still in the air, as were the police choppers and their searchlights. One of the biggest manhunts in modern Chinese history was unfolding all over the capital city, The hounds were everywhere and he was the fox.
But right now he was more interested in a tiger.
With Rat in British custody and Zhou, Pig and Monkey all dead, Tiger was the last surviving Zodiac and letting him go was unthinkable.
And then he saw him, fleeing at full speed into the night. He was sprinting under a line of streetlights toward another side street. Hawke knew that for the Zodiac assassin, losing him in the backstreets of Beijing would the easiest thing in the world. He had to catch him now, or he would be the mother of all loose cannons, hell bent on revenge against them and with the skillset to deal it out.
He sprinted after him across the car park, pounding on the asphalt as fast as he could power his legs forward. Tiger was younger than him, faster and probably more agile, but he thought he might just have the edge when it came to upper body strength.
And luck.
Tiger darted into an alley lined with garbage cans and the Englishman followed him into the darkness. The assassin was already at the far end and wheeling around the corner. Chest pounding and lungs on fire, Hawke forced his aching legs to work harder and faster as he turned the corner and scanned the street for his enemy.
A busy street lined with shops on both sides. Towering above them were several storeys of apartments, marked by washing on poles hanging out of the windows and blowing gently in the neon breeze.
Tiger was on the other side of the road, slowing to a jog now and heading for what looked like a laundry.
Hawke was wrong. The Zodiac assassin wasn’t aiming for the laundry but a Mazda parked up out the front of it. As Tiger approached it, someone inside flung open the rear door and he dived inside.
The former SBS man was running out of options. If the car took off into these side streets that was the end of the chase. But the Mazda wasn’t taking off anywhere. Instead it revved and turned in a tight circle in the middle of the street before heading right for him.
Hawke narrowly avoided the impact by flinging himself into a forward roll and he got back to his feet on the other side of the road. As the Mazda rushed past him a man in the back seat beside Tiger leaned out of the rear window and twisted a submachine gun around, spraying lead all over the asphalt. The rounds chewed into the surface of the road and spat chunks of tarmac up into the air all around him.
He dived onto the hood of a passing cab and landed with a smack on the windshield. His back slammed into the glass and smashed it, leaving the driver struggling to see the road. He opted for stomping on the brakes and sent Hawke flying off the hood of the car and crashing down on the hot, hard road. He turned the fall into another roll to absorb the energy and dragged himself back up just in time to avoid another hail of bullets from the Mazda.
He ran to the side of the road and took cover behind one of the market stalls. The owner started shouting in Mandarin at him and waving a slice of durian in his face. His tirade was brought to an abrupt stop by a savage fusillade of automatic bullets raking into the front of his stall and blasting his stock to pieces. He swore loudly and hit the deck beside Hawke, then spoke in rapid Mandarin.
“Just what I was thinking, mate.”
More police sirens and lights.
“They’re having a busy night.” Hawke cradled his head in his hands as another wave of gunfire ripped over their heads blasting lotus roots, taros and starfruits all over their heads.
The driver of the Mazda hit the gas hard, spinning the wheels and making them squeal like pigs. Two thick clouds of burned rubber smoke spewed out of the rear wheel arches and then the car took off, swerving down the street. It turned a corner and vanished into the night leaving crowds of terrified people peeping out from behind wherever they had sought cover.
Hawke thrust a hundred dollars into the stall holder’s hands and looked at him with an apology on his face and a shrug on his shoulders. “Gotta go, mate. Not all that
interested in explaining this to the law.”
He slipped away into the crowd and called Scarlet. Reaper had done the decent thing and stolen a Haval H9 SUV he’d found around the back of a noodle bar near the restaurant. He started the long walk back to the rest of his team and found them leaning against the side of the Haval, sharing a smoke. Lexi was safe but not out of China, so the mission was only half done. They still had to get back to the other team and finish the hunt for Kruger and the Sword of Fire.
“Talking of getting out of China,” he asked. “Rich sort it out yet?”
Scarlet nodded. “As planned. The ship leaves tonight – if we can get there.”
“We can get there.”
The rest of the night was quiet as Hawke drove the Haval out of the city and joined the highway stretching around the west coast of Bohai Bay. Leaving the industrial landscape of the capital behind, they cut through endless tracts of Chinese countryside before finally arriving in Qingdao at four in the morning.
The port city nestled on the western reaches of the Yellow Sea and they quickly located the Naja Maersk moored up behind one of the massive container cranes in the northern section of the port. At over four hundred meters in length and nearly two hundred thousand tonnes, it was one of the world’s more formidable container ships and tonight it was their passage to freedom.
Sailing under a Danish flag, it was due to leave port and sail through the South China Sea before crossing the Indian Ocean. From there it would head north through the Suez canal until eventually reaching Rotterdam. Under the protection of Captain Poul Kampmann the ECHO team would sail out of Chinese waters and then get picked up by a chopper from a US carrier group under the direct orders of President Jack Brooke himself.
Hawke pulled up and killed the Haval’s engine. Dumping it at the side of the road behind a cargo shed, they walked across to one of the gangways on the stern’s starboard side. Waiting there was a man smoking a cigarette and wearing a black beanie. He introduced himself as Ulrik and then showed them up the enormous gangway.
