Joe Hawke Series Boxsets 4

by Rob Jones

  The soldiers pushed her out of the room and along the corridor leading up to the steps they had taken to reach the vault. Outside, Lea raised her hand to her mouth and pretended to cough as she spoke into her palm mic. “You there, Cairo?”

  “Sure am, but where are you? You’re not at the rendezvous point.”

  She glanced around at the guards and lowered her voice. “We’ve been put under arrest by the US Army.”

  “What the actual fuck?”

  “No time to explain,” she said quietly. “They’re flying us out on a transport from the airport right now. How fast can you be here?”

  “We’re a few minutes out. Hold tight, darling.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “I see them,” Scarlet said. “Just as Lea said – they’re marching them across the airfield now.”

  “How many guns?” Lexi asked.

  “Three soldiers,” she replied coolly. “Two with subs and an officer with a pistol in a belt holster. They’re ordering them up into the back of the plane now.”

  Zeke whistled. “Not good.”

  “If they take off we’re never going to see them again,” Nikolai said.

  “They’re not taking off with them on board,” Scarlet said. “Lea, still receiving, darling?”

  Nothing.

  “Lea?”

  Some crackling, and then Lea’s Irish accent weakly crackling through the comms. “I’m here, but I won’t be for long. We’re taking off in seconds.”

  “I know, I’m watching you from outside the airfield. When you’re on the take off roll, it would be mighty handy if someone accidentally opened the rear cargo door.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Your ride will be waiting for you at the back of the plane.”

  “Yes,” Lea said. “You really are crazy.”

  “It’s your only hope. Do we have a date?”

  “We’ll be there, Cairo,” Lea whispered. “Just make sure you are!”

  “Hold on tight, darling.”

  Scarlet cut the comms and turned to Zeke. “You were a tank commander, right?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “So you’ll have no problem driving this Toyota along the runway under heavy fire and chasing that plane on its take off roll?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Smashing. Let’s get on with it – they’re powering up for take-off!”

  Nikolai shook his head. “No wonder we always lost to you.”

  They climbed into the Land Cruiser and Zeke stamped on the gas. With nothing to lose, they piled through the perimeter fence and bounced along the scrub surrounding the airport. Hitting the runway, the Texan spun the wheel to the right and pulled up straight behind the C130 in a squeal of burning rubber.

  “Faster, Zeke! I need more power!”

  The laconic Texan turned to meet Nikolai’s eyes. “I bet she talks like this to all the boys.”

  The Russian’s lips never moved a millimeter, but Lexi rolled her eyes. “Boys.”

  Zeke stamped on the throttle and increased power.

  “We’re in place, Lea,” Scarlet said. “I know you can’t respond, but if you’re going to open that cargo door then it’s now or never!”

  *

  Lea hadn’t even had the chance to tell Hawke or Reaper about Scarlet’s communication, and now it was time act. He was going to think she was insane, leaping out of her seat and trying to open the rear cargo door while the plane was rattling down the runway, but that was exactly what she did.

  Jumping from her seat, she reached the lever before Benning and his soldiers had a chance to react, and by the time they’d pulled their weapons and aimed at them the door was already halfway down.

  “Holy crap!” Benning said, shocked by the sight of a Toyota Landcruiser right out the back of the transport aircraft. Scarlet Sloane was standing on the hood with her legs apart and a Heckler & Koch MP7 in her hands. On her face, a devilish grin appeared as the wind whipped her black hair around like a wild banshee.

  “Sir?” one of the soldiers screamed. “Do we fire?”

  It was too late. Reaper heaved his shackled hands up and elbowed the soldier in the face while Hawke reached down and disarmed him. With his hands also shackled, he held the gun at Benning’s head. “Tell your men to lower their weapons, captain!”

  Benning reluctantly complied, still taken aback by the sight of the woman in black on the hood of the Land Cruiser.

  “The ring, captain!”

  Benning handed the ring over to Hawke, who now turned to Lea and Reaper. “Go!”

  “Not without you!”

  “I’ll go first and catch you when you jump over!” Reaper said.

  He dived out of the back of the transport plane, crashing down on the hood of the Land Cruiser. Scrambling to his feet, he stood beside Scarlet and called out to Lea. “Your turn!”

  The C130 reached V2 and its nose lifted into the air as it started to take off. Lea tumbled backwards and slid down the cargo ramp.

  Hawke reached out to grab her, missing by inches. “Lea!”

  She clutched onto one of the hydraulic actuators to stop herself smashing into the tarmac and getting chewed up in the Land Cruiser’s front wheel. “Shit!”

  Benning took the moment to edge closer to Hawke, but the Englishman raised his gun higher into his face. “Don’t even think about it!”

  Lea scrambled to her feet and leaped across to the Toyota, almost slipping off the side of the hood. Reaper grabbed her and hauled her back to her feet, and then the two of them climbed inside the cab through the front passenger window. At the wheel, Zeke swerved and fought to keep the vehicle steady.

  The C130 took off, rapidly climbing into the air. Twenty feet up and Hawke knew it was now or never. He leaped out of the back of the cargo door and crashed onto the Toyota’s wide roof, leaving a shallow dent as he smacked down into the aluminum.

  He flipped over onto his back to see a scowling Cairo, and behind her, the monstrous sight of the C130 roaring up into the air. “You get to have all the fun, Hawke.”

  “The sun shines on the righteous.”

  Scarlet and Hawke climbed into the SUV as Zeke spun the wheel and plowed the heavy vehicle into the sandy scrub at the side of the runway. The airport’s perimeter fence approached rapidly, but Zeke never flinched as he smashed through it and thundered away from the airport.

  “Anyone in pursuit?” Hawke said, hurriedly loading his gun.

  Zeke checked his mirror. “Nothing. Some flashing lights but they’re way over the other side of the airport. We’ll be outta here before they get anywhere near us.” He killed the lights and steered them off the road and out into the desert to the north. “They ain’t gonna get their hands on us, no way baby.”

  *

  Far to the north of Baghdad, the reunited team cut across the desert for an hour until they were certain Tucker and his men were out of their lives. When they were sure they were alone, Hawke ordered Zeke to pull up on the side of the road and kill the engine.

  The silence of the desert is a unique experience. Anyone who has ventured out into these desolate parts of the world understands the deep sense of peace that washes over these endless stretches of sand and dunes.

  Hawke had walked away from the vehicle for a few moments to contemplate the scale of what they were attempting in their bid to discover the Land of the Gods. He also considered the raft of new enemies the mission had thrown their way: Razak, Yakuza, McKenna, Kozlov, and now the entire United States military. They sure were in a big barrel of shit, and right at this moment he had no idea how to get out of it.

  When he returned to the Toyota, the rest of the team were gathered around desperately trying to configure the seven rings into an understandable map. It didn’t look like they were getting very far.

  “Any luck?”

  Lea frowned. “Nope. “How the hell are we going to work this out without Ryan?”

  “We send them to Washington,” Hawke said. “Only Alex ca
n do this.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting that Mokrani’s ring is in the hands of the Athanatoi?” Lea said. “I bet the bastard Oracle has already got it on his withered little finger.”

  “I’m not forgetting it,” Hawke said. “I’m banking on Alex being able to do something with the seven rings that might be enough to give us the location, or at least close enough for us to extrapolate the Citadel’s location without it.”

  Hawke laid the rings out on the Land Cruiser’s hot hood and Lea took photos of them from every angle.

  “There,” she said. “I’ll email these to Alex. Fingers crossed she’s still safe enough to do something with them.”

  “Then get onto Rich and update him.” Hawke turned and stared out over the desert. “Wherever Alex says we need to go, we’re going to need to get there as fast as we can so he needs to organize a transport chopper for us.”

  “On it.”

  “So now we wait,” he said. “And we rotate sleep shifts with lookout duty.”

  “Fingers crossed indeed,” Scarlet said, repeating Lea’s words. Hot dry air rushed over the dunes and ruffled her hair. She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out into the night. “After all, Life is an adventure, right? An adventure that has to be grabbed with both hands.”

  *

  Alex Reeve looked at the HD images of the rings with a frown on her face. Seven golden rings, each one predating all current evidence of human civilization by countless millennia, and each one a piece of a puzzle that would reveal the Citadel. Strange carvings on smooth faces. Were these lines important or just scratches made by the passing of so many centuries?

  “Looks like the team has been pretty damned busy,” Kim said.

  “I’ll say,” said Camacho. “But the question is, can you do anything with this information?”

  Alex nodded. “Sure, but I have to work fast.”

  “Very fast,” Camacho said.

  “Beats sitting around here doing nothing waiting for Faulkner to get us,” Kim said, agitated. She looked at her watch. “Where the hell is Brandon? He’s been gone nearly fifteen minutes. He said he was going to talk to Frank about what was happening. Maybe he should have gone in a bit heavier.”

  “You catch more flies with molasses,” Camacho said.

  “I think I have it,” Alex said, turning in her wheelchair. “It’s actually not that difficult to work out. It’s a variation of a very old way of X.” She fired up Google Earth and then referred back to her notes. “If I’m right, it looks like the Citadel is somewhere in the Zagros Mountains on the Iraq-Iran border. On the southwestern side of them… somewhere around here.” She pointed to the screen.

  Kim frowned. “Doesn’t look like anything’s there.”

  “What did you expect?” Alex said. “A giant neon sign?”

  “I guess not. Are you sure this is right?”

  “It’s not exactly right because I only have seven of the rings. The eighth would give us the exact location, but this is as close as we’re going to get. From there on, it’s all down to the guys in the field.”

  Camacho patted her on the back. “Great work, Alex.”

  “Just give me a second to write down these coordinates and I’ll email them over to Lea.”

  Brandon burst in through the door, a terrified Kamala Banks at his side. “It’s happened.”

  She looked at him with fear shading her face. “What do you mean?”

  “Faulkner’s stormed the Oval Office and removed your father from power. They arrested Suzie Matsumoto and took her to away someplace else, and there’s a team of soldiers on their way here right now to arrest me and you.”

  He crossed the room and stared down at the images on the phone. “Are they the rings?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Woah,” he said. “Any luck?”

  “Yeah,” she said hurriedly. “I’m just emailing Lea the coordinates.” She hit send and dropped her phone. “We have to get out of here, Brandon!”

  “We sure do,” Kim said.

  Brandon picked up the phone and slipped it in his jacket pocket.

  “What about the panic room?” Camacho said.

  Brandon shook his head. “I know it seems safe, but they’ll have a dozen ways of overriding the system and getting you out.”

  Alex wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure?”

  She looked longingly at the panic room and felt immediately safe when she saw its heavy eight hundred-pound steel door with its fifteen deadbolts. Specially designed ballistic walls and floors meant no one could fire bullets at them and a high-tech self-defense system consisting of knock-out gas and a direct line to the outside world. There was even a CCTV system and a small bank of monitors from which she could monitor the world, including anyone trying to get into the panic room.

  “Trust me,” he said. “We have to get out of this place completely, not lock ourselves up inside it.”

  “Okay,” Alex said nervously. “I’m in your hands.”

  Brandon jumped in behind her and started pushing. “We need to split up.”

  “Agreed,” Camacho said.

  “Is your spare wheelchair in here, Alex?”

  She nodded. “Sure, why?”

  Brandon checked over his shoulder as he wheeled Alex to the door. “Kim, you get into Alex’s spare chair and have Kamala and Camacho wheel you to the north exit. Make plenty of noise and get their attention. Meanwhile, I’ll take Alex to the south. I know a way out of here. We’ll coordinate a rendezvous later.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Kim said, climbing into the other wheelchair.

  Camacho grabbed the push handles while Kamala drew her gun. “Let’s go!”

  Brandon gave a proud nod of his head. “Good luck, everyone.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Alex Reeve fought hard to slow her breathing and Brandon McGee pushed her along the corridors on the first floor of the Residence. He wasn’t exactly running, but she knew she’d never been this fast in her wheelchair before and part of her was more scared of falling out than what would happen if Faulkner’s soldiers caught up with them.

  Almost.

  “We’re nearly there, Brandon. Take it easy.”

  “Sorry, Alex, but we can’t let them catch up with us. They already have the President and Jack Brooke and we have no idea if Kim and Kamala got away or not. It’s a total shit show.”

  He was right – it was a total shit show and they were the last act. She thought of the expression on her father’s face as the marines marched him out to the SUV round the back of the West Wing and felt a rage she had never experienced before.

  It felt like blood was boiling in her veins and that her head might explode at any minute. How could they treat him like that? That son of a bitch Davis Faulkner was going to pay for this, that was for damned sure – but how? She was talking about a man who had manipulated the entire US political system and the news networks in order to effect a coup of the world’s most powerful country. How was she going to help her father and get back at Faulkner?

  She was powerless, like a fly in the Vaseline traps her grandmother used to make when she was a child. There was only one way she had even the slightest chance of saving herself and rescuing her father and that was the ECHO team, but she didn’t even know where they were. The last she had heard they were lost in the Iraqi desert somewhere, up to their necks in sand and flies and being hunted by the Oracle’s army of acolytes. It all felt hopeless.

  “Take a left, Brandon.”

  “No, it’s a right.”

  “I’ve lived here for quite a while now,” she said. “We reach the car park if we go left.”

  “That’s the car park everyone knows about, but there’s another way out of here.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “There are tunnels under the White House, accessible from several locations under the compound in case we have to evacuate the President in a hurry.”

  “In a situation like this, you mean?”

&
nbsp; “Sure, just like this, only this time the tunnel in the Oval Office was out of the question because Faulkner knew about it and made sure the President got nowhere near it when he stormed the office.”

  “That bastard!” she said, holding back the tears. She could feel one of her anxiety attacks coming on and once again pursed her lips to push out long, slow breaths. “How far to our escape tunnel?”

  “Not far.”

  “What if he knows about this one too?”

  “I won’t lie to you,” Brandon said, glancing over his shoulder. “He’s not going to take over the White House without knowing all about all the escape routes, but we’re ahead of him, and the shootout in the West Wing looked like it rattled him. He waited to attack us when he knew we all together there, so he wasn’t expecting anyone to get away, least of all, all the way to the Residency. We’re head of them, for now but we don’t have long.”

  “Please God, don’t let them get us!”

  She realized how pathetic she sounded, but Brandon didn’t care. In the short time they’d known each other he’d become more than a secret service agent and they had struck up a good friendship. She knew that right now he wasn’t just doing his job and saving the life of the First Daughter, but trying to protect a friend.

  “We’re here,” he said, turning the wheelchair into a narrow corridor.

  “This just goes to the kitchens.”

  “Wrong again, Reeve!”

  Without warning and still at speed, he spun around in the corridor as they approached a storeroom cupboard door. He brought the chair to a stop and run his key card through a slit on the side of the door. The light went red and a buzzer sounded.

  *

  Kim Taylor kept her head down as she walked through the kitchens. As she walked past a pot of tomato sauce cooling on the side, she smeared a handful of it across the chef’s whites they had stolen and pretended to be coming off shift. Joining a group of other cooks and waiters, she walked slowly through security.

  Camacho and Agent Banks were right behind her, also disguised in the chef’s whites and with their earpieces and palm mics discarded in case they were searched. Kamala’s plan was to head out to the Ellipse where many of the White House staff parked their cars before coming into work in the morning, but whether they got there or not was another matter.