by Graham Brown
“I need a weapon,” he said.
Sonia handed him her pistol.
“Where’s your friend?” Danielle shouted, firing a carefully aimed shot in one direction and then the next, trying to keep the rest of the men at bay.
Hawker looked toward the swamp and realized what Danielle was saying.
“They must have chased him off!” he shouted. “Don’t worry, he’ll be back.”
“He better make it quick. I have two more shells.”
Hawker reached into his vest, pulled out an extra clip, and handed it to her. “I won’t be needing this.”
Danielle snapped off her last two shots, popped the empty out, and jammed the clip Hawker gave her into the rifle.
As she racked the slide, Hawker looked over the field.
The men attacking them had been scattered. Some were cowering behind overturned vehicles, others taking what cover they could out on the open ground. There was no one between them and the marsh.
“How many of them are left?”
“No idea,” Danielle said. “Seven or eight. Maybe a dozen.”
“I can’t believe they haven’t shot us yet,” he noted.
“They’re not going to shoot,” Sonia said.
He turned.
“They want me,” she explained. “Just like you said. They killed my father because he wouldn’t help them and now they want me — alive.”
That was one of the reasons he’d wanted her in the safe house.
He looked around, pissed at himself for not forcing her to go with Savi and her sister.
“Sooner or later they’re going to try another run,” he said. They’d go for him and Danielle and then they’d swarm Sonia and take her. No way in hell he was going to let that happen. But how to stop it?
Hawker looked around. His own ATV was gone. A runaway that had zoomed off into the darkness, it probably wouldn’t stop till it hit the Persian Gulf.
“Does this thing still run?” he asked.
“I think it will,” Danielle said.
Hawker grabbed the handhold and pulled with all his might. The ATV came up slowly and then went over and landed back onto its wheels.
“You two get on this thing and head for the marsh,” he said. “Keegan’s out there somewhere.”
“What if he’s not?”
“He is,” Hawker insisted. “If you don’t see him, just drive right into the damn water and swim for it. He’ll find you.”
He took Danielle’s rifle.
“What about you?” Sonia asked, fear in her eyes.
“I’m going to make these people wish they’d messed with someone else tonight.”
Danielle’s face was white, but she tried to play along. “He’ll be all right,” she said. “This is what he does.”
Sonia didn’t look convinced, but she nodded her head.
Danielle flipped the switch and the ATV’s panel lit up. “We have power.”
Danielle climbed on and Sonia settled in behind her.
“Go!” Hawker shouted.
The ATV’s wheels spun, showering Hawker with sand as it raced away toward the water’s edge.
Almost immediately several of the men and the last of the sand rails moved to cut the women off.
Hawker targeted the buggy and lit it up with three quick bursts. Desperately trying to keep the alley open he fired a burst at the men on the right and then at the group on the left. Alternating his shots like this he tried to keep them pinned down as Danielle and Sonia raced for the water.
It looked as if it might just work. The men who’d come to get them were cowering. They’d bit off more than they’d expected and had begun regressing into survival mode, staying down even when they didn’t have to. Danielle was still accelerating, head down, throttle wide open.
And then, right in front of his eyes, something happened that Hawker could not believe.
CHAPTER 39
Danielle held the ATV’s throttle at full and the four-wheeler flew down the sand gathering speed. Seeing no sign of Keegan or the airboat, she planned to race into the water as far as possible and then dive off with Sonia in tow.
They could swim out into the dark and hide in the reeds and the murk of the swamp. Their pursuers were still unlikely to shoot at them for fear of hitting Sonia, and eventually they’d have to leave or risk trouble with the Iranian military. But that did not help Hawker, and unless Keegan showed up and began throwing some fire support their way, Hawker wouldn’t last long.
As they roared down the hill and onto the mud flat, Danielle listened for Hawker’s shots. She knew he was deadly accurate, enough that she didn’t look to either side, only ahead. If someone popped up it would be the last thing they did.
No one rose to challenge them, no one cut them off. Fifteen seconds and they’d be in the water.
And then suddenly, something was wrong.
She felt Sonia’s hands slip from her waist, felt her fall away, and felt the ATV surge forward with the sudden reduction in weight.
She slowed slightly and turned a bit, enough to see.
Sonia had fallen in a heap, tumbling like a ball.
“What the hell?”
Danielle began a turn to pick her up, but shots flew her way. Tracers that she hadn’t seen before in this fight. It was like they knew Sonia had fallen and could now open fire. She cut away from the incoming, but a shell or two hit the front right wheel.
The tire exploded. The ATV went down hard like a racehorse with a broken leg. Danielle flew off again, hit the mud at the swamp’s edge, and slid forward like she’d landed on ice. Covered in mud, she hit the waterline and lay sprawled in muck.
A group of men were moving toward her, a second group racing toward Sonia. Unbelievably, the young woman stood and began to move toward them.
Staying low, Danielle unholstered her Beretta. From behind her a great noise came zooming forward. The airboat roared out of the darkness with Keegan at the helm. Rapid fire from the twin guns on the tripod scattered the men who’d come for her, but it was too late for Sonia. The men had her and were dragging her off.
Danielle raised her gun to fire but couldn’t without hitting Sonia. She heard a shot from Hawker’s ArmaLite. But then nothing.
The tables had been turned. They hauled Sonia into the waiting Humvee, threw her in the back, and slammed the door. Seconds later they were racing off. The other men piled on the sides of the second Humvee and the surviving sand rail, and the ragtag convoy raced off with its prize.
In a moment they were gone, disappearing into the dunes.
Danielle looked around. The light from the burning vehicles flickered across the desert, illuminating the wreckage of the battle: dead men, ruined machines, smoke, flame. Up on the slope, alone in the center of the carnage, it lit upon Hawker, stunned and immobile and staring after the departing vehicles.
* * *
Hawker could not believe what he’d just seen. Their enemy had taken Sonia. What’s more, it seemed as if she’d given herself up willingly at the very edge of freedom.
Why?
His mind raced, but he found no answers. Had she fallen? Had she been injured by some gunfire he didn’t see? Had she been trying to save them by sacrificing herself?
He had no idea. And in truth, the reasons didn’t matter. They had her and they had the stone and things were infinitely worse than they’d been twenty-four hours ago.
On the sand beside him, the man Hawker had clubbed with the rifle was coming to.
Hawker looked down. The young man looked familiar. Hawker had seen him in Paris. This was the man who’d managed to jump off the boat and disappear into the Seine.
The man looked up with glazed-over eyes, and the fury that rose in Hawker became hard to contain. Twice this man had tried to murder friends of his; twice he’d been the cause of anguish and grief.
“You’re a dead man,” Hawker growled.
A wave of fear washed across the man’s face.
He turned from Hawke
r.
“Look at me, you son of a bitch!” Hawker shouted.
The man did not respond. He was moving his arm toward his face. He had something in his hand, something small.
Danielle was coming up the side of the dune.
The man’s hand moved.
Hawker snapped the gun toward him.
“No!” Danielle shouted.
Hawker’s rifle cracked and the echo of its report rolled across the night.
CHAPTER 40
Danielle stared at the man on the ground. Hawker had blown a hole in the man’s hand and he now clutched it, writhing in agony. A black pistol lay on the ground beside him.
“I thought you were going to kill him,” Danielle said, sounding relieved.
Hawker turned to her and the look on his face froze her heart.
“I am going to kill him,” Hawker said. “But not before he tells me where they’re taking her.”
The scanner on Danielle’s belt began to squawk again. She could hear the words, enough to make out that they were saying something about Americans near the swamp.
“You’re going to have to do it somewhere else,” she said.
Hawker seemed to know that. He’d already slung Danielle’s rifle over his shoulder and was bending down to pick up the injured man.
Danielle helped, using a strip of cloth to bandage the man’s hand and then tying his wrists with another strip.
Hawker threw the man over his shoulder and carried him down the slope. Danielle ran ahead, climbing aboard the airboat with Keegan and breaking out extra ammunition.
She saw Hawker wade into the water and toss the man on board like a sack of flour before climbing on himself.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Keegan gunned the throttle and spun the wheel. The airboat turned and raced out across the swamp.
CHAPTER 41
Hawker stood in the kitchen of a small house, in a vacant section of Al Qurnah, washing the grime from his hands and face. Burying his face in a towel, he tried to think and clear his head even as it pounded with post-battle adrenaline.
His eyes burned from the sand and the wind while his mind burned with rage. Try as he might, Hawker could not come to grips with the sight of Sonia falling from Danielle’s ATV and then running toward their assailants.
As Danielle put in a call for Moore to contact them, Keegan came up and put a hand on Hawker’s shoulder.
“I’ll guard the bugger,” he said, referring to their prisoner, who sat tied and gagged in another room. “You want me to cave his head in?”
Hawker intended to interrogate the bastard but he needed to get his wits about him. Although anger could be useful it had to be wielded with control.
“I’ll do it myself if it comes to that,” he said.
Keegan nodded and walked out of the kitchen, just as Danielle came in, looking keen to wash her own face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’ll find her. Somehow we’ll find her.”
Hawker appreciated the kindness. He wasn’t used to it, and so he appreciated it all the more.
He moved over as Danielle took off her jacket and shoulder holster. His own holster lay on the counter, and as he glanced at it Hawker’s eye fell onto the gun in the holster. It was a smaller pistol, not the 9 mm Beretta that Danielle normally carried.
“You handed this to me,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”
“It was Sonia’s,” she said. “Somehow we traded.”
“You give it to her in the first place?”
“No, she had it with her.”
Hawker studied the weapon. It was a.25-caliber automatic. The sight of it left a sickening feeling in his stomach, a possibility he didn’t want to consider.
He handed the towel to Danielle, stepped away to grab his phone, and sent a text message to a number in France.
A moment later Moore was on the satellite line and the three of them were having a teleconference.
“… the CDC confirmed all the numbers on infection rate and virulence. And the threat is now receiving the highest-priority response,” Moore said.
“Meaning what?” Hawker asked.
“Stockpiles of antivirals are being increased. Interpol is redoubling its efforts and the president is going to brief leaders of NATO countries in the morning.”
“That’s all political bull,” Hawker said. “We need to do something and we need to do it now.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Moore said.
“We should be going after these bastards,” he said. “We should have full recons of southern Iran going by now. We should have strike teams in there, we should have helicopter patrols scanning the coast, and we should be violating Iranian waters looking for a getaway boat because these anti-God lunatics are probably not planning on staying in the Islamic republic.”
He noticed Danielle studying him, her eyes kind. Moore was blunt.
“Hawker, I understand that Sonia is your friend but a mini-invasion of Iran is—”
“It’s not about her being a friend,” Hawker said. “She’s the key now. They came after her in Dubai to disrupt the fund-raiser — which put her back in Ranga’s shoes: desperately looking for funding — and because they wanted to grab her in person. If they had gotten what they needed out of Ranga there would be no need for them to take her. But Ranga pulled some kind of trick on them.”
“Like what?”
Hawker shrugged. “Maybe he told them that everything they needed was at the lab, hoping they’d blow themselves up going to get it. Or maybe they killed him too quickly by mistake. Either way, they didn’t give a damn about her until he was dead. There can only be one reason for that.”
“Because they want her to finish what he started,” Moore said.
“Exactly.”
“Suppose that’s correct,” Moore said. “Any idea how long it will take to synthesize the serum?”
“She said she could do it in a day.”
Moore took a breath and nodded. “Yang insists that’s the simplest part.”
“How long do think she’ll hold out?” Danielle asked.
“Not long,” Hawker said. “A day, maybe two; depends what they do to her. Depends on if she even wants to hold out.”
Neither of them asked him to elaborate, which he was thankful for. In his anger he’d begun to say things he wasn’t sure he meant.
“I’m afraid they might not have to do anything to her,” Moore said.
Hawker looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Two things have happened,” he said. “First, someone hit Paradox last night and made off with computer records and various stock from their lab. No one’s sure, because the company is in a shambles, but we’re guessing they have the viral stock for 951.”
It kept getting worse.
“In addition,” Moore said, “the NRI office that you dropped Sonia’s aunt and sister at in Kuwait went dark at almost the same time. Someone hit it hard. Both of them are gone.”
A new wave of bitterness swept forth as he pictured the little girl with her arthritis and failing vision being manhandled by the cult’s thugs.
“How did anyone know they were there?” Danielle asked.
“Don’t know,” Moore said. “They might have been watching the house.”
“This isn’t my first dance,” Hawker said. “I promise you no one followed us.”
“Could have been a tracer, or from an aircraft or a neighbor’s tip,” Moore said.
Hawker tensed, trying to contain himself. This latest news was throwing him off balance. How the hell was this group always one step ahead of them? It was as if the cult knew their playbook. As if they were listening in. Which would be impossible unless …
The only one who knew they were going to Iran besides him, Danielle, and Moore was Sonia. And the only person who knew where the safe house was besides him, Danielle, and Moore was Sonia.
Hawker prayed he was wrong, and just as paranoid as everyone accused him of being,
but the image of Sonia falling off the back of that ATV almost deliberately continued to run through his mind. He’d begun to think that Sonia was involved with the cult somehow.
Ranga had warned him to trust no one. He hadn’t listed an exception for his daughter. Could their falling-out have been more than just another argument?
The thought made Hawker sick, but it didn’t affect what they had to do now. The next move had to be the same.
“If they have her sister, then Sonia won’t hold out at all. And if they have 951 they might not even need her,” he said, bluntly. “So you might as well assume that weapon will be up within the next twenty-four hours. That means we have to find them before they go underground again. It took us an hour to get back here. It would have taken them twice that long to get to the coast. And that’s why we have to intercept them.”
Over the phone Moore exhaled audibly. “Things don’t work that fast, Hawker. Even if I could get the president to agree, he’d have to issue the orders, move units into place. No one’s standing by to do what you suggest. Getting units on-site in three hours would be a miracle.”
“Give me a helicopter. I’ll start myself.”
“Getting you killed by an Iranian missile isn’t going to help us,” Moore said. “Sit tight. I’ll call back in half an hour.”
“Sit tight?” Hawker said, raising his voice.
“What else can we do?” Danielle asked.
Hawker hesitated. “We have one of their guys,” he said. “We can break him.”
“You want to torture him?” Danielle said, making no effort to hide her disgust.
“This is an extreme circumstance,” he said. “Besides, we’re on foreign soil, he’s not an American, the Constitution doesn’t apply. Isn’t that what we’ve been told?”
Hawker was addressing his words to Moore, but Danielle had taken over. “Forget about the Constitution. This is insane. You’re not a torturer.”
“I’ve been on the other end of it,” he said. “I know what to do.”
“And what do you think you’re going to get out of him?” she asked. “He’s Arab. Probably just a local like the guys they hired in France.”
