by Rob Jones
He straightened up as he watched it fly through the sky. Not bad for a beginner.
It was then he was aware of someone talking to him. It was Aaron Carlson his personal assistant, and he sounded even more anxious than usual.
“What’s up, Aaron?”
“It’s about the, er... mission, sir.”
“What about it? I don’t want any bad news right now, Aaron – not if it’s going to mess up my handicap.”
“It’s Colonel Geary, sir. He says they failed to take the island.”
Faulkner turned to face Aaron, and raised his club up to rest on his shoulder. This was not good news, and he had been expecting better from Geary. “What?”
“He says they had a greater defensive capacity than he had anticipated for such a small, private island.”
“And isn’t just how he would put it, too?”
“And there were jets... our jets, sir.”
“I see.” His mind began to whir.
“What should I tell him?”
Faulkner sighed and turned back around to face the driving range. He swung the club off his shoulder, nearly hitting Carlson in the face as he did so, and tried all over again to relax his posture and regain his composure. The Oracle wasn’t going to like this one little bit.
“So what do I say, sir?”
“Tell him to keep his goddam mouth shut.”
“Yes, sir.”
Davis Faulkner watched Aaron walk off the course and his mind began to race with this new development. The Oracle rarely accepted failure but there was a good chance his notorious bad temper might be soothed by his good news about almost certainly being elevated to the Vice Presidency in a few weeks. Davis Faulkner clung to that hope and took another swing into the great blue beyond.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Lea Donovan turned to the window so the others didn’t see the tears and stared at the smouldering wreckage of the Seastead. It reminded her of the pictures she had seen of burning oil rigs. Great clouds of filthy black smoke bloomed into the cold Atlantic air, rising a few hundred feet before getting caught by a strong wind and whipped west over the ocean. In a few days it would reach the African coast, but they were going in the opposite direction. They were sailing into the setting sun in a boat taken from beneath the burning wreckage of the Seastead.
They had destroyed the Oracle’s oceanic inner sanctum, but it brought no pleasure because the cost was too high. Maria Kurikova was lying in a body-bag in the cargo compartment and Ryan Bale was missing, presumed dead and buried at sea. When she thought about it she felt like someone had hollowed her out.
Two of her best friends were gone and for what? A strange golden idol that meant nothing to anyone – and which was now in the Oracle’s grotesque grip. All they had was the Valhalla idol, exactly what they had started out with. A weird avatar forged from gold and offering nothing to them except the inscrutable expression of an elderly mandarin… She hated those idols. It was because of them that her father was dead, and now Maria and Ryan were added to that grim list, as well as so many other innocents.
Ahead of her Joe Hawke was idling past the marina’s no-wake zone and taking the boat out into open water. As he pushed the throttle forward the bow rose ten degrees into the air before getting on plane and then it dipped again, allowing a better view of the stormy horizon ahead of them. With the extra fuel on board he was happy that they would reach Elysium in a little over one day’s sailing. At least then they would have the safety of their sanctuary to recover and regroup before deciding how to deal with so much new information. It was bewildering, but he never let his enemies get the better of him. There was no choice but to fight to the end.
Lea dried her eyes and looked behind her into the cabin. Jack Camacho and Scarlet Sloane were asleep, the English SAS officer’s head resting on the American CIA man’s broad shoulder. Lexi Zhang was staring out the opposite window, no doubt her usual worries scattered to the wind by the thoughts of this terrible day. Reaper was smoking on the stern, collars up and wordless.
Hawke now gripped the wheel and trimmed the boat at five degrees, instantly smoothing the ride and allowing the vessel to increase in speed. He checked the compass and nodded with inward satisfaction that he hadn’t forgotten how to drive a boat. A small consolation after the terrible disaster of the Seastead battle, she guessed.
She knew he was thinking about Ryan and Maria, and adding their deaths to the list of all the others who had died since this all began – Sophie Durand, Olivia Hart, Bradley Karlsson, Ben, Alfie, Sasha… the roll-call of the innocent dead went on and on and made her want to scream with rage. She knew he felt the same.
At least Mendoza, Soto, Luk, Kamchatka and the bastard Kruger were all dead. It brought some small comfort to her that her friends hadn’t died for nothing. Dispatching Luk and Kamchatka to the ocean floor for eternity was a particularly comforting thought.
Hawke put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. He hadn’t shaved for days and he looked tired and yet there was still a kind of energy around him and that was comforting too, but the truth they had learned from the Oracle felt like it was crushing her and making it hard to breathe. It changed everything. There really were cults of immortal beings who worked in the shadows to control governments and the Oracle was some kind of leader who possessed the power to destroy mountains on the other side of the world.
None of it made any sense, but it was the new reality and they all had to rise to meet it with a show of force. The Oracle’s vow to annihilate mankind had not fallen on deaf ears and the ECHO team had to stop him. But where to start… she knew it had something to do with those damned idols.
The former Commando checked the compass and put the boat to sea, his heart heavy with the knowledge he was leaving two fallen comrades behind. It wasn’t the first time. As a commando and an SBS canoeist and even now as an ECHO team member he had lost colleagues and friends before, but this time felt different. This time felt extra raw.
Reaper felt the same way, and he knew he had to step up and be there for his new friends. It was time to put his reluctance to join things behind him and request a formal place on the ECHO team. He picked up his tobacco tin and cigarette papers and moved forward to the wheelhouse. Lexi was trying to hide her tears, but not doing a very good job of it, and when he saw Camacho and Scarlet sharing a hug and a few quiet words of consolation, he knew he had to be with these people.
“I want in,” he said.
Hawke looked at Lea, and she shrugged her shoulders. “As soon as we get back to the island we’ll speak to Rich.”
“You think he’ll accept me?”
Hawke nodded. “He’d be crazy not to, Vincent.”
Reaper gave a solemn nod and began the intricate process of rolling a cigarette at sea. Not his first time, the slim cigarette was made in seconds and hanging off his lower lip as he searched through his pockets for a lighter. Before he found his own, a flash of light in front of his face startled him. He followed the arm back to the inscrutable face of Scarlet Sloane, who was now also smoking.
“Ah – tu as du feu,” he mumbled. “I lost mine in the battle, je crois.”
Scarlet sighed. “I’d lose my soul before I lost my lighter.”
“I can believe that,” Hawke said under his breath.
Reaper took the light and moments later he was puffing out a cloud of fresh tobacco smoke as he wandered back to the stern.
Scarlet went back to Camacho and Lexi went below decks to be alone.
Hawke settled on taking the boat back to Elysium.
Beside him, Lea Donovan looked back out to sea. The smoking Seastead was now nothing more than a smudge on the distant horizon.
She wasn’t going to let any of this stand, and she knew none of the others would either. She clenched her jaw as she fought the rage back once again, her mind spinning with thoughts of justice and revenge as she heard those terrible words echo in her mind once again… this isn’t the end, Donovan – only the beginning.
You can bet on it, she thought.
You can bet on it.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Here is a great place for me to thank you for reading my book, and also give a special thanks to everyone who has followed Hawke’s journey from the beginning. Regular readers will know how I feel that writing/reading a novel is a shared experience and I hope you enjoy reading these tales as much as I enjoy writing them. I have some really exciting and new ideas about the future of the Joe Hawke Series and I can’t wait to share them with you. I’m also hoping to be able to bring you some good news about a release date on the standalone thriller I’ve been working on, which is called The Armageddon Protocol as well as some other projects.
Let me add that all reviews at Amazon are gratefully received as they are essential to the series, so please allow me to give a big thanks to everyone who has taken the time to leave me a review in the past. I also want to say thanks to everyone who has left me a review on Goodreads as well. It means a lot to a writer and I value your opinion. If you enjoyed the book and would like to leave me a review, please just follow this link. Also, if you would like to join my mailing list please do so here www.robjonesnovels.com
Rob Jones Links
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Other Books by Rob Jones
The Joe Hawke Series
The Vault of Poseidon (Joe Hawke #1)
Thunder God (Joe Hawke #2)
The Tomb of Eternity (Joe Hawke #3)
The Curse of Medusa (Joe Hawke #4)
Valhalla Gold (Joe Hawke #5)
The Aztec Prophecy (Joe Hawke #6)
The Secret of Atlantis (Joe Hawke #7)
The Lost City (Joe Hawke #8)
You can find updates, information and all other news about my novels, including new book releases on my Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/RobJonesNovels/
