by Rob Jones
The Englishman called up to Sheng. “I think you need a cup of tea and a nice sit down, mate.”
“Silence, you fool!”
The self-styled Thunder God now reached the apex of the tomb, a full fifty feet above the main floor where the others stood. There, he was finally face to face with the great emperor himself as he stared into the stone statue of Qin’s upright sarcophagus.
Lea watched in disgust as he blew the dust from Qin’s carved face to reveal a small handle. “Just as the legend says!” He turned the handle on the front of the enormous structure and slowly pulled at the front of it.
At that moment Sheng screamed a raft of orders at Luk, who had been watching his dear leader with increasing suspicion over the last few moments. As Sheng disappeared inside the sarcophagus to claim his prize, Luk moved forward to follow his instructions, which although delivered in hysterical Cantonese were obvious to everyone: kill Hawke and the rest of his team.
Above them, Sheng emerged from the sarcophagus with a small roll of parchment held together with a tiny red ribbon. He held it aloft and laughed madly. As he did so, they heard a rumbling sound and then a dark liquid began pouring from the holes built into the walls of the inner tomb.
“What the hell is that stuff?” Lea said.
“A kind of pitch,” Reaper said.
“What?”
Hawke coughed. “It was used as an early kind of thermal weapon. I don’t know how old Qin managed it, but any minute now I’d be very surprised if it didn’t...”
“Catch on fire?” Lea said.
Hawke nodded. “How did you know?”
“Look over there.” She pointed to a platform behind the sarcophagus and they all saw the tell-tale sight of flames, small, but lots of them and rapidly growing in number.
“Some kind of ancient mechanism’s ignited the oil,” Hawke said.
Reaper sighed. “Which is not the best news I’ve had this week – and look.” He gestured to the base of the sarcophagus where the oil was collecting in a pool. Slowly the flames from the top level were travelling down the rivers of oil all over the tomb.
With the exception of Luk, Sheng’s goons looked at the fire and then ran from the chamber. Luk was panicked, but a few more screams from his boss and he sprinted forward and lunged at Lea with his knife. She took a step back and his momentum carried him forward into the loving arms of Vincent Reno. Reaper tiger-punched him in the throat and he collapsed in a wheezing heap at his boots.
Lea wasted no time in lashing out and struck Luk with an eye-watering roundhouse kick to the back of the head which sent him flying over in an arc and crashing down into the dirt on his back.
He scrambled to his feet and stared wide-eyed at the fire. His eyes darted over to Sheng who was now giving him more orders.
“Kill them! Kill them now, Luk! That is an order from your god!”
Luk looked at the fire and then back at Sheng, and then finally to Hawke and the others, perilously close to the lethal flames which grew larger with every second. The heat was rising, and the sweat poured down from his forehead and trickled into his panicked eyes, which now flicked over to the tunnel that led back to the five trials and ultimately to safety. Without saying another word, he dropped the knife and turned on his heel. A moment later he was in the tunnel and out of sight.
Sheng stared with obvious shock and horror at the desertion.
“Looks like your Luk’s run out, Sheng!”
Lea rolled her eyes and moaned. “Oh, for the love of God, Joe.”
“What? I literally just cannot help it.”
“I worked that out the first day I met you, you fool.”
“You forget that I have this!” Sheng screamed, waving the map in his hand. “And this means unrivalled power. Luk will certainly rue the day he deserted me, but I have greater things to consider, such as how to dispatch you annoying and pathetic mortals.”
Sheng pulled his gun, held it level and prepared to fire it, but as he did so the flames licking at the rope holding one of the beams aloft above his head finally finished their work, and the rope snapped.
Hawke winced, Lea averted her eyes.
Sheng heard it and flicked his head up to see the cause of the noise, but all he saw was the sight of a heavy wooden beam falling toward his face. Half a second later it smacked him hard in the head and knocked him from the ledge. He tumbled off the top of it and crashed into the base of the tomb with a sickening crunch, his neck broken and bent round at a terrible angle.
“That’s for Hart,” Hawke whispered to himself.
Now, the fire was all consuming, its white and orange flames licking the sides of the support beams holding the temple in place around them. The highly flammable tar mixture continued to pour from the hundreds of holes all around them, and the flames leaped from one stream to the next until the entire chamber was ablaze.
Hawke tried to shield his face from the tremendous heat but it was too much. He could feel himself burning and took a step backwards. Through the shimmering inferno he saw the unmistakable figure of Lexi Zhang as she lunged forward and grabbed the map from Sheng’s dead fingers. Her figure rippled mirage-like in the heat as she struggled to cover her mouth with her hand.
“Lexi, I’m coming!” Hawke shouted, taking a step toward her, but the blaze was too much even for him and no matter how hard he pushed himself to go forward his basic survival instinct stopped his feet from going another step.
Lexi waved the map at him and tried to get across the burning river of tar, but then something terrible happened. He watched in horror as she took a misstep and began to windmill backwards over to the ledge. Hawke watched in terrible slow-motion as she slipped over the edge, her arms flailing to try and stop herself going back. In her hand was the cursed map of immortality, flashing in the firelight, and then...
Then she was gone, over the edge, her screams receding into the black pit as she slipped away from them, from life. Hawke stood motionless for a few seconds, taking in what he had just seen. This terrible place and that damned map had taken Sheng and rightly so in his view, but now it had taken not only Olivia Hart but also Lexi Zhang – the Agent Dragonfly he had met in Zambia all those years ago – and now she was dead too, another life claimed by the madness of greed and the lust for power.
“Joe!”
He turned to see Lea holding her hand to him. She was shielding her face from the heat with her other hand and coughing violently in the smoke. “Joe, it’s time to go! We have to go now before we all die in here!”
“She’s right, Hawke,” shouted Reaper. “This is one fire not even we can put out.”
“We must leave!” Han shouted.
All around them the fire grew stronger and closer.
Lea beckoned Hawke over with her hand “She’s gone, Joe! She’s dead, and so is Sheng. We have to get out of here now!”
Hawke snapped back into the moment. Lea and the others were right. All the others were dead, and they would be too if they didn’t get out of the tomb in double-quick time. He holstered his gun and jogged over to Lea without looking back for Lexi once. He knew she was gone, and more than that, she had died trying to retrieve the map for him and that was something he was going to have to live with, but now was not the time to think about it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Hawke was watching the sun set over Kowloon Bay when Lea stepped out onto the balcony with two glasses of chilled vodka. Tonight should have been about celebrating but instead he felt like a total failure. He had led a mission where Olivia Hart, Sophie Durand and Lexi Zhang were killed.
“How’s Ryan?” Hawke asked.
Lea handed him a vodka and turned to look over her shoulder. She was looking back into the room where various people were mingling and fighting for conversation time with Jason Lao, Sir Richard Eden or Frank McShain, who seemed especially pleased with himself thanks to the retrieval of the Tesla device and its delivery back into the safe hands of the US military. But as she looked,
she did it as if she were looking for Ryan, but it was a token gesture. They both knew Ryan wasn’t at the party. He hadn’t come out of his hotel room since their return to Hong Kong.
“I don’t know... This has hit him pretty hard, Joe.”
Hawke bit his lip. “I know. Who can blame him? He isn’t used to losing people around him – not in this way, at least. And it’s my fault.”
“Joe... you can’t blame yourself for Sophie’s death.”
Hawke downed his vodka and stared at her. “Why not? Maybe as far as Lexi is concerned, but not the others. I was their commander. I was leading the mission. It was my choice to send Sophie out into the field, and it was my choice to bring Olivia into this nightmare.”
“Sure, I know, but you didn’t pull the trigger, Joe. Sheng’s goons killed Olivia, and the damned Lotus Girl killed Sophie.”
Hawke was silent for a long time. Below, the streets of Hong Kong buzzed and rattled their way into another neon night. Above, the first new stars of the evening were appearing in the darkening city sky. Even to Joe Hawke the romance of the moment was obvious – if it weren’t for the loss and anger he felt over the deaths of his friends.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m just not up to it anymore. I’m making too many mistakes.”
“Now you’re just being an eejit.”
Hawke shook his head and raised the glass to his lips before remembering it was empty all over again. “I don’t think so. Too many details are getting past me, Lea. I lost three good people in the last few hours...”
Sir Richard Eden broke off his conversation with Jason Lao and joined them on the balcony.
“It’s bad news, I’m afraid.”
Hawke sighed. “The vodka’s run out?”
Eden made no reply to the half-joke, but continued. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s about Lexi Zhang.”
Hawke lifted his head and stared at Eden. “What is it?”
“She’s not dead.”
Hawke was incredulous. “She survived?”
Eden nodded.
“But how? I saw her die just a couple of days ago – consumed by fire and then she fell into the pit with the map.”
“We don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that a woman strongly matching her appearance boarded a private jet in Xian. She was identified by one of my contacts a few hours ago. The plane she boarded was a private charter going to Berlin.”
Hawke and Lea shared a glance. Hawke had a very bad feeling about what was coming next. “And?”
“And she wasn’t alone. She was with the same Russian who delivered the Tesla device into Tokyo Bay. It’s pretty clear she’s done some kind of deal and sold him the map.”
Hawke’s mind spun with the mixture of the bad news and the vodka. Not only had he led good friends to their deaths, but now he’d let himself get betrayed by Lexi Zhang in the process. She had humiliated him, and if that were not bad enough, she had handed the most precious power in the world to an unknown Russian who was happy to drown everyone in Tokyo for a few million dollars.
Eden returned inside where Hawke watched him explaining the news to members of the various concerned governments.
“She betrayed me!” he said, still not really believing what he had heard.
Lea scowled at the thought. “Don’t you worry about Lexi Arsing Dragonfly – her arse is mine. Believe me.”
“But... how?”
“We’ll track her down and ask her!” Lea said, her voice suddenly full of optimism. “What a great excuse to tramp all over the world shooting at things, and then we get to have our revenge on the Dung Beetle or whatever she calls herself.”
“It’s not as simple as that, Lea. Everything’s spinning out of control.”
“What are you talking about? What do you always say about not losing your spirit of adventure – so where’s yours, ya loser?”
Hawke poured more vodka and sank another shot. “Before she died, Hart told me that my wife was the target of the shooting in Hanoi, and not me. It’s blown my world apart, Lea.”
Lea was silent for a moment. “I don’t know what to say... I’m so sorry, Joe.”
“And I know you and bloody Cairo are keeping something from me as well – no – don’t interrupt or bother to deny it. I don’t think I can find it in me to go forward with any of this.” He glanced inside where Scarlet Sloane was umpiring an arm-wrestling contest between Reaper and Karlsson.
“Listen, Joe. Keep it together, all right? We can find Lexi Zhang and recover the map – you know we can! As for what the Commodore told you – I’ll help you in any way I can to find out who’s behind your wife’s murder, you know I will.”
Hawke started to reply when his phone buzzed. He looked down at the words on the screen and could hardly believe he was reading them.
“What is it?” Lea asked.
“It’s Nightingale...” Hawke’s face went pale.
“What’s the matter, Joe?”
“She says she’s being kidnapped. They’ve got her.”
“Oh my God! Who’s got her, Joe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s just a joke?”
“Never. Not Nightingale...” His words trailed away and he handed her the phone. On the screen was a blurred picture of a man approaching Nightingale. He was holding a knife. “She says she was hiding in her wardrobe and writing to me from there. She must have had just enough time to send this text and picture before they took her.”
Lea handed him back the phone. “I’ll do whatever you want me to, Joe. You know that.”
“I don’t know what to do... I’m losing it.” He stared at the tiny screen with uncomprehending eyes. First Dragonfly, now this blurred figure, the knife... it made no sense.
“You have to go to her.”
“I don’t even know her name, Lea! I don’t know where she lives! If I wanted to track someone like her down I’d ask... well, her.”
“We can do this, Joe. I’ll talk to Richard. You helped him, so he’ll help you, and believe me, that really means something. He has serious contacts all over the world.”
Hawke looked out over the bay, but his focus was somewhere in the middle distance, in that place he stared at with sad eyes when his thoughts were far away. Any hopes of glory he had arrogantly harbored at the start of all of this were smashed to pieces now.
Yes, he had killed Sheng and ended the threat he was posing to the world, and Scarlet had taken out the Lotus as well, but Olivia Hart and Sophie Durand were both dead – killed on his watch, and Lexi Zhang, the Dragonfly from his deep past had just betrayed him in royal fashion and totally humiliated him in front of Lea and Sir Richard Eden. Now, one of his oldest friends was in real trouble and he didn’t have any idea how to help her. All he had to go on was a few lines of text and a blurred picture of a madman with a knife, sent to him from the other side of the planet.
Out there, across the bay, the Hong Kong night drew in around Joe Hawke. It matched the darkness now drawing across his mind as so many thoughts and emotions struggled for supremacy of his soul. He didn’t know what to do next, but whatever it was, he knew he had to do it now.
THE END.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Here is the best place for me to thank everyone who bought and enjoyed the first two Joe Hawke novels. The Hawke series is a lot of fun to write because of the pure escapism in this type of story and like other series of its kind it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. I guess if you’ve come this far, you already know that... It’s great to know you enjoy reading about Hawke’s adventures as much as I enjoy writing them, and I’m scheduling the final part of this three-story “immortality arc” to be released at the end of 2015 or very early 2016. After that who knows what Joe Hawke will face?
In the meantime, please visit my website at www.robjonesnovels.com for the latest news and updates, and don’t f
orget my Twitter and Facebook pages. Also, I’m happy to reply to emails at [email protected] even if it takes me a few days to do so!
And so once again, Mystery Reader – my thanks to you, who bought and read this story. It’s appreciated, and I hope we can carry on with this journey together. Someone’s got to keep Hawke out of trouble, after all...
Signing off,
Rob
Rob Jones Links
Rob Jones Website
Rob Jones Author Central page
Rob Jones Facebook
Rob Jones Twitter
Rob Jones Goodreads
Rob Jones Email
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/
