Assassin

Chapter Fifty-One

RON GIDWITZ AND IAN WAGSTAFF, THE SQUAD’S RADIOMAN, had escaped from the remains of Phantom by sheer luck and good design. She’d sheared off both wings in the crash landing; the weight of the snow had simply ripped them away from the fuselage. But then the monocoque egg-shaped cockpit had detached, as it had been engineered to do, hit a buried slope and gone airborne. It hit the snow once more and skidded directly towards Hawke and Patterson, snow parting in front of the nose skid like a bow wake thrown to either side.

“Jump!” Hawke screamed and he and Patterson dove out of its path. The oblong black egg bounced once again and soared directly over the head of Alexander Hawke, who stared up in amazement as the carbon fiber module containing two good men disappeared over a sheer rock face.

“Good God,” Hawke said.

“Designed that way,” Patterson shouted over his shoulder, making his way up to the edge of the cliff face. “Modular. Lose the plane, keep the pilots. That’s the idea, anyway. We’ll soon see.”

Hawke, slogging as fast as he could through knee-deep snow, rushed up to join Patterson on the rocky ledge. He was expecting the worst, splintered black shards and broken bodies on the rocks far below. Arriving at the top, he found himself perched, not on the edge of nowhere, but on a simple ledge. Thirty feet below him, down an angled black ice incline, another, larger, snow-covered ledge projected out into thin air. There, he and Patterson first saw the upturned canopy dish lying in the snow about ten feet from the cockpit. The black plastic pod looked as if it had been split open with a hammer. Hawke’s face flooded with relief.

Gidwitz and Wagstaff were rolling in the snow, wrestling, and laughing like a pair of punch-drunk palookas. They weren’t dead, just drunk, victims of altitude sickness.

“Hypoxia,” Hawke said. “You were right.”

Phantom’s internal systems had malfunctioned. Oxygen deprivation in the cockpit had sent the two DSS rangers into disoriented euphoria that no doubt caused the crash. But, thanks to the Widow’s reinforced cockpit module, they were still alive.

Hawke leapt off the edge, landed hard on his butt, and slid easily feet-first down the black-ice face to the bottom. Patterson followed seconds later. Tex removed two gold foil survival suits from his backpack and managed to convince the two giddy men to climb inside. Wagstaff, the communications specialist known traditionally as Sparky, kept trying to tell him a joke about a Texan who owned a pickle factory. Tex finally shut him up and managed to strap emergency oxygen masks over both their faces. He turned to Hawke.

“It’ll take at least half an hour before they’re in any condition to move around. At least.”

“We don’t have that long, Pards,” Hawke said, flicking his HK machine gun to full auto. Both men turned to see what was making all the noise.

Emerging from a wide crack in the mountain was a Hagglund BV 206 all-terrain tracked vehicle. As it rumbled into the open, Hawke saw that it was towing a tracked troop carrier. The military ATV was built in the UK for NATO’s Rapid Reaction Force, but that wasn’t any NATO insignia painted on the door of the all-white vehicle. It was a symbol Hawke had seen before. An upraised sword in a bloody hand. On the roof, a man behind a swivel-mounted .50-cal. machine gun. Without warning, the man atop the vehicle opened up, stitching the snow, kicking up powder, stopping just short of Alex Hawke.

He and Patterson lowered their weapons.

The double doors at the rear of the troop carrier flew open and ten armed guards poured out, leaping to the ground. Two guards immediately opened fire, squeezing off long, high bursts over their heads; the rounds splintered rock and ice on the cliff face above, showering it down on Hawke, Patterson and the two sick men on the ground. In seconds, the guards had formed a semicircle around them.

“Got the drop on us, Pards,” said Tex out of the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, but here’s the good news,” Hawke said.

“I’m waiting, Hawkeye.”

“They take us prisoner in that thing, we don’t have to worry about how to blast our way inside an impregnable fortress anymore. Classic Trojan Horse. Works every time.”

“Yup. Good point, Sunshine. I was kinda hoping we’d catch a break just like this.”

A grinning guard suddenly stepped forward and jabbed the muzzle of his Kalashnikov into Hawke’s belly. Hawke staggered backwards against the ice face, collapsing to the snow, feigning pain. Patterson lunged for the man who’d done it, but nine AKs swung in his direction. Hawke had seen the blow coming in the man’s eyes and so was ready for it. He’d also caught a glint of light from the cliff above out of the corner of his eye. Now it was gone. With any luck at all, the rest of the team above had not been spotted.

The same guard with the loopy grin came over and kicked Hawke brutally in the ribs with his steel-toed boot. Then stood over him, smiling. Hawke twisted away in the snow, rolling to avoid the next blow to his ribs, gaining precious seconds, talking softly into his lipmike as he moved. He no longer had to feign any pain. His left side was on fire.

“Hey, Tommy,” Hawke whispered, “You up there?”

“Got you covered, Skipper,” the sniper Tom Quick replied. “In the rocks above and behind, on your left, sir.”

The guard advanced and kicked Hawke again, even more viciously. The pain was searing and it took his breath away. This guy was starting to seriously piss him off.

“Got a shot, Tommy?” Hawke managed.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Take it.”

A neat red hole instantly appeared between the eyes of the grinning man standing over Hawke.

“Old pals of Mr. bin Wazir,” Hawke said smiling up at the guard who was dead on his feet but didn’t realize it yet. “We understand he lives nearby. Thought we’d drop in.”

Before anyone else could react, Tom Quick took out the tango with the .50 cal on the roof of the Hagglund, and then dropped two more on the ground with clean head shots. Hawke got to his feet, bringing up the HK as he did, moving to give Patterson a clear field of fire as well.

Hawke heard a burst from a weapon on his left, swung instantly that way and fired. His rounds caught the man in the throat. He dropped his weapon and raised both hands to the wound, unable to stop the geyser of bright arterial blood which erupted. The man collapsed in a heap in the blood-soaked snow.

Five of the six remaining guards, unaccustomed to armed resistance, turned to run for their vehicle. All five died on their feet in less than ten seconds, victims of Hawke, Patterson, and the silent but deadly sniper above. Quick had acquired the new lightweight HK 7.62 sniper rifle for the mission. So far, he had no complaints. The sixth guard, spotting Quick on the edge of the overhang, raised his automatic to return fire. Before he could squeeze off a burst, Hawke hit him low, across the knees, and sent him sprawling in the snow. In an instant Hawke was all over him, ignoring his own pain, the snout of his weapon jammed up under the guard’s chin.

He looked into the terrified boy’s eyes and asked, “Do you want to live? Nod yes if you speak English.”

“Yes—”

“Name!”

“Rashid—”

“Get on your feet, Rashid. I’m requisitioning your vehicle. Sorry. Force majeure. You’re driving.”

“Good work, Pards,” Patterson said, “Your friend Mr. Quick up there makes a fine addition to the squad.”

“Still, we do appear to have lost the element of surprise—Widowmaker, FlyBaby, you guys get down here on the double. We’re taking this ATV inside the Pasha’s palazzo. Copy?”

“On our way, skipper.”

They loaded Gidwitz and Wagstaff into the troop transport. The two men were still groggy, but coming around courtesy of the oxygen. Mendoza and the rest of the team climbed inside the carrier as well, except for Hawke and Patterson, who would ride up front with the kid driving the snow-cab. Quick would be riding up on the roof, manning the .50-cal.

Hawke looked at his watch. Christ. It would be a very close thing. He had less than eighty minutes to find Kelly, extract vital information from bin Wazir, and get the hell out of there before the B-52s showed up and the big bunker-buster bombs started falling. And the Tomahawks came cruising.