Assassin

Chapter Fifty-Five

The Emirate

HAWKE STACKED UP HIS ASSAULT TEAM JUST OUTSIDE THE tunnel’s entrance, their jump-off position into the mountain fortress. They were in single file, MP-5s at the ready, set at full auto. They were now thirty-one minutes into an eighty-minute mission parameter. Tight to begin with and then going off the side of the mountain—Christ. Hawke raised his hand, silently communicating a sixty-second countdown until the team would enter the tunnel. Then he and Quick each tossed two flash-bang and smoke grenades deep into the tunnel.

All his mind’s eye could see as he watched the whitish smoke fill the tunnel was the image of Patterson dwindling to a tiny white speck in the black nothing below. At least Tex had gone knowing he had done his duty, died in the service of his country. It helped, a little, to think that Tex would at least have known that kind of peace in that last tenuous minute of life. He hoped so, anyway. Maybe you couldn’t even think when—he tried in vain to shake off these feelings, force himself into the present moment. It would be a certified bastard soon enough, when and if he had time to think.

Damn it!

Despair and dread were pricking at the edges of his consciousness. Despair at losing Tex. And dread that he might not find bin Wazir in time or not at all. He could be leading these men into a death trap. How arrogant could he have been to imagine that such a small force could penetrate—no. It was certain death to allow this kind of thinking. He deliberately dug his fist deep into his fractured ribcage, causing tears to spring to his eyes and driving every thought but the howling pain in his side out of his mind.

“Go,” he said, seconds later, and the team moved forward into the tunnel. After one hundred yards, Hawke signaled a halt. They had encountered zero resistance thus far, which was both good news and bad. He certainly had no desire to see any more live ammo headed his way. Yet, clearly, their presence was known. The lack of any defense, especially here at the back door of the enemy’s house, was troublesome in the extreme. A man didn’t need Stokely’s nose to smell a trap.

He needn’t have worried. As they edged forward in the dense smoke, he heard the muffled exhaust of another Hagglund and saw two wavering yellow lights floating toward him in the bluish-white smoke, like flying saucers in a cloud.

“Backs against the wall,” Hawke ordered his men, trusting the approaching engine noise to cover his voice. “Tommy, take out the fifty on the roof. Use your suppressor. Two up in the cab are mine. Everybody else at the rear doors. When they open up, waste them.”

The ATV rumbled blindly toward them. When it was directly opposite, Quick squeezed off a silent head shot and the man up behind the .50-cal tumbled off the cab. Hawke leaped onto the running bar, his .45 in hand. He shot the startled driver in his left ear, then, as his sidekick was raising his AK-47, he put one between his eyes. From the rear of the carrier, he heard his team’s automatic weapons open up and the screams of the dying men inside. The driver’s foot was still jammed on the accelerator and Hawke reached inside and grabbed the wheel, steering with one hand. When he’d guided the thing through the smoke into clear air, he reached inside, switched off the ignition and, as the ATV came to a stop, pocketed the keys.

“Might come in handy,” he said to Quick, finding him in the dissipating smoke. Wagstaff and Gidwitz were pulling eight newly dead guards out of the rear of the troop carrier.

Forty-four minutes. And counting.

The seven-man squad proceeded cautiously onward into the bowels of the mountain. The tunnel, which now smelled strongly of fuel and oil and machinery, led eventually to a spacious natural vault. It was being used as a motor pool. Here were three more armored personnel carriers, two more Hagglund ATVs, and a fleet of snowmobiles. No secondary cadre of guards, no security cameras mounted above that he could see. The tunnel continued beyond the vault, angling upward. Christ. He didn’t have time for all this bloody spelunking.

He didn’t notice the stainless steel door inset into the rock to his left until he heard a hiss and saw it begin to open. He and his squad dropped to a crouch, weapons trained on the opening door.

There was someone inside. And, though he was huge, it was only one man. The massive black man Hawke and Kelly had met five years earlier, one night on Mount Street, just outside the Connaught Hotel. Hawke’s finger tightened on the trigger of his HK. Shoot him? Or get him to take them to bin Wazir and save them the precious time and trouble of looking for him?

“Hawke,” the big man rumbled. He held up his hands, bright pink palms outward, to show he was unarmed.

“Indeed, I am,” Hawke said, making a decision and lowering his weapon. He’d decided against killing the man on the spot; better to simply let this fellow take him to the target. He’d reached a point where every minute counted. On his signal, the squad lowered their guns.

“Ar am Tippu Tip,” he said. “The Pasha sent me. You come.” He stepped back to make room for them in the large elevator.

“Good. We were hoping to catch him at home.”

Hawke stepped back and nodded to the team to enter. What the hell, he thought, an elevator was a lot easier than using the bricks of Semtex they carried to blast a breach in a five-foot-thick wall. Once they were all inside the elevator cab, Tippu touched a panel and the door slid shut.

“I believe we’ve met,” Hawke said, turning to smile at the African. “London, wasn’t it?”

Tippu glared at him with his red eyes.

The lift jerked once, then rose swiftly. Roughly calculating the probable speed of ascent, he determined they had already risen a thousand feet. The mountain complex was clearly enormous. When the lift stopped, and the door hissed open, he could see that he’d not been mistaken. The cab was flooded with sunlight. They stepped outside, blinking in the brilliant light and clear air. They’d arrived at the very top of the Blue Mountain.

The first thing Hawke noticed was that there was no snow underfoot. Subterranean heating system, he thought, as they moved out onto some kind of parade ground. On the far side, he could see a small village of minarets and vast glass domes. From the greenish hue inside, he guessed they housed trees and exotic vegetation. Not a soul in sight, armed or otherwise. Bloody Shangri-La.

A high wall of thick bluish stone surrounded the entire compound. This exterior wall was studded every hundred yards with lookout posts. Winking glints of steel caught the sun in each window. They were expected. He followed the curve of the wall with his eyes. He knew from the recon photos that the main entrance was to his left, beyond the huge Oriental shrine which dominated his view. The structure was a replica of the Japanese sumo shrine in Kyoto.

“Over there,” Tippu said, pointing at the shrine. “Sumo temple. He is waiting. Leave guns here.”

“Dream on,” Hawke said.

On either side of the steel door from which they’d just emerged stood two stone guardhouses, both empty. The wooden door of one hung ajar. Hawke looked at Quick’s bloody left arm and mangled hand.

“Tommy, you remain in there. Keep your eyes open. Cover our retreat. When and if.”

“No,” Tippu said. “He comes. Guns stay.”

“No,” Hawke said. “He stays. He is wounded.”

Tippu looked at the muzzle of Hawke’s HK, now an inch from his nose, then he shrugged his great shoulders. He turned and stomped off towards the temple, his broad back presenting a choice target. It was the gesture of a man who knows he has you vastly outnumbered. A moment later, after a brief whispered conversation with Tom Quick, Hawke and the squad followed, leaving Quick behind. To Hawke’s enormous relief, the hand Quick had broken was not the one that featured his highly reliable trigger finger.

Speaking quietly into his mike, he ordered Gidwitz to advance with him. The rest of the team was to linger for exactly three minutes, then fan out and get across the open ground to the shrine. Hawke then headed across the empty parade ground at a run in the direction Tippu Tip had gone, a sharp spike of pain in his left side with every loping stride.

A match was already in progress. Two sumos, glistening with sweat, were in the dohyo, stomping about the ring, chasing away evil demons, Hawke believed. At the edge of the ring, sitting in solitary splendor was the man he had met in London in the late nineties. Or, rather, twice the man, for he had doubled in size in the interim. Like the other rishiki, he was wearing a ceremonial mawashi, a loincloth of crimson silk.

“You come,” Tippu said to Hawke. “He stays here.”

“Human sacrifice,” Hawke shrugged, smiling at Gidwitz.

Hawke quickly surveyed the enormous circular room. It was spectacular. Massive wooden beams, which appeared to be plated with hammered gold, soared above him. Mounted on the beams above the ring, four Sony Jumbotrons, broadcasting the match. There were eight arched doorways, two of bin Wazir’s men posted on either side of each. No visible weapons anywhere. An ornate balcony projecting above his head encircled the entire space. No one up there he could see. What small audience there was, a smattering of veiled women on one side, and a group of men on the other, paid no notice to the new arrivals.

This bin Wazir was either very stupid or supremely confident. Hawke imagined the latter. Somewhere in this fortress, he hoped, Brick Kelly was still alive. And somewhere inside the brain of bin Wazir was information the president of the United States needed desperately. The trick, how to extract both while keeping his own skin, and that of his men, intact. No mean feat, it would appear.

“Many guns trained on you,” Tippu grunted. “Put down your weapons now. Him, too.”

“Certainly,” Hawke said, unfastening his web belt and letting his HK slide to the ground. Gidwitz did the same.

Hawke quickly turned away from Tippu, bent, as if to tie his bootlace and quickly extracted Patterson’s old Colt pistol he’d shoved inside his boot. He placed it in Gidwitz’s hand as he stood up. He looked into the man’s eyes, then deliberately up at the balcony, before he turned to follow the African through the crowd of onlookers. Gidwitz had nodded imperceptibly. He’d understood the unspoken orders, Hawke reassured himself, find a way up to the balcony with the Colt. Cover him.

“Ah,” Snay bin Wazir said, smiling broadly, “Lord Alexander Hawke.”

Hawke offered a slight bow from the waist. “Mr. bin Wazir. It’s been a long time.”

“Indeed. I saw your aircraft. Interesting approach. You are here for your friend Mr. Kelly, I imagine.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I am. Is he still alive?”

“For the time being.”

“Where is he? I’d like to say hello.”

“He is, unfortunately, detained at the moment. However, should you survive the little entertainment I’ve arranged, I shall see you to his quarters.”

“A sumo match?”

“You haven’t lost your keen powers of observation, Lord Hawke.”

“Never. Who’s winning?”

“Right now, Hiro. The bald chap. But Kato is formidable. He could still prevail. You will fight the winner of this match. If you live, you shall have the honor of fighting me.”

“A dubious honor. Still, if you insist—”

Snay bin Wazir clapped his hands and the two additional sumo giants who’d been observing the bout in progress approached him, bowing deeply.

“This man will be competing,” he said to the two huge Japanese. “One of you, take him away and see that he is suitably prepared.”

“I will do it, sire,” one said, stepping forward.

“Good. Go with him,” bin Wazir said to Hawke, and returned his gaze to the action in the dohyo.

“This way,” the sumo said.

Hawke followed the man through a set of heavily embroidered draperies to the far right of the ring. They entered a spartan room, smelling richly of the sandalwood that paneled the walls. The sumo sat on a bench and motioned Hawke to join him.

“You know sumo techniques, Hawkeye-san?” he asked Hawke.

“Not exactly,” Hawke replied.