Assassin

Chapter Fifty-Seven

THE CHEERING WAS ASTOUNDING, BUT WHAT WAS MOST SURPRISING was the sudden appearance of all four sumo rikishi at his side in the ring. The four giants surrounded him, turned to face outward, and planted themselves, arms folded across their chests, forming a defensive perimeter around him. Apparently, Ichi-san was not the only sumo warrior who had no love for the man who remained face down in the center of the dohyo.

Tippu Tip had appeared when bin Wazir went down and now crouched beside his fallen and unmoving master. Making angry, mournful sounds, Tippu looked up, his red eyes flashing at Hawke. Alex had no interest in another round with this brute. That match had been decided one night long ago with Tippu Tip checking into St. Thomas’s Hospital on the Thames for an extended visit.

“Ar kill you,” Tippu bellowed, getting to his feet. Hawke had heard that line from him before.

“Ichi-san,” Hawke said, ducking away from a swipe of Tippu’s huge paw. “Could one of you gentlemen please escort this fellow from the ring? We must find Kelly, quickly.”

Ichi looked at Hiro, who immediately obliged, seizing the giant African from behind, arms around his thick waist, lifting him off his feet, and simply waltzing him out of the dohyo.

“Kelly is here!” a woman’s voice cried out. Hawke looked up in amazement. A veiled woman robed in emerald silk stood up amidst the group of women seated on the far side of the ring. Standing next to her was a tall, gaunt figure of a man dressed all in black. He pulled back the burnoose covering his head and that was when Hawke saw the shaggy red hair.

“Brick!” he shouted. “Let’s get the bloody hell out of here!”

“Good plan!” Brick replied, but his cry was hoarse and raw.

Brick Kelly was alive. Hawke grabbed Ichi’s arm and squeezed it. Smiling, he said, “The timing of heaven, Ichi-san?”

“Yes, Hawkeye-san. The time for freedom.”

Phut-phut-phut! A burst of automatic fire kicked up clay a few feet from Hawke’s feet.

“Get down! Get down!” Hawke shouted, pulling Ichi to the clay beside him. The three riskishi also dove to the clay. The guards at each doorway had their weapons up, and were squeezing off short bursts, but they seemed uncertain. Their lord and master was down, but was it over? Hawke heard a round zip above his head and then saw the man who’d fired at him go down, his head exploding in a fine red haze.

Hawke’s eyes lifted instantly to the heavily carved wooden balcony. Tom Quick was up at the rail with his new sniper rifle, not the least uncertain about what to do with it. Every time a new guard appeared in a doorway, Quick waxed him with a clean head shot. Gidwitz was up there, too, behaving like a gunfighter in an old western. He’d pop up and fire, duck down, scramble around to a new location on the balcony and fire again, creating the illusion of four or five gunmen up on the balcony. The illusion was enhanced by the nostalgic roar of Tex Patterson’s old Peacemaker.

Everyone was occupied for the moment, his guys seemed to have the situation in hand; but Hawke had information which needed to get to Washington immediately.

“Tommy,” Hawke said, having retrieved his Motorola headset from Ichi, “I need Sparky Wagstaff down here in the ring with that sat phone. Now.”

“Bad news, Skipper. Sparky was headed here from the guardhouse with the com set. Got halfway across, one of the towers took him out. Fire is murderous out there.”

“Get someone out there. I need that phone, Tom.”

“Negative, Skipper, we tried that. Phone was smashed. Nothing left of it.”

“Anybody else down?”

“Gidwitz took one in the shoulder, sir, but, as you see, he’s not down. Just keeps firing that old Colt.”

Twenty minutes remained on the mission clock. The guards were all firing up at the elusive Gidwitz up on the balcony now, and it gave Hawke’s remaining men, who had somehow made it to the shrine, the chance to clear the hall one doorway at a time. Hawke didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the bullets to stop. By now, the big American bombers would have arrived and be circling above. He needed to get on a radio to the president. Now. But the closest radio available was aboard Hawkeye.

He and Ichi started in a low crouch towards Kelly, and Hawke saw his friend limping towards him. The man could hardly walk. Torture had broken his body.

Brick Kelly was smiling, but tears were streaming down his face.

Hawke ran the final few steps and Kelly fell into his arms. It was only then that Hawke saw in his eyes how very near to death his friend was.

“Alex,” he whispered through parched and cracked lips.

“It’s okay, Brick. We’re going home now, old buddy.”

The woman who’d been with Brick stood, and raised a gleaming Samurai sword high above her head. The enemy fire ceased instantly. “You are Hawke,” the beautiful woman in silk said, approaching him. “I am Yasmin. Kelly spoke of you. You did not forget your friend.” She lowered her sword.

“He is my friend,” Hawke said, embracing the frail body, shocked at how little flesh remained on his bones. He had not eaten much since his abduction. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Take him safely home to his wife and children,” she said. “That is more than enough.” Smiling sadly, she turned away.

Hawke supported Brick with one arm and headed toward the nearest doorway. It looked clear. He spoke again into his mike. “Okay, Tommy, I have the hostage alive. Give me a fast sitrep, we’ve got to move out, now! What’s it look like from up there?”

“Door opposite you is clear, sir. Working on the rest—”

“You get our guys out of here. I’m out this door with the hostage. Regroup at that elevator. Sixty seconds. How’s the parade ground look? Can you take out those bloody towers from up there? Can I get some fire suppression?”

“Negative. Don’t have a shot, Skipper. Can’t—”

Hawke had been carefully ticking down the remaining mission time in his head. He was at eighteen minutes. He needed to get to his radio, and they would barely have time to rig a snatch for the Black Widows. Even that assumed somehow crossing the parade ground under withering fire from the watchtowers. He cast his eyes about the hall, desperately searching for some way out.

“Ichi-san, is there some other way out of—”

“No harm will come to you now, Hawkeye-san,” Ichi said, nodding in the direction of the regal Yasmin. She was deep in conversation with a uniformed man, clearly the captain of the guards, who was nodding his head vigorously, and shouting orders at subordinates and into his walkie-talkie. All automatic weapons were lowered, even as he spoke. Apparently, a new ruler now held dominion over the Blue Palace. And her word was law.

“Come along, Ichi-san,” Hawke said, pulling the balaclava down over his head. “You want out of here as badly as I do.”

Supporting Kelly with one arm, Hawke ran through the arched doorway of the sumo shrine and into the brilliant sunshine of the parade ground.

“Belay that last, Tommy, cease fire.” Hawke said into his lip-mike as he ran across the open ground. “Regime change. We’re going out unopposed. Move it.”

“Copy. Look up. You got B-52s assembling upstairs.”

Hawke shouted over his shoulder at the sumo who was struggling to keep up, “I can make space for you if you want to come along, Ichi-san. In fifteen minutes, this place will not exist. If you wish, go back and tell Yasmin that she must get herself to safety. Deep inside the mountain. Now. Understand?”

“Thank you, Hawkeye-san.”

“Don’t thank me yet. That elevator—”

“I know it.”

“Sixty seconds. No more.”

Twelve minutes on the clock. The dead radioman, Ian Wagstaff, sealed inside one of the gold survival bags, had been carefully placed inside the troop carrier. The now delirious ambassador lay upon a makeshift bed between the two facing benches, breathing emergency oxygen. Gidwitz gave him first aid as Hawke raced the vehicle over the bridge at full throttle, out along the narrow shoulder of the mountain and through a narrow gorge. Finally he was heading up a steep icy incline he knew would lead to the crevasse and the long snowfield where they’d left the Black Widows.

Ichi, who sat up front in the cab, was looking at Hawke closely. “The palace is to be destroyed?” he asked.

“Yes. I hope Yasmin and the rikishi are taking shelter somewhere inside the mountain.”

“There are many bombs buried within that mountain, Hawkeye-san.”

“Bombs?” Hawke looked at him, changing down to a lower gear to make the grade.

“Bin Wazir is a death merchant. The mountain is one of his primary factories.”

“The British plane that exploded. And the new one to take its place. You know about these?” Ichi nodded, yes.

“Yasmin knows everything. She tells me everything. The new plane is disguised to look like the real one that was destroyed. The passengers aboard the new one are all from terrorist camps.”

“Is the new plane carrying bombs? How many?”

Hawke’s hands were relaxed upon the wheel, his eyes were calm and focused. But his heart was thudding in his chest.

“Some of the bombs in the mountain were going to America. But, now—”

“What, Ichi-san? You must tell me. There’s no time! Millions will die.”

“There was a problem with the fissile material. An accident. Many technicians died. Dr. Soong, who made the bombs, is aboard the plane for America now. He has infected those aboard with—”

“The bombs, Ichi, does he have bombs on the plane?”

“I believe that he does. But he is taking no chances now. Because of the problem, he has also infected everyone aboard with a virus. Something he created. Like God.”

“How many on the plane? Innocent people? What virus?”

“Four hundred trained terrorists, I think. No innocents. Smallpox.”

“Jesus, that’s the scourge,” Hawke said, pushing the accelerator to the floorboard. The Hagglund crested the top of the incline. To Hawke’s enormous relief, the three Black Widows were waiting just as he’d left them.

“I was worried they might have destroyed our planes,” he said to Ichi as he raced across the snow towards them. The sumo looked at him and smiled.

“You are not supposed to be alive.”

“I suppose not,” Hawke said, braking the ATV to a stop. He wished Ichi good luck and leapt out, running for his glider, organizing their escape as he ran. It had taken four minutes to reach the snowfield. Quick leapt off the roof of the cab and landed in the soft snow.

“Tommy, let’s roll. We’ve got less than eight minutes till bombs away. You guys know the drill. Mario and Ferg rig the poles for the snatch. You and Gidwitz keep the ambassador as comfortable as you can until we’re ready to get him into my plane. Gidwitz goes with you. My new friend Ichi-san will ride in Widowmaker. You guys’ll have to remove the middle seat to make room. Ditto my plane for Kelly. Move it!”

Hawke slid the canopy back and climbed into his pilot’s seat. There was a thin coating of frost on his instrument panel. He was thankful no snowfall had accumulated on his long slender wings. He lit up Hawkeye’s radio and thumbed the mike. His first order of business was getting his men the hell off this mountain. Behind him, the middle seat was being removed. The mission read-out on the panel ticked down to four minutes.

“Gabriel, Gabriel, this is Hawkeye,” he radioed the surveillance plane circling above him. “Come back.”

“Roger, Hawkeye, this is Gabriel. Shaving it a little close today, aren’t you, Captain?”

“We have the hostage, Gabriel. Alive, barely. Have emergency medical and trauma standing by to receive us. I am rigging the snatch poles for our extraction now,” Hawke said, “Poles and snatch wires will be up in under two minutes, so I want three Navy STOLs lined up with their hooks down and ready to grab us, over.”

“Uh, roger that, Hawkeye, if you look to your right, you’ll see them coming up the valley now.” Three of the four prop-driven planes that had delivered the gliders would now retrieve the survivors. A tailhook on each Navy STOL would snag a wire strung between two telescoping fiberglass poles mounted in the snow ahead of each plane. That wire was connected to an eyebolt at the nose of each glider. This glider snatch had been perfected by Navy pilots in the Pacific in 1944. It usually worked.

The last set of poles went up and he saw Ferg race for his plane.

Two minutes. Quick raced by, giving him a thumbs-up. The poles were all rigged and the crews were loading up. The Blue Mountain Boys were almost ready for extraction.

“Appreciate that, Gabriel, I need an immediate scrambled patch to the White House now. I repeat, this is Code Red FLASH-traffic emergency, over.”

“Uh, roger, we’ll put you through, Hawkeye,” the E2-C pilot said, all the banter gone now. “Stand by, over.”

Fifteen seconds later, after Brick Kelly had been carefully lowered and strapped on his back inside the newly created cockpit space, Hawke was talking to the president of the United States. He thumbed a switch to the right of his altimeter and the canopy cover closed silently over his head. Another toggle switch turned on the heat.

“Good work, Hawkeye,” Jack McAtee said, “I’m monitoring your traffic with the boys upstairs. You need to get those damn planes out of there now.”

“Working on it, Mr. President. We got Brick. I also have vital information—”

“You got to bin Wazir?” Hawke could hear the desperate edge of hope in the president’s voice. “What did you get?”

“Sir, bin Wazir blew a British Airways 747 out of the sky about twenty minutes ago. I saw it happen. Don’t know point of origin, but she was out over the Pacific, inbound to Los Angeles—”

The president cut him off, and Hawke could hear him barking orders to his staff. One minute. Christ!

The first Navy STOL roared ten feet over his head, snagged his wire, and the Black Widow glider lifted off, accelerating from zero to one hundred and twenty miles an hour in one second. Hawkeye and her tug flew straight up the crevasse and out into clear air. He looked back and down. FlyBaby and Widowmaker were airborne too, their tow planes climbing out fast.

Seconds later, his glider was rocked by the shock waves of massive explosions below. The B-52s, mere glints of silver above, had opened their bomb bays. American Tomahawk missiles, having flown all the way from the Nimitz Battle Group, were slamming into the mountain fortress, pulverizing it. The mountain peaks, where he’d been moments earlier, now disappeared in a massive cloud of ice, rock and debris climbing into the sky. It looked like a volcano blowing its top. But his little flock, now down to three, had made it out just in time.

“Go ahead, Hawkeye,” the president said. “I’ve got you on speaker. We’re all here in the Situation Room. What we know is, there was an explosion aboard a British Air carrier, but the plane is still apparently inbound.”

“Yes, sir, there may be another inbound aircraft carrying four hundred tangos infected with—”

“Another plane?”

“Affirmative, sir. You have an airplane inbound to Los Angeles that is not what it appears to be.”

“What about the goddamn Pigskins, Alex? Where are they?”

“I asked bin Wazir if the bombs were already inside the U.S. His reply, holy warriors now carry death to America. A scourge far more lethal than the atom. Quote, ‘Ten million Americans will die today—an angel of death will descend.’ ”

“Carrying how, Alex? How the hell were the warriors carrying the cargo? Angel of death? What in God’s name—”

“I know this sounds crazy, sir, but I saw it. When the British flight blew—”

“You saw the British plane go down?”

“Affirmative. Live feed on a monitor.”

“You assume it was a live feed.”

“Affirmative, sir, an assumption. When it blew, bin Wazir said, quote, ‘Another plane, identical, now takes its place.’ I have that confirmed through one source. That’s all I’ve got, sir.”

“An identical plane? To the British flight?”

“That’s what he said, sir, confirmed by my source. Bin Wazir told me that in one hour, America as we know it will cease to exist.”

“Jesus Christ—hold on, Alex—get Davis at NAS Miramar to scramble every goddamn F-117A Stealth fighter he’s got, now! Alex, repeat, he said one hour?”

“Yes, sir. That was 1400 hours. Exactly twenty-eight minutes ago.”

“Thirty-two minutes left.”

“Aye, sir.”

Hawke could hear a good deal of heated discussion at the other end. When the president returned, his voice was calm but edged with steel.

“This second inbound 747 you spoke of, Hawkeye. Would you characterize that as hard information, over?”

There was a long pause before Alex Hawke replied.

“Negative, sir, I could not go that far. Strike that, would not go that far.”

“God help us.”

“Yes, sir.”