The Aztec Prophecy

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Hawke lunged forward with the chair and rammed one of the legs into the man’s face with a savage degree of accuracy and force. It tore through his cheek and smashed his cheekbone. He howled in agony and staggered backwards, raising his hand to check the severity of the wound.

Hawke disarmed him and then used him as a human shield as he fired at the others, but Mendoza was gone as quick as smoke and the mag only had three rounds in it and was now empty. Hawke wanted to go after him but one of the other goons pulled a knife from his belt and padded over to him. Hawke was tall, but this man towered over him as he got closer. He raised the knife and after offering a string of Spanish profanities he brought it crashing down toward Hawke’s head, but Hawke dodged the attack and side-stepped the much slower man.

Before the man could respond, Hawke powered a heavy punch into his flank and brought his other fist up hard and fast into the bottom of his jaw. He heard the teeth smash as he drove the lower jaw upwards and the man screamed out in agony, spitting blood out of his mouth. It looked like he’d bitten off part of his tongue.

Hawke winced but took the moment to snatch the knife from the man’s hand and stuff it through the top of his belt. Now, one of the men grabbed at his arm and yanked him back away from the wall beneath the archive drawers. Hawke used his spinning momentum to drive home another fat punch, this time hitting the other man square in his face. He flew backwards, all smashed nose and wobbling jowls until he collided with another chair and fell over in a heap with his legs tangled up in the chair’s stretcher.

Free now, Hawke ran to the door and searched the other room for Mendoza but all he saw was another brawl at the end of the aisle where Lea and Maria were taking it in turns to deliver axe-kicks to one of the goons. He ran toward them, with Ryan in his wake.

Maria had known it wasn’t going to be a fair fight from the second she saw the man’s beer gut, but the FSB were not world-renowned for their mercy-giving qualities and now she was cranking things up to a terrifying degree, alternating left boot-right boot with the power of a ninja. One final smash to the jaw sent him off to sleep, and now with both men down, they sprinted along the aisle Pavoni had led them down not twenty minutes earlier. Moving forward to the far door they wrenched it open to see Mendoza and his remaining protection climbing out of a window and clambering down onto a roof.

They reached the window only to see Mendoza and his surviving men drop safely from the low roof to the ground. The cartel man spun around and blew them a kiss, and then drew his finger theatrically across his scarred throat to indicate he would kill them.

“That’s a bit rude,” Lea said, tutting.

Hawke nodded. “So let’s teach them some manners… down you go, Ryan.”

“Eh?”

“Out the window and climb down the bloody wall — they’re getting away with the codex!”

After a short and unappreciated protest, Ryan followed Hawke out of the window, followed by Lea and Maria. They made their way down the roof valley and over the gutter before dropping down to the gravel on the ground level.

“Over there!” Maria cried. “I see them!”

Hawke shielded his eyes from the bright Roman sun. Sprinting for their lives now, Silvio Mendoza and his men were making serious tracks.

But not for long, Hawke thought.