The King's Tomb

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Driven by a fierce loyalty, the wall of muscle and bone that was Vincent Reno stormed forward into the swarm. Charging into the enemy ranks, he lashed out with one hand curled into a heavy, deadly fist and the other gripping a dagger drawn from his belt. Spinning, kicking, crushing and then hurling those who dared to attack him out of his way, the man they called Reaper proved once more his indispensable position in the team.

Scarlet was next into the fray, body-slamming a soldier away from the Frenchman and taking him out with a razor-sharp scissor kick. Armed with a combat knife in each hand, she slashed at the enemy and forced them back. Vermillion arcs of blood sprayed through the air around the two ECHO team members as they fought their way through the men. Nothing could stop them from rescuing their old friend, not even here in the heart of the Chinese homeland.

Armed with handguns, Hawke and Devlin fired on the soldiers further along the corridor, taking out two of them before the third and final man freed his gun from the holster and took cover behind a stairwell wall. Supercharged with adrenaline from the unexpected assault, Lexi lifted the gun Hawke had given her into the aim and unloaded the magazine in a ferocious fusillade directed at some of the crowd closing in around Reaper and Scarlet. Men screamed as their chests bursts open and sprayed blood up the walls behind them. Others scattered for cover.

Working as one now, the Frenchman and former SAS officer took advantage of the few soldiers brave enough to continue engaging them under Lexi’s fire. Reaper fought hard, with the power of a pro MMA wrestler and the speed of a ninja. Ducking and diving, dodging and blocking and then returning fire with a barrage of rib-cracking power punches and crippling elbow strikes. He grunted and he sweated, but he never flinched and he never slowed. Fighting Reaper was like fighting a mountain.

Hawke and Devlin worked their way up the corridor with a Buddy System, or bounding overwatch tactic. The Englishman went first, charging down the corridor as Devlin backed him up with suppressive fire. Hawke slammed into a shallow doorway and now provided the cover while Devlin sprinted forward, all the time closing in on the soldier defending the distant stairwell. Now Devlin took cover and fired on the man while Hawke took his turn in the offensive forward position. Reaching the stairwell, Hawke reloaded his gun and prepared to spin into the void and take out the soldier.

Behind them, Lexi tossed her empty gun aside. It clattered to the tiled floor as she leaped into the brawl with Reaper and Scarlet. Filled with hate and loathing at how she had been treated in this place she relished the chance to take some back for herself, to prove to herself that she wasn’t a spent force and that they had failed to break her. The first soldier was a man who was trying to attack Scarlet from behind.

She grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, smacking the heel of her hand into the dead-center of his surprised face and crushing his nose to pulp. She finished the job by swinging her elbow around full-force and smashing it into his mouth, knocking his front teeth out and nearly making him swallow his tongue.

He staggered back, raising his hands to feel the damage she had inflicted on him and she delivered a devastating Wushu butterfly kick, instantly knocking him out.

The second man lunged at her but slipped on his comrade’s blood. Flailing in the air for a few seconds, Lexi drew on her terrifying knowledge of martial arts and put him down hard with a merciless Krav Maga eye-strike. Illegal in professional competitions, ramming rigid fingers into your enemy’s eyes was a certain method of taking him out of the fight.

As he doubled over and screamed in pain, Lexi ended their date by landing a couple of hard slaps around his face before driving a spinning crescent kick into his head. Out cold before he hit the floor, she kicked him in the balls for good measure and then turned back to the fight.

Reaper was gripping two wriggling men by the backs of their heads. He brought their skulls together with a toe-curling cracking sound and they slumped to the floor at his boots. Scarlet was running the blade of her knife across the chest of another. Blood burst out through his fatigues and he yelled out in terror. More soldiers now came from every angle, running down the stairs behind them and emerging from a fire exit beside it.

“Something tells me they don’t want to let you go, Lexi,” Scarlet said.

Lexi winked. “I have that effect on people.”

Up ahead, Hawke spun around into the void and emptied his magazine into the soldier defending the stairwell. The bullets tore into his chest and blasted out the other side, ricocheting off the steel banister rail and burying themselves in the green and white painted plaster walls.

Devlin joined him at the stairs, gun raised into the aim and ready to fire. “All done?”

Hawke nodded and raised the palm mic to his mouth. “Northern stairwell cleared. We’re good to go.”

Scarlet’s voice crackled back in his ear. “Having some trouble back here, darling.”

Hawke shared a look with Devlin. “Must have sent in reinforcements. Stay here and make sure the stairs stay clear, I’ll go and sort it out.”

He sprinted down the corridor and was shocked by what he saw. The lobby was now a warzone with Scarlet, Reaper and Lexi fighting at least twenty PLA soldiers. Tasked with defending the inner sanctum of the Chinese State, the men and women in uniform were fighting as fiercely as they could, but his ECHO friends were more than a match for them. By the time he had reached them the action was over.

“Turns out you didn’t need me after all,” he said.

Scarlet shrugged. “What can I say?”

“Where now?” Lexi said. “I hate this place.”

Hawke glanced at the bloody rag wrapped around her left hand. “To the courtyard. We have a little surprise waiting there.”

They headed back to Devlin and reached the small courtyard where they had broken into the Torture House compound. To Lexi’s confusion, Hawke then leaped down through a manhole cover. Working quickly and efficiently and exactly according to plan, he picked up their backpacks one by one and passed them up to the rest of the team.

Lexi nervously scanned the courtyard for any sign of the soldiers. “What the hell’s going on? They’re sealing the perimeter! We don’t stand a chance.” As she spoke, a series of search lights switched on and lit the night as the soldiers started to scan the perimeter for any sign of the invaders.

Hawke lifted himself out of the hole. “Right, everyone open their packs and let’s get out of here.”

With confusion still etched deep on her face, Lexi followed the others and unzipped the chunky backpack Hawke had passed her from the sewer pipe. She opened it up and was astonished by what she saw.

“I don’t believe this.”

“Believe it and hurry the hell up!” Devlin said.

She pulled a strange, heavy black object from the bag and set it down on the cobblestones. “What the hell is this?”

Scarlet said, “It’s a jet-powered hoverboard, a bit like the Flyboard Air but with its own proprietary software and turbojets. Its top speed is one hundred miles per hour, it has a ceiling of ten thousand feet and can fly for fifteen minutes before running out of fuel.”

“Am I dreaming this?”

“No,” Devlin said. “And to be fair it’s more of a nightmare.”

Hawke fitted a small pack onto his back. “There’s enough A1 kerosene in these packs to last around ten to fifteen minutes and after that you’re hitting the deck. How high you are when that happens is up to you, but I’d recommend no more than ten feet. These remotes control the throttles and after that just follow my lead.”

“Are you insane?” Lexi asked. “We’ll never get away on these things!”

“We’ll never get away any other way,” he said. “The perimeter was completely sealed the moment the alarms went off. Besides, where’s your spirit of adventure?”

Lexi sighed and shook her head as she stepped onto the board and secured her boots inside the straps. “I saw someone doing this on YouTube once,” she said, turning cynical eyes onto Hawke. “He had a parachute.”

“No room for parachutes.”

Soldiers tumbled out of the courtyard door and saw them. They raised their guns and started firing.

Hawke fired his board up first and the four miniature, jet-powered turboengines burst to life. Rising up into the air he turned and fired on the men with his Glock, forcing them to take cover.

Scarlet and Reaper were already powering their jetboards into the air behind him, hands on their weapons and spinning around to fire on the men. Hawke thought Lexi was having some trouble with her board, but Devlin covered her while she fired it up and got it moving. Breaking a Chinese citizen out of a government facility like this would lead to some serious questions at the highest levels, especially if anything went wrong and they were already on the wrong side of most governments.

Lexi was higher in the air now and Devlin was just a few seconds behind her, wobbling about as he fought to control the jetboard while simultaneously firing on the soldiers.

They gained speed rapidly, the 250 horsepower jet turbines easily lifting them up to the elevation of the outer perimeter wall. Another alarm declared loud and clear that they were leaving the compound. Searchlights lit them up like Christmas trees as they flew over the top of the outer wall and headed down toward the street.

Hawke was in the lead, racing down from the top of the wall and slowing up around twenty feet above the street. Below him, soldiers poured out of the main gate and sprinted after them with rifles.

He flinched as a bullet traced past him and then another struck the casing on one of the jetboard’s four turboengines. The soldier who had fired on him was still giving chase, stopping every few yards to raise the rifle and take another pot shot.

The five-strong team now converged around fifty feet in the air as they continued to flee. Below them, a motorbike raced out of the main gate and headed in their direction. Tiger was driving it and Monkey was riding pillion, armed with two PLA-issue P19 semi-automatic pistols.

He teased some more speed out of the jetboard, suddenly shooting up into the air once again and leaving Tiger far below in his wake. Lexi was at his side now, deftly manoeuvring the jetboard as if she’d spent half her life flying one.

“Zàijiàn, you bastards!”

Spinning around in the air, she raised her weapon and opened fire on the soldiers sprinting across Tiananmen Square. Spraying them with rounds, she forced them to take cover behind their vehicles, but in the distance, she saw at least another half a dozen PLA trucks giving pursuit.

We’ll be lucky to get of this with our lives, she thought, then saw Tiger and Monkey speeding up on their bike and continuing to pursue them.

“This is not good!” she screamed. “They’re gaining on us!”

“What’s the plan, Hawkster?” Scarlet asked.

With only a few minutes of kerosene left before the jetboards fell out of the sky, Hawke knew there was only one plan. “We get back to our car and get to the rendezvous point as fast as we can!”