The Lost City

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“You win some, you lose some.”

Hawke downed his lager and put the glass on the table with a loud smack. “Maybe, Lexi,” he said. “But you don’t lose against a man like Dirk Kruger. We’ve had too many losses. We let Mendoza get away in Mexico — and look at the carnage that mistake cost. We lost Maria and maybe even Rich, and now we let the man responsible for most of that slip through our fingers like sand.”

Ryan took a sip of the lager. “On the bright side, I’m still here. That’s how come we didn’t get Kruger. None of you would have screwed that up.”

Scarlet laughed loudly but immediately stopped, glancing at Ryan. “You’ve changed.”

“Have I?”

She nodded. “You’re now half-nerd, half-man.”

“Well the nerd half wants a cigarette,” Ryan said, and helped himself to one from Scarlet’s pack. He put it in his mouth and fired it up with her Zippo. Everyone stared at him as he blew the smoke out into the air and sighed.

Lea looked concerned. “Are you okay, Ry?”

He gave her a sharp look. “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

“You don’t smoke cigarettes, for one thing.”

Ryan downed his beer and took another drag. “I smoke weed all the time, so what’s the difference?” He shrugged his shoulders and fixed his eyes on her. She could see something was missing now. She knew he was still in shock from the news of Maria’s death, but this seemed like something else, something more… he had a new look in his eyes, a new recklessness she had never seen before.

“Just sayin’…”

Hawke broke the tension by rising from his chair and asking anyone if they wanted another beer. The consensus was clear, so he stepped inside for a few moments. He emerged a few minutes later and pulled his chair out. He sat down with a sigh and handed around the cold beers. The mission had been successful — to a degree. They had ended Saqqal’s insane bioweapon threat and passed the Utopia plague to the authorities, and they had also stopped Kruger from stealing the Lost Treasure of the Incas, but they had lost it all to Eddie Kosinski. Someone had tipped him off and his CIA boys had been all over the Rio docks like white on rice. It wasn’t the first time he had lost the grand prize to Kosinski.

The food Lea had ordered arrived at their table — flame-grilled picanha steaks with black beans and rice, and another round of chilled Brahmas on the side. He took a slow sip of the cold beer and glanced out across Copacabana Beach and the South Atlantic Ocean beyond. Down here in the southern hemisphere it was summer, and the tropical heat of the bay enveloped him like a blanket.

Above him, the stars struggled to be seen through the incredible light pollution of the behemoth city at his back, but he could still see a few in the far eastern sky. He ate some of the steak and tried to relax, but what would have been a perfect evening was destroyed by the absence of Maria, Rich and Alex and he knew everyone here tonight felt the same way. The only consolation was Scarlet hadn’t made any crappy Barry Manilow jokes since they’d arrived at the restaurant.

He tried to shake the thought of their missing friends from his mind, but it lingered like cannon smoke on a battlefield. He lifted his first bottle and finished the beer before picking up the second and taking the top third off in a couple of seconds. He set it down and looked around the small, beleaguered group.

“I think we won today,” Reaper said, but without conviction.

“How’d you work that out?” Lea said.

He gave his usual shrug. “We discovered the Lost City of the Incas for one thing, and we stopped Kruger getting the treasure,” he said matter-of-factly. He took a long drag on his roll-up cigarette and winced as he sucked the smoke down. When he spoke next, the smoke tumbled out with his words. “And we ended the threat of Saqqal and Jawad,” he said, tapping his forefinger on the table to underline the point.

“I guess, but it still feels like a failure,” Lea said.

“And we all know why,” Ryan said.

“Nevertheless,” Scarlet threw in. “We won the battle we set out to win.”

Hawke shook his head. “We might have won the battle, but we’re losing the war. Our team is in shreds and Elysium is smouldering ruins.”

“We will win, Joe,” Lea said.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do, Lea,” he said.

The others nodded in agreement. They all knew what was expected of them. With Eden out of the game and no way to know when or even if he would be back, they all had to give more to the cause, but they all knew how hard it would be.

Hawke unbuttoned the top of his shirt and Scarlet wolf-whistled loudly causing a few of the diners to turn and gawp.

“Weyhay!” she said. “Undo another couple of buttons just for me will you, darling?”

He gave her a sarcastic smirk.

“And if you pop open the top of your shorts you can let that gut out for a few minutes.”

Hawke stared at her and after a long period of silence a thin, uncertain smile broke out on his face. They had a lot of work to do — hunting down Dirk Kruger for a start, not to mention smashing the Oracle and his sinister cult — but he had the camaraderie of the people sitting around this table… the camaraderie of his closest friends, and nothing could beat that. He raised his bottle over the center of the table.

“To revenge?” Scarlet said with a dark sparkle in her eyes.

“No,” Hawke said with a solemn shake of his head. “To old friends and new adventures.”