The Sword of Fire

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Hawke, Lexi and Devlin waited in the shadows as the minisub pilot pulled alongside a small jetty and killed the engine. When he opened the hatch the first and last thing he saw was Hawke’s fist as it piled into his face. Devlin dragged the body along the jetty as the Englishman fired the engine back up and then they were away.

It didn’t take Hawke long to acquaint himself with the controls and set a course for Zito’s island. He submerged the Aurora a few meters beneath the surface so they wouldn’t be seen: Zito and his men might not be expecting it to return so soon, so Hawke decided to err on the side of caution.

“If they’ve hurt her, I’ll kill every last one of them,” Devlin said.

Hawke and Lexi exchanged a glance. “There’s a line for that,” Lexi said to the Irishman. “And you’re at the back of it.”

Hawke noticed the offshore bars gradually rising up as they neared the island, and he made the decision to surface the small vessel. When they broke through the waves they all saw the lights of Isola Pacifica’s long northern coast. Behind them, in the center of the island, was some elevated ground. It was partly covered in a large pine forest and perching on the top was Zito’s villa complex.

“She’s in there somewhere,” Hawke said, killing the sub’s lights.

“Not for long,” said Lexi.

Hawke navigated the sub into Zito’s mooring jetty and cut the engine. Now, with only the sound of the waves splashing against the glass cockpit bubble, he opened the hatch and climbed out into the darkness. When Lexi and Devlin joined him, he had already lashed the sub to the jetty with some mooring rope and was now surveying the best way to get up to the villa.

They decided to go to the east and use the forest for cover for as long as they could, but there was still the open ground of the beach to cross first. A few steps into their journey they all heard the sound of engines revving in the darkness.

“What the hell?” Devlin said. “How did they know?”

“Maybe they have a crystal ball?” Lexi said, glancing at the Irishman.

“Here they come,” Hawke said. “They’re on dirt bikes — back to the sub!”

“And desert Lea?” Devlin said.

“We need a new plan,” Lexi said, but Danny Devlin was already on his way. He had split up from Hawke and Lexi and was now sprinting toward the cover of the trees.

“What the hell is he doing?” Lexi said.

Hawke shook his head and cursed. “He’s going to get us all killed!”

As they took cover behind the minisub, Lexi raised her hand and pointed at Devlin. “They’ve already seen him. They’re on his tail!”

One of the dirt bikes broke away from the other and swerved hard to the left. It was now headed in the direction of Danny Devlin who was still running up the beach toward the cover of a line of stone pines at the top of the dunes.

The Irishman glanced over his shoulder and saw the threat fast approaching, and then they were all aware of the sound of gunfire.

Hawke saw a third man up on the bluff, hunkered down behind a sage bush and his eye fixed firmly to the telescopic sights of a sniper’s rifle. He cursed and called out to Devlin to warn him of the threat.

The man on the dirt bike was now almost nipping at Devlin’s heels. He pulled an MP5 from his belt and began firing at his prey. The bullets ripped through the sand and chased after the former Irish Ranger as he raced toward the cover of the trees.

Hawke opened fire with his Glock. Night shrouded the biker, and he was racing away out of sight, but the rounds slammed into the sand around him and nearly knocked him off his bike.

Under fire now, and struggling to control the bike with one hand and fire the machine pistol with the other, the man raised the weapon and fired on Devlin again. The bullets peppered the sand behind the Irishman, but before they could rip into his back, he dived into the cover of the trees and bushes up on the ridge at the top of the beach.

Lexi breathed a sigh of relief but Hawke cursed at the unnecessary risk Danny Devlin had taken. He could have gotten them all killed and had put the entire operation in jeopardy.

“Holy crap,” Lexi said. “That was close!”

“Too close,” Hawke grumbled. “He could have got himself killed doing that.”

But there was no time to think about right or wrong. With Devlin up inside the cover of Isola Pacifica’s small forest, the rider burned off down one of the narrow tracks inside the woods in pursuit. The other rider turned around and headed back in the direction of Hawke and Lexi back on the jetty.

“Oh, crap,” Lexi said. “That was predictable.”

“Yeah — thanks to Mr Devlin.”

The man racing toward them pulled a machine pistol and began firing. Hawke had used a whole mag trying to save Devlin, so now he needed a new one but there was no time. The rider was so close Hawke could smell the two-stroke exhaust fumes and as the bullets danced their way up the wooden jetty, he scanned for a weapon. Spying a loose board in the jetty, he wrenched it free with a hefty tug.

“Jump!” he yelled, holding onto the board as he leaped off the jetty.

They both dived into the water and swam down under the jetty seeking whatever cover they could find. Looking up to the surface Hawke saw the rider had slowed down and was now taking his dirt bike along to the end of the jetty where the Aurora was moored. He was peering down into the water and pointing the MP5 down at the waves as he went, searching for any sign of them.

Thanks to his extensive SBS training, Hawke could hold his breath for several minutes, but he knew Lexi Zhang would run out of air much faster, so he had to think fast and act even quicker. If she broke the surface to take a breath the rider would rake her full of holes in a heartbeat.

Lexi had swum over to him now but he could barely see her in the dark water. The full moon gave a low light and lit her face a ghostly silver, and her eyes were staring at him with desperation and fear.

The rider fired the MP5 and they both saw the bullets tracing through the water all around them. He had no idea where they were and Hawke knew it. He was firing blind and would soon give up.

Hawke waved at Lexi and gestured she should follow him, and then he turned and swam back along the length of the jetty toward the shore. With the plank of wood still in his hands he swam up to surface and sure enough the final rider turned and headed back to the shore.

Speeding up as he prepared to jump the dirt bike off the jetty and land it back on the sandy beach, Hawke waited until the last second and then rammed the plank up through the gap in between the jetty boards.

The dirt bike rider had no time to react. Half a second later his front tire smashed into the plank and the spinning wheel came to an instant stop, propelling the rider off the bike. He backflipped through the air and landed with a heavy crunch while his bike crashed down on its side and came to a rest at the beach end the jetty.

Hawke and Lexi clambered up out of the sea and then the Englishman made his way over to the rider. Still soaking wet, and aware of the sniper hiding up on the bluff, he acted fast. Grabbing hold of the disoriented man’s helmet he twisted it hard to the right and back again. They both heard his neck snap and then a high velocity round took the top inch off one of the jetty poles.

“Shit!”

A shower of splintered wood burst into the air between them. They looked at one another and said at the same time, “Night sights!”

Hawke cursed again and grabbed Lexi by the arm, pulling her down off the jetty and into the sand. He knew the direction of the sniper because of the way the round had struck the pole, and now they were tucked down behind the riders’s dirt bike.

“This is our only way out of here,” he said.

Lexi looked at him. “So what are you waiting for?”

He pushed the dirt bike back up onto its wheels and straddled it. Lexi jumped on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Just like that night in Hong Kong, remember?”

Yes, he remembered, but when another high velocity sniper’s round thudded into the sand a few millimeters from the front tire he was very much back in the moment. Revving the bike wildly and releasing the clutch he was soon steering the dirt bike across the dark beach and up toward the same ridge Danny Devlin had used for cover a few moments earlier.

Sniper fire was now spitting all around them as the gunman up on the bluff tracked them along the beach through his night sights. Hawke swerved the bike left and right in an attempt to make them harder to track, but then one of the rounds ripped out the rubber on the rear tire and sent the bike skidding all over the place.

Gunfire from the forest now. He saw a muzzle flash from behind the trunks of the stone pines. For a second Hawke almost turned the dirt bike west and headed away from the ridge but then he realized the shooting inside the pine forest was aimed at the sniper up on the bluff.

“Must be Danny!” he said.

“He’s redeemed himself, then,” said Lexi.

Hawke aimed the battered dirt bike for the ridge, and seeing a narrow pathway that seemed to lead off to the right, he raced up it as fast as he could with the intention of jumping the last few meters.

With Devlin’s cover fire to their left, Hawke now zoomed the bike up the incline and launched into the night air. The engine growled as they flew through the night and then crashed back down on the path leading into the small forest. Gravel chips and pine cones exploded out around them as the bike smashed down to earth.

Lexi pointed to another muzzle flash. ‘There!”

Hawke revved the bike and turned the handlebars to the left. Navigating the narrow path for a few seconds they were soon beside Danny Devlin. He was crouching behind one of the pine trunks with a good view of the sniper. A few meters behind him was the other rider — dead in the undergrowth, and his bike was propped up against another trunk.

“Glad you could make it,” Devlin said.

Hawke opened his mouth to tell the Irishman his fortune but Lexi grabbed his arm.

“Not the time, Joe.”

She was right, but he couldn’t help it. “You could have killed all of us, Danny!”

He smiled and winked. “Not my fault if you’re slow off the mark, Josiah.”

Hawke’s response was silenced by Devlin turning and firing the stolen rider’s weapon at the sniper.

“Now,” Devlin said coolly. “I wonder if that third round made the mark?”

They looked over the top of the dark beach at the bluff and then they saw the sniper roll gently away from his position and let go of the rifle. It tumbled off the edge of the bluff and hit the sandy beach below it with a soft thud.

Devlin gave them another of his famous winks. “I thank you…”

“Good shot!” Lexi said.

“Thanks,” said Devlin. “I don’t think that naughty little monkey’s ever going to reload again.”

She turned to Hawke. “Wasn’t it, Joe?”

“What?”

“A good shot!”

Hawke paused for a second. “Let’s get on with it, yeah? We can congratulate ourselves when Lea’s safe.”

“We’ll get her back safe, all right,” Devlin said with confidence.

“Maybe,” Hawke said flatly. “But thanks to you, the whole world and his wife knows we’re here.”

The former SBS man pushed past Devlin and padded through the undergrowth toward the treeline closest to the villa. With the two dirt bike riders and the sniper taken out, it was pretty obvious Giancarlo Zito was not going to be in a very good mood when they finally caught up with him.

Worse, thanks to Devlin’s crazy call to make a break for it back on the beach, the Italian mobster would be totally prepared for any assault and maybe even making plans to leave the island with Lea and the manuscript before they could reach the villa. He knew Lea spoke very highly of ‘the Commandant’ but he was starting to ask questions about her judgement of the man.

As they trudged through the forest toward the southern part of the villa compound Hawke turned to Devlin. “This time, you do as I say, when I say it, right?”

Devlin raised his palms in a truce gesture and gently bowed his head. “You’re the boss, Joe, you’re the boss.”

Hawke locked eyes on him and sighed. “On an ECHO operation, in the field, then yes, I am, Danny. If you can’t handle it then you can’t roll with us, all right?”

Devlin was silent for a few tense seconds, and then smiled and said, “I already told you — you’re the boss.”

“Joe — leave it, we have to think of Lea,” Lexi said.

“I am thinking of Lea,” Hawke said defiantly. “When we get inside Zito’s villa we can’t afford another fuckfest like we just had back on the beach, and that happened because the chain of command broke down. Are we all clear?”

Devlin and Lexi nodded. Everyone knew the reprimand had been aimed at the Irishman, but no one mentioned it again as they trudged through the final part of the forest, broke the tree line and finally emerged face to face with Zito’s private villa.