The Sword of Fire

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Crouching in the shade of the perimeter wall, Hawke pushed the magazine release button on his Glock and pulled the slide back. The empty mag dropped to the ground and he quickly smacked the spare into the grip. Wasting an entire mag trying to save Devlin’s life on the beach had got his blood up, but now wasn’t the time for debates.

The peace didn’t last long, and now Zito’s men activated a series of security lights around the property. The bright lights lit the perimeter up almost as bright as day, and then the shooting started. The first to open fire was a man on the roof with what sounded like a compact machine pistol.

“Aim’s well off,” Devlin said.

“He doesn’t know where we are,” Hawke said. “He’s just making a statement.”

“I’ll give him a statement,” Lexi said, and raised her gun into the aim.

“You’ll never hit him as long as he’s behind these damned lights,” Devlin said.

Lexi threw him a look. “Thanks for that, bái chī.” She shook her head and then lined up the first light with the front sight post of her weapon. She pulled the trigger and the light exploded in a shower of sparks. “One down, four to go.”

Before the Irishman replied, Lexi Zhang astonished him by blasting the four remaining security lights to shattered glass in as many seconds. Then she lifted her weapon and fired on the shooter on the roof. He tried to take cover behind a chimney stack but she was too fast for him. She ploughed the first round into his left shoulder as he dived for the cover and turned him around like a spinning top. Firing a second time she hit his throat and he crumpled down like an empty suit.

She raised her smoking muzzle to her lips and blew the smoke into Devlin’s amazed face. “How was that?”

Devlin laughed. “Pretty damned good, as a matter of fact — but tell me, what does bái chī mean?”

“It means you’re very rugged.”

“Does it now?” he beamed.

“Yes,” Hawke said with a withering glance. “Does it now?”

Turning her back on Devlin, Lexi winked at Hawke and they turned to face the villa again. With the grounds plunged into darkness, they noticed a flashing light in one of the upstairs windows. “Check it out,” he said.

Lexi squinted up at the light. “What is it?”

“Morse code — SOS.”

“Lea!” Devlin said.

“Maybe,” Hawke muttered. “Or maybe a trap.”

“We have to check it out,” said Lexi.

Hawke nodded, and the team cut across the blackened lawn until they reached a broad patio and a set of French doors. Trying the doors and finding them locked, Hawke fired at them with his Glock and fractured the safety glass into a thousand pieces. He picked up a heavy bronze patio chair and hurled it at the window. It smashed through the pane and skidded to a halt in a sea of glass splinters all over the floor inside.

“Come on,” he said. “We haven’t got much time until…”

The lights went out.

“Damn it!” Lexi said. “Now they have the advantage.”

“They always had the advantage,” Devlin said.

“Not while I’m around,” said Hawke.

Lexi looked at him in the darkness. “If there’s one thing that always amazes me it’s the size of your cock-”

Her words were cut short by the sound of the enemy firing on them. Judging by what the rounds were hitting, Hawke figured they didn’t have night vision, but he dived on the floor just as fast. Seconds later Lexi and Devlin were beside him, taking shelter from the gunfire behind a large, antique sofa.

“It’s just two guys, I think,” Devlin said. “On the landing of the stairs there.”

With her eyes now accustomed to the darkness, Lexi peered around the sofa and confirmed what Devlin had said.

“There’s another staircase over there in the kitchen,” Hawke said quietly. “You keep these clowns company,” he said. “I’m going upstairs to get Lea.”

With Lexi and Devlin giving him cover fire, he crouch-walked across the sunken living room and hit the stairs. Seconds later he was sprinting down a long central corridor until he found a door which he thought was in approximately the right place. Opening it, he found an empty bathroom with moonlight glinting on the polished silver taps of the bath, so he moved on down the corridor. Lea was up here somewhere and it was up to him to rescue her.

With the sound of gunfire and yelling below him, Hawke sprinted to the next room along the corridor and booted the door open to find Lea Donovan standing in the moonlight beside another man. With his back to the window he was little more than a silhuoette to Hawke, but the Englishman could see clearly enough that he was holding a gun to her throat.

“Joe!” Lea cried out. “Behind you!”

Hawke spun around to see another man stepping out from behind the door. With the moonlight shining directly in his face he was able to recognize him at once as one of the men he had fought back in Boston.

“Drop the weapon,” Moonlight Man said, calmly lifting a pistol into view. The silvery light shone dully on the weapon’s muzzle as he grinned at Hawke. “I’ll ask you only one more time, and then I’ll…”

Hawke fired his gun at the man before he’d finished the sentence. The round tore through the man’s eye and sprayed a misty cloud of blood and brain matter on the wall behind him.

The former commando turned and fired at the man holding Lea before the first man hit the floor. The back of the second man’s neck blasted away into pieces and he slumped to the floorboards with a look of terrified realization etched on his now-dead face.

Lea screamed. The sheer speed with which Hawke had despatched the two men holding her at gunpoint had shocked even her. She had expected a wisecrack, an insult and then for her lover to throw down his gun. Instead she got a bloodbath, dealt out in less than two seconds. With the gun still smoking, Hawke crossed the room and held her by her shoulders.

“Are you all right?” he said. He noticed the shooting downstairs had stopped.

“Sure… I…” she glanced down at the dead man at her feet. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Where’s Zito?” Hawke asked, straight to business.

“I’m not sure. He was in here but when you attacked the villa he ran out and started barking orders at his men.”

Lexi and Devlin ran into the room. The Irishman approached Lea and smiled warmly. “Are ya alright, girl?”

“I’m fine, Danny. Joe… handled it.”

Devlin looked down at the two dead men, and sniffed. “So I can see.”

Hawke kissed Lea but then locked his eyes on her. “What about the manuscript and idol?”

“The idol’s already gone,” she said. “Some guys turned up a few hours ago and took it. Zito told me that finding it on me was an unexpected pleasure. All he was hired to find was the manuscript.”

“But the men that took the idol,” Lexi said. “They didn’t take the manuscript?”

Lea shook her head. “Nope. Zito said that’s being delivered to someone else.”

“So where’s Zito got the manuscript?” Hawke asked.

“How should I know?” Lea said, hands on hips. “He didn’t invite me here for a tour of the place, you know!”

“Fantastic,” Hawke said. “You’re on the island for bugger knows how many hours and you haven’t found out where Zito’s safe is.”

“Give her a break,” Devlin said.

Hawke and Lea turned to Devlin and spoke at the same time: “Keep out of it!”

“I was just…”

“I’d keep out of it if I were you,” Lexi said.

“So now we’ve got to track the safe down,” Hawke said.

“It’s not in the damned safe,” Lea said, squeezing her eyes shut as she struggled to remember something. “Wait a minute — he mentioned something about reading it in his observatory. It means nothing to him, anyway — he was hired to take it by someone else, like I said.”

“Who by?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “He wouldn’t let that particular cat out of the bag. He said I’d find out tomorrow.”

“Too bad neither you nor the manuscript are going to be in his possession tomorrow then, isn’t it?” Hawke said. “We need to get out of here and in a hurry, but we need the manuscript first. Danny — can you arrange some transport while we go to the observatory?”

Devlin chuckled. “Leave it to me, Joe.”

They watched Devlin vanish into the darkness of the corridor and then Hawke turned to Lea. “So, which way to this observatory?”

“I think it’s at the far end of the corridor outside this room,” Lea said.

They checked the corridor was clear and then made their way hurriedly toward the observatory.

“It’s definitely down here, right?” Lexi said.

“I already said that I think so,” Lea said, “but only from overhearing snatches of their conversation.”

They made their way down the final stretch of the corridor and turned a corner to find themselves faced with large double doors. Osservatorio was written on one of them in polished gold letters.

“Bingo!” Lexi said.

They entered and found a large, low-lit room with the largest telescope any of them had ever seen in the center of it. It was mounted on a turntable and pointing toward a retracting roof.

“So this is what old Zito spends his time on when he’s not giving people the cement shoes?” Lexi said, mesmerised by the enormous telescope.

“There!” Lea shouted. “That’s it — on the chair next to the telescope.”

Hawke jogged over to the chair and snatched up the manuscript. “All right — we’re set. Let’s just hope we can get out of here as easily as we got in.”

“So what’s the plan, Joe Hawke?” Lea asked.

Hawke stuffed the manuscript into his shirt and winked at her. “Just like usual — we wing it.”

They left the room and jogged down the stairs toward the lower part of the villa. “So this winging it…” Lexi said. “Is that an SBS thing?”

“If you mean improvising, then yes,” Hawke said with a grin.

They were near the smashed patio doors now, and heard raised voices from a room on the other side of the house. “That’s Zito,” Lea said.

“Sounds pretty pissed off to me,” Lexi said with a chuckle.

“Time for us to go,” Hawke said. “And pray your Commandant has got us some of those bikes we saw earlier.”

Lea gave him an odd look. “Former Commandant, Joe.”

Outside in the hot night, it wasn’t long before Zito’s men located them and opened fire, but they ran from the lethal fusillade with everything they had. Hawke navigated them across the lawns and into the shrubs which formed the border between the villa and the small forest, and they scanned the trees for Devlin.

“Over here, you silly bastards!”

Looking deeper into the trees they saw Danny Devlin half obscured behind a trunk of a large stone pine. He was waving them over and they ran to him in the relative safety of the small forest.

“I got two of the bikes.” Devlin straddled one of them and started it up. “Back to the Aurora, and quick as you like!”

Lexi was giving them cover now, firing at Zito’s men as they tried to cross the lawn and reach the forest. Above them they heard the sound of rotor blades whirring and then a Robinson R44 helicopter rose over the villa. After swooping over the forest it turned hard to port and made for the coast.

“Looks like Zito’s out of here,” Lea said.

“He must have got what he wanted from the manuscript,” said Hawke.

Lexi frowned. “So someone’s given his strings a tug.”

Hawke thrust the manuscript into Lea’s hands. “We’ll worry about that later. Right now get this thing out of here!” he yelled. “We’re right behind you!”

Lea jumped on the back of Devlin’s dirt bike and clung on tight as he raced away into the night.

Hawke kick-started the other dirt bike and Lexi continued to spray hot lead all over the men. “Time to go, Lex!”

She leaped on the back of the bike and wrapped her arms around Hawke’s waist.

“Go!”