The Sword of Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Hawke got into the Suburban, slammed the door shut after him and brought his fist down on the dashboard with a hefty smack. Losing Kloos like this was a major tactical error. Not only had he allowed the professor’s life to be put at severe risk but Giancarlo Zito now had the opportunity to get the missing information he needed in order to track down the sword. Kruger would be beaming at his success, and there was only one antidote to that: take that success away from him and kill him with it.

Everyone else was already in the vehicle, and Devlin had just told a joke but only Lea was laughing. “And do you remember that time when Benny went on leave and we put his car up for sale?”

Lea laughed again and raised her hand to her mouth to cover the laugh. “Oh God, I do! Poor bastard had phone calls requesting test drives all through his holiday.”

“Back to Kloos and the manuscript people,” Hawke said, glancing at Lea. “This isn’t a holiday.”

Her face dropped. “You don’t say? Jeez — we were just talking about old times.”

Devlin said nothing.

“We have to get to Wales in a hurry,” Hawke said. “It’s not going to take long for Zito to get what he wants out of Kloos, and when he does the sword’s his for the taking. That will make Kruger happy, and anything that makes that son of a bitch happy makes me unhappy.”

“Got that right,” Ryan said.

“Can you get us to the sword with what Kloos gave us, mate?”

“Maybe. I’ll give it some thought on the plane.”

Reaper slammed the SUV into reverse and spun the wheels as he brought the vehicle out of Kloos’s side street and onto the main drag. Hawke glanced out the tinted window at the people who were now daring enough to venture back into the city again after the violence around the station.

As if she had read his mind, Lea leaned forward from the middle seats and handed him her iPhone. The day’s horror had already made it to the international press, and there was even a picture of the M-Squadron outside the station on the front cover of the New York Times. The headline ran: TERROR COMES TO AMSTERDAM. Looking closely in the rear of the image Hawke saw Reaper behind one of the trams. Luckily the Frenchman’s face was obscured by the distance.

“What’s going on?” Reaper asked, not taking his eyes off the road.

“You almost got famous,” Hawke said without humor. He showed his old friend the front page of the paper and then returned the phone to Lea.

“Fame is fleeting, mon ami,” Reaper said. “Those who chase it are fools running toward the end of a rainbow that never appears. It is not real life, non?”

“Nothing wrong with chasing a dream, Reap,” Lea said.

“Celui qui court deux lièvres à la fois n’en prend aucun,” Reaper said with his best Gallic shrug.

“Huh?” Devlin said.

“He who chases two hares catches neither,” the former Legionnaire said by way of explanation. “Old French proverb.”

Outside the crowds were growing in number once again as the city slowly came back to life. They were already some distance from the station now, and these people probably had only the vaguest idea about what had happened in the heart of their own city. Amsterdam was a peaceful place, and it wasn't every day that a team of gunmen dragged a kidnapped man across the busiest part of the city, opened fire on anti-terror police and then fled to safety on a speed boat.

And all on his watch.

Hawke pushed back into his seat and closed his eyes. He knew that there would already be an alert out not only on Zito but also on the men and women of the ECHO team who had fired on them. Normally Lea would call Eden and he would start pulling strings connected to the Dutch authorities, but with the old man in a coma there was only one thing they could do if they wanted to get out of the Netherlands and reach the Welsh mountains before Zito.

He half-turned in his seat and faced Lea. “Something tells me we’re going to need Magnus Lund.”

The quiet chatter in the Suburban came to a sudden halt.

“Lund?” Scarlet said. “You mean the walking corpse we met in Miami before the Lost City mission?”

“Know any other people called Magnus Lund?” Hawke said.

“Living dead or not,” Lea said. “Lund is the only contact we have with the Eden Consortium. I say we contact him again.”

“Me too,” Ryan said confidently. “The man proved himself when he sent those rescue helicopters to get us in the jungle.”

“Exactly,” said Kim. “Getting that sanctioned in a country like Peru would have taken a lot of top-level negotiations. So not only did he prove we could trust him but we know he can make things happen. I say we call him.”

“On it,” said Lea, and started making the call. She spoke to his Copenhagen office for a few minutes and then disconnected the call. “That was his assistant. She says he’s in Tehran on business but she’ll pass it on.”

Scarlet sighed. “Great. We only find out if he’s sorted it when we arrive at the airport and get nicked or not.”

“You should have more faith in humanity,” Kim said.

Scarlet turned in her seat and looked at her as if she were a fool. “You don’t know me at all, darling.”

Back in his office, Davis Faulkner twiddled his thumbs as he waited for the video conference to begin. Two of the five large plasma screens on his wall now flickered to life to reveal the faces of Colonel Frank Geary and Karen Conrad, the deputy director of the NSA. Faulkner trusted the NSA more than the CIA. He had more people willing to do his bidding there, not to mention they were military intelligence and more clandestine. He could squeeze much more out of them than the CIA.

“Are we all secure?” Faulkner said.

They confirmed that they were.

“Good. Regarding our earlier conversation, I wanted you both to know that the order has come down to deal with the ECHO team.”

“Deal with them how, exactly?” Conrad said.

“They are to be executed.”

A brief look of anxiety washed over both their faces, but before either could reply, Faulkner spoke again. “And soon. Karen, have you ever heard of a man named Edward Kosinski?”

Conrad shifted in her seat. “I know Kosinski. He’s very capable. He worked for us for a while, but now he’s back with the Company,” she said, referring to the CIA.

Faulkner gave her a look as he lit one of his famous Cuban cigars. “He is indeed — both with the CIA and very capable.” A large cloud of smoke filled the humidified air in front of Faulkner’s face. “How quickly can he put a team together?”

Conrad spoke with confidence. “Within hours.”

“I mean the best team,” Faulkner said firmly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been given the order to kill ECHO. I’m getting some serious pressure to take these guys out so I’m talking about the mother of all wetwork here, Karen.”

She nodded. “Maybe a few days if you want the very best. I know Cougar is out of the country right now. She’s in Nicaragua.”

“Cougar?” Geary failed to subdue a laugh. “Is she particularly dangerous around young men in nightclubs?” He shook his head. “What’s her real name?”

“I don’t know,” Conrad said. “And I don’t want to know. She was raised in Chicago’s toughest neighborhood, mostly on the streets. She joined the army first chance she got. Ended up in Delta Force before crashing out and working as a mercenary, mostly in Latin America. Army intelligence tests ranked her IQ in the ninety-eighth percentile, which is one in fifty, and it’s a very cunning intelligence, believe me. She is utterly ruthless and as far as we can tell she has pretty much nothing to live for except carrying out hits for large sums of money. Don’t laugh at her codename, Frank — you might live to regret it.”

Geary didn’t look convinced. “If you say so.”

“I do,” Conrad said. “If Kosinski needs the best to take out ECHO then that means Cougar and her team.”

Geary brushed his chin with the back of his fingers. “Is this kill order coming from the President?”

Faulkner locked eyes on him. “No, it is not, Frank. It’s coming from a much greater power than that.”

Geary looked shocked. “I don’t know, sir…”

“You look uncomfortable, Frank. I hope you’re not losing your fucking nerve.”

“No, sir. It’s just that…”

“And we have something a little more delicate to discuss,” Faulkner said, cutting him off. “The sort of business you don’t do in a video conference, no matter how secure, if you catch my drift. I want you both at my office later today. My assistant will send you the time when I’ve checked my schedule.”

“Yes, sir,” they both said.

“And make sure you have a strong drink before you arrive,” Faulkner said. “You’re going to need it.”