Thunder God

CHAPTER TEN

Seconds later, Henshang Road became a war zone. The men assaulting Chan’s villa from the front took up what Hawke assessed as fairly professional positions in the street and front garden so he quickly had everyone take up the best defensive positions he could arrange with so little time.

Without waiting for an invitation, the men unleashed a terrific full-frontal attack on the property. Bullets piled into the stucco and blasted chunks of plaster from the walls onto Chan’s Astroturf. As they fired, groups of two or three men advanced on the house while their colleagues covered them.

“Cover the back, Cairo!” Hawke shouted.

Scarlet took off down to the back of the villa while Hawke and Lexi fired back at the men in the street, pinning a few of them down in an isolated location behind a magnolia tree. The men with Lea dragged her away to the side of the property. Now they heard Scarlet firing at the back of the house.

“Great,” Lexi said. “Looks like we’ve got the bastards on both sides.”

Outside, one of the men primed a grenade and hurled it at the villa’s large double doors.

“This just keeps getting better, Joe! They’ll be inside in seconds.”

The grenade detonated and blasted hand-size fragments of Chan’s oak-paneled door into the hall with savage velocity.

Then Scarlet returned from the back of the house. “As much as it pains me to say it, Joe,” she said, “I think we have to admit defeat on this one. There’s half the PLA out the back. They’re over the back fence and advancing either side of the pool. No way can I hold them off with this thing.” She held the Type 93 in the air. “I know I’m pretty bloody amazing but no one’s that good.”

“What I love about you is your humility, Scarlet,” Lexi said.

Scarlet smirked. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should,” said Lexi. “You have so much to be humble about, after all.”

Hawke rolled his eyes. “Can we just stop the cat-fighting, please? It feels like Charlie’s Angels in here and meanwhile Lea’s down there in the middle of a bloody war zone.”

Now the men were in the house. They could hear them systematically destroying every room, spraying bullets and lobbing grenades as they cleared the building room by room.

“Something tells me these guys are pretty serious about this portrait,’ Lexi said.

“This girl is a genius,” said Scarlet.

“Can it, Ice Queen,” Lexi said.

Scarlet glared at her. “What did you say?”

“Oh, that has to hurt, right?” said Lexi, reloading her Browning. She turned to Scarlet. “I mean with you loving yourself so much and everything.”

“Look, in a minute it’s going to be me shooting you, never mind that lot downstairs!” Hawke said. “We have to focus.”

“I’m always focused, darling,” Scarlet said. “Didn’t the Val Doonicans train you to be focused in stressful situations? Shame…”

Hawke ignored the traditional SAS slur against the SBS and tried to clear his head for a second. “Clearly whoever is behind the murder of Hoffmann and the theft of the Tesla device is also behind this,” he held up the portrait of Xi Shi, the First Beauty. “My money’s on this Sheng character, and it’s pretty obvious he’s found out we’re onto him and he’s not happy about it.”

“If it really is Sheng then we’ve got a real war ahead of us!” Lexi said, her words laced with a lethal mix of fear and anger.

“If it’s war he wants then war he gets,” Scarlet said. “Eden was very clear about stopping Sheng with whatever it takes. We have carte blanche.”

“Why don’t we just start with getting out of here?” Lexi said.

Scarlet raised her voice over the sound of the gunfire. “For once I agree with you!”

The sound of men screaming and whooping with joy as they trashed the villa below resounded up the sweeping marble staircase. More shots were fired and more wanton destruction meted out by Sheng’s army of thugs.

Hawke ordered Lexi to retreat with the portrait while he and Scarlet covered her from their position at the top of the stairs. There was a French window in Chan’s bedroom which opened onto a broad balcony, flanked either side by two mature magnolias. It was at the rear of the house, which was now clear as the men who had stormed the villa from that direction were now inside attacking the new position defended by Hawke and Scarlet.

Hawke took a deep breath and focused his mind. It seemed his life was on a permanent full-speed setting and there was no escaping the fact. Now, only they had the portrait and only they knew about Hoffmann and the missing Tesla device developed by the US Navy. This meant only they could stop Sheng and whatever deranged plans he had for the world. Now was no time to get killed.

He and Scarlet poured a savage rain of fire onto the men at the bottom of the stairs as Lexi sprinted for safety, but they were gaining ground. There were just too many of them to fight in such an enclosed space.

“Update?!” he shouted over his shoulder.

Scarlet craned her neck and watched Lexi slip through the window, the portrait safely in her grasp. “She’s out, Joe.”

“Then it's time for you to go too,” he shouted. Bullets traced past his head and ripped through a massive abstract oil painting Chan had had hoisted onto the wall at the top of the stairs.

“And leave you here alone?” Scarlet picked off two of the men with startling casualness and watched them tumble down the stairs and collapse in a heap on the polished hall floor.

“Yes, and now, Cairo! I can look after myself.”

Downstairs one of the men Scarlet had just shot was screaming in pain.

“Damn!” she said. “Thought I’d finished them both off.”

One of the man’s compatriots fired a short burst of automatic rifle fire into his chest and ended the moaning.

“Can’t say their hearts aren’t in it,” Scarlet said. “And it's time for us both to go, Joe — now!”

Hawke flicked his head to the open window in Chan’s bedroom and made a quick calculation. “All right — let’s get out of here,” he said. “You take the tree on the left and I’ll take the one on the right. In three, two, one…”

They deserted their position and sprinted to the large bay window in the master bedroom. As they climbed into the canopies of the magnolias they heard the sound of Sheng’s men racing up the stairs and blasting everything in sight.

“Race you to the bottom!” cried Scarlet.

“You’re actually enjoying this, Cairo. You’re certifiable.”

Hawke hit the fake lawn with a gentle thud a second before Scarlet Sloane, which caused her more irritation than the sight of Sheng’s men appearing on the balcony and raking them with more machine gun fire. The bullets tore through the magnolia canopies and peppered the Astroturf all around them.

“Over there!” Hawke shouted. “It’s Lea!”

He directed Scarlet’s attention to the far side of the lawn where Lea was taking cover behind a long hedge. She was holding a gun taken from one of the men who had been holding her before the shooting started, but who was now lying dead on the floor.

“And look there — looks like Lexi’s arranged some transportation for us.”

They gave Lea the signal to retreat back to the SUV, and they sprinted across the lawn using Chan’s mature gardens as cover for most of the way before running through the main gates and climbing into one of the SUVs Sheng’s men had arrived in — it was a brand new Jaguar F-Pace. The driver was lying unconscious on the road beside the vehicle, and Scarlet used him as a step to help herself into the car.

“Thanks!” she said. “It would be a shame to bring any mud into such a beautiful car…”

“Are you okay, Lea?” Hawke asked.

She nodded — she looked shaken but not stirred.

“Then hit it!” screamed Hawke, and Lexi floored the accelerator.

The SUV’s wheels spun and the car lurched forward in a cloud of stinking black rubber smoke. Behind them, Hawke saw Sheng’s men jump into the second SUV.

“Yeah, they’re not going anywhere,” Lea said with that distinctive smile of hers.

“Alternator?” Hawke said.

“No time for all that,” the Irishwoman said. “Blew their bastard tires out. All four of them.”

Hawke smiled and nodded in appreciation of her work, but as Lexi steered the SUV roughly around the corner he saw Sheng’s men climbing back out of the disabled Nissan X-Trail and kick the tires. One of them crossed the street and fired a shot through the window of a silver Nissan GTR.

“Don’t celebrate too soon,” said Hawke, “but I think Sheng’s goons are more resourceful than we gave them credit for.”

“Oh, what now?” sighed Lea.

“They’ve decided to take a nice, shiny roadster for a joyride, and I think we’re the target.”