Thunder God

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“I am so pleased you finally decided to show up,” Lea said.

Scarlet smiled. “I knew you’d miss me, darling. You can thank me for rescuing you later. That’s two nil, I believe…”

“It’s so nice to see you, too,” Lea said through clenched teeth.

Scarlet snorted. “I’m just grateful you never tried to hug me.”

Hawke smiled. Same old wisecracking Cairo — that meant she was up for the fight.

“Hey…” Lea said in response to Scarlet’s jibe, but Hawke hushed her to point out Hart’s team who were joining them from the southeast. They took cover with them behind the wall and began a consolidated fight back. A few minutes later and most of Sheng’s men had either been killed or were retreating.

With a lull in the fighting, and everyone grouped together at last, Hawke spoke up. “Okay, listen up everyone! This is the situation — Sheng and Luk are retreating from the island and almost certainly on their way to Xian to raid Qin’s tomb — it looks like he got the final location by torturing Han.”

Ryan’s eyes widened. “The map’s in Qin’s tomb?”

“Yeah.”

“How do we know that?” Ryan asked excitedly. “I know archaeologists recently found some kind of new annex there — it must be to do with that!”

“Before Sheng’s goons killed Jenny Tsao, she told us all she knew, and the rest came from the tattoo on Han’s back.”

“Tattoo?”

“We’ll fill you in later. According to Tsao, the Emperor Qin couldn’t translate the map and so it was useless to him. So enraged was he at his failure to crack the code that when he found out he was dying from the mercury poisoning he ordered that the map be buried with him in his tomb so that no other man could ever hope to use it to gain immortality for himself.”

“And that’s why he built the famous Terracotta Army…’ Ryan said, his voice trailing away in wonder. “What a bastard.”

“Exactly,” Hawke said. “According to Tsao, Qin surrounded his tomb with thousands of soldiers with the basic idea of protecting him in the next world. It took over seventy thousand men to create the necropolis, and the whole place was booby-trapped with crossbows hidden in the walls. If that weren’t enough, his son, Qin Er Shi, the second emperor, dictated that all his father’s wives who had failed to bear any children for their husband should be buried alive with the dead emperor.”

“Sounds like they were all crackers to me,” Hart said.

“Not so crazy. Tsao told us it was probably to stop rival claims for the throne. To top it all off, it was decreed that all the men who had built the tomb and who knew what treasures it concealed — like the map, for example — couldn’t be trusted to keep it secret, so they were sealed inside the tomb just before it was shut off for ever.”

“Imagine what it was like if you were one of those men sealed inside, just after the last stone had blocked you in,” said Ryan, his imagination running riot. “They probably ate each other.”

“Thanks for that, Ryan,” Lea said.

“That is the story of the first emperor’s death,” Hawke said, proudly.

“Now that’s what I call a state funeral!” Scarlet said.

“But where does Khan tie into all of this?” asked Ryan.

“Genghis Khan found out about Qin’s search for the map, and in his quest he managed to uncover the truth about the emperor’s success in finding it in the west, and his failure in not being able to translate it. Khan obviously knew Qin had hidden the map in the tomb when he was buried, and set out to retrieve it, but according to the last few verses in the chapter he too died before he reached the tomb.”

“So now we know that the map Zaugg was after…” Lea said.

“And Genghis Khan,” Hawke said.

“And Qin Shi Huang,” said Ryan.

“And don’t forget Sheng Fang,” Lexi said, scowling.

“What they were all after,” Lea said, “was raided from Poseidon’s vault by Qin and was in his tomb here in China the whole time.”

“Where it’s been for the last two thousand two hundred years,” Ryan said.

Hawke nodded. “So our job is to get that map back and that means we have a date with a few thousand terracotta soldiers and one of the world’s most famous tombs, but first we have the little problem of getting off this insane island — and you,” he said, turning to Scarlet, “have a little date in Tokyo.”

“Why’s that, darling?”

“Because that’s where the Lotus and her mysterious Russian friend are going to activate the Tesla machine.”

As he spoke, Bradley Karlsson pulled a phone from his pocket and moved a few yards away to make a call, fast and quiet.

“Tokyo?” Ryan said, almost in a whisper. “That’s one of the most geologically unstable cities in the world.”

“And one of the most densely populated,” said Scarlet.

“How do you know this?” Reaper asked Hawke.

“We overheard some of the Russians as they loaded the device onto the tender before going back to the yacht. They were speaking Russian but we clearly heard them mention Tokyo several times, and then laugh.”

“That could mean nothing,” Reaper again, casually pulling a cigarette from behind his ear and lighting it with his Zippo as a bullet traced over his head. “It could be where one of them is going on his honeymoon, no? Or maybe even they knew you were there and were playing you like a violin, is that how you say it?”

“Playing him for a fool is more appropriate in this case,” Scarlet said.

Hawke frowned. “No, I don’t think so. The yacht is sailing at top speed towards Japan as we speak. It’s pretty clear to me that Tokyo is Sheng’s target destination for the Tesla device. That’s my call and I’m making it.”

“In which case, this is no problem,” Reaper said, shrugging his shoulders. “A yacht like that would not go faster than seventy knots, so…”

“And what’s that in English?” Scarlet asked.

Hawke rolled his eyes. “SAS… it’s eighty miles an hour. You’d know that if you didn't let us to all the hard work at sea.”

“Don’t get me started, Joe.”

“Either way,” Reaper interrupted, “Tokyo is over a thousand miles from Shanghai so sailing at top speed it’s going to take them twelve hours to get there. We have plenty of time to organize an assault force to take them down. Nothing could be easier, and we will be enjoying a cold beer before sundown, no?”

“No,” replied Hawke grimly. “There was a Sikorsky S-98 Scout on board. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Never heard of it,” said the Frenchman dismissively.

“It’s a gyrodyne.”

“A what?” said Ryan.

“A very high-speed compound helicopter with an extra propeller at the rear to provide extra forward thrust. As far as the world is concerned it’s still under development back at Sikorsky HQ, but somehow our mysterious Russian friend seems to have got hold of one, and it looked like it might have been modified.”

“And how fast does this thing go?” Reaper asked, interested enough now to move his eyes from the tip of the cigarette to Hawke.

“It can go well over two hundred and fifty miles an hour, and has a range of over seven hundred and fifty miles. If the Russian takes his yacht out a couple of hundred miles — three hours’ sailing — then they can launch the S-98 and be in Tokyo in less than four hours, and the water here is packed with similar vessels. They could easily hide out in busy water and it would take us all day to find them.”

“So in other words Tokyo could have less than seven or eight hours until it’s totally destroyed,” Scarlet said. “Even less depending on how that gyrodyne has been modified, right?”

“Exactly,” Hawke said. “But sadly for Sheng and the Russian, that’s not going to happen because we’re on it.”

As he spoke, he saw the familiar outline of Sir Richard Eden’s private Gulfstream as it descended onto the airfield. It had come to collect them now the fighting was under control.

“So what’s the plan?” Reaper asked, flicking his cigarette over the wall.

“I’ll take Lea, Lexi, Reaper and the Commodore and finish this here. Cairo, you lead Karlsson, Sophie and Ryan to Tokyo and take out the Russian and our old friend the Lotus. We’ll take Sheng down in Xian, secure the map and meet up with you later.”

“Excellent,” Scarlet said. “More shooting! But…”

“You need him, so don’t even ask.”

“Seriously, no one needs Ryan Bale, Joe.”

“Hey!” Ryan protested.

“As it stands at this moment, Cairo, he knows more than any of us about the Tesla device and its capabilities. It could come down to your life in his hands as much as the other way round on this one, all right?”

“My life in his hands? That’s the sort of traumatic thought you never forget, Joe.”

“Ryan saved my life in Greece. I’ll never forget that and neither should you. If you mess him about you’ll have me to answer to.”

“Easy tiger, I’m sure I can babysit Ryan Bale for a few hours in Tokyo.”

“If that thing goes off in Tokyo it’s going to be total carnage on an unprecedented scale,” Ryan said.

“Right,” Hawke said. “Which is why you’re going to stop them before they do anything naughty, all right?”

Scarlet smiled at the prospect. “Ooh, this is exciting! I’ve never been to Japan before.”

“It's not a bloody sightseeing trip, you fool,” Lea said.

Hawke stopped Scarlet from replying and turned to face the group. “This is it, everyone. Right now it’s up to us to save the world…”

“And that’s a worrying thought,” Scarlet said. “A very worrying thought.”

With the Lotus and her team sailing off to the east in the super yacht and Sheng flying his team west to Xian and the temple, it was now time to kill two birds with one stone, and that mean breaking everyone up into two teams and finalizing their plans.

All around them Sheng’s men were deserting the island, and now in the midst of the clearing smoke of the battle, they stood and listened to Hawke as he finished detailing the plans and gave everyone their final orders. These people had become his friends over the last few weeks, and in some of the toughest circumstances he had ever known.

Scarlet would lead the team going to Japan, backed up by Ryan, Sophie and Karlsson. Meanwhile, Hawke would lead Lea, Lexi, Hart and Reaper into the battle at Qin’s tomb in Xian. But around twenty minutes later, as he was finishing the briefing, he suddenly stopped talking and pointed at the sky. “What the hell are they?”

The others turned to look at several F-15s racing toward the island from the northern horizon, armed to the teeth and ready for action.