Valhalla Gold

CHAPTER THREE

Hawke hit the floor in a heartbeat, and then immediately scanned the room to check on everyone else. Lea was already behind the cover of the sofa and she was returning fire in no uncertain terms, but Victoria looked like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights, so Hawke dived for her and grappled her to the floor with his arms tight around her waist. Lea caught the move in the corner of her eye but said nothing. Everyone else followed suit as the first wave of bullets tore over their heads and wrecked the rear wall.

On the other side of the room, Scarlet had dived for cover and grappled Ryan to the floor with her arms around his waist. They landed with a crash on the mahogany floorboards, and Ryan yelled out as Scarlet fell down on top of him. “If you want me all you have to do is ask,” he said, putting his arms around her waist.

“Gross,” she said “I just saved your life and that’s what you’re thinking about? I hate to break it to you, boy, but I see you in approximately the same way a praying mantis sees a fly.”

“Roger that,” Ryan said glumly.

“Or not, in your case,” she replied.

Hawke peered over a shredded sofa and saw the speed boat had turned around in a sharp arc and was pulling up to the jetty at the bottom of the garden.

“We’ve got to get out here!” he shouted. “We’re out-manned and out-gunned, and not even I am that good.”

Lea shook her head and sighed. “If you were a Mr Man you’d be Mr Modest, I reckon.”

Hawke gave her a sarcastic grin and told everyone to stay calm, but Victoria began to panic and scrambled closer to Lea by the door.

“They’re trying to kill me!” she screamed, and ducked down behind Lea with her head in her hands. “I need to get out of here!”

“Just take it easy,” Hawke said as he unloaded a second magazine through the Louvre windows. He tried to calm her but between the answer-phone message and this attack she could hardly be called paranoid. Someone out there obviously wanted her dead and it had to be connected to Nate Derby’s murder in Canada, but now his focus was on the vicious assault approaching from the waterline.

Outside the boat had now moored on the pier and the gunmen were making their way through the garden, using the lush tropical undergrowth for cover. Hawke counted four of them including a woman with a crew cut, and the way they moved made him think they were ex-Special Forces of some kind. As they got closer, he recognized a tattoo of a burning grenade on one of the men’s necks — the same as the one he had seen on Reaper, which could mean only one thing.

Now, he and the rest of the team returned fire as Victoria grew more hysterical.

“They’ve come to kill me! You have to stop them!”

The assault team in the garden split into two groups, with three of them remaining in the original assault position while the woman disappeared from view.

“Where has she gone?” Scarlet said. “The woman’s disappeared.”

“They’re opening a second front somewhere!” Hawke said, ducking again to avoid taking a bullet. It traced over him and smashed into the wall sending plaster puffing up into the air.

In the chaos of the fire-fight, Lea yelled: “I’ll find her!”

“Where are you going?” Victoria said, panicking. “You can’t leave me alone!”

“Just stay here with the others while I make sure the kitchen’s clear!”

Before Lea could make another move, Victoria panicked and bolted for the kitchen door. Hawke cursed, guessing her intention was to try and escape out the front but that was exactly where the woman with the crew cut had gone to create the second front in their assault.

Lea stayed low and made a move toward the kitchen to try and stop Victoria but she was through the door in a second. If the assault team really were thinking of a pincer movement and coming in through the kitchen, Victoria would be in a lot of trouble.

Hawke picked off another of the men in the garden, sending him spinning around into the shrubbery where he got tangled and ended up hanging there like a macabre scarecrow. The SBS man nodded in appreciation of his work when he heard Ryan shouting from across the room.

“Er… guys!”

“What is it, Ryan?” Scarlet shouted. “If you want someone to change your nappy I’m afraid the grown-ups are rather busy at the moment and if you…” She stopped talking when she saw the look on his face. “Ryan?”

Ryan said nothing, but raised a hand and pointed over Scarlet’s shoulder.

Hawke turned to see someone holding Victoria hostage. It was the woman he had seen in the garden with the crew cut. She was tall with a powerful athletic body and a thin, jagged scar ran from the corner of her mouth and snaked away behind her left ear. She blew a large purple bubblegum bubble which popped and she pulled it back into her mouth. Whoever she was, she was holding a knife to Victoria Hamilton-Talbot’s slender throat. The serrated blade pushed into the soft flesh and started to draw blood.

Then she spoke. “All of you — drop your weapons or she dies, right in front of you.”

Hawke watched an expression of total fear color Victoria’s face as he processed the woman’s accent. It sounded Russian, he considered — maybe a southern dialect. He hated to give the order, but he knew had no choice. “Do as she says!”

Scarlet spoke next. “All right, just take it easy, darling,” she said, never taking her eyes off the woman. “I’m going to climb away from the geek and stand up, with my hands above my head — I’m not armed.”

The woman peered at Ryan for a second before giving Scarlet a slow nod of approval to stand up.

Scarlet moved away from Ryan, hands up to show she was unarmed, and made her way slowly into the center of the room.

Hawke studied the woman carefully as she spoke and measured up the threat: left-handed, Russian accent, and a coldness in her eyes that reminded him of someone he had met before.

Then she screamed another order. “All of you, guns down! I won’t tell you again.”

Hawke cursed inwardly, but gently set his gun down on the floorboards. “Just let her go and tell us what you want.”

Before he finished speaking, the sole surviving gunman from the garden stepped casually through the rear doors and stood in the center of the room. This was the man with the tattoo of a burning grenade on his neck. He too was tall but sported slicked-back hair and had a solid, prominent nose. He spoke in rapid French to the woman holding Victoria and then looked down at Hawke on the floor.

“Could this be the mighty Joe Hawke?” he said.

“Right first time,” Hawke said sourly. “And who are you?”

With no warning, the man kicked Hawke in the face and sent him flying back into the upturned drinks cabinet. “My name is Leon Smets and never forget it.”

Hawke wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and crawled back up to his knees. He noticed the yacht at the bottom of the garden was slipping out of view to the south of the resort.

Smets surveyed the small group for a few seconds and nodded with appreciation. His dark eyes settled menacingly on Victoria. “Are you Donovan?”

She shook her head.

“Where is Donovan?” he said, looking around at the others, all kneeling on the floor. “Give me her or this woman dies right in front of you.” He nodded dismissively at Victoria who was still trembling in the woman’s grip.

Hawke knew what Lea had to do. He knew she couldn’t watch an innocent woman die to protect herself, but why Smets could possibly want her and not Victoria was a mystery to him.

Lea turned her face up to Smets and spoke. “I’m Lea Donovan… what do you want with me?”

He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her to her feet. “You know what we want. Come with me, and no more fucking questions.” His voice was cold and emotionless.

Hawke reached out to her as she passed but they all knew she had no choice but to surrender. That hunting knife was pushing deeper into Victoria’s throat and the woman holding it looked like she wanted to kill her more than she wanted to take her next breath.

When Lea was beside Smets, the former Foreign Legion man gave a nod to the woman and she pushed Victoria away. Smets put his gun in the small of Lea’s back as Victoria gasped with a strange mix of relief and horror. She tumbled to the floor beside Hawke.

“I’m so sorry…” she said quietly.

“Forget it,” Hawke said. “People like this don’t play fair.”

Smets grinned, but there was nothing in the eyes except hate. “Now we go, and you stay here like good little puppies or the Irish woman gets her throat slit.”

They moved Lea away into the kitchen and silence fell in the room as the ECHO team looked at each other, stunned.

Hawke knew there was no time to waste, so he grabbed his gun and ran to the kitchen. He went through the narrow door and turned the corner with the weapon raised but found an empty room. The flyscreen door was closing slowly behind them. They had gone, and he had to act fast if he was going to rescue Lea. Why they had gone to all this trouble to take her was a question he could answer later, but how had they known they were in Florida?

He smashed his way through the wedged-shut outside door and scanned the back yard for Lea and her kidnappers. He felt the adrenalin pounding through his body as his mind raced with visions of her being subjected to another kidnapping, and maybe worse. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“I see them!” he shouted to the others. “The bastards are dragging her toward the boat!”

The yacht he had seen going south was slowly moving further along the coast from Victoria’s beach hut to where it was covered by the curve of a tree-lined beach. The Englishman now saw it was a Maritimo M58, a luxurious sixty-foot motor yacht with several opulently appointed decks not to mention some pretty chunky hardware under the hood. Whoever was behind this operation had funds.

“We can’t let them get away!” Ryan shouted, pulling out his phone.

“Thanks for that contribution, Captain Obvious,” Scarlet said as she smoothly reloaded her SIG. “And now is hardly the time to play Final Fantasy, is it dear?”

“I’m not playing Final Bloody Fantasy,” he replied. “I’m taking their picture. If they’re Foreign Legion our friend from Marseille might be able to help identify them.” He zoomed in on them and started snapping pictures.

“Ah, yes,” Scarlet said. “I was waiting to see how long it would be till you thought of that.”

Hawke ignored the comments as he tracked the attackers’ progress through the resort. They were keeping off the central path and using the gardens of the beach huts for added cover as they made their way to the boat.

“The yacht has to come into the coast to pick them up.” Scarlet said.

From their position in the garden they were able to look down the side of the property at the coast and watch as the luxury boat sailed calmly away from them.

“They’re going to rendezvous further down the coast behind those palms!” Hawke said.

“There’s a short-cut through here!” Victoria said. “It’s a narrow track which is used by the garbage trucks once a week. If they’re trying to get back to the coast then this is the fastest way to try and catch them.”

“Right,” Hawke said firmly. “Scarlet, you stay here with Vikki and Ryan — I’m going after Lea.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Babysitting again?”

“We’re not sure if they’re planning on attacking again or if they have other men here we don’t know about. The last thing we want is for us both to go after Lea and get back to find Vikki and Ryan with their heads blown off.”

“Er yeah…” Ryan said with a look of horror on his face. “That’s definitely the last thing we want.”

“Heads blown off?” Victoria said, going white. “You don’t mean that literally, do you, Mr Hawke?”

Scarlet sighed. “I will do literally anything if you let me go for Lea while you stay here with these two.”

“Sorry, Scarlet, but not this time.”

“Bastard, but go… just go!”

Hawke didn’t reply, but just started running.

He sprinted down the track Victoria had suggested and kept his eye on the progress of the yacht. His boots crunched on the gravel and he made his way along the backs of the luxury huts at speed, calling out an apology as he ran through the middle of someone’s garden picnic and getting snagged in their birthday bunting.

He saw the yacht was slowly drawing away from him, and the humidity of the Florida day was dragging on him like a weight as he sprinted. He leaped over a low wooden fence and sent a shower of startled Bahama mockingbirds flying from an orange tree up into the air. It was then he realized he was starting to lose the race.

He increased speed, but they were still too far away. He vaulted over another low fence and made his way toward the shore, noticing an Innespace Seabreacher X moored to a pier. It must have been the one Lea had seen earlier.

Now Smets was dragging Lea along the jetty and waving his gun in the air as he screamed at his underlings. He turned, saw Hawke and fired a series of casual shots in his vague direction to keep the Englishman from getting any closer, but Hawke slipped into parkour mode to dodge the bullets and executed a couple of high-speed shoulder rolls as he drew closer.

Now he felt like his lungs were about to burst as he finally got to the beach, only to see Smets hauling Lea roughly into the back of the large boat and shouting commands at the man in the wheelhouse.

Without thinking of his own safety, Hawke took a deep breath and started to sprint to the jetty. He’d let Lea slip through his fingers before and he was damned sure he wasn’t going to let a man like Smets get his hands on her.

But even running as fast as he could, he knew he wasn't going to get there in time, and as he hit the foreshore and vaulted up onto the jetty he watched in agony as the Maritimo’s powerful engines roared loudly and pushed the boat out into the ocean.