Thunder God (Joe Hawke Book 2) Read online

  Scarlet turned slowly and pretended to look at a passing 747 as it climbed into the orange clouds above the city. It looked like it could rain at any minute, and as she followed the path of the aircraft she covertly surveyed the street.

  “Black jeans and shades on his head?” she asked.

  “That’s the chap.”

  “If it’s a tail he’s not very good,” she said dismissively. “Could be anyone.”

  “Or he could be someone,” Hawke said.

  “So, make him sing for his supper, darling.”

  They stopped walking and pretended to check the menu in the window of a Nepalese restaurant.

  “Definitely a tail,” Hawke said, watching the man’s reflection in the window. “He’s pulled up outside that jewelry store on the other side of the street. If he’s half as smart as he should be, he’s looking at us in the reflection of that window the same way we’re using this one.”

  A moped puttered down the street, weaving in and out of shoppers and tourists as it spewed a cloud of filthy blue smoke into the air behind it. People were going about their business in the early evening like any other night in the city.

  Scarlet sighed. “So what now?”

  “Let’s have a word with him,” Hawke said coolly.

  “He’s probably armed.”

  He turned to her with a sarcastic smirk on his lips. “Yeah, but I’ve got you.”

  They turned from the restaurant and aimed for the man, but before they could even step into the street their pursuer knew he’d been rumbled and immediately pulled a gun from his pocket. He fired it twice at them in what looked to Hawke like a dangerous piece of improvisation.

  They both ducked and jumped behind a food stall for cover as the bullets smashed the restaurant window and exploded a shower of glass splinters all over the people inside.

  People across the market screamed and ran for whatever cover they could find. A man in a down-market barbershop picked up his phone and made a call, presumably to the police. Then a young security guard in a nearby jewelry store ran into the street. He pulled a Glock 19 from his hip holster and aimed it at Hawke and Scarlet.

  “Arms up and don’t move,” he shouted in stilted English.

  Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Well, which one do you want me to do, darling?”

  Hawke watched powerless as the man in the black shirt turned and fled into the market crowd.

  “We haven’t got time for this…” he said.

  “You do arms up, now!” shouted the security guard. “You try and rob store!”

  Before the security guard knew what day it was, Scarlet knocked the Glock from his hand with a ferocious Krav Maga slap kick and sent it flying into the road with a metallic smack. Hawke retrieved it and the guard immediately raised his eyebrows and then, a second later, his hands. “Please, don’t shoot!”

  “Look at it this way – you’re still breathing,” Hawke said to the guard. “That means she likes you.”

  Then without wasting another second, they gave chase to the fleeing man.

  They sprinted into the crowd, darting through the busy night market as fast as they could, but seconds later Hawke stumbled over a crate of cheap bracelets beside a stall and sent them flying all over the place. The stall owner shouted and waved his finger, but Hawke and Scarlet left him in their wake and continued in pursuit of the man.

  Suddenly, Hawke’s plan had changed from tracking down Lea and now Hoffmann’s killer for Eden, to chasing an unknown assailant through the Hong Kong night. For all he knew, the three were connected, and now he had to find out how.

  “Come on, Joe!” Scarlet shouted. “We’ll never get him with you falling all over the place like a drunken twat. If only Lea could see you now...”

  Lea. In the two weeks since Zaugg had met his maker, Hawke and Lea hadn’t seen much of each other, but now she was missing he wished they had. After they returned to London from Geneva, they had spent a few days together before Lea went alone to Ireland to see family.

  She surfaced only once to text Hawke and ask him when they should meet again. She told him she was at home, and he guessed the west coast because she had spoken to him that night in Zermatt about a cottage she owned there. But now Eden’s call in the middle of the night to tell him she had gone missing had come like a sledgehammer.

  But Hawke had been busy too. The affair at the British Museum had not exactly helped his reputation in the world of private security, and while his resolution of that problem would have won him endless contracts, he had no choice but to keep the whole business to himself. So he had divided his time between looking for work and improving his parkour across the London skyline.

  Until, that is, this latest nightmare had arrived on his doorstep. First Lea’s disappearance and then when he landed, the news of Hoffmann’s murder. The briefest of briefings had sketched a rough picture of a private German researcher who had dedicated his life to the discovery of something described by Eden only as the Reichardt Papers. He was a loose associate of Eden until they found him garroted to death on the Paris underground.

  Now, their man had left the market and was sprinting for his life down a smaller side street. Hawke was certain the man probably knew the city like the back of his hand and if he let him out of his sight he would vanish into the night forever. But his parkour training meant there was little chance of the man getting away in an urban environment.

  Away from the main drag, Scarlet fired a shot at the man with her Beretta Storm, a nifty little subcompact pocket pistol she packed when she was going away to enjoy herself. The sound of the gunshot melted away fast in the busy night. The hunted man ducked down instinctively to avoid being struck so she fired five more, deliberately high. These shots were louder, and followed by the sound of people screaming behind them in the market.

  “That’s just fantastic,” Hawke said, sighing. “Every cop in the city will be here in five minutes.”

  “So let’s get on with it then.”

  Hawke was beginning to regret asking Cairo Sloane to lend him a hand, but once again, her assistance was heavily recommended by Sir Richard himself. Clearly they had a complex relationship – neither had decided it was time to tell him what was going on but with Lea missing he would take whatever help he could get his hands on.

  The man now scarpered to the end of the side street and ran around the corner but Hawke and Scarlet were closing on him. In the next street a few seconds later, Hawke squinted in the brightness of the neon shop signs – no one was running any more.

  Scarlet caught up with him a second later. “Anything?”

  “He’s slowed to a walk to blend into the crowd.”

  Then, the sound of police sirens. Hawke looked over his shoulder and saw a Mercedes Sprinter van in police markings cut along the end of the street behind them. They too were on the hunt tonight.

  “Looks like the plods are out to spoil our fun,” Scarlet said.

  “And we need to get to our little friend before they do,” Hawke said, surveying the crowd. “There! He’s stepping through the crowd again – I see him trying to get away down an alley.”

  They chased after him once again, pushing their way violently through the crowd of shoppers and tourists as the police sirens closed in around them.

  “He’s getting away, Joe!”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “He’s disappeared again!”

  “Damn it!” Hawke muttered, and climbed halfway up a traffic sign for a better view. Seconds later he saw the man weaving slowly in and out of a group of people watching a street performer playing a guitar and singing through a cheap sound system.

  “There he is!”

  The man glanced back and saw Hawke up the stop sign. He immediately darted into the next alleyway and was gone from sight once again.

  “It’s now or never,” Hawke said. “I think this guy’s going to disappear into the night if we’re not careful.”

  “And for all we know he’s our only le
ad to Lea or maybe Hoffmann’s killer.”

  Hawke and Scarlet raced into the alley and allowed a second for their eyes to adjust to the darker atmosphere away from the neon brightness of the main drag. Then they saw their man, but now he was no longer alone, and he was no longer running away from them, but toward them.

  “Bastard must have called for back-up,” Scarlet said. “They’re mob-handed now – must be at least eight of them.”

  “I don’t fancy our chances,” Hawke said. “Not with so many members of the public all over the place.”

  The men approached, and Hawke saw the flash of a blade in one of their hands.

  Scarlet looked at the Beretta. “Only three left in here, Joe.”

  “But they don’t know that.”

  She sighed. “As much as I want to kick their balls in, I think eight versus two, and their having the home advantage too, means maybe it’s time for a tactical retreat, no?”

  Hawke agreed.

  Reluctantly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The gang chased after them, emboldened by their new strength in numbers. They moved with their concealed blades deftly through the oblivious crowd of shoppers and tourists like sharks cutting through a shoal of guppies.

  Ahead of them, Hawke and Scarlet Sloane had gone from hunters to hunted in a few short seconds and were now racing back along the city streets in a bid to find a place to hide from the armed men. It was at times like this Hawke regretted getting involved with the enigmatic Richard Eden, but in his view, being chased through foreign cities was better than watching paint dry, and he would go to the end of the earth if it meant saving Lea.

  He glanced back over his shoulder when they reached the end of the road and saw the gang was gaining on them. They clearly wanted a silent and fast end to Joe Hawke and Scarlet Sloane, preferably in a quiet alley in the darker corners of the city.

  “What now?” Scarlet asked.

  Hawke’s mind raced. Ahead were just more shops and tatty market stalls, tourists milling about and casually looking at the cheap jewelry.

  “We need some speed,” Hawke said.

  “I never knew you were into that sort of thing.”

  Hawke rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean, Cairo.”

  Then the heavens opened.

  “Bloody fantastic!”

  The storm clouds unleashed a heavy subtropical monsoon onto them, and seconds later the sky was full of lightning and rainfall. A deep peal of thunder boomed above the city as Hawke spotted their chance. A young man was sliding off the saddle of an old Vespa and going inside a snack bar for shelter.

  Hawke pointed at the dilapidated moped. “That’s our ride!”

  “That thing?” Scarlet said with contempt. “I’d rather be dead than seen on that.”

  “Which is very convenient because right now that’s exactly the choice you have.”

  Behind them, the gang was closing in. Scarlet pursed her lips as she pretended to deliberate over the situation.

  “Stop pissing about and get on the bike, Cairo!”

  Scarlet gripped Hawke around his waist as he revved the Vespa and released the brake. The moped lurched forward and skidded out into the street, Hawke desperately trying to maintain control as the narrow wheels slipped about on the greasy road.

  He watched the men in the small, cracked rearview mirror and saw two of them dragging a taxi driver from his cab and stab him. He fell to the floor in a heap while they jumped into his car and gave chase. Seconds later the cab’s headlights were just yards behind them, lighting the heavy rain in their yellow beams as the engine growled and revved in the background, the grille like a snarling jaw.

  “Bloody hell, Joe – can’t you go any faster? They’re almost up my arse.”

  “Well...”

  “Don't even think about finishing that sentence or I swear I will throw you under the wheels of that cab.”

  “Got it.”

  Hawke made a sharp right turn, holding his leg out to stop the thing from tipping over. The new street was narrower than the last, but this didn’t stop the cab. They closed the gap and began firing at them. A second later a bullet ricocheted off the tin license plate on the rear of the Vespa. It made a comical pinging sound before flying off into the rain.

  Scarlet pulled the Beretta from her pocket and with one arm looped tightly around Hawke’s waist, she coolly fired a shot into the windshield of the pursuing taxi. Through the torrential rain she made out the tell-tale sign of a bullet hole in the glass.

  The car skidded and swerved in the narrow street, its right fender striking a low brick wall and sending a shower of golden sparks into the damp air, but they were soon on their tail again.

  With a renewed sense of purpose, the taxi now pulled up close enough to hit the rear tire of the Vespa and seconds later Hawke was fighting to control the light-weight moped as it spun all over the slippery road, narrowly missing a line of garbage cans at the rear of a restaurant.

  “Another shot please, Cairo!” he shouted. “And make this one count.”

  Scarlet turned on the moped again and fired a second shot, but just as she squeezed the trigger the moped hit a pothole and the bullet fired off high, sailing above the cab and disappearing into the Kowloon night. “Damn it, Hawke! Can’t you drive?”

  “Eh?”

  “You ask me to take a shot that counts and then you drive right over the top of a fucking pothole.”

  “You might have noticed that we’re in the middle of a damned monsoon, Cairo, and my vision is limited to about half an inch. Take another shot.”

  “Only got one bullet left, Joe. No more potholes, all right darling?”

  Hawke slowed down, allowing the cab to gain on them once again. Scarlet held on to Hawke again as she turned and aimed the Storm subcompact for a final time at the pursuing cab.

  And fired.

  This time the bullet went through the windshield again, but lower, and hit the intended target. The driver slumped forward and the engine revved wildly as the dead man’s foot pushed down on the throttle.

  Hawke pushed the Vespa to the max in a bid to outrun the more powerful car, but just as it was about to ram into their rear tire once again, the narrow road came to an end and Hawke spun out to the left. Behind them the cab raced onward in a straight line and smashed head first into a giant billboard advertising a luxury gift store.

  “That’s them all wrapped up then,” Hawke said.

  Scarlet sighed. “For fuck’s sake.”

  “What?”

  “Just enough with the nasty one-liners, all right?”

  “Sure, if you say so, but...”

  “What is it? Why are you slowing down?”

  Hawke came to a stop and switched off the engine. “We’ve got company.”

  He pointed to a long, black car parked in front of them. Leaning against the hood was a man holding a shiny black pistol as casually as if it were a banana.

  “Inside the car please,” said the man, and pointed the gun at them.

  *

  The car was a stretched Mercedes limousine and a second later the rear door opened.

  “In here!” Hawke didn’t recognize the voice, but then the driver held a tiny paper dragonfly out of the window for him to see. “It’s this or die, Mr Hawke.”

  “How does he know your name? Who are these people, Joe?”

  Hawke sighed. Of all the people to be rescued by, it had to be her.

  “Come on,” he said. “This car will take us where we need to go.”

  They climbed inside and shut the heavy door on the rain. The man with the gun sat opposite them, gun raised at their chests. Without another word being spoken, the driver pulled away. They drove through the city for an hour and finally pulled up outside a seedy-looking strip club. Inside they were shown up a flight of stairs and they entered a semi-lit room.

  The woman’s voice was cool and slightly husky.

  “It’s been a long time, Joe.”

  Hawke peered i
nto the shadows where the figure of a lithe, young woman emerged into the room. He recognized her perfume – orchids and vanilla.

  “Dragonfly,” Hawke said, putting his gun away.

  “Always and forever,” said the woman. She blew him a kiss.

  Zhang Xiaolu moved forward and offered the Englishman an ambiguous smile. She was wearing mostly black and her lips seemed impossibly red in the half-light. She held a Type 84 loosely in her hand, but slid it artfully into a shoulder holster as she stepped into the warm glow of the lamp.

  “You look good, Joe,” she said.

  Known in the West as Lexi Zhang, the woman was a card-carrying member of staff in the Ministry of State Security, the intelligence agency of the People’s Republic of China. Hawke never took his eyes off her, and not just because he didn’t trust her. The good news was that the phrase smoking hot was invented for Lexi Zhang, the bad news was that she knew it. “Too bad I didn’t break into your bed as well as your hotel room back in Geneva. You looked so peaceful when you were sleeping. I had the urge to… ruffle your hair.”

  Hawke smiled. “But we all know what to do with urges, don’t we, Lexi?”

  “Yeah,” Scarlet said, stepping forward. “And I am actually in the room with you two right now, you realize that?”

  Her words startled Hawke, who had apparently forgotten she was actually in the room with him and the beautiful Chinese agent.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled unapologetically. “Lexi, this is Cairo Sloane, Cairo – meet Lexi Zhang, otherwise known as Dragonfly. She recently broke into my hotel room in search of information relating to Poseidon...”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Lexi said.

  “Likewise, and it’s Scarlet,” she said, frowning at Hawke. “No one calls me Cairo anymore. Now we’ve got that out the way, perhaps we can get to business?”

  “Business?” Lexi said, turning to Hawke. “And here I was thinking you had flown to Hong Kong for pleasure.” She ran a gentle finger up the length of his arm all the way to his shoulder.

  Hawke frowned. “Sorry Lexi, but this time it really is business.”

  “This time?” Scarlet said, raising an eyebrow.