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  Ryan’s rounds raked up the wooden staircase and buried themselves in the plaster of the supporting wall behind it. Through the goggles he saw the man who had now hit the deck at the top of the stairs and was crawling forward on his stomach with the shotgun in his right hand.

  Ryan saw the moment and seized it, rolling forward until he was under the stairs. On his back, he lifted the compact machine pistol and let rip, firing on the man blindly through the top of the stairs.

  He heard a scream and then the man tumbled forward, smashing through the spindles and collapsing with a hard smack right beside him.

  In the ghostly green light of the night vision, Ryan saw the man take his dying breath through a bloody mouth. How did Hawke and the others do this for a living? He had a hard time imagining it until he realized with a gasp that this was his life now. Saving lives and taking lives was now part of his life and he still wasn’t sure he could live with it.

  The young man raised his palm mic to his mouth. “Power out and basement secured.” He had already made the decision not to tell anyone about the wound. Ryan doubted it would cloud anyone’s judgement. This crew was too professional to be distracted by a man down, but he didn’t want to look like he was stupid enough to get hit.

  He heard Lea’s voice in his ear as she spoke over the comms. “Great job, Ry. We’re going after Kruger so if you don’t want to miss the fun you’d better get up here.”

  Ryan Bale didn’t need an embossed invitation. He rolled out from under the stairs and ran across the basement. Sprinting up the staircase to the kitchen, he raised his gun and emerged into a room that looked like it had been bombed. “Where is everyone?”

  Camacho’s voice buzzed in his ear. “Going up the main stairs to Kruger’s study.”

  “Me and Kim are heading to the bedroom suites,” Lea said.

  “Care to join us?” Kim said. “Maybe his wife has some panties you could try on, you big girl.”

  Ryan was crossing the hall now and hitting the bottom of the stairs. His back was pulsing with pain and he could feel the blood soaking into the t-shirt under his tactical vest. Up ahead he could see the rest of his team as they turned the corner on the next floor. “Oh, that’s funny, but I’ll think I’ll stick with Jack in the study.”

  “Sure thing,” Kim said. “If I see any your size I’ll grab you a pair.”

  Her voice cut out and the comms went dead as everyone concentrated on the next phase of the mission. They all knew Kruger was in the house; they had seen him enter the place just that afternoon and the intel that he was stashing the Sword of Fire here until summoned by the Oracle was also good. Now was their chance to take out the arms trafficker once and for all and retrieve the ancient sword.

  Gunshots rang out from another section of the house and he prayed Lea and Kim were all right. This was not his natural milieu. For one thing, people who used the word milieu did not generally know how to strip a rifle in thirty seconds, but he did. He had changed now and he had to accept it.

  He wasn’t the gawky nerd Lea and Hawke had recruited in London for the Poseidon mission. He’d been through the mill and learned the ropes from the best in the business. He’d seen things no one else dreamed of seeing. He’d fallen in love. He’d watched his lover die. He knew the difference between all the bullet calibers and their uses and when to deploy a tear gas grenade or a real one.

  And when to deploy the word milieu to devasting effect in any sentence.

  With the schematics memorized, he swung a sharp right at the top of the sweeping staircase and found himself in the study. Camacho was hurriedly packing C4 on a large diamond safe in the far wall. “Jesus, you don’t hang around, Jack!”

  “Down!” Camacho yelled and dived behind a desk.

  Ryan slammed down next to him as the C4 exploded. It ripped the front of the safe from the rest of the casing and flung it across the room like a lethal trashcan lid. The safe’s door buried itself three inches deep in the opposite wall as smoke and the stench of burned almonds from the detonated explosives filled the room.

  “Let’s see what we got,” Camacho said. “You cover the door!”

  Ryan did as he was told as the American checked the safe. He heard a sigh and looked up to see Camacho punching the wall. “Nothing. Let’s hope the girls had better luck in the bedroom.”

  Even with the pain in his back, Ryan considered the obvious joke but kept it to himself. What was worse than being sloppy enough to get hit? Making jokes afterwards, that’s what. He kept his mouth shut and followed Camacho out of the door and along the corridor to the bedroom.

  They found Lea and Kim rifling through Kruger’s private wardrobe and drawers, but still found nothing. Lea cursed. “Nothing relating to the Oracle and no goddam sword.”

  “Hey!” Kim ran to the window. “They’re getting away!”

  An explosion rocked the house and blasted a hail of broken banister wood through the door. It blew over them like a hailstorm of razor-sharp splinters as they hit the deck to find some cover.

  “Dammit all!” Kim yelled.

  Lea smashed a fist into the floor. “I’m so frigging pissed off right now.”

  “What do we do?” Ryan asked.

  Camacho looked at the smoke billowing into the room from the staircase. “We go after them! It’s not too late and we never give up – right?”

  The American CIA man moved forward, adjusting his goggles and raising the M4 carbine. Reaching the top of the stairs he felt some resistance as he tried to bring his right foot forward. Then he heard the tell-tale sound of a tripwire snapping beneath him.

  Lea was right behind him and she heard it too. “IED!”

  The explosion was savage, blasting each of them backwards through the smoky air like so many rag dolls. Lea and Ryan collided mid-air and crashed to the floor outside Kruger’s room. Camacho was blown straight through the study door and Kim flew over the mezzanine rail, tumbling through the air toward the parquet floor.

  “Kim!” Camacho yelled. He crawled out of the study and scrambled down the stairs with his gun raised.

  Ryan and Lea were right behind him, each taking the steps two at a time.

  “Is she okay?”

  “I’m fine…”

  She had been saved from a broken neck by a table. It had snapped under her weight but arrested her fall enough to ensure she survived with nothing more than some bruises. She snatched up her gun and dragged herself to her feet. “Let’s get going!”

  They ran over to the door, coughing the smoke from their lungs. Ryan was first, emerging from the chaos and jogging out onto the expansive bull-grass lawn.

  The others ran over to him.

  “We have to get after them!” Kim said.

  “It’s too late.” Ryan swore and kicked a wad of turf into the air. “They’re long gone and they were generous enough to destroy our SUV before they went. If anyone wants a challenge it’s in a thousand pieces all over the yard.”

  Each member of the team felt the same crushing sense of defeat as Kruger’s Maserati Levante made the corner at high-speed and vanished from sight.

  Lea stared at the fleeing vehicle and knew she had failed. “Fuck it sideways!” She turned in a circle and screamed out loud. “Shit, you’re wounded, Ry!”

  “It’s nothing, really.” He was playing it cool, but he was already feeling a little dizzy from the blood loss.

  “Get your vest off.”

  He removed the tactical vest and dropped it to the floor.

  Lea gasped when she saw the thick matted blood caked over his t-shirt. “Jesus, Ry!”

  “It’s nothing…”

  And then he went down onto his knees, his head spinning.

  Camacho and Kim grabbed hold of him while Lea lifted the t-shirt and checked the wound. “You need medical attention.”

  And next on their radar were the flashing blue lights of the South African Police Service hurriedly swerving around the bend with sirens wailing. They skidded to a halt outside th
e burning house and police leaped from their vehicles with guns raised.

  “Drop your weapons now!” the lead officer yelled. “You’re under arrest.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The ECHO Gulfstream cruised thousands of feet over the rice paddies of Guangdong Province. The moon broke the horizon over the South China Sea and the fading dusk of another tiring day gave way to the night.

  Hawke had just woken after the long flight from London. Scarlet Sloane was sitting at a table with Vincent Reno and Danny Devlin playing Texas Hold’em. By the looks on the two men’s faces she was winning big style and as he walked across the cabin and joined them it was just in time to see her slide another pile of fifty-dollar bills onto her side of the table.

  “There’s no escaping fate, boys,” she said with a wink. “I’ll enjoy spending this.”

  Hawke pulled up a chair and looked at Reaper and Devlin with sympathy. “I’d fold before it turns into strip poker.”

  “Fold?” Devlin furrowed his brow with fake confusion. “That’s what I’m waiting for!”

  Hawke said nothing. Tension had been high in the ECHO team since his bust-up with Lea and for a time he’d blamed the Irishman, but a few texts from Scarlet had set him straight on who was really to blame and it turned out it wasn’t Devlin but him. Sure, the former Irish Ranger had pushed his luck on their last mission to locate the Sword of Fire, but he knew in his heart his old friend was right.

  He ran his hands over the box in his jacket pocket. The engagement ring was still there, next to his heart but now cold and redundant. It needed the heat from Lea’s hand to come alive, but he was starting to think asking her would be a mistake and that marriage for him was some kind of a curse.

  His first wife was brutally murdered on their honeymoon and he’d delayed asking Lea for a long time. When he had finally decided to take the step, they’d argued and broken up within hours. Maybe the smartest thing he could do was toss the ring in the garbage and forget all about it. That had to be the best thing for both of them.

  “I’m out.” Reaper folded his hand over onto the table and yawned.

  “Smart but boring,” Scarlet said. “I’d have the shirt off your back in the next round.”

  “Now you’re talking!” Devlin said.

  Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “I won’t stop there, Danny. You’ll be down to your underwear in three rounds and I’m not sure how that benefits any of us, darling.”

  Reaper clapped a heavy hand on her shoulder. “C’est vrai. The only way you win when playing strip poker with a man with Danny’s body is to lose and go naked yourself. It saves the eyes.”

  “You guys shoot straight from the hip,” Devlin said, and turned his cards down to the table beside the Frenchman’s. “I’ll quit while I’m behind.”

  Hawke watched Scarlet smirk as Devlin and Reaper moped down to the end of the plane with empty pockets. She cleared the cash off the table and swept it into her jacket pocket with the single fluid motion of a seasoned Vegas pro swiping her winnings into a chip rack before taking them to the cage.

  He opened his mouth to speak but she won that fight too and spoke before he got a word to his lips.

  “Someone needs to make the first move, Joe.”

  Hawke looked down the cabin at Devlin and frowned. “Maybe I over-reacted when I saw him hugging her.”

  “You think?”

  “I presume you’re being sarcastic.”

  “Clever you. I gave Lea a hug once,” Scarlet said. “Does that mean I’m in love with her?”

  Hawke took a deep breath, puffed his cheeks and blew it out again. “I was going to ask her to marry me, Cairo.”

  “So get on with it and stop being such a bell-end.”

  Hawke contemplated the friendly advice, delivered as ever with Scarlet’s usual panache.

  Dammit all, he had known he was wrong the second Lea had walked away with Devlin back in London, but now wasn’t the time for regrets. Lea had gone to Pretoria to bring Kruger down, secure the sword and get a lead on the Oracle and he was leading a team to Hong Kong to rescue Lexi. He had to focus, not stress about the rocky road of his private life.

  “Bell-end, eh?”

  “You said it.”

  Hawke narrowed his eyes. “No, you said it.”

  “What are you, a lawyer?”

  “You think we could make it work?”

  “What makes you ask the question?”

  He shrugged. “Just wondered.”

  “I don’t think so, darling. I’m not one for settling down. You know that – I’d eat you for breakfast.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  They watched the progress of their flight on the little screen. Still over Guangdong Province, and with their journey almost at an end, they now turned into their final vector. She let out a heavy sigh. “Look, I know you’re only a man so I’ll explain it in simple terms. You were a bell-end. We established that, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Exactly right, but you’re a bell-end that wants to make things right.”

  “I’m not sure I like bell-end being used in anything but the past tense. A one-off sort of thing rather than a permanent condition.”

  “Bear with me.”

  “Fine.”

  “So the way you make things right is to grovel profusely and then go ahead and do your wedding ring thing.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Grovel profusely for how long?”

  “There are no rules. It’s an indeterminate time decided only by Lea, darling.”

  “Got it.”

  Scarlet’s phone rang. She checked the screen and said “Eden” before taking the call. “Hey, Rich. You have something new?”

  “Yes, I have something new.” His voice was weak thanks to his recent recovery from an induced coma, but the tiny speaker on the phone made him sound even more fragile.

  “What’s up?”

  “A reliable source has managed to refine the target’s whereabouts in Hong Kong today.”

  The team shared an excited look.

  “Turns out our man Rat is hopelessly addicted to gambling, but it’s mostly illegal on mainland China so when he wants to lose some money, he likes to travel to the casinos in Macau, or the…”

  “Or the racecourses in Hong Kong?” Hawke said.

  “You read my mind.”

  “Any idea which one?”

  “Better than an idea. Rat will be at the Happy Valley Racecourse on Hong Kong Island this evening. They’re running a big race there tonight and Mr Rat wants in on the action.”

  “Tonight?” Devlin asked.

  “Happy Valley Racecourse runs races on Wednesday nights,” Eden said. “An old friend of mine, Monty Devane, happens to be on the board of the Hong Kong Jockey Club and he’s already working with their security to try and track him down. He’ll brief you when you arrive. In the meantime, I’ve arranged with the British Embassy for you to be fast-tracked through the airport by an officer with MI6 named Chris Raynes. He will introduce you to another man in the Special Duties Unit.”

  “Who are they?” Devlin asked.

  “The SDU is a tactical unit within the Hong Kong Police Force whose main work is in counter-terrorism.”

  “And they’re happy working with us to track down one of the Zodiacs?” Scarlet said. “They’re Chinese agents after all.”

  “It’s complicated,” Eden said. “There are factions within the top of the PLA and not everyone is supportive of the way the Zodiacs work.”

  “I get it,” she said. “Sounds like we’re all set up and ready to go.”

  “I’ve done all I can,” Eden said. “Now it’s over to you.”

  When he disconnected the call, a silence filled the cabin. No one had talked to Eden about the coma he had suffered, but they were all pleased to see he was having such a strong recovery. If he had died, the leadership of the operation would have passed to Hawke and Lea, and that wouldn’t exactly be easy with the way things were right now.


  Hawke broke the silence. “All right – get some sleep everyone. It’s not long till we land in Hong Kong and we’re back on the clock. It could get rough. Lexi needs us in a big way right now and this could easily be our last chance. The Zodiacs aren’t the easiest people to track down and I don’t like Rich’s chances of being able to get us this close a second time.”

  “I agree.” Reaper cracked his knuckles.

  Scarlet sniffed. “Another game of poker anyone? You know what they say – sleep’s for pussies.”

  “Count me out,” Reaper said. “I need to rest. I’m not as young as you.”

  “And you can forget me as well,” Hawke said with a wry smile. “I’ve seen you play too many games to go up against you.”

  “What a couple of jessies,” Devlin said, sitting down opposite Scarlet. “I’ll play you Cairo, and I’ll kick your ass too.”

  Scarlet gave the deck a professional riffle shuffle and started to deal. “This I have to see.”

  Hawke smiled and walked over to the couch where he collapsed down onto it and stretched out ready for what Ryan had started referring to as a nanonap. He wasn’t exactly sure what one of those was – in his day back in the regiment, it was “forty winks”, but he was prepared to give it a go.

  He’d need the rest if the Zodiacs were as ruthless as the briefing notes described them to be.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When they landed at Hong Kong International Airport out on the Zhujiang River Estuary, they stepped out of the crushing humidity and into the air-conditioned cool of the airport arrivals terminal. Hawke glanced around at the impressive building and remembered all the times he had been through here on his travels.

  The memory that stuck in his mind most was the week he spent here with Liz not long after they met. They had flown in on a Friday night and met with some of his Royal Marines friends. They’d visited the Ladies’ Market and Temple Street. Joked all the way around Disneyland and ridden the funicular railway to The Peak. As the past always seemed to be, it was a more innocent time with easier laughs and less stress and when he thought about it he started to feel like someone had hollowed him out with a combat knife.