“You don’t look so dangerous now,” Draco said. “Hardly enough to cause anyone pain. And yet you are the bane of my existence.”
Hawker stared in utter confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I don’t even know who you are.”
The man snapped off a shot at Hawker. The bullet took a chunk out of the wall by Hawker’s head. Hawker flinched and contorted his body away from the impact. The pain in his side tripled.
“You don’t know me?” Draco shouted. “After what you did to me?”
Hawker’s chest heaved and fell awkwardly as he fought for breath and understanding. Perhaps he could buy some time. His hearing had come back and some of his strength seemed to be returning. More important, Danielle was still out there.
He pressed himself against the wall and used it as leverage to force himself up. He stood facing Draco.
“You were only hired to take the fall,” Draco said. “Don’t you know your role? You were supposed to die or disappear and be blamed for what happened.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawker said.
“They cast me out because of you!” Draco shouted. “Cast me out into the darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth and they took you in. You: a traitor.”
The man knew something about him, wherever the information came from. But Hawker was no traitor.
“I never betrayed anyone,” Hawker managed. “I just wouldn’t … betray my conscience.”
“Well, that’s the problem with a conscience,” the man replied. “It can really mess up your day.”
As Hawker spoke he realized for the first time in a long time that he had nothing left to make up for. He’d done what was right. Not just what was right for him, but what was right in and of itself. And even then he’d spent years struggling with the choice that had banished him.
His only guess was that this man must have been involved somehow, though he didn’t recognize him.
Just then a thunderous explosion rocked the boat. Hawker steadied himself with a hand on the wall, hoping it was the first of the Tomahawks, but it was followed by only a few rumbles and then slowly the odor of smoke began to seep into the room.
Draco glared at him. “Have you no respect?” he said.
“Bow your head. You’ve just heard the sound of Ms. Laidlaw’s death at the hands of a tripwire.”
The smug arrogance and the words themselves lit a fire in Hawker. Not waiting, not thinking, he charged. He pushed himself off the wall and lunged forward. The SKS fired. A shot hit Hawker on the side, a glancing blow. The vest took most of the energy and Hawker collided with Draco, wrapping his arm around the man’s neck, trying to tackle him.
They stumbled together but didn’t fall. They crashed through the door into the bay where Nadia was strapped to the gurney. Hawker drove the cult leader into the wall.
Still standing, Hawker slammed his knee into Draco’s stomach and then butted his forehead into Draco’s face. The man’s nose shattered and he cried out. The back of his head hit hard against the wall as he tried to get the rifle loose and shoot Hawker.
Using the leverage he’d gained, Hawker wrapped one arm around Draco’s neck and grabbed his weapon with the other. Gripping it with all his might, he kept Draco from turning it at either him or Sonia.
Draco pulled the trigger anyway and gunfire sprayed the room. The recoil hammered near Hawker’s wound. The pain was incredible, but Hawker held on, and Draco fired again, unwittingly forcing his own man, Cruor, to take cover.
As the latest shots ended, Hawker could feel his hand burning where he held the rifle. He let go, slammed a punch into Draco’s face, and then turned him and bent him backward, pulling the man off his feet and body-slamming him to the ground.
Hawker landed on top of him and began to pummel the bastard, slamming his fist into Draco’s face.
Before he could beat Draco to death, Cruor lunged for him, grabbing him around the neck and choking him. The brawl became all disjointed, a glimpse here, a punch there, another blow here.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Sonia smashing something into Cruor’s skull, and the man went off to the side. But as the thug landed, he rolled, brought his own weapon to bear, and blasted Sonia in the stomach. She fell backward against the wall, clutching her abdomen and doubling over.
At almost the same moment shots rang out from the other direction, blood splattered on the far wall, and Cruor collapsed to his knees and then fell on his face.
Draco scrambled away, ducking through the door to where Nadia lay. A pair of shots chased him, puncturing the glass between them. Fissures spidered across the clear plate and it crumbled in toward Hawker.
As the shattered glass fell away, it revealed Draco hiding behind Nadia. His right hand held an injector attached to her IV line; his left hand held another one that hooked into the same line at a Y connection. They were large syringes, the size of toothpaste tubes, with thumb-sized plungers. One had been marked with a red stripe and one with white.
Hawker looked around wondering where the hell the shots had come from. Danielle stood in the doorway with a rifle raised to her shoulder.
“Never one without the other,” Draco managed. The words came raggedly from his busted mouth. “I trust you recognize me, Ms. Laidlaw.”
“Gibbs,” she said, sounding disgusted. “I have to say you’ve looked better.”
Hawker finally understood. Gibbs had been director of the NRI before Moore. He’d ordered Danielle to hire Hawker for the ill-fated Brazilian expedition, planning to eliminate the team once they’d discovered what they were looking for, to take the discovery private, and to force the blame off on Hawker, a known fugitive and criminal at the time.
But after it all went wrong, Hawker had pulled Danielle and the other survivors out of the jungle. Gibbs’s partner had been killed and Gibbs had fled, disappearing into the underworld before he could be arrested.
Hawker didn’t recognize him because he’d never met the man. But Danielle knew him well.
“Fire and my body tenses,” Gibbs/Draco said. “The plunger will go down even if I die.”
Gibbs crouched behind Nadia, using her as a shield in her upright sitting position.
On the floor across from Hawker, Sonia was bleeding out, her shirt soaked through with blood, the floor beneath her turning red. He was torn between moving to Sonia, whom he couldn’t help, and holding his position a few feet from Gibbs, almost in striking range. He crawled to Sonia. She had to be in terrible pain, her eyes barely focusing.
Danielle eased closer, the rifle still trained on Gibbs. “What is it you want, Gibbs? What the hell was all this about?”
“I want to be king,” he said, laughing. “But I’ll settle for making the world beg for my mercy and pay me billions.”
“So why do all this? You could have taken the virus and left.”
“You arrived a little early,” he admitted. “But I wanted to be here anyway. To show you that you’d lost to me, to find you writhing on my deck filled with shrapnel and throw his”—he looked at Hawker—“dead body beside you. I wanted pictures to send to Arnold so he’d know I’d taken you, his prize student, as payment.”
“You’re delusional,” she said. “You blame us? For what you did?”
The anger returned. “They hunt for me with dogs and they fawn over you,” he said. “They give you the keys to the kingdom, even as they try to destroy me. I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you both. I could have killed you many times. Just a shot here or there. But you would never have known it was me. And I would never have had the chance to do what I’m about to do. Punish the whole world for casting me out.”