Scarlet’s voice crackled back in his ear. “Having some trouble back here, darling.”
Hawke shared a look with Devlin. “Must have sent in reinforcements. Stay here and make sure the stairs stay clear, I’ll go and sort it out.”
He sprinted down the corridor and was shocked by what he saw. The lobby was now a warzone with Scarlet, Reaper and Lexi fighting at least twenty PLA soldiers. Tasked with defending the inner sanctum of the Chinese State, the men and women in uniform were fighting as fiercely as they could, but his ECHO friends were more than a match for them. By the time he had reached them the action was over.
“Turns out you didn’t need me after all,” he said.
Scarlet shrugged. “What can I say?”
“Where now?” Lexi said. “I hate this place.”
Hawke glanced at the bloody rag wrapped around her left hand. “To the courtyard. We have a little surprise waiting there.”
They headed back to Devlin and reached the small courtyard where they had broken into the Torture House compound. To Lexi’s confusion, Hawke then leaped down through a manhole cover. Working quickly and efficiently and exactly according to plan, he picked up their backpacks one by one and passed them up to the rest of the team.
Lexi nervously scanned the courtyard for any sign of the soldiers. “What the hell’s going on? They’re sealing the perimeter! We don’t stand a chance.” As she spoke, a series of search lights switched on and lit the night as the soldiers started to scan the perimeter for any sign of the invaders.
Hawke lifted himself out of the hole. “Right, everyone open their packs and let’s get out of here.”
With confusion still etched deep on her face, Lexi followed the others and unzipped the chunky backpack Hawke had passed her from the sewer pipe. She opened it up and was astonished by what she saw.
“I don’t believe this.”
“Believe it and hurry the hell up!” Devlin said.
She pulled a strange, heavy black object from the bag and set it down on the cobblestones. “What the hell is this?”
Scarlet said, “It’s a jet-powered hoverboard, a bit like the Flyboard Air but with its own proprietary software and turbojets. Its top speed is one hundred miles per hour, it has a ceiling of ten thousand feet and can fly for fifteen minutes before running out of fuel.”
“Am I dreaming this?”
“No,” Devlin said. “And to be fair it’s more of a nightmare.”
Hawke fitted a small pack onto his back. “There’s enough A1 kerosene in these packs to last around ten to fifteen minutes and after that you’re hitting the deck. How high you are when that happens is up to you, but I’d recommend no more than ten feet. These remotes control the throttles and after that just follow my lead.”
“Are you insane?” Lexi asked. “We’ll never get away on these things!”
“We’ll never get away any other way,” he said. “The perimeter was completely sealed the moment the alarms went off. Besides, where’s your spirit of adventure?”
Lexi sighed and shook her head as she stepped onto the board and secured her boots inside the straps. “I saw someone doing this on YouTube once,” she said, turning cynical eyes onto Hawke. “He had a parachute.”
“No room for parachutes.”
Soldiers tumbled out of the courtyard door and saw them. They raised their guns and started firing.
Hawke fired his board up first and the four miniature, jet-powered turboengines burst to life. Rising up into the air he turned and fired on the men with his Glock, forcing them to take cover.
Scarlet and Reaper were already powering their jetboards into the air behind him, hands on their weapons and spinning around to fire on the men. Hawke thought Lexi was having some trouble with her board, but Devlin covered her while she fired it up and got it moving. Breaking a Chinese citizen out of a government facility like this would lead to some serious questions at the highest levels, especially if anything went wrong and they were already on the wrong side of most governments.
Lexi was higher in the air now and Devlin was just a few seconds behind her, wobbling about as he fought to control the jetboard while simultaneously firing on the soldiers.
They gained speed rapidly, the 250 horsepower jet turbines easily lifting them up to the elevation of the outer perimeter wall. Another alarm declared loud and clear that they were leaving the compound. Searchlights lit them up like Christmas trees as they flew over the top of the outer wall and headed down toward the street.
Hawke was in the lead, racing down from the top of the wall and slowing up around twenty feet above the street. Below him, soldiers poured out of the main gate and sprinted after them with rifles.
He flinched as a bullet traced past him and then another struck the casing on one of the jetboard’s four turboengines. The soldier who had fired on him was still giving chase, stopping every few yards to raise the rifle and take another pot shot.
The five-strong team now converged around fifty feet in the air as they continued to flee. Below them, a motorbike raced out of the main gate and headed in their direction. Tiger was driving it and Monkey was riding pillion, armed with two PLA-issue P19 semi-automatic pistols.
He teased some more speed out of the jetboard, suddenly shooting up into the air once again and leaving Tiger far below in his wake. Lexi was at his side now, deftly manoeuvring the jetboard as if she’d spent half her life flying one.
“Zàijiàn, you bastards!”
Spinning around in the air, she raised her weapon and opened fire on the soldiers sprinting across Tiananmen Square. Spraying them with rounds, she forced them to take cover behind their vehicles, but in the distance, she saw at least another half a dozen PLA trucks giving pursuit.
We’ll be lucky to get of this with our lives, she thought, then saw Tiger and Monkey speeding up on their bike and continuing to pursue them.
“This is not good!” she screamed. “They’re gaining on us!”
“What’s the plan, Hawkster?” Scarlet asked.
With only a few minutes of kerosene left before the jetboards fell out of the sky, Hawke knew there was only one plan. “We get back to our car and get to the rendezvous point as fast as we can!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hawke steered the jetboard down to Tiananmen Square until he was no more than two or three feet off the ground. “Get down low!” he yelled. “Harder for them to see us.”
The rest of the team followed him and descended until they were almost the same height as the crowd of people now scattering from them in every direction. Most were scared, some were bemused and others simply filmed all they could on their phones.
The jetboard engines roared. CCTV cameras swivelled. Somewhere in the distance they heard a helicopter. Tiger revved his bike and closed the gap as Monkey raised both guns cowboy-style and fired on the ECHO team with a vengeance.
Hawke twisted around and returned fire while still flying away from them. Reaper and Scarlet made the same manoeuvre. Devlin and Lexi raced ahead toward their Maxus D90 SUV which was still where they had parked it earlier.
Out of rounds, Hawke clicked the release and the empty mag fell away onto the square. He smacked a second one into the grip and emptied it all over the pursuing Zodiac men and their bike. Hitting either of the assassins would work for him, but if he missed and hit the fuel tank there was the possibility of it killing or injuring innocent bystanders.
He raced backward through the night, hot wind whipping at his hair as he fired again on his pursuers. Empty jackets spat from the ejector port and clattered to the ground below. The gun kicked back in his grip with each shot, but holding the throttle remote meant firing one-handed and the bullets were going everywhere except where he wanted them.