Tiger’s Kawasaki growled like a hungry beast, accelerating easily with the twist of the throttle as he weaved in and out of the terrified crowd. Monkey fired again, almost hitting Reaper. Somewhere behind them they heard the sound of the helicopter engine grow louder and then police sirens and lights on the streets to the east and west of the famous square.
“Ever heard the phrase we’re in deep shit, Hawke?” Devlin said.
“Keep going!” Hawke shouted back to him. “We have to get to the Maxus before the fuel runs out in these engines.”
The chopper was even louder now but still no sign of it. Tiger was closing in and not far behind were at least half a dozen cop cars and PLA jeeps. Hawke suddenly found it easy to imagine being in a Chinese laogai, or gulag, for the rest of his life.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw the Maxus. He slowed the board gently and it rapidly lost altitude. The rest of the team also brought their boards to the ground and leaped off.
Hawke joined them dived into the Maxus D90. Firing it up, he wasted no time in flooring the throttle pedal and steering away from the kerb. The enormous Chinese SUV growled in response and lurched forward like a hungry tiger as the Englishman slammed his door shut and buckled his belt.
Soldiers crawled from everywhere like ants, but this time they were armed with automatic rifles. Hawke saw a handful on the right emerging from a set of concrete steps. Unable to get away from them before they fired, he frantically spun the wheel and plowed the two-thousand kilo monster right through them.
One on the side managed to dive away and fire off a few rounds before he crashed back down the steps. One smashed into the grille and disappeared beneath the SUV and the third tried to leap away but was too slow. He bounced up over the hood and smashed into the windshield leaving a chaotic array of spider-web fractures all over it and obscuring Hawke’s view.
The SBS man wanted to slam the brakes and send the man flying off the hood, but by now the other soldier on the concrete steps had gotten himself back together and set up an offensive firing position. Tucked away behind the reinforced concrete he was now firing on the D90.
“Swerve!” Lexi yelled.
Hawke spun the wheel and the man flew off the car. They all heard the rounds spraying across the tailgate as they made their way toward the rear window. Seconds later all the glass on the back of the SUV blasted out in a shower of lethal shards and sprayed into the back of the car.
“Holy shit!” Lexi screamed.
“Bastard’s a good shot,” Scarlet said calmly. “Shame to do this, really.” She smacked a fresh mag in the grip of her Glock, popped her seatbelt buckle and turned in the rear seat. Lifting the weapon into the aim she rested it on the top of the seat and squinted down the sights. “Steady as you like, Joe.”
She fired on the shooter and hit him with the first round. It neatly punctured the center of his forehead just an inch below the line of his helmet. In his death throes, he released the assault rifle and fell back down the concrete steps without a scream. Scarlet turned back and winked at Lexi as she was buckling her belt back up. “If only you could fight like that we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Lexi snarled. “Why, I ought to….”
“Go to shooting lessons?”
Lexi leaned forward, ready to fight, but Reaper gripped her by the wrist. “We’re family,” he growled, turning to Scarlet. “Reunited. Now, kiss and make up.”
Hawke sent the Maxus screeching into a sharp bend and stamped on the throttle when they were back on the straight.
Scarlet laughed. “Kiss and make up… you wish, darling.”
“Yeah, you wish,” Lexi said.
Now Reaper laughed. “See, you’re already on the same side!” He checked his gun and pushed down the window. “This is nice, n’est-ce pas?” Leaning outside with the wind flapping his bandana, he started laying down some fire on an army MengShi 4x4 on their tail.
Hawke saw the MengShi gaining on them and wrenched the steering wheel hard to the left to take the next bend. “Your friends,” he said to Lexi. “They’re not very nice people. They’re so keen to get you back they’ve recruited a Fiery Thunderbolt.”
“A what?” Scarlet said.
“It’s a recon chopper,” Lexi said. “And they’re not my friends.”
Running alongside the Maxus around five hundred feet in the air on their left was a Harbin Z-19 attack helicopter. Hawke craned his neck to peer up at the chopper. “Good stuff. We’ve got rockets, we’ve got gun pods and we’ve got Hongjian air-to-surface anti-tank missiles. Can I interest anyone in some clean underwear?”
The chopper spun around like a black angel of death, flying sideways as the pilots aimed the pod-mounted 23mm machine gun at the fleeing SUV and opened fire on the ECHO team. The rounds chewed into the asphalt behind them and chased them at high-speed as they raced south along Qianmen Street.
Ripping over the busy junction at Zhushikou West they tore past Temple of Heaven Park and continued south, but shaking the hunters off their tails was proving to be harder than they had thought.
The Harbin chopper was now directly overhead and rotating on its axis so it was now side-on to the fleeing Maxus. The door opened and a man they recognized as Zhou leaned out with a megaphone. Behind him he saw Pig. “Pull over or we will kill you!”
“Looks like we’re running out of options, Joe!” Reaper said.
“What have you got us into?” Devlin said with a grin. “I could be in Flynn’s right now taking the top off a pint of black, you know?”
Hawke smiled back. “Nothing I can’t get us out of — and I’ll share that pint with you when all this is over.”
Scarlet sighed. “I wonder what it feels like to be hunted by half the Chinese Army?” She turned to Hawke, deadpan, her words dripping with sarcasm. “Oh wait, it feels like this.”
“I’m doing my best, Cairo.”
They approached a large concrete and steel bridge supporting the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway. In the distance to the west Hawke saw the unmistakable outline of a Fuxing Hao high-speed bullet train racing along the line. Its sleek steel hull glinted in the arc lights of the railroad line.
“This is going to get ugly,” he said.
Scarlet flicked a glance at him. “What do you mean?”
“Behind us,” he said, nodding toward the rear-view mirror. “The Z-19 is opening fire on us!”
The chopper swooped down until it was below the top of the buildings lining Singin Street and let rip with its nose-mounted GPMG. Rounds ripped along behind them like dancing devils, savaging the asphalt road service and ricocheting up into the air six ways from Sunday.
“This is too close!” Lexi said. “It’s over!”
The bridge approached them at lightning speed.
“They’re firing another missile!” Hawke yelled. “Hold on to your arses!”
Above them on the bridge, the train gathered speed on its journey to Shanghai.
Hawke sucked in a breath and spun the wheel hard to the right sending the Maxus lurching over onto two wheels. They squealed loudly and black rubber smoke billowed up in their wake as the Hongjian air-to-surface missile ripped underneath them and smashed into one of the bridge’s concrete stanchions.
“Holy shit!” Lexi yelled, covering her face with her forearm.
Hawke spun the wheel hard to the left and brought the Maxus crashing back down onto all four wheels. The axels creaked and groaned as the heavy vehicle swerved all over the road. He fought hard to correct the skid and avoid the collapsing bridge up ahead. “Look out!”
After a supercharged explosion, the section of the bridge directly above the destroyed support column now collapsed in a massive smouldering heap of crumbling concrete and an enormous cloud of smoke and dust. They all saw the bent, broken rails twisting down from the tracks, pointing like the gnarled fingers of a gravedigger at a freshly dug grave.