“You missed all the fun!” Scarlet said as she helped Hawke get Ryan into the chopper. He clambered in after him and swept the water from his hair, rushing over to Ryan who was still unconscious.
Scarlet stretched Ryan out on the floor of the chopper and began to give him the kiss of life.
Lea ran over to Hawke and kissed him.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Never! But how did you find us?” Hawke asked.
“Infrared detector on my helmet,” Trond said calmly over the headset from the cockpit. “If I hadn’t been wearing this you would be halfway to Russia by now.”
Ryan spluttered back to life and doubled over on his side as he coughed the seawater from his lungs.
“You’re going to be all right,” Scarlet said, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Ryan was clearly rattled, but knew he had a reputation to maintain. Through the coughing and wheezing he looked up at Scarlet adoringly. “I can’t believe…” he began.
“What?” Scarlet said.
“That I’ve been kissed by the woman who shot the President of the United States!”
She sighed heavily and pushed him over.
“But didn’t you feel the spark?” Ryan called out.
“I’ve been more turned on blowing up a sex doll.”
Victoria looked disgusted. “Oh, how dreadful!”
Ryan got to his knees and tried to get his breath back. “You’ve blown up a sex doll?”
“I see we’re all up to our usual speeds and settings,” Hawke said, reaching his arms around Lea’s waist.
Scarlet rolled her eyes as they kissed a second time. “Is that really the best use of our time?”
“Cairo’s right,” Hawke said. “We need to launch the submersible right away,” he said. “They’ve dived in the Rán and they’ll be halfway there by now!”
Trond waved a one-finger salute in acknowledgement and turned the chopper back to shore. Moments later, the enormous military machine was slowly descending over the sea to the bottom of the cliffs and touching down on the freezing beach. The rain blowing in from the Barents Sea was cold and heavy, and reduced daylight visibility to the point that it almost looked like twilight, but none of that mattered to Hawke.
He had a mission to complete and nothing was going to stop him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Getting inside the complex was easier than Lexi had anticipated. Her first thought was to use the door she had seen ‘Ben’ exit from when she set the alarm off in the yard, but when she got there it was shut again, and locked. Clearly they knew the island was now under attack and had initiated some kind of silent lockdown.
She had finally gained entry to the place via a skylight in what turned out to be the food stores. She lowered herself gently to the tiled floor and after helping herself to a sip of bottled mineral water from the shelf, she refocussed her mind and readied her weapon for the next stage of the mission.
Her attempt to obtain any kind of schematics for the complex had failed miserably — it was as if the place didn’t exist. There were no authorities on the island she could ask after all, and every one of her foreign intel agency contacts had come to nothing. This meant that from this stage onwards she had to feel her way forward step by step — improvising as she moved silently along the complex’s corridors in search of her final target. Anyone who got in the way between her and Eden would also have to be eliminated.
She stalked down a long utility corridor leading from the food stores to what was obviously the generator room. For a while she considered sabotaging it and plunging the place into darkness, but while that sounded like a good idea at first it would not only give away her current position inside the complex, but also give her a disadvantage. The ECHO team knew this place better than she did and they would certainly have access to better night vision tech than her handheld monocular.
In the cool, air-conditioned silence of the complex, her mind drifted back to her training back in Beijing, and the monstrous figure of Shi Keyu. Shi was her boss and chief training officer, and his fondness for ancient Chinese military strategy was well-known in the academy.
“Remember, Xiaoli,” he had said. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
If his scowling, pock-marked face hadn’t been less than ten inches from hers she would have rolled her eyes. His endless quoting of Sun Tzu, the Spring and Autumn Period Chinese military strategist and commander, was also well-known in the academy.
Now, she couldn’t shake him out of her mind.
The time he had caught her smoking in her room and made her do a hundred push-ups. Even now she could still see the reflection of her face in the polished toecaps of his boots. The time he had reprimanded her in front of everyone after she had failed to recite accurately Sun Tzu’s five basic factors of military strategy. She could still see his bloated, sweating face even now after all these years.
She glanced at her watch — she had been on the island less than half an hour so far. She smiled and thought of Shi Keyu one last time. Shi Keyu who was dragged kicking and screaming from his Jiaozi dumplings one night to face execution by firing squad for crimes against the state. As she closed in on her objective, she heard the ancient voice of Sun Tzu as he whispered in her ear: Quickness is the essence of the war.
Ahead of her she heard whistling. She stopped in a heartbeat and pushed herself up against the wall, hiding in the shadows of a Chinese windmill palm. Good choice, she thought, but her appreciation of the plant-life was cut short when she saw the unmistakable figure of Maria Kurikova as she glided across the small window in the kitchen door and opened the refrigerator. It was definitely the Russian woman — blonde hair tied back, blue eyes, tall and elegant. Too elegant for an FSB goon, she thought. Perhaps she was descended from the Russian aristocracy.
But Kurikova’s provenance hardly mattered now. All Lexi was thinking about was how to take her out of the equation. As far as she was concerned she wouldn’t be able to have a serious shot at taking Eden out until the Russian woman was out of the way. She might look like a Tsarina, but Lexi had seen her in action and it was no joke. Her assessment of the situation was that if she tried to hit Eden while Kurikova was still standing things might get nasty.
She racked her mind thinking of possible plays, and then the ghosts returned to her once again out of the ether. Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected…
Not expected, indeed.
Looking above her she saw an air-conditioning duct grille. Standing on the side of the palm pot she pushed it open and climbed inside until she was concealed within the duct, and then she shuffled forward slowly and silently, dragging both Shi Keyu and Sun Tzu behind her.
Over the kitchen now, she peered down through the grille in the ceiling and watched as Maria finished making her sandwich. Lexi noted that she had left her gun on the couch in the sunken living area.
Big mistake, she thought. This is too easy.
Taking a deep breath, she coiled her legs up and then released them like a spring, powering the grille out with her boots and dropping through the hole behind it. The grille clattered to the floor with a metallic crash and Maria almost jumped out of her skin.
Lexi hit the ground and Maria reacted in half a second, just as Lexi knew she would. She spun around and reached out for the gun but it was too late. She had left the weapon too far away and made herself defenseless.