He dropped his weapon and heard Danielle’s rifle clatter to the rooftop.
“Turn around.”
Hawker turned slowly to see three guards flanking a heavyset Chinese man. He didn’t know him by sight, but Kang’s head thug was a man named Choi. Hawker guessed that’s who he was looking at.
“Get on the ground!” Choi shouted.
As Hawker put his hands on the rooftop, he caught the sound of a reverberation. As he lay flat, the sound grew rapidly until a sleek, European-built helicopter came roaring up over the side of the building.
He looked up just as shots began to rain down from the open door of the helicopter.
Two of the guards went down. Choi and the other scrambled for cover.
The helicopter swept past and turned around.
Hawker grabbed his weapon and began firing, pinning down Kang’s people in the stairwell.
The helicopter had turned and was coming back. It trailed a steel cable. As Danielle took over the firing, Hawker dove for the wire and grabbed it.
“Come on!” he shouted.
Danielle raced toward him, dragging Yuri.
The helicopter hovered, but shots rang out and sparks could be seen where shells hit the fuselage.
“Hurry!”
Hawker clicked in and then locked Danielle and the kid in as well.
The helicopter peeled off as Choi and the guard came out of the stairwell firing.
Hawker fired back, just as the slack was used up. With a jolt they were yanked off their feet, flung over the edge of the tower and falling.
The three swung through the air like jumpers on some absurd thrill ride, arcing toward the water, accelerating forward like a giant pendulum. It was an insane rush, racing at a hundred miles an hour through the dark and the rain with nothing around them, and the waters of Victoria Harbour a thousand feet below.
They swung forward and up, weightless for a second before dropping back. After two or three smaller arcs they were stable, trailing beneath and behind the helicopter as it moved across Victoria Harbour.
The rain stung their faces like pellets from a gun. Hawker gripped Danielle and Yuri tightly to reduce the friction and the swaying. The helicopter’s winch could not raise the weight of three people at once, so the plan was to get over to the Kowloon side, land, and then disperse.
Danielle held on tight. “Who’s flying this thing?”
“No one you know,” he said.
She shouted above the wind. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He tried to explain his allies. “These guys are Russian.”
“I thought Moore sent you.”
“He did,” Hawker said. “But I needed help, and they sort of made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Hawker squinted at her, the wind stinging his eyes. He could see Danielle shivering in the cold and rain, but they were descending and slowing. In a few minutes they’d be down on the ground.
“They want this kid back,” he told her. “Kang was using him to blackmail one of their scientists, the kid’s mother.”
Danielle cocked her head as if she’d heard him wrong. “They lied to you,” she said. “Yuri’s an orphan. They’ve been doing experiments on him.”
Hawker cringed. He figured Ivan had told him only half the truth, but this was not what he’d expected.
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be,” she said.
He looked at the kid and then back at Danielle.
“I’m not giving him back,” she insisted.
He didn’t know what to say, how to explain just what kind of a man Saravich was. How there would be no compromise.
“I gave someone my word,” she said. “And I’m not going back on it.”
Her eyes were unyielding. Despite the wind and the spray and the rain, she glared at him.
He watched her glance toward the shore. Fifty feet high now, five hundred yards from land, they were doing only thirty knots.
“You don’t understand!” he shouted. “I made a deal with them.”
She pulled free from his grasp and stretched upward, reaching for the steel line.
“Well, I’m breaking it.”
Before he could stop her, she pulled the release bar and the three of them dropped like stones.
It’s amazing what the mind can do in the blink of an eye. It took all of a second and a half for the distance to be used up, but as he tumbled through the darkness, two complete and distinct thoughts ran through Hawker’s head.
First: that if they somehow survived the fall, he was going to kill Danielle for causing it. And second, if they did survive the fall and he relented on his first thought, where the hell could they possibly go, that Ivan wouldn’t find them and kill them both.
And then he slammed into the water like a man running full force into a solid brick wall.
CHAPTER 19
Building Five, Virginia Industrial Complex
Arnold Moore had been expecting the worst, with the president and the head of the CIA coming to see him together. The two men had chosen Monday morning for a short drive out into the countryside to NRI headquarters at the Virginia Industrial Complex, affectionately known as the VIC. Moore hadn’t been given a reason, but he assumed it had something to do with Danielle’s rescue, and he was right. Partially.
After several minutes of haranguing by the CIA’s chief, Moore glanced at the president. So far the commander in chief had remained oddly silent at a bawling-out session he’d specifically called for. It almost seemed as if he’d turned the whole thing over to Stecker, a thought that worried Moore considerably. And yet Stecker seemed just as puzzled at the president’s silence.
“The point is,” Stecker said, launching forward once again, “when we hear about someone hiring a fugitive, a mercenary who used to work for us, we don’t expect it to be the head of a fellow agency.”
Moore could see the outlines of the trap now. If he denied the meeting to the president, Stecker would produce proof. And if he admitted what he’d done, he’d be seen as a reckless fool.
With nowhere else to turn, Moore threw up his only defense, weak as it was.
“I wasn’t acting in my official capacity,” he said.
“What the hell does that mean?” Stecker asked.
Moore clarified. “No NRI funds were used in the operation.”
“Then where did the money come from?” Stecker asked.
“My own personal account,” Moore said, before adding with some glee, “My CIA retirement was a big part of it. I’d like to thank you for that.”
Now Stecker glanced at the president as if waiting for him to lower the boom. When President Henderson remained silent, Stecker scowled. He turned back to Moore.
“You must be out of your mind, Arnold,” he said. “You know you can’t act as a private citizen. Not in your office. You endanger the very fabric of—”
“If Ross Perot can go rescue his own people from a hostile nation—and be a hero for it, I might add—then I can rescue mine. When a private citizen of a foreign country acts against the law, I don’t have to be bound by it in protecting one of ours.”
Stecker exploded. “God damn you, Moore, you’re out of control! If you worked for me I’d fire your ass or have you arrested.”
Moore sat back. At least Stecker had exposed his true purpose. “Ah yes. So that’s what this is really about. The CIA’s never-ending campaign to take over the NRI and all its assets.”
“It’s called Central Intelligence for a reason,” Stecker replied.
Moore raised his eyebrows. “I’ll give you the Central part,” he said. “But Intelligence … really, that’s been kind of hit-or-miss.”
Moore watched Stecker’s face go red. He looked like a tourist who forgot to use sunblock on a Florida beach.
Before his head could explode, the president raised a hand.
“I’m going to ring the bell here, gentlemen.” He looked at Stecker. “Byron, I have you ahead on points, but Arnold has a knockout punch waiting for you, one you’ll never see coming.”