“Smashing,” Ryan said.
“So you can hack the thing, yeah?”
“I think so.”
“Me too,” Alex said. “It’s been done before, at least.”
“That’s right,” Ryan said. “The Iranians recently hacked a USAF drone flying over their border by hacking into its GPS system and uploading a maldrone.”
“A what?” Hawke shouted.
“Drone malware, basically. I can use it to hack the drone and connect it to my laptop. That would bring it under my control, theoretically, at least.”
“Theoretically, Ryan, I’m about to get covered in Medusa’s lethal bacteria and turned to stone, and if that’s not enough motivation there’s a strong southerly right now and when Kiefel’s little timer releases this shit it’s blowing all over one of the most densely populated places on earth… so can we just get a move on, please?”
“Already on it,” Alex said. “We already know the drone’s IP address because it’s one of ours, and I just hacked it and disconnected it from its internal GPS guidance system. Anything Kiefel programmed in there is now old news.”
Hawke breathed a sigh of relief. “What now?”
“Now I’m turning it around…”
“Woah!” Hawke yelled as the drone banked hard to the right and steered sharply away from midtown Manhattan.
“How long have we got on that timer, Joe?” Ryan asked.
“Sixty seconds.”
“The SWAT guys have got a sealed unit for us to land it in but it’s on a US Navy ship just off the coast,” Alex said, and then added grimly, “We don’t have time to lower the drone so you can get out, Joe.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Hawke said as he strapped Jakob’s backpack on. “Our German friend left me a get out of jail free card. Just fly the drone over to the yacht and then take her out to the ship!”
Hawke moved to the drone’s door and waited as Ryan flew the drone back to the Hudson then he leaped out and immediately pulled the cord on the BASE jump parachute. He glided safely to earth and landed with a gentle thump beside Cairo at the base of the Statue of Liberty. She was standing a few yards from the container holding Medusa.
“What the hell happened to Jakob, anyway?” Alex asked over the headset.
“He dropped out of city life,” Hawke said.
“You mean the Big Apple didn’t work its magic on him?”
“No — he didn’t see the point of it.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes and they watched the drone, guided by Ryan and Alex, as it landed inside the sealed unit on board the ship in the distance.
“Can you believe we don’t even get a pension for this work?” Scarlet said.
“You’re still talking about money, Cairo, and… wait — I don’t believe it!”
“What is it?”
Hawke pointed at a small Coast Guard tender as it moved toward them. “Look who’s on the bow.”
“Who am I looking at, Joe?”
“The smug bastard waving at us.”
“Who is it?”
Hawke couldn’t help but grin. “It’s Eddie Bloody Kosinski, and he’s coming to get Medusa.”
Hawke and Scarlet shared a glance, and then burst into laughter.
Moments later their humor was subdued by the sight of Agent Doyle pulling President Grant from the Hudson River. The Commander-in-Chief had the wound Scarlet had aimed for, and was fine, but still needed medical attention. As the team of doctors swarmed around him on his way to Marine One, he called Hawke and Scarlet over.
“Mr Hawke, I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart…”
“Don’t mention it,” Hawke said.
“You saved a nation tonight, Mr Hawke, and maybe the world. We all owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Hawke gave a nod but made no further reply, aware that he was suddenly the center of attention.
As they loaded his stretcher into the back of the giant helicopter, Grant turned to Scarlet.
“As for you — you saved the life of the Commander-in-Chief tonight, and more than that, a husband and a father. I’ll never forget what you did, even if it was slightly unorthodox.”
“No problem, Mr President,” Scarlet said.
“If you ever need anything…”
Now he was inside the chopper and the blades began to speed up. Slowly, the large machine lifted off the ground.
“I’ll bear that in mind!” Scarlet shouted, but her words were drowned out by the turbine and then the President was gone into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Lea winced as the pulsing agony of the deep laceration on her head coursed through her temple and into her jaw. She felt the blood from the wound welling in her eye socket and for a moment she thought she was going to pass out again.
Only now did she feel the duct tape over her mouth and the cable-ties on her wrists behind her back. A weird stench of motor oil hung around her nostrils and a wave of nausea rippled over her as she struggled to see in the darkness, her arms now numb as the weight of her own body crushed down on them.
She didn’t know where she was. The last thing she remembered was trying to go back inside to pull Danny Devlin from the flames as they burned down her parent’s old holiday home. She never even got the chance to drag him from the fire and toxic smoke before one of the men had hit her in the head with his gun and then everything had gone black as night.
Wherever she was now, it was a small, closely confined space. For a dreadful second, she thought she was in a coffin, but then she realized her cheek was pushed against some kind of hard carpet, and as far as she knew, the interior of coffins weren’t usually carpeted.
She breathed a short sigh of relief before another wave of panic rose in her when she heard an engine fire up and then a familiar rumbling vibration — she was in the boot of car, and it didn’t take her long to work out which one.
The gunmen’s Audi A7.
Now it was all coming back.
She remembered what Lefevre had said about Mr Luk — was he really going to take her back to Hong Kong and hand her over so that psychopath could subject her to death by a thousand cuts? She felt sick at the thought, but she was given no time to think. The engine revved and she felt the car lurch violently forward, forcing her to the back of the boot and striking her head on the internal boot release. She cried out as the metal release catch dug into the fresh wound on her head, but her cry was muffled by the duct tape on her mouth into a pitiful moan.
She knew the roads around here better than anyone, and by following the turns of the car she knew where they were heading — south-east toward the coast, and that could mean only one thing. The men were taking her to Connemara Airport where they no doubt had some kind of aircraft fuelled up and ready to take her — and her father’s research files — to god knows where, but Luk rose in her terrified mind once again.
She heard an indistinct mumbling from the front of the car and then the leader of the two men started shouting. This was followed by a drastic swing to the left and the squealing of tires. Then the car went straight again and there was a rapid acceleration.
Her mind drifted to Joe Hawke, whom she had last seen in Egypt so many weeks ago. The former SBS man had saved her before, but not this time. This time he didn’t even know which continent she was on. Her only hope was the one man who knew where she was, but the last time she had seen Danny Devlin he had been half-dead from a bullet wound and smoke inhalation and was now unconscious and surrounded by flames.
Danny Devlin coughed the burning smoke from his lungs and staggered from the flames with his hand over his mouth. His face was smeared with soot and he stopped on the patio and violently threw up. He rushed his hands to his side and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the bullet had only produced a flesh wound — searing half an inch of his torso away and leaving what would be an impressive scar — but he would live.