“I guess that’s too bad, huh?” She glowered at him, her eyes turning icy cold and brimming over with pure hate. “’Cause you got it.”
He ran for it, but she was faster. She hunted him down before he made the end of the street. Hooking his legs out from under him she brought him crashing down into the slime of the gutter. His face slammed down in the grime as he tried to scramble away from her. He got to his feet and gripped the tire iron hard. This was it. The bitch wasn’t going to let him go so he had to take her out.
He swung the steel lever at her and she stepped not away but into the arc of the swing. Opening her hand, she brought her arm up and moved it in the iron’s direction of travel. She gripped the lower end of the weapon near the man’s hand and rotated her arm around until the elbow landed in his face and broke his nose.
He grunted and fell away from her. She seized the moment and yanked the tire iron from his hand, disarming him of the weapon in less than five seconds from his initial attack on her. She spun around and brought the steel rod down on the top of his skull and then twisted around until she was able to smash him in the face with the back of her other hand.
It struck him like iron and blasted his head back allowing her to land a punch on his left temple. He stopped fighting now and seemed to hang in mid-air for a few seconds until he started to sway on the spot like the town drunk. It was not an impressive effort, she thought and landed the final blow.
She extended the tire iron to the full reach of her arm and spun around at her waist one-eighty to maximize the momentum of the steel bar. It landed on his jaw and shattered the teeth on the left-hand side of his mouth. He fell down and landed face-first in the gutter slime, a Whopper box cushioning the final impact.
She dusted her hands off, picked up her purse, walked over to her gym bag and blipped open the doors to her RAM 1500. Climbing inside, she tossed the gym bag on the passenger seat and fired up the engine. “Three minutes,” she said with a frown. “That’s a full minute per asshole. I have to sharpen up.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hawke took in the darkness of the National Museum of China’s enormous main entrance hall. The size of the place was breathtaking. Its smooth marble floors stretched out like a football pitch and its glass and steel windows towered a hundred feet up to the ceiling. He estimated it was easily big enough to accommodate a full-size passenger jetliner.
Breaking in through a skylight had been easy enough, but they all knew it only got harder from here. In the darkness, they crossed the expansive floor and headed toward a series of shallow marble steps leading up to three colossal double door arches. Sixteen Chinese characters on a bright red sign hung above the door. Hawke nor anyone else could read them but they knew from the schematics it was the entrance to the museum’s Level 1.
“That’s right, yeah?”
Alex’s voice crackled over the comms in everyone’s ears. “Sure is, Joe. I’ll make a linguist of you yet.”
He smiled. “That’s more Ryan’s field of expertise.”
“Wonder how the boy’s getting on?” Scarlet said, her boots clipping on the polished marble steps.
“They haven’t called in yet,” Alex said.
“Are we worried?” Reaper said.
“Not yet,” Hawke said. “They know what they’re doing.”
They moved through the doors and stepped inside the Ancient China section on Level 1. A special exhibition on the Silk Road had been attracting a large crowd of interested people and a series of stone sculptures from the Song Dynasty also seemed to be a big hit, but tonight all was silent and dark. And he was interested in only one thing — finding the access point to the utility tunnel Alex Reeve had located on the museum’s schematics.
As he scanned the space for the fire door, he felt good, but anxious. Earlier that morning he’d gone for a long run around the eastern shore of Kunming Lake. It was a good way to burn off some adrenaline and stay calm before an op like the one they were going to execute tonight.
It had been busier than he’d expected, with people everywhere he looked. Some were Beijingers, walking dogs or jogging or just making their way to the office. Others were tourists greedily snapping pictures of the Summer Palace which rose majestically above the northern edge of the lake.
He’d beaten his personal best and returned to the hotel feeling pretty good about himself. After a shower and something to eat during their briefing they’d stepped out onto Chang’an Avenue and made the short walk from the hotel to the museum.
They slipped through a fire door and found themselves behind the scenes of the giant museum. “It should be down here.”
“I think that’s it,” Reaper said.
On the door was a warning in Mandarin. Scarlet looked on her phone at an image Alex had sent her. They corresponded. “This is it.”
The door was locked, but not for long. Reaper’s delivery of a hefty riot boot almost smashed it off its hinges and then they were in.
The utilidor was a long passage constructed deep beneath the museum whose main function was to accommodate the vast building’s utility lines. These included electrical cables, steam pipes and fiber optics among others. It was an eerie world of damp walls and echoes and smaller conduits receding away into total darkness.
Reaper gave the place an unforgiving glance. “At least it’s not a sewer pipe, hein?”
“That fun comes later,” Scarlet said.
“Alex said it was disused,” said Hawke.
They followed the corridor for several hundred meters until they reached a maintenance office. The door was locked, but Reaper’s famous shoulder-barge soon had it on the deck and then they were in. Stepping inside, they found themselves in a small room full of clutter and junk.
Hawke saw it first. “I’m looking at the floor, Alex. I see the disused sewage pipe you’re talking about and it’s got a steel grate fixed on it just as you said.”
“Which is what the C4 is for,” Scarlet said.
“Right,” Alex said, “but don’t use all the explosives. You’ll need some at the other end when you reach the Torture House.”
Hawke packed a small quantity of explosives around the grate. “All right, we’re go,” he said at last.
Reaper detonated the C4 and blew the ironwork clean off the pipe’s entrance. The explosion was small and contained and thanks to their underground location it went totally unnoticed. When the smoke cleared, they left their cover and made their way over to the hole in the floor.
“So we’re really going inside that horrible little sewage pipe?” Devlin said.
“Look on the bright side,” Scarlet said.
“There’s a bright side?”
“Of course not,” she said deadpan. “Get in the fucking pipe.”
“Once again, it’s disused, Danny,” Hawke said.
They lowered their packs inside the pipe and jumped down after them, crouching down on all fours and crawling into the gloom.
Hawke led the way, his head-mounted torchlight shining a beam down into the pitch-black darkness. The concrete-lined pipe offered no surprises, except for the occasional dead rat and was precisely as their planning had shown them it would be. He pushed on, crawling on his hands and knees with his team behind him.
“That’s not smelling so great,” Devlin said.
“Please stop whining,” Scarlet said.
They made their way along the pipe, lighting the total darkness with their flashlights as they drew nearer to the section beneath the notorious Zodiac Torture House.
“Can’t say we lead a boring life,” said Devlin.
“There,” Hawke said. “Up ahead I see the wall Alex described from the schematics.”