Still over Hawke’s shoulder, Lexi called back and an argument began. The man lifted what was left of the bloody chicken up with his other hand and started screaming some more. Lexi laughed and hurled back more abuse.
The Englishman considered the situation and wondered if he’d run into an episode of the Outer Limits.
Devlin scratched his head. “What the holy fuck is going on?”
“I take it he’s not going to serve us then?” Hawke said.
Lexi laughed. “You don’t want to know what he’s saying.”
Reaper turned from the front door. “Tell him the People’s Liberation Army want to see his menu.”
They ran past the screaming man through a door into the rear. In the kitchen now, steam and smoke filled the air again, but this time the flash of woks and the smell of ginger and chili replaced the smell of burning car seat stuffing.
“Which way?”
A chef snatched a knife-sharpening steel and held it up as a weapon.
“Hang on,” Hawke said. “Why am I still carrying you, Lex?”
She shrugged. “I thought you were just being an English gentleman.”
Hawke twisted his mouth and dropped her from his shoulders. “Your ride is over.”
“If I knew it was a ride I’d have dressed for the occasion.”
He looked at her. “Really? Here and now?”
The soldiers teemed in through the door and flooded into the kitchen. Still no sign of Tiger and Monkey, Hawke noted, but this was plenty enough trouble as it was. The fight kicked off when Reaper snatched up a wok and piled into three men beside one of the industrial-size stoves.
Smashing the cooking pan into one of their heads, he swung it back in the opposite direction and panned another of the soldiers a second later. Both men fell back onto the stove, plunging their hands into the gas flames and screaming in pain as Reaper headbutted the third man and finished him with a bone-crunching haymaker.
The man fell back and crashed into more soldiers like a bowling ball colliding into a dozen pins. One of them scrambled to stop himself going over and reached out to grab something to stop his fall. He hit the handle of another wok and flicked it up into the air, spraying himself and his colleagues with hot oyster sauce and Sichuan peppercorns.
Lexi and Scarlet were taking out their frustrations on some soldiers closer to the man with the sharpening steel who was now running from the kitchen with fear on his face. Devlin was pounding another soldier in the corner, holding him up with one hand while landing punches on his jaw with the other.
Hawke scanned the room for another way out when he saw a door behind some industrial refrigerators. It was at the other end of the enormous island that ran down the center of the kitchen. It seemed to lead to a downward staircase and he thought it looked good as a possible escape route, but then Tiger and Monkey burst through it with their guns and started firing on him.
He slammed himself up against the wall behind the refrigerator and called out to his teammates, alerting them to the arrival of the Zodiacs. Searching the enormous kitchen for their locations, he saw Reaper first, deep in the brawling mob. Catching sight of his skull and crossbones bandana, he called out to him.
“Zodiacs, Reap!”
The Frenchman spun around. “And just as I was getting bored, too!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Reaper didn’t hesitate and quickly launched himself into the assassins, lashing out with tightened fists and razor-sharp elbows as he worked his way through the soldiers to get to the Zodiac men.
They fired on him, hitting a soldier in the heart and killing him on the spot. The soldiers reacted fast and badly, drawing their weapons and raking the two assassins with a vicious fusillade.
Tiger and Monkey were the hardest trained men in the country. They took cover behind the island in the center of the kitchen and calmly reloaded. When they fought back against the soldiers it was a bloodbath and seconds later not a single one of the PLA men was still alive. Their cooling corpses slid down to the kitchen floor beneath walls covered in blood. Tiger and Monkey reloaded and turned their guns on the ECHO team and the traitorous asset. They would kill them all.
Reaper had a different strategy planned. He pounded across the kitchen and vaulted over the island. His tactical Foreign Legion-issue boots smashed down on the tiles with a heavy thumping noise as he turned on the assassins.
Tiger swivelled around to look up at the invader, unable to believe he’d had the nerve to do what had just happened. Monkey excitedly slapped the floor with his free hand and laughed like a madman.
Reaper grabbed hold of Monkey’s throat and hurled him back into the wall beside the staircase. The Zodiac assassin smashed into the plaster at an awkward angle and tumbled down into the stairwell, smashing his head on the banister rail as he went.
For a second, the Frenchman thought the job was done, but then he saw something that shocked him to the core. Monkey sprang up over the banister like he had the power of flight and raced toward him, a knife drawn in the air.
Reaper never flinched. He ducked, swung around and landed the bottom of his clenched fist in the middle of Monkey’s face. The assassin swooned for a moment as his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. He was a fast and experienced martial arts warrior but the former legionnaire had caught him by surprise. He fell to the floor and rolled out of sight under the island.
Reaper scanned the room for the vanishing Monkey. “C’est quoi ce bordel!”
A few steps away, Hawke swung a powerful right-hand cross at Tiger, but his opponent was too fast for him. He ducked, easily dodging the blow and fought back with a lethal hook kick, smashing Hawke’s legs out from under him and sending him tumbling over backwards.
“Need a hand, buddy?” Devlin said, wiping blood from his mouth.
Hawke gave him a look. “Not right now, thank you.”
Tiger attacked again, launching himself at maximum velocity at the fallen Englishman, but Hawke rolled away to the left, leaving Tiger’s punch smashing into the floor tiles beneath him.
Monkey rolled out of the island at the other end of the room and leaped to his feet behind Lexi. Cockily, he tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned he winked.
Even with her damaged hand, her reaction was ruthless and she started pummelling him in the stomach. She moved so fast he had no chance and she cursed as she beat the wind from his lungs, never letting up long enough for him to get his breath back and return fire. The murder of her parents at the hands of these men had raised a hatred inside of her she never realized she could feel and now she fought with a ferociousness never before seen by the ECHO team.
Now, her work was nearly done. She grabbed hold of the semi-conscious, dazed Monkey by his hair and walked him backwards to one of the stoves. Pinning him up against the work surface, she started gripping his throat.
The assassin squirmed as she squeezed ever tighter on his throat. His face started to turn purple and when he pleaded for mercy, his voice was weak and hoarse. He begged her in Mandarin to release him.
“I will release you only to hell!” she spat back at him, tightening her grip even further. One glance at her mutilated, bloody hand was enough to keep her resolve to kill him clear in her mind.
He kicked and flailed until a fat blue tongue popped out of his mouth and his eyes looked like they were about to explode. “Die, you piece of shit!” She slammed his head down under the surface of a pan of filthy old cooking oil and held him there. He kicked and squirmed some more. “You killed my parents, you son of a bitch!”