Up ahead over the water the Anshar was still low enough for him to grab hold of the tether line, but it was gaining altitude all the time and if they didn’t reach it soon they would lose their final chance to get on board. Then the tether line started to retract.
The Anshar gathered speed as it lifted away from Copperhead Key. The Oracle stood front and center in the bridge, directly beside the captain. Blankov was on his other side and Kruger was behind him, gripping Lea in his arms. An ashen-faced Athanatoi hurried through the cockpit door and approached the men on the bridge. “We’re being followed!”
“What do you mean, being followed?” said the Oracle.
“An airboat, sir.”
“Hawke!” The Oracle scowled at him and walked over to the portside window. “But I don’t see anything.”
“He’s almost directly behind us, Oracle, but he can be seen from the rear viewing deck.”
The Oracle looked at the pilot. “Is there any way he can get on board?”
The pilot shook his head. “No. The tether lines are fully retracted, sir.”
“Increase altitude at once!” he snapped. “This is Joe Hawke we’re talking about, after all.” He turned to Kruger and glared at him. “This is your fault, Kruger. Are you totally incompetent? I ordered you to kill that man!”
“Yes, sir.”
The Oracle pulled a Walther PPQ from his jacket pocket and lifted it until the muzzle was pointing at the South African’s right eye. He held it there for a second and watched the sweat break out on the arms dealer’s creased face. Just one bullet, through the eye… the man would be dead.
He spun it around in his hand and held it at arm’s reach. “Take this gun, Dirk and kill Joe Hawke. If he’s alive by the time we reach Miami Beach, I will personally execute you and throw you to the sharks — understand?”
Kruger extended a shaking hand and took the pistol. “He’s a dead man, sir. I swear it.”
Hawke stamped on the throttle pedal so hard he thought he might just push it right through the bottom of the boat. They raced forward sending giant arcs of seawater into the air either side of them, all the time inching closer to the Anshar.
“It’s gaining altitude!” Ryan yelled.
Devlin stared up into the sky. “We have to make a move now or it’s too late, Hawke!”
He was right. “Take over the controls, Ryan! We’re going up there.”
The young man stood fast. “No way!”
Hawke knew this was coming. He opened his equipment bag and rummaged around, pushing aside his Kukri knife and a butcher’s steel until he found what he was looking for — a compact rocket-propelled grappling hook. “We can’t mess about, Ryan. We don’t have time for an argument — I have to get the grappler prepared.”
Devlin stepped up. “I’ll take the controls while you two ladies decide what’s going on!”
“Kruger’s up there, Joe! This could be my last chance!”
Hawke made a split-second decision. His old friend was right about Kruger and the last chance, but did he have it in him to fight Kruger to the death? He recalled Ryan’s failure to kill the South African when he had the chance back in Rio de Janeiro after the Lost City of the Incas mission.
Was this a chance to redeem himself, or was he risking the mission by replacing a seasoned soldier like Devlin with a dope-smoking hacker with a chequered background? When he looked into Ryan’s eyes he knew what he had to do. “Fine, you go up after me and do as I say.”
“Thanks Joe.”
“Get us closer, Danny!” Hawke said, pulling the compressed air launcher from his bag. He turned to the young Londoner. How he had changed. The meek computer nerd was no more than a pale rasher of wind when he’d met him. He could have knocked him over with a feather, but he’d worked hard to prove himself. Tattoos on his toned arms, hair shaved down and a week’s stubble on his jaw. He felt a bit like a father watching his son leave home. “Don’t make me regret this, Ryan.”
“I won’t.”
Hawke hoped so from the bottom of his heart as he prepared the grappling hook and aimed it at the bottom of the airship’s gondola. Firing on a moving target was never easy, especially one that was not only moving to the side but also gaining elevation at the same time.
The range of the launcher was rapidly running out, but he stayed calm and aimed as Devlin kept the airboat smooth and steady. Taking the thing out of the sky would have been a simple matter of firing on the airship with their guns and blowing a few holes in the elevators and aft ballonet, but Lea was on board.
If an airship of that size crashed into water from this altitude she might survive, but she might not and that wasn’t something any of the ECHO team, least of all him, wanted to live with. The only solution was to fire the grappling hook onto one of the struts holding the engine motors to the gondola and then climb up the hard way and do the job by hand.
He fired the hook and they watched it spiral through the humid Floridian twilight until it collided with the airship. For a second, he thought he’d missed, but then he saw its metal claws wrap around one of the support struts. Instantly, the massive coil of rope attached to it started to unravel on the airboat’s tiny foredeck.
“It’s now or never, Ryan!” Hawke said, grabbing the end of the rope. “Which is it?”
CHAPTER FORTY
Cougar had been tracking them since Pavlopetri, sitting up on a cliff with her binoculars watching them in a savage fight with some men on a yacht. Garcetti was vague about who the men in black suits were, but whoever they were, they sure could fight.
She had followed them back to the airport without a hitch and tracing their outbound flight to Florida hadn’t exactly been tough with Garcetti’s contacts. She was there at Miami airport’s car hire before their plane’s wheels hit the asphalt. Watched them pile into the SUV and then pulled out after them.
When the chopper nearly got blown out of the sky over Copperhead Key she thought her mission was over, but when she heard the gunfire on the island she knew they’d survived. Waiting for them to make their next move was easy.
Easy as cherry pie.
Now, sitting in the front of her truck, she looked at the picture of Matty that she kept on her dashboard. There he was, a rare smile on his young face. A moment without pain snapped by a forgiving iPhone camera.
Her phone rang.
“I miss you, Mom.”
“I know. I’ll be home soon. You go back to bed, you hear me?”
“I hear you, mom.”
“I mean it, Matty. I don’t want you getting tired. Did you find the soup I left in the refrigerator?”
“Already ate it.”
She imagined him all alone in the apartment warming the chicken soup on the stove. Sitting at the kitchen table as he ate it by the spoonful. It broke her heart, but there was no other way. When you’re going through hell, keep on going. She forgot who said that now, but it stiffened her resolve to get the job done.
“Listen, you make sure the place is locked up before you go to bed.”
“I will.”
“And if there’s any problem you can speak with Mrs Kowalczyk across the hall, you got it?”
“I got it.”
She hoped he did and she blew a kiss down the phone to him when she said goodbye. It was a tough conversation to have, but soon all this hell would be over. Justin had called earlier to tell her things were coming together south of the border. There was a neat little place just outside of Los Cabos he had his eye on for the three of them. All they were waiting for was this one last job and then they could be together forever.