And Matty could have his operation.
She opened the box of high velocity rounds and carefully selected exactly one bullet. She never needed more than one. More than one was useless. If the target survived the first round then he knew he was under sniper fire and took evasive action. The job always got done with the first round.
And this one had something etched into the side of it.
A name.
A marked round. Her specialty. The bullet with your name on it. It was why her name struck fear into the hearts of men and women all around the world.
Cougar.
Just one shot and it was over.
She glanced down inside the box at all the other rounds. Chunky, lethal .408 bottlenecked cartridges and each one carrying the name of the intended victim.
Taylor.
Camacho.
Devlin.
Reno.
Zhang.
Bale.
Each one of them a perfect killing tool. Solid bullets, not lead-core. Every one of the copper nickel alloy rounds delivering a violent and bloody end from over two kilometers away.
Lund.
Eden.
Sloane.
Each one of them nothing but death on speeding wings of lead.
Donovan.
Hawke.
She selected one of the named rounds and slid it inside the CheyTac M200 Intervention. The most lethal sniper rifle in the world, it could effortlessly power a .408 bottlenecked cartridge at over three thousand feet per second.
She set the weapon down in the footwell and leaned back in her seat with the monocular at her eye. It was dark now, but it was a high-quality night vision model and she was able to track the movements of the ECHO unit easily.
After a short time on Copperhead Key in what looked like some kind of firefight with a bunch of men dressed in black suits, Hawke, Devlin and Bale had climbed into an airboat and were in pursuit of an airship. Crossing back to the island, she saw the rest of the team fighting with more men in black. Looked like they were from that movie she liked when she was younger.
The Matrix, she guessed.
Crossing back to the airboat, they were still in pursuit of an airship which had risen from the center of the island and was now gaining altitude and heading out toward Biscayne Bay. She knew all of this must have something central to do with the kill order, but it wasn’t her place to ask questions or second-guess. Her superiors didn’t like that. They told her what to do and she did it. That was just about how it had always worked.
Government assassin, they called her. A ghost, others said. She didn’t care what words they used, all she knew was, this was her last job. The dark reality of what she did for a living was no longer something she could live with. They got her when she was young, but now she knew better. She closed her eyes and thought about Matty and Justin. She thought about Los Cabos and the villa. She thought about going fishing in the Gulf of California. Watching her boy laugh and play in the bright turquoise water far away from the streets of LA. No more pain, no more suffering.
A life worth living and it was all hers for the taking.
All she had to do was execute Operation Crossbow and she was home free.
She opened her eyes and started to track the ECHO team once again through the monocular.
Ryan yelled back, “It’s now, Joe!”
The rope was rapidly running out. Hawke threaded it forward until he was holding a section three or four meters from the end, giving Ryan the final section of the line to hang onto. “Keep us directly underneath, Danny!”
“No problem,” the Irishman yelled back over the noise of the propeller.
“They’re still ascending,” Hawke cried out. “When the rope goes taught we’re leaving this boat in a hurry, so hang on!”
Ryan nodded but said nothing. He swallowed hard and tried to look unfazed. Checked his gun was in his belt and gripped the rope with both hands. Now or never.
Now.
The rope tugged tight as the airship lurched upwards. Hawke was first off the deck and Ryan a second later. Their ascent was rapid and soon the Englishman was suspended in mid-air, fifty feet above the shark-infested water of Biscayne Bay. He looked down to check Ryan was all right and found him clinging to the rope for his life. His grip was good and he knew what to do, but getting up there was one thing — then they had to fight their way through an airship full of Athanatoi.
Craning his head up he saw the base of the gondola. He had around one hundred feet of rope to climb until he reached the engine’s support strut. He prayed he could get that far without someone shooting at him and started to heave himself up the rope.
He’d spent half his life climbing up and down ropes, but he quickly found he was developing blisters on both hands. Maybe ECHO needed a long, hard training course to toughen themselves up for the hard stuff like this? Ten feet to go now and the portside door of the gondola swung open to reveal a man dressed in black.
Athanatoi.
He was holding a compact machine pistol he didn’t recognize and now fired on him with a merciless fusillade of automatic rounds. Just as the airship had not been easy to hit with the grappling hook, neither were he and Ryan. The rope was swinging wildly in the wind as the giant craft continued to gain elevation and the bullets went all over the place.
Hawke looked down and saw Devlin had used his common sense and was steering the airboat out of the gunman’s line of fire. He coiled his left hand around the rope and moved his right hand across to his shoulder holster, ducking as another wave of bullets traced through the air inches from his head.
He pulled the pistol from the holster and aimed it at the young cultist. Immortality was no match for the lethal aim and shot of the former SBS sergeant and his first shot struck the man in the dead center of his forehead.
He tumbled out of the gondola and whistled past him and Ryan before crashing through the surface of the bay in a twisted, broken heap. Progress, Hawke considered, but these guys were like ants. Another would be along any second now.
A few feet from the strut, another Athanatoi appeared. This time Hawke was ready with his gun in his hand and his aim worked out in advance. When the face appeared in the door, Hawke fired and killed him instantly, this time blasting him back inside the gondola and hopefully causing an obstruction to stop others from leaning out of the door.
He dragged himself up over the support strut and made himself secure against the side of the gondola, firing inside intermittently to provide cover fire for Ryan as he climbed up behind him. When his friend was almost at the top, Hawke blasted his way inside the gondola and took out two more Athanatoi. The captain was standing at the bridge with his hands in the air. Beside him was a nervous-looking Blankov, but there was no sign of the Oracle, Kruger or, more worryingly, Lea.
“Where are they?”
“You can’t stop this now, Hawke.”
“Stop what?”
Blankov and the captain exchanged a nervous glance.
Hawke aimed his MP5 at Blankov’s face. “Stop what?”
“The tsumami.”
He and Ryan stared at each other for a moment. “A tsunami?”
“Yes, or a tsunami bomb to be more accurate. It’s buried off the coast of Miami Beach. The Oracle is going to detonate it with a remote when we’re in the right position to watch it flood the city.”