The fingers squeezed tighter. He felt Kruger’s fingernails burying themselves into the soft flesh of his neck, the fingertips pushing into his veins and blocking the circulation of blood, choking the windpipe. Maybe, he thought, it would be easier just to let go. I’d be back with her then. We’d be together in a better place and all this suffering would be over forever.
“You’re fucking weak, Bale!”
Ryan strained for air.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance. This time I’m putting you down like a rabid dog.”
The periphery of his vision started to fade out and he saw stars forming wherever he turned his bulging eyes.
“Men like me will always beat pathetic, weak bastards like you. As long as you’re in this world you’re just wasting my oxygen. Your Russian girlfriend must have been fucking insane to go with you, boy. Too bad she’s dead, eh?”
Motivated by a depth of burning anger he’d never known before and never wanted to know again, Ryan heaved Dirk Kruger away from him and leaped to his feet. The South African did the same and reached for a knife on his belt.
Ryan lunged at him, snatching up the gun Hawke had thrown down and stuffed it into his stomach.
“You won’t do it!” Kruger said. “You’re a girl.”
Ryan felt a kind of sick pleasure rush through him as he buried the muzzle of the Glock in Kruger’s belly. It felt good. If only he had the strength to ram the barrel right through this bastard’s stomach wall and out of the other side. As it was, he’d have to settle for using it the way God intended.
He fired point blank. The flesh of Kruger’s stomach acted a little like a muffler and reduced the ferocious sound of the weapon. The man’s eyes opened wide as the rest of his face froze. He knew what had happened. He was a dead man walking.
Ryan wondered what it felt like to have a nine-mil slug fired through your stomach at point blank range and then fired another one to see if it made things better. And a third and a fourth.
The captain rushed Ryan, but he spun and fired, hitting him in the head and killing him on the spot, then he emptied the rest of the mag into Kruger’s stomach and pushed the dying man away. “You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, Dirk, but in your case, I’ll make an exception.”
Kruger tried to talk but bubbles of blood formed in his mouth, popping like bubblegum as he took his last breaths. Behind him, air rushed in through the open gondola door and rippled through his hair. He reached out a trembling hand, a look of terror on his face. It was the face of a voiceless man begging for help, but he wasn’t going to get, Not today. Not from this man.
Ryan hurled the empty gun to the floor and walked over to the kneeling Kruger. Raising his leg, he planted the sole of his boot squarely on the South African’s chest and without saying a single word, he pushed his defeated enemy out of the gondola. There were no screams as he tumbled down to the tropical waters of Biscayne Bay.
An ugly splash formed in the water below. It wasn’t the sort of splash you survived, but Kruger was one lucky bastard, after all. Ryan blew out a breath and for a moment he thought he saw the familiar outline of a great white shark swimming toward the splash. He looked closer and saw he was right.
Maybe Dirk Kruger’s luck had run out after all.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Hawke reached the observation deck and saw Lea struggling with the Oracle. He was forcing her toward the shattered window at the rear of the cabin and the tsunami bomb remote was lying in the splintered glass on the carpet beside an upturned barstool. The bag with the seven idols was on the floor and the codex was upside down on the carpet beside it.
Hawke leaped from the top of the steps and crashed down into Wolff’s back, piling him face-first into the broken glass. The Athanatoi chief cried out as the glass splinters embedded in his face and he fought like a madman to get the Englishman off his back.
“How long can an immortal spend in jail?” Hawke pulled his arm in a half-nelson and made him squeal like a pig.
“You’re dead a lot longer,” he snarled and whipped a knife out with his other hand.
Hawke saw it coming. He’d been reaching for the very same arm to pin them both behind his back and tie them together, but his right hand was weakened by the bullet wound Kruger had planted in his shoulder.
The Oracle struck out wildly with the knife, but surprised Hawke by not attacking him. Instead, he threw the knife at Lea and it sliced through her thigh.
She screamed and kicked the knife away, but she had lost her balance and started to tumble back to the open window. She started to grow faint and her eyes rolled up into her head.
“Lea!” Hawke released the Oracle and sprinted to her, pulling her roughly back from the gaping void and resting her down on the sofa.
He turned. “You fucking bastard, Wolff.”
The airship pitched forward and knocked them all off their feet. The idols rolled down to Hawke and Lea but the codex stayed up at the other end with the Oracle.
Hawke watched his eyes crawl over the idols. “If you want them, come and get them.”
The old man’s eyes leaped from the idols to the codex. Time was running out.
Lea came to and looked at the Oracle with disgust. “God, I wish you were dead!”
“Let me give you a goodbye kiss, instead.” The Oracle reached into his pocket with a withered, bony hand and pulled out a grenade. Snatching up the codex, he put on a backpack and climbed over to the open window. He pulled the pin and tossed the grenade at them. Then he jumped into the void and fell away from the bottom of the gondola.
“The grenade!” Hawke yelled, rugby tackling Lea to the floor. “Get down!”
The grenade detonated and blasted the back of the observation cabin clear off the gondola and sent debris ripping across the fins and elevators. Fire wrapped up around the roof and snaked back down the walls toward where they were taking cover. When the smoke cleared, the Oracle had escaped and the airship was a dead bird, pitching down and speeding toward Miami Beach.
USAF F-16 fighter jets closed in on them as they approached the no-fly zone.
Lea watched with disbelieving eyes as a parachute canopy popped open from the backpack and unfurled in the gathering night.
The Oracle twisted down for around a hundred feet and then dropped down onto the deck of a submarine. He slammed the hatch down behind him and seconds later the enormous boat was under the waves.
“I don’t believe it, Joe.” She fought the tears back. “He’s done it to us again!”
Hawke could offer no more than a heavy sigh and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “It’s not over. We have the idols now, remember. If he wants them, he has to come and get them and then we’ll kill him.”
“But he has the codex.”
“And we have Alexander’s ring.”
Lea wiped a tear from her eye. “Am I imagining it or are we plummeting to the ground?”
“Eh?”
“Look… outside.”
Hawke didn’t have to look outside. As she spoke, the airship pitched down even more, sending all the broken furniture and glass sliding along the floor to the front of the cabin.
“This isn’t good.”
“It feels like we’re on the sodding Titanic!” Lea said.
“Except we get to crash into the sea before we sink in it,” Hawke said. “Brilliant.”
They ran down the central corridor where Ryan was desperately fiddling with the controls at the front of the bridge.
“Er. We’ve got some major problems guys!”
“What’s up?” Hawke asked.
“The Oracle’s goodbye kiss wrecked everything. The primary control surfaces are out, including the elevators and rudder.”