Hawke and the others slammed into the cover of the stairwell doorway and prepared to fire back. He and Scarlet were one side and Reaper and Devlin on the other, each of them holding their guns up to their chests ready to attack.
Hawke indicated with two fingers that he and Scarlet would go in and the others were to provide cover fire. When he gave a curt, shallow nod to everyone, they all knew it was the sign to go. He and Scarlet spun around and opened fire in the doorway. It was a relentless and ruthless attack, and by the time Reaper and Devlin moved in to provide the support fire, Rat was hit, struck in the shoulder and spun around like a top.
The Zodiac agent stumbled over at the top of the steps and crashed all the way down to the bottom. The concrete steps were unforgiving, and on the way down he broke his left wrist and sustained a concussion. Lying in a heap at the base of the stairs, he tried to lift himself up but quickly gave in, howling in pain as he applied pressure to his wrist to lever himself up. He collapse back down onto the floor and clamped his eyes shut as he gave a silent prayer.
Scarlet was first to reach him. When she saw the state he was in, she stuffed the gun inside her holster and pushed the toe of her boot down on his throat.
“Well look at that,” she said. “Looks like we caught a rat.”
Hawke walked over to her and also holstered his weapon. Upstairs at the ground level the crowd was growing restless as the race drew to a premature conclusion and the authorities continues to order them out of the grounds. Excited voices garbled over the tannoy system and another confused roar filled the grounds, but down here a very different atmosphere was unfolding.
The Englishman leaned over, twisted a fistful of the man’s collar in his fist and dragged him up to his feet. “You’re coming with us, sunshine.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“I have a good friend I think you should meet.”
Hawke pulled his fist back and then piled it into the man’s face, instantly knocking him unconscious.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A lithe, tall woman in her late twenties was waiting for them in the basement of the safehouse. “Sam, meet the team,” said Hawke. As he spoke, Reaper and Devlin bundled Rat over into a chair in the corner of the room and started tying the struggling, hooded man to it. “This one’s Vincent, but we call him Reaper, and that’s Danny Devlin. The scowling woman with the cigarette hanging off her lip is…”
“Cairo Sloane,” the young woman said.
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “My reputation precedes me.”
“Something like that.”
Scarlet looked her up and down, ignoring Rat’s squeals and grunts as he struggled to free himself from Reaper’s vice-like grip. Devlin calmly continued to tape him into the chair. “And who might you be?”
Hawke answered. “This is Samantha Dearlove.”
Scarlet lit the cigarette and shook her hand. “Delighted, I’m sure.”
Devlin finished taping Rat’s legs to the chair, checked he was secure and stood up to his full height. Reaper tore the bag from the man’s head and tossed it on the floor.
“We get anything for returning this scrote back to its rightful owners?” Scarlet said.
Dearlove shook her head. “He’s part of the Zodiacs. Officially they don’t even exist and if any of them get caught the Chinese Government just cut them loose. So he’s worthless as far as any sort of trade goes, if that’s what you had in mind?”
Scarlet shrugged. “He’s worth something to us, darling. He snatched one of our team and he’s our only lead. Without him we have no chance of getting her back.”
Dearlove was strictly by-the-book and already she was starting to regard the ECHO team with increasing anxiety. “Let me speak with him first.”
Scarlet sighed and looked at her watch. “If you must, but remember we’re up against the clock here.”
Dearlove stared them down. “On my own, please.”
The others gave Hawke a glance. He shrugged and turned to the MI6 agent. “You have five minutes.”
They waited outside as Dearlove used all her training on the captive, but when she appeared at the door it was obvious she had failed to extract anything from the assassin. “It’s as we thought,” she said dolefully. “He’s clammed up.”
“My turn,” Hawke said.
Dearlove gave a nervous sigh. “We don’t want an international incident on our hands.”
“Leave it to me,” Hawke said with a cocky wobble of his head.
“Not too rough, Hawke. I mean it,” Dearlove said anxiously. “Don’t forget he’s the property of the Chinese Ministry of State Security and sooner or later they’re going to get wind of this.”
“C’mon, you know me,” Hawke said. “I’m the poster child of restraint.”
Scarlet laughed and nearly spat out her cigarette.
“All the same, this isn’t the movies, Hawke,” said Dearlove haughtily. “Do try and control yourself.”
Hawke walked back across the basement. Rat wasn’t even breaking a sweat as he turned a confident smile on him. The prisoner even managed a smug nod of the head.
“How you doing, Ratty?” He picked up a lug wrench and held it casually in his hands, testing its weight and balance.
“If you think you can beat the information out of me, you are sadly deluded. There is nothing you can do to me that is worse than what the Ministry will do to me if I speak.”
“We’ll see about that.” With the forehand swing of a Wimbledon champion, he brought the head of the lug wrench crashing down on his leg and smashed his right kneecap to pieces.
Rat screamed and struggled to escape his bonds, but Devlin had stuck him down too tight. His screams turned hoarse but the Zodiac man clamped his jaw down, gritting his teeth hard to restrain himself.
“That’s going to take a good surgeon to fix up, mate,” Hawke said.
“Screw you!”
“Careful, lad. You’ve only got one other kneecap.”
The man grunted and writhed, fighting the urge to lose his temper and insult Hawke. He was a prisoner now and there were protocols to follow, but it didn’t look like these guys were too bothered about protocols.
“My turn,” Scarlet said, sliding another lug wrench off the top of a toolbox on the floor beside the bound prisoner. “I’m not going to lie to you, Rat. This is going to hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me.”
She took the lug wrench and aimed between the man’s legs. He fought to bring them together and protect himself but each leg was taped securely to its own chair leg. It was impossible to close the gap, and it was clear that he sensed his terrible vulnerability.
Scarlet swung the wrench and brought the end of it crashing down on the tiny patch of seat that was visible between Rat’s legs. The weight of the steel combined with the accuracy and power of Scarlet’s swing to smash a fist-sized chunk of the wooden seat to pieces.
Rat squeezed his eyes shut and screamed.
“Next stop is your nuts, Rat Man,” she said coolly, and brought the wrench back over her head for the next attack.
“All right, all right! Stop!”
“You’re going to give me something?”
Rat was breathing heavily, fighting hard not to show weakness in front of his enemy, but the agony of a smashed kneecap was too much to bear. In his struggle to hide his pain from Hawke, he started to hyperventilate and his face turned red. He opened his eyes and looked up at Scarlet with a terrifying mix of fear and real, burning hatred in his eyes. “Yes, just please get her away from me.”
“No,” Hawke said bluntly. “Not until I hear the quality of your information.”