With plaster dust and wood splinters raining down from the explosion, they staggered to their feet and readied for a fight.
“I think they might have some grenades, ladies,” Lexi said.
Hawke thought that was a good guess, but his concerns they would use a second grenade were put to bed when he heard men bundling into the building from the rear and approaching the professor’s office door. More of the CGF rebels were now approaching the front of the office from the street.
Balta looked up with an expression of strained fear on his wrinkled face. “Are these the people you said would come for me?”
“Unless you forget to pay your council tax bill this month, then yes,” Scarlet said.
“Will they kill me?”
“Only when they’ve used you.”
Hawke took control. “Reaper and Scarlet take the back and Lea, Ryan and I will take the front. Lexi, you take Luis and the professor into the adjoining office. They want Balta but they might settle for Luis.”
“Thanks,” Luis said.
And with that the assault began.
“Flashbang!” Hawke yelled but the fuse was short and the next second it had detonated in a blinding flash of light and noise, and now in the dusty confusion created by the blast they were totally disoriented.
Lea staggered to her feet, coughing up plaster dust and trying to regain her balance. She was dimly aware of screaming but her head felt like it was wrapped in cotton wool. And then she saw the rebels as they burst into the office and fought their way toward Balta. They had the mask but they still needed the knowledge. In the confusion and chaos of the fight, Lea thought it was good to know that Dirk Kruger didn’t know everything.
A rebel rushed her and took a swing, but she dodged it and ducked her head to avoid his follow-up punch. She grabbed his shoulders and kneed him hard in the groin. It was a dirty trick but he looked like he deserved it and she would use anything in her arsenal to defend herself. He doubled over and she thrust her right hand forward, striking his chin with a palm strike and knocking his head back. He toppled over on his arse and she finished the job with a swift kick, delivering her left boot around the right side of his chops and putting him to sleep for hours.
“Nighty night!” she said.
Across the room Ryan Bale was fighting with another man, but this time he looked like he meant it. She moved to help him but then she saw something had changed with her ex-husband. Usually he looked like he wanted to do anything but fight, but not this time. This time he was almost enjoying it as he pounded his fists on his opponent and sent him staggering back to get his balance back.
The fight had dragged Hawke into the corridor, and now he was grappling with another of the rebels and putting him in a choke hold. He grabbed his neck and squeezed hard, pushing his fingers behind his Adam’s apple to finish the choke. The man’s face went purple and he stopped breathing, but Hawke couldn’t stop. At that second all he could think about was Maria Kurikova, and that heart-melting smile of hers. The fact she had walked away from her homeland to fight alongside him. The smell of her perfume. Ryan’s loss… And the rage rose in him like molten lava as he faced an enemy so close to the one who had taken her life.
The man was unconscious now, but instead of letting him fall to the floor, Hawke pulled his arm back and powered a mighty fist into his face and smashed his nose to a pulp, and again and then again, and then…
“Joe! Leave it.”
He turned to see Lea. She looked horrified at what he was doing. He wanted to scream, but instead he let the man’s unconscious body fall to the floor and sprinted back into the office and the main fight, pumped full of adrenalin. Back in the fray, he saw the surprising sight of Ryan Bale taking out his frustrations on one of the rebels.
Ryan was not a born fighter — it wasn’t in his nature — but he was a tall man, nearly as tall as Hawke, and if he put on some weight and changed his attitude he knew he could be dangerous. Today, it looked like something in him had snapped and it didn’t take a genius to know what. Either way, it seemed to Hawke that perhaps Ryan Bale was a different man now, and that just maybe he had taken his first steps toward pointing his life in a new direction.
Hawke noticed any rebels who were still standing began to retreat and leave the fight, fleeing from the office, all except the man who was fighting Ryan.
The young Londoner moved into the fight now instead of backing away, and continued to deliver a salvo of blows into the man’s face. Blood was pouring down from his opponent’s broken nose, and he was spitting it out of his mouth as he tried to fight back but if Ryan had learned anything from Joe Hawke it was never give your enemy a chance to get back on his feet.
If he was going down, then send him down.
And then he did something that stunned them all.
He rammed a powerful head-butt into the goon’s face and knocked him out cold.
“Holy Shit, Ry!”
But Ryan didn’t stop there, and padded forward to the unconscious man. He grabbed his collar and punched him again, and then thundered a kick into his side.
Lea ran to him and pulled him back. “Ryan! He’s out cold, leave it!”
“He killed Maria!” Ryan screamed.
“No… he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did! And he killed Sophie too! They’re all the same.”
Another kick.
Hawke stepped over and pushed Ryan away from the man. “Lea’s right, mate. He’s out cold. You won. And he’s not the man who killed Maria. That was Ekel Kvashnin and he’s fish food. Reap killed him on the Seastead.”
Ryan was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating. Lea watched his chest heaving up and down and the blood pumping hard in the veins on his neck. “I’m sorry… you’re right, of course.”
“It’s okay, mate,” Hawke said. “You had to get it out somewhere.” He glanced at the knocked-out man on the floor. “I guess that toerag was as good a place as anywhere.”
“But it won’t bring her back,” Lea said gently, holding his shoulders and looking into his eyes. She was trying to find the old Ryan, the nerd, the man with the one-liner who could always quip his way out of any problem, but all she saw was anger, hatred and confusion.
“I know… I know!”
He brushed her off and walked out Balta’s door, smashing it shut behind him. The flimsy wooden door wobbled on its hinges with the force of the blow before coming to a stop in the frame.
Hawke went to follow him but Lea caught his arm.
“Leave him,” she said. “I know Ryan better than anyone. He’ll be alright, but he needs time.”
Hawke watched the young man through the doorway as he pounded to the end of the corridor and slumped up against the wall. “You’re right — he’ll come around. He’s strong.”
“You can say that again,” Scarlet said. “Did you see the way he trounced that goon? I’ve never seen him fight like that before. Normally he’s like a big girl’s blouse but that was approaching half-decent brawling.”
Lea frowned at her. “You have a real way with words, you know that, Cairo?”
Scarlet shrugged and lit a cigarette. “I was merely making an observation, darling. No need to be a cow about it.”
“I’m not being a cow, I just think you should show some respect for the guy and not take the piss all the time.”
“Sorry — I’m Scarlet Sloane — have we met?”
Lea rolled her eyes. “Sadly, yes.”
“We haven’t got time for this,” Lea said. “Where are Lexi and the others?”
“They went into the other office,” Hawke said.
They opened the door to see Lexi and Luis both unconscious on the floor and so sign of Balta. “There!” Lea said, leaning out the window. “They’re taking him into the freaking Lollapalooza crowd!”