“Get Kruger!” Reaper yelled at Ryan, and threw him the gun. “Three rounds… make them count.”
Ryan didn’t need to be told twice and ran forward to the wheelhouse. As he went he glanced over his shoulder and saw Reaper and the Colombian rebel fighting hard on the deck. They crashed into the net and began tumbling over each other as the punches flew.
But Ryan couldn’t stop to help. He had only one target in mind: Dirk Kruger.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Corcovado Mountain is a monumental peak of granite rising nearly two and half thousand feet into the air above the Tijuca Forest to the north of Copacabana. People reached the top via a rack railway which carried them two and half miles to the peak where they could see the world-famous statue of Christ the Redeemer. Nearly one hundred feet tall, the statue had looked over Rio de Janeiro since 1931 and attracted countless millions of tourists.
Now, Ziad Saqqal, Bashir Jawad and Mr Rajavi were scrambling out of the catering truck and running toward their only hope of fulfilling Saqqal’s insane plan — the Corcovado Rack Railway. Bursting into the front cab, Saqqal waved a gun in the face of the engineer and forced him to start the train. Jawad followed his boss toward the train while Rajavi sprayed the platform with bullets and then leaped up to join the others. The train began to pull away and start its journey to the peak.
Joe Hawke watched Jawad as he gripped the medical carrying case in his arms the way he might cling to a distressed baby and all around the tourists were screaming and running for cover from Rajavi’s submachine gun. They were terrified of the bullets as they fired from the flashing muzzle, but both Hawke and Lea knew they should be a thousand times more terrified of the contents of Jawad’s medical case.
“Where the hell are they going?” Lea said.
“This train goes to the top of the mountain,” said Hawke. “I think Saqqal wants to release Utopia from an elevation to increase the area the wind spreads it to.”
“Which means only one thing…”
“Right — we have a train to catch!”
Hawke and Lea leaped onto the rear car of the rack railway and reloaded their weapons. The train was only two carriages long, and they could see Saqqal holding a gun to the engineer’s head up front. Beside him, a nervous Jawad was still gripping the case, but now Rajavi was padding down the first carriage with his submachine gun in his hand.
Hawke frowned. “We could be in trouble. That gun’s a lot bigger than mine, Lea.”
“Don’t worry, baby… it’s what you do with it that counts.”
He gave her a look and cocked his head at her. “Is it now?”
She winked and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Time to rock n’ roll, Josiah.”
“Then let’s start this dance,” he said, and aimed his gun at the man in the mask who was now almost at the door separating the two cars.
Hawke fired, smashing the glass in the door and sending Rajavi diving for cover, but he was soon back up again and returning fire. The bullets from his Heckler & Koch ripped the wooden fittings of the second car to shreds in seconds, showering Hawke and Lea in a cloudburst of splinters and dust.
A nervous Saqqal ordered Rajavi to stop Hawke and Lea from getting to the front of the train under any circumstances. The Iranian’s response was to rake the carriage for a second time with his submachine gun, but that was a mistake.
With the H&K out of rounds, Hawke charged forward and grappled the strongman to the floor of the first car. Rajavi fought back like a demon, using the gun as a club and lashing out wildly with the stock, clipping Hawke around the jaw with it.
Hawke flew back, nearly knocked unconscious and Lea charged into the fray in defense of the man she loved. A swift kick sent Rajavi flying backwards where he crashed back into the seats and cracked his head on the steel rim of the window. Hawke got his focus back and leaped on top of the man once again, pulling his fist back and pounding it into the weird silicon mask.
Rajavi flicked his head to the left and right to dodge the blows but he was getting tired. Somehow he got his knees up and managed to wedge his boot in Hawke’s stomach and force him back for just enough time to allow Rajavi to get back on his feet.
The Iranian padded forward, his heavy breathing muffled by the silicon mask which was now half-pulled down and at an odd angle. He hurriedly shifted it back but Hawke had stretched it and torn the side during the scuffle and it slipped back down again.
Rajavi slammed him against the top of the chair, squeezing his neck with his enormous hands. Up close, Hawke saw the mask more clearly now, and the hate-filled eyes lurking behind the slits in the silicon. The weirdness was made worse by the mask’s low quality. While some silicon masks were almost indistinguishable from real human faces, this was cheap and obvious.
Hawke reached up to grab at the man’s hands but he was too strong and his thick, meaty fingers were clasped around the Englishman’s windpipe in an iron grip that was impossible to release. Then he had an idea, and moved his hands up from the grip around his throat and onto the mask, grabbing hold of a fistful of silicon at the side of the mask.
Hawke felt the mask come away from the man’s face, and Rajavi responded immediately, leaping away and taking a few steps back. He hurried to shift the mask back into place. The terror in his eyes made his fear of exposing his disfigured face to the word harshly obvious.
The former Commando saw his weakness now, and he rushed forward, grabbing a fistful of silicon. This time the mask came away in his hands, and for a second he could hardly believe what he was seeing as he stared into Rajavi’s indescribably mutilated face. He was barely recognizable as human, with just the two eyes staring back at him from a mass of scar tissue and exposed teeth and muscle.
Rajavi screamed with rage as the silicon mask flapped away on the breeze and disappeared through the smashed window. He lashed out but his anger destroyed his accuracy and Hawke was able to dodge the blows easily.
Outside the train was rattling around a right-hand bend and then it crossed a wooden bridge. Lea looked down and saw a sheer drop of hundreds of feet falling away from the right-hand side of the tiny rack train.
The Englishman saw the distressed terror in his opponent’s eyes, and almost felt sorry for him, but then Rajavi pulled a small flick knife from his pocket and pushed his thumb down on the button. The blade flicked out and flashed in the light.
Rajavi grinned and nodded as he thrust the knife forward, but Hawke was faster.
He grabbed the Iranian’s belt and used his own bodyweight against him to push him out of the window.
Rajavi let out a blood-curdling scream as his heavy body tumbled out of the window of the Corcovado rack train and spun over the edge of the cliff. The drop was so far the sound of his screams died out long before he smashed into the bottom.
Hawke dusted his hands off and wiped the blood from his mouth as Lea took a deep breath. They were both aware that the train was now slowing down and looked outside to see they were pulling into the station.
Ahead of them, Saqqal was dragging the engineer out of the front of the train with a knife pushed into his throat. “You come any closer and I slash his throat.”
When they were clear, Saqqal pushed the engineer aside and he and Jawad made a break for it, sprinting away from the small station at the top of Corcovado and making their way toward the tourist center at the base of the statue. Christ the Redeemer loomed a hundred feet above their heads as they ran around the base and disappeared to the west side.