Kamchatka fired on him. He was high in the substructure’s support scaffold, like a pirate in a galleon’s rigging. By the looks of it, he was loading a Russian-made VSSK Vykhlop sniper rifle, and he was doing it with impressive calmness and efficiency considering the circumstances.
Reaper knew this was his moment. He slowed his breathing and took the shot.
And Kamchatka took the bullet in his heart, just as he had done to Maria.
“Goodnight, you bastard,” Reaper said.
As Kamchatka fell from the rigging into the sea, Reaper closed his eyes and gave Ryan and Maria a silent prayer.
Hawke aimed the grenade launcher for the final time and fired it at the jet. They watched as the grenade round tore through the air, their hearts full of hope. The former Commando had judged the speed of the aircraft and the crosswind, aiming the projectile ahead of the moving jet and to its left to compensate for the three seconds it was in the air.
Time seemed to slow down.
Lea and Camacho emerged from the monorail and ran to them.
And all four watched as the jet lifted into the air, flying right over the top of the end of the runway as the grenade exploded into a third and final fireball. The aim was good enough to knock the jet to starboard for a few seconds, but they watched with grim disappointment as Wolff pulled it level and banked hard to port. Seconds later he vanished into the low cloud ceiling and all that remained was a stormy sky.
“You missed him!” Lea said.
Hawke threw the grenade launcher to the ground and cursed.
“What about Lazarus?” Scarlet said.
“He’s gone.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s from the Bible,” Lea said. “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. Matthew. ” She looked at Scarlet who was staring at her. “Oh — I’m a recovering Catholic schoolgirl.”
Lexi arrived next, panting hard with the effort of the sprint. “I got the refinery.”
“Good work,” Hawke said. “But he got away.”
And then Reaper turned the corner, hands on his hips and doubling over to get his breath back.
“Where are Ryan and Maria?” Hawke asked, unsettled by the bleak look on the former legionnaire’s face.
The Frenchman took a deep breath, straightened himself up to his full height and looked at them. He said nothing, but gently shook his head.
They all knew what it meant.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Davis Faulkner relaxed his posture and tried to remember everything he had been told about the basic golf swing. Sometimes in life it was just too easy to forget the fundamentals, and this was one of those times. He was a busy man, and he had too much on his mind to remember the little things.
He gently corrected his balance, shifting his weight to the middle of his feet and gently angling his spine down towards the Bridgestone B330 ball awaiting its fate down on the tee. He flexed his knees and lowered his right side to ensure the ball was in perfect alignment with the left side of his head.
Faulkner remembered what his instructor had told him about the swing — bring the club head back first, then the hands, shoulders and hips should all move in one gentle, fluid motion. As he raised the club higher he shifted the weight to his right side. The momentum of the swing gained pace, and his shoulders were now a good way into their full rotation in preparation for the attack.
He began the downswing with a lateral shift, dropped his arms, pulled his right elbow into his hip and rotated his body towards the ball, making sure to keep his head up and away from the ball as he went. Then, with an accuracy and power than surprised him, he made contact with the ball, kicking his right knee inward and keeping his left leg straight. The club head smacked the ball high and fast into the bright, crisp Virginia air.
He straightened up as he watched it fly through the sky. Not bad for a beginner.
It was then he was aware of someone talking to him. It was Aaron Carlson his personal assistant, and he sounded even more anxious than usual.
“What’s up, Aaron?”
“It’s about the, er… mission, sir.”
“What about it? I don’t want any bad news right now, Aaron — not if it’s going to mess up my handicap.”
“It’s Colonel Geary, sir. He says they failed to take the island.”
Faulkner turned to face Aaron, and raised his club up to rest on his shoulder. This was not good news, and he had been expecting better from Geary. “What?”
“He says they had a greater defensive capacity than he had anticipated for such a small, private island.”
“And isn’t just how he would put it, too?”
“And there were jets… our jets, sir.”
“I see.” His mind began to whir.
“What should I tell him?”
Faulkner sighed and turned back around to face the driving range. He swung the club off his shoulder, nearly hitting Carlson in the face as he did so, and tried all over again to relax his posture and regain his composure. The Oracle wasn’t going to like this one little bit.
“So what do I say, sir?”
“Tell him to keep his goddam mouth shut.”
“Yes, sir.”
Davis Faulkner watched Aaron walk off the course and his mind began to race with this new development. The Oracle rarely accepted failure but there was a good chance his notorious bad temper might be soothed by his good news about almost certainly being elevated to the Vice Presidency in a few weeks. Davis Faulkner clung to that hope and took another swing into the great blue beyond.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Lea Donovan turned to the window so the others didn’t see the tears and stared at the smouldering wreckage of the Seastead. It reminded her of the pictures she had seen of burning oil rigs. Great clouds of filthy black smoke bloomed into the cold Atlantic air, rising a few hundred feet before getting caught by a strong wind and whipped west over the ocean. In a few days it would reach the African coast, but they were going in the opposite direction. They were sailing into the setting sun in a boat taken from beneath the burning wreckage of the Seastead.
They had destroyed the Oracle’s oceanic inner sanctum, but it brought no pleasure because the cost was too high. Maria Kurikova was lying in a body-bag in the cargo compartment and Ryan Bale was missing, presumed dead and buried at sea. When she thought about it she felt like someone had hollowed her out.
Two of her best friends were gone and for what? A strange golden idol that meant nothing to anyone — and which was now in the Oracle’s grotesque grip. All they had was the Valhalla idol, exactly what they had started out with. A weird avatar forged from gold and offering nothing to them except the inscrutable expression of an elderly mandarin… She hated those idols. It was because of them that her father was dead, and now Maria and Ryan were added to that grim list, as well as so many other innocents.
Ahead of her Joe Hawke was idling past the marina’s no-wake zone and taking the boat out into open water. As he pushed the throttle forward the bow rose ten degrees into the air before getting on plane and then it dipped again, allowing a better view of the stormy horizon ahead of them. With the extra fuel on board he was happy that they would reach Elysium in a little over one day’s sailing. At least then they would have the safety of their sanctuary to recover and regroup before deciding how to deal with so much new information. It was bewildering, but he never let his enemies get the better of him. There was no choice but to fight to the end.