Tonight, Eden was first and that meant no air thieves.
The go light flicked on.
No time to think.
Out the door a heartbeat later, falling into the black night. The ground raced up to him. Low-level parachute descent at twenty-one feet per second. Three seconds for the chute to deploy. Full equipment and weapons strapped to him. His mind buzzed. Emergency aircraft exit drill. The ground got closer. The darkness swallowed him whole.
But why couldn’t he move anymore? And where had the aircraft gone? Everything was black, and his arms and legs were as heavy as lead. He felt a hideous presence looming behind him in the darkness. Was it the Oracle and his Athanatoi army, hunting him even here in the darkest recesses of his mind?
He felt like he was going mad.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“So that’s where this Zito scumbag is keeping Lea,” Ryan said. “An exclusive private island crawling with armed security, and it’s up to us save her.”
“And the manuscript and idol,” Hawke said.
Ryan dragged on his cigarette and blew a thick cloud of smoke toward the parasol over their heads. “Of course, the manuscript and idol.”
Hawke peered through the gap in between Lexi and Devlin opposite him and watched a speed boat cutting through the turquoise water in the cove. Beyond it, the sun flashed on the Tyrrhenian Sea. His eyes followed the boat until it vanished behind the cliffs at Laurito, and he was startled back to reality by the sound of Lexi laughing loudly.
Thanks to Magnus Lund and his contacts in Interpol it hadn’t taken more than an hour to identify the gunmen who had raided Flynn’s and snatched Lea. Jake’s CCTV coverage of both inside and outside the bar offered near total coverage and while the men had worn masks they had been able to follow the car all the way out to a small private airfield just north of the city.
After that it was a matter of tracing the aircraft — a Beechcraft King Air registered to a man named Giancarlo Zito. He described himself as a ‘businessman’, but Lund’s interpol man had clarified what that meant, and it turned out Zito was a drug-trafficking mobster with tentacles connecting him to the criminal underworld all over Europe. The intel also hooked up nicely with the manuscript thieves who had been traced to Naples.
And now they were here in Positano studying the mobster’s private island. It wasn’t the first time Hawke had stormed an island but it would be one of the trickier times — locals warned that the tides around the island were unpredictable and dangerous, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Zito was notoriously paranoid about being monitored by the Italian Government and kept a constant guard around the island with several armed men.
“What do you have in mind, Joe?” Kim said.
“From looking at the island on Google Earth, it’s impossible to land there unobserved, especially considering how any men Zito has on the island. It’s too far out to swim to, even for me, so there’s only one option.”
“Parachutes?” Ryan said.
Hawke gave him a look. “No, not parachutes.”
“Was that a stupid question?” Ryan asked.
“He who asks Google a question is a fool for five minutes,” Lexi said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling the hot smoke. “But he who does not ask Google a question stays a fool for life. Ancient Chinese proverb.”
Hawke watched Scarlet Sloane walking back over to their shaded table. She had been in the bars and restaurants asking locals for information. Reaper, who had made the short flight from Marseille, was walking beside her.
“Anything?” he asked.
She nodded. “Just met a lovely waiter chap named Mario.”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Here we go again. It’s not enough to break Jack Camacho — now she’s going to shag her way along the Amalfi Coast.”
“You’re only jealous, tiny,” Scarlet said with a wink.
“Who is this person?” Hawke asked.
“Just a barman,” Reaper said.
“One of his friends used to work for Zito a long time ago,” said Scarlet. “He got on the wrong side of him and ended up in traction for a few weeks.”
“Are we still talking about Zito now, or are we back on Camacho?” Ryan asked.
“I’ll put you in fucking traction in a minute,” Scarlet said.
Ryan opened his arms, cigarette hanging off his lower lip. “I’m right here.”
“You’d wet yourself if I came anywhere near you.”
“Now you’re just being rude,” Ryan said.
“What did this Mario say?” Hawke said, bringing things back to business.
“Well, according to him, Zito sends a small boat out to the smuggling ships and meets them in the middle of the Med. The heroin shipment is transferred to the boat which then comes back to the Isola Pacifica. The island’s private so the authorities aren’t interested in the comings and goings of a millionaire’s speed boats, so how does he get the heroin onto the mainland?”
Hawke smiled. “This sounds like my territory.”
“Exactement,” the Frenchman said.
Scarlet lit a cigarette. “Young Mario says he uses a small submarine to bring the dope from the island into Positano, and from here it’s loaded onto trucks and transported all over the rest of Italy and even further away to countries like France, Switzlerand and Austria.”
“He’s got to be using an Aurora,” Hawke said.
“This is what I was thinking,” Reaper said.
“So the only question is — where does he land the thing when he brings it to the mainland?” Lexi said.
“That cost extra,” Scarlet said with a weary smirk. “For a small bribe, Mario told me he uses a quiet cove to the east of the town in a place called Arienzo. He says this is because not only is it away from the town but it’s got faster access to the main road leading over to Salerno and Zito has a small villa there.”
“Little bastard has it all worked out,” Devlin said with a shake of his head. “And here’s me thinkin’ I should work for a living when all I had to do was get me a minisub and smuggle smack.”
“That’s illegal, Danny,” Kim said.
“So it is!”
Kim sipped the last of her beer and set the bottle down on the table. It was getting hot now and she leaned back in her chair. “Do we know when the next shipment is?”
Scarlet shook her head. “All Mario could tell me was they come every few days because that way the quantities are kept small enough for the sub. He said there hasn’t been one for at least two nights so chances are good that either tonight or tomorrow night we’re on.”
“So all we have to do is get a nice little hidey-hole near that cove and wait for the action,” Ryan said.
Hawke tapped his fingers on the wooden table. “Nothing’s ever that simple, mate.”
“Maybe,” Ryan said with a tired smile. He stubbed his cigarette out and immediately opened his matchbox to light another. “Maybe not.”
Scarlet frowned. “So who draws the short straw?”
“To go and get killed, you mean?” Ryan asked.
“No, the short straw means you have to stay here and do fuck all. Going to the island means shooting and violence.”
Ryan cupped his hands around the match to stop the sea breeze extinguishing the flame. “In that case, count me in.”
“The sub in question only has four seats,” Hawke said. “I’m the only one who can pilot it, plus I want two others.”
“But that’s only three,” Scarlet said.
Ryan shook his head. “She’ll work it out in a second. This is precisely why you shouldn’t drink Scotch at this time of the day.”
“It’s coffee,” Scarlet said, cuffing Ryan around the back of the head.
Ryan laughed. “That coffee’s more Irish than Danny.”