“Newton’s First Law of Motion, baby!” Ryan shouted through the window at Vetsch who was now struggling to maintain control of the Harley. “You gotta love it!”
“Don’t speak so soon, Ryan.” Lea craned forward to look in her rear-view. “It's not over yet.”
Hawke heard the rasp of the Harley as it accelerated once again.
“He’s a determined little fellow,” he said. “I’ll give him that.”
Vetsch pulled alongside a second time and fired a long burst of bullets up the side of the car.
“Everyone get your head down, now!” Hawke screamed.
A second burst — what the SBS called the old ‘lead wasps’ — smashed the rear window and whistled past Hawke’s ear before thudding into the windshield with incredible velocity.
Ryan screamed again and put his head between his legs.
“Checking to see if you wet yourself, Rupert?” Hawke said.
“No I am not!” came the muffled reply. “And my name is Ryan!”
Lea sighed. “What is this, a dick-measuring competition?”
“He started it!” Hawke protested.
“I don’t think so — I think Mr Testosterone here started it.”
“Just pack it in, you two,” she said. She turned to Hawke to reply, but something caught her eye. “You’re hit!”
Hawke leaned forward to look in his mirror. “That’s nothing,” he said, wiping a line of blood off his cheek. “Just a flesh wound.”
“Sodding hell, Joe,” said Ryan. “You got shot in the face with an Uzi!”
“It’s nothing,” he repeated, keeping an eye on the traffic ahead while at the same time monitoring Vetsch’s progress behind them.
Thanks to a UPS truck parked up with its hazard lights flashing, the road ahead narrowed and they only just got through the gap.
Lea took out her iPhone and flicked to maps. “Nothing ahead but water, Joe.”
“Eh?”
“Those trees up there — see — that’s pretty much where Manhattan ends and the Hudson River begins.”
Hawke looked down at the speed — seventy-five miles per hour now, and racing in and out of traffic on West 86th. Behind them Vetsch kept pace, swerving from side to side like a madman, and then he fired another burst into the rear of the hot rod.
Behind Vetsch, Hawke saw the unmistakeable blue flashes of the police.
“When in doubt, go faster,” Hawke said, and stamped harder on the throttle. They all felt the jolt as the large engine instantly produced more power and the hot rod shot forward like a drag car. Hawke was beginning to enjoy himself again.
“Did you actually pass your driving test?” Ryan said.
“I’ve been driving since you were in nappies,” was Hawke’s blunt response. “If you don’t like it you can always get out and walk.”
Hawke dropped a gear and accelerated the Ford once again, haphazardly steering the old hot rod in and out of the busy Manhattan traffic in an attempt to lose the much faster Harley on their tail. The suped-up engine roared noisily as the car thundered forward.
“Watch out, Joe!” Lea shouted. “Lights!”
“Yes, thanks — I am looking out the same window as you are.”
They burned through a red light and skidded across a junction with seconds to spare, but Vetsch, insane in his pursuit of the golden disc fragment wasn't so lucky.
A Maybach pulled out on a green light and Vetsch rammed into it. As the old bike smashed into the front of the tank-like car, it stopped with a simple crunching sound and smashed into the wing.
Vetsch didn’t share the same fate. He was propelled from the seat of the Harley, Uzi still gripped in his hand, and flung like a stone from a caterpault through the air. He sailed across the junction and landed in the back of a passing garbage truck.
“Good riddance to…”
“Don’t even say it, Joe,” Lea said, sighing. “Don't even think about saying it.”
“Sorry. But at least that’s one problem out of the way.”
They watched as Vetsch tried to scramble out of the garbage in the back of the truck, his face twisting into a scowling mask of humiliation and revenge. His death threats were drowned out by the roar of the truck’s engine as it accelerated away from the junction.
“So what’s next?” Ryan asked.
They watched the garbage truck fade into the traffic beyond.
Hawke’s eyes returned to the road ahead. “We go and take a look at that golden fragment. Then I want a steak and some beer before I go and take out every one of those bastards who have been trying to ruin my day.”
CHAPTER TEN
Thanks to Vetsch’s team infiltrating them at the hotel Eden had booked, they were forced to book a new room for the night, and it was several stars south of the Athenee, with a view of a side street and a brick wall instead of Manhattan’s skyline, and a vending machine half-full of Dr Pepper replacing the luxury restaurant.
“I never met anyone like you before,” said Lea as she dabbed Hawke’s grazed temple with an alcohol wipe.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Well don’t. You’re a total idiot who’s going to get himself killed one of these days.”
“I’ll say,” Ryan added.
“You attract bullets like you were a magnet, Mr Hawke.” Lea gently cleaned the wound.
“Actually,” Ryan said, perking up a little, “most bullets are made of lead, which doesn’t have any magnetic qualities to speak of.”
“Shut up, Ryan,” Lea said. “I know that. It was just an expression. Weasel.”
“Yeah,” added Hawke. “Shut up, Rupert.”
“Let me look at the fragment,” Ryan said. He picked it up off the bed and turned it in his hands. It reflected the light of the lamp dully in the low light of the room.
“Anything?”
“There’s writing on it, but it’s in what I presume is ancient Greek.”
Lea sighed. “And your language genius doesn’t extend to that, am I right?”
“Partly. I can tell you this word here probably means acropolis, but other than that even I can't help on this one.”
Hawke looked at the line of foreign letters neatly carved into the gold, unfamiliar and alien to him.
“Acropolis? That’s in Athens, isn't it?” he said.
“There are many acropoles all over Greece as a matter of fact,” said Ryan. “But yes, I suppose most ordinary people would leap to the one in Athens.”
“I swear I’m going to punch him, Lea.”
“Please, Joe — no. It’s just what he is — like it or leave it.” Lea turned to Ryan and shook her head at him, frowning. “I left it.”
“No, I left you!”
“Not this again.”
“Just, please Ryan,” Lea said, “would you start working on the translation for us? Just for me?”
Ryan mumbled something about people using him only when they wanted something, and opened the MacBook, bathing his face in a bluish glow in the corner of the hotel room. “Luckily for you heathens, I happen to know an excellent yet sadly unvisited Ancient Green translation engine on here, and will endeavour to convert this to English for you.”
“Thanks Ryan,” said Lea, yawning. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah,” said Hawke, “I’m being sincere when I say thanks too, Rupert.”
“Listen, I guess we’re making progress,” Lea told him. “So I’m going to check that bar downstairs for a beer or something.”
She returned a moment later holding two bottles of Rolling Rock.
Rolling Rock. The last thing he and Liz had shared before the terror that unfolded on his honeymoon in Vietnam all those years ago. The day when he lost his beloved wife in a vicious drive-by shooting in Hanoi’s Nha Tho Street, just outside a small bar they had just discovered together.