“It was for a stolen portrait,” Hawke said. He couldn’t stop looking at her — the shape of her lips, the way her hair blew in the open window. He hadn’t felt this way about a woman since the day he stood on that windy platform in London and met the love of his life. The girl they murdered in Vietnam when they were trying to kill him instead. But this time he wouldn’t let that happen. This time he was going to make sure no one hurt the woman he loved. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Me too…”
“You could be a little more grateful,” Scarlet said.
“I’m sorry?”
“For us rescuing you. You haven’t even said thank you.”
“You never rescued me! I had the situation completely under control. I was going to play it like a lamb for that Chan guy and then after lulling him into a false sense of security I was going to blow his head off and fly back to London. Simples. All you did was expedite the situation, as Richard might say.”
Scarlet snorted. “Should have left you there.”
Hawke smiled.
Lexi pushed the SUV faster and harder.
“Maybe you should have,” Lea said. “At least there were no megalomaniacs, cold-hearted bitches, no SBS sergeants with an attitude problem, no nerds and absolutely no ancient Doomsday weapons.”
“Ah, about that…” Hawke said.
“What?”
“As far as Doomsday weapons and megalomaniacs go we might have another situation developing,” he said.
“Oh, you’re kidding! And here I was coming to China for the restaurants.”
Hawke looked at her for a second, still excited she was back in his life. “I forgot, you already had this briefing from Richard, of course.”
She nodded and smiled. “Why the hell do you think I’d come all the way over here? I want to get me some shooting and hunting!”
“Then you’re in the right place,” Lexi said. “Because they’re gaining.” She checked the rearview mirror. “Almost on top of us, in fact.”
Lea turned again and this time saw the smooth, cat-like grille of the silver GTR almost upon them now. Either side of them the suburbs of Shanghai were growing into much higher skyscrapers and commercial buildings, and the traffic was getting denser as a result. “Damn thing’s much faster than this,” she said.
“But you can make it slow down with your gun, right?” Lexi said, her words dripping with sarcasm.
“I could make you slow down with my gun, I know that,” Lea mumbled under breath.
“What?” Lexi said.
“I said steady this car so I can take a shot.”
Lea fired several shots but they all missed.
Hawke sighed and pulled out the Sig he had retrieved from one of Chan’s bodyguards. “If you want a job doing…”
“I’d slap him if I were you,” Scarlet said, and turned in the front passenger seat. She put the window down and began to fire some shots at the GTR.
Lea glared at Hawke. “If you even think about finishing that sentence then you can book another hotel room for tonight, you got that Action Man?”
“Hey — I was just joking!”
“Well I wasn’t.”
Hawke took the point, and began to fire a series of carefully aimed shots from the rear side window, just behind Lexi, while Lea covered the other side. For a few moments they were making headway, blowing out the GTR’s headlights and cracking its windshield, but then Sheng’s men took evasive action and began to swerve the powerful Nissan violently from side to side, ending any chance of another successful hit, especially on the tires.
Then, the man in the passenger seat opened fire with what looked like a pretty old submachine gun. Hawke ducked behind the seat, and the rear window of the F-Pace was blown out in seconds. Then, the bullets struck the release mechanism on the tailgate and sent the rear door flying open.
“Oh, that is just arsing fantastic!” Lea said.
Seconds later another line of bullets ripped through the rear seat and thudded into the F-Pace’s dashboard.
“Holy crap that was close!” Lexi screamed. “You gotta close that back door, Joe!”
“The thought had crossed my mind, thank you Lexi!”
Hawke knew he had to act fast. With the rear door open they were totally vulnerable to attack from the GTR and the next shots could easily kill them. He clambered over the back seat and gripped on to the handle inside the trunk as he leaned out, stretching his arm up to the handle on the rear door.
Then, the GTR roared to life and weaved through a short stretch of traffic until it was once again right behind them. Hawke could see the grinning faces of the men inside as the man in the passenger seat casually leaned out the window again and aimed his gun dead-straight at Hawke’s chest. To add insult to injury, the man waved a sarcastic goodbye to him as he squeezed the trigger.
Hawke screamed. “Lexi, evasive action!”
Without asking why, Lexi Zhang skidded the SUV heavily to the right and pulled in tight behind a white van. With the violence of the maneuver she got them away from the GTR — for now — but also sent Joe Hawke flying out the back of the F-Pace.
Sophie Durand was watching the traffic far below in the busy streets of Shanghai, and contemplating what Hawke and the others were doing when she heard Ryan sigh loudly. She turned to see him leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head.
“You’ve given up?” she said, surprised,
“Hardly, Soph. Ryan Bale doesn’t give up.”
“You know, only real jerks refer to themselves in the third person.”
“Point taken. I never give up, if that makes you feel any better.”
“It does.”
“Good, take a look at his — my brilliance lives and breathes before us.”
She rolled her eyes and returned to the computer, shifting some of the coffee cups out of the way so she could slide up onto the desk. “What am I looking at, genius — more about this prophecy?”
“No, unfortunately — there’s basically nothing about it at all on the internet. It seems to exist only in the work of these Reichardt and Hoffman guys. We’ll have to keep researching that one. The only thing I could find was a translation of some ancient Chinese poetry that referred to the prophecy being about the return of the Thunder God and the rebirth of humanity, but no specifics.”
“But that sounds pretty bad, no?”
“Yeah, you could say that. After watching Hugo Zaugg trying to bury an entire town in millions of tons of snow and what he wanted to do with Poseidon’s trident, any talk of a rebirth of humanity doesn’t exactly have positive connotations in my mind.”
Sophie nodded. She knew what he meant and she agreed. They knew so little, but the facts they had gotten hold of so far weren’t looking good — the return of this Thunder God, a missing earthquake machine of unknown power and now a vague prophecy about a new start for humanity. All of this was starting to make her very nervous.
“So if it’s not about the prophecy, then what has your magnificent brilliance uncovered?”
Ryan looked up at her and smiled, but spoke without acknowledging her sarcastic tone. “I hacked into this particular website — the one with the most references to the prophecy — and I used a simple piece of web tracking software to see who else has been looking at the site.”
“You can do that?”
“Of course. Most website developers put some simple code into their sites that gets executed whenever anyone visits them, and that code then reveals and tracks various pieces of information about the visitor — simple stuff like operating system or browser but also the IP address.”
“No, I meant you can do that?”