He cleared his head and focused on the mission. It was true they hadn’t stopped Sheng yet, but they had slowed him down, and now they had destroyed his headquarters and were only a few minutes behind both of his teams.
Now, Lea strained to see the compound through the smoke. The F-15 Eagles had unloaded a series of devastating ordnance on the island and surrounding outbuildings, including a GBU-15, a two thousand pound guided bomb which sailed down and landed smack on the main roof, destroying most of the palace.
The resulting explosion had started fierce fires which were now spreading all over the north part of the compound. White-hot flames flicked like devil-tongues from any remaining structures and the smoke grew thicker and billowed out of the broken building into the hot air outside. The Eagles turned to the east, presumably on a mission to track down the super yacht.
“Okay, it’s time to stop Sheng,” Hawke said. “We can’t let them get to the tomb at Xian. One mistake there by us and the map’s his.” He checked his weapon and began to move out.
Hart moved closer to Hawke and held him by the arm to stop him moving forward. “Joe, I have something to tell you.”
“What is it, Olivia? We don’t have a lot of time.”
“I know, but it’s just that if I don’t make it…”
“Sounds ominous, but you will make it. Tell me later, all right?”
Hart nodded, but didn’t look very happy about it. “You need to know this, Joe, believe me.”
“I need to know a lot of things,” Hawke said, his honest face breaking into an almost childish smile. “But now we have to stop Sheng, yeah? Get on the blower and have Lao send some air transport down to us pronto, and in the meantime, you take Lea, Lexi and Reaper down to the airfield.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got a monk to save.”
“I want to come with you!” Lea said, looking into his eyes.
“No, it’s too dangerous.” Hawke’s face hardened. “I’m going to find Han alone. If he’s still alive we can't leave him in a place like this, and if what he told me about Sheng’s human trafficking activities is true then there might just be more people here to liberate. You go with Olivia and Lexi and make sure the airfield’s safe and me and Han will be there before you know it.”
Reluctant to leave him, Lea kissed Hawke and they held each other as the flames rose around them.
Hawke sprinted back into the complex and began a measured room-by-room clearance and search for Han and anyone else who might have fallen foul of Sheng Fang.
In the east wing of the complex he heard cries behind a large door.
He fired at the double doors and they splintered into thousands of pieces in a few seconds. A second later he was across the hall and kicking the remaining parts of the door down with his boot. He saw a stone staircase leading into darkness below, and began to make his way forward, gun raised.
Behind him a terrific explosion filled the air and he turned his head to see an enormous fireball out in the courtyard. Screams of pain and terror filled the air a second later, and for a moment he wondered if he’d heard any familiar voices, but shook the thought from his head. He knew better than anyone that you couldn’t take doubt or fear into the front line or you’d be the next casualty.
He moved into the dark room and instantly heard Han crying out for help. He stepped forward and lowered himself to a crouching position, and could hardly believe what he saw. Han was there, in the dirt on the floor, doubled in agony, the tattoo on his back made unreadable by what had to be at least a hundred savage lashes, and worse, he was gripping his torn shirt around a stump where his left hand should have been.
“I told them… I’m sorry… I told them what Tsao told us. I told them where the map is buried.” He broke down in a wave of desperate sobs. “They said they would bring my parents here and do the same to them, they said they would kill my whole family, Joe… and now Lynn died for nothing!”
“We’ll balance our account with those scumbags, Han, don’t worry about that. But you need emergency care on that arm or you’re not going to make it, especially in this heat, and another thing, if we…” he stopped talking for a moment. “What was that?”
“What?” Han asked, confused.
“I thought I heard something — there, behind that wall.”
Both men listened again, more attentively.
There it was again — a scratching noise, and a thumping sound — and was that people wailing? Hawke went to the wall and searched but found nothing, then he heard it again. “No — it’s coming from below us! Look for a trap door!”
They searched for a few moments, kicking the mats and straw aside, and then Hawke found what he was looking for — a simple wooden trap door held in place by a bronze bolt. He slid the bolt open and aimed the gun at the door.
“Stand back, Han.”
He flicked the trap door open with his boot and took a step back. “Whoever’s in there, come out slowly with your hands raised.”
For a moment nothing happened. It was quieter than when the trap door was shut. Then there was a shuffling sound followed by moaning and then Hawke heard the desperate pleas of broken people.
They both watched in horror and amazement as dozens of pale, emaciated people crawled through the trap door in the floor and emerged dazed and blinking in the low light of Sheng’s dungeon.
Hawke shook his head in disbelief. “What the hell?! Are they Sheng’s prisoners?”
“No,” Han said grimly, gripping the bloody shirt over his arm. “They are Sheng’s slaves. We’re looking at the real victims of Sheng’s sick trade — the people he trafficks around Asia and the world as slaves.”
Less than five minutes later Hawke and Han were running toward the Chinese transport plane organized by Hart and Lao. Han saw the chance he had been looking for when he saw a line of burning grass alongside the runway.
Without pausing for thought he ripped the shirt from his arm and plunged the bleeding stump into the white hot embers. His screams could be heard all over the island.
When he was finished sealing the wound, they sprinted over and jogged up the rear cargo door to see the rest of their team, plus Lao and a dozen more men in full military kit looking back at them. Lea was looking at Han, horrified at what she had just witnessed. As they strapped themselves in, at least a dozen other soldiers exited the aircraft.
“They’re going to help the people you saved,” Lao told Hawke. “Then we’ll get them off the island and to a hospital on the mainland.”
With everyone safely on board, the Shaanxi Y-8 whined as its four ageing turboprops pulled it up into the air. For a few seconds Hawke watched the smoke and flames engulfing Sheng’s complex down on the annihilated Dragon Island, his former luxury retreat, and was pleased with his work, but the job was only half done.
Hawke took a deep breath and closed his eyes. They were finally on Sheng’s tail, and almost close enough to stop him once and for all. He thought about Scarlet and the others who were racing towards Japan in Eden’s Gulfstream IV, and the thought of her and the Lotus in a final face-off somewhere in Tokyo made him nervous. Cairo was the best, but her fatal flaw was how unpredictable she was, and it ran through her like a black thread in a complicated tapestry. The lives of twenty million people were in her hands now.
Scarlet Sloane tapped her cigarette gently against the solid silver case and raised it to her lips. Packing the tobacco down in the end of the cigarette in this way made it easier to light and burn faster. Smoking was not allowed on Sir Richard Eden’s forty million dollar Gulfstream, but there wasn’t a man or woman aboard who was going to object to Cairo Sloane lighting up, and she knew it.