The Curse of Medusa

“Does this mean I get immunity?” Collins said nervously.

“From the US authorities, maybe, but from me, sadly no.”

Without saying another word, Hawke powered his fist into Collins’s face and knocked him out cold. “We have to get to New Orleans in a hurry,” he said.

Kim turned to face him, her hair blowing in the helicopter’s downdraft. “On it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Joe Hawke ignored the high-performance takeoff of the Learjet 31. His mind was still processing the totally unexpected sight of Scarlet Sloane as she drove across the airport asphalt on a stolen motorbike and skidded to a halt a yard from his legs.

“Only you could lose a President,” she had said as the rubber smoke drifted into the air.

Now, as Vincent, Doyle and a team of SWAT men slept in the small cabin, the two of them and Kim Taylor studied maps of the processing plant. He knew the flight from Washington DC to New Orleans would take less than two hours in the Lear, and that didn’t leave much time to organize a strategy to save Charles Grant and bring Kiefel’s plans to a halt.

After discussing their strategy for the tenth time, he shut his eyes for some important rest before the assault, but struggled to sleep. Instead, he recalled his earlier conversation with Alex Reeve and realized somewhere over Alabama that she had been right, as usual. Thankfully, Scarlet had stayed out of it, but he knew it was time to speak to Lea Donovan.

He had thought about calling her before, but the events of the last few hours had overtaken him. Now he had a few moments he knew what he had to do. He switched on his phone and gave her the call he should have made a long time ago.

Her voice was clipped and distant. “So you remembered my number then?”

Not a good start. She sounded as angry as he’d imagined she might, but he had a right to be angry too.

“Where are you?” he said, trying to chill things down.

“I’m in Ireland.”

“Visiting family?”

“If you call chasing my father’s ghost off a cliff visiting family, then yeah… I’m visiting family.” She sounded as unhappy as he’d ever known her and he regretted more than ever walking out on her back in Luxor.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“You don’t need to understand.” Her voice grew weaker as the reception faltered. She sounded so far away. She was so far away.

“Don’t be like that, Lea. Do you need any help?”

“I have help, Joe. You’re not the only action-figure in the toy store you know.”

Touché, he thought. Presuming a woman with Lea’s contacts and experience was sitting around waiting for his help was stupid and presumptuous.

“So what’s going on?” he said after another awkward silence.

“An old friend of Dad’s and Rich’s was murdered, so I’m looking into it.”

“You think the murder is connected to your father’s death?”

Her reply was succinct, to say the least. “Yes.”

Another long silence stretched out between them.

“What about you?” she asked at last. The phone line crackled and accentuated the distance between them.

“I’m in America.”

“America?” she sounded shocked. “I thought maybe you went back to London.”

He knew there was no point in delaying the inevitable. “I’ve been staying with Alex at her father’s cabin in Idaho for a few weeks.”

A longer silence.

“Is there something you want to tell me Joe Hawke?”

Uh-oh, both names. “If you mean is there anything going on between me and Alex, then no, there isn’t. She’s just a very old friend of mine. I don’t think of her like that, and she doesn’t think of me like that.”

She changed the subject. “You’re up to your arse in this terror attack, aren’t you?”

“You could say that. I’m calling from a jet. We’re flying to New Orleans to rescue President Grant. I’m surprised ECHO isn’t all over it as a matter of fact.”

“Rich has his reasons.”

“Enigmatic.”

“I could tell you more, but as an outsider you don’t have clearance.”

“Funny, but that’s what Scarlet Sloane just said to me.”

“Scarlet’s there?”

“Yeah — she landed in the US a few moments ago. Eden sent her and Ryan up here as soon as he found out Medusa was involved in all this. He can’t help himself.”

“Listen, Joe… I have to go.”

He nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. It was an instinctive reaction. “Sure.”

“I’ll call.”

Sure, he thought as the line went dead.

* * *

Lea switched her phone off with a scowl, folded her arms and stared out of the windshield without blinking. Outside the car, the Irish countryside flashed by in a rain-streaked blur and she caught her reflection in the window. She looked like she was about ready to murder someone.

“They’ll hypnotize you, you realize that.”

Lea thought about ignoring him, but she had the crazy idea Mikey O’Sullivan wasn’t the type to be ignored. “What will?”

“The windscreen wipers,” he said, pointing a meaty finger at them as they swished back and forth in the heavy rain. “If you stare at them like that you’re sure to be mesmerized.”

“Is that true, Danny?” Lea said, turning her head slightly to the back.

“You can forget about asking him for back-up — they’re both dead to the world.”