He jammed his gun into the back of the woman he’d found posing as a security systems expert from a corporate office. She went by the name of Alex, but he didn’t care. She was just another job to him, another person someone wanted dead. However, her kill fee was paltry compared to her partner, Brady Hawk. That’s why Elias was going to use her as bait.
“Who are you?” Alex asked, resisting his shoves down the stairs.
“Just shut up and keep walking,” he said.
“I’m not going another step until you tell me who you are.”
“Fine,” Elias said. “I’ll just carry you myself.”
She spun around and looked him in the eyes, but Elias made sure it was the last thing she saw before pistol whipping her in the head. He collected her body after she collapsed and then hustled through the door and across the dimly lit parking garage. After he unlocked the door, he tossed her unconscious body into the back seat and cranked up the car.
Once he settled behind the steering wheel, he looked over his shoulder once more to check and make sure she was still out. Satisfied, he grinned and reached to put the car into gear when a bullet ripped through the window and the back of his head.
Elias fell face first onto the steering wheel, landing on the horn. It blared, echoing throughout the parking garage.
* * *
HAWK HUSTLED OVER to the car and yanked a dead body out of the driver’s seat. He ripped the man’s coat off and used it to clean the windshield so he could see while driving. After tossing the coat on top of the man, Hawk opened the door to the backseat where Alex was starting to come to.
“Hey, Alex, it’s me. Are you okay?”
With her eyes still closed, she grimaced and then touched her temples. “What just happened?”
“The man who captured you in the security room is dead, and you’re safe.”
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“Hold that thought.”
Hawk raced across the parking garage and grabbed the luggage cart with the three missiles on it. He pushed it back toward the abductor’s car and loaded the missiles into the trunk along with all their gear—except for Alex’s computer.
“I need you to wake up,” he said.
“My head,” she said as she groaned. “It hurts.”
“Drink this,” Hawk said, handing her a bottle.
She took it and chugged all the water.
“What’s happening?” she asked after finishing.
“We’re not out of the woods yet. There’s still one more missile out there, and we need to go find it.”
“Do you know where to look?” Alex asked.
“I was hoping you could help with that.”
Alex moaned. “Let me think for a second. I saw the car that drove away with the missile. A woman was driving. She looked familiar.”
“You recognized her?” Hawk asked.
“I thought so, but the resolution on the monitors wasn’t that sharp.”
“What else do you remember?”
“Just give me a second. It’s coming back to me—the license plate. And she left in a blue sedan, heading north onto the main road.”
Hawk thrust the computer into her lap. “Try to remember as many details as you can, but we have to find that missile before they launch it toward Miami.”
Hawk jammed the gear into reverse and backed out of the space. Seconds later, he was screeching his tires as he sped out of the garage and onto the main road. As Hawk drove, Alex typed furiously on her laptop.
“Making any progress?” he asked after about a minute.
“I’m accessing some CIA satellites, but there aren’t that many cars in the area. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”
Hawk sped along the road, contemplating how he would handle the terrorists with just a handgun. It wasn’t a scenario that set him up for success, but at least he had a weapon. That was a far better improvement than his situation an hour earlier when he didn’t even have the other three missiles, much less a gun.
“Okay, I think I found the car,” Alex said. “Up ahead on the left, there’s a short road that leads to an inlet. It’s hard to tell because it’s dark, but I’m pretty sure that’s the car.”
“If you’re wrong about this, Alex—”
“I’m sure this is it,” she said. “Just turn left up here.”
Hawk followed her directions, whipping the car onto the tight two-lane road. It wound around for several hundred yards before Alex told him to kill the lights.
“Better hurry,” Alex said. “I’ve got a live feed, and it looks like someone is loading up a rocket launcher of some sort.”
“How far away are we?” Hawk asked.
“Maybe fifty yards around the bend,” she said.
“If they’re arming the weapon, I’ll never make it in time.”
“But they might hear you,” Alex protested.
“We don’t have a chance now unless we do.”
Hawk eased his car around the curve, creeping slowly. The moon illuminated the beach in front of them. A woman and three men were all crouched over some object, working feverishly.
“That’s got to be the launcher,” Hawk said. “I’m getting out.”
Hawk hustled toward the beach but stopped short when he saw one of the men hoist the weapon onto his shoulder and fire the missile. Flames streaked out the back as it tore through the sky. The terrorists all threw their hands in the air and celebrated, shouting something in Arabic.
That’s Evana Bahar.
“Get back here,” Alex said over the coms.
“No,” Hawk said. “We need to take them out.”
“What we need to do is get the hell outta here and call Miami right now to get them to clear the stadium. We only have about fifteen minutes before the missile hits.”
“That’s not enough time,” Hawk said. “They’ll never be able to clear the area in time.”
“We’ve got to try,” Alex said.
Hawk turned and
