As they rounded the corner, Hawk looked up to see J.D. Blunt flanked by Titus Black and Andrei Orlovsky. Blunt exchanged a few words with Russian officials before Hawk and Alex were shoved in the back toward the direction of The Phoenix Foundation director.
“You better hope I never catch you again,” the Russian officer said.
Hawk resisted the urge to snipe back at the man, instead choosing to make a mental note of the man’s face and commit it to memory. If they ever met again, Hawk wouldn’t take the man as a prisoner. The score would be settled in a different manner.
Hawk looked at Blunt, bags heavy beneath his eyes. His dour expression wasn’t out of the ordinary, but the edges of his lips seemed turned downward more than usual. Blunt didn’t speak until they had all exited the compound and were inside the car.
“What the hell happened here?” Blunt said.
“It’s a story with a lot of holes,” Hawk said.
“You better start filling them in,” Blunt said as he adjusted the rearview mirror in order to see Hawk and Alex.
Titus Black ignited the engine and eased onto the accelerator as they bumped along the road leading away from the facility.
“From the best I can tell, someone sabotaged the plane,” Hawk said before recounting what he knew about the situation.
“What about you, Alex?” Blunt asked. “What do you recall?”
“Not much,” she said, “other than waking up with Hawk holding onto me and telling me not to look down. I wish I knew more, but I just don’t. We think someone drugged me.”
“Captain Covington?” he asked.
“It was either him or the co-pilot,” she said. “But I never interacted with him other than to say hello when I arrived at the hangar.”
“Well, none of that matters now,” Blunt said. “We just need to get home as soon as possible and figure out a way to deal with the impending mess Sinclair is about to make when he coopts President Young.”
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, the wheels were up and they were soaring over Russia, leaving the country behind. Hawk had plenty of unfinished business in the massive country, business that didn’t even pertain to the officer who’d treated them so poorly. But that would all have to wait. The more pressing matter centered around President Young’s impending meeting with Falcon Sinclair.
Blunt gave Alex a laptop, pre-loaded with all her files that were backed up from the CIA’s server farm. As the team discussed a strategy for preventing Sinclair from coopting Young, Hawk became annoyed with Blunt’s insistence that the president and the tech billionaire meet.
“You can sway Young to cancel the meeting,” Hawk said.
“It’s too late,” Blunt said. “That ship has sailed, both figuratively and literally. Young wouldn’t tell me much about his meeting, other than the details were secret. But one of my White House insiders told me that Young was flying to Kuala Lumpur and sailing out of Port Klang on one of Sinclair’s high-speed yachts.”
“And where were they going?” Alex asked.
“That’s the part my informant didn’t know. Apparently, not even Young knew.”
“So, Young is floating around at sea with some Australian billionaire he just met?” Hawk asked. “That doesn’t seem like the wisest thing.”
“His Secret Service detail is with him,” Blunt said. “But I’d feel much better if we knew what exactly Sinclair was up to because it can’t be good.”
Hawk sighed and shook his head. “I would’ve felt much better if you had stopped Young from ever meeting Sinclair in the first place.”
“Young insisted on it, saying that the location was secret because Sinclair had some world-changing technology that he wanted to demo,” Blunt said.
“We need to figure out where they’re meeting so we can find out what this big secret is,” Hawk said.
Blunt shook his head. “No, we need to find Evana Bahar so we don’t lose funding.”
Hawk pounded his fist onto the arm of his chair. “If Obsidian turns Young into a puppet, what difference does it make if we have funding or not. We’ll never be able to do what we need to do to keep America safe from terrorists. Instead, we might just be letting a coup take place while we chase after some terrorist so the president can pound his chest about how safe we are as a country. Meanwhile, he’ll be inviting the worst kind of terror to the White House, the kind of terror you have no idea even exists and is poisoning everything you ever believed in. I, for one, don’t want that on my conscience.”
Alex raised her hand as she stared at her computer screen. “Uh, guys, I just got an email from Helenos-9.”
“The hacker in Berlin?” Hawk asked. “What does he want?”
“He said that there’s something he needs to tell us—in person,” Alex said.
“We don’t have time for that,” Blunt said. “We need to go to Morocco and plan how we’re going to capture Evana Bahar.”
Hawk scowled. “What’s wrong with you, sir? About a week ago, you were convinced our highest priority was stopping Obsidian and not Bahar and Al Fatihin. This about-face from you is puzzling.”
“Staying in Young’s good graces is important for the future of this organization, one that I feel strongly has a vital role in the country’s security both now and in the future. I don’t want to jeopardize everything we’ve built because we’re suspicious of Sinclair’s motives.”
“Suspicious of his motives?” Alex asked as she furrowed her brow. “We know he’s scheming to seize power in every sector possible. And if we’re serious about securing our country, we need to take this threat far more seriously than any bomb Evana Bahar’s minions can sneak into the country. We’re talking about the fabric of our democracy at stake here with what Sinclair wants to do.”
“Okay, fine,” Blunt said. “I guess maybe we can stop for
