“Don’t kill me,” Nazari said. “I think this is a big misunderstanding.”
“No, this was an overestimation on your part that you wouldn’t suffer the same fate as your brother,” Hawk said.
Then he hit Nazari with two shots, one center mass, the other in the head.
Nazari collapsed to the ground, and Hawk returned to the room where he found about two dozen men typing furiously on their keyboards.
“Your fearless leader Tahir Nazari is dead,” Hawk said. “So, I’m taking over this operation. Is that clear?”
The men ignored him, continuing to type. Hawk growled before jamming the muzzle of his gun into the back of one man’s head.
“I’m gonna need that computer,” Hawk said.
The man threw both his hands in the air before vigorously resuming his tasks. Hawk didn’t wince as he put a bullet in the back of the man’s head. He slumped over, dead. Hawk shoved the man’s body to the floor and inserted the device Alex had given him into a USB port.
“You’re in,” Hawk said.
“Roger that,” Alex replied.
Hawk shoved the chair away with the back of his knees and circled the room. “It’s time for you to all stop what you’re doing.”
The men ignored Hawk and continued working.
I don’t have time for this.
Hawk shot three men in the back of their heads before the others finally relented. “Please get up and go stand against that wall.”
“I’ll call the FBI,” Big Earv said.
Hawk waited a half-minute before saying anything into the coms. “Alex, how are things coming?”
“We’re almost there,” she said. “I’ve got an army of hackers helping me, led by this guy named Gimli. Don’t ask.”
“I won’t.”
Within two minutes, Hawk wondered if his eardrums would suffer permanent damage from Alex’s jubilant yelp over the coms. A searing pain shot through his ear canals.
“Please tell me that means something good,” he said.
“We got all of them,” Alex said. “They’re returning to the roof right now.”
Hawk wandered over to the window and watched the drones return in a line back to the roof.
“How’d you manage that?” he asked.
“It’s the return to home function every drone has,” she said. “Gimli and I figured out a way to override the system that prevented us from controlling the drones. But, as it turns out, we didn’t need to. We just need to send all of them back where they came from.”
Hawk heard sirens howling from the street below. “I think we have company.”
A round of shots echoed off the nearby buildings. Hawk stuck his nose up to the window and saw two black SUVs roll up to the facility, blocking the street. A half-dozen agents poured out of the car and wasted no time in picking off the two guards in the front.
Big Earv glanced at Hawk. “Why don’t you take the fire escape? I’ll handle the feds.”
“You sure?”
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Big Earv said as he glanced around at the men clustered together in the center of the room, face down with their hands behind their heads.
“They’re certainly not martyrs,” Hawk said. “Or at least they don’t want to be.”
“Go,” Big Earv said, nodding toward the broken window. “And hurry.”
Hawk’s gaze met Big Earv’s. “Thanks. We’ll meet up on the other side.”
“Roger that.”
Hawk darted toward the window and then jumped through it onto the fire escape. He maneuvered his way down to the ground before hustling back to their SUV.
“All good?” Alex asked.
Hawk shook his head. “Not quite yet. There’s still one more thing we need to do.”
After fishing his cell phone out of his pocket, Hawk dialed President Young’s private line.
“Who is this?” Young asked as he answered the phone.
“Your worst nightmare or your best friend,” Hawk said. “It all depends on how you answer.”
“Brady Hawk,” Young said. “You enjoying your last few minutes as a free man?”
Hawk clenched his fist, wishing the conversation was occurring in person. He wanted to hit Young in the mouth and make him swallow his teeth. But Hawk took a deep breath instead before continuing.
“Sir, it seems like you and I have a similar problem,” Hawk said.
“I don’t think so,” Young said. “After all, I’m the president.”
“If you don’t agree to help me, you might not be for long.”
“So brash and so bold, Agent Hawk.”
“I have no reason to be otherwise,” Hawk said. “The truth is on my side.”
“The truth?” Young said with a chuckle. “That’s as subjective of a commodity as you want to make it these days.”
“Well, I’m here to restore integrity to what it means to be truthful. And you’re going to be a part of that whether you want to or not.”
“This ought to be interesting.”
Hawk sighed. “Here’s the deal I’m willing to make, but I need a public statement from you that clears our names, including J.D. Blunt’s and Christina Shields’s and Titus Black’s as well.”
“In exchange for what?” Young asked.
“To make your big problem go away.”
“And what problem is that?”
Hawk chuckled. “Do I really need to spell it out for you?”
Silence from the other end.
“Okay, fine. If you want to play it that way, I won’t make you guess. It’s Falcon Sinclair. I know that he has bought or has dirt on nearly half of Washington. We both know he stole the First Lady from you, too. What kind of spineless man stands for that?”
“To be honest, I wasn’t really torn up about that. Madeline was, well, she wasn’t a pleasant woman to live with.”
“That’s still no reason to let Sinclair take over not only this country but the rest of the world,” Hawk said. “We’ll all be subject to his whims very soon.”
“Are you sure you can take him out?” Young asked.
“We’ll do more than that,” Hawk said. “We’ll obliterate him, and in the process, you might just get a second term.”
“All right,” Young said. “I’ll make an announcement tomorrow.”
“No,” Hawk said. “Tonight. It needs to be tonight. If you don’t, we’ll miss our opportunity to take down Sinclair.”
“You win,” Young said. “I’ll do it tonight.”
“And we won’t
