“Ready?” Blunt asked.
“Hold on,” Alex said over the coms. “There’s something wrong with your transmission.”
Hawk took instructions from Alex on how to proceed with troubleshooting for the camera. After a couple of minutes, the problem wasn’t resolved.
“Now what?” Hawk asked.
She sighed. “I’ll come up there and fix it for you.”
“You can’t just walk me through it?”
“It’d be quicker for me to do it myself than to try and tell you how to do it,” she said. “I’m on foot. It’ll only take me a couple minutes.”
“Roger that.”
The men stood around and shot the breeze, discussing everything from the best places to retire to preferred fishing locations to who was going to win the big early season college football games that weekend. By the time they were done, Hawk glanced at his watch. Five minutes had passed.
“Alex, where are you?” he asked in his coms.
Nothing.
“Alex?”
More silence.
“What is going on?” he asked again.
Then he heard another voice, but instead of it being Alex’s, it was a man’s in a distinctly South African accent.
“Well, hello, Mr. Hawk,” the man said. “It’s so nice to see you.”
“See me?” Hawk asked. “You must be mistaken.”
“Nope. I can see you just fine. Over here.”
Hawk spun to see a hulking shadowy figure marching toward them, a woman in tow.
When Hawk recognized Alex, he cursed under his breath.
“Drop your weapon or she dies,” the man said.
“Rocky, so good of you to finally show up,” Sinclair said, his dour expression now transformed into a broad grin.
“Like you say, boss: better late than never.”
Hawk laid down his gun on the ground.
“Kick that over to me,” the man said.
Hawk did as he was told.
“Good boy,” Rocky said. “Now, you try anything, she eats a bullet. Are we clear?”
Hawk nodded. He tried to act like the sheer terror sweeping across Alex’s face was no big deal, but he could tell that Rocky wasn’t just going to drop this thing once he got his way. Sinclair wouldn’t let him simply walk away either. Someone was going to pay.
Alex pleaded with Hawk to help her as Rocky yanked her head back using a fistful of her hair to do it.
“No more talking,” Rocky said, speaking each word slowly for emphasis.
“Uncuff me,” Sinclair said to Blunt, who promptly unlocked the bindings.
Sinclair drew back and delivered a vicious uppercut to Blunt, knocking him to the ground.
“Nice hit, boss,” Rocky said.
Sinclair lorded over Blunt. “How about those supple hands now?”
Still lying in the dirt, Blunt inched away from Sinclair, who was rolling up his sleeves.
“Where are you going, old man?” Sinclair said. “We’re just getting started.”
Hawk winced at he watched Blunt suffer a beating from their former prisoner. Yet since the minute Hawk realized their mission was in jeopardy, he remained calm. Sinclair and Rocky worked quickly to secure Black and Blunt to the base of a nearby oil derrick.
“What do you want?” Hawk asked, hoping to speed the proceedings along.
Sinclair turned and marched toward Hawk. “You know what, wise guy? I’m going to get you to confess to everything you just tried to do with me. Only you’re going to confess that a secret black ops program of the U.S. government was responsible for the gas leak, for the spy cameras installed in our Freedom Homes, for the payouts under the shell company of Drisi Enterprises. You’re going to confess to everything, even the murders of my bodyguards. Is that clear?”
Hawk took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Blunt scowled. “Hell, no! You better not let this man win.”
“There are some things more important than this job,” Hawk said as he looked at Alex. “We don’t all need to die tonight. Give me the script. I’ll fix it and then read it.”
“Excellent,” Sinclair said, rubbing his hands together. “And I want all of you flanking him as he reads it.”
“Everyone except Alex,” Hawk said. “Leave her out of this.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Hawk,” Sinclair said. “It’s too bad we didn’t meet earlier in life. I think we could’ve been fast friends.”
Rocky ushered Alex over to Hawk and Blunt before untying them.
Hawk glared at Sinclair but ignored his comment. “How would you like for me to read this? In my thickest Texas accent? Should I sound educated or broken, maybe a little quiver in my voice?”
Sinclair laughed. “I don’t care if you read it in Farsi. Just say what it says, and I’ll have the FBI come pick you gentlemen up.”
“And my wife,” Hawk added.
“Her too,” Sinclair said, cocking his head to one side. “Now, go ahead. Start reading.”
Hawk took a deep breath and scanned the industrial area behind them. He glanced back down at the paper. “Is that thing recording?”
“Dammit,” Sinclair said. “Just read the bloody paper.”
Hawk licked his lips and peered down at the words a final time before locking his gaze with the lens in front of him. Then he began the apology.
“My name is Brady Hawk, and I’m here to confess a multitude of crimes against my government and other private citizens of both this country and others,” Hawk said.
He was about to launch into the part about how he paid off politicians, but a gunshot echoed through the area. Sinclair spun around in the direction the shot came from, his weapon raised.
“Who’s there?” Sinclair asked.
The next bullet knocked the gun out of Sinclair’s hands. In fear, he dove to the ground, cowering there. “Get him, Rocky.”
Rocky took up a position behind one of the oil derricks, using it for cover. He fired a couple shots back before Hawk seized his moment to escape with Alex. He grabbed her hand and they raced toward the back of the SUV, shielding them from Rocky.
“Get inside,” Hawk said. “See if you can find a gun, and keep your head down.”
Hawk crept around the outside of the vehicle as he approached Rocky, who was unloading on the shooter. “Time’s up.”
Rocky wheeled the gun around and trained it on Hawk’s knee. When he went to fire the weapon, the gun clicked, out
