One by one, Evana's team filed out into the hallway, their hands raised in surrender. In total, six hackers exited the room and were lined up against the wall. Black paced alongside the apprehended hackers, his weapon trained in front of him.
“Where’s Evana?” Hawk asked as he searched the room and yanked all the computers’ power cords out of the socket until all the machines were powered down.
He repeated his question several times, yet nobody answered.
Hawk persisted. "One of you needs to share that information right now, or else someone's going to pay a steep price."
They all remained silent.
“So, who’s going to die protecting a terrorist?” Hawk asked before stopping in front of one man and jamming the gun barrel into his temple. “Will it be you?”
“She just took off for the roof,” one woman said.
The others in the group shot dirty looks at her.
“Thank you,” Hawk said.
“And you better hurry,” the woman said. “She still has control of the drones on her phone.”
Hawk opened the glass doors from the master suite leading onto the balcony. He could see the National Mall a block away, which had turned into a stampede. People were fleeing in all directions, crushing kids and the elderly in an effort to find safety. Horns honked wildly, while people fought over vehicles.
Everyone knows what’s coming now.
He rushed outside and managed to catch a glimpse of Evana jumping onto the roof from the railing on a balcony two floors above his position.
“I’m going after Evana,” Hawk said into his coms. “She still has control of the drones.”
“You’ve got three minutes, Hawk,” Alex said.
He studied the balcony above him for a second and took a deep breath.
Then he jumped.
CHAPTER 39
7:48 p.m.
HAWK’S FINGERS WRAPPED around the wrought-iron railing on the balcony, and then he pulled himself up. Evana Bahar had disappeared from sight, putting him at a distinct disadvantage. He leaped to the next balcony and considered all of the possibilities.
As Hawk’s mind whirred, he decided that the two most likely scenarios were her waiting on him with a weapon and firing it the moment he came into view or her sprinting away from him with the phone to control the drones in her hand. Both of those situations presented a host of problems, though none loomed larger than the ticking clock.
“Two minutes and thirty seconds,” Alex said over the coms.
The update only strengthened his resolve.
“Do you have a visual on Evana?” she asked.
“In ten seconds, I’ll know.”
Hawk scrambled up to the top, preparing to jump back down if Evana had waited for him. However, the roof of the building was clear, aside from a few rows of air conditioning units and a door for access into the building. He scanned the area and noticed her running on the top of a nearby building. Hawk dashed toward the edge and jumped.
He rolled as he landed before bouncing to his feet. Evana continued sprinting to the edge of the building. As he raced after her, she came to a stop and glanced down at the street below. Then she locked eyes with him, her weapon drawn.
Hawk slowed down and considered how he could navigate the standoff.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite American assassin in the flesh,” Evana said with a wry smile.
“You’ve got ninety seconds, Hawk,” Alex said over the coms.
Hawk tried to focus.
Evana continued. “In a matter of seconds, those Shadow drones will be in range and rain down firepower like this nation has never seen on its own soil. If you want to be a hero and kill me, go ahead, but this phone is going over the edge with me and you’ll have failed. Thousands of innocent people will die, something I know your conscience couldn’t handle.”
“So, this is it,” Hawk said as he nodded.
“The moment you’ve been waiting for. You finally have me in your sights, but if you kill me, you’ll be killing all those people down there.”
“But it’d be the last time you’d ever harm anyone.”
“That’s not much of a consolation prize,” she said. “Now, don’t you come another step closer.”
Evana stepped onto the ledge and carefully walked backward along it. She held the phone in her left hand over the edge, the gun in her right trained on Hawk.
He took a step toward her, which she responded to by shooting at his feet. “Now, what did I just tell you.”
She took a quick glance over the edge and kept moving.
“Forty-five seconds, Hawk,” Alex squawked in his ear.
He started a timer in his head, his gaze fixed on the terrorist mastermind. When he reached thirty seconds remaining, he knew he had to take a chance or everyone would die. With limited options, he took aim at her right shoulder and then dove to the ground.
While Hawk would’ve preferred to put a hole in her head, the immediate objective was regaining control of the drones before they strafed the National Mall. When the bullet hit her shoulder, she recoiled to her right side. She dropped her phone as she fired back. It hit the pavement and bounced away from her. However, she lost her balance and fell backward.
Hawk rushed over to edge and snatched the phone. He glanced down and noticed Evana had landed on a fire escape fifteen feet below. She staggered away and Hawk couldn’t do anything about it.
He turned his attention back to the phone and saw a button labeled “abort”. When he hit it, Alex shrieked in his ear.
“Hawk!” she said. “You did it. The planes just banked east away from the National Mall.”
He wanted to celebrate but couldn’t, not with Evana Bahar at street level. She looked back up at him and disappeared into the throngs fleeing the mall.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” Alex asked.
“Evana got away,” Hawk said.
He hustled after her but realized his effort was in vain. There wasn’t any way to find her amidst the chaos. He ran back into the building and found Black
