Page 50 of Hawk on the Hunt

“Didn’t see you coming,” Polo ground out as he lunged for the gun.

Dylan tackled him, wrestling him to the ground, but Polo’s hand was already wrapping around the butt of the gun. Dylan punched him, but Polo was surprisingly strong. A counterpunch hit him hard, and he fell backwards, giving Polo the upper hand.

Polo pointed the gun right at Dylan’s chest, when Tiger rammed him from the side, this time hitting him so hard, that he lifted off his feet and landed on the gurney, the gun going off at the same time.

Zara screamed, and Dylan whipped his head in her direction. She stood close to the machine. He ran his eyes over her, scanning for injuries, but he saw none. Relieved, he let out a breath. With it, he felt a sharp pain sear through him. He looked down and saw blood seep from his upper arm, drenching his jacket. Polo had managed to shoot him. He lifted his arm, looked at both sides, and sighed with relief. The bullet had gone right through it.

There was another scream, this one from a man.

Dylan looked toward its origin. Polo was lying on the gurney. He was tied to it by firm belts. Tiger stood a few feet away, just looking at Polo, while he continued screaming.

“Get me the fuck out of here! Get me out!” Polo screamed at the top of his lungs.

Zara ran into his arms, and Dylan held her tightly. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, tears in her eyes. “You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing.”

Tiger stepped closer to the MRI machine, looking down on Polo, while the machine continued humming and following its preset sequence, the gurney slowly rolling into the circular part of the machine.

“Help me! Get me out!”

Polo fought against his restraints, but the fear in his eyes confirmed that he’d spoken the truth earlier, when he’d said that once the sequence was initiated, it couldn’t be overridden. He knew his fate was sealed.

Tiger bent over him. “Now you know what it feels like. See you on the other side.”

The gurney with Polo on it disappeared in the machine, and the circular part of it began to spin around him, the tempo increasing with every second, while the computer monitor woke up and showed a screen that looked like a seismograph recording an earthquake.

Zara cast a glance at the machine, before turning back to Dylan. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

By the time Zara had found medical supplies and bandaged his wound to stop the bleeding, the machine came to a stop and the gurney emerged. Polo lay there, not moving, his eyes open, staring into the void.

Dylan looked at the computer monitor that had now switched to a different window. He pointed to it. “What’s that mean?”

Tiger looked at it and pointed to the various lines. “That’s his current brain activity. And that’s his heart rate and blood pressure.”

“He’s still alive?” Zara asked.

Tiger nodded. “Yes, he’s got a heartbeat. But he’s a vegetable. No brain activity.”

Zara looked stunned.

Dylan squeezed her arm. “He deserved it. He killed a lot of people, and he would have killed even more.”

She nodded. “I know. It’s just hard to watch.”

“What are we gonna do with the machine?” Tiger asked. “We can’t just leave it here.”

“We can’t blow it up here,” Dylan said, shaking his head. “We’re in the middle of D.C. There’s no buffer zone between this building and its neighbors. Let’s get everything we can carry: the server, the computers.”

“Johnson dropped his briefcase in the hallway,” Zara said. “The data discs have to be in there.”

Tiger walked into the hallway and came back with a briefcase a moment later. He opened it, and nodded. “Yep, the data discs are here.”

“Good, let’s take those,” Dylan said. “We’ll discuss with Fox later how to best disable this machine. We might have to dismantle it, and transport it out of here piecemeal.”

Tiger nodded. “It’s a plan.” Then he pointed to Polo. “What about him?”