Warriors Read Online Free

hostilities that could lead to regional war. At that point the chances of it expanding into a global conflict were nearly one hundred percent.
    Preventing that was his mission.
    IN LONDON, ONE WEEK EARLIER, “C,” as the chief of MI6 was traditionally called, had summoned Hawke to join him for lunch at his men’s club, Boodle’s. Lord Hawke had thought it was a purely social invitation. Usually the old man conducted serious SIS business only within the sanctum sanctorum of his private offices at 85 Albert Embankment, the headquarters for Six.
    So it was that a very relaxed Alex Hawke presented himself promptly at the appointed hour of noon.
    “Well, here you are at last,” C said, amiably enough. The “at last” was the old boy’s way of letting you know who was boss. Sir David Trulove, a gruff old party thirty years Hawke’s senior, had his customary corner table at the third-floor Grill Room. Shafts of dusty sunlight pouring down from the tall leaded windows set the table crystal and silver afire, all sparkle and gleam. Above C’s table, ragged tendrils of his tobacco smoke hung in wreaths and coils, turning and twisting slowly in the sunlit space.
    The dining and drinking at Boodle’s was, by any standard, done in one of the poshest man caves in all London.
    C took a spartan sip of his gin and bitters, looked his young subordinate up and down in cursory fashion, and said, “I must say, Alex, a bit of time in the down mode becomes you. You’re looking rather fit and ready for the fray. ‘Steel true, blade straight,’ as Conan Doyle’s memorable epitaph would have it. Sit, sit.”
    Hawke sat. He paid scant attention to C’s flattery, knowing the old man used it sparingly and only to his own advantage, usually as some prelude to another more important subject. Whatever was on his mind, he seemed jovial enough.
    “Most kind of you, sir. I’ve been looking forward to this luncheon all week. I get bored silly sometimes, up in the country. Good being back in town. This is a much-needed interlude, I must say.”
    “Let’s see if you still feel that way at the conclusion. What are you drinking? My club, my treat, of course,” Trulove said, catching a roving waiter’s eye.
    “Gosling’s, please. The Black Seal, neat.”
    Hawke sat back and smiled. It really was good to be here, a place where a man could act like a man wants to act, and do just what he pleased without encountering approbation from bloody anybody.
    “So,” Hawke said after C had ordered another drink and his rum, “trouble, I take it.”
    “No end of it, sadly.”
    “Spill the beans, sir. I can take it.”
    “The bloody Chinese again.”
    “Ah, my dear friends in the Forbidden City. Something new? I thought I was fairly well up to speed.”
    “Well, Alex, you know those inscrutable Mandarins in Beijing as well as I do. Always some new wrinkle up their embroidered red silk sleeves. It’s that abominable situation in the South China Sea, I’m afraid.”
    “Heating up?”
    “Boiling over.”
    Hawke’s rum arrived. He took a sip of it and said, “What now, sir? Don’t tell me the Reds have blockaded one of the world’s busiest trade routes?”
    “No, no, not yet anyway. It may come to that. Still, simply outrageous behavior. First, they unilaterally extend their territorial claims in the South China Sea hundreds of miles south and east from their most southerly province of Hainan. All done with zero regard for international maritime law, of course. And now they have established a no-fly zone over a huge U-shaped sea area that overlaps parts of Vietnam, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Brunei.”
    “Good Lord. And with what possible justification?”
    “Beijing says its right to the area comes from two thousand years of history, when the Paracel and Spratly island chains were regarded as integral parts of the Chinese nation. Vietnam says, rightly, that both island chains lie entirely within its territory. That it