Assassin

Chapter Twenty-One

Nantucket Island

ALEX HAWKE, WEARING A FADED GREY ROYAL NAVY T-SHIRT and a pair of swimming trunks, was up on deck again in the wee hours, his faithful parrot Sniper riding easily on his left shoulder. He had a pocketful of Cheezbits, one of Sniper’s favorite late-night snacks.

He still needed air. Couldn’t seem to get enough of the stuff.

A fresh breeze had come up just after midnight and blown most of the fog offshore. A fingernail moon, little more than a sliver of ivory, hung above the horizon in a dark blue sky; there were a few stars, white as bone.

Cheeeez-us! Cheez-us! Sniper squawked, and Hawke popped another tidbit into the air. The parrot snagged it with her sharp beak and fluttered her wings in appreciation.

“Good bird, Sniper,” Hawke said. Slushy, the head chef down in the galley, had secretly taught the caviar and cheese–loving bird to say “Cheez-us” and Alex had been unable to cure her of the mildy sacrilegious new habit.

The recent cold front that had brought heavy rains to the Cape, Martha’s Vineyard, and the island of Nantucket had now gravitated northeast out over the North Atlantic. In its wake, only wispy remnants of misty vapor snaking through the silent streets of old Nantucket Town and wafting through dark forests of sailboat masts in the dead-quiet harbor.

The remaining heavy air left every surface cool and damp, and the broad teak decks of Blackhawke were slippery underfoot. She was anchored out in open water, a good distance from the harbor entrance as a security measure. Tom Quick wanted a lot of empty water around his boat at a time like this. Room to maneuver or get under way if she was threatened in any way. There wasn’t another yacht within half a mile of her anchorage out here.

The sharp tang of the breeze coming off the ocean was strong and antiseptic; it felt good as Alex filled his lungs with it. In the owner’s stateroom on the deck just below, he had tossed in his bed for hours, but any notion of sleep he’d had this night was clearly just a dream. Padding across the varnished floorboards to the head, he’d opened the medicine chest and reached for the slim orange vial of a small miracle pill called Ambien.

Alex Hawke’s personal physician, Dr. Kenneth Beer, had prescribed the sedative when Alex had seen him immediately after Vicky’s funeral in Louisiana. He’d been at his wit’s end over lack of sleep and had decided not to cure it with spirits as was his old custom. Beer was forever trying to convince him that his lifestyle was hardly befitting his profession. Hawke, of course, had never told Ken what he did for a living, but his doctor had taken enough lead out of him to hazard a guess. Hawke’s body was a living testament to Beer’s surgical talents.

“Hell, Hawke, you’re only as good as your last scar,” Ken would say, stitching him up and sending him on his way.

Ten milligrams would put him out, and he’d come to depend on this nightly escape hatch. Beer had assured him it wasn’t habit-forming, but Hawke wondered. Freedom from pain of the magnitude he’d been suffering was clearly addictive. He’d replaced the plastic cap without removing a pill, stepped into his still-damp bathing suit and pulled a T-shirt over his head, hoping some fresh air might calm the troubled waters.

He knew he had things to work through. Things that a narcotized brain studiously avoided during sleep state. Vicky was dead. A month later, his grief was still acute. The case had gone cold from lack of attention. The Yard wasn’t getting anywhere but, stupidly from his point of view, didn’t want any help, either. Stoke and Ross had come up with a plausible suspect. Their case against the Cuban psychopath nicknamed Scissorhands had both motive and opportunity. Hawke at this moment wanted nothing more on earth than to light up his airplane, head down to Miami, and help Stokely and Ross run down the murderous Cuban.

On another, less personal front, there was this bastard they called the Dog. A cunning devil who was, according to reports Conch and Texas Patterson had shared with him, capable of wreaking unspeakable havoc upon a weakened, vulnerable and increasingly isolated America. But no one, it seemed, had a even a clue as to his true identity or whereabouts. “Go find this guy, Alex,” Conch had said. “And delete him.”

Hawke’s staunch efforts to keep his personal feelings and his professional obligations separate had not met with much success. But, he’d made his decision to send Stoke out without him and somehow he’d find a way to live with it.

His first stop had been the bridge, where he’d had a brief chat with his ship’s captain, Briny Fay, regarding an ongoing problem with the boat’s Aegis defense warning systems. The news from Briny was not good. Two of the CPU mainframes that backed up the Aegis had crashed inexplicably, and the techs couldn’t figure out why. Now, as he made his way aft along the port side of the bridge deck, Sniper’s own less sophisticated but highly effective alarm system went off.

HAWKE! HAWKE! The old parrot screeched. Sniper was trained in the ancient pirate ways, riding the master’s shoulder to warn of unseen and unexpected dangers. Like the heavily armed man who now stepped out of the shadows directly in front of him.

“Hullo,” Hawke said evenly.

“Sorry, Skipper,” Tommy Quick said, lowering his weapon. “Didn’t hear you coming.”

“Well, I’m barefoot, Tommy,” Hawke said, a smile in his voice. “So it’s hardly surprising.” The young American was in charge of security aboard this boat and he took his job very seriously. Quick, the former sharpshooter, was a stealth warrior who didn’t care much for surprises and so very rarely experienced any.

“Still and all, sir,” Quick said, looking down at Hawke’s bare feet, embarrassed.

“It’s quiet out there, Sarge,” Hawke said, gliding over the awkward moment by casting a glance seaward. There was a new moon and a few bright stars winking behind high, fast-moving clouds.

Too quiet! Too quiet! Sniper squawked.

“Too quiet, she’s right, yes, sir,” Quick replied, smiling at the well-worn joke. “The natives are restless.”

“To hell with the natives,” Hawke said. “What about the bloody tourists?”

Hawke placed one hand on the rail and gazed down into the sea. The water, some twenty feet below the deck where he stood, was brilliantly illuminated, light blue darkening to deep blue, by a security system of underwater floodlights. It attracted all manner of marine life, including not a few of the large local sharks the famous author Peter Benchley, a Nantucketer himself, had made so notorious.

“Mind taking Sniper for a bit, Tommy?”

“Not at all, sir,” he said and held out his arm to the bird.

“Thanks. Thinking of going for a quick swim, actually, Sarge,” Hawke said, holding out his parrot. The bird flared her wings and alighted on the younger man’s forearm.

“Swim, sir?”

“Work a few kinks out.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea, sir?” His employer’s idea of a quick swim might be miles. In open ocean at night with a strong tide running, with possible hostiles in the area, this was definitely not a good idea, at least from a security man’s point of view. On the other hand, Hawke was a former SBS commando. Swimming great distances at night in any weather under any conditions came as naturally to him as strolling around the block during a spring shower.

“Why not?”

“Well, security, Skipper. Ship’s at full alert. Because the mainframe is down, our Aegis defensive perimeter only extends…well, you know our situation, sir,” said Quick. “Until we’re up and running again, we’re pretty much a sitting duck.”

“Yes, there is that,” Hawke said, using one hand to vault himself easily off the deck and up onto the narrow varnished teak handrail. He then stood upright, perched atop the slender rail, facing the sea, perfectly balanced, arms at his side, smiling.

“I could launch two men in an inflatable to keep an eye on you, Skipper. Not a bad idea under the current—”

“No need of that,” Hawke said. “Cheers.”

Dumbstruck, Quick watched Alex Hawke rise up onto the tips of his toes and fly off the rail, executing a pretty good jackknife, extending to his full length to break the surface with little more than a ripple. Quick looked down in time to see Hawke’s curly black head pop back up in the dead center of his entry point, a huge grin on his face.

“Repel all boarders!” his employer shouted and then he dove down, disappearing amongst schools of varicolored fish, swimming rapidly beneath the huge black hull.

“Jesus H. Christ!” a voice exploded in Quick’s earpiece.

“What is it?” Quick said, adjusting the lip-mike of his Motorola headset.

“Oh, nothing much, sir,” one of the underwater video technicians stationed in the fire control center replied. “The owner just swam up, shoved a shark out of the way and stuck his face in my fisheye lens, that’s all. Big smile on his face. This is not foul play, roger, Sarge? His idea to jump into the deep dark sea full of sharks?”

“Yeah, his idea, affirmative,” Quick replied.

“Sounds about right, sir.”

“Yeah. Not that it’ll do any good, but you guys keep the underwater telephotos on him as long as you can. Cycle a 360 sweep every five minutes. And gimme a heads-up the second he returns.”

“Aye, aye.”

“Sonar?”

“Still down, Sir.”

“How long ’till the Aegis is back up?”

“Techs are saying two hours, minimum.”

“Christ. A sitting duck.”

“You could say that again.”

Sitting duck! Sitting duck! Sniper said.

Hawke swam as hard as he could, slicing through the slight chop. He stopped suddenly, muscles aflame, somehow always knowing precisely where his halfway mark was. Buoyant in mind and body, he let the current take him, relaxing into a dead man’s float, face submerged, limbs hanging down, so heavy they felt more like logs, going with the flow. He let his thoughts float as well, go where they would, and he stayed in this meditative state for some time, lifting his head for air only as often as required.

He remained that way until a deep cold began to seep into his muscles, telling him it was time to head back. Lifting his head for a deep draught of air before starting the long swim home, he was surprised to see a small pleasure yacht silhouetted against the sky, a darkened cabin cruiser, perhaps forty feet in length. She had neither running lights nor navigation lights illuminated, her motors were silent; she was drifting with the current just like Hawke, treading water some five hundred yards off her port beam.

Curious.

He swam towards her, instinctively pulling himself slowly and quietly through the waves. As he drew closer, he saw that she was one of those luxury picnic boats. They were built along the lines of a Maine lobster boat, and if you had a million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, she was yours for the asking. He’d swum to within fifty yards of her when he saw someone switch on a flashlight down below. The curtains were not drawn in the main cabin, and he watched the yellow glow bobbing about, moving forward towards the bow.

The moving flashlight gave him a fairly good mental picture of the layout below. A salon amidships and a small v-berth stateroom all the way forward. He’d guess a complete power failure except most boats of this size were equipped with gensets, diesel or gasoline powered generators. So what was this strange duck doing floating around out here in the dark in one of the east coast’s major shipping lanes?

He paddled quietly around to her stern. There was just enough ambient light from the fingernail moon and few visible stars to make out her name and hailing port, emblazoned in gold leaf on her dark blue transom.

RUNNING TIDE Seal Harbor, Maine

He swam up to the swim platform at the stern, grasping it with both hands, trying to decide whether to hail the owner and see if he could offer assistance or slip aboard quietly. The main cabin was dark once more. Whoever was down there had either extinguished the flashlight, or taken it forward out of sight. That’s when he saw the small electric motor jury-rigged on a swivel mount to the swim platform. Twenty horsepower. A tiller for steering. A man standing on the platform had enough power to maneuver the forty-footer anywhere he wanted without making a sound.

Slip aboard quietly.

He timed the waves slapping under the boarding platform at the stern, waiting for one to lift the boat, waiting for the precise moment when he would swing his weight aboard. With any luck, the rising water would disguise the additional weight suddenly added to the stern. Go! Heaving himself up, he sat on the outer edge of the platform, legs dangling in the water, waiting to slide back into the water instantly if anyone took notice of his arrival. After a minute, he got to his feet, slipped over the transom, and stood on the aft deck looking forward.

The door to the enclosed pilothouse was hanging ajar. He crossed the teak deck and stepped inside, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness.

To his right, seated behind the wheel at the helm seat, the figure of a large man in a dark watch cap facing straight ahead, not moving. Asleep? Drugged? Alex edged cautiously forward, waiting for the man to swing around with a gun leveled at him. Why was he so paranoid? Ah, right, someone was trying to kill him. When the man made no move to turn and see who was approaching, Alex reached out and put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

The man, dressed in yellow foul-weather gear, slumped backward, and his head suddenly fell back upon the seat cushion with a soft thunk. His mouth gaped in a rictus of death, his eyes were a faint dull gleam under the lowered lids, and the skin of his collapsed cheeks was bluish-white. There was a neat black hole in the middle of his forehead, powder burns around the entrance wound; the coagulated blood puddled in his sunken eyesockets was black in the moonlight.

There was a gun lying on the seat beside him.

He saw that it was a Browning nine, the sidearm favored by the U.S. Army and also a number of American police forces. He patted him down, felt a bulge in a breast pocket under the slicker, reached inside and pulled out an alligator wallet. The man was Alan Outer-bridge, age fifty-five, according to his Maine driver’s license. Lived at some place called The Pines on Seal Point, Maine. This was, had been, his Hinckley Talaria 44. And Mr. Outer-bridge was now very dead.

Roughly a thousand dollars cash was in the wallet, credit cards, a picture of a young girl. He put the back of his hand against the man’s cheek. Guessing, he placed the time of death about two hours earlier.

Hawke turned toward the companionway. The man down below with the flashlight had hijacked this yacht at gunpoint, then murdered the owner and not for his money. Whatever brought the killer to Nantucket, it wasn’t robbery. And it wasn’t tourism. There was a strong possibility that the blood of Deirdre Slade and her two children was on his hands.

Alex ducked out through the pilothouse door and quickly retraced his steps back to the transom. He ejected the mag in the grip of the Browning, saw that it was full of hollow-points, reinserted it, and jacked a fresh cartridge into the chamber. He was counting on the wind to carry the sounds away, still, he kept his eye on the pilothouse. If someone should suddenly appear there, Hawke now had a rough idea who it might be, and he would shoot that man without a moment’s hesitation.

He slipped inside once again and had almost reached the companionway leading below when the flashlight went on. Hawke froze, crouched down beside the dead man, the gun extended at the end of his right arm, waiting for the silhouetted figure in the opening. He heard a door slam and a muttered curse. All quiet, he moved forward again, feeling his way down the companionway.

The main cabin was dark, with shadowy outlines of furniture and a banquette to port. He padded silently down the four steps leading to the salon, ready to shoot anything that moved, and stopped dead in his tracks. There was a man lying on the floor, face down. The upper half of his body disappeared through an engine room hatch in the cabin sole.

There was the sound and flash of sparks and more cursing from the prone man. A MAC-10 machine gun lay on the floor beside him. Hawke eased himself down to a sitting position on the top step, a good ten feet from the prone figure, and gave the thing a few moments. No noise coming from the forward cabin or the closed head to starboard. One still alive down below anyway, Mr. Outer-bridge having departed this mortal coil.

“Jara!” the man halfway into the hold said, Arabic for shit, Hawke thought.

“Deputy Savalas, I presume,” Hawke said, by way of breaking the ice. “Good shooting.”

“What? Who—”

“Engine trouble, old boy? Boats are a bloody bitch, aren’t they? If it’s not one damn thing, it’s another.”

“Shit!”

The startled young man’s head came up too quickly and he banged it smartly on the underside of the metal deck. He craned around, eyes wide.

“You!” he said, eyeing Hawke and rolling towards the MAC-10.

Hawke pulled the Browning’s trigger and a bullet tore into the expensive cherry woodwork inches above the man’s head. The crack of the nine was deafening inside the small cabin. The man flattened once again on the deck.

“Itchy trigger finger, Nikos,” Hawke said, “Sorry. Lifelong problem. Slide that machine gun over here. Easy. Now, then, you can sit up and toss me that flashlight like a good little scout.”

Deputy Nikos Savalas shoved the automatic weapon in Hawke’s direction, then sat up, sullenly rubbing the back of his head. He pitched the flashlight. Hawke caught the torch and set it beside him on the top step, aimed at Savalas.

“I see you’ve shaved off your moustache, Deputy,” he said.

The deputy was out of uniform, wearing torn blue jeans and a loose-fitting black rubber slicker. He glared at Hawke who was sitting quietly at the top of the steps, elbow on one knee, chin propped in the upraised palm of his left hand, smiling. He held the gun in his other hand, loosely, but ready.

“How did you know—” he said.

“It was you? Saw the DHYC burgee up on the bow. Dark Harbor Yacht Club. Wasn’t completely sure until I saw the ‘DHPD’ on the butt of your service Browning. I caught a whiff of you when it took you three times to toss me that line at the Slade’s dock. A kid from the Maine coast who doesn’t coil a line prior to tossing it? And who else had access to my airplane all night? You cut those aileron cables all by yourself, did you?”

“I told my father it wouldn’t work. We should have just—”

“Credit where it’s due, it was a close thing,” Hawke said. “We almost bought it. Lucky for me, I had a splendid copilot aboard. Look here, I don’t have time for this rubbish. You hijacked this boat up in Maine, got the owner to bring you down here and then your gun went off in his face. Why?”

The boy suddenly reached inside his slicker and Hawke put another round approximately one inch from his left ear. Maybe less.

“On your feet. Get your bloody hands up,” Hawke said. When the youth did as he was told, Hawke added, “Now, both hands at the collar. Easy. Rip open the Velcro. One smooth motion, all the way open, thank you.”

Savalas did as he was told and Hawke saw it wasn’t a gun he was going for. He was wearing a heavy webbed vest strapped about his middle, pouches stuffed with thin flat bricks of Semtex. Suicide bombers in every little village and vale, Hawke thought.

“Your idea is quite good, really.” Hawke said. “Your darkened and disabled vessel drifts into Blackhawke’s vicinity. An SOS comes over our radio. We respond. Take you aboard, trusting souls that we are. Boom. We all go to Paradise.”

“It gets even better,” a second man said, standing in the now open doorway of the forward cabin. Tall and dark, wearing greasy coveralls, he was an older, greying version of the deputy. This was the father. The mechanic who worked out at the airfield. The man had a second MAC-10 aimed at Hawke’s head. “Please to drop your weapon,” he said, with a lightly inflected American accent. “Kick both guns over here.”

Hawke complied.

“Kerim, take the guns.”

“Kerim is it, Nikos? Well, Kerim, ask Daddy how could it get any better than this?” Hawke said, kicking the Browning away. He was already calculating the angles, whether to roll right or left, go low or high, which one to take out first, which of them might possess the better reaction time, how many seconds it would take to—

“Kerim! Show this impious Englishman the little surprise we have planned for him tonight! We were just putting the final touches on it, yes? Now, he’s a member of his own surprise party. Enough talk! Hands on your head!”

Kerim tossed the stubby machine gun to his father, keeping the Browning auto on Hawke. The younger man then stepped back beyond the square hole in the floor, motioning Alex forward with his free hand. Alex got to his feet and advanced three of four steps to the open hatchway. The father was moving around behind him, had the flashlight on him. The kick, when it came, hard and into the small of Hawke’s back, was not unexpected. Hawke pitched forward, headfirst into the hatch.

What was not expected was the blur of Hawke’s extended right hand, locking around Kerim’s wrist, his gun hand, and pulling the would-be suicide bomber down through the hatch with him, the two of them landing arms and legs akimbo, Kerim’s body atop his own, shielding Hawke, for the moment, from the machine gun the man standing above him had aimed at his heart.

“Looks like your son’s going to beat me to Paradise,” Hawke said. “If you decide to shoot me, I mean.”

“Say your prayers,” the older man shouted into the hold.

“The devil I will!” Hawke replied.