Hawke

“You remember what to do when you get the call?”

“I hit the little button on the left and when it starts to blink I put in thirty hours.”

“Perfecto. You are not so stupid as Julio thinks you are.”

“You tell Julio I’m happy to kick his sorry ass any time he’s ready.”

“I am kidding you, Elvis. Relax. You sound so tense.”

“Tense? Why should I be tense? I kill a coupla thousand people every day.”

“You sound like you have second thoughts, señor. Perhaps we should talk about this. You know, the money, it is not released to you until we are satisfied you have accomplished your mission. You know that?”

“I don’t have the money? What the fuck are you—?”

“I didn’t say that. You have it. But you can’t get to it until I give you the account password. It’s a numeric code that allows you to withdraw. See what I mean, Elvis?”

That’s when Rita stuck her head in the door.

“Honey—dinner’s ready. Can you get off the phone, please?”

“Yeah, I’m just—gimme a sec, okay, sweetie? I’m just finishing up here.”

“As long as you’ve got him on the phone, tell Julio I loved that old album he did with Willie Nelson,” Rita said, and slammed the door.

Christ. This spy stuff was tough. He looked at the phone in his hand and saw that it was shaking again.

“Listen, Iglesias, I’ve done my part. Your bug bomb is hidden where nobody on earth could find it. You call me, say the word, and the bugs will vacate that fucking cockaroach motel like Chinamen with their pants on fire in a fuckin’ firecracker factory.”

“Bueno, bueno. I’m sure you will not let us down. After all, you have a lot to lose, señor.”

“I ain’t jeopardizing a million bucks, pal, believe me.”

“I’m not only speaking of money, señor.”

“What the hell—?”

“If you do not do exactly, I mean, exactly, as I say—if there is even a hint of stupidity or cowardice or duplicity, you will lose a lot more than money, Señor Gomez.”

“You want to tell me what the fuck you’re talking about?”

“You have an Aunt Nina in Miami. She won’t suffer. A nine-millimeter to the back of the skull. They’ll find her someday, stuffed in a rental car trunk at the bottom of a canal somewhere in the Everglades.”

“Are you—”

“Then, of course, there is Rita. She will be last. Before she goes, she will witness the deaths of your two young daughters. Their names, let me look at my notes, yes, their names are Tiffany and Amber. First Tiffany, then Amber, then Rita. They will all die slowly. Have you got all that, Elvis?”

“I think you guys are smoking something, right? Just screwing around with me to—”

“Good luck, Elvis. I just want you to know what you’re dealing with here. We’re watching your every move. Be a good boy. We will be in touch very shortly.”

“Oh, man. Fuck me,” he said, and put down the phone. “Fuck me all to hell.”

Gomez went down the stairs and out to the garage. He reached up to a high shelf and pulled down a big old Maxwell House can half full of nails and stuff. There was a half-full pint of Stoli inside, too. He sat down at his workbench and tipped the bottle back.

Good old Vitamin V. Yeah, it helped. Steadied his nerves. If he was ever going to get the goddamn million dollars, staying steady was critical.

Not to mention keeping his goddamn family alive. God, you mind your own business, join the Navy, get married, and then wake up one day and find yourself mixed up in all kinds of shit. Everything goin’ along just fine and then, whammo.

36

He had the little sloop close-hauled, on a reach out across the sparkling blue bay. There was a freshening breeze blowing out of the northeast and he had Kestrel heeled hard over, making a good eight knots through the water, bound for Hog Island. Ahead, a vicious riptide flowed out to sea between Hog and its nearest neighbor, a small island called Pine Cay. He needed to tack the boat just before he entered the rip and then it was an easy downwind run up into the Hog Island lagoon.

“We’re going to come about in a few seconds,” Alex said.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Vicky shouted from her perch on deck just aft of the mast. She was slathered in oil, her face to the sun, long tresses streaming behind her. She was wearing a bright red two-piece bathing suit with a see-through linen top over it and she had simply never looked more beautiful.

“You can get ready to duck,” Alex said, with as much nonchalance as he could muster at the moment. Kestrel’s boom was solid spruce and nearly as thick as a telephone pole. And in this strong breeze, it was going to come screaming over the deck when he tacked the boat. Alex knew how hard the wooden boom was. It had slammed him unconscious once during a violent storm in the Azores, putting him out for three hours.

Vicky scrambled to get back down into the cockpit, but she slipped on the steep pitch of the wet deck and screamed, grabbing a stanchion at the last second.

“Hang on, darling,” Alex said over the wind. “Hold on to something. Always.”

“One hand for yourself and one for the boat,” Vicky said. “Temporary lapse of nautical memory.”

Kestrel was not big, only about twenty-six feet overall, but she was beautiful, with white topsides, teak decks, and a lovely old mahogany cabin top. A Sitka spruce mast soared overhead flying a snowy white mainsail and a big Genoa jib, now filled with wind.

There was nothing much below save a V-berth forward, a small head, and an alcohol stove. When Alex had the boat in England, he sometimes took short cruises around the Channel Islands, the places where he’d grown up. Then he’d sleep aboard the little boat and do all the cooking on the small stove. Now he kept Kestrel stowed in a sling inside Blackhawke’s massive hangar deck.

“How fast are we going?” Vicky cried, arching her back and letting her long hair trail over the gunwale.

Alex didn’t reply, he was looking aloft at the slight flutter of luff in the mainsail. He hauled in on the mainsheet. Vicky could not tell if he was still angry with her after last night’s conversation. He’d been very charming all morning, and she thought he was probably embarrassed at his outburst.

He’d knocked on her cabin door at eleven, carrying a tray with tomato juice, lemon wedges, aspirin, and Alka-Seltzer. There was a silver vase with three yellow roses. Her favorites.

“Look alive, matey! We shove off at noon sharp,” he’d said after delivering the goods and just before pulling her cabin door closed behind him.

She’d downed all three hangover potions and staggered to the shower, letting the steaming hot water work its wonders. By noon, she was in reasonably good shape. The prospect of a quiet picnic on a desert island lifted her somewhat soggy spirits.

“All right,” Alex now said, “we’re going to come about now and tack for Hog Island. Get ready to duck when I tell you.”

“Ready, Skipper,” Vicky said, nervously eyeing the big wooden boom that would soon come swooping across the decks.

“Ready about?” Alex cried.

“Ready about,” Vicky replied. She uncleated the mainsail sheet, as Alex had taught her on the sail across the bay. After the tack, she would haul in on the sheet and take a few wraps around a winch on the opposite side. She’d done a little sailing with her father on the Potomac, and it was coming back to her. Alex seemed surprised she knew a sheet from a halyard.

“Hard alee!” Alex said, and put the tiller hard over, swinging Kestrel’s bow up into the wind and then over onto a dead run straight for the small island. Alex eased the main and jib sheets and the little sloop surged forward.

Vicky had ducked just as the thick boom came slashing over her head. Pine Cay was now on their starboard side and looked quite beautiful. The entire island seemed to be covered with tall Australian pines. She could almost hear the wind whistling through the swaying trees. It looked enchanting and she found herself wishing it were their destination. “Hog” wasn’t nearly as romantic-sounding as “Pine.”

Hog Island, in fact, was distinctly unlovely. She could make out some scrub palms along the shore and the backbone of an old wooden boat half-sunk in the sand.

“What a pretty little island that is,” she said, pointing at the one called Pine Cay. “Maybe next time we could have our picnic there?”

“Yes, darling,” Alex said. “Next time. Hog Island may not be the prettiest, but it’s the only one inhabited by a blind pig.”

Alex freed both halyards and dropped the mainsail and jib to the deck. Kestrel ghosted up into the little crescent of a lagoon. Nearing shore, the boat slowed and Alex scrambled forward to the bow. He picked up the small Danforth anchor and flung it overboard.

“Sorry, but we’ll have to anchor out here. It’s as close in as I can get with our deep keel. Go ahead and swim ashore. I’ll follow with the picnic basket.”

“That’s a big roger, sailor boy,” Vicky said. She climbed up onto the top of the cabin house, removed the linen top she’d been wearing over her bikini, and gracefully dove over the side into the crystalline blue water. Alex noticed she swam with long powerful strokes. She reached the shore in seconds and ran from the surf, sprinting across the hot sand.

She stretched out on the white sand in the shadow of the half-buried fishing boat and watched Alex wade ashore. He was struggling through the surf, trying to balance the wicker basket he held on his head.

“Come on, MacArthur, you can make it!” she shouted.

Alex emerged grinning from the surf and ran to her. He placed the picnic basket beside her and ran his fingers through his damp black hair.

“Would you mind unpacking everything?” he asked. “I want to go check on something.”

“Looking for Betty?”

“No, Betty will arrive as soon as she smells food. I’ll be right back.”

She opened the basket and pulled out a blue and white beach towel. There was a large H with a small crown above it embroidered on the towel. Spreading it on the sand, she began to unpack the basket. She pulled out a bottle of still-cold Montrachet, a baguette of French bread, and several kinds of cheese. She wasn’t very hungry following her night on the town, but the wine certainly looked good. Where was the corkscrew?

Alex walked along the shoreline until he spotted it. A lone blackened palm standing amidst the charred and scrubby vegetation. He walked inland and soon found the crater the surface-to-air missile had made when it crashed. It was about six feet across and three feet deep. He sifted through the sooty palm fronds and twisted shards of metal until he found what he was looking for.

A jagged piece of the missile with identifying marks. The piece was badly burned, but he could see something stamped into the metal. It wasn’t a Stinger after all. It was a Russian bloc SAM-7. The section in his hands looked as if it might have been one of the fins. With any luck, it might be enough for the “bomb baby-sitter,” as Tate had called the deputy secretary of defense, to help put the pieces of this puzzle together.

“Well, that was certainly mysterious,” Vicky said when he returned. “Marching off down the beach, clearly a man on a mission. What’s that?” she asked, looking at the piece of black metal in his hand.

“Piece of evidence,” he said.

“Really? Of what?”

“Attempted murder,” Alex said, and knelt down on the blanket. “I think he would have got me, too, if Betty hadn’t rattled him.”

“Betty rattled a murderer?”

“This piece of metal is all that’s left of a SAM missile a chap fired at me the other day. Betty knocked him down once, but he still managed to get a shot off.”

“Hold on. Someone actually tried to blow you out of the sky? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Vicky, I sometimes get involved in negotiations for a third party. As frequently happens, one party feels my demands are unreasonable. They’d like me out of the loop.”

“So, they tried to kill you? Alex, does this have anything to do with that briefcase?”

“That possibility is under investigation. Meanwhile, I thought it best we make Blackhawke our address for a week or two.”

“Keep us out of the loop,” Vicky said, looking at him evenly. “You said us.”

“It’s me they’re after. Would they try to get to me through you? I’d be less than honest if I said no.”

After considering this for a few moments, she smiled and kissed him on the cheek. Then she spread some Brie on a piece of the baguette and handed it to him. “Eat up. Wine?”

“Yes, please,” he said, eating the bread and holding out a wineglass.

She filled his glass with the cold white wine. It was wonderful with the bread and cheese. She’d already had two glasses herself. After feeling absolutely horrible all morning, she was now starting to feel pleasantly indolent and relaxed. The sun and salt were beginning to work their way into her. The idea of two weeks like this was beginning to seem perfect.

It was the first time she’d seen Alex in a bathing suit. He looked good, she decided. Especially the legs. His body was hard and maybe too lean but for the bundled force gathered at his upper arms and shoulders. He caught her staring at him and brushed some sand off her cheek with his hand.

“You were a very naughty girl last night, Victoria.”

“I was not.”

“Yes, you were. And I’ve half a mind to give you a good sound spanking.”

“Only half?”

“Shh, here comes my savior! Betty! Over here! Get out the oranges. Those are her favorites.”

Vicky could hear the big pig meandering through the scrubby palms. The pig made loud snorting sounds as she emerged onto the beach and headed in their direction.

“She’s huge,” Vicky said, shrinking back from the beast. “And hairy. I thought pigs were soft and pink. And small.”

“Betty is a very well-fed animal. She has many admirers. Hold out an orange in your hand. She’ll take it from you.”

Vicky did, and Betty immediately gulped it down whole.

“Terrible manners,” Vicky said.

“She’s a pig, for heaven’s sake.” Hawke patted Betty’s snout affectionately. “A blind pig at that, aren’t you, Betty?”

“A blind pig who saved your life, apparently.”

“If not for Betty, I would now be, to use a favorite Americanism, toast,” Alex said while he patted and nuzzled the pig.

“I know you two are close, but is Betty going to be joining us for the entire picnic?”

“No. She just wanted to stop and say hello. Watch this.”

Hawke grabbed the sack of oranges and apples, got to his feet, and strode down to edge of the surf. Betty followed him. Hawke threw all the oranges out beyond where the waves were forming, and all the apples, too. Betty trotted out through the surf, swimming just as a Labrador might, her nose leading her to the nearest oranges.

Hawke looked back and smiled, then sprinted through the sand and returned to Vicky.

“That ought to keep her busy for the better part of an hour,” Hawke said, dropping to the towel.

“More wine?” Vicky asked.

“No, thanks. Wine and sunshine make me sleepy.” He lay back on the towel and closed his eyes.

“Me, too,” Vicky said, lying down beside him. “It is a lovely little bay.”

“Isn’t it?” Alex said, yawning. “I call it the Bay of Pig.”

Vicky smiled. She rolled toward him, then propped her head up on her hand and stared at this man she’d come to love. He’d closed his eyes and there was a contented half-smile on his face. His thick black hair was wet and shining. His chest, beaded with salt water, was rising and falling rhythmically. What saved him, she thought, was that he had no idea how good-looking he was.

She sat up and unhooked the top half of her red bathing suit. Then she put her hand over his heart.

“Are you asleep?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t suppose you would mind terribly if I licked your shoulder?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Just a lick, lollipop. I love salt. I think I don’t get enough of it, the way I eat. It’s essential to the body’s fluid balance, you know. Sodium. Chloride. Yummy.”

“Lick away then, darling. Dine to your delightful sufficiency.”

“Thank you.”

“How am I?” he said, after a few moments of feeling her tongue dart about his neck and shoulders.

“Yummy,” she said. “Can’t get enough.”

“You could always pour some olive oil and vinegar into my hair and make a small side salad to go with the entree.”

“I’ll stick with the main course, thank you.”

“Suit yourself, then.”

She started with his shoulder but soon moved to his chest and then to his belly. She immediately noticed a marked increase in his breathing rate.

“Sorry to bother you. I wonder if you would mind pulling down your bathing suit?” she asked, brushing the tips of her white, coral-tipped breasts across the deeply tanned skin of his belly.

“My bathing suit?”

“Here, I’ll help you.”

She took the bow of little white strings that held up his navy blue bathing suit in her teeth and pulled them apart.

“There you go,” she said. “Now, will you please pull it down?”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because you’re my lunch and you’re covering up my favorite part. The piece de résistance.”

He pulled both knees to his chest, lifted himself off the towel, and removed the bathing suit in one motion.

“Well done,” she said.

“Happy now?” he said.

“Oh my, that does look good,” Vicky whispered in his ear, and then her lips were everywhere, causing him to arch his back upwards involuntarily as he felt her mouth close around him.

They made love there on the beach with the blind pig swimming to and fro in the blue sea, chasing the apples and oranges. Vicky was astride him, riding, rocking, her hair matted to her forehead with the heat of both sun and passion, her eyes locked on his right up until the instant when she cried out and arched her back, raising her arms to the sky with both hands outstretched, reaching for something she’d never quite touched until this very moment.

She lay in his arms for a time, her head on his chest, listening to his heart pumping, feeling him fall slowly away from inside her and drift down into what she hoped was the bliss of a peaceful dream.

He began to snore softly. She got up and put on her bikini, looking down at him, smiling. The she dropped to her knees once more and stroked the damp black ringlets of hair on his chest.

“Alex Hawke,” she whispered to him, “you can’t hear me, but you know what I wish more than anything? I wish I’d become a surgeon instead of what I am. I wish I could take a little scalpel inside that brain of yours and find the exact little furrow of gray matter where whatever hurts you is hiding. Snip, snip, snip, I would cut it out. And you’d never have those terrible dreams, ever again.”

She sat up and brushed the hair back from her eyes. She sucked deep gulps of tangy air deep into her lungs, feeling totally invigorated, bristling with sharp, kinetic energy. She got to her feet and stood there, shielding her eyes with her hand, scanning the blue horizon. A flock of white seabirds was circling the pretty little island of pines beyond the channel.

Pine Cay, Alex had called it. It couldn’t be more than a mile from where she stood. She was a strong swimmer. A competitive swimmer. She could swim across and explore the pine forest while Alex slept. She could probably be over and back before he woke up, he was sleeping so soundly. The water was such a lovely shade of light blue it seemed to be begging her to plunge in.

She swam out toward the delicious river of dark blue that ran between the two islands.

Alex had no idea how long he’d been asleep.

He sat up with a start, realizing Vicky was no longer beside him. He looked around, but didn’t see her swimming or anywhere along the deserted beach.

He called out her name. No answer.

He leapt to his feet and ran along the line of scrub palms. Maybe she went exploring. He called her name repeatedly, thinking, she’s barefoot. Why would she go back among the rough and prickly palms?

His heart started pounding. That’s when he heard something that sent an arrow of fear through his heart.

Alex…Alex…Alex!

Faint. And coming from the sea.

He ran to the water’s edge, desperately scanning the rolling waves for a sight of her. There. A faint smudge. It had to be Vicky. She was halfway across the pass between the two islands! In the very middle of the vicious riptide rushing toward the open sea!

He made a running dive and started swimming as hard as he could, cursing himself furiously for not warning her about the current. Stupid! He never dreamt that she’d go out that far, but remembered how enchanted she was with the pine-forested island. That had to be it. She’d decided to swim over and—

He stopped swimming and raised his head. He could barely make out the dim shape that had to be her.

No…no…no…

Her voice was weaker now, a faint no repeated over and over. She was telling him to stop. Telling him the current would only take him as well. He plowed ahead another fifty yards, feeling the swift pull of the running tide taking him into its grip.

He swam harder. He was strong. Stronger than this bloody current that was stealing Vicky away from him. He swam until the muscles in his legs and arms were burning and then he swam harder still.

Another look. There. She was much farther away now. He saw her go under. Then surface again. He swam toward her, heedless of the wicked pull of the water. Raised his head, gasping for air. A sick, hollow feeling began to steal its way inside him. For every ten yards of progress he gained, she was being swept away another thirty.

He plowed forward, refusing to acknowledge it was hopeless now, unwilling to give up. He swam another thirty yards, feeling himself right on the periphery of where the rip was strongest. He raised his eyes, stinging with a mixture of tears and salt, and looked again.

“I love you!” he cried out, praying she might yet be able to hear him.

He saw her just that one last time, briefly, being pulled past Pine Cay now, and then he saw her go under. Waited. Fought the tide. Waited for that dear little head to surface, please, just once more and maybe he could get to—somehow get to—God—just to see her again…

He knew then that she was gone. Simply. Irrevocably. Gone.

He lifted his face to the heavens and screamed mercilessly at God.

Alex Hawke turned and swam as hard as he could for Kestrel. The edges of the rip had him, fought him, but not hard enough to overcome his rage. In minutes, he was climbing aboard the sloop. He ducked down through the companionway to the small navigation station.

There was a satellite phone hanging above the notebook computer with the GPS system.

Ambrose was on the sat phone speed dial.

He picked up on the first ring.

“I need immediate help,” Alex said, gasping for breath. “Immediate! I need our main launch in the water headed out the cut between Hog Island and Pine Cay. At least two divers aboard. I need you to call the Bahamas Air-Sea Rescue Command at Harbor Island. Tell them we need search-and-rescue choppers out here now.”

“Alex. Calm down. What’s going on?”

“It’s Vicky, goddammit.”

“What’s wrong, Alex?”

“She’s gone. Swept out in the riptide. I don’t know! Maybe we can save her! Christ, just get some bloody help out here, all right?”

“We’re coming,” Ambrose said, and hung up.

Alex scrambled back up on deck and hoisted the main and the jib. He weighed his anchor and headed the sloop out into the cut, his eyes fixed on the area where time and speed of current might have put her since he last saw her.

His eyes were burning. He was praying for that little brown smudge he’d last seen drifting away from him.

Praying to see it again. Simply praying for it to still exist.

37

Reel Thing, a brand-new fifty-foot Viking sport-fishing boat, was swinging on her anchor in the dark of a small cove. It was a hot moonless night, and only the lights of a few dim stars were visible. The cabin lights were all off below and above decks, and the sounds of the Allman Brothers came softly from speakers mounted throughout the boat.

The owner, Red Wallace, and his best fishing buddy, Bobby Fesmire, were sitting in the stern drinking Budweiser in the dark. Red was the biggest Ford dealer in South Florida. Bobby was his sales manager. Red and Bobby went way back. They’d gone to Florida at Gainesville together, pledged Kappa Alpha together, and played on the national championship Gator football team together. Both of them still wore their big gold NCAA rings with all the diamonds on their pinky fingers.

They took this little fishing trip to the Exumas as often as they could, which was once every two or three months. Sometimes they took clients so they could write it off, most often they’d bag the clients so it was just the two of them.

Tonight, they’d moored the boat in a small cove, ringed with mangroves. The wind was out of the east, so Reel Thing had her stern toward the small opening to the channel. Not that there was anything to see, but it gave them a view of the heat lightning blooming on the horizon.

“Know what heat lightnin’ is, Bobby?” Red asked.

“Yeah. Lightnin’ that comes from heat.”

“No, it ain’t. It’s ordinary lightnin’ comes from so far away, you can’t see nothin’ but the reflection of it. Ain’t no such thing as heat lightnin’.”

“Why the hell d’you bring it up then?”

“Just tryin’ to educate your dumb ass, is all.”

“I ain’t so dumb.”

“Only guy I ever knew saw a family reunion as a chance to meet girls.”

“You sayin’ it ain’t?”

“Bobby, we had a class of five hundred and thirty-seven seniors graduate.”

“Yeah?”

“You did not graduate in the top five hundred and thirty-six.”

“And your point is? Grades don’t mean nothin’ in my book. Look at us. We’re doing pretty damn good, I’d say. Couple of dumbass crackers sitting on top of the whole damn world. Look at that ring. What’s it say?”

“NCAA National Champions.”

“Bet your ass.”

Earlier that afternoon, Bobby and Red had given up on marlin fishing and found a little cove to put up for the night. At sunset they’d sat out on deck, drinking beer and casting into the mangroves. Didn’t hook a snook or any other kind of damn fish for an hour or so and gave up when it got too dark to see.

They had two big sirloins sitting out on the counter down in the galley but they’d pretty much forgotten about them. They’d wolfed down some boiled shrimp earlier. Good shrimp, too, from the Publix supermarket down the street from the Bahia Mar Marina in Lauderdale.

Red and Bobby had been down here scouring the Exumas and Bahamas for fish for about ten days. Red had been wearing the same T-shirt every day. It said, “My Drinking Crew Has a Fishing Problem.”

That sentiment pretty much summed up the entire voyage. They hadn’t caught a hell of a lot of marlin, but then again, as Red had often pointed out, they hadn’t caught a hell of a lot of hell from their wives either.

Red, who was sitting in the fighting chair on the stern, took a big swig of his Bud and said, “Bobby, lemme ask you another goddamn question. How many fish we catch this week? Total.”

“Three,” Bobby said. “Maybe.”

“And how many beers you reckon we’ve had all week?”

“Hundreds. Maybe a hundred and fifty.”

“So, let’s go with a hundred and fifty. Now let me ask you another question. How many times does three go into a hundred and fifty?”

“Shit, I dunno. What do you think I am? A human calculator?” Bobby burped deeply and tossed his empty over his shoulder.

“Hell, Bobby, it ain’t like I’m asking you to divide goddamn Roman numerals! It ain’t rocket surgery! It’s simple damn arithmetic. You’re a car salesman. You ought to be able to do the calculation. Three goes into one-fifty, lemme see now, fifty times.”

“Sounds about right.”

“My point is, we’ve achieved about fifty-to-one beer-to-fish ratio. And I think that’s pretty goddamn good, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Considering the fact that I like Budweiser a hell of a lot better than I like fish. I’m going to tell you a secret I’ve never told anybody else. I can’t stand the taste of fish. Hate it. You ever tell my wife, Kathy, that, I’ll whup your sorry ass.”

“Well, that’s good, Red, that you don’t like ’em,” Bobby said. “ ’Cause if them damn helicopters and search-and-rescue boats are back here in the morning, your chances of catching any marlin’ll be about the same as they were today. Shitty.”

“I was monitoring channel sixteen earlier, up on the flybridge. I think they gave up on whoever or whatever was missing out there. We should be all right for tomorrow.”

“Maybe.”

“I will eat a tuna fish sandwich,” Red allowed after a long silence. “Long as it’s got a lot of mayo. Mayo I can eat out of the jar.”

“Hell, I’ve seen you do it.”

“How many times America save France’s ass, Bobby?”

“Least twice. And what’d they ever do for us?”

“That’s my point. The frogs invented mayo. In my book that just about evens things up.”

“Good point.”

“Hell, Bobby, I’d eat a mud sandwich, you put enough mayo on it. Hey. You hungry?”

“Could be. You want, I’ll go put that cow meat on the griddle?”

“I could eat—damn, it’s late—what the hell time is it?”

“Gotta be getting close to midnight,” Bobby said. “You want yours rare or—holy goddamn Christ! Red, what the hell is that?”

“Hell is what?”

“Look out there in the channel! Off to starboard. See it? Looks like the whole damn ocean is exploding!”

Red leapt out of his fishing chair and ran to the stern rail. Bobby was right. Something was going on out there. “Sonofabitch! Hand me them damn binocs, Bobby! Hanging right there by the tuna tower ladder.”

Red put the binocs to his eyes and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The sea was exploding. About a thousand yards off the Reel Thing’s stern, out in the middle of the dark deep channel.

“Shitfire, Red! Lemme see.”

He handed Bobby the binoculars.

“Jesus,” Bobby said. “What is it, Red?”

“Whale? How the hell do I know? What am I, a goddamn oceanographer?”

A huge mound of boiling white water was growing in the midst of the inky waves of the channel. It became a mushroom shape, rising and growing, and then the roiling sea did explode and a massive sharp-edged black snout emerged, surging majestically into the midnight sky at a forty-five-degree angle. Black and white seawater was pouring off her sleek dark sides in sheets.

“Well, I’ll be damned, Bobby,” Red said, passing him the binocs just as the strangely shaped hull finally broke the surface.

“A goddamn living breathing submarine!” Bobby said.

Red looked at it, shaking his head in wonder.

“You ever seen a submarine look like that, Bobby?”

“I ain’t never seen a goddamn thing looked like that. Sweet Jesus. Looks more like a UFO than a submarine.”

The thing was still rising at an impossible angle. Then the triangular-shaped bow came crashing down into the boiling sea and the bizarre craft began a slow turn toward one of the many islands on either side of the channel.

Red couldn’t believe his eyes. The hull was in the shape of a giant delta wing and what looked like some kind of weird conning tower was now rising from the apex of the two hulls. The sub was literally as broad abeam as an aircraft carrier.

“That’s the biggest, craziest-looking damn submarine I’ve ever seen,” Red said. “Hell, it looks like one of them stealth bombers and it’s as big as a goddamn battleship!”

“It ain’t natural-lookin’, Red,” Bobby said, staring at it. “Something spooky about it. Like it’s from goddamn Mars or something.”

“Shitfire. Aliens in submarines,” Red said. “What’s next?”

“Yeah. You always wondering ’bout flying saucers. Well, maybe here’s your goddamn answer!”

Water broke over the huge sub’s bow in great white torrents, and, with the binocs, Red and Bobby could make out the silhouettes of three small figures appear atop the now fully exposed conning tower. Someone raised a fluttering flag to the top of a tall post capped by a red light.

A powerful searchlight on the sub’s portside was switched on and swept the sea immediately around the sub. Just when the broad white beam was about to reach the opening to the little cove where Reel Thing was moored, it stopped and started back the other way. Deep in the cove, they would be pretty hard to see anyway.

“Look at the flag. It ain’t Russian, is it, Red?” Bobby asked. “I mean, it is one of ours, right?”

Red had the binocs trained on the conning tower.

“Naw, it ain’t Russian,” Red said, studying the flag. “Then again, it ain’t American either.”

“Well, what then? Mars?”

“I seen that flag around here before. I just don’t exactly remember which one it is. Jamaica?”

Bobby spewed beer all over the deck, he was laughing so hard. “Jamaica? Jamaica! They ain’t got any damn submarines in Jamaica, Red.”

“Well, you’re so smart, go down in the cabin and bring me up that atlas. We’ll look her up. Use a flashlight. And turn off that damn stereo, too. Maybe we’re not supposed to be seeing this.”

Bobby went below to get the book and Red stood staring at the sub, transfixed by it. He knew subs were down here in the Caribbean; hell, they were everywhere. But he’d never dreamed of eyeballing one up so close. Especially such an otherworldly machine.

The sub’s searchlight flashed three times, two short and then one long. Then it was extinguished. Some kind of signal? Had to be.

In the last long flash of the searchlight, he’d seen three people come out of the woods on one of the little islands, just to the west. They were dragging a big inflatable across the beach, with an out-board on the back. Red saw them put it in the water. Then he heard the engine sputter and start, and then the raft was moving at high speed toward the submarine.

Drug deal. Goddamn drug deal. Colombians, probably. Shit, he should get on the radio and call the Coast Guard. It was a good thing that searchlight hadn’t spotted them. But what if it was some kind of naval exercises thing? Top secret experimental shit. A joint U.S. war games thing with some allied country. Hell, where was Bobby with that atlas?

“It’s Cuban,” Bobby said, coming out of the dark cabin. He had the book in his hand. “I looked it up.”

“Cuban?” Red said. “Cubans ain’t got any goddamn submarines.”

“Yeah, well they do now. Look on page sixty-two,” Bobby said, handing Red the book and the flashlight. Before Red could make a move, Bobby started climbing like a drunken monkey up the ladder of the tuna tower.

“Bobby, goddamn you! What the hell you doin’? Come on back down here!”

Bobby, upon reaching the top of the tower and laughing like a madman, turned on the powerful spotlight and aimed it right at the submarine’s conning tower.

“Jesus Christ, Bobby! They’ll see us!”

“See the flag?” Bobby shouted down. “Now turn to page sixty-two and look at the flag. Then tell me it ain’t Cuban!”

Suddenly, the sub’s searchlight flashed on again. This time it didn’t stop short of the Reel Thing.

Red put his hand up to his eyes. The light was blinding. He didn’t know what the hell was going on but he did know one thing. He was getting his brand-new goddamn fifty-footer the hell out of there. Colombians and Cubans didn’t much care for Americans and vice versa. He had a twelve-gauge Remington above his bunk, but the rusty old pump action wouldn’t do much against a goddamn giant submarine.

He ran inside the darkened cabin and cranked up the twin five-hundred-horsepower Cummins diesels. Then he got on the radio to Bobby up on the tower.

“Bobby, now you listen to me. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but something tells me we ought to skedaddle on out of here on the double. You get your ass down on the bow and get that anchor aboard. Right now. You hear me?”

In five minutes, Bobby had hauled the anchor aboard. Red went back on the stern and looked for the sub, but they’d turned the searchlight out and all he could see was blackness. Shit. Were they just waiting for him to come out?

Back at the wheel, he flipped on the flashlight and looked at his chart. He’d keep all his running and navigation lights off, run out of the cove fast as he could, put her hard over to port, and head for open sea. Full throttle. He wanted as much water between him and that damn sub as he could get.

Reel Thing was capable of a top speed of thirty-five knots. Once safely outside the cove, Red leaned hard on the throttles and headed for the wide open spaces.

Man, what an adventure, he thought, popping a Bud. He turned on his radar, fishfinder, and GPS and was comforted by the green dials lighting up and showing his position and speed. He looked for a blip of the sub on the radar screen. Nothing.

He considered calling the Coast Guard on sixteen, then thought better of it. It was, after all, none of his damn business. He just wanted to get back to Lauderdale and sell a few more goddamn Explorers. Now that most folks had forgotten about that goddamn tire fiasco, he was selling cars again.

Reel Thing was up on a plane, throwing masses of white water to either side of her bow. After a few minutes of high speed and cold beer, Red started to calm down. He throttled back a little. The engines were brand-new and he knew he shouldn’t be running them at such high RPMs. Hadn’t seen the sub on the radar anyway. Lost the sucker.

Then he had another thought, not as comforting. Hadn’t seen it on the radar because it had submerged.

“Whoo-ee,” Bobby said, lurching into the cabin, spilling beer on the carpet. “That was something.”

“Why the hell’d you turn that light on, Bobby? Goddamn. All we had to do was sit there and mind our own damn business.”

“I wanted to show you that Cuban flag, amigo. That’s all. What the hell’s wrong with you? Big old sub scare your ass?”

“Hell no.”

“Then what’d you run away for then?”

“Bobby. Do yourself a favor. Shut the fuck up.”

“Uh-oh. He’s mad. Well, guess what. I’m going back up top that tuna tower, put on some Waylon, and have a couple of cold beers. So I won’t be in your goddamn way, oh mighty Captain…Kangaroo.”

Bobby pulled a six-pack out of the fridge and slammed the cabin door shut behind him.

Red settled back in his captain’s chair, eased the throttles until they were at cruising speed, and picked up the sat phone. It was only around midnight. Maybe Kath would still be awake and they could have a little chat. He’d tell her he was all fished out and headed home. Tell her about the amazing encounter with the submarine.

He started to punch in his home number.

“Uh, Red?” he heard Bobby say over the speaker.

“What the hell you want now?” But he didn’t like the sound of Bobby’s voice as he finished dialing up his number on the sat phone.

Kath picked up on the first ring. Her voice was sleepy. He’d woken her up.

“Hey, Red, you might want to—”

“Hold on, Bobby, I’m talking to my damn wife! Hey, babe, sorry to wake you. How you doing?”

“You might want to come on up here, little buddy.” Bobby’s voice on the speaker.

“Sleepy,” Kath said. “It’s almost two in the morning, Red.”

“Red? You coming?”

“Sorry, hon, my watch must have stopped. Hold on. I won’t be a sec,” he said into the phone.

Then, into the mike, he said, “Come up there? Goddammit, Bobby! Why the hell would I do that?”

“Something weird going on out here. I don’t know what it is. Off our port beam. Long white thing in the water. Like a trail. Headed in our direction. Looks like it’s coming right at us.”

Red was just sober enough to understand this instantly.

“Honey, something crazy’s going on,” he said to his wife. “Lemme check it out. Hold on.”

He dropped the phone and ran to the portside window. A trail of white, maybe a hundred yards away. He had time enough to say just one word.

“Shit.”

The Soviet Mark III torpedo was traveling at a depth of thirteen feet. It was running at over sixty miles an hour and leaving a huge white wake. The nose of the torpedo was packed with enough explosive to level a city block.

It took only seconds for the torpedo to reach its target. It hit the Reel Thing dead amidships.

Red, Bobby, and the Reel Thing vanished. They had been atomized.

In Fort Lauderdale, Red’s wife hung up the phone, having heard a fragment of loud noise and then silence. She shook her head, thinking of how much fun Red and Bobby had on these little getaways. Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.

The fire caused by the explosion was climbing into the blackness of the night sky. It was visible for four miles.

Less than a mile away, a man with his eyes glued to the periscope lens of the José Martí witnessed the destruction with grim satisfaction.

Commander Nikita Zukov of the José Martí removed his eyes from the rubber eyepiece of the periscope and allowed a wry smile to cross his face.

A fishing boat. He’d just sunk a stupid fishing boat.

He shook his head and flipped up the handles on either side of the periscope. There was a hiss of hydraulics as the tube slid into the deck. Then he turned to face his new crew of would-be submarine officers.

“Direct hit,” he said nonchalantly in Spanish. “Target destroyed.”

The Cuban officers standing around him in the dim red glow of the sub’s control room burst into applause. They brought the scope back up and each took a turn at the eyepiece, watching the orange sky lit by fiery debris falling into the black sea. They were laughing, shouting “bravo,” and clapping each other on the back.

Zukov stood back and watched them in disbelief. The former cold warrior could not decide if he was amused or humiliated by this scene and what had just precipitated it.

His first kill. After a brilliant twenty-year career. His first kill was a fifty-foot sport-fishing boat festooned with outriggers and fishing rods, instead of cruise missiles and eight-inch guns. With a crew of perhaps two men aboard.

The communications officer monitoring all radio transmissions announced that only one call had gone out from the boat and it wasn’t a mayday. The Martí’s position had not been revealed before she had sunk them.

Good.

Two American fisherman. Aboard a rich man’s fiberglass toy. Nothing to write home to Moscow about, but it was perhaps a start. First blood, at any rate.

Two figures stepped out of the shadows. It was Admiral de Herreras and the Russian Golgolkin, who’d stood silently by while the officers celebrated.

“May I have a look?” de Herreras said.

Zukov stepped back and let him use the periscope. The admiral studied the flaming debris pool for a moment, then swiveled the eyepiece ninety degrees left and stopped, grunting with satisfaction.

“Comrade Golgolkin, have a look. Is that it?”

Golgolkin put his eyes to the rubber cups, sweat stinging his eyes. His hands were shaking badly and he couldn’t seem to focus the blurry image.

“Is that it,” the admiral shrieked, “or is it not?”

Golglolkin nodded yes and stepped away from the periscope.

“So. Our next target, Commander Zukov,” de Herreras said, grinning with satisfaction. “Have a look.”

Zukov put his eyes to the scope and focused. It was beyond ridiculous. Impossible. A large private yacht, huge, over two hundred feet. Brightly lit. With a massive British flag fluttering in the breeze at her stern. Zukov took a deep breath, remembering Manso’s admonition on the beach early that morning.

“It’s not possible, Admiral,” Zukov said.

“Why not? Comrade Golgolkin here has just informed me that Blackhawke is the ship of the man who betrayed us to the Americans. My sources in Washington say he’s aboard. I wish to destroy him.”

“A small fishing boat is one thing. Accidents happen. But this. The loss of life. It would be considered an act of war by the British, Admiral! A huge international incident! Surely you don’t want to—”

“I am the fucking chief of naval operations, let me remind you! Are you refusing a direct order, Commander?”

“Sir, in good conscience I cannot—”

The Cuban admiral unfastened the leather holster that held his sidearm and raised the pistol. It was a silver-plated Smith & Wesson .357 magnum.

“I asked you a question, Commander. Are you refusing a direct order?”

“I am.”

The explosion was instant and deafening inside the cramped control room. A fine red mist erupted from the back of the Russian commander’s skull as brains and bone spattered all over the periscope. He swayed on his feet for a second, then collapsed in a heap on the deck. All of the men, both Russian and Cuban, looked on in horror.

“I am a firm believer in summary justice,” the admiral said. “The man was a traitor. I am now in command of this vessel and I want that boat sunk. Is that clearly understood?”

No one said a word. The silence was as deafening as the gunshot. The already fetid air reeked of cordite and the coppery smell of blood. The Cuban admiral stepped over the body and stared hard at the shocked faces of his crew.

Golgolkin leaned back against the bulkhead and breathed a sigh of relief. Only an hour earlier, he had slipped into Zukov’s quarters and rifled through his orders. Zukov had orders to kill him once the mission was completed. Now that Zukov was dead, perhaps he was safe. He stepped back into the shadows, removed a silver flask from his pocket, and drained it.

“I want someone to take a bearing on this target and sink it,” the admiral said, his face turning bright red. “Now!” he bellowed.

No one moved or spoke. After an endless minute, an officer who had been standing by the ballast control panel stepped forward. He moved slowly through the reddish smoky light, eyes riveted on the Cuban with the pistol in his hand. He dropped to his knees beside the fallen captain.

There, kneeling beside his oldest and dearest friend, he looked up at the glowering admiral with tears of rage in his eyes.

“I am the boat’s executive officer, Comrade Admiral,” he said in Spanish. “Vladimir Kosokov, second in command. This man you have murdered was my boyhood friend in Cuba. I have been his XO in the Soviet Navy for ten years.”

“Very well. I order you to sink that vessel!” the admiral roared.

“In my cabin are orders given me by Commander Zukov. They come directly from General Manso de Herreras. They are explicit, Admiral. They say that if anything should happen to Zukov, I am to assume command, offload you at Staniel Cay, and return the submarine immediately to base.”

The Cuban regarded him in shocked silence. His own brother! Manso would pay for this humiliation.

“Fine. You can die beside your traitorous friend.”

“I would be honored. But I must warn you. This is the most advanced submarine on earth. And I am the only one aboard now capable of getting it safely home. And the only one who knows the codes for fire control sequencing of all weapons. Kill me, and you render the submarine useless. And condemn every man on this vessel, Russian or Cuban, to certain death.”

The admiral raised his pistol once more, his countenance aflame with righteous anger. The crew waited in silence for their death sentence, every eye focused on the finger that would squeeze the trigger.

A tall, thin man emerged from the shadows, shot out his hand, and gripped the admiral’s wrist.

“Give me the gun, Carlitos,” the man said quietly, and the admiral, eyes blazing, did as he was told.

It was the man the crew had been whispering about during the entire voyage. The man who seldom left his cabin and never spoke. The new Cuban head of state security. Rodrigo del Rio.

The man with no eyes.

38

Alex Hawke sat on the edge of his bed, smoking a cigar and staring at the black telephone. There was a half-empty bottle of scotch whiskey beside the phone.

He shook his head and tried to clear it. This morning, he had awoken in this very bed in the rapturous state of a man in the midst of a love affair. Now he felt as if he had been broken into infinitely small pieces, starting with his heart.

The Bahamian Air-Sea Rescue Teams had called off the search after twelve hours. Hawke, having failed in his pleas to get them to continue, had stayed aloft in his seaplane for another few hours, sweeping in low grid patterns over the empty moonlit waters. Finally, just after midnight, he’d landed in the lagoon and taxied up to the ramp at Blackhawke’s stern.

Ambrose and Stoke had been standing there, waiting for him. They started to say something, but Hawke interrupted.

“How?” he said, staring at them angrily, for that’s what he felt now, anger superseding his sadness. “How could one man be so bloody stupid as to allow anyone to swim out into that bloody current? Without a warning? Not a word! How? Answer me!”

Ambrose and Stoke reached out to him but he brushed past them. He paused and turned to face them.

“Here’s the bloody answer! I might as well have drowned her with my own hands! What’s the difference? Murder is murder!”

He climbed four flights of stairs and went straight to his stateroom, where he had remained. He called the bridge and told the captain to call him on the direct line if there was any news. Then he turned off the main phone and opened a bottle of whiskey.

In that way, he had spent an hour or so, drinking and staring at the phone to the bridge, willing it to ring. It didn’t. There had many knocks at his door and he’d ignored them all. At some point, Ambrose had slipped an envelope under his door but he’d ignored that as well.

Somehow, later, he heard the ship’s bell chiming. Four bells. Two o’clock in the morning. Alex rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. Two A.M., which would make it maybe midnight in Louisiana.

He picked up the half-empty scotch bottle and climbed the stairway leading up one deck, making his way along the companionway to Vicky’s stateroom. Save the low thrumming of generators, the ship was dead quiet. There were a few crewmen about, armed, looking out over the rails to sea. They kept the underwater floodlights on all night now, and monitored the video cameras installed below the waterline twenty-four hours a day.

There was a man out there somewhere who clearly wanted to kill him. Little did that man know his target was already dead.

Her room was just the way she’d left it, hats, blouses, scarves, bathing suits, straw hats, all strewn about the bed. He sat down amongst these things, not quite sure why he’d come here. Unable to stop himself, he picked up her pillow and pressed it to his face. The scent of her perfume, of course, still lingered there.

God.

Then, through eyes blurred with tears, he saw the address book on her nightstand and remembered why he had come here. He opened the book to S and didn’t find what he was looking for. He turned to D and there it was.

Daddy. And a 225 area code. Louisiana.

Even the sight of her handwriting in the address book was unbearable. When he thumbed through its pages, a small envelope fell out. It had his name on it. It wasn’t sealed.

Inside were two tiny photographs. The ones that had been inside his mother’s locket. Then he remembered. She’d vowed to wear the locket always. She must have removed the pictures that morning, not wanting to harm them, realizing they’d be going for a swim on the island.

He remembered the golden locket hanging from her neck, suspended between their bodies, swinging to and fro in the rhythms they were creating, the two of them there on the sand beside the ripples of pale blue waters that lapped the sand. And the swift dark blue waters farther out.

He uttered the one oath he’d always considered himself too much of a gentleman to say and reached for the receiver. He began punching in the number he’d found in the book. He lost track of the number of times the phone rang before anyone picked it up.

“Hello?” a sleepy Southern voice finally said.

“Is this Seven Oaks plantation? LaRoche, Louisiana?” he asked.

“Yes, suh, shore is.”

“This is Alexander Hawke calling. I’d like to speak to Senator Harley Sweet, please.”

“Might be asleep out on the porch, suh. Too hot to sleep indoors, but the senator, he’s not a believer in air-conditioning.”

“I’m sorry to disturb him, but would you please tell him it’s extremely important?”

“Well, if you say so, suh, I surely will do that. Will you hold the phone? I’ll go see if I can rouse him up.”

Alex waited, rubbing his eyes, staring at the framed picture of Vicky and him on her nightstand. They had their arms around each other, standing beside the Serpentine in Hyde Park. When the deep voice suddenly came on the line, it startled him.

“This is Harley Sweet.”

“Senator, we’ve never met. This is Alexander Hawke calling.”

“Alex Hawke! Well, it’s mighty fine to finally hear your voice, son. I’ve been hearing an awful lot about you from my little girl.”

“That’s why I’m calling, Senator. I’m afraid I have some horrible news. There’s been an accident.”

“What do you mean? Is Vicky hurt?”

“Senator, I’m afraid Vicky has been lost.”

There was a long silence, and Alex just held the phone to his ear, numb, staring at her face in the picture.

“Lost? You mean dead? Tell me exactly what happened, Mr. Hawke.”

“We, uh, we went for a picnic this afternoon on a small island. Just Vicky and I.”

“Vicky is my only child, sir.”

“I know that, Senator. I must tell you that I’d far rather be dead myself than giving you this news.”

“Go on, son. Tell me about it.”

“We had a small lunch. After we’d eaten, we both fell asleep on the beach. When I awoke, I didn’t see her. I thought perhaps she’d gone off exploring the island. I didn’t see her swimming, so I looked up and down the beach. I—”

“Please continue, Mr. Hawke. I’m sure this is difficult for you.”

“Sorry, sir. I heard a faint cry coming from the sea. There is a deep channel a few hundred yards offshore. It runs between the island where we’d gone and another island about a mile away.”

“Yes?”

“I could see her. It was Victoria. She was almost two thirds of the way to the other island. I could see that the, uh, current had her. The riptide.”

“What did you do, Mr. Hawke?”

“I swam for her, of course. I tried to keep her in sight. It’s a riptide that runs to the open sea. It was moving very swiftly.”

“You were unable to reach her?”

“I’m a good swimmer. I swam as hard as I could. She was calling to me, saying no, telling me to go back, I think. She might have realized it was useless at that point. I—”

“You gave up.”

“No, sir, I did not. I swam out into the rip. When I looked up, I realized that for every ten yards I was gaining, the tide was opening the gap between us by thirty or forty yards, maybe more.”

“You lost sight of her?”

“I saw her go under. I swam for her. She came up once more and called out something, but by then she was too far away.”

“And then?”

“I watched her go under. She never came back up.”

“My baby is gone?”

“I had Bahamas Air-Sea Rescue and my own men on the scene within fifteen minutes. We continued the search for eight hours without any—without any sign of her, sir.”

“I understand.”

“I’ve ordered the search to resume at first light, Senator. I’m going back out in my own plane as well.”

“I’m certain you’re doing all you can, Mr. Hawke. I appreciate your efforts on my daughter’s behalf. If you’ll excuse me now, I’m going to hang up the phone.”

“Senator, I cannot possibly tell you how grievously sorry I am. This is all my fault.”

“Vicky was a very powerful swimmer, Mr. Hawke. All-American at Tulane. She swam all the way across Lake Pontchartrain when she was thirteen years old. She knew what she was doing. The idea that a current might be too strong would never occur to her.”

“But I should have—”

“My daughter would not have wanted you or anyone else to die needlessly. If there’d been a prayer of you reaching her, I’m sure you…”

“I couldn’t, sir. I couldn’t.”

“Son, listen to me. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you, but if my daughter cared for you, you must be a good man. Vicky grew up in this old tumbledown place. It was just the two of us. Her momma died in childbirth.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“That was a long time ago. There’s a big live oak out at the end of our drive. Sits on top of the levee and you can see clear to the other side of the Mississippi from the topmost branches.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Victoria loved that old tree. Called it the Trinity Oak because it had three big old branches. She’d spend all day up on the highest branch, reading her books, writing her poetry. It’s where she felt closest to God.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m not a religious man, Mr. Hawke. But my daughter was. So, I want you to find my little girl. I want to lay her down to rest in her sacred place, that little churchyard that is in the shade of old Trinity.”

“I’ll do everything I can to find her, sir,” Hawke said.

“I believe you will. Goodbye, Mr. Hawke. And don’t drink any more damn whiskey. I find too much of it only makes things worse.”

“Yes, sir. Good-bye, Senator.”

Hawke hung up the phone. He couldn’t bear the scent of her, the sight of her things, a second longer. He rose and wandered back to his own stateroom where he collapsed upon the bed. He stared at the ceiling, trying to make Vicky’s face go away. He could see her perfectly. Her beautiful auburn hair was matted to her forehead. But she wasn’t above him. She was below him. About fifteen feet down in the green water, her arms and legs spread out. Not moving. Drifting and—

Sometime later, there was a squawk from Sniper on his perch, followed by a knock at the door. “Yes? Who is it?”

“It’s Stokely, boss,” said the muffled voice outside.

“What do you want?”

“Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Hawke said, and sat up, drying his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “Why not?” he said, opening the door. He padded back to his bed, leaning his head back against a large white pillow.

“How you feelin’?” Stoke asked, pulling up a chair.

“Ask me something else.”

“I don’t mean to bother you. You hurt. You on the bench. You sidelined. Ambrose sent me down here to check on you. Man thinks you should eat something.”

“He sent you down here to tell me that?”

“No, boss. He wants you to come up to the bridge. The radio guy or whatever picked up something on the satellite TV. News show off the Cuban television. Ambrose taped it and wants you to see it.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. What is it? A fucking cricket match?”

“Naw, it ain’t no crickets. It’s Castro. He’s on the Cuban TV station. Something going down in Cuba. Ambrose said you need to see it is all I’m sayin’. I wouldn’t have bothered you for nothing but—”

WHOOOMPH!

The sound of an explosion, muffled and distant but still enormous, reverberated throughout Hawke’s stateroom. The crystal decanters and glassware on the bar tinkled but didn’t fall.

“Holy Christ, now what?” Hawke said, and picked up the direct line to the bridge.

“What the hell was that, Captain?” Hawke asked when Blackhawke’s skipper picked up.

“We’re looking at it now, sir,” the captain said. “An explosion about two miles off our port beam. We had them on radar. They were headed northwest at about twenty knots. Small yacht, fifty feet or so.”

“No SOS prior?” Hawke asked.

“No, sir. They just blew sky high. I’ve ordered the launch lowered. The second officer is on with the Coast Guard now, apprising them of the situation. I’m sending Quick and the launch over to look for survivors. Not much hope by the looks of it, I’m afraid.”

“I’m coming right up.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Come on, Stoke,” Hawke said.

When Hawke reached the bridge, he could still see the fire two miles distant. Congreve and the captain were both standing just outside the wheelhouse on the starboard bridge wing with their binoculars trained on the scene. Alex and Stokely stepped out onto the small bridge deck. The smell of burning fuel had already drifted toward them.

“Sorry to bother you, Alex,” Ambrose said, handing him the binoculars. “But I had no choice. A military coup in Cuba, apparently. Now this poor fellow out there seems to have blown himself up.”

“A Cuban coup. Is that good news or bad news?” Hawke said, raising the glasses to his eyes. There was nothing left of the yacht but flotsam and jetsam floating in a spreading pool of burning fuel.

“I’d say a rogue military government with a ballistic submarine was bad news,” Ambrose said.

“Is Castro dead?”

“No. I don’t believe so. Not yet anyway. I taped the broadcast. Whenever you’re ready.”

“What do you think happened to that yacht, Cap?” Hawke asked, still looking through the binoculars.

“Hard to say, sir. The most likely scenario is an electrical fire in the engine room. Raged out of control and both fuel tanks exploded.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Poor chaps never knew what hit them. Jesus Christ. Welcome to life aboard the yachts of the rich and famous. It’s been one bloody rotten day in Paradise, gentlemen.”

“Indeed it has, sir,” the captain said. “On behalf of the entire crew, we are all terribly, terribly sorry about your tragic loss, sir.”

“Thank you,” Alex said. “Please convey my gratitude to the crew for all they’ve done to help. If you could have my seaplane ready, I’m going back out at first light, Captain.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the captain said, and returned to the bridge. Alex stood with his hands on the rail, gazing out at the distant fire on the black sea. There was a sharp line of pink and gold on the far horizon.

“Come look at the tape, Alex,” Ambrose said, putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Then the doctor wants to give you something to help you sleep.”

“I’m not going to sleep until I find her, Ambrose.”

39

“Well, I will say one thing,” Hawke said. “That has to be the shortest speech Castro ever gave.”

They had gathered in the ship’s darkened screening room, scattered about on large, overstuffed leather chairs, to watch the tape originally broadcast on the Cuban National Television station.

“Please rewind it and replay with the sound turned down a little,” Hawke said. “And if you’d be so kind as to give me a simultaneous translation, Ambrose? Needn’t be word for word.”

Castro appeared on the screen. He was seated at a small table, staring into the camera. He looked ten years older than his recent pictures, haggard and worn. There were deep black circles under his eyes, and his hands were shaking uncontrollably.

As Castro started speaking, Ambrose said, “He begins by expressing his enormous gratitude for the sacrifices the heroic Cuban people have made during the time of the struggle. He goes on to say that he knows it has been difficult for them, but that it was in service of a great cause. He says that the revolution, while it has been a great political success, has not been a great economic success.”

“Fairly mild understatement,” Hawke said.

“He alludes now to his health. Everyone knows of his recent illnesses. He says he has the will but doesn’t have the energy to continue. He says he’s stepping aside for health reasons and—he starts to say something else, and they cut him off.”

“Health reasons meaning someone off camera has a bloody pistol aimed at his head,” Hawke interjected.

“No doubt,” Ambrose agreed. “A chap from the American State Department called. I told him you couldn’t be disturbed. I spoke with him for a few moments. According to him, it’s a full-blown military coup, all right.”

“Who’s this lovely ponytailed fellow we’re seeing now?”

Ambrose took a deep breath. Whether he was prepared to admit it or not, Alex Hawke was finally confronting his demons face-to-face.

“This is General Manso de Herreras, Alex,” Ambrose said. “Castro’s right-hand man. Former minister of state security. Apparently he’s just promoted himself to general. He’s now head of all the armed forces.”

“Man look just like a woman,” Stoke blurted out in the dark. “Man look like he wearing makeup.”

“What does the general have to say for himself?” Hawke asked, leaning forward in his chair and staring intently at the face on the screen. He’d seen something there, Ambrose quietly observed.

“General de Herreras says he is deeply honored that el comandante has elevated him to the great responsibilities of military chief and has placed such trust in him.”

“Bullshit,” Stoke said.

“Indeed,” Ambrose continued. “He is proud to be part of a new leadership that will bring Cuba forward to her rightful place in this new century. The new government will announce many social and economic reforms in the coming days, weeks, and months.”

“Could you freeze-frame this guy right here, Ambrose?” Hawke asked.

“Certainly.”

The picture froze on a close-up of de Herreras. His heavily lidded eyes conveyed a cold ruthlessness that was startling.

“What is it, Alex?”

“I’ve seen this man before,” Hawke said, pressing the fingertips of both hands against his eyes and heaving a deep sigh.

“Are you all right, Alex?” Congreve asked.

“Perfect.”

“Manso de Herreras. It must sound familiar?” Ambrose said.

“Yes. That must be it. De Herreras. Name of that chap in Blackhawke’s letter, isn’t it? The one carried all that buried booty we’re trying to find.”

Then he got to his feet and went to the rear of the room where a steward poured him a cup of hot coffee. He then walked forward again until he was about four feet from the large screen, staring up at the face frozen there for two long minutes.

“Are you all right, Alex?” Congreve finally asked, imagining what dreadful thoughts must be going through his friend’s mind. Hawke didn’t reply and, after a few seconds, Ambrose said, “Alex? Everything all right?”

“Couldn’t be better,” Alex said, his eyes never leaving the screen.

“Shall I continue to pause?”

“No,” Hawke said. He returned to his chair and collapsed into it. “I’ve seen enough of this bloody bastard for now. Please roll the tape.”

“This part is interesting,” Ambrose said, hitting the Play button once more. Alex had clearly made the Manso connection. But he was not yet ready for a psychological showdown.

“What does he say?”

“He says never again will Cuba need to rely on the strength of false allies who promise much and then disappear. Cuba’s own might will be felt by anyone who threatens her self-interest.”

“We certainly know what he means by that,” Hawke said. “That bloody submarine. He’s taken delivery, or he wouldn’t tip his hand.”

Ambrose continued translating.

“Cuba will no longer tolerate the injustices it has suffered at the hands of the Americans. He is demanding that the American blockade of Cuba be lifted immediately. He is also declaring that the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo is an insult to Cuba’s sovereignty that will no longer be tolerated. America will be given a deadline to evacuate or face extreme consequences. Further statements on these matters will be issued by the new government tomorrow.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hawke said. “A rogue state with an invisible submarine bearing forty MIRV nuclear warheads ninety miles from Miami.”

“Chilling thought, isn’t it? Here he introduces the new president of Cuba,” Ambrose said, as a new face appeared on the screen.

“Who the fuck is that guy?” Stoke said. “Looks like goddamn Zorro in a three-piece suit.”

“That,” Ambrose said, “is el nuevo presidente de Cuba, Fulgencio Batista. Grandson of the man Castro overthrew some forty years ago.”

“Where’d they dig him up?” Hawke asked.

“Grew up in Spain. Went to Harvard College, and then Wharton School of Finance. Renounced his U.S. citizenship and took his family to Cuba six months ago. Prior to that, he was a partner at Goldman, Sachs on Wall Street. Had a farm in back-country Greenwich, Connecticut, and played golf every Saturday at the Stanwich Club.”

“Really? From partner at Goldman to president of Cuba? Bad career move,” Hawke said. “What’s Batista Junior got to say for himself?”

“More glowing rhetoric about a new day dawning.”

“That’s it?” Hawke asked.

“Basically.”

“And the forces loyal to Fidel?”

“Most likely executed or imprisoned. If you can still find any.”

“The Cuban people themselves? What’s the reaction?”

“Alex, after forty years of lies, fear, and torture, these people don’t believe a word anyone says. Anyone. They don’t trust their own children. Life will just go on. I guarantee you, they won’t even discuss these political events with their closest friends. Someone might chat up his own mum if he really trusts her, but that’s about it.”

Hawke flipped a switch that slowly brought up the hidden ceiling lights. He swiveled his big leather armchair around and faced Ambrose, Stokely, and Sutherland, who were all scattered two or three rows back.

“How do you know so much about this band of brigands, Ambrose?”

“The secretary of state also called immediately after the Cuban broadcast. We had a long chat. You were sleeping. I told her about the tragic events of the day. She asked me to convey her deepest sympathies. She didn’t want to disturb you, but asked if you’d call as soon as you’d seen this tape.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“There is going to be a meeting tomorrow afternoon. She’s assembled a team to deal with the crisis. You’re not going to like this. They’re all aboard the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, currently en route to Guantánamo. The meeting is at five P.M. She knows that you won’t want to come but insists you must.”

“Why, may I ask?” said Hawke, plainly infuriated. It was precisely what he’d told Conch he did not want to do.

“Apparently the British minister for Latin American affairs went directly to the president. He says that since it was a British citizen who ‘cracked this thing wide open,’ namely you, he wants the British represented. The president elected you.”

“Well, he simply ain’t going,” Stokely said. “We going back out to look for Vicky. He’s taking his plane, I’m taking the Zodiac. Soon as it gets light.”

“The meeting aboard the Kennedy isn’t until five tomorrow afternoon, Alex,” Ambrose said.

Alex muttered, “Bloody hell.”

“She predicted you’d say that. Also, she herself may arrive late due to an emergency planning session the president has scheduled at the Little White House in Key West. She’d like you to be on the JFK as her safeguard in case, she said, ‘anybody has any really stupid effing ideas’ close quote.”

Hawke pressed his fingertips to his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

“I suppose I have to go, damn it to hell,” he said after a few long moments. “Ross, can I land a seaplane on a carrier deck?”

“I don’t see why not. Kittyhawke’s pontoons have retractable wheels. All it doesn’t have is a good, sturdy tailhook. I’ll have one installed immediately.”

“Good. Ross, also, please have the radioman send a message to flight ops aboard the Kennedy. Advise them they’re going to have an unusual little visitor dropping in tomorrow afternoon.”

“Aye, Skipper.”

“How long until sunrise?” Hawke asked.

“A few hours.”

“All right,” Hawke said, getting to his feet. “At first light, I’m going back out to find Vicky. Ambrose, would you mind taking a little walk with me aft?”

“Not at all.”

Once the two men reached the stern they stood side by side at the rail staring at the glassy water stretching to the horizon. Hawke finally broke the silence.

“I saw something, Ambrose. On the wall at the club.”

“Yes?”

“I know it means something. I know I should understand it. But I can’t—I can’t see. Or I won’t see. Am I making a complete fool of myself?”

“No, Alex, you’re not.”

“Anyway, see if you can make something of it for me, will you?”

Alex pulled an old Polaroid snapshot, yellow with age, out of his pocket and handed it to his friend.

“I’ll be happy to see what I can come up with, Alex.”

“Thank you, Ambrose. You are the most wonderful friend a man could ever ask for, you know.”

He walked away without waiting for a reply.

40

Ambrose had awoken to the heartbreaking sound of Hawke’s little airplane coughing and sputtering to life. When the noise came to resemble a screaming banshee outside his window, he sat up in bed, yawning, and pulled aside the curtain of the small rectangular port. He watched the silver plane lift off the water and climb into the nighttime sky.

Ambrose was keenly, painfully aware that Alex must know his search for Vicky’s body was hopeless. He also knew that Alex would be up there all day, flying every square mile of ocean within and beyond the search area, praying to find this woman who had seemed to offer him, finally, peace and passion.

He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

It was useless.

He picked up the brier pipe from his nightstand and jammed it between his teeth. It was both a comfort and a stimulant to thought. He realized despite the tragic events of the day, he was still poking around the edges of the thing that had haunted him for thirty-odd years.

He had slept fitfully, tossing and turning in his bed, unable to erase an image that simply would not go away. The image he saw was black-and-white and compelling. A simple composition. A story. A very old, sad story.

There were three figures in the foreground. A snowstorm of confetti and silver streamers filled the air. The photo was blurred as if some reveler had jostled the photographer at the moment the shot was taken.

Happy New Year.

A beautiful blond woman in a white sarong, diamonds sparkling around her regal white neck. A brilliant tiara in her hair. The woman had a flute of champagne in her raised hand and was smiling. Her other arm was thrown carelessly around the shoulders of a very fat young man with a bald, bullet-shaped head. A heavy golden crucifix was suspended from the thick gold chain around his neck.

There was another man in the foreground of the image. Tall and strikingly handsome in a spotless white dinner jacket, he stared directly into the eye of the beholder. The sober eyes were not amused. Fixed, impatient, not smiling.

For him, at least, this was not a very happy New Year.

Why?

Because the woman has had too much bubbly? Been too friendly with the bald-headed chap, perhaps. Said something indiscreet.

Ambrose sat bolt upright. He took a deep breath and looked out his oval port window. Overprinting the rippling black water, he saw the lingering image still, and now he had it.

The beautiful woman in Alex’s blurry Polaroid was Alex Hawke’s mother. The man in the dinner jacket was Alex’s father. And the fat youth with the golden cross? His large chunk of the puzzle was rapidly fitting into place, too.

Three Cuban boys on a murderous rampage.

Alex Hawke had handed him a key to the puzzle he’d been trying to solve for over thirty years.

Ambrose picked up the phone and called Sutherland’s cabin, waking him from a dead sleep. He told Ross to meet him on the bridge deck in ten minutes. Then he called Stokely and delivered the same message. He got up, padding quickly across his small cabin. He opened the door to the tiny head and stood before the sink, gazing at his haggard reflection in the mirror.

He was busily brushing his teeth when the magnitude of what was happening struck him like a blow to the head. He was standing at the very brink of solving the insoluble. The mystery surrounding the events aboard the yacht Seahawke that had occurred over thirty years ago.

Dressed, he shoved his service revolver, a pre-war nickel-plated Webley-Scott, into the side pocket of his favorite tweed jacket and headed for the bridge.

Sutherland and Stokely were already there.

“We’re going ashore,” Ambrose said. “Ross, please ask Tom Quick to select four of his best crewmen and arm them with automatic weapons. Stokely, do you need a gun?”

“I am a gun,” Stoke said, dead serious.

“Good. We might well put your talents to use then. Have everyone meet at the launch as quickly as humanly possible.”

“What is it, Constable?” Sutherland asked.

“Our first stop will be a surprise visit to Mr. Amen Lillywhite. If we find out what we need to know, there will be a second surprise party, quite possibly a highly charged affair.”

“We’ll be ready at the launch in ten minutes,” Sutherland said, and picked up the ship’s phone to begin assembling his team of raiders. It took less than a minute.

“Ross, do you have the Streetsweeper aboard?”

“Certainly.”

“Bring it,” Ambrose said, and left the bridge.

The Streetsweeper was Ross’s invention. It was a pistol-gripped, sawed-off shotgun capable of firing fifteen twelve-bore cartridges in less than twenty seconds. He had used it with much success in some difficult operations. He would carry it in addition to the matching flat Wilkinson throwing knives strapped inside each forearm.

Half an hour later, the launch arrived at the Staniel Cay docks. The small raiding party was armed to the teeth. It was just past four in the morning, still dark, and the entire island seemed to be sleeping. They still had the cover of darkness on their side. After disembarking, Ambrose posted one man on the dock to cover their escape if necessary.

The six remaining men moved swiftly toward the old club, bristling with weapons. All they knew was what Stokely had told them on the ramp. It was going to be a search and seizure, and it was most likely going to be a hot one.

The door of the club, not surprisingly, was open. There was a man sleeping atop the bar, snoring loudly. Ambrose considered waking him and reminding him of the club rules but disturbing him seemed unnecessary. He moved to the wall of photographs adjacent to the bar, pulling Alex’s Polaroid from his pocket and gazing up at the montage of overlapping snapshots. His eyes went to the upper left-hand corner where he’d seen a grouping of shots that had the appearance of being taken in the late seventies.

Two days ago, this had been a solid wall of photographs. Now, quite a few obvious patches of crumbling stucco revealed that a number of them had recently been removed. He looked at the picture in his hand, then placed it inside his jacket pocket. Satisfied, he turned to Sutherland and Stokely.

“All right, then. Two doors either side at the top of these stairs. Amen’s room is on the right,” Ambrose said. “At least, I saw him enter that room two nights ago. Ross, you and Stokely come with me. Tom, you and your fellows please remain down here unless you hear something disturbing upstairs.”

Ambrose was first up the steps. He waited for his two colleagues outside the bedroom door. Then he pulled out his revolver and stood back as Stokely kicked the old wooden door open. The force of his kick knocked the door off its hinges and sent it flying into the room.

A startled Amen sat bolt upright in his single iron bed, his eyes wide with surprise and fear.

“Good morning, Mr. Lillywhite,” Ambrose said, and walked straight toward him, his gun aimed at the naked man’s heart. Stoke and Sutherland stood just inside the doorframe, their weapons at the ready.

“What the—”

“Please be silent and listen,” Ambrose said. “I’m going to ask you a few very important questions. If I hear the right answers, no harm will come to you. You should know that I am a policeman and so are these gentlemen.”

Ambrose opened the small black leather case and showed the man his shield. “Are you ready?”

Amen, eyes on the gun, nodded his head.

“Good,” Ambrose said. “What is your name?”

“Amen, sir. Everybody knows that.”

“Your full name, please.”

“My name is Amen Lillywhite,” Amen said. “Named after my father.”

“Mr. Lillywhite, the very first time I visited this establishment, I noticed a number of particularly interesting snapshots on the wall downstairs. Some of them appeared to have been taken at a New Year’s Eve party in the early seventies. Tonight, I return only to find that many, if not all, of those particular pictures, have been removed. Any idea who might have taken them? Or why?”

“I don’t know,” Amen said. “I swear. So many pictures up there, I didn’t even notice they were missing.”

“You don’t have them?”

“No, sir. I don’t.”

“I believe you. Next question. Who is the owner of this establishment?”

Amen Lillywhite leaned back against the stained wall and shook his head.

“I am investigating a murder case for the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard,” Ambrose said. “If you withhold either evidence or information pertaining to this crime, you’re going to prison for a long, long time. Again, who is the owner of this club?”

“I don’t know anything. I just work for the man is all.”

“Give me his name. Now.” Ambrose pulled the hammer back on his revolver. It made a big impression.

“Don Carlo, that’s what he’s always been called ’round this little island. Just Don Carlo.”

“Did he remove the pictures?”

“I guess maybe he wanted some pictures taken down. Two days ago, Gloria ask me why Don Carlo seemed so upset about some pictures on the wall. Said he noticed one was missing. Said somebody had taken one. He told her to take some other ones down and burn them all out in the trash pit.”

“Did she do it?”

“I don’t think so. Don Carlo beat her up pretty badly one time she wouldn’t, uh, well, you know what I’m talking about. Ever since then, she don’t ever do what he say, less he standin’ right there watchin’ over her. Prob’ly, she hid the pictures in her room.”

“I hope so, for her sake. Destroying evidence related to a homicide investigation is a very serious offense.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“Good. How long has Don Carlo owned this club?”

“I guess thirty years or so. As a young man, he work for me tending bar. Only a month or so. Then he left without a word. One day he shows up again with a big wad of cash money and buys the place from my boss, Mr. Daniel Staniel was his name. Don Carlo, well, he’s what you call an international businessman. Big man. To him, this old club ain’t nothin’ but a hobby, like a—”

“Front for an international narco-terrorist operation. What is this man’s nationality?”

“You mean—”

“What is his country of origin?”

“You mean, where he was born, that would be Cuba. He and his brothers are big shots there. Military.”

“Their names?”

“Don Manso is one. The other he just calls Juanito.”

“Ah, yes,” Ambrose said, barely suppressing an urge to shout with joy at the mention of these two names.

Ambrose removed an envelope from his jacket and took out three folded and yellowed sheets of paper. He selected one and showed it to Lillywhite.

“Is this the man now known as Don Carlo, who worked for you thirty years ago?”

Lillywhite narrowed his eyes and said, “Yes, sir, that’s him.”

It was the police sketch Stubbs Witherspoon had given Ambrose on Nassau.

“Is this man on this island now?”

“Yes, sir. He live here most of the year. Spends a lot of time up in Cuba, too. But the man here now. Showed up yesterday.”

“Where does he live? His house, where is it?”

“Other side of the island. Over on the ocean side. Big place.”

“Guards?”

“Yes, sir. All the time.”

“Does the house have a name?”

“Finca de las Palmas.”

“Describe it.”

“Big white place. High stone walls all around it. Main gate at the top of the steps up from the beach road. Where de guard house is. Some big wooden gates round dere on de west side wall. House sits in a pine forest up high overlooking the sea. Nothing else round that place, sir.”

“Where is Don Carlo’s room?

“I ain’t been up there. But I think it’s third floor, overlooking the sea. He got a long balcony where I think he sleeps sometimes. Anyway, I’ve seen him up there in his pajamas, entertaining, you know? Fancy black iron railing up there.”

“Does he have a wife? Children in the house?”

“No, sir, he do not have no wife, no children.”

“There’s an old schoolbus parked outside the club.”

“Yessuh.”

“Run?”

“That’s my mother’s bus. She hauls kids to school in it every day. Calls it her bread and butter.”

“You have keys?”

“Yes, sir. ’Course I do.”

“Get dressed. You’re coming with us.”

“I ain’t done nothin’, sir, but tell you the Lord’s honest truth.”

“I’m taking you into protective custody until I can determine the truth of that statement.”

“Don Carlo, he see me with policemen, I’m dead.”

“He won’t get the chance to see you, Mr. Lillywhite. I’ll see to it that he does not. No harm will come to you or any member of your family.”

“You got to mind yourself with Don Carlo, Mr. Congreve. Real careful. Man is crazy. He ’bout bad as they get down in these islands. And they can get very bad.”

Lowering his weapon, Ambrose walked toward the empty doorframe, paused, and looked over his shoulder at the man still lying on the bed.

“You’re dealing with Scotland Yard, Mr. Lillywhite. Bad is our bread and butter.”

41

Gomez felt as if he must have died and gone to heaven.

Not only had his wife taken him back into her bed, she’d gone to acting like a bitch in heat. Right now she was sitting astride his chest, panting, her hands planted beside his ears, slapping her big breasts back and forth across his cheeks, pausing every now and then to let him nurse hungrily at her swollen nipples.

It wasn’t all good behavior that had led Gomer to this blissful new state of affairs. He’d been a very bad boy.

His buddy on the guard tower, Sparky Rollins, told him a shipment of generic Viagra had arrived last week at the Gitmo PX. Cheap. And, goddamn, it worked. Man, did it work. Not only for him, but, he discovered, for Rita as well. He decided not to tell her about it. Just let her get a taste of the new and improved Gomer for a few days. Show her that the big dog was back.

And once you let the big dog out, well—

She’d been surprised at his new ability and, after a few nights, even a little friendly. She wasn’t exactly all the way to the moaning and groaning stage, but she was allowing him to do what he wanted to do. Certainly better than the frigid ice bitch she’d been for months now.

He hid the pills from her way at the back of the top shelf of the little closet where she stashed the clean bath towels. The shelf was so high, she couldn’t reach it, even with the stool. But he could. And, like clockwork, he’d climb up there every night before dinner, take down the jar, and pop a couple. An hour later, stand back, baby, nobody knows how big this thing’s gonna get.

Couple of nights ago, climbing down from the stool in the bathroom with the plastic jar full of little blue pills, he’d had another one of his brainstorms.

What if he crushed up a bunch of them little blue wonders and sneaked them into the spaghetti sauce? Or soup or whatever the two of them were eating for dinner. Then just sit back and see what happened. Hell, couldn’t hurt. Not like he was putting poison in her food or anything.

It was like Spanish fly. Hell, he must have gone through a ton of Spanish fly when he was a kid. Problem was, nobody knew if it worked or not. It sure didn’t seem to work for him, but who knew? Other guys seemed to be getting lucky all the damn time.

This stuff definitely worked. Made her stone crazy in the sack. Couldn’t get enough of that big old dog, that was for sure.

She was moaning now, calling him names, words coming out of her mouth he’d never heard any woman say, begging for it, and she was going to get it, by God. Right friggin’ now! Oh, yeah—

A tinny rendition of the William Tell Overture started up on the bedside table. Shit. His cell phone. Nice timing, dickhead, whoever you are. He let it ring a couple of times, thinking whoever it was would give up and call back later. Groaning, he entered her and that’s when it hit him. What if it was—?

He reached for the phone, not missing a beat.

“Hello, Elvis,” said the familiar voice.

“Hey, how you doin’, amigo? Long time no see. Um, listen, could you call back in about—”

That’s when Rita whupped him up the side of his head so hard it knocked the phone out of his hand. He rolled out from under her and onto the floor, reaching around for his phone, hearing the tinny little voice coming from it. He grabbed it and said, “Sorry, baby, I—”

“Goddamn you!” Rita screamed, and in the moonlight he could see her grab the damn lamp off the table and rip it out of the wall, throwing it right at his head. He ducked, but it still hit his shoulder and hurt like hell. He stood up, rubbing his arm, and noticed he was still hard as a rock. Damn, this stuff was good!

“Listen, baby, I’m sorry. I just thought it might be an important call and—”

“Your little friend Julio Iglesias, maybe?” she snarled at him. “Or maybe it was Madonna. Or Mariah Carey. Get the hell out of here! Get out of my sight, you bastard.”

He was about to plead with her, beg, but then he thought, wait, it was them. Well, they’ll call back. Like any second now. He’d better get down to the kitchen and be there when the phone rang.

“Chill, baby, I’m sorry,” Gomer said, pulling on his jockeys standing on one leg. He stuffed the cell phone inside the waistband of his jockeys. “I’ll go. You try to get some sleep, baby. You’ll feel better and—”

Something else was hurtling at him through the darkness. Clock radio? He pulled the door shut and heard whatever it was shatter against the thin wooden door. He ran down the narrow stairway that led to the kitchen, Rita still hollering upstairs. Jesus H. Christ, this spy shit was tough on a marriage.

Now, there was a good question. Everybody knew that Jesus’ middle name started with an H. But how many people knew what the H stood for? Huh? How many?

Henry? Harold? Howard? Jesus Howard Christ. Didn’t sound right. Screw it. Leave that one to the nuns and the Bible experts.

He opened the fridge, one eye on the wall phone, thinking they might try that number, and grabbed a cold Bud. Popped that tallboy while he was in the laundry room, digging around in the dryer. He found a nice clean T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

He was zipping up his jeans, damn, he still had a friggin’ woody! Jesus, this stuff was—he suddenly felt something vibrating on his pecker. What the—? His cell phone. He had switched it to vibrate. Felt pretty damn good, he was thinking, reaching down and pulling his cell out, not bad at all. Pick up the wall phone and call his dick a few times.

“Hello?” he said, putting the cell to his ear.

“Fuck you doin’, Elvis, hanging up on me?”

“I’m sorry, man, see my old lady, she—”

“Tell it to somebody who gives a shit. We’ve got business to discuss, Elvis. Urgent business.”

“Okay, well, who is this? Who’m I talking to?”

“Julio.”

“Julio, my man! Whassup?” Gomer asked, trying to sound like he had his shit together and was ready for action. He’d had a few beers, but he’d learned one thing. You had to be sharp on the phone with these dudes.

“Listen carefully. It’s checkout time at the Roach Motel, Elvis. We just got the call. You know what you have to do?”

“Checkout time! Aw-right! My man, it’s about time! Let’s get it on! Let’s rock and roll!”

Gomer noticed his breathing was getting shallow and his mouth had gone dry like that old iguana, one who’d been lying on a rock out in the sun too long.

“You got the RC, Elvis?” Julio was asking him.

“Some in the fridge. Why?”

“The radio control box, you dumb shit.”

“Oh, yeah. That. Just kidding around. No. Not on me. I mean, I know where it is.”

“You remember how to work it?”

“Tell me again.”

“Are you drunk, Elvis? Tell me the truth, right now. If you are, you’re dead. You and your whole family, understand? Dead meat.”

“Hell no, I ain’t drunk, Julio! I swear it! I had two beers with dinner and I’ve been screwing my brains out for two solid hours! Jesus! Calm down, all right?”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now, listen to me, compadre. You go get that little bug box. You remember the little window with the red numbers?”

“Of course. Jesus. I’m not stupid. You’re talking to a petty officer third class here, pal.”

“Is it armed?”

“Uh, it says ‘armed,’ yeah.”

“Bueno. Now, you push the button on the left side. The numbers should all come up 0000. That’s step one. Step two, you push the button on the right. The numbers will start going up. Push the button again when they say 3000 exactly. The numbers will stop.”

“Okay, I’m with you,” Gomer said. He was scribbling furiously on Rita’s grocery store pad, trying to keep up. “3000. What if I go too far, you know, by accident?”

“No problem. Push the right button again and it will zero you out. Then you just do it again.”

“Cool. So I can’t mess up. Then what?”

“What time you got?”

Gomer looked up at the big kitchen clock, then at his watch.

“Exactly ten o’clock P.M.”

“Okay. Once you’re programmed, you don’t do anything, anything, until midnight. At the stroke of twelve, you push the left and right buttons at exactly the same time. You got that? Exactly the same time.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it, señor.”

“What does that do, pushing both buttons?”

“Starts the countdown to checkout time at the old cucaracha motel. Thirty hours. The numbers will start rolling backwards.”

“Holy shit, then what?”

“Then you are a very rich man, Elvis. At ten or fifteen seconds after midnight, your cell phone will ring. You make sure you’ve got it on you, charged up, and turned on. Got it?”

“Yeah. What do I say?”

“You answer, ‘Roach Motel.’ A voice will ask you if there are any vacancies. If you have successfully initiated the countdown, you say, ‘No vacancies for thirty hours.’ Then you hang up.”

“No vacancies for thirty hours. I got it. Then what?”

“One more little thing, amigo, one more thing and then you are a very, very wealthy individual.”

“What?” Gomer asked, feeling a little chill.

“You have to deliver the RC to one of the guards at the Cuban checkpoint. That’s the only way we can confirm that you have fulfilled your mission. And the only way you get the password to your Swiss bank account.”

“What? The Cuban side? How the fuck do I do that?”

“You told us you had a good friend at one of the American towers.”

“Sparky Rollins?”

“Exactly. He’ll let you through, no questions, right? You said he was your amigo, the one you did all that time in the brig with?”

“Yeah. I guess. What if he doesn’t just happen to be on duty tonight?”

Christ, he was starting to shimmy and shake like a goddamn Mexican jumping bean.

“You ever hear of wire cutters, amigo?”

“Aw, shit, Julio,” Gomer said. He felt like he was going to start bawling. “There’s a goddamn minefield out there! You guys know that. How the hell do I walk across that?”

“Very, very carefully, amigo. You got a million dollars at stake. You got to think positive. You got to watch your step, man, you’ll make it. Vaya con Dios.”

“But what about—hello?” The line had gone dead. Shit. He stared at the phone in his hand. It was shaking so bad, he didn’t trust himself to put it in his pocket. He set the phone on the counter and took a big swig of the Bud. He wiped his eyes with the bottom of his T-shirt.

Stay cool, he told himself. You can pull this off. This is the big one. But you got to stay cool. Stay focused. Focused on what? The Big Plan, of course! He’d been so nookie crazy lately that, until Julio’s call, he’d almost forgotten the Big Plan. The money, dickhead. The million dollars over there in goddamn Switzerland, that’s what he had to focus on.

And the box. Had to focus on his little pal RC. Good thing he’d been smart enough to write it all down. He looked at the pencil scribbles on the grocery pad. They were kinda blurry because of his sweaty hand, but he could make them out. He folded the paper and stuck it in his jeans pocket.

Then he grabbed another Bud and headed for the garage. The phone! He’d need the cell phone! He grabbed it off the counter and stuck it back down into his underpants. Safer that way. He ducked out the screen door that led to the little backyard.

It was raining. Hard. He hadn’t even noticed. Thunder, lightning, the whole weather thing. Christ. His backyard was underwater. He splashed the few short steps to the garage and stood under the eaves, breathing hard. Why? What was the problem? The minefield? Yeah, that was a problem. A bona fide bitch. Would he try it for one million big ones? Bet your ass.

So, what then? There was something missing in the plan, that’s what. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he would. He just needed a little Vitamin V to calm his nerves.

He stepped into the dark garage and reached up to the shelf where he hid the bottle of Stoli inside an old coffee can. Can was there but it felt too light. He peered inside. Nothing but a few rusty nails. Goddamn kids. Or maybe Rita. She was always sneaking around, looking for his bottles. Now he’d have to drive over to the PX and buy a fifth of the Stolmeister. No biggie.

A thought. He better program the little RC Cola thing before he dipped into the sauce. Smarts. Total concentration. That’s what it took in this modern world of high-tech espionage.

He opened the trunk and lifted the spare. The little bundle was right where it was supposed to be. The RC wrapped in one of his old T-shirts. He lifted it out, carefully, carefully, and moved from the car to his work bench and pulled the cord on the hanging work light.

He unwrapped the bundle. He smiled when he saw the little red letters saying ARMED. He stuck his hand in his jeans pocket and pulled out the directions he’d written in the kitchen. Took a deep pull on the old brewski. Smoothed the scrap of paper out on his work-table and went to work.

Unbelievable. How good he was. He had it programmed in thirty goddamn seconds. Just seeing the 3000 flashing made him smile.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

Rafael Gomez, that’s who. Yeah, baby.

Then he leaned in through the driver’s window and put the little box on the front seat. He got in and started the piece of crap Yugo. He looked at his watch glowing in the dark. He had an hour and forty-five minutes to relax and enjoy himself. Couple of drinks, calm down, and think.

Because there was still a part of the plan he hadn’t wanted to deal with, but now he had to face it head on.

The problem he had to figure out, now that he’d programmed the goddamn thing was, once he’d pushed the two buttons, what the fuck did he do then?

He got behind the wheel and started the car, thinking hard as he could about the one thing he’d been trying so hard not to think about.

Namely, how did he make sure his family got the hell out of Dodge before the fit hit the shan when all them damn roaches checked out? That was the one-million-dollar question, all right. Had to work on that one.

Good news was he had thirty whole hours to figure that beauty out. Give a man with his kind of brainpower that much time, he’d be more than likely to come up with the goddamn secret of life!

He put the car in reverse and backed out of the garage. He’d start to figure something out, once he sloshed a couple of cold vodkas down the pipe. Another family emergency in Miami? Would that work again so soon? Probably not.

He backed into the street and put the car in first, splashing through puddles, tearing up his street at a pretty good clip. He could afford to speed. Weren’t too many MPs cruising around in their Humvees this time of night. And after all, he was on a pretty tight deadline.

As he drove with his left hand, he unwrapped the bundle. The RC felt cool to his touch on the seat beside him. He looked down at the red window that was flashing ARMED and then 3000, back and forth. So, he was ready. Focused.

He pulled into the PX parking lot. Something was wrong. All the windows were black. Goddamn. Sunday night. He’d totally forgotten. PX was closed on Sunday night. He pounded on the steering wheel. Now what? Here’s what. Go around the back, break a window in the door, and let himself in! Hello? Duh!

Steal a Stoli for Jesus!

The hootch would be locked up behind the metal gate back of the bar. Nothing serious. He had a tool kit in the trunk. Wirecutters, everything. He could jimmy anything. Hell, probably jimmy the back door at the White House no problema if he had to. He’d always been good with tools. Good with anything. He saw the little box winking at him. Bad if somebody took his little friend RC while he was on a mission. Real bad. He decided to take it with him along with the tool kit. Swig of Bud, toss the empty in the backseat, and it’s party time, pretty mama!

“RC call home” popped into his mind and he giggled.

He climbed out of the car and turned his face up into the falling rain. He opened his mouth and let the sweet water fill it. So this was what life was like on top of the world.

Christ, it was great to be rich. Don’t let anybody kid you.

Sweet.

42

“Call the ball, Kittyhawke,” squawked the irritated voice of the air boss in his headphones.

Calling the ball.

That’s what the U.S. Navy carrier pilots called it.

If the ball showed green, you were coming in too high. Red, too low. A line of white lights was what you wanted to see.

He watched the lights at the after deck flash green, then red, then green as his little plane bucked the thirty-mile-an-hour headwind. On final approach, what you were mostly worried about was a stall, and Alex was definitely worried. His jumpsuit was wet with the sweat of his adrenaline boost.

He’d already had two unsuccessful attempted landings.

A stall now would be catastrophic.

His headphones squawked again.

“You’ve got to land here, son,” the air boss said. “This is where the hot chow is.”

The carrier had turned into the prevailing wind. It was traveling at flank speed to give maximum wind over the deck, helping pilots to reduce their landing speeds. From experience, Alex knew that wind, wave, air, and skill must be in total sync for him to get home.

Alex had lined up once more, approaching the fantail of the heaving 1,000-foot steel runway of the U.S. aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy from astern. The 82,000-ton Kennedy, or “Big John” as she was called in the service, had a four-and-a-half-acre deck. Because of the heavy rolling swells, the huge flight deck was lazily rolling ten degrees side to side, but it was rising and falling with the wave action, causing twenty-to thirty-foot surges of the deck.

A carrier landing like this in his old Royal Navy Tomcat was one thing. All those thousands of pounds of thrust gave you a lot of control. A lot of options. Too low? Pull up. Too high, nose her down. Miss the wire? Power out at full throttle. His little seaplane was a different matter entirely. He’d already been waved off twice. The landing signal officer he’d been arguing with on the radio had finally told him to please just go home.

He’d considered just landing alongside the carrier and letting them send a launch to pick him up. The giant swells took that idea out of his consideration set fairly quickly. There was no going home, either. The cold front had moved in solidly and the conditions had worsened to the point where flying back to the Exumas was not an option. He told the LSO he was coming back around. His earphones crackled again.

“Kittyhawke, you’re three-quarters of a mile out. Call the ball.”

“Roger. Got the ball,” Hawke said.

He felt the little plane shudder as he lined up on his target. Wheels down, full flaps, tailhook down, prop pitch into full low, adjusting his trim tabs to get Kittyhawke into proper trim. His fuel was at total rich mix for maximum power recovery. He knew he’d have to dump the plane down hard to have any chance of his tailhook catching the wire. There were four arrester wires on the deck. Catching one of them would be his only chance of stopping short of the water at the other end of the carrier.

“Kittyhawke, you’re way below glide path. Pull up!”

“Roger,” Hawke said. “No problem.”

In fact, it was a problem. He didn’t think there was any power left in the old Packard-Merlin engine. He was pitching and yawing and the headwind was killing him. Somehow, he had to get his nose up. This was his last shot. He hauled back on the stick. What the hell. He was going in one way or the other.

He’d gotten his nose up a little but the deck was still rising, lifted by the enormous swells. Christ. Fall, damn it, fall! Sweat stung his eyes. It was going to be very, very close.

At the last second, he saw the deck pause majestically and finally begin its long slow fall. He’d timed the swell perfectly. That’s the only thing that saved him. The deck began to drop at precisely the right instant. He cleared by maybe a couple of feet and he banged the little plane down hard. It bounced and jarred him and he said a little prayer, instantly realizing he had another problem. He might just bounce right over all of the four arrester wires.

In his old Tomcat jet fighter, he’d had sufficient power for a bolter. Go to full throttle in a touch-and-go and power out if you miss the last wire.

He didn’t have that option in Kittyhawke.

Then he felt the wheels hit the deck again. In a second, he was thrown forward against the restraints of the seat harness as Kittyhawke wrenched to a violent and welcome stop. Second-best feeling in the world, he thought, smiling at the old carrier pilot’s expression. He’d hooked the fourth and last of the arrester wires.

“Throttle back, son, you’re not going to make this boat go any faster,” the air boss said in his headphones. Embarrassed, Alex realized he was still at maximum power. He eased his throttle down to idle.

“Bingo,” the air boss said, from his control station just above the navigation bridge up on deck 010. “Welcome to the Kennedy, Kittyhawke. We were beginning to wonder.”

“Third time’s the charm,” Hawke said, a lot more coolly than he felt. He taxied over to the nesting place that a green-jacketed crew-man was now waving him into.

“Yeah,” the air boss said. “Just a walk in the park, Kittyhawke.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Hawke reached over and shut down his engine. There were a couple of wheezing gulps from the old Merlin and then it died quietly.

Climbing out of the plane, he saw the red-jacketed “crash salvage” personnel sitting on their white fire-control tractors. They were all staring at him, shaking their heads and smiling, a few actually applauding. The purple-coated “deckies” and green-coated “maintainers” were all smiling and looking his way, too.

He could hardly blame them. Clearly, the entire landing ops crew were happy to have this particular landing experience behind them. So was he.

He kissed the forehead of the little bathing beauty he’d had painted on his fuselage and jumped from the pontoon down to the deck. He looked up at the carrier’s massive superstructure. From the keel to the masthead at the top, it was as tall as a twenty-three-story building. He then cast his eyes along the row of F-14A Tomcats lining the deck. He saw the legendary logo on their tails. The Black Aces squadron seemed to be in final prep for a night exercise.

Downtown Havana, Hawke thought. And if not tonight, probably sooner rather than later.

Walking across the broad flight deck, he realized that it had been a long time since he’d been aboard a carrier. Since those balmy days in the Persian Gulf in fact. He sucked a draught of the sharp sea air down deep into his lungs. It felt good. Finally, after a remorseful day of endless crisscrossing miles of empty sea, something finally felt good.

Twenty minutes later, he’d tossed his duffel bag into a small cabin in the visiting officers’ quarters, changed from his flight suit to khakis, and was now in the wake of a bustling admiral’s aide escorting him down a long corridor through “officers’ country” to the commanding officer’s wardroom.

The first face he saw when he entered the room was Tate’s, the unpleasant CIA chap he’d encountered at the State Department. Tate’s thin, bloodless lips curled into something slightly resembling a smile and Hawke nodded in his general direction.

But he was relieved to see the face of Jeffrey Weinberg, the deputy secretary of defense, among the eager military and civilians ranged around the big square mahogany table. Alex imagined Cuba on a silver platter in the center of the table. Ranged round the platter, the long knives of the Pentagon. The bomb baby-sitter certainly had his work cut out for him.

Hawke had never seen so many ribbons, decorations, or so much brass on so many puffed-up navy blue and khaki chests in his life. And he was a man who’d seen a lot of both.

There were two empty chairs. One had a small blue flag in front of it. Hawke took the other one and collapsed into it.

“Sorry I’m late, gentlemen,” he mumbled, opening the big black three-ring binder in front of him. As he did, the door to the wardroom opened and an aide stood back as the commander in chief, Atlantic Fleet, ramrod straight, marched into the room.

He was a tall man, at least six-five, with keen gray eyes set wide in a deeply lined face, and snow white hair cut very short in the classic Navy “whitewalls” fashion. He was leathery, tough, and weathered from a lifetime at sea. He gazed around the table, sizing up his team.

Alex knew him and liked him. Born in Hyco, Texas, the CINCATFLT had been first in his class at Annapolis, a Rhodes scholar, a fine athlete, and still a young man for his exalted rank. He was in his prime and clearly at the top of his game.

“I’m Admiral George Blaine Howell. I’d like to welcome each and every one of you aboard my flagship. We’re a little proud of the Kennedy, and we hope your stay aboard her will be both comfortable and productive.” His eyes stopped when they reached Hawke, and he was clearly surprised to see him. Alex saw something you generally didn’t expect in the eyes of the military. Sympathy.

“Commander Hawke. Good to see you again. We regret the tragic events of yesterday and especially appreciate your taking this sad time to be with us.”

There were murmurs and head nods around the table.

“Glad to be aboard, sir,” Hawke said. “Sorry to keep everyone waiting.”

“A few of us were up on the bridge,” Tate said. “You gave us all quite a thrilling air show.”

Hawke looked up at the man across the table and glared at him, waiting for him to look away. He finally did.

“You’re welcome to try your hand at a carrier landing anytime, Mr. Tate,” Admiral Howell said. “I’m sure you’d find it quite exciting. Now, let’s cut the bullshit and get down to business.”

Howell opened the silver cigarette case in front of him, popped an unfiltered Camel in his mouth, and lit it. A steady stream of smoke escaped his lips as he started to speak.

“Everyone knows why we’re here. These sons of bitches in Havana. A military coup in Cuba. Goddamn hoodlums, from what I hear. Drug dealers. Murderers. We don’t know if Castro is dead or alive. Doesn’t really matter much to me. One way or another we’re going in there. “

The admiral had reduced one cigarette to ash in less than a minute, and lit another.

“Thanks to Commander Hawke’s efforts, we now know that we are confronting a rogue state quite possibly in possession of the most sophisticated and deadly nuclear submarine ever to roam the oceans. Somebody needs a clear and direct threat to American national security, this is it. The president has instructed this task force to negate that threat with a preemptive strike.”

He paused, letting his eyes roam the table. “Since I’m in charge of this task force, that, gentlemen, with your help, is exactly what I intend to do. The U.S. Navy is going to find that submarine. We’re going take it away from the Cuban rebels. Or we’re going to sink it.”

He looked around the table and said, “Last time we went into Cuba, it was a total ratfuck, dicked up in spades. We actually learn from history. Sometimes. So. Anybody got any bright ideas?”

“If I may, Admiral?” Weinberg said, getting to his feet.

“Of course,” Howell replied as Weinberg walked over to a huge map of Cuba on the wall opposite Hawke. He picked up a laser pointer and flicked it on, aiming at Havana.

Alex settled back in his chair and tried to assume an air of composed, if not rapt, attention. It was now officially a “meeting.” There were few things on earth Alex detested more than meetings. Within his own companies, meetings were strictly limited to ten minutes. Anyone who could not say a definitive yes or no to any question was forbidden to attend.

“Number one,” Weinberg said, “we have to keep talking to these people, no matter how threatening, how belligerent they become. We keep them talking long enough to form and implement our strategy.”

“Who does the talking on our side?” Admiral Howell asked.

“The president has suggested the secretary of state. Her Cuban heritage makes her ideal. Anyone disagree?” Weinberg asked. Howell nodded his approval. There was no dissent.

“Good,” Weinberg said, “then she will be the gatekeeper for all information and intelligence we generate. She will lead our negotiations with the new regime. The secretary has asked me to apologize for her late arrival. She’s coming from an emergency meeting with the president on Key West.”

“That’s one, what’s number two?” the admiral asked, a wreath of smoke now encircling his head.

“Well. If you’ll open your briefing books,” Weinberg said, “you’ll see that tab one contains a series of photographs taken by our U-2s and Predators over the last week or so. The photos are of an island here, off the coast of Manzanillo, on the southeast coast of Cuba. Please take a minute to study them.”

“Never anything brief about a briefing book,” Admiral Howell muttered, turning the pages, skipping ahead.

As the men leafed through their books, Hawke opened his case and withdrew a small package containing an audio cassette. The radioman aboard Blackhawke had handed it to him as he boarded his seaplane. He assured Hawke it would be interesting.

“The rebels’ base of operations is called Telaraña,” Weinberg said. “Tab two contains precisely detailed building-by-building layouts of the entire compound.”

“How’d we come by that?” one of the admirals asked.

“Easy,” Tate interrupted. “They recruit local labor, we supply it. We have at least three members of the construction crew on our payroll. The diagrams in your books are the product of their latest intelligence. Two, maybe three days old.”

“Let’s move on,” Admiral Howell said.

“That large white structure you see at the mouth of the river,” Weinberg continued, “is a submarine pen. Its dimensions tell me that it is precisely wide enough to accommodate the extraordinary beam of a Borzoi. Commander Hawke, would you like to speak to this?”

“Certainly,” Alex said. “Six months ago, the Cuban rebels bought an extremely sophisticated Borzoi-class submarine from a pair of ex-Russian submarine officers, now arms dealers. Two Borzoi submarines were completed in late 1991 using purloined stealth technology. Borzoi utilizes a radical delta wing design, twin hulls forming a V-shape, twenty silos on each hull. It has a retractable conning tower for minimum drag whilst submerged. Fastest sub on earth, by a factor of three, biggest payload, virtually invisible to existing methods of detection.”

“Don’t tell me this thing can fly, too,” Howell said.

“Pretty fair description of what she does underwater,” Alex replied.

“Christ. Have they taken delivery?” Tate asked.

“I believe they have, yes,” Alex said.

“Do you have any proof of that?”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps, did you say?” the CIA man said, coating the word with gelatinous sarcasm.

“Yes, Mr. Tate, I said perhaps,” Alex said. Before this was over, he and Mr. Tate were going to have a very private conversation.

Seeing the tension, Admiral Howell coughed into his fist, and Weinberg tapped the map with his pointer.

“We know they’ve built a sub pen, and we know they’ve purchased a Borzoi boomer,” Weinberg said. “What we don’t know is whether or not they’ve actually taken delivery.”

“From the tone and manner of their opening salvo,” Admiral Howell said, “ordering us out of Gitmo, I’d guess these boys were packing some serious heat. In all likelihood, the sub has been delivered.”

“Perhaps,” Alex said, looking at Tate, “you are right, Admiral. This little package might confirm your supposition. If I may?” The admiral nodded.

Alex pushed his chair back, got up, and walked around the table to Howell, handing him the small package.

“Audio cassette,” Alex said.

“Of what, Commander?” the admiral asked.

“Admiral, my yacht is equipped with underwater towed array sonar. Since we frequent ports and coastlines where neither your Navy nor mine is welcome, we record everything we hear. If it’s sufficiently interesting, we courier it to Washington or London. My radioman handed me that cassette this afternoon just before I took off. Your lads should give a listen to it. My man thinks our SONUS picked up the signature sound of a Russian Mark III torpedo’s screws. But you fellows are the experts.”

“Thank you,” Howell said, and instantly an aide was at his side. He took the package and left the room.

“Commander,” the admiral said, “when and where did your boy pick this up?”

“At 0220 hours, sir,” Alex said. “It was recorded while we were lying at anchor one mile due west of Staniel Cay.”

“What the hell would the sub be shooting at in the Exumas?”

“No idea, sir. A small American sport-fishing boat suffered a catastrophic explosion and sank at precisely the same time. I heard the explosion two miles away. Upon reaching the bridge I observed a fiery debris field. Why they’d waste a torpedo on such a target is beyond me. But I’m almost positive they sank that fishing boat.”

“Shakedown cruise,” the admiral said. “The Exumas aren’t that far from the southeast coast of Cuba. Target practice. Tell your boy we appreciate his vigilance, Commander Hawke.”

Hawke nodded.

“To continue,” Weinberg said, “our mission objective is clear. We must neutralize or destroy that submarine and its missiles.”

“I vote for destroy,” Admiral Howell said, and everyone around the table chuckled. Weinberg smiled and resumed.

“If I know the president, Admiral, that submarine has an extremely short life expectancy,” Weinberg said. “The president and his cabinet are meeting in Key West as we speak, formulating a precise response. There is a lot of pressure to invade coming from the Pentagon. I have my own opinions on that, however—”

“What is your opinion?” The question came from the lantern-jawed man two seats to Alex’s left. General Charley Moore, U.S. Marines. There was no question about General Moore’s opinion, Alex could see in the hard set of the cold blue eyes.

“This isn’t Panama, General Moore,” Weinberg said. “When we went in to extract Noriega, the Panamanians were dancing in the streets.”

“That is correct,” Moore said, leaning back in his chair with his fingers laced behind his head. “Hell, I put four of my boys on every street corner of every intersection in Panama City. The neighborhood women adopted every last one of ’em. Fed ’em so damn much, I had to put an ad in the newspaper begging them to stop. My troops were all outgrowing their uniforms!”

“That will not be a problem in Cuba, General Moore,” Weinberg said, allowing himself a small smile. “I would like to say that the Cuban people are a nation of sheep. But that would be incorrect. They are a nation of ostriches. The state has them so thoroughly terrorized that—”

“Yes, but here’s the real problem,” Tate interjected. “In Cuba, you’ve got—”

“Mr. Tate, with all due respect, excuse me all to hell,” Admiral Howell said. “But it’s getting a little windy in here. Any damn fool can come up with the problem. I want the goddamn solution! Everybody’s insights into Cuban and Panamanian politics are goddamn fascinating. But this is not the time for it. Now, I am a mission-oriented kind of fella. The president wants action now, not fucking discourse. Do I make myself clear?”

Alex breathed deeply and closed his eyes. Thank God, Howell was seizing control of this bloody thing. He had been on the verge of making some excuse and walking out. He could barely tolerate these saber-rattling ego fests when he was at his best. Today, with Vicky’s loss spiking every thought, his tolerance was at zero.

Admiral Howell looked around the table, sucking down great volumes of smoke, waiting for a response.

“Find that sub, sink it, then invade the island, kill the bad guys, and put a decent, honest man in the president’s office,” General Moore said. Howell smiled.

“That’s better. Thanks, Charley. The commander in chief gave us a job to do, and by God we’re going to do it. He asked me if the Atlantic Fleet was ready. I said if anybody in Havana even sneezed in the wrong direction, my boys could send that country back to the Stone Age in about twelve minutes. Hell, I’ve got nine fighter squadrons right here on Big John! I’d just as soon take the goddamn Geneva Convention and shove it up Cuba’s sorry ass. Now let’s talk about that, goddammit.”

Alex relaxed and took his mind somewhere else.

Doesn’t work well with others.

That’s what he’d told Conch. It was true. His idea of Hell was sitting in a room with any group that considered itself a committee. His grandfather had a saying: “Search every park in every city of the world and you will never, ever, see a statue of a committee.”

As the meeting droned on, Alex stifled a yawn behind his fist and noticed a new sensation. Hunger. The food on American carriers was famously good. He hadn’t eaten since the accident. After a dinner in the officers’ mess, he’d try to get a good night’s sleep in his little VOQ cabin. He’d take off at first light and resume his search for Vicky.

Tate was on his feet now, doing profiles on the new leadership of Cuba. Alex glanced up now and then, feigning interest. He looked up at the young face of the new president, Batista. Hawke wondered if he were the only one to find this ironic bit of history amusing.

He couldn’t listen to Tate any longer. He pushed back his chair, starting to rise, and prepared to duck out of the meeting. But the face up on the screen now stopped him cold. He collapsed back into his chair, his eyes riveted on the image. A feeling swept over him, a feeling that everything inside him was shifting, starting to come loose. His eyes were burning and he massaged them with his fingertips, willing himself to control these sudden, swirling emotions.

Tate droned on, and soon had moved to a new character. Hawke, forcing himself to take slow, deep breaths, didn’t hear a word he said.

“Excuse me,” Hawke said, interrupting Tate mid-sentence. “I’m terribly sorry. I missed something. Could you possibly go back to the prior slide? Who was that man again?”

Tate couldn’t resist an eye-rolling sigh as he hit the clicker and reversed the carousel to the previous slide.

“I’m frightfully sorry,” Hawke said. “But who is this man again?”

“As I said, this is the man behind the military coup,” Tate replied, a falsely patient expression on his face. “Formerly Castro’s most trusted aide de camp. His name is General Manso de Herreras. Why? Do you have some information about him?”

“Yes, I do,” said Alex Hawke, getting to his feet and gathering up his materials. He nodded to Admiral Howell and said, “Please excuse me, Admiral, I’m afraid I need to make an urgent phone call.”

Howell nodded and Alex walked quickly to the door. The aide saluted and pushed the door open.

“Excuse me, Commander,” Tate said, as Alex was halfway out the door. “But if you have any information regarding this man, I’d like to know what it is.”

“I’m sure you would. But it’s strictly personal. It’s none of your bloody business, Mr. Tate,” Alex said over his shoulder, not bothering to turn around before he walked out.

“Question,” Tate said, sometime late in the evening, after the orderlies had cleared the dinner dishes and the men were sitting or standing around the officers’ dining quarters in small groups. A blue haze of cigar and cigarette smoke hung just below the ceiling. There was the usual hubbub of conversation as great quantities of port wine and Irish whiskey went round and round the admiral’s table.

All very grand, Alex thought, the way the Americans entertained aboard their carriers. He’d been studiously avoiding the raucous chatter, preferring to nurse his vintage Sandeman port alone. He was thinking of turning in when Tate pulled up a chair next to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Yes?” Alex said, barely glancing up.

“You don’t like me much, do you?”

“Let’s just say I don’t like the cut of your jib, Mr. Tate.”

“Not that I give a shit. The point is, I have a job to do down here. For some reason, everyone in Washington thinks you can help. So. Why were you so interested in this Manso de Herreras this afternoon?”

“I think we covered that bit earlier, Mr. Tate,” Alex said, staring into the man’s bloodshot eyes, “when I said it was none of your bloody business. Now, piss off.”

“Ah, but it is my business, isn’t it?” Tate said, leaning in so that Alex could smell the scent of sweat and liquor pouring off the man.

“Manso is the central figure in this little Caribbean drama. You clearly know more about him than you’re letting on.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Alex said, looking up and glaring at the man.

“I’m calling you what you are, Mr. Hawke. A pompous aristobrit who’d rather keep his little secrets than assist his country’s most valued ally in what has become a very, very dangerous state of international affairs.”

Alex smiled, took a sip of his port, and turned to face Tate.

“Aristobrit? That’s a good one, Mr. Tate. Do you duel?”

“Sorry?”

“Duel? Pistols at dawn? The Code Duello? An ancient custom for settling disagreements between gentlemen, which is probably why you’re unfamiliar with it. Duels, unfortunately, seem to have fallen out of favor at about the same rate as gentlemen.”

“I don’t follow you,” Tate said.

“Ah, hardly surprising. Let me help,” Hawke said. Slowly setting his port glass down on the white linen tablecloth, he whipped his fist around and backhanded Tate hard across his right ear. Hard enough to snap the man’s head back. Tate sat stunned, rubbing his bright red ear. His eyes blazed with hate, but Alex was amused to see that, in the revelry surrounding them, their small tête-à-tête had gone completely unnoticed.

“That’s how it works,” Alex said, smiling. “You’ve been insulted. Dishonored. Do you now wish to avenge your honor?”

“You pompous shit, I’ll—”

“Good. Now we have a duel,” Hawke said, smiling pleasantly. He saw a fist headed his way and said, “No, no, not here, Mr. Tate. Bad form.”

Alex’s hand shot out and caught Tate’s forearm mid-air, stopping the man’s fist just short of his own temple.

“I’ll kill you for this, you fucking English bastard,” Tate said.

“Not here, old boy,” Alex said. “This is the part where we step outside.”

Still keeping the man’s arm locked down on the table, Hawke reached under the table and used his free hand to grip Tate’s testicles in a cruel vise. Tate winced and withdrew his arm.

“Good boy,” Alex said, smiling. “As I say, it’s customary to step outside to settle these affairs. May I suggest we leave these gentlemen to their port and finish this unpleasantness up on the flight deck? I don’t think either of us will need a second, do you, old boy?”

“Shouldn’t take me that long to kick your ass,” Tate growled.

Hawke smiled, amused at the man’s obvious confusion over the term “second.”

“Good,” Alex said. “Shall we go? I’m quite sure we shan’t be missed, old boy.”

“Don’t call me old boy,” Tate hissed, rising from the table.

“Sorry, old boy,” Alex said, getting out of his chair and motioning Tate toward the door.

“Swords at dawn are out of the question, I suppose,” he said.

“More’s the pity.” He put his arm around Tate’s shoulder and moved him through the boisterous crowd toward the exit. “It will just have to be the manly art of fisticuffs on the poop deck, old boy.”

“I’ll meet you up there,” Tate said. “I’ve got to use the head.”

“A votre servis, monsieur. I’ll be waiting out on the fantail,” Hawke said, and whistling a cheerful tune, he strolled off down the long companionway, up three flights of steps, and out into the salty air.

He found a place to sit, a small stepladder used by deckies to reach the fuel ports on the F-14.

“Hello, Hawke,” a tall man said, coming toward him out of the covey of bedded-down Tomcats.

Alex looked up, not recognizing the voice or the silhouette.

“David Balfour,” the man said. “We were bunkmates in that hell-hole hospital in Kuwait.”

“Balfour?” Alex said. “Is that you? Good God, I thought you were dead!”

43

Stokely, barely able to keep his butt planted in his seat a third of the way back in the old bus, watched Ambrose Congreve bouncing around behind the big steering wheel and thought he’d bust a gut.

Man had on a tweed jacket with a little white hanky hanging out the top pocket, some kind of damn flannel trousers, and shiny brown shoes with little tassels dangling on the front of them. Best part, man had on uptown bright yellow socks, and his feet were flying back and forth mashing the clutch and brake pedals!

Stoke, like most everyone else on the bus, was dressed completely in black. All were wearing Kevlar vests. But not Ambrose. Had on a nice old gray woolly vest with leather buttons! Man was something else. Man on a mission, though, you had to give him that. Pipe jammed between his teeth, tearing up the deeply rutted sandy road twisting through the scrubby palm trees. Grinding gears, mashing on the brakes, flying over the hills.

Damn Mario Andretti of schoolbus drivers!

Just then the bus got airborne at the top of a big hill and Stokely caught his first glimpse of the ocean. Which meant they were getting close.

Everybody on the team was quiet, holding on to keep from flying around inside the bus. In situations like this, Stoke knew, each man was thinking about his immediate future. Hell, he was too. Nobody really knew what they were up against. No time to even send a recon team ahead. Could be real easy. Could easily be real hard. When they went bad—like that time in Panama—well, best not be thinking about that.

Stoke checked his gear and ammo. In addition to the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun hanging from a shoulder strap, he had his custom Beretta 92-SF in his thigh holster, along with ten clips of ammo. A hundred rounds of hollow-point HydraShok hot loads that could literally blow a guy’s head off.

Lots of other goodies were hanging from his webbed belt. Dagger, flash-bang grenades, and thunder-strips to disorient the bad guys. And a secure Motorola walkie-talkie with a voice-activated lip mike and earpieces so he could communicate with Ross and Quick. He also had fifty feet of nylon climbing rope with a rubber-coated grapnel hook at one end.

He was pumped. Man. It had been a long time.

Stoke, Ambrose, and Ross, with the help of Amen Lillywhite, had quickly roughed out a plan. Amen had used a stick to scratch a diagram of the target house in the dirt parking lot outside the club. Ground floor, second floor, top floor. Big wide center stairway leading upstairs right from the front door. Hallways on either side leading to the rear.

Target’s bedroom was on the top floor front, guard’s dormitories at the back of the first floor. A solid stone wall around the entire perimeter, ten feet high. Two ways in and out of the property. A guarded iron gate at the front. Two big wooden gates on the north side.

It was a basic snatch.

Surprise. Confusion. Overwhelming firepower. Float like a pissed-off butterfly. Sting like a badass bee. In other words, your basic SEAL behavior.

Ambrose saying the target must be taken alive.

Stoke saying that these things were entirely up to the target. Ambrose giving him a look. Not sayin’ more, which was good.

The bus crested a hill, banged down hard, and Amen, sitting up front, said, “This’d be a fine place to stop, Mr. Congreve. This piney wood right here goes on down to the wall at the back of the house.”

Ambrose mashed the brakes and the bus skidded to a stop at the edge of the pine forest. He pulled up the hand brake and turned around in his seat.

“This is where we disembark, gentlemen,” Ambrose said. He pushed the handle that opened the door. “Check your weapons and ammunition. Stay low and stay silent. We will descend this hill in single file and regroup at the wall to the rear of the house. Mr. Jones will lead us in from there.”

Mr. Jones? Nobody ever called him that. Still, man sounds like he knows what he’s doing, Stoke thought. That was good. Rest of these guys, well, he wasn’t used to working with amateurs. This Tommy Quick, of course, now he was a comfort. Had his Remington 700 sniper rifle with a bigass Star-Tron Mark scope on it. Guy was the best sniper in the whole U.S. Army. He could definitely come in handy. Still, this was definitely not your split-second-timing SEAL-type deal.

Hell, hadn’t even had time to recon the place before going in. This would be a first, going in blind. Gain experience, that much was for sure.

“Lock and load, ladies,” Stoke said, getting out of his seat and making his way to the front of the bus. He’d made sure the whole team was equipped with basically the same gear he had, minus the three walkie-talkies. “We going in to get this bad boy, truss him up like a Christmas turkey, and deliver his ass on a platter.”

They moved swiftly down through the pines, their footsteps deadened by a thick carpet of pine needles. Stoke took the lead, Congreve was safely in the middle, and Sutherland, the trailman, brought up the rear. It took less than five minutes to reach the ten-foot stone wall that rimmed the perimeter of Don Carlo’s estate.

Stoke held up his closed fist and the little band huddled around him. It was still pretty dark, but not for long. They had to move quickly. Stoke divided them into two squads. A Squad, led by Tom Quick, would go around the north side of the property. B Squad, led by Stoke, with Ross, Ambrose, and Amen right behind him, would go south.

Stoke would take out any guards at the front gate.

“Test, test, test,” Stoke said into the tiny lip mike that he, Ross, and Quick were now wearing. “Everybody copy?”

“Loud and clear,” Ross said.

“Ditto,” Quick said. “Five by five.”

Stoke looked at his watch and said, “A Squad, go!” Quick and his five men took off in a low, crouched run.

Stoke watched them disappear around the curved wall and then started with his team around the south side. Halfway, they came to a set of heavy wooden gates. He held up his hand and motioned for Amen to come forward.

“What’s this for?” Stoke whispered to Amen, pointing at the gates.

“Way he gets his cars in and out,” Amen said. “Two big Jeeps.” Stoke pondered that a minute. Besides the bus, Stoke had only seen three or four cars on the whole island. All beat-up little taxis.

“Good,” he said. “How much farther around to the guardhouse?”

“Another hundred yards, mebbe,” Amen said under his breath.

“Tap me on the shoulder just before we get within sight of it, you understand?” Amen nodded.

“Hey, Ambrose,” Stoke said, “you cool back there?”

“Never cooler,” Ambrose said, smiling. Had to give the man credit, he wasn’t lying. Seemed like the man had balls, after all.

Stoke hand-signaled his little team and they began to move forward behind him. Just when they had the ocean in sight, Amen tapped him on the shoulder, and Stoke dropped to his knees. The team came to a halt behind him. He pulled the Beretta from his thigh holster and fitted a silencer on the barrel. Then he crawled forward on knees and elbows, the pistol out in front of him.

Two minutes later, he was back.

“No sign of a guard in the window I can see,” he whispered. “Just a blue TV light flickering. First time I ever seen a damn TV satellite dish on a guardhouse.”

“Probably asleep, though,” Amen whispered in his ear. “I’ll go check. Guards all know me. If he’s awake, I’ll just hand him these. I do it all the time. Keeps peace in the family.” He pulled a pint of Jamaican rum and a big hand-rolled spliff of marijuana out of his pants pocket.

“My brother,” Stoke whispered to Amen. “You good, you very good.”

Two minutes later, Amen came crabbing back along the wall, smiling his ass off. Stoke could already pick up the sweet smell of ganja drifting around from the guardhouse.

“What up?” Stoke asked Amen.

“One guy only in there,” Amen said. “Usually, they two. Awake. Got headphones on, listenin’ to his Marley tunes, watchin’ TV. Gave me a big smile.”

“Weapon?”

“Always keeps a machine gun layin’ cross his lap.”

“Quick?” Stoke said.

“Copy,” he heard in his headphones.

“You guys in position?”

“Roger that.”

“Okay,” Stoke said to his team. “Nobody move. I’ll be right back.” He took off in a low crouch.

The guardhouse had three windows. One facing the ocean, two on either side. Long as he stayed low and quiet, no way the guy could pick him up. In seconds, Stoke was crouched just below the north-facing window. A cloud of pungent smoke floated out above his head. Beretta in his hand, he suddenly popped up and looked in the window, not four feet from the guy.

“Boo,” Stoke said, smiling.

The guard looked up, big case of wide-eyes, the gun in his lap already coming up.

“Bad idea,” Stoke said.

The Beretta spit twice and the man’s shirt puffed inward and then outward as blood gushed from the sucking wound made by two shots to the heart. The man pitched forward from his stool. Stoke reached through the window and grabbed his gun just before it clattered to the stone floor.

He saw an old green metal panel on the wall. Lots of toggle-type switches. Not marked in any way. Shit. No way to know which was which. He saw Amen and Ambrose peeking around the corner of the wall and motioned them forward.

“Quick?” Stoke said into his mike. “Copy?”

“Copy,” he heard in his phones.

“Guard is down at the front gate. Looks clear. Let’s link. We’re going in.”

“Twenty seconds,” Quick said.

Stoke turned and handed the guard’s machine gun to Ambrose.

“We might come out this way, Constable,” Stoke said. “We might not. But if we do, you got a great field of fire to cover our retreat from this guardhouse window.” Man looked like he didn’t find this plan agreeable.

“Listen to this very carefully,” Ambrose said. “I’ve been working on this bloody case for thirty years. I’m going into that house and arrest that man either with you or without you.”

Stoke looked at him for a long second, sizing him up.

“Let’s go get him then, Constable,” he said. He leaned back inside the guardhouse. The man on the floor was dead. He looked at the corroded control panel. Some of the switches had to be wired to some security system inside. Which ones? He felt a sudden heat on his shoulder and looked up. Goddamn. The sun had just broken the horizon. Way past time to move.

“Amen, do you believe in God?” Stoke said.

“I believe in Jah,” Amen said. “Jah soon come.”

“Thing is, this Jah of yours, he goin’ to come a whole lot sooner you don’t tell me the God’s honest truth right now, my brother. Ready? Which one of those switches opens the gate? And which one shuts down the alarm system?”

“One on de far left is de gate. Middle one is the main alarm.”

“You understand whose side you’re on here, don’t you, my brother?”

“I do, sir.”

Stoke reached in and flipped the middle switch and the one on the left. If he heard any bells and whistles, he was prepared to shoot Amen on the spot, which he really didn’t want to do, as he’d come to really sort of like the old coot.

He waited, the Beretta in his hand hanging loosely at his side.

The big black iron gates swung silently inward just as Ross and his team arrived. There were no audible alarms. Stoke waited a minute, his eyes focused on the house, looking for any sign of activity inside. Then he turned to Amen.

“Amen, you the man. Now you sneak back on up to the bus and wait twenty minutes. We don’t show up, you go on home and get back in bed. We all thank you, brother.”

He put his hand on Amen’s shoulder. The man had been invaluable. Then he turned to the seven men who remained gathered at the gate. He felt dumb even asking the question, but under the circumstances, he had to do it. This was not exactly a highly trained SEAL squad that could perform like a bunch of deadly ballet dancers.

“Okay. Everybody know what they doin’?”

They all looked him in the eye and nodded. Good. They may not be cool, but they looked cool. He felt better. Anyway, what the hell. This one was for Alex. All the shit he’d been through, time he got a little back on the plus side.

“Let’s book,” he whispered, and stood back as they passed through the gates, fanned out into the pines, and started climbing. Stoke gave them twenty seconds and then he too started up the hill toward the house.

He started getting glimpses of the place through the trees. Huge. Towers, golden domes, damn house looked like Disney World might if it was on the Strip in Vegas. At the back of his mind was whether or not there was a silent alarm inside the house whenever the gate opened. That might make the whole thing way too interesting. Better not go down that road.

“Ross?”

“Copy.”

“Out of the woods?”

“Edge. We have an open courtyard with a circular drive. Thirty yards to the front door.”

“Sit tight. How’s it look?”

“Quiet.”

“Good quiet or bad quiet?”

“Good.”

Stoke came over a rise and saw his whole squad crouching along the tree line, weapons ready. So far, nothing looked funky. He crept up and squatted beside Ross. He had the nylon climbing rope in his hands, swinging the hook and looking through the trees up at the third-floor balcony. Because of the thick woods, the house was still in shadow. But people might be waking up in there any minute now.

Middle of the man’s circular driveway was this splashing fountain, all lit up. Three cars in his driveway, all bright red. Two Humvees and what had to be one of those Ferrari Testosterones. Where the hell you gonna drive a Ferrari on this island? Can’t hardly keep a schoolbus on the road at more than twenty.

He looked at Ambrose and started undoing the snaps on his Kevlar vest.

“Since I’m going up the outside of the house, I won’t be needing this,” he said to Ambrose. “Best you wear it since you goin’ inside the front door.”

Ambrose looking at him like he’d lost his mind.

“I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that monstrosity,” the man said.

“You sure as hell might get caught dead you not wearing it, Constable. Now put it the fuck on.”

“I’m quite comfortable with what I’m wearing,” Ambrose said.

“Ain’t no time for this shit, Ambrose, know what I’m sayin’? Alex already lost Vicky. What I’m going to tell him I come back without his best friend, huh?”

Ambrose heaved a sigh and pulled the vest on over his tweed jacket, muttering to himself the whole time.

“Okay. Quick, get your boys through the woods to the back of the house and wait for my go signal. Check?”

“Check.”

“Ross, you and Ambrose wait here twenty seconds after I go. See me goin’ up that wall, you haul ass for that front door. Stay low. Wait. You hear me tell Quick ‘go,’ that means I’m inside, and Quick’s going inside and you and Ambrose blow through that front door. Then straight up them steps to that top-floor bedroom fast as you can, cool?”

“Cool,” Ambrose said, smiling at him.

“I believe you are,” Stoke said.

He gave Ambrose a punch to the shoulder right on his Kevlar vest, laughed, and took off, sprinting around the fountain like a running back. He looked in both Humvees and saw keys stuck in both ignitions. Man sure seemed lax about a lot of shit. In seconds, he was crouched beneath a window, looking up at the balcony. The sun’s rays had just hit one of the tallest towers on the roof and were moving down toward the balcony. Shit.

He caught the balcony rail with the first toss of the rubber-coated grapnel hook on the end of his climbing rope. Didn’t make a sound. He went up the wall hand over hand with the dagger in his mouth, just in case the man had decided to sleep out on his porch. Knife in your mouth like to scare folks shitless.

Peeking over the rail, he saw that the long terrace was empty. Just a row of louvered mahogany doors onto the bedroom, all closed. He hauled himself up and over and stood for a second, thinking it through. He turned to the rail, leaned over, and saw Ross and Ambrose scrambling around the fountain. He gave them five seconds, then started trying the doors, praying to find one open.

Third one was ajar. He pulled it open two inches and put his ear to the door. Snoring. Loud damn snoring. He started feeling lucky.

He slipped through the door and pulled it shut. Like stepping into a damn meat locker, it was so cold. Man had the AC down to fifty. He couldn’t see shit for a couple of seconds, it was so dark. The snorer was to his left, maybe thirty feet away. To his right, same distance was a goddamn fire going in a fireplace. Had to be ninety outside and the man had a fire going!

Across the room, he could see light shining under a wide doorway. He started in that direction, not making a sound, and bumped into something hard. Banged his damn knee. It was some kind of damn chair, bolted to the floor. He felt the arms and back. Like a dentist’s chair felt like. What the hell?

He moved through the darkness to the double doors most likely leading to the upstairs hallway. Tried them, both were unlocked. He cracked one door wide enough that Ross would see it, then he felt around on the wall for a light switch. Just before he pressed it, he whispered the word “Go!” into his mike.

He hit the switch, and the whole room lit up. Huge damn bed with a huge damn bald-headed man under some shiny black satin sheets. Man was on his back, had about twenty pillows behind him, propped up with a black and pink silk sleep mask over his eyes. Son of a bitch was still snoring!

That’s when the first of many concussion grenades went off downstairs and the man sat bolt upright, lifted his cute little mask, and saw this huge black guy standing by his bed with a pistol aimed at his forehead.

“Madre de Dios!” he shouted. “Qué pasa? Who the fuck are you? What’s going on?”

“Good morning, Doctor,” Stoke said, a big grin on his face.

“Doctor?” the man said. “There must be some mistake. I’m not a—”

“You a pussy doctor, ain’t you?” Stoke asked. “Otherwise, why you got that damn gynecological chair stuck in the middle of your damn room? Banged the shit out of my knee on one of your damn stirrups, Doc.”

All hell was breaking loose downstairs, and just when he was starting to worry about them, Ambrose and Ross came through the man’s bedroom door.

“I was just waking up the doctor here,” Stoke said as Ambrose and Ross joined him at the foot of the bed. “See his chair? Man like to play doctor. Do pelvic examinations and shit.” The man shifted under the sheets and Ross brought up the Streetsweeper and put it right on the target. Streetsweeper tended to get people’s undivided attention.

“Take your hands out from under the sheets, very slowly, and cross them behind your head,” Ross said. The man, who’d gotten real quiet, did like he was told, but who wouldn’t, looking down the barrel of Ross’s sawed-off weapon?

“Is this your man, Constable?” Stoke asked.

Ambrose stepped closer to the bedside and studied him, mentally adding thirty years to the face in the Polaroid photograph and the one in Stubbs Witherspoon’s police sketch. It wasn’t the face that did it so much as the eyes. One look at the eyes and you knew this was a killer. Wild, dark, killer’s eyes. There was no question in Ambrose’s mind.

He was face to face with the man in the New Year’s Eve Polaroid. One of three brothers who’d slaughtered Alex Hawke’s parents. He leaned in close to the fellow and spoke.

“What is your name, sir?”

The man stared at him in disbelief. This could only be the work of his brother Manso! He’d been set up. This was why he’d been forced off the Martí. Humiliated in front of his men. His treacherous brother would pay dearly for this. He would—

“I asked you your name!” Congreve shouted.

“I am Admiral Carlos de Herreras, señor! Commander in chief of the Navy of Cuba! This is an outrage! I demand that you—”

“Quiet.”

Ambrose pulled out a little leather case and flipped it open, showing the man his shield.

“My name is Ambrose Congreve,” he said in an even voice, full of measured intensity. “I am a special investigator for the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard. In the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I am placing you, Carlos de Herreras, under arrest upon suspicion of murder. I order you to get out of that bed and come with me. Now.”

“You will regret this, señor. We are the new ruling party of Cuba! My brother, he is the new—”

“Get out of that damned bed!” Congreve shouted, and ripped the sheets back. “As if I give a hoot in hell who you are! On your feet, Admiral, you’re under arrest!”

The man sighed, major league all pissed off, slowly pulling his hands out from the pillows. Still had the little black and pink mask up on his forehead. Stoke was looking at Ambrose, smiling, about to congratulate him, when Ross shouted, “Stokely, watch out!”

Stoke turned but it was too late. The fat man’s arm was extended toward him, a little black automatic in his hand. His thought was, shit, this is what happens when you go lending out your flak jacket. Then a sledgehammer hit him.

Stoke stayed on his feet long enough to see Ambrose raise and fire his weapon, hitting the suspect’s gun hand before he could squeeze off a second shot. The fat man was screaming in pain as Stoke hit the floor.

Ambrose knelt beside him, stuffing his handkerchief into the wound. There was a tremendous amount of blood, but he was still breathing. Ross had the big man cuffed and was speaking into his mike. Stoke was fading in and out and Ambrose was feeling for his pulse when he heard Ross in his headphones say, “Tom, give me a sitrep.”

“Still taking fire,” Quick said. “I’ve got one man down.”

“We’re coming down the front way,” Ross said. “Give us some cover.”

Then Ross had his hands under Stoke’s armpits and was pulling him to his feet.

“Come on, Stokely, we have to get you to a doctor now!”

“He’s a doctor, ain’t he?” Stoke said, grinning weakly at the fat man and getting woozily to his feet. His whole front was sticky with hot blood.

Ambrose led them out into the hallway and they headed for the stairs. Ross was in front with the Streetsweeper, supporting Stoke. Next, the prisoner, with Ambrose’s pistol jammed in his back. Ambrose could tell the firefight below was a lot less intense as they started down the broad marble staircase. He saw Stoke tighten his grip around Ross’s neck to steady himself going down the stairs. He heard Quick shout a warning to Ross in his headphones. What the—

Suddenly, rounds whistled by his ear and over his head and he looked down to see three young chaps in T-shirts crouching at the foot of the steps, guns trained directly on them. One guy squeezed off another burst. He felt a sharp jolt of pain, clutched his chest, and fell back hard on the marble steps. Staring at the ceiling, Ambrose managed to move his hands and legs. God in heaven, he was still alive. But they were getting killed up here.

Ross didn’t wait for another shot. His finger snapped shut on the trigger of the Streetsweeper, and it erupted in a rapid series of blasts that blew what was left of the three men right out the front door and down the steps to the driveway.

Ross stuck out his hand, and Ambrose grasped it, pulling himself to his feet.

“Hold on,” Ross said to him, shouldering himself into the Streetsweeper’s strap and getting his other arm under him. “We’re going right out the front door!” They were going down the stairs fast. Then they were outside. Somehow, the sun had come up.

The front steps of the finca were slick with bodies and blood. Stepping over somebody’s blown-off foot, Ambrose somehow managed to tell Ross what he’d seen on the way in. That there were keys in both Humvees. Blood was pumping out of Stokely, even with the handkerchief stuffed inside the wound.

Ambrose dredged up a strength he’d never known and jammed his gun into the back of the prisoner. The chap had been about to run for it.

“I’m all right,” he told Ross. “Let’s just get this bloody bastard the hell out of here!”

Then Ross was behind the wheel of the Humvee, the prisoner next to him up front. Ambrose climbed into the backseat and pressed his pistol against the back of the Cuban’s head. He felt dizzy, and the sight of their prisoner still wearing black and pink silk pajamas, with the matching mask on his head, made him doubt his own mind.

Suddenly a new wave of chaps started coming out on the steps and seemed to be shooting at them. Then they started dropping to the ground, left and right. He thought he saw the sharpshooter Tom Quick in an upstairs window, picking them off with his sniper rifle, putting neat little black holes in people’s foreheads.

“Hold on, Inspector,” Ross said, and he mashed on the accelerator, the Humvee screaming around the fountain, heading for the wooden gates, and taking both of the gates off their hinges as they went crashing through.

“Okay, we have the suspect,” Ambrose heard Ross say in his phones. “We have two casualties needing immediate medical attention. Get your guys the hell out of there! There are keys in the second Humvee at the front door. Use it!”

Two casualties? Ambrose thought. That meant he must be one of them.

That’s when he felt a sharp pain in his chest and all the lights went out.

44

Vicky had nicknames for most of her Cuban guards.

There was Ace, of the small black plastic comb, who was continually running it through his long black oily locks, swooping it up into an endlessly collapsing pompadour. And X-Ray, who was at least six-five and weighed maybe one hundred thirty pounds. Then there was Big Pimpin’, so called neither because of his enormous size nor his scarlet pimples, which he had in pustulant abundance, but because he was constantly bragging about all the girls he was running in and out of the compound.

And, finally, the one she called Eyes Wide Shut. He was the putative leader of the four, and by far the worst of all. He had never hurt her, thank God, but he never took his eyes off her either. They had taken her bathing suit and jewelry away in exchange for a cotton shift she washed each day.

Eyes made her strip two or three times a day so he could search her. He would poke and prod, smiling all the while. He always found an excuse to get rid of the other three first. Sent them on errands, told them to take a break. Vicky was sure they knew what was going on. But they never said anything.

Eyes was the only one with a key to the manacles that shackled her to the bed. She had to ask his permission whenever she needed to use the bathroom. He always made her leave the door open. Once, when she’d stepped out of the shower, he was standing there in his trademark grungy sweatshirt with his pants down, erect.

“Aw, you think I’m supposed to get upset over a little thing like that?” she’d said.

Maybe he didn’t understand what she’d said, but he understood what she meant. He never did it again. Then, of course, there were the Russians. The fat one. And the weird little one she vaguely remembered as having bought her a drink at the junkanoo.

So far, Eyes had kept the two Russians away from her. She’d learned from X-Ray that they were constantly offering the guards huge sums of U.S. dollars for an hour alone with her. Eyes, so far, had told them to stay away from her or he’d kill them. But you never knew just how long or how far his jealousy would stretch. She reassured herself daily that an ounce of flirtation equaled a pound of protection.

She was going to survive this. No matter what it took. No matter how long it took. At night, she thought of Alex. Worried about how what had happened added to the pain he was already suffering. And she thought of her father. She was all he had. If only there were some way to get word out. Bribe one of the guards? With what?

Eyes. If she could gain his trust, make him intimate promises she’d maybe never have to keep, he could get word out for her. He was both her principal tormentor and her only hope.

Little boys, big guns.

There were eight guards in all, working consecutive twelve-hour shifts. The night shift, she hardly dealt with. She’d talked the doctor who’d examined her that first night into giving her some heavy-duty sleeping pills. So, she either slept, or feigned sleep, from eight at night until eight in the morning when the night guards left. It made the time more bearable.

The guards were all killers and proud of it. She’d heard them bragging about kidnapping and torturing high-ranking journalists and politicians believed to be still loyal to Castro. Some spoke English, and she had three years of college Spanish, and when they got careless, they sat around saying things in front of her.

She listened to every word, and picked up a lot she wasn’t supposed to know. Castro was a guest here. So was his son. So were the former officers of Fidel’s secret police, army, and navy. It was a busy place. “The Hostage Hilton” was how she came to think of it.

Bit by bit, Vicky learned that there was a price on the heads of many people in Cuba. Millions of pesos for a long list of disloyal generals and journalists. Hundreds of thousands for certain “friends of Fidel” who were unfriendly to the new regime. Organized murder was about to become a booming business in Cuba.

Naturally, she didn’t recognize the names, but some of the targets were apparently pro-Castro left-wing bigshots in Miami and New York, too. Meanwhile, an army of boys, just like the ones who guarded her, were roaming the island, murdering whoever got in their way. Cuba was now on the verge of becoming the new Colombia. Lawless. Murderous. Lost.

One afternoon, after Eyes had made her strip, he pointed his gun at her and said in good English, “If there is trouble, any kind of trouble, our orders are to shoot you first. You understand that, chica?”

She nodded. Since everyone thought she was dead, she wasn’t too optimistic about a rescue attempt. Escape, yes, she was worried about how to do that. Very worried. Especially since the nightly screaming had started.

The guards called him Scissorhands.

He worked in a warren of basement rooms where all the interrogations took place. Late at night, she could hear the piercing screams. They said that when he looked at you, he had no eyes.

She’d overheard enough to know Scissorhands was not one of the top two or three generals who had overthrown the old regime. Apparently, his real name was Rodrigo, and she overheard someone say he was some rich nightclub owner from Havana. Scary-looking, because his eyes had no color. Another time, someone said he worked directly for the new military chief, General Manso something or other. This guy they all called Scissorhands, Rodrigo, was apparently the new head of State Security.

Scissorhands liked to attend interrogations just for fun. He wore a blood-soaked smock and carried a large pair of gleaming silver scissors in his pocket as he scurried from room to room during interrogations. “Snip, snip, snip,” the guards would laugh whenever the screaming started.

She thought she was on the third floor of the prison. Blindfolded immediately after her abduction in the waters off Pine Cay, she’d not seen a thing until she was brought into the room she currently occupied. The windows were boarded shut. There were no newspapers. She was not allowed to watch TV.

All she knew, she got from careful listening. During the day, there were sounds of Jeeps and tanks and large numbers of troops going by under her window. So she was on a fairly main thoroughfare of some kind of military base, most likely the headquarters of the rebel general who had overthrown the old regime.

One morning, the thing she’d dreaded most actually happened. Someone came to take her away. Whether it was to be shot or simply “interrogated,” she was sure it was not going to be a good morning. Still, she forced herself to stay calm.

It wasn’t really a surprise. The guards had been acting strange all morning. Looking at her and then looking away. No Nintendo, no idle conversation. Just smoking and speaking quietly amongst themselves. Even the girl who came to clean each morning was acting strangely.

No one said a word. But she knew. Today was her day.

When the knock at the door finally came, Vicky was almost relieved. She heard the door open. When she looked that way, Ace pressed the barrel of his gun against her cheek, turning her head from the door.

Eyes unshackled her without looking at her. He wore a look of grim satisfaction. He grabbed her roughly by the back of her shift and held her while Ace tied a thick blindfold around her head.

Panic bloomed. She tried to pull away and heard the rip of cotton as the thin shift split down the back. She felt her heart thudding in her chest and her breath getting very shallow. She forced herself to breathe deeply and stay calm. The breathing helped a little.

Eyes and X-Ray steered her toward the door, Eyes managing to squeeze her breasts roughly as he did so.

The one who had entered said something in a raspy Spanish, and Eyes released his grip on her. She heard the door close behind her and knew she was outside and alone with this new raspy-voiced Cuban.

“Buenos días, señorita,” he said, and then, in perfect English, “I am Major Diaz. You are to come with me, please.”

He held her arm lightly and led her down a flight of stairs. She was barefoot and she felt damp concrete underfoot. It had rained last night. If she was right about which floor she was on, three flights of steps would mean they were descending to the ground. One more would mean the basement. They reached a landing after three flights, turned right, and started down again.

“Where—where are you taking me?” Vicky asked.

“You’ll see soon enough, señorita,” Diaz said.

They went through another door. Now they walked down a long corridor and suddenly there was shouting and whistling on either side of her. She heard what sounded like tin cups being banged on bars. It was not hard to imagine the row of cells on each side, or the prisoners’ reaction to the woman in the torn shift.

They came to a stop, and Major Diaz said something to a guard. She heard a key turning in a lock, and then she was being pushed through an open door. A wave of cold air shocked her. The thin shift offered little protection. Air-conditioning. A new experience. A chilling experience, she thought, glad she still had a tiny reserve of humor in there somewhere.

“Just tell the truth,” Diaz said, a harsh whisper in her ear. “And tell it quickly.” He then released her.

“Muchas gracias, Major,” a new voice said. “That will be all.” This new voice was velvety and musical. She didn’t know if that was good or simply terrifying.

She heard Diaz walk out and the door close behind her with a solid thump. Thick door. Soundproof. She felt dizzy and disoriented without Diaz’s hand on her shoulder. She had no choice but to stand and wait for whatever was coming.

“Bienvenido a Telaraña,” the man finally said. “Be seated.”

“Where is the…” She reached out, feeling for any piece of furniture. “Where is the, uh, the—?”

“The chair? Ah. Three steps forward,” the man said in his soft voice. Almost singsong.

She took three tentative steps, felt soft carpet beneath her feet, and put both hands out in front of her. She felt the wooden back of a chair, pulled it toward her, and managed to sit down.

“You may remove your blindfold,” the man said.

Vicky did, blinking in the harsh light. There were two men in the room. There was one man in uniform sitting in a big leather chair behind a beautiful carved mahogany desk. Another man, tall and very handsome in a white suit, stood behind the desk, looking down at some photographs. Behind him on the wall was a large painting in a massive gilt frame. A museum-quality Goya. On the floor, a magnificent Aubusson carpet. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. This seemed an unlikely setting for all the midnight screaming.

Then the handsome man walked around from behind the desk and looked into her face, staring at her. “Good morning,” he said in beautiful English. “I am so happy to meet you. My name is Rodrigo.” He smiled down at her. His eyes, she was shocked to see, were completely colorless. And in the breast pocket of his elegant white suit was a pair of silver scissors.

Vicky thought her heart would burst as the word exploded in her mind, Scissorhands.

“What is your name?” the uniformed man seated at the desk asked, and she squinted her eyes, trying to focus on him instead of the other one. She decided not to even look at the eyeless one. If she did, she’d never get through this alive.

She took a deep breath and composed herself. Somehow, she was going to make it out of here alive. She stared at the man behind the desk. He’d asked her a question. What was it?

Though he was seated, she could see that her interrogator was tall and thin. He wore an elaborate uniform, covered with decorations. He was handsome in a way, almost pretty. Long black hair, carefully swept back from his high forehead. Tied in a ponytail. Long black lashes and deadly gray eyes.

Spidery hands folded quietly before him on the leather top of his desk.

“I asked you a question. Your name?”

“Sorry. My name is Dr. Victoria Sweet. What’s yours?”

“I am General Manso de Herreras. How are you being treated, Dr. Sweet?”

“Abominably.”

Scissorhands smiled at this and walked back behind the desk. He perched on the edge and resumed leafing through his glossy eight-byten photos. From time to time he would look up at her with those monstrous eyes and smile at her.

“Sorry. We try to be accommodating. What kind of doctor are you?”

“I’m a pediatrician. I help children with neurological disorders. I also write books for children.”

“Ah, a fellow student of human emotions. I’ve no degree, of course, I’m a lifelong military man. Yes, but a politician as well, and so a keen observer of the psychological.”

“May I ask a question? Why am I here, General?”

“Ah. You would like to be the interrogator?”

“I’d like to know why I’m being held against my will.”

“You ask the simple ones first, Doctor. Very well. You’re here because you’re a pawn.”

“I’m a pawn?”

“Yes. The pawn resembles a queen perhaps, but she is still a little pawn. Does the little pawn play chess?”

Vicky sat silently for a moment, deciding how best to play this dangerous game. “Tell the truth, quickly,” Major Diaz had said. For no good reason at all, she decided to trust him.

“You’re holding me because you want to use me in some way. Probably to get to Alex Hawke,” Vicky said, staring him straight in the eye. “How do you intend to do that?”

“Very good! We can make this short, then, although I am thoroughly enjoying our conversation.”

“Short is good. That would include my stay here, General. When do I go free?”

“If you do exactly as I say, and the results are commensurate with your efforts, you will be released unharmed.”

“I have your word?”

“What you have, my beautiful señorita, is no choice. Checkmate, you see?”

“I see. In that case, why don’t we get started?”

“Muy bueno.”

The man opened a desk drawer and placed a cassette recorder and thick newspaper on top of the desk.

“Please bring your chair closer to the desk. You’ll be more comfortable while you’re recording.”

She did as she was told and felt a wave of terror sweep over her. The photographs Scissorhands had been looking at weren’t from his family album. They were pictures of women with fingers, ears, and nipples missing.

Vicky stifled the scream that was rising in her throat and forced herself to take deep consecutive breaths. She hardly heard what the man was saying.

“I have a statement here that I wish you to read into this microphone. State your name first and address this message to Alex Hawke. The statement simply says that you are a political prisoner. You have been taken hostage by the Cuban guerrilla group known as Telaraña. You may then use your own words. Plead your case to your lover. Tell him that your life depends entirely on how well your friend Hawke follows directions.”

“What directions?”

“It is of no consequence to you. I will speak when you are finished. I want this man Hawke to use all of his connections in Washington, both at the State Department and the White House, to dissuade the United States from taking any preemptory offensive action against my new government.”

“That’s it?”

“Almost. Have you ever heard this Hawke mention a map? A treasure map, let us say?”

“No, never.”

“It is not the reason he has returned to the Exumas after all these years?”

“It’s a holiday, General. He likes to fish.”

“Ah, well. If your memory doesn’t improve, I’m sure you’ll have a chance to discuss it in detail with this gentleman on my right. Meanwhile, I will conclude the tape by saying that if there is any rescue attempt whatsoever you will be shot immediately. How does that sound?”

He handed her a copy of today’s Miami Herald. “You will then end this message by reading this front page headline and the date. So there will be no doubt on the other side. You understand?”

“Perfectly. Turn the thing on, please.”

General de Herreras flipped a switch on the recorder. “One more thing,” he said, pulling an envelope from inside his jacket and then sliding it across the desk toward her.

She opened the envelope and looked inside. It was the golden locket that Alex had given to her.

“This locket, it belongs to you?” he asked.

“It did,” Vicky replied. “Once upon a time.”

45

Gomer was sitting cross-legged behind the PX bar in total darkness. He was on the floor, a half-empty bottle of Stoli in one hand, his little pal RC in the other.

Any snoopy MPs who happen to walk by and peek in the windows, they wouldn’t see nothing.

Mesmerized by the little red numbers on RC, reading 3000 now but not for long, he barely even noticed the sickly sweet smell of old spilled beer and booze or how grunged out the sticky floor was. He’d take a breath, though, and man, it was ripe. Like a skunk had taken a whiz back here.

He took another biting swig of warm Stoli.

Hell, he’d gotten shitfaced in a whole lot worse places than this! Besides his little sidekick RC, the only light came from a round fluorescent green clock on the wall. He could see it perfectly from right where he was sitting. Keeping track of time, man, that was critical at this juncture.

In between sips of Stoli, he was very busy, going over the Big Plan. In his mind, of course. Nothing written down. To make sure he had the BP down pat, he was reciting the steps aloud to himself over and over.

First thing, you press both buttons on RC at the stroke of twelve midnight. Keep an eye on the clock. That’s why he’d strategically placed himself behind the bar so that he was hidden, but could still see the clock.

Okay, fifteen seconds after the Big Bug Checkout Countdown begins, his pecker starts ringing. Heh-heh. No, no, he gets a call on his cell phone fifteen seconds after he pushes the buttons. He felt around down in his crotch area. Yep. Cell phone was right where he’d stuffed it. Not a lot of room down there where the big dog hangs, baby, whoo-ah!

Yes. Okay. Phone rings, he answers it. What does he say? Um, shit. What did Julio tell him to say? Roach Motel! Yes! He got it! He knocks back another biting shot of room-temperature Vitamin V as a reward. He practices:

“Roach Motel?”

And then the guy on the phone says…what…“Any vacancies?”

And he answers…lemme see…“No, no vacancies, not for thirty hours!”

Yeah, baby. He had the mother down cold!

Then what?

Oh yeah. He takes his little buddy RC and heads over to Sparky’s tower station right on the no-man’s-land fenceline. Gets Sparky to let him through. Then, if Sparky ain’t on duty he—holy shit! The green fluorescent ring around the clock had caught his eye. He couldn’t goddamn believe it!

The clock said it was twelve-fifteen!

He’d missed his goddamn deadline by fifteen minutes! Jesus. Sitting here thinking and drinking and what’s he do? Just misses the most important deadline of his whole stinking life, that’s all. Oh, man. Now what?

A million little green smackeroos sprout wings and fly somewhere over the rainbow, that’s what.

Tears are streaming down his face as he gets slowly to his feet. Puts RC and the Stoli on the bar and wipes his eyes. All his life he’d thought he was so smart. And now he has to face the truth. He is just a dumbass gusano from Little Havana and he always had been.

He walked around the bar and pulled up a stool.

He’d kept his eye on that friggin’ clock up there, he really had, and now he’d gone and—wait a minute. Hold the goddamn phone!

Now the clock says eleven forty-five! What the—oh, man. He was losing it. Almost. Sitting behind the bar, he’d been looking at the clock in the mirror! It said twelve-fifteen in the mirror. That was only the reflection. It was eleven forty-five in real life! He was okay! He was cool! He had fifteen whole minutes left! He was going to—ouch, there was a light shining in his eyes. He whipped around.

Somebody was shining a couple of flashlights through the windows at the front of the PX, rattling the front doors. Had they seen him?

MPs, had to be. Great timing, guys, really great, thanks a million, no pun intended.

He grabbed the Stoli and RC, ran back behind the bar, and dropped to his knees. He had to boogie on out of here but quick. He crab-walked the length of the bar and quickly reached the back door he’d jimmied open on the way in.

Two seconds later he was sprinting through the swirling curtains of rain toward his car. There was a Humvee pulled up right behind it, blue lights flashing. Goddamn. He looked back over his shoulder at the PX. Saw two lights flickering around inside. By the time those dumbass cops found the back door broken open, he’d be adios amigo.

He opened his car door and tossed the Stoli and the RC on the front seat. Then he jumped behind the wheel and twisted the key in the ignition.

Aw shit, not now. Piece of crap Yugo, come on! Start, goddammit! Rain must have blown up under the distributor cap, that was it. Of all the times to—wait. Better idea.

He grabbed his bottle and RC, jumped out of his car, and ran back to the MP’s Hummer. Keys were in! Yes! There was a God!

He slammed the Humvee in gear, reversed, and saw the two flashlights bobbing through the rain, headed his way. Going to try and cut him off. No way, girls. He bounced back over the curb, put it in first, and stood on it, swerving up onto the grass, then back down the service driveway to the main drag, hauling complete ass. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to midnight. He hung a Louie and headed for Sparky’s watch tower, looking in the rearview.

Careening around the corner on two wheels, he was mystified to see another Humvee with its blue flashers going, blocking the street. Jesus H. Christ! He hit the brakes, skidded short of the two MPs standing there, and slammed it into reverse, knocking over some guy’s arty-farty mailbox. Shit happens, neighbors.

Well, now, goddamn it all to hell. Here came the two Keystone Kops from the PX, running around the corner and blocking his “Escape and Evasion” maneuver. Held up his watch. Seven minutes. RC was on the seat beside him, thirty hours and seven minutes to payday. He just had to play it cool was all. The way he’d always played it, right?

The two MPs in front stayed put. Hands on their sidearms, tough guys, watching too many episodes of JAG lately.

He craned his neck around and saw the two dickwads behind him coming toward his car. One guy stayed at the rear on the passenger side, the other one walked slowly up to his window. He rolled it down, nice and polite like, shoving the Stoli bottle under the seat with his right hand. He’d like to hide RC, but here was the guy shining some bright light right in his damn window.

Five minutes. He felt the Vitamin V pumping hot in his veins. Hell, any fool could stay cool for five more goddamn minutes.

“How we doin’ tonight, sailor?” the MP said.

“Just fine,” he said, giving the guy a big smile. He couldn’t even see the guy’s face, the light was so bright.

“What exactly you doing in the PX on a rainy Sunday night, sailor?”

“Just having a little drinky-poo, sir,” he giggled. That’s what Rita called cocktails when she was at somebody’s house for dinner.

“Had quite a few, I’d say. Seein’ as how you picked somebody else’s vehicle to drive home in.”

“No, sir, I have not been drinking quite a few. Only had one, sir. My vehicle wouldn’t start is all.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them.”

“Yes, sir!” He’d been trying to slide RC out of the guy’s sight.

“What the hell is that thing?”

“That’d be your portable CD player, sir,” he said. Damn quick, too.

“Okay, very carefully, get your service ID out and hand it to me.”

“Yes, sir. It’s in the pantleg pocket of my fatigues. Right where I always keep it. ’Cause of the Velcro, you know. Okay?”

“Just show me the goddamnn thing,” the MP barked at him. Touchy, touchy.

He reached down and ripped open the Velcro seal on his pocket. Pulled out his ID packet. An open pack of Rita’s cigarettes came flying out, too, cigarettes spilling all over the floor. What the hell? Oh. She liked to wear his fatigues sometimes, when she went riding. So, that’s where she’d been hiding them! She was going to get an asswhupping for that all right!

Cigarette. That would steady the old nerves. He reached down and picked one up and popped it between his lips. Then he leaned over toward the MP’s light, put the end of the cigarette right on the glass lens, and started to drag on it, trying to get the damn thing lit.

“Hell’s wrong with your lighter, sir. Can’t even get—”

It wasn’t a lighter, he saw now, hell no, it was a damn flashlight. He’d tried to light his smoke on a flashlight! Sent a bad signal, probably.

“Step out of the vehicle, sir,” the MP said. “Now!”

“Absolutely,” he said, moving his foot off the brake and flooring the accelerator. He hit something, felt like a deer, maybe one of the damn MPs who wouldn’t get out of his way, and then his new Humvee was tear-assing across a few lawns and driveways and drainage ditches. He had the ideal “Escape and Evasion” vehicle, all right.

There were a whole lot of flashing blue lights in his rearview now. Shit, looked like the whole damn military police force was on his ass. Too late, kiddies, too damn late! He knew a shortcut to Sparky’s tower. He could be there in two minutes. He banged a wall hanging a hard right and banged walls a few more times going down the alley, sending trashcans flying left and right.

His watch said three minutes till twelve. He was going to make it, goddammit. He was going to pull this big bad mother out of the fire.

He burst out of the alley and there it was. Tower 22. Home of his best buddy, Sparky Rollins. All he had to do now was cross that baseball diamond and then a big open field and he was home free. No flashers in the rearview now. Good, they musta missed his shortcut. He accelerated across the diamond and decided to take out a row of bleachers down the right field line just for fun. Hell, it wasn’t his Humvee.

Then he was tear-assing across the open field, friggin’ airborne half the time. What a ride! His old heap would never have made it across all these damn flooded ditches and bushes and shit. To his left, he could see a train of blue flashers as the Humvees came to a stop in the parking lot of the baseball field. Then they too started racing across the diamond towards him. He managed a peek at his watch.

Thirty seconds.

He skidded to a stop a hundred yards from Sparky’s tower, jumped out, and ran over to the base. Cupping his hands, he yelled up to the tower.

“Sparky! My man! Sparky, you up there?”

“Sparky’s off duty tonight,” a guy up in the tower yelled down. “Identify yourself! Who the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing?” Guy had an M-16 pointed right at him.

“I’ll show you what I’m doing!” Gomer said, jumping back in his Humvee. “Watch this, asshole!”

He reversed back a hundred yards and stopped. The fleet of Humvees was racing across the field toward him, all fanned out, thinking about surrounding his ass.

He looked at his watch and saw the second hand coming around, come on, baby, come on, yes! He had the RC in his lap, staring at it. Twelve midnight on the button! Two buttons actually and he pushed both of them simultaneously just like Julio Iglesias had told him.

The red numbers instantly started rolling backwards.

The Big Bug Checkout Countdown had begun.

The whole U.S. cavalry was maybe two hundred yards behind him now and coming fast. He rammed the Humvee in first and floored it. He was headed straight for the fence, screaming at the top of his lungs. Glass was shattering and hitting him in the face and he realized the guy on the tower was shooting at him!

One of his own guys was shooting at him! Friendly fire? No such luck, pal. Court-martial time for somebody!

He was going eighty when he hit the wire fence. It slowed him down a little, and he took a lot of goddamn fence with him and he musta hit one leg of the tower by mistake because it looked like it was starting to topple over, but goddammit, he was headed for the promised land now!

He took a quick look over his shoulder. There was the guy on the tower, only now he was pinwheeling in the air, headed for the ground. He saw that all the Humvees had stopped short of the fenceline. Of course. You’d have to be crazy to drive across a goddamn minefield on a rainy night, right? He was peering over the top of the steering wheel, wondering if the mines would be like little bumps that he could steer around, when he felt his pecker humming.

He jammed one hand down inside his jeans and pulled out his cell phone, put it to his ear. Damn, it was hard to drive with one hand but what else were you supposed to do?

“Roach Motel,” he said, realizing that his mind was totally clear but that he was screaming.

“Any vacancies?”

“No. No fucking vacancies for thirty hours.”

“Muchas gracias, amigo. Viva Cuba!” the guy said.

Then there was a click in his ear and then a much louder noise, some kind of explosion, and he felt the entire Humvee lift into the air, seeming to break in half as it rose. Then it was falling end-over-end and he seemed to be upside down and there was this terrible ripping pain in both legs, hurt so bad he couldn’t believe it and then—

He opened his eyes.

He was lying on his back in a ditch full of water. Rain was still falling hard, stinging his face. Stuff was on fire all around him. Shit, his own T-shirt was on fire! He scooped a handful of muddy water from the ditch and put it out. Had to get moving. Had to deliver the RC and get his money. He could even see the Cuban towers now, they all had their spotlights trained on him. He’d been so close!

He’d just have to walk this last part, that’s all. He felt woozy, but he could do it if he could just get his legs to move. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t even feel his legs in fact. He reached down to where he thought they were and—