Hawke

As soon as Kittyhawke was safely secured, Hawke raced up to Blackhawke’s sickbay. Stokely was sitting up in bed, haranguing the doctor, when Hawke walked in. Clearly, Dr. Elke Nilsson was not accustomed to being admonished. A blond, blue-eyed Dane, she had signed on two years earlier, when Blackhawke spent one month in Copenhagen harbor on special assignment for the British government.

Alex and Ambrose had successfully broken up a Serbian diamond smuggling ring, flipping witnesses and suspects until they’d climbed the slippery ladder all the way to Milosevic himself. Slobo was a very busy boy. Alex, unfortunately, had gotten a pair of souvenirs of the exploit, courtesy of a Serb gunman.

Dr. Nilsson had come aboard to treat Alex, successfully extracting two bullets embedded in his right buttock, and she’d been hired on the spot. The fact that the new ship’s doctor bore a startling resemblance to her twin sister, the reigning Miss Denmark, had no bearing on Hawke’s decision. He vetted her qualifications very carefully after hiring her.

Fortunately, she’d not yet learned enough colloquial English to understand the torrent of undeleted expletives that Stoke was hurling in her direction. The term “booty,” for instance, had not yet entered her lexicon.

“Stoke,” Hawke said, “what’s the problem?” For a man who’d taken a bullet the day before, Stokely looked to be in remarkably fine fettle.

“Problem?” Stoke said. “I’ll tell you what the goddamn problem is. Got her little booty parked on that chair right over there! The hell kind of doctor is she, anyway? Goddamn—”

Alex pulled up a chair by Stoke’s bed and sat down.

“Calm down, Stoke,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, hell, first she tells me how lucky I am the bullet didn’t hit nothing important. Nothing important? Hell, everything I got is important! Flesh, bones, arteries, all that shit. Not important, my ass.”

“Stoke, she’s just doing her job,” Alex said, smiling at Dr. Nilsson. She had her arms folded across her chest and had gone quite red in the face. At the moment, she was puffing at a charming little banglet of blond hair that kept falling across her face.

“Yeah, okay, then she tells me it ain’t nothing to worry about. ’Course it ain’t, for her ass! Ain’t her goddamn chest got shot, it’s mine! She got a helluva lot more chest to worry about than I do, don’t she? She—”

“Dr. Nilsson,” Alex said, interrupting Stokely, “I’m sure he didn’t mean…uh…perhaps you could leave us alone for—” He didn’t finish because the Danish doctor flung Stokely’s chart at the wall and stormed out of the room.

“Great,” Alex said. “See what you’ve done? Now I’m going to have to go find some way to apologize for you.”

“How you doin’, boss?” Stoke said, a wide grin on his face. “You heard all what happened? Five of the best, my brother!”

“I heard all about it from Ross,” Alex said, slapping Stoke’s palm smartly. “Unbelievable, Stoke.”

“Listen up, my man!” Stoke said. “We kicked us some serious ass yesterday. Serious ass.”

“I can never thank you enough, Stoke. I mean I—”

“Hell, ain’t me you should be thanking, boss. It’s your little buddy Ambrose. That man gets all the credit for this here collar. He been working that case for thirty years, you know. Never told you, did he?”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Alex asked.

“Been working on the case for thirty years. Ambrose.”

“Good Lord,” Hawke said, feeling all the breath go out of him. “I had no idea that Ambrose…none. I can’t imagine that he would…”

It was the first time Stoke had ever seen Alex Hawke speechless.

“Way he works, I guess. Low profile. Him and Ross flew over to Nassau and found some old retired cop who’d kept his file. Had the original police drawings of the three perps. Ambrose took ’em and blew the thing wide open.”

“Absolutely amazing,” Alex said, still stunned.

“Yeah, pretty good cop after all, ain’t he?” Stoke said, swinging his massive legs over the side of the bed. “Now, go sweet-talk your damn doctor and get her to leave my ass alone. I feel great. And I got a lot of shit to do, boss, got to fill out police reports and all that.”

“Stoke, lie down a minute and listen to me. I’m thankful you’re all right. Ever since I was told you were hurt, I’ve—Stoke, listen. I’m going to need your help. Now. You’re the only one who can help me.”

“All right, now you gonna get all serious and stuff. Go ’head then. Tell the old Stoke what on your mind.”

“You’re not going to believe this, but Vicky is alive.”

“What? What the hell you talkin’ about?”

“All I know right now is that somehow, incredible as it seems, Vicky is alive. She’s a hostage, but she’s alive.”

“Hostage of who?”

“The new Cuban government. She’s being held on an island called Telaraña, just off the southwestern coast of Cuba. It’s a heavily fortified military base.”

“How you know all this, boss?”

“I just listened to this cassette,” Alex said, handing the cassette and a Sony Walkman to Stokely. “It was delivered along with Vicky’s locket to the Swiss embassy in Havana. You should listen to it, too. She quotes the headline from yesterday’s Miami papers. Vicky is alive, believe me.”

Stoke donned the earphones and listened for a few moments.

“Holy shit, she really is alive,” Stoke said. “That’s wonderful. Now what the hell they want Vicky for, boss?”

“The general believes he can coerce me to intercede on his behalf in Washington. Ridiculous, but there you have it. Unbelievably, Vicky is still alive. But not for long unless we can get her out of there, Stoke. Two big problems. One, she made it plain that any rescue attempt would result in her death along with all the hostages.”

“Just like them goddamn Colombians. I dealt with ’em up in the Medellín mountains. Always say they goin’ shoot the hostages first. And generally do. But we snatched a few live ones, boss.”

“How long does it take to put a hostage rescue plan like that in operation, Stoke?”

“Shit, boss, all depends,” Stoke said. “At a military installation? Five days, minimum. You got to recon the place down to the inch. Know where your hostage is located. Know where the windows are, what kind, how thick the doors and walls are, all that entry and egress kinda shit. You got to intercept all the communication going in and out, so you know who’s who, where they are, and what the hell is what.”

“Stoke,” Alex said, looking at his watch, “I said there were two problems. Here’s problem two, and it’s a big one. At some point, in less than twenty hours from now, the Americans are going to launch fighter squadrons from the John F. Kennedy. Fighters and cruise missiles from the Atlantic Fleet are going to bomb that rebel compound, and anything else they fancy, into oblivion.”

“Jesus Christ. Twenty hours?”

“Maybe less. Now, I know your old Navy unit used to be pretty good at this kind of thing. SEAL Team Six, I mean.”

“Good? Shit. They the best-trained, deadliest, most capable group of warriors in America’s history. Hop and pop, stuff and snuff. Snatch and grab.”

“Stoke, if ever I needed anybody like that, it’s now. How in hell are we going to get Vicky out of there? Could the team you and Quick put together yesterday possibly—”

“No way. Not something like this. No way.”

“So, who? Who in God’s name can help us?”

“Well, bossman, that’s a real good question. Real good. I ain’t sayin’ it can’t be done, all I’m sayin’ is—”

Stoke clasped his hands behind his head and lay back against his pillow, staring at the ceiling. Alex could almost hear the wheels spinning. A minute later, he sat bolt upright in bed, a big grin on his face.

“Thunder and Lightnin’!” he said.

“What’s that?”

“The sons of beaches, that’s who. Navy SEALs. They were my two Team Six platoon leaders, now semiretired,” Stoke said. “Mr. Thunder and Mr. Lightning. That’s what we called them two headbangers. Call one Thunder ’cause he good at blowing things up. Call the other Lightnin’ because you dead and he’s gone before you know what hit you. Man is one cold-blooded assassin. If anybody on this planet can get Vicky out of there alive, they the ones.”

“Where are they?” Alex asked, leaning forward, hope showing in his eyes for the first time since he’d heard Vicky’s voice on the tape.

“Martinique,” Stoke said. “They run their operations out of a base camp on the cape by St. Marin. Where the St. Lucia Channel meets the Atlantic.”

“Operations?” Hawke asked eagerly. “What kind of operations?”

“Well, secret shit, you know? Black ops. They all mercenaries now. Soldiers of fortune. Go anywhere in the world, blowin’ shit up for people who don’t want their name in the papers. Got their own patched-up old C-130. Flyin’ in, snatchin’ and grabbin’, killing terrorists. All that good stuff.”

“Hostage rescue?” Hawke asked.

“Best freelance hostage rescue team in the world. Bar none.”

“How many of them?”

“Their team size varies all the time. That business, folks tend to come and go. Like a SEAL platoon, two squads, seven guys each. They got a platoon standing by, generally. Last time I talked to them, they had about fifteen or so commandos down there. Constant training.”

“All ex-SEALs?”

“Nope. Got a couple of Viet Montagnards. Three or four frogs, ex–Foreign Legion desert warfare types, couple of real badass Gurkhas from Nepal, and the rest former SEALs, some seriously bad dudes, boss.”

“Can you set something up, Stoke? Now?”

“Depends on if we catch ’em at home, boss. They on business trips mostly. Frequent fliers, frequent drinkers, frequent headbands.”

“Stoke, they’re our only hope.”

“Soon as that little Danish pastry doctor lets my ass out of this sickbay, I’ll get on it.”

“You’re out and on it, Stoke,” Hawke said. “Head up to the bridge and try to raise these guys on the sat phone. We can fly down there as soon as Kittyhawke’s been refueled.”

“Thunder and Lightnin’, boss, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Stoke said, throwing back the covers, and literally leaping out of bed. “Boom! Crash! Bang!”

Alex found Ambrose on deck just outside the man’s personal cabin. He was standing at the portside rail, watching the gulls dive, and puffing thoughtfully on his pipe. He was wearing a monogrammed navy silk bathrobe with red piping and mismatched red and blue leather slippers.

His hair was standing straight up as if he’d just climbed out of bed, which in fact he had.

Hawke crept silently across the teak decks and joined his friend at the varnished mahogany rail.

He put his hand on the man’s shoulder, which made him jump almost a foot in the air. “Hullo, old thing,” Hawke said.

“Good Lord! Alex!” Ambrose exclaimed.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t hear me land a little while ago?”

“Well, I, er, just woke up and—” He pulled two wads of yellow beeswax from his ears. “I, er, use these at night. My own snoring, you see, is so dreadfully loud that it wakes me up.”

“Aha,” Alex said. “I just came from seeing Stoke down in sickbay. I can’t tell you how I feel about what you and Stokely did. It’s just too—”

“You’re not upset?”

“Good God, no! Ambrose, listen to me. There are simply no words in my mind to describe what’s in my heart. To say that I am deeply and profoundly grateful is so woefully inadequate, I can’t even say it.”

“Since we never discussed the matter, I mean, well, frankly I always felt a little guilty about—”

“There is no vocabulary, Ambrose, that can convey enough to thank you for what you’ve done.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a police officer, Alex. Just doing my duty. The truth is you solved the case yourself, whether you realize it or not.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! It was all your hard work that—”

“The photograph you spotted, Alex. The old Polaroid. It was the critical piece of inductive information that made all the other pieces of the puzzle fit.”

“I couldn’t see it. You did.”

“You saw it, Alex. Your mind just wasn’t ready for it yet.”

“Yes. I’ve had some kind of a—breakthrough. I’ve never felt better. Hard to describe the feeling. Clarity, perhaps.”

Alex put his hands on both of Ambrose’s shoulders and squeezed. Congreve saw tears threatening, but Alex blinked them back and smiled.

“Ambrose, time is short and I’ve some incredible news to tell you. But first, how are you? Ross said you were hit?”

“Oh, good Lord, I’m fine. Just a wee bruise over my heart is all. Ouch, yes, right there. I’d be dead, certainly, had not Stokely made me wear his perfectly hideous vest. Most unattractive.”

Hawke laughed, and said, “Ambrose, Vicky is alive.”

“What!” Ambrose exploded. “You can’t mean it! I mean to say, how on earth—”

“Don’t ask me how, I don’t know. Nor have I time to speculate. All I know is that she’s alive and being held hostage by the Cubans. By General Manso de Herreras.”

“The brother of Admiral Carlos de Herreras, the man I arrested.”

“Exactly,” Alex said. Taking his friend by the arm, Hawke said, “Come for a quick stroll around the decks, and I’ll tell you my immediate plans. God willing, I’m off again within the hour.”

Alex recounted the whole thing: his meeting aboard the JFK, his conversation with the secretary of state, Vicky’s cassette, and his most recent chat with Stokely. They reached the stern, and both settled into the comfortable banquette.

“Thunder and Lightning?” Ambrose said, relighting his pipe. “I certainly like the sound of that.”

“Let’s hope they live up to their celestial billing, old boy.”

“Yes,” Ambrose said. “We should drink a toast.” Picking up the nearest phone, he said, “Congreve here, sorry to trouble you. I’d like two very spicy Bloody Marys, please? Fine. That will be all, thank you.”

“I’d love to join you,” Alex said, “but Stokely and I are taking off for Martinique as soon as Kittyhawke’s tanks are topped off and we’ve loaded all of Stoke’s SEAL equipment.”

“I’m very glad for you, Alex,” Ambrose said. “You’ve made a great leap forward, you know, coming to grips with the past. And, of course, it’s splendid news about Vicky. If anyone can save her, you two can.”

“We’ll get her out,” Hawke said, his jaw set. “I’m going to make a copy of the treasure map in case I need a bargaining chip for Señor de Herreras.”

“I must say, Alex, I’ve never in my life seen you happier.”

“I admit I’ve never felt quite this way before. I always imagined I was a fairly happy-go-lucky sort of fellow. But now—look, here comes Sniper!”

The steward had arrived with Ambrose’s cocktail order, and the parrot was perched on the man’s shoulder. Upon seeing Alex, the big bird immediately flew to its owner’s outstretched forearm.

“Good fellow. Look at you, Sniper, you’ve grown fat. What have they been feeding you?”

“I saw him eat an entire tin of Beluga last evening,” Ambrose said.

“Well, he deserves it. Don’t you, Sniper? Speaking of which, I think you deserve something as well, Constable.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You’ve had enough excitement for one voyage. While Stokely and I are gone, I want you and Sutherland to go somewhere and relax. Perhaps play a little golf. I know how you love it and I feel guilty keeping you cooped up on the boat for so long.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alex,” Ambrose said. “I’ve enjoyed every second of it! Bloody marvelous expedition. One of our best!”

“I insist, old thing. There must be someplace here in these islands with a golf course worthy of your mighty swing and delicate touch around the greens.”

“Well, in that case, there is one course that Sutherland and I have been looking into. On the odd chance that we might have a little free time, of course.”

“Well, there you have it. Pack up your bags and sticks and go enjoy yourselves. It will do you a world of good. Send me the bill.”

“Very generous, Alex, I must say.”

“Nonsense. What’s the name of the course, by the way? The Lyford Cay Club in Nassau, I imagine.”

“No, no. A lovely old course down in the Dominican Republic, actually. Blessed with a rather poetic name. It’s called Dientes de Perro.”

“Translation?” Alex asked, getting up and stretching his legs.

“I’ll send you a postcard.”

“Well, keep your head down, old boy. Godspeed.”

Ambrose watched his friend saunter away, the parrot bobbing on his shoulder. The tune Hawke was whistling floated back to Ambrose. It had to be thirty years old, but he recognized the lovely melody instantly.

It was the famous theme song from Lady Catherine Hawke’s last film, Southern Belle, the marvelous story of Abigail Lee, a beautiful woman who is killed defending her Low Country South Carolina plantation against a marauding Union army. Coming back from the dead as a ghost, she bedevils and haunts the rapacious Union general who now occupies her beloved ancestral Barnwell Island home.

In a most surprising way, Ambrose thought, sipping his Bloody Mary, Alex Hawke seemed to be coming back from the dead, too. For the first time since he’d met the boy, long ago on Greybeard Island, he could actually say that Alexander Hawke was on the road to peace.

49

Alex banked hard left, and Kittyhawke slipped down through vast canyons of sunlit clouds.

“Is that it, Stoke?” he asked.

There was a narrow slash in the undulating green canopy of trees below. A couple of hundred yards wide and about half a mile long, this gash in the jungle was definitely not on the chart of Martinique spread across Hawke’s knees.

Stoke cocked his head toward the window and said, “That’s it, all right, Bossman. Home of Thunder and Lightning itself. That hangar down there, covered with vines and shit, is where they keep the C-130. Big black mother.”

Alex came around and lined up on the end of the jungle runway, lowered his flaps and got his retractable wheels down. No tower, no air boss scrutinizing his approach and the runway wasn’t even bobbing up and down. Easy peas, as they used to say during his Dartmouth days.

Only when a couple of Jeeps emerged from the trees and raced down the runway to an apron at the far end did he see any signs of life. Once there, both Jeeps turned so that they were facing the incoming airplane and turned their headlights on.

“Means it’s okay to land,” Alex heard Stoke say in his headphones, and he eased the little seaplane in over the treetops and dropped in for a three-point landing.

Ten minutes later, Alex and Stokely were in the back of one of the two Jeeps, bouncing along a dirt road that snaked upwards through the jungle. It was good Stoke had asked for two Jeeps. His SEAL toys filled up most of the second one.

“Wait till you see this joint,” Stoke said. “It is something else.”

Alex had been enjoying the riot of color everywhere he looked. It was like racing through a tunnel of botanical wizardry. Orchids, bougainvillea, and frangipani. Banyans and banana trees. Red, green, and yellow birds that darted and swooped overhead. Shafts of sunlight picked out waterfalls splashing into small pools and spilling across the road.

He was finding the humid heat of Martinique deliciously lush after the dry, sparse vegetation of the Exumas and Bahamas.

“It’s an old fort,” Stoke said. “Place was falling down years ago, when the boys first came down here and bought it. But the troops spent all their spare time fixing it up real good. Look up there, see it?”

The Jeep came over a rise, and Alex saw the small fortress sitting atop one of the many green hills that paraded down to the sea. It looked to be late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, most probably English, Hawke thought, judging by the design of the crenellated battlements and guard towers at the four corners.

Colonized by France in 1635, Martinique had remained a French possession, save three brief periods of foreign occupation by Britain. The old fort was incredibly sited and gleaming white in the morning sunlight. Stoke had not overstated the facts, Alex saw as they drew near, the fortress was indeed something else.

“See all them shiny cannons poking out all around the top?” Stoke asked.

“Yes,” Hawke said. “Magnificent.”

“Well, guess what,” Stoke said. “They all work. Only fire ’em on special occasions, birthdays and Bastille Days and shit like that. But you should hear those mofos roar. Man, you talk about thunder and lightning!”

“What do they call the fort, Stoke?”

“Well, it had some fancy French name when they first bought it, but the boys renamed it. It’s officially called Fort Whupass now.”

Hawke laughed. “Fort Whupass,” he said, loving the sound of it.

The fellow driving their Jeep, a Martiniquais, who had forearms like lodgepoles sticking out of his olive-green T-shirt, turned around and smiled at him. “Oui, c’est ça! Bienvenue à Fort Whupass, mes amis,” he said in his Creole patois.

“Merci bien,” Hawke replied, looking up into the trees. “Il fait tres beau ici.”

“Oui, merveilleux.”

“Vous êtais ici, maintenant?”

“Non, pour la journée seulement.”

“Ah, oui, alors—”

The Jeep finally emerged from the dense jungle, and Hawke could see the sandy road ahead, climbing up to the wall of the fortress. He was astounded to see a large rectangular platform being lowered as the Jeep drew near.

“A drawbridge?” Hawke asked, incredulous.

“Damn right, a drawbridge,” Stoke said. “Ain’t regulation without one. And a moat, too, full of big-ass alligators. You going to have a fort you got to do it right! Besides, these boys don’t want nobody sneaking up on they ass.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Stoke looked at him for a beat and then said, “Well, maybe about the alligators. There is a moat, though. Big-ass moat.”

“A moat, Stoke? In Martinique?”

“Well, no, ain’t really no moat either. But they always talkin’ ’bout puttin’ one in. Can’t ever have enough security when every terrorist organization on earth hates your ass. Boys done moved three times in the last fifteen years.”

They were just passing under a tree and Hawke glanced up to see a man in jungle camo perched on a high branch. He was cradling a high-powered rifle with a scope. The sniper saw Hawke staring and waved.

The two Jeeps barreled across the lowered platform, which Hawke saw actually did cover a deep ravine, and screeched to a halt inside the open stone-paved courtyard. There was conspicuous lack of activity inside the fort, just a few dogs sleeping in the shade of a four-story structure of whitewashed stone.

The hot morning sun and the humidity were enough to make anyone, man or beast, seek shade.

“Where is everybody?” Hawke asked, surprised at the sense of total desolation that pervaded the old fort.

“Sleepin’, most likely,” Stoke said. “Catching Z’s. Boys had a twenty-mile jungle run last night. They all sacked out in the barracks, which is the ground floor. Second floor is the armory. Third floor is communications and computers and shit. Top floor is where we’ll find our guys waiting. They call it the poop deck.”

“Stoke, you seem to know an awful lot about this place. Why’s that?” Hawke asked, following his natural curiosity around the building to take a look.

“Well,” Stoke said, right behind him and looking sheepish, “I did do a little freelance work down here from time to time. When I was NYPD, you know, I’d take all my vacation time in Martinique.”

“That’s how you’d spend your vacation?”

“Shit, boss, counterterrorism is the most fun you can have with your clothes on!”

“My God, what in the world is that?” Hawke said as they rounded the back of the white stone building.

There was an amazing structure just inside the wall at the rear of the courtyard. It looked like a giant cube of green glass, which is just what it was. Constructed of thick, clear green glass building blocks, dazzling in the morning sunlight, the building had to be thirty feet high by thirty feet wide. A perfect square, no windows, no door that Hawke could see.

“Somethin’ else, ain’t it, boss? I knew you’d get a kick out of it!”

“What is it? Looks like an emerald as big as the Ritz.”

“I call it the Emerald City. But it’s really a museum.”

“Museum?”

“The ‘spoils of war’ museum. Where they store all the things they pick up around the world after the shooting dies down. Whatever the enemy leaves on the ground. You wouldn’t believe what’s inside that place.”

“I’d certainly love to see it. How do you get inside?”

“Through a tunnel from the basement of the main building. If there’s time, they’d be happy to show you.”

“Right, Stoke, let’s get going.”

They entered the main building and climbed a narrow set of stone steps carved into the wall. Four flights up, they arrived in a dark corridor that led to a vaulted chamber. Beside a massive wooden door, in a chair leaned back against the wall, a man wearing a white kepi on his head sat reading a book. The novel Citadelle, by Saint-Exupéry, Alex noticed. Required reading for all Legionnaires.

But he was wearing an old navy and gold SEAL T-shirt and khaki shorts, the traditional SEAL daytime uniform. His head was shaved and he had a black beard that hadn’t been trimmed in years. He had a MAC 10 submachine gun slung over the back of the chair and a burning Gauloise hanging from the corner of his mouth. He looked up, saw Stoke approaching, and a huge grin lit up his deeply tanned face.

“Zut alors! Skippair!” the man exclaimed in a heavy French accent. “Incroyable! I heard you were coming down!” He rocked his chair forward and leaped up to embrace Stokely. They pounded each other’s backs sufficiently hard to fracture a normal man’s spine.

“Froggy! Yeah, the Frogman his own self! Shit! I’ve missed your sorry pencil-dick numbnuts ass,” Stoke said, holding him by the shoulders and looking down at him. The man was barely five feet tall and almost that wide. “You still smoking them damn lung darts? What’d I tell you ’bout that?”

“I take it you two know each other,” Hawke said, a little impatiently. The clock, after all, was ticking.

“Stokely Jones is ze meanest woman I ever served under, monsieur,” Froggy said, sticking out his hand to Hawke. “Comment ça va, monsieur? I am ze famous Froggy.”

“Alex Hawke, Froggy,” Hawke said, shaking his hand. “Pleasure.”

“Frogman was in the C.R.A.P. division,” Stoke said. “French Foreign Legion. One of the few French units to serve in the Gulf War.”

“Crap?” Hawke asked, waiting impatiently for the joke.

“Oui, monsieur! Commandos de Recherché et d’Action en Profondeur! Ze best!” Froggy said, puffing out his chest and saluting.

“Splendid,” Hawke said, looking at his watch. “I think we’re expected.”

“Oui-oui, c’est vrai,” Froggy said, opening the door. “It’s true. Let me tell zem you are arrived.” He stuck a silver bosun’s whistle in his mouth and piped them aboard as they entered the room.

50

Two men rose from a large wooden table where they’d been sitting. Sunlight streamed into the room through open windows on all sides. To the east, Alex could see the dark blue Atlantic rolling to the horizon. To the south and west, the pale blue of the Caribbean Sea. The room was devoid of furniture save the plain wooden rectangle of the table and twelve simple wooden chairs.

There was a sign on one wall, hand lettered in flowery calligraphy. It was the SEAL creed:

The More You Sweat In Training

The Less You Bleed In Combat

There were maps and navigational charts scattered everywhere. Hawke was gratified to see that it was a map of Cuba they’d been poring over. Clearly, they hadn’t been wasting any time since Stoke’s phone call little more than two hours earlier.

Stoke went to each man and embraced him in turn. There was little back-pounding now, just emotion. For a second, Hawke thought they were all going to get leaky on him.

“Boss, say hello to Thunder, this good-lookin’ Injun on the left, and Lightnin’, this ugly-ass Irishman on the right. Boys, give a big warm welcome to Alex Hawke, the guy I’ve told you so much about.”

“Good morning,” Hawke said, striding across the sunlit room, smiling at both of them. “And thanks for agreeing to meet on such short notice. It’s deeply appreciated. Flying down, I heard no end of lies about you two.”

“Congenital liar, Stokely is,” Lightning said, earning himself a look from Stoke. He was a big strapping Irish chap, ruddy-complexioned, and weather-burned, with short red-gold hair that also lightly covered his bulging forearms, and crinkling blue eyes. He had the stub of an unlit cigarette jammed in the left side of his mouth.

“You must be FitzHugh McCoy,” Hawke said, giving the man a stiff salute. McCoy, Hawke knew, was a Medal of Honor winner. In the U.S. military, such a man is entitled to a salute from anyone of any rank.

“Welcome aboard, Commander Hawke,” the man said in a thick Irish brogue, returning the salute. “FitzHugh McCoy is indeed the name, but call me Fitz. My accomplice here is Chief Charlie Rainwater. If he likes you, he’ll let you call him Boomer.”

“Pleasure,” Hawke said to the copper-skinned man, offering his hand.

The keen-eyed fellow studied Hawke for some time, seeming to decide whether or not to shake his hand. He was tall and bristling with muscle, with blazing black eyes and a long narrow nose sharp as an arrow above somewhat cruel lips. His shoulder-length black hair fell about his shoulders and he was wearing buckskin trousers.

He was, Hawke had learned on the short flight down, a full-blooded Comanche Indian. A true plains warrior, he was also the best underwater demolition man in the long history of UDT and the SEALs.

He and Fitz had earned their reputations in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam as part of SEAL Team Two’s riverine operations. They specialized in making life miserable for Mr. Charlie on a daily basis. Thunder, because he always scouted barefoot, saved countless lives in the jungle, finding tripwires no one else could see, hearing VC footsteps no one else could hear, smelling a VC ambush a mile away.

Boomer had earned three bronze stars in Vietnam, and one silver star. Fitz had had the Congressional Medal of Honor pinned on his chest in the White House Rose Garden by President Lyndon Baines Johnson himself.

Thunder finally extended his copper-skinned hand to Hawke.

“Boomer,” he said.

“Hawke,” Alex said, and shook his hand.

“Good name,” Boomer said.

“I inherited it,” Hawke said, smiling at the man.

“I hear you earned it, too,” Boomer said, and settled back into his chair, putting his bare feet up on the table and crossing his arms across his broad chest.

“Skipper here tells me we have a critical time element,” Fitz said, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air. “So maybe we should all get to be arsehole buddies later and get down to business right now.”

“Brilliant,” Hawke said, taking a chair at the table. “I think we just became asshole buddies, Fitz.”

Stokely, pulling out a chair, burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny, Skipper?” the lanky Irishman asked Stokely.

“First time in my entire life I have ever, I mean ever, heard Alex Hawke say the word asshole,” Stoke said, still laughing.

“That’s because I only call you one after you’ve left the room,” Alex said, to Stoke’s evident chagrin and the obvious amusement of Fitz and Boomer.

“Commander Hawke,” Fitz McCoy said, moving over to a large blowup of Cuba on the wall, “let’s get started. All I know is based on a troubling conversation with Stokely this morning. Trust me, this outfit can do anything. But I didn’t like one thing I heard.”

“Fitz, I’ll be honest,” Alex said. “I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest if you just said, ‘No, thank you,’ and sent us packing. Any sane man would. I mean it.”

Stoke coughed into his fist, stifling a snort. Alex was unbelievable. Man just automatically knew exactly where people’s buttons were located. Man had just located Fitz’s number one button and mashed it hard.

Fitz stared at Alex for a long moment, and Alex saw him come to the decision.

“Okay, it’s a hostage snatch,” Fitz said, stubbing out his cigarette and jamming another one in his mouth. “How many are we pulling out?”

Hawke pulled an eight-by-ten photograph out of an envelope. “Our primary objective is this woman. An extremely close friend of mine. Her name is Victoria Sweet. This is a picture of her taken just last week. And this is a transcript of a cassette she recorded after her capture, clearly under duress. I have the cassette as well.”

“Thanks, we’ll listen to it. Meanwhile, how about a quick sitrep? Summarize the situation for us? We are aware, of course, that there’s been a military coup d’état in Cuba.”

“Cuba’s new military regime wants two things. One. Immediate lifting of the U.S. embargo. Two. Immediate withdrawal of all personnel from Guantánamo NAS within eighteen hours and twenty-seven minutes from right now.”

“These guys are in no position to make such ridiculous demands!” Fitz said. “What is this, the mouse that roared?”

“This mouse has two substantial assets,” Hawke said. “A fully operational Soviet stealth submarine carrying forty warheads. And a biological or nuclear weapon hidden inside the Guantánamo naval base set to detonate at 0600 hours tomorrow.”

“Holy shit,” Fitz said. “These guys are crazy. After bin Laden, and all of Al Qaeda’s and Saddam’s subsequent bullshit, America’s tolerance for this kind of crap is zero. These Cuban dipshit generals would obviously rather have a parking lot than a country. Where the hell is Castro when you need him?”

“Disappeared, Fitz,” Hawke said. “He’s either dead or a hostage they didn’t get around to yet.”

“I’d guess dead.”

“Probably right,” Hawke said. “At any rate, the Gitmo CO is preparing an order of evacuation. First step, get all the women and children safely aboard the JFK and other Navy vessels. Once they’re steaming out of Gitmo harbor with half the Atlantic Fleet giving them cover, squadrons and cruise missiles from the Fleet are going to carpet-bomb the place.”

“Including the hostage site, I assume,” Fitz said.

“Yes. It’s called Telaraña. The Spider’s Web,” Hawke said. “Just here, in Golfo de Guacanayabo, is a small island just off the coast of the town of Manzanillo. The military installation there is the Navy’s number one target. That’s where the rebel leaders are holding the hostages and that’s where the Soviet sub is parked. And that’s why we’ve got a time crunch.”

“I have to be honest with you lads,” Fitz said, looking from Stoke to Hawke. “This mission looks like a real goatfuck. One. Who knows when the Navy F-14s will show up? We’ll be just as dead as the Cubanos.”

“Good question,” Hawke said. “I have no idea.”

“Conch wouldn’t tell you?” Stoke asked Hawke.

“I’d never put her in the position of having to say no, Stoke.”

“Two. We’ve got an island with an area of at least three square miles, uncharted. With no SIGINT, no TECHINT, I’m not seeing a lot of ways to pull this off. And, there’s not even bloody time for basic recon. How about HUMINT?”

“The CIA does have men on the ground, inside the target zone,” Hawke said, pleased that Conch had just taught him the meaning of HUMINT. “They created a lot of the material I’m going to show you now. Plus a satellite and a dedicated bird in the air twenty-four hours a day. Predator.”

He put a heavy leather satchel on the table and withdrew a thick black three-ring binder. A scarlet X on the cover identified it as top secret.

“Have a look,” Hawke said.

Both men eagerly flipped through the pages, their excitement growing.

“Where the hell did this come from, Commander?”

“A U.S. Navy briefing I attended on the JFK this morning. I’m sure I’m breaking every rule in the book by showing it to you, but what the hell.”

“Fitz,” Boomer said, tabbing through the book. “Look. A whole section of thermals.”

“You’ll find a fairly complete set of construction and elevation plans for most of the buildings,” Hawke added. “Courtesy of the CIA construction crew.”

“Bloody good!” Fitz said. “And here are satellite photos of the whole installation, some taken as recently as yesterday. We can feed these into the ModelMaker downstairs and have a Styrofoam 3-D mock-up of the entire compound in half an hour.”

The look of hope in the Irishman’s eyes did not go unnoticed. “You’re sounding somewhat encouraged, Mr. McCoy,” Hawke said.

“Aye. We’ve moved beyond the hopeless stage, yes,” Fitz said. “We still don’t know where your hostage is. The way we operate, we clear the room. Four through the door, instantly separate the bad guys from the good guys and eliminate them. We can hardly go building to building, clearing rooms till we find the right one.”

“One second,” Boomer said. He’d been studying the thermals. Thermal imaging picked up any source of heat, men, or machinery, and turned it into recognizable shapes and forms.

“Okay,” Boomer said. “Watch. We overlay these thermal transparencies on this series of sat photos. Now. See this large rectangular building? About two clicks from the sub pen? Watch this. Every twelve hours, a large vehicle, that’s it right there, pulls up outside. Looks like maybe twenty guys climb out, enter the building, and then another twenty guys come outside and climb in the back.”

“Looks like a guard change to me,” Stoke said. “Where there’s guards, there’s hostages.”

“Definite guard change,” Fitz agreed. “Gotta be where the hostages are held.”

“Okay. That’s a start. Now, these are all barracks,” Boomer said, pointing to neat rows of buildings in a compound about half a mile from the hostage site. “Soldiers there will definitely come running when they hear the fire and grenades as we enter the target building. We have a serious need for speed.”

“Yeah,” Stoke said. “Hop and Pop.”

“Fitz’s specialty,” Boomer said. “Here’s the primary radar dome, and look at all these cute little sammy and scud site missile launchers.”

“The sub pen looks like it’s still under construction,” Fitz said. “See all the crap still on the ground? Bulldozers? Steel beams and rods. Tell me about the sub, Commander. Building looks big enough to accommodate three fooking subs.”

Hawke did. When he described the Borzoi sub with its delta-wing design, retractable conning tower, and forty missile silos, both men’s eyes widened with excitement. The idea that this might be more than just another hostage extraction clearly got their attention.

“Can we take out that sub?” Fitz asked.

“Well, it is destroying private property,” Hawke said. “But then again, the world would be a hell of a lot safer place without it. And, since the Atlantic Fleet is at this very moment preparing to neutralize or destroy it, the Americans might just look the other way. Let’s take it out.”

“Good lad. We’ll see what we can do. I’m wondering about this large structure here,” Fitz said. “The one nearest the beach. It’s clearly much older than anything else. Looks like a small finca that’s had a lot of wings added over the years.”

“It belongs to General Manso de Herreras,” Hawke said. “American intelligence has him as the guy who took Castro down. You can hear his voice on the tape. I’ve got video footage of him as well.”

“How and why did he abduct the hostage?” Fitz asked, looking at the photo of Vicky.

“How, I don’t know,” Hawke replied. “Why is easy. An attempt to get me to use my influence in Washington. Affect U.S. policy toward his new government. Ridiculous, but true. I’m going to kill him, by the way. When I find him.”

“Sorry?” Fitz said.

“Thirty years ago, Manso de Herreras and his two brothers murdered my parents. Stokely captured one of the brothers just yesterday and had the bastard arrested for murder. Head of the Cuban Navy, as it happens.”

“That’ll tend to piss the other two off,” Fitz said.

“So,” Boomer said, eyeing Hawke carefully. “It’s not just a simple hostage snatch, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” Hawke said. “Somehow, I’m going to get inside this finca here and kill the two remaining brothers. That’s my problem, not yours.”

The Indian nodded his head. “I understand,” he said.

“Which leaves me with one question,” Fitz said. “Namely, how do we get two squads in and out of there? Look at this place! We got radar here and here, we got fooking SAM sites under every bush, we got two, maybe three fooking thousand troops in these barracks. I mean—”

“HAHO,” Boomer said. “Night time.”

“Yeah, just what I was thinkin’, Boomer,” Stokely said. “HAHO.”

Seeing Hawke’s puzzled expression, Fitz said, “A jump. High Altitude–High Opening. The plane is flying at thirty thousand feet, fifteen miles from the target. It’s night. Nobody hears us, nobody sees us.”

“We use flat chutes as parasails,” Boomer said. “We use minibottles of oxygen to keep from blacking out. We’ve got lights on our helmets, compasses and altimeters on our wrists. We do a long, controlled glide into the LZ. Done much jumping, Commander?”

“The logic of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane has always escaped me,” Hawke said. “But I did a tour with SBS. Jumping was a big part of our training.”

Stoke looked at the two ex-SEALs, grinning. “What’d I tell y’all? Ain’t nobody got bigger stones than my man Hawke here, huh? Balls to the wall!”

“SBS? No shit,” Boomer said. “Tough outfit.”

SBS was the British Special Boat Squadron, whose rigorous training was known throughout the special warfare world as even tougher than the SEALs’. In Boomer’s eyes, Hawke had just become an official member of the brotherhood.

“Right, one more thing and then we’re done talking,” Fitz said. He got up and handed Hawke the transcript of Vicky’s message. He’d used a red pencil to circle four words in the second paragraph.

Hawke stared at it, trying to make some sense of the thing.

“I’ve listened to countless hours of these kinds of tapes,” Fitz said. Depending on the hostage’s state of mind, they tend to use words only a loved one would understand. Or send clues that would be helpful in a rescue situation.”

“Yes?” Hawke said.

“I’m wondering,” Fitz said, lighting another cigarette. “Would Vicky ever use a word like ‘uppermost’ or ‘herein’ in her general conversation?”

“Never,” Hawke said, looking at the paper. “I think I see where you’re going.”

He studied the section in question, reading it aloud:

“—so herein you’ll find me, alive and well but uppermost in my mind is that in whatever time is so far left to me is getting my backside nestled next to yours again—”

“Herein, uppermost, backside,” Hawke said. “She’d never talk like that. Rather cute, however, the backside reference.”

“So ‘herein’ is her location,” Fitz said, spreading out the plan of the hostage building they’d identified. “ ‘Uppermost’ has got to be this top floor. Far left side of the building is here, obviously, and this is the very backside or rear of the structure.”

He put his finger on the floor plan. “That’s her room, gents, right there.”

“We got it!” Stoke exclaimed. “Vicky, you something else, gal.”

“Right, then,” Fitz said. “Why don’t you two guys go get some hot java or chow or take a walk? Visit the Fort Whupass Museum gift shop. Boomer and I have some serious bone-crunching brainstorming to do and no time to do it. Be back here in one hour. That suit you lads?”

Stoke could see Alex about to protest and said, “One hour.” He pushed back his chair and stood up.

When they were outside the door he turned to Hawke and said, “Sorry, boss. I know you want to be in there. But this here one hour is why Thunder and Lightning get the big bucks. Trust me.”

“I’ve got a good feeling about these guys, Stoke,” Hawke said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet, boss.”

“Least I can do is buy you a little souvenir from the gift shop,” Hawke said, disappearing down the stairway and into the tunnel leading to the Emerald City.

51

Rita Gomez was sitting in her kitchen crying when the front door bell rang.

The small pewter urn containing her late husband was sitting on top of the refrigerator where the kids couldn’t see it. Gomer’s will had stated he wished to be cremated, and the CO’s wife, Ginny, had made sure he got his wish. Twelve hours after his death in “No Man’s Land.”

When Rita had climbed up on the footstool to place it there, she’d seen about two years’ worth of dust coating the fridge top. Dust to dust. That’s what she thought, stepping down from the stool.

On the walk home from the small service at St. Mary’s, Amber and Tiffany kept demanding to know what she was carrying. Except for her two noisy daughters, the whole neighborhood seemed eerily quiet.

“What’s in there, Mommy, what’s in there?” they said over and over, skipping along the sidewalk beside her.

She couldn’t bring herself to say, “Daddy.”

The service had been small but painfully long. A few members of Gomer’s platoon sat in the first few pews just behind Rita and the two little girls. Angel, Rita’s hairdresser and best friend, was there. There was an organist. Some desultory flowers on either side of the urn. A few sputtering candles that expired halfway through the service.

Gomer’s best friend, Chief Petty Officer Sparky Rollins, made a brave attempt to eulogize Gomer, saying that he had been a man who had “died the way he lived, on the edge, living life to the fullest.”

It was about as kind a description of her husband’s death as anyone was going to come up with, Rita thought, shifting uncomfortably on the wooden seat. She was fanning herself with a church bulletin. Gomer would have leaned over and whispered that it was hot as Hades in here.

Father Menendez, who’d been counseling Gomer without any obvious success these last few months, gave a lengthy benediction and sermon, none of which Rita could remember. Something about a troubled soul now at peace. Not all warriors die a hero’s death, he said, some are lost in a battle for the soul.

Anyway it was over, but somehow she couldn’t stop crying. The handsome young sailor was gone. There’d been so much hope in her heart that rainy day inside the little chapel in Miami. He seemed like such a fine young man, standing so straight beside her in his brand-new uniform.

And then when they’d had their kids, she’d felt like all of her dreams were coming true. But something went wrong. It wasn’t just the drinking, although that was certainly part of it. It started back when Gomer’s mom first got sick in Havana. When he couldn’t get any medicine for her, and heard her screams on the phone. Finally watching her die in such pain. That’s when it started going seriously downhill. That’s when he started to—the front doorbell rang again.

“Sorry,” Rita called out, hurrying through the tiny living room. “I’m coming.”

She wiped away her tears on her apron and pulled the door open.

It was the commanding officer’s wife, Ginny Nettles, standing there with a big casserole dish in her hands.

“I’m so sorry about your husband, Rita,” Ginny said. “It’s just awful. May I come in?”

“Oh. Of course,” Rita said, standing aside for her and then following her inside. She was slightly stunned at having the base commander’s wife appear at her door. She had been to the Nettleses’ house for a birthday party and to play bridge a few times, of course, and said hello to Ginny at the Exchange or the beauty parlor, but still.

“I made this for you last night,” Ginny said, placing the casserole on the kitchen counter. “Shepherd’s pie. Now, of course, it looks like you won’t be needing it.”

“What do you mean?” Rita said, thoroughly confused now.

“You mean you don’t know?” Ginny said. “Oh—that’s right. You’ve been at St. Mary’s all morning. Well, it’s the most amazing thing. We’re all being evacuated.”

“What?” Rita said. “I don’t understand. We’re being—”

Ginny had walked into the living room and was bending over the TV, looking for a button. The kids had been watching Josie and the Pussycats before going out to play in the back. Josie was still on.

“Do you mind if I put on CNN?” Ginny asked. “I’ve been glued to it all morning. We’re all over the news.”

“No, of course not,” Rita said, feeling completely disoriented. She dug the remote out from under a cushion and switched channels to CNN. There was that big blue banner running across the screen that said “Special Report.” In Rita’s experience that always meant “Especially Bad News.” Both women sat down on the worn sofa and saw images of Guantánamo that seemed completely alien.

Men in bright yellow environmental suits were pouring from the rear of C-130s out at Leeward Point field. There were strange vehicles manned by similarly dressed men patrolling the streets, and bomb squad teams who looked like Martians. Somehow, life at Gitmo had turned upside down in the last two hours and Rita Gomez had missed the whole thing.

One of the famous old CNN guys from the Gulf War was standing under a palm tree outside the Gitmo HQ building with a microphone. Rita tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but she kept glancing over her shoulder at Gomer sitting up there on top of the fridge.

“In many cases,” the reporter was saying, “bacon was frying on the stove and the Monday wash was on the line when the order came to evacuate dependent women and children. Already, security guards protect empty houses and patrol now-quiet neighborhoods only yesterday filled with children’s noisy play.”

“What is—what in the world is going on, Ginny?” Rita asked, feeling suddenly frightened.

“Shhh, just listen.”

“The plans for the evacuation were announced and effected immediately. The base was divided into areas, and responsibility for notification and transportation to the awaiting ships and aircraft was given to the various commands.”

“Why are they wearing those suits?” Rita asked, but Ginny ignored her, intent upon the broadcast.

“The Navy Exchange is still open,” the CNN guy continued, “but it stands deserted. A battalion of Marines arrived during the early-morning hours, and their general attitude is one of calm watchfulness. Guantánamo is a changed place this morning. The base golf course is dotted with the temporary tents pitched by Marines who now bivouac on the fairways and greens.”

“Oh, my God,” Rita said.

“Along with the Marines, bomb squads, scientists, and doctors from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, all in their protective clothing, find no relief from the hot Cuban sun. No one will officially confirm why they’re here, but rumors are rampant.”

Ginny hit the mute button and turned to Rita. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you’ve always seemed one of the few base wives who were nice because of who I was, not because of who my husband was.”

“Tell me, Ginny. The girls and I’ve been over at church since seven. We’ve missed the whole thing. Why in the world are we being evacuated?”

“There’s some kind of bomb hidden on the base. Joe says it’s either a nuclear or a biological weapon. Some kind of new laboratory-created bacteria, they’re guessing most likely. The ‘poor man’s atomic bomb,’ he called it. They haven’t been able to find it to defuse it or whatever they do. So, we’re all clearing out. Women and children, I mean. And civil servants, of course.”

“My God,” Rita said. “Who would do such a thing?”

“The new Cuban government,” Ginny said. “They’re nuts, Joe says. Certifiable looney-toons. Listen, I’ve got to run. We’ve only got a couple of hours before we have to be at the boarding stations. You’re only allowed to pack one suitcase for each family member.”

“Okay,” Rita said, her mind racing. She glanced back at the top of the fridge. There was a family member up there. Did Gomer still count for a suitcase?

“If you’ve got a dog, you’re supposed to tie him up in the backyard. And leave the keys to the house on the dining table.”

“We don’t have a dog.”

“Right. I’m sorry. This is a terrible time for you,” Ginny said. “Listen, you get the kids packed and ready to go. Then drive over to my house and we’ll go—”

“We don’t have a car. The MPs have it impounded.”

“Oh. Yes, that’s right. I forgot. Well, listen, Rita, I’ll pick you and the girls up here then. If you could be out front with your luggage?”

“Okay,” Rita said, looking around at the bravely decorated little rooms she and Gomer and the girls had called home for so long. She couldn’t stop herself from noticing just how dry the dried flowers looked. God, how she’d tried to make this house a home.

“Can you be ready in an hour? The streets are a mess. Packed all the way to Wharf Bravo. That’s where the JFK is berthed.”

“Sure. We, uh—whatever you say. I would think your husband would, you know, fly you and Cindy out? Something?”

“That’s what he wanted us to do. I said no way. I think the commanding officer’s wife’s place is shoulder to shoulder with the sailors’ families aboard the Kennedy.”

“We’ll be ready, Ginny. Right out front on the sidewalk.”

Rita followed Ginny out to her car. The sun was broiling now and she shielded her eyes, waving good-bye as Ginny pulled away from the curb. Just as she was about to turn and go back inside, another car pulled up by the mailbox. One of those gray Navy cars.

Two men, one in civilian clothes and the other in Army fatigues, climbed out of the front, then the back door swung open and one of the yellow-suit guys climbed out.

“Are you Mrs. Gomez?” one of the civilian guys asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“We’d like to talk to you for a minute. Is it possible to step inside out of the sun?”

“Of course,” Rita said. “Please follow me.”

Rita showed them into the living room. The two coat-and-tie guys sat down. One had a large briefcase. The man from Mars guy stayed in the kitchen. Rita saw him reach up to the top of the fridge for Gomer’s urn.

“What is he doing?” she said. “That’s my husband!”

“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” the guy on the couch said. “We’re doing a house-to-house search. It’s his job. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

“Who are you?” Rita said, remaining on her feet, twisting the folds of her navy blue skirt in her hands.

“I’m Brigadier General Darryl Elliot, and this is Mr. Chynsky,” Elliot said. “I’m from JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. Mr. Chynsky is counterterrorist director for the NSA. That gentleman in the kitchen is Dr. Ken Beer, a chief investigator from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He has presidential authority to search your house, ma’am.”

“Fine,” Rita said. “Let him.”

“Dr. Beer, I’d start upstairs and work down,” the one named Chynsky said. The guy in the spacesuit nodded at him and headed up the stairway.

“Mrs. Gomez,” General Elliot said, “I know this is a tough time for you. I’m sorry. But I have to talk to you regarding some things our investigators have turned up since your late husband’s death and cremation. We don’t have a lot of time here.”

“Whatever I can do to help.”

“Thank you. Did your husband exhibit any unusual behavior in the weeks leading up to his death?”

“He was drunk a lot. Nothing unusual about that.”

“Any strange new habits? Disappearances?”

“If he wasn’t sleeping he was over at the bar at the X pounding Budweisers.”

“Any new friends or associates recently?”

“He only had one friend. He wouldn’t know what an associate was.”

“Friend’s name?”

“Sparky. Sparky Rollins.”

“Yes. The guard posted on what used to be Tower 22.”

“That’s him.”

“Did you ever overhear any unusual conversations between the two of them?”

“Sparky never came here. Gomer always went over to Sparky’s apartment at the BOQ. So they could watch the Playboy Channel, I guess. He slept over there a lot, too.”

“Please try to think, Mrs. Gomez. Was there anything, anything at all, that struck you as different or unusual about your husband in the last month or so?”

“Well, Julio Iglesias did start calling here about a month ago. That was fairly unusual.”

“I beg your pardon? Julio Iglesias? You mean the singer?”

“Well, he called himself that. But he sure didn’t sound like any Julio Iglesias I’ve seen on TV, believe me.”

“What, exactly, did he sound like, Mrs. Gomez?”

“Cuban. Very strong Cuban accent. Tough guy.”

“How often would he call?”

“Every now and then. He’d call at all hours. I think there were two of them.”

“Two?”

“Two guys both pretending to be that singer. Their voices were different, you know?”

“Mrs. Gomez, this could be very important. Did you ever accidentally overhear or eavesdrop on any of those conversations?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that. Besides, he always took the calls in another room.”

“Ira,” Elliot said to Chynsky, “we need the log on all incoming and outgoing calls from this number in the last two weeks. Thanks.”

Ira got up, went into the kitchen, and got on the phone. Elliot opened his leather bag and pulled out an object in some kind of freezer bag.

“Have you ever seen this object before, Mrs. Gomez?”

It was a metal box, about the size of a brick. Little buttons on it. Banged up. It looked like it had been dropped from a ten-story building.

“Mrs. Gomez?”

“No. I’ve never seen it before. What is it?”

“Did your husband have any hobbies? Like model airplanes or model boats?”

“I already told you. His hobbies were beer and the Playboy Channel.”

“This is a radio control device, Mrs. Gomez. You could use it to fly a remote control airplane. Or you could use it to, say, program a bomb.”

“Why are you showing it to me?”

“It was found in the mud, a hundred yards from your husband’s body.”

An hour later, Rita and her two daughters were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for Mrs. Nettles to pick them up. The girls had on their best dresses. They had four pieces of luggage. Three suitcases plus an old bowling ball bag for Gomer.

The two suits from Washington and the CDC investigator had finally left, but not before the spaceman scared the kids half to death when he went out to the garage. They’d come running into the kitchen screaming their heads off. The yellow suit was right behind them, holding some old newspapers. Cuban newspapers, he said. And some moldy twine.

“Granma,” he said. “The Cuban daily, Havana edition. Dated five weeks ago. Heavily folded and imprinted. Looks like something cylindrical was wrapped in it.”

“Bag it,” Elliot said.

When Elliot started asking her questions about a bunch of old newspapers, that’s when she’d told them, hey, old newspapers, big effing deal, pal. B.F.D. She’d had enough. She’d spent all morning at her husband’s funeral. Now she only had half an hour to pack up all her family’s stuff and head to the Kennedy. Enough.

He thanked her for her time and tried to be nice. She guessed he was only doing his job. But if he thought Gomer had anything to do with anything at all that was a Special Report on CNN, he was flat crazy. Gomer wasn’t smart enough and certainly not sober enough to pull off anything as big as this big magilla thing seemed to be.

Lost in a jumble of thoughts, she was startled by the sound of a car horn. A big white Chevy Suburban cruised right up to the curb, flags flying from all four windows. The passenger side window slid down, and Cindy Nettles stuck her head right out. She had her blond hair in pigtails, with big red, white, and blue ribbons.

“Hop in, guys! C’mon! Mom says we’re gonna be late!” Cindy said.

Ginny Nettles was nice enough to climb out and help her stow their luggage in the back with all the rest. Then Rita and the kids climbed into the backseat, one on either side of her. Ginny got back behind the wheel, and they were off.

The traffic, once they got going, was a nightmare. MPs and marines wearing gas masks were at every intersection trying to keep the endless converging lines of private vehicles and buses full of evacuees moving. Rita was grateful that no one was honking or yelling, no one was trying to cut in front of them. If she had expected panic, she saw none. These were military families, Navy families, and they acted like it.

There was confusion at various checkpoints over who was going where. Ginny and Rita were headed for the Kennedy, berthed at Wharf Bravo, and Ginny knew how to get there. But there were also evacuation vessels at Northwest Pier Lima, Northwest Pier Victor, and Southwest Pier Lima. There were no directional signs, adding to the disorder and confusion.

At Wharf Bravo, there was a sense of barely controlled chaos on the pier. In the massive shadow of the famous warship, endless rivers of women, children, and the elderly were streaming up various gangplanks. Rita watched them disappearing with agonizing slowness into the many cavernous mouths in the Kennedy’s hull. Twice, various officers recognized the CO’s wife and tried to move them up in the line. Ginny refused both times, and it took another hour before they were out of the broiling sun and inside the Kennedy.

Seated behind a long table were six officers checking the evacuees’ identification before admitting them aboard. At either end of the table were Marines armed with machine guns. The six officers checked every piece of identification carefully, Rita noticed, even Ginny Nettles’s.

Little Cindy presented herself alongside her mother and handed the officer a pink plastic wallet. It matched the pink plastic suitcase she was carrying.

“Okay,” the officer said, opening the wallet. “Let’s see who you are, young lady.”

“Lucinda Nettles,” Cindy said. “My daddy is Admiral Nettles. Do you know him?”

“I certainly do,” the officer said, smiling. “Thank you, Lucinda. Next in line?”

“I hope it’s all right if I brought an extra suitcase,” Cindy said. “I had to because of my best friend.”

“Sweetheart,” Ginny said, bending down. “This nice officer is in a hurry. There are lots of people behind us. Let’s move along, darling.”

“Want to see him?” Cindy asked the officer, putting her suitcase on the table.

“Maybe later,” the officer said. “After we’ve—”

But Cindy had already popped the latches of her bright pink suitcase. A large white bear that had been crammed inside her extra bag exploded out onto the table.

“What’s his name?” the officer asked, with a smile of forced amusement.

“Mr. Teddy,” she said, hugging him tightly. “He’s my very best friend in the whole wide world!”

“Welcome to the Kennedy, Teddy,” the officer said with a smile.

Everyone got a big chuckle over that one.

52

All was still inside Archangel, the C-130 Hercules turboprop transport plane owned and operated by the elite counterterrorist group known in international special warfare circles as Thunder and Lightning.

Archangel had been built by Lockheed in the early fifties and was one of many C-130s still flying in every part of the world.

It was a black, moonless night, and as the big plane lumbered along at thirty thousand feet, she was nearly invisible.

The airplane’s entire fuselage and wings were painted matte black. There were no lights winking on her wingtips, none showing at her tail or nose. Even the lights in the cockpit were a muted shade of red, barely visible from the outside.

The route of flight had taken them north out over the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, then Archangel veered northwest out over the Caribbean Sea. She’d skirt the southern coasts of the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, then vector due north toward the southwest coast of Cuba.

Most of the guys were sitting along rows of canvas sling chairs that lined the fuselage interior or resting atop greasy pallets on the floor. Everyone was dressed in dark camouflage tigerstripes, wearing nothing reflective, faces blacked out with camo warpaint. Thunder and Lightning would be invisible when they floated down from the heavens toward their objective.

In addition to the two C-130 pilots up front and the jumpmaster, there was a platoon of commandos aboard. The platoon consisted of two seven-man squads. Fitz McCoy would lead Alpha squad. Bravo was under the command of Charlie Rainwater, known to his men as Boomer.

They’d been airborne for over an hour. Hawke was checking and rechecking his weapons and ammo. In a coin toss on the runway, he had been assigned to McCoy’s squad, while Stoke would tag along with his old XO, Boomer. Since Hawke was easily the least experienced member of the counterterrorist team, he’d promised Fitz he’d stay right by his side.

In what seemed like no time at all, the green light came on, and the jumpmaster was pointing at Fitz’s squad.

Fitz, sitting next to Hawke, took a long drag on his cigarette and said, “Saddle up, Commander. We’ll dip on down to twenty thousand feet now, reduce our airspeed, and then we go.”

“Five minutes!” the captain said over the intercom.

Hawke nodded. He was thinking about his last jump. He didn’t particularly want to think about it, but it kept popping up. He felt the plane dropping and cinched up the straps crossing his chest. In addition to his chute, he was carrying a lot of gear. Still, he was probably the lightest man going out.

He had an MP5, the HK 9mm submachine gun favored by SEALs, and a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol, both fitted with what the Yanks called hush puppies or silencers. He also had stun grenades and Willy-Peters hanging like grape clusters from his web belt. Willy-Peters were white phosphorus grenades, lethal and terrifying to an enemy when used.

“Two minutes!” The huge ramp began to lower and the cavernous interior was suddenly filled with a roaring wind. “Ramp open and locked,” the jumpmaster said.

Hawke eyed the jump/caution light. It was glowing crimson. He rechecked his Draeger for the third time. Since they’d be jumping into the sea and swimming ashore, all the men were equipped with Draegers. These German-made oxygen-rebreathing units produced no bubbles and made no sound. That made them ideal for secret insertions like this one. Hawke was feeling especially grateful for his tour with the SBS unit of the Royal Marines. He’d trained with all of this gear before.

Most of it, anyway.

Weight was a big problem in the thin air of high-altitude jumps. Many of these men would be going out the door with a hundred pounds or more strapped to their bodies. Two men were going out, carrying two IBS boats complete with motors. In SEAL lingo, IBS stood for Inflatable Boat, Small. Once they’d exfiltrated, each one was capable of carrying a seven-man squad, plus, in an extraction, a few hostages.

The jump alarm bell signaled one minute to drop.

Hawke used that minute to turn everything over in his mind once more. In the plan, worked out over the course of the afternoon, the two IBS boats would rendezvous with Nighthawke, the seventy-foot-long offshore powerboat carried aboard Blackhawke. The jet black oceangoing speedboat, two-time winner of the Miami–Nassau race, was capable of speeds in excess of one hundred knots per hour.

Nighthawke’s huge cockpit and hold below could easily accommodate twenty people. In the likely event of trouble, Hawke had instructed Tom Quick to mount a fifty-caliber machine gun on the stern deck.

If the IBS boats could make it safely to the designated rendezvous, Nighthawke could easily outrun the fastest Cuban pursuit craft. And deliver the two teams safely to the mother ship, Blackhawke, which would be cruising innocently twenty miles offshore. That was the plan anyway and—Hawke’s musings were interrupted—the jump light! It flashed from crimson to green.

The jumpmaster pointed at Fitz and said, “Good hunting, Fitz. Go!”

Hawke stood and followed his squad to the rear. One by one the five men in front of him strolled down the oily ramp of the C-130 and dove off into the blackness of the nighttime sky. It was Hawke’s turn. He hesitated a second and instantly felt Fitz’s hand on his shoulder.

“You okay, Commander?” Fitz shouted over the roaring wind.

By way of answering, Hawke stepped off the ramp.

His first sensation was that of the freezing slipstream hitting him like a wall of ice. Then the huge black airplane overhead was gone and he looked down. Nothing below but pitch black nothing. He checked the altimeter on his wrist. Four miles up. He pulled his ripcord.

He felt the chute slide out of his backpack and separate.

Instantly, he was yanked violently upwards in his harness. Then, just as he prepared to settle in and enjoy the ride, he veered sharply left and began to descend in a ferocious, out-of-control spiral. Looking skyward, he saw that one of the cells in his canopy had collapsed.

“Bloody hell!” he shouted in the darkness. This was not a good start. He yanked on the guidelines, desperately trying to fill the canopy with air. It didn’t happen. What happened is that the crazy corkscrewing continued. Then two more cells collapsed and the chute fluttering above him folded neatly in half. He was at nineteen thousand feet and plummeting in free-fall. His body felt suddenly very cold, and he realized he’d broken into a sweat.

All right, Hawke thought, he’d practiced this before. This was, in SBS parlance stolen from the SEALs, SNAFU. Situation Normal All Fucked Up. But it was not yet FUBAR, which translated to Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. He had a backup.

Hawke did a cutaway, jettisoned the useless chute, and let himself relax into free-fall again. He was now just under fifteen thousand feet, flying on cruise control. He spent the next ten seconds that way, then he yanked the ripcord on his second chute.

The flat chute opened beautifully.

He began a controlled descent of lazy spirals in the blackness. It reminded him of why he’d enjoyed some of his jump training at SBS. Checking his compass and altimeter, he determined that he was descending through ten thousand feet, about five miles from splash-down in the two-hundred-square-yard patch of ocean designated LZ Liberty. Boomer’s Bravo squad was going into LZ Nautilus a quarter of a mile away.

Alpha squad’s primary mission was to locate the hostage. Bravo was going to create an explosive “diversion” of sorts when the time came for both squads to link up and go in for the snatch and grab.

Five minutes later, Alex could make out the black humped outline of the island called Telaraña and the southwest coast of Cuba beyond it. He saw phosphorescent white rollers gently breaking along the island’s beaches. He estimated he had about a fifteen-minute glide remaining, so he just hung in his harness and enjoyed the view.

He was so relaxed he was startled to hear canopies fluttering all around him and the sound of men splashing down just under him. He pulled the cord that inflated his BCD vest, a buoyancy compensator device, then initiated a series of S turns to eat up speed and waited for his boots to get wet. Five seconds later, he flared up and hit the water.

He saw black faces bobbing all around him, white teeth smiling at him. He heard a whoosh as the IBS partially inflated. One man would stay offshore with the rubberized inflatable. His main problem would be staying out of the path of the Cuban patrol boat.

“You’re a bit late,” one of the faces said.

“Sorry, Fitz,” Alex said. “Minor equipment problem.”

“I noticed. Good recovery,” Fitz said. “We got lucky. We just missed landing on the fooking roof of a Cuban patrol boat. He’s gone round that point now, but he’ll be back.”

Fitz did a quick head count. Every man in Alpha had made it to the LZ. It was time to don the Draeger oxygen rebreathers and start swimming. They were a half mile from shore. Hawke could see breakers on the white sand and a dark stand of palm trees Fitz had designated as their next rendezvous point.

Before he pulled the swim mask down over his face he did a full 360.

Finca Telaraña, General Manso de Herreras’s massive, grandiose home, sat on a spit of land jutting into the sea. It was a dark, hulking structure, bathed in the pale blue light of a scattering of stars. Hawke said a silent prayer that two men from his distant past were sleeping somewhere inside. But the finca was not their first objective. First they would launch a surprise raid on the building where Vicky was being held.

“Go,” Fitz said simply, and all eight men dove under the surface and started kicking for shore.

Little more than half a mile to the west, Boomer and his Bravo team were just entering the narrow shoals of the La Costa river. The flashing red and green navigational lights at either end of the jetties were unseen by the squad, which was swimming at a depth of twelve feet.

This is where the Draeger rebreathers were critical. Not a single bubble revealed the presence of seven powerful swimmers moving up the black channel. There were sure to be a lot more guards where Bravo was going than the empty stretch of beach Alpha was headed for.

Hawke emerged from the surf and saw two of his men sprinting for cover into the stand of palms. There was still no moon, but the ambient light of stars and white sand made him feel all too vulnerable. He flicked his HK to full fire and headed for the trees, knees pumping.

He found Fitz and the team already gathered and sorting out their weapons and gear. Each man was being given a Motorola headset and lip mike. There would be instant and silent communication among all the men in Alpha. Fitz’s squad would also monitor Boomer’s transmissions and vice versa. That way, the two teams would know each other’s every move.

Hawke noticed Fitz was wearing a big smile. He had a cigarette hanging from the left side of his mouth, unlit.

“What is it, Fitz?” he whispered. “You seem altogether too jolly.”

“I just had a happy thought on the swim in,” Fitz said. “Does anyone know today’s date?”

“May first!” one of the squad members said. It sounded like Froggy.

“May Day in Commieland!” another commando said.

“Fooking right it is.” Fitz beamed. “Which means our little buddies have been partying all day and all night. It’s 0230 hours. I should think most of them would be snug in their little beds by now.”

“With all ze Stoli and rich Cubano cigars,” Froggy said, “zey might be a little sluggish waking up, mais non?”

“A bit like Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve, surprising the British at Trenton,” Hawke said, smiling. “Bloody bastard.”

“May Day,” Fitz said with a grin. “Christmastime for Commies.”

“Bravo, you copy?” Fitz said into his mike.

“Copy,” Boomer said.

“Anything?”

“Just came up to take a look. Halfway up the river.”

“Tangos?”

“Six or seven, guarding the entrance, don’t look like they’re expecting company. No problem.”

“Twenty minutes to hostage site rendezvous, Boomer. Go.”

Tangos, or T’s, Hawke knew, was SEAL-speak for terrorists. It’s what they labeled all bad guys around the world. He felt his adrenaline surge. It had been a while since he’d found himself in a foreign locale, surrounded by so many men who would like to do him serious harm.

“Froggy,” Fitz said, “get your NV gear on and see if they’ve got pickets out here.”

“Aye, aye,” Froggy said. Hawke watched the wide little Frenchman strap the night-vision equipment on his head and then slip out of the stand of trees. He darted across the beach, staying low, for about two hundred yards. Then he checked up and ducked behind some large scrub palms and bushes.

“Two tangos in a parked ATV,” Froggy said. “Shucking and jiving, mon ami.”

“Have you got a head shot? A clear plink?”

“Aye on both.”

“Make that hush puppy bark softly and wax ’em, Froggy,” Fitz said. “We’re moving up right behind you.”

Hawke barely heard the whump of the two deadly 9mm whispers in the dark.

“Two deceased tangos,” he heard Froggy say in his headset.

Then Fitz turned to Hawke. “The Frogman is our medic,” he said, “on the off chance anybody gets hurt. He’s also the platoon’s best shooter, which is saying something, believe me.”

Fitz then held up his hand and motioned the squad forward. The Finca Telaraña lay ahead, sleeping in the darkness. They would leave it in peace for a while. Alpha’s first stop would be the large building at the rear of the compound where Hawke believed they’d find Vicky.

If she was still alive.

53

Hawke was breathing hard.

They’d covered the last thousand yards of thick jungle at a dead run. With all his gear, cradling the HK MP5 submachine gun, it had been an effort. It wasn’t that he didn’t keep himself in very good shape. The fact was, of the whole team, he alone was unaccustomed to twenty-mile jungle runs every other day.

Alpha squad had encountered a total of six sentries. All six had been dispatched quietly and efficiently. Four by squeezed-off head shots they never saw coming. Two had their throats slit from behind before they could sound a warning. So far, there was no sign of alarm anywhere within the compound.

So far, in other words, so good. Everything was proceeding according to plan. An entirely dangerous state of affairs, as Hawke knew from long experience.

They were all crouched at the base of a towering banyan tree when he pulled up, wheezing a bit. Fitz was studying a crayon drawing he’d made of the compound. A tiny red penlight moved over the surface of the map he’d created based on the sat photo analysis. The men huddled close around him, peering at the drawing.

“We’re here,” he said. “Fifty feet from the sand road. The target building stands there, in a large clearing five hundred yards in that direction. It appears to be surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with concertina wire. The last two days of thermals indicate a pair of perimeter guards walking the fenceline. Cosmo, got your clippers?”

“Aye, sir,” said one of the Gurkhas. Perhaps one of the smallest, and easily the toughest, men on the squad.

“Go make us a nice large hole, lad,” Fitz said, pointing the penlight at an X marked on the map. “Right, I believe, there.” He spit one dead cigarette out of his mouth and stuck another one in the corner of his mouth. He didn’t light it.

“Don’t smoke ’em if you got ’em,” Fitz whispered. “These woods could be crawling with tangos.”

The little commando instantly slithered into the underbrush and was gone. Fitz looked at his men. “It should come as no surprise that the fence may have electronic sensors. If it does, we’ll all know soon enough. Get ready to blow through the hole if all the fooking bells and whistles go off.”

Hawke saw all the men flick their HK MP5 machine guns to full fire.

“Bravo?” Fitz said into his mike.

“Set,” Hawke heard Boomer say.

“We’re cutting wire. Give us two minutes.”

“I’ve got Cosmo in my NV,” Boomer said. “We just waxed two guards and are moving along the fenceline toward him now.”

The two squads would rejoin at the predesignated fence opening. Once through, Alpha would go left to the western side of the building, Bravo would go right to the eastern entrance. This would be the hard part, the hundred yards of open ground they’d have to cover once inside the fence.

“You see any other tangos outside or inside the building, Boom?”

“Negative. Building is dark.”

“Could be a trap.”

“I don’t smell one, Fitz.”

“Good enough for me,” Fitz said quietly. In the Mekong, Boomer could smell VC traps literally a couple of klicks away.

The men waited in tense silence for the sound of alarms and the harsh glare of floodlights. For Hawke, it was the most agonizing minute of the mission. If they were detected early, the guards would surely kill Vicky before he had any chance of reaching her.

“Okay, we got us a hole here you could drive a half-tonner through, Chief,” they all heard Cosmo say in their phones.

“Bravo, go,” Fitz said, at the same time raising his hand and motioning Alpha squad forward.

Three minutes later, Hawke and the rest of Alpha emerged from the jungle at the fenceline. He saw Cosmo, Boomer, and his men already there. Boomer smiled at him.

“Fun and games, sir?” Boomer whispered.

“Just like the good old days,” Hawke replied.

The three-story rectangular building was dark, just like Boomer had said. There was a dirt road leading around to the rear. Three or four vehicles were parked in the front, two half-ton trucks and a couple of WWII vintage Jeeps.

“Somebody check those vehicles for keys on the way in,” Fitz said. “We may just need them. No keys, be ready to hot-wire. Alex?”

“Right here,” Hawke said, sliding forward to crouch next to Fitz. Fitz pulled out his drawing of the building.

“If we got her code correctly, top floor, backside left, Vicky’s room should be right here. Last door on the right at the top of the stairs. We go four-through-the-door and clear the room. You, Froggy, and Cosmo come in on our heels. Clear?”

“Damn it, Fitz, I’m the only one who knows her on sight. I told you before, I should be in the front four.”

Fitz regarded him for a hard second. He saw he was unlikely to change Hawke’s mind.

“Christ,” he said. “All right, it’s your ass. We go in low. Acquire and shoot. No fancy head shots. We’re firing heavy loads. A hit anywhere will take the tango down.”

“Aye,” Hawke said, a grin spreading across his face. He’d known he’d get his way.

Fitz looked at his digital watch. “Twenty seconds,” he said. The men all pulled their black balaclava hoods down over their faces.

“We blow the east and west doors simultaneously. Clear the stairways and get to the top floor fast. Smoke grenades, stun grenades, and frags. Good hunting, lads. Let’s go hop and pop!”

Fourteen men snaked single file through Cosmo’s tear in the fence. A hundred yards to go and the large building was still dark, save a yellow light burning over each entrance. Alpha went left; Bravo went right. Anybody looking out a window would spot them immediately. Alex was in a low sprint right behind Fitz. He was expecting the sound of automatic weapons fire at any second.

It didn’t happen.

When they reached the entrance, every man stood aside as Cosmo placed a small explosive-packed battering ram against the heavy wooden door. No door could withstand its impact.

At the opposite end of the building, Bravo squad was preparing the same dramatic entrance. Everybody strapped his night-vision gear on. It would give them a huge advantage over the tangos inside.

“Blow their goddamn doors off!” Fitz said into his lip mike, and, with a loud bang, the two wooden doors at each end of the building breached inward.

Alpha squad was inside the building instantly, hurling flash-bang and smoke grenades into the dimly lit interior. The distinctive sound of AK-47s, the tangos’ automatic weapons, erupted as the opaque white fog of the smoke grenades began filling the room. Stun grenades were popping at the rear of the room. The white fog was rolling his way, but Alex saw a set of stone steps leading up just in time.

“Fitz!” Hawke cried, spraying his HK at four figures advancing toward him. “Stairs on the right! I’m going up.” The four tangos who’d been there a second ago had crumpled to the floor under the withering fire of Hawke’s 9mm submachine gun.

The firefight was intense now. Hawke knew the hostage guards on the top floor would be dazed but already awake. He took the steps three at a time.

“Top of the stairs, Hawke,” he heard Fitz say, and then the muffled brrrrp of Fitz’s HK submachine gun was exploding inches from his right ear. Lead from the tangos above was whistling by his head.

“Down!” Fitz shouted, and Hawke went prone on the steps, putting the sights of his own HK on a mass of figures at the top of the steps. Fitz propped his gun on Hawke’s shoulder and emptied a whole mag, obliterating the rush of tangos down the stairs.

“Behind us!” Fitz shouted as he reloaded. “Coming up the steps!” Concrete and other debris was raining down on them as rounds tore up the wall and the stairs above them.

Hawke’s submachine gun had gotten trapped under his body. He reached behind him and grabbed a frag grenade off his web belt, pulled the pin, and let it bounce down the stone steps.

“Adios, muchachos!” he shouted. The tangos saw the grenade coming and started to retreat in a jumble back down the steps. By then Hawke had his Sig Sauer 9mm pistol on them and was firing into them. The heavy loads were incredibly effective. Men just crumpled at the bottom of the steps. Then the frag exploded and nobody was moving.

“Let’s move!” Fitz said, and he and Hawke scrambled up two more flights of stairs to the top floor, firing heavily at anything that moved. The heavy fire was returned, and huge chunks of concrete and tile exploded from the walls just above Hawke’s head. He saw two twinkling yellow muzzle flames in the smoke and emptied his mag in that direction. The firing stopped.

There was smoke up here, too, which was good. It meant Froggy or Cosmo had already made it this far and detonated smoke grenades. At the other end of the hallway, he saw shadowy figures. The loud exchange of automatic weapons fire meant Bravo squad was hard at work. As long as Vicky was alive, he didn’t care who found her. He saw Fitz in the haze, motioning him forward.

Mounting the final step, he saw that Fitz was standing in front of a plain door and that Froggy and Cosmo were there, too, crouched on one knee.

There was shouting coming from behind the door. He heard Vicky cry out. He didn’t wait for Fitz’s command, he just lashed out at the door with all the strength he had in his right leg. The door splintered inward.

Hawke, Fitz, Cosmo, and Froggy were through the door low, firing even as they rolled across the floor to either side of the door. Three men, one woman, Hawke made out, as he dove for the floor.

“It’s her!” Hawke yelled, “She’s on the bed! Vicky, don’t move!”

A gaunt, hollow-eyed man with long greasy hair bent over the bed holding Vicky by the throat with one hand, a gun in the other. Another man, fat and sweating, stood bare-chested at the foot of the bed, desperately trying to fasten his trousers, his plans rudely interrupted. Hawke recognized the two Russians instantly. Rasputin now had the .45 at Vicky’s temple, while the fat man, Golgolkin, had pulled his little automatic out of his pocket.

When he heard Alex call Vicky’s name, Rasputin turned and aimed his .45 directly at Hawke’s head. Alex, in the act of getting to his feet, fired so quickly that he’d pumped half a dozen shots into the skeletal man before he knew he’d squeezed the trigger.

He saw the heavy loads blow Rasputin against the wall, several dark stains beginning to bloom on his chest and abdomen. He was already going white, gone. He collapsed behind the bed as Alex turned his weapon on the fat one, the one named Golgolkin, and emptied it into his naked, sweating torso. He’d taken the two Russians out, just as he’d promised Gloria.

“Vicky, get on the floor!” Alex shouted as Golgolkin crumpled, dead before he hit the floor.

His clip expended, Alex ejected it, pulled a spare from the mag-holder strapped to his forearm, and slammed it into the grip of his Sig.

“Alex! Watch out!” he heard Fitz cry. He whirled as the bathroom door flew open and a tall, skinny boy dressed only in his jockeys opened up with an AK-47. The staccato noise of the weapon lasted but a second. Froggy, still on the floor, his Beretta in a two-handed grip, had put a small neat hole right between the boy’s eyes.

Alex climbed to his feet. Three down. He whirled around looking for someone else to shoot.

He saw two other bodies lying at Fitz’s feet. Somehow, he’d missed all that. He looked at the bed. Vicky was gone. He ripped the bed away from the wall and saw her, half-hidden by the first Russian Alex had killed. She’d done just as he said and rolled to the floor.

He bent down and pulled her up into his arms. Her hair and face were matted with blood but he soon determined it wasn’t her own.

“Alex—” she started, but he cut her off. Her eyes were wide, naked with fear, but there was definitely recognition.

“No time,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Can you walk?”

“No, but I can run,” Vicky said with a feeble smile.

As he helped her to her feet, Fitz’s voice was in his headphones.

“Hostage is clear,” Fitz said. “Alive and well. How about it, Bravo?”

“Clear,” he heard Boomer say.

“Anybody down?”

“Nobody but bad guys,” Stoke said.

“Yeah, same,” Boomer echoed.

“Then let’s fooking get out of here,” Fitz said.

54

Having cleared two rooms, Stoke, Boomer, and the two Gurkha Bravo guys burst into a third. It had only one guard.

When Stoke kicked the door open, they saw the guard had dropped his AK-47 on the floor and was standing flat against the far wall with his hands in the air, red-eyed and white-faced with fear.

“I think you can handle this one alone, Skipper,” Boomer said to Stoke. He and the two commandos moved farther down the hall where the firing was heaviest. Stokely moved into the room, sweeping his HK back and forth until he reached the terrified young guard.

“What the hell wrong with you, boy?” Stoke said, sending the guard’s AK-47 rattling across the floor with a kick of his boot. “Big old black man scare you so much you ain’t even going to put up a fight?”

“I—I have orders to execute him, señor,” the guard said in trembling but perfect English. “If there is any rescue attempt. But I do not want to do it. They say they kill me if I don’t do it!”

“Execute who?” Stoke asked, looking around the room.

“Him,” the guard said, pointing at the bed.

At first, Stoke thought the bed was empty.

Then he saw some movement under the sheets and saw whoever it was had pulled the sheets up over his head. Stoke walked over and ripped the sheets off. It was just an old guy wearing some ugly-ass pajamas.

“Get out the damn bed, my brother, you free at last,” Stoke said, prodding him gently with the muzzle of his HK.

“Fuck you,” the old guy said.

“Fuck me? I come and rescue your damn ass and all you got to say—hey, hold the phone, I know you! You goddamn Fidel, ain’t you? Hell, you Fidel Castro! Man, you world famous!”

“Go away,” the old guy said. “Leave me to die in peace.”

“Peace? You call this peace? Hand grenades going off, submachine guns firing all over the place? You deaf or something? Now get out that bed.”

“Where is my son?” Fidel said. “They promised he would not be harmed. No one will tell me.”

“Where’s his son, asshole?” Stoke asked the guard.

“They took him last night. To Havana.”

“Alive?” Castro asked, staring at the guard.

“Sí, Comandante. He was alive when they put him in the truck. I swear it.”

“Hey, Comandante, get out the bed and put these damn pants on,” Stoke said, throwing him a pair he’d found draped over a chair.

“Why?” Castro said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Why? Look at you! A badass revolutionary like you wearin’ them funky pajamas? Why is ’cause I’m gonna save your sorry ass whether you like it or not, that’s why. I leave you lyin’ here like this, they just gonna shoot you.”

“So?”

“So, you a Communist, ain’t you? Man, you on the endangered species list! You right at the top! I ain’t goin’ to let a bunch of dipshit drug dealers murder an old coot like you in cold blood. I’m a New York City policeman! Now, get your damn pants on and let’s get out of here!”

Castro climbed out of bed muttering and started pulling the trousers on.

“You, too, dickhead,” he said to the guard.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. You see anybody else in here?”

“No, señor, but—”

“Shut the fuck up, okay? Now both of you listen up. Pablo, you go out first, then the living legend, and then me. Pablo, you stay tight, right in front of the comandante, got that? Shield his ass. You don’t do it, you try and run, and I’m going to blow your ass off anyway. Okay, Pablo? Comandante? Let’s go!”

There were three Cuban soldiers just emerging from the haze at the top of the stairwell when they came out of the door. Pablo froze and then Stokely shoved Castro to the floor, told Pablo to hit the deck, and unleashed his MP-5. Before the tangos could register what was happening they had crumpled to the floor, shredded with lead.

“HydraShok loads,” he informed Fidel and Pablo. “Some serious shit, ain’t they? Come on, Comandante, get your ass up. We gettin’ out of here!”

The firing at the other end of the building had diminished considerably. Stoke was just stepping over the dead soldiers heaped at the top of the steps when he heard Fitz on the radio tell Boomer they had the hostage and were clearing out of the building.

Stoke didn’t see anything moving out front when the three of them stepped outside into the courtyard. Clouds still blanketed the stars, but he could sense it was getting lighter out. The closest vehicle was a beat-up old Jeep he’d checked on the way in. Keys were in the ignition.

“Get in that damn Jeep and drive, Pablo,” he told the guard, shoving him toward the driver’s side. He held Castro’s arm, escorted him around to the Jeep’s other side, and helped him get in. Then he handed the old man his 9mm pistol. Castro looked down at the weapon in his lap with an expression of mild surprise.

“Now listen up, Comandante, I don’t know what’s going on down here in this whacked-out fucking country of yours. But I do know there’s an eight-foot hole in that fence right over there. About five hundred yards past it is a jungle road looks like it might lead somewhere.”

“Sí! I know it,” the guard said. “It leads to my village of Santa Marta!”

“Good,” Stoke said. “Excellent. Pablo, this old fella is looking shaky. You take him on home to your momma and get some hot chicken soup in him, okay? Perk his ass right up. You got that? Now you two get your sorry damn asses out of here before the real shooting war starts!”

He looked at Castro and leaned in close to him.

“I’m goin’ to tell you something now, Comandante, all right? Just between you and me, know what I’m sayin’, my brother? The truth?”

Castro nodded, just sitting there, looking up at him like what the fuck.

“This Communism thing?” Stoke said, looking at him, dead serious.

“Yes?”

“It sucks. Try something else.”

The Jeep roared off, and Stoke climbed up into the big half-ton truck parked a few yards away. No keys. He’d have to hot-wire it. Just as he bent to do it, the windshield of the truck exploded, showering him with a thousand fragments. He lifted his head and saw more green fatigues than he could count coming at a run down the road from the barracks area.

Shit.

The wires sparked, and the truck roared to life. He jammed it into reverse and backed up all the way to the doorway Alpha squad had entered. By the time he got there, he saw Hawke and Fitz emerge with Vicky supported between them. She looked okay. Hollow-eyed, but okay. Shit, she was breathing, wasn’t she?

“Everybody in the back of the truck!” Stoke shouted, leaping from the vehicle. “We got the whole Cuban Army coming down the road!”

Hawke lowered the tailgate and helped Vicky climb inside, giving her a quick hug. “God only knows how you got here, Vicky,” he said. “But I am going to get you out.”

“What…took you so long…Alex?” Vicky whispered, trying to smile.

Fitz’s commandos, some of them obviously wounded, started streaming through the door. Fitz did a head count as he helped them up into the back of the truck. He obviously wasn’t going anywhere until every one of his men had walked or been carried through that doorway.

“Okay, Stoke,” he said. “All accounted for. Hit the beach! Hawke and I will ride on the running boards and give you cover fire. Froggy, you guys grab a few RPGs and cover us out our rear. Go!”

Enemy rounds were sizzling all around them, a few starting to rip into the canvas top of the half-tonner when Stoke took off. Hawke, on the driver’s side, and Fitz, on the passenger side, each held on to the big rearview mirrors with one hand and fired their HKs at the rapidly advancing troops with the other. The Frogman and two guys in the back of the truck were hanging out over the tailgate firing rocket-propelled grenades at the first wave of green fatigues coming through the fence.

The RPGs slowed the wave of hostile troops down some but it looked like hundreds of them were coming. It was going to be close, Stoke thought, as he fishtailed the big truck in an effort to get the hell out of there.

He held up his arm to look at his watch. He was surprised to see it soaked with blood. A piece of windshield must have caused a deep gash in his forearm. His bloody watch told him they were forty minutes into the mission. They’d been in the building seventeen minutes. If they were going to reach the inflatables and make the appointed offshore rendezvous with Nighthawke before the whole Cuban Navy showed up, he had to get moving.

The banging of gunfire and the whoosh of RPGs behind him was now constant. It occurred to him that, except for his momma, just about every single person on earth he cared about was riding in this truck. Whatever it takes, he said to himself.

He told Hawke and Fitz to hold on and mashed the accelerator. The most direct route would take them through the heart of the tango compound, just west of the big finca that jutted out into the sea.

That’s when he saw the huge Soviet helicopter gunship come up over the trees. Soviet choppers made everybody else’s choppers look candyass. Big old black bulbous things with glass bubbles and turrets and shit. Scary-looking. Its rotor wash was kicking up a furious sand-storm.

Still, Stoke saw the bug-eyed monster’s twin six-barreled miniguns open up and start winking at him. Then he saw it fire two missiles.

“Christ, Stoke! Dodge those things!” Hawke said, firing his HK at the oncoming chopper. Stoke swerved violently right to avoid the incoming missiles and it was all Hawke and Fitz could do just to hang on.

The two missiles exploded about thirty yards to the left of the truck, causing a massive crater. The concussion alone lifted the truck up onto two wheels. It teetered, then finally banged back down again and Stoke got it moving and swerving right. This was bad. Even Stoke knew nine-millimeter rounds were literally useless against armored Soviet helicopters.

“We can’t take this thing out with the HKs!” Hawke said. “We need RPG launchers up here now!” He shouted in Stoke’s window as the chopper roared overhead. “Have someone pass them up!”

Stoke started zigzagging in earnest now, hearing the whine of the big chopper’s jet turbines as it careened around for another pass.

“No! Belay that order!” Fitz shouted in Stoke’s other window. “We’ll never get a clean RPG shot hanging out here one-handed! Stoke, can you execute a one-eighty in this thing?”

“Hang a U-ey?” Stoke said, swerving to avoid a looming palm tree. “I think I can manage that!”

“Do it!” Fitz screamed. “And come to a dead stop. I want to give Froggy a shot out the back at this fucking chopper. He’s the only one of us with the slightest chance to bring it down!”

“Hold on back there, folks!” Stoke shouted over his shoulder. “We’re going to flip this half-ton heap around backasswards!”

Stoke yanked down hard left on the wheel, locking it, and sent the big truck into a hard drift through 180 degrees. When it had completely reversed directions, he yanked up on the emergency brake. The truck skidded to a stop, throwing up a huge spray of sand.

He was amazed to see that during this maneuver, Fitz had somehow climbed through the window of the cab and was now scrambling over the bench seat into the rear of the truck. He was yelling at Froggy and the two other RPG guys to get ready.

The monster chopper had completed carving its turn and was skimming back over the treetops. It was probably surprising to the pilots to find themselves now approaching from the rear. But the ticking of bullets puncturing the hood and fenders wasn’t exactly soothing to those inside.

“Froggy, you remember where the sweet spot is on these birds?” Fitz was shouting at the back of the truck. “It’s an Mi-38 Heckle!”

“Mais certainement, ze Heckle’s thorax,” Froggy said, getting to his feet. “Right below his gullet.” He unhooked the tailgate, let it fall, and stood up on it, spreading his stance and lining up the RPG tube, right down the throat of the big black bird. He shifted his feet for better balance. The tailgate was sticky with the blood of his wounded comrades.

“Oh, shit! Don’t let him get too close, Froggy!” Fitz shouted, watching the chopper roar toward them at treetop level. Soviet choppers were designed to get hammered and not even change course. There was one small vulnerable spot, though, and Froggy had his eye on it.

“Settle…settle,” Froggy said, the tube on his shoulder, ignoring Fitz and all the lead flying toward him, steady as a rock. He was actually calm at such moments. He knew he was probably going to get shot, and since there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do about it, he always focused on whatever weapon was in his hand at the moment.

The RPG had a maximum range of 1,000 feet or so. It was designed solely for land warfare. Firing one upwards was enormously dangerous, even suicidal as a few Sammies had learned in Somalia, shooting at U.S. choppers. Froggy, who had been there, knew he was forced to bide his time. The miniguns on the bird were spitting lead, kicking up sand all around the back of the truck. Closing—closing—now!

WHOOOOSH!

The grenade shot out toward the ugly black helicopter, leaving a white trail of smoke behind it. The chopper tried desperately to pull up but it was too late.

There was a small explosion first, just aft of the nose under its chin bubble where its controls were. The chopper veered sharply left. It went into a rapidly accelerating spin. Fitz and Froggy watched, counting the seconds, praying the hit was on target.

There was an enormous flashbang of light and sound as the helicopter became a huge fireball skidding along the tops of the trees. It tilted violently left, its main rotors snapped and went flying, and then there was no trace of it other than the thick black smoke and licks of fire rising from the jungle.

A cheer erupted in the back of the truck, and then they all held on as Stoke jammed the truck into first gear and hauled ass the hell out of there, headed for the beach.

“Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learnin’ how…” Stoke sang at the top of his lungs. He could see glimpses of the sea now through the palms. There was still sporadic fire coming from all sides, but Hawke and Fitz and the boys in the back of the bus seemed to be doing a good job of suppressing it.

Stoke was driving with one hand now, firing his .45 out the windshield and the driver’s side window. He didn’t have any targets but he liked the general idea of fire coming from all sides of the truck.

Suddenly the truck rocked left. Something had slammed into the vehicle hard on the right. He waited for an explosion—nothing. He looked at the right side door. An unexploded Russian RPG had poked its ugly-ass nose right through his goddamn steel door and stopped! The things were two feet long and there was at least a foot inside sitting there pointed at him!

Shit. He was more surprised than afraid. You talk about lucky. Can’t get no more lucky than a dud RPG coupla feet from your ass. Can’t hang around here too much longer, less luck be running out.

“Stoke!” he heard Hawke say in his headphones.

“Talk to me, brother.”

“The big house coming up on your left, el finca grande. You and I are hopping off there. Make for the trees and drop us off!”

Stoke leaned out the window and shouted at Hawke, who was still firing his HK at anything that moved.

“Fuck you talking about, boss?”

“Pull inside that stand of trees, Stoke,” Hawke said, leaning in the window, grinning his ass off. “You and I have some unfinished business. It might take a while. Fitz and Boomer will get Vicky to the IBS and then out to Nighthawke. Then send an IBS back for us. If we’re not at the rendezvous in half an hour, tell him to go without us.”

Stoke slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop inside a grove thick with palms.

“I knew you’d understand,” Hawke said, smiling.

Hawke then leapt to the ground and ran around to the rear of the truck. He quickly climbed up inside, found Vicky, and whispered something into her ear. She reached up and wrapped both arms around him and he kissed the top of her head and turned away.

“She all right?” Fitz said, climbing down off the tailgate with Hawke.

“She will be,” Hawke said. “I’m sure you fellows will make sure of that.” He looked up at the commandos jammed into the back of the truck and saluted them.

“Well done,” Hawke said, looking each man in the eye. “Remarkable job. Thank you, each one of you, for what you did.” There was silence inside the truck, and Hawke had turned away, when one of the men coughed.

“We know where you and Stokely are going, sir,” Cosmo said. “A couple of us would like to come with you.”

“Make it all of us, mon ami!” Hawke heard Froggy say.

“Thanks, Froggy,” Hawke said, “but we might have a better chance if it’s just the two of us. Besides, I need all of you brave gents to protect the lovely lady. Ready, Stoke?”

“Let’s move out, boss,” Stoke said, and he and Hawke disappeared into the darkness.

There was still sporadic shooting behind them. The fire, though sparse, was getting closer. Hawke heard Fitz shout something obscene as he climbed behind the wheel and the old truck shot forward, spraying sand from the rear wheels, headed for the beach.

Hawke wasn’t overly worried. If anyone could get Vicky safely aboard the inflatable and out to the designated rendezvous with Nighthawke, it was FitzHugh McCoy, Charlie Rainwater, and the incredible band of warriors inside that truck.

55

Five minutes later, Alex and Stoke were a hundred yards from the main finca, hunkered down, well hidden in the scrub palm at the fringe of the jungle.

The place was immense.

Wings extended in all directions, mostly three stories high, some with towers and turrets at least six or seven stories. Towers and parapets and hundreds of yellow lights, oblongs and hexagons, a wonder of golden windows. All was pale stucco, and the many rooftops and chimneys were finished with bright blue ceramic tiles.

Both men scanned the width and breadth of the finca compound with their night-vision goggles. There was an eight-foot stone wall, topped with concertina wire, surrounding the entire compound. The main portion of the house lay some three hundred yards inside the wall. Just opposite them was a massive iron gate flanked by two guardhouses with dim blue lights burning inside.

For the most part, the house was surprisingly quiet. Considering that all hell had broken loose in the last half hour, there was remarkably little activity.

One wing, built on a rocky promontory extending out into the sea, was ablaze with light. Stokely and Hawke immediately deduced it was the general’s living quarters. They could see a few silhouetted figures moving past the windows. On the very top floor, beyond what appeared to be a bedroom, a large open terrace was built overlooking the sea.

“Good Lord,” Hawke said under his breath. “You see that?”

“Yeah,” Stoke whispered. “A damn Bengal tiger just cruised by. Look up in the tree to the right of the entrance. Hard to see him, but there’s a boa constrictor napping on the lowest branch.”

“Are you ready to go rock this boat?”

“I was born ready,” Stoke said, slamming a fresh mag into the rubber grip of his Beretta.

“Then let’s saddle up,” Hawke said, in a perfect mimicry of Fitz’s gung-ho cry.

They had previously decided there was only one way they could both gain access to the finca and stay alive in the process.

So they dropped to their bellies and crawled like snakes across two hundred yards of open sand, dotted with clumps of devilish sand-spurs. When they reached the guardhouse on the right side, they simply stood up and smiled at the guard.

“Buenas noches, señor,” Hawke said. “Habla inglés? I am Alexander Hawke. This is my colleague Detective Stokely Jones. We would like a word with General de Herreras.”

So saying, Hawke and Stoke stepped back and dropped their submachine guns and sidearms to the ground. Then they each placed their hands on top of their heads. Hawke began whistling an old tune, one Stoke thought he recognized as the theme from Bridge on the River Kwai. He instantly joined in, producing a lively if unlovely harmony.

The stupefied guard instantly emerged from the guardhouse, training his weapon on them. He shouted something in Spanish, and the other guard came running.

The second guard spoke English.

“What de fuck you think, amigo? You kill many of my brothers. Now, we take you to the general? No, we shoot you fucking bastards!”

He squeezed off a burst, the rounds sizzling about three feet over their heads.

While the other guard trained his submachine gun on Stoke, the English-speaking one walked right up to Alex, pulled a jungle knife from a scabbard on his hip, and sliced open the blouse of Alex’s tigerstripes. Then he stuck the point of the blade under his chin. He’d hooked the thin gold chain around Alex’s neck.

The St. George’s Alex had worn since childhood caught the light. The guard ripped the chain and the gold medallion fell to the ground. The man bent down to retrieve it, dangled it in front of Alex’s eyes.

“Vaya con Dios, señor,” the guard said, twisting the knife blade so that it pierced the taut skin.

“Shoot these gringo bastards,” he said, stepping back outside the field of fire. “The white man first.”

The other guard raised his gun and racked his slide but saw that Stokely walked directly between the muzzle of the AK-47 and Alex. The huge black man had a small white handkerchief in his raised right hand.

“Yo! Hold up! Flag of truce, son,” Stoke said. “You can shoot us, I know, but I ain’t recommending it. You think we just walk up, throw down guns ’cause we stupid? No. We got important information your commander wants to get his hands on. This here is Alex Hawke. He famous. Man who been fuckin’ with you. General Manso hears you got him held prisoner, hell, he like to pin a medal on both yo’ asses!”

The two guards looked at each other.

“Fuck your flag of truce,” the guard said. “We have orders to shoot intruders on sight.” He fired a quick burst at Stokely’s feet, the rounds kicking up sand all around him.

Stoke ignored it, gave them his biggest smile. “Aw, see, you ain’t thinkin’ clearly. Trigger happy, is all. You just nervous. Get your finger off that trigger a second, ’less you do something stupid. Cheat y’all selves out of a battlefield promotion. Maybe you boys ought to ring the general’s ass up and tell him you got Alex Hawke hisself down here? He tells you to shoot us, well, hell, we shit out of luck, that’s all. Pull your trigger, Pedro.”

The guard looked at Stoke’s eyes. He didn’t like it, but like all men in his position he was extremely risk averse. He told his colleague to keep his gun on them and ducked back inside the guardhouse.

A minute later, he was back outside.

“Vamonos,” he said. “General de Herreras has agreed to see you.”

“See?” Stoke said to the guard. “Just what I told your ass. You shoot us, you in the deep severe, baby. Now, you a national hero!”

“I’ll take my medal back now,” Hawke said to the guard, but all it got him was a jab to the ribs with the butt of a gun.

Hands still on their heads, Hawke and Stokely were marched through the heavy wrought iron gates and inside the compound. They mounted a wide set of marble steps leading to a pair of massive metal doors.

The doors were from some ancient fortification, heavily decorated with shields and lances. A blinking video monitor picked them up, and the doors swung inward instantly. There was a huge entry hall, with candles guttering in heavy fixtures mounted on the walls. Hawke could see a wide stone staircase curving upwards into the darkness.

Six formidable guards, all in black uniforms with red berets, stood in a semicircle facing them. Hawke was astounded to see that the entire group of guards appeared to be Chinese. Then he remembered hearing Conch say that Raul Castro had long been making overtures toward Beijing. Clearly, they’d passed the overture stage.

Conch would be interested to learn there were highly trained Chinese troops in Cuba. If he lived to tell her about it.

All six guards had Chicom pistols on their hips and lethal-looking Chinese Tsao-6 submachine guns aimed at the bellies of the two prisoners.

Someone then stepped forward from the shadows and, ignoring Stoke, scrutinized Hawke. The man had the dress uniform coat of a highly decorated Cuban general thrown over his silk pajamas. It was barely large enough to cover his enormous paunch.

He poked his silver-plated .357 magnum into Hawke’s stomach until Alex winced, then stepped back and smiled.

“This must be Alexander Hawke himself!” the pajama-clad general said in heavily accented English. “Welcome to el Finca Telaraña!” There was the sour smell of rum and tobacco on the man’s breath. His eyes were red-veined and watery. He was more than a little drunk, Hawke thought. May Day festivities, no doubt.

“Good evening, General. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Hawke said, maintaining the casual smile on his face.

“Why, I am General Juan de Herreras. You’ve not heard of me? I am in charge of the whole Cuban Army!”

“A responsibility that no doubt weighs heavily on your shoulders, General,” Hawke said, eyeing the man carefully, seeing a very old picture in his mind.

It was not the skinny one. Or the very fat one who had the machete at his mother’s throat. No, Congreve had already arrested that monster.

No, this was the other one, he recognized the eyes now, the one who held his mother and—it was all Hawke could do not to lunge at the man and rip out his heart. He knew he had to marshal all this anger, compress it, guard his arsenal of hatred jealously. He was going to need all of it if he were to do what he’d come here to do successfully.

“Ah, of course,” Hawke managed to say. “Now I remember. I believe I made your acquaintance many years ago.”

“Really, señor?” de Herreras said. “I don’t think so. I would remember. In any event, my brother Manso is waiting for you in his study. Since you and your friend here have caused us so much distress in recent days, I warn you that he is not in the best of moods.”

“Pity,” Hawke said. “Perhaps I have something that will cheer him up.”

“Excellent! Please follow me,” the general said, and he strode beyond the curving staircase into the deeper shadows of the great hall. Stoke and Hawke felt the presence of the six guards behind them.

Hawke and Stoke had not seen the second stairway. This one curved down into murky blackness. The sound of the heavy-booted Chinese guards reverberated in the stillness. They had disturbed the sleep of two silky Russian wolfhounds guarding the top of the steps.

It was odd, Hawke thought, how removed this bizarre fortress seemed to be from all the gunfire and bloodshed that had taken place within the huge compound. Perhaps these generals did not dirty their hands with mere soldier’s duty.

When they finally reached the bottom of the steps, there was a long red-carpeted corridor leading in both directions. Alex figured they must be a good forty feet underground. The general beckoned, turned right, and walked past several mahogany paneled doors until he stopped abruptly, and knocked on one of them.

It slid open with a hiss, and an elderly Oriental fellow wearing black silk pajamas and white gloves ushered them all inside a massive elevator. He had a wispy little white goatee that looked like milkweed.

“To my brother’s study,” General de Herreras said to the attendant who bowed, then pushed a button.

The elevator came to a gentle stop and the door slid open. The attendant bowed deeply as they all stepped out of his car. Hawke, expecting some grand room, was surprised as they emerged instead into a dark, smallish foyer with a single table along one wall. A gilt-framed painting, lit by an overhead light, dominated the room. Alex bent over to take a look.

An early Picasso in shades of blue.

“This way, gentlemen,” General Juan de Herreras said, pressing his palm against a panel cut in the mahogany. There was a click and a door swung outward revealing a set of steep stone steps leading up. It was suddenly cool and damp inside and the air smelled of, what, chlorine? Alex touched the stone wall. It was wet and mossy. At the top of the steps, two flaming candles hung in iron fixtures on either side of a narrow wooden door.

“After you,” the general said, and Alex and Stoke started climbing.

At the top, they stood aside as the general pushed a number of buttons on a keypad mounted by the door. A green light flashed and the door swung open.

Hawke and Stoke were both struck dumb by what they saw.

The room they entered was circular. The walls and great domed ceiling were made entirely of glass. They revealed what was perhaps the most spectacular underwater view Hawke had ever seen. Huge underwater lights, all hidden, illuminated the scene beyond the glass. Tropical fish of every size and color swam by. Exotic vegetation swayed from the sandy floor.

Above their heads, a great white shark, some twenty feet in length, swam idly by, above the glass dome, followed by a school of barracuda.

“Man living at the bottom of an aquarium,” Stoke whispered. “Look up there.”

Higher above them, at least thirty feet above the glass ceiling, huge stalactites hung down and schools of brilliant fish darted through them. Stalagmites, too, rose from the bottom of the grotto, forming intricate cities of pink and white coral.

The glass room seemed to have been constructed on the sandy floor of some deep natural grotto, most likely fed by the river flowing out to the sea. At this river’s mouth, Hawke thought, the submarine pen where the Borzoi lay.

The tensile strength of the glass had to be enormous, because Alex could discern no seams, no visible means of support. And yet a massive bronze chandelier hung from a fixture at its very center. It provided the only light in the room other than the external underwater illumination. The fixture consisted of finely wrought rings of hammered brass and bronze, getting smaller toward the top.

The largest ring, the lowest, held at least fifty blazing candles, while the top ring held ten or so. It had to be suspended on some kind of hydraulic or electrically powered wire, Hawke thought, capable of being raised and lowered, otherwise, how could you manage to keep all these bloody candles lit? The effect was certainly dramatic, he had to admit.

“Some weird-smelling shit in here, boss,” Stoke said under his breath.

The air was filled with a stupefying sweetish stink, the smell of burning poppy seeds, Hawke realized. He’d walked into an underwater opium den.

“Well, well, well. Alex Hawke himself,” came a sugary voice from the center of the room. Directly beneath the chandelier was a massive oval desk. The owner of that velvet voice was unseen, seated at the desk but hidden by the back of a tall leather chair facing away from the new arrivals. “We finally meet,” the voice said, floating upwards on a cloud of pale opium smoke.

“A dream come true,” Hawke said.

“Let me get a look at this famous Hawke,” the voice said, and a tall, slender man rose serenely from the chair. He was naked from the waist up, his well-muscled back toward them. A long black ponytail reached halfway to his waist.

Hawke sucked down a quick gulp of air as he regarded the man.

There was a spider tattooed on the man’s shoulder. Black with a red spot on its belly.

Spiders were bad. Alex had been terrified of them ever since he’d awoken one night to find one crawling across his face. On his cheek. By his mouth. Had he not awoken, it would have crawled inside—

Hawke managed to let the shock of seeing and hearing this man wash over him without a trace of it registering on his face. By the time the man had pulled a dressing gown from the chair and turned to face him, Hawke had regained the same faintly amused smile he’d been wearing since entering the finca.

As Manso walked around the massive carved oval desk, Hawke eyed him evenly. The candlelight flickered darkly in those dead black eyes set in a face of decidedly feminine beauty. The long hair, still jet black, tied at the back. Too beautiful for a man. Too much raw brutality for a woman.

He was slipping his muscle-corded arms inside a long flowing robe of red Chinese silk trimmed at the neck and cuffs with black pearls.

“The night I first saw you,” Hawke said, “I thought you were a woman.”

“Really?” Manso said. “How very interesting. When was this?”

“It was a very long time ago,” Alex said. “I was just a boy.”

“We were both boys long ago, weren’t we, Señor Hawke?” Manso smiled at the thought. “Something to drink? Or smoke? Our Chinese friends supply us with lovely opium.”

“No, thank you,” Hawke said.

“How about your friend? Who is he, by the way?”

“I can speak for myself. My name is Stokely Jones, United States Navy, retired. NYPD, retired. And I ain’t thirsty either,” Stoke said, dropping his hands from his head for the first time. When Hawke saw the Cubans had no reaction to this, he did the same.

“Shall we relax? Perhaps over there nearer the glass?” Manso said, and he indicated a grouping of mandarin opium beds arranged along one section of the glass wall.

He stretched out languorously on the largest of the beds, strewn with silk pillows of gold and black and red. He stretched, flexing the fingers of both hands.

There was something very odd and studied about the general’s movements, Alex thought. He moved like a fine athlete or dancer, with exaggerated elegance and drama, as if this were his stage and all that happened here was a performance. One whose significance only Manso understood.

Indeed, he and his brother seemed supremely indifferent to the explosive events that had so recently occurred within their own compound.

“Tequila, señor?” General Juan de Herreras said, taking a swig before offering the opened bottle.

“Later, perhaps,” Alex said.

Alex suddenly understood the lack of activity in the big finca. The two de Herreras brothers had clearly just been woken up. One, Juanito, from an alcohol-and drug-induced sleep, the other, Manso, from some blissful dream here in this soundproofed room.

General Juan de Herreras, weaving slightly as he moved, waved his tequila bottle in the general direction of his brother Manso, indicating that they should all join him on the sofas. Alex and Stokely exchanged the briefest of looks, each of them right on the edge, waiting.

Something about the edge. Having worked together for so long, they both knew exactly where it was. All the time.

Alex sat on the corner of the sofa opposite Manso. Stoke remained on his feet, head darting back and forth, his eyes constantly monitoring the six Chinese whose weapons were unwaveringly trained on him.

“A lovely view, is it not, Mr. Hawke?” Manso said. “I modeled this room on a far more modest construction created by my mentor, el doctor. He’s the one who taught me to enjoy killing a man like you. You know of Escobar?”

“Enough to know that I wish I’d been the one to put a bullet in his head. Interesting room. But don’t threaten me. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses?” Alex said.

“A man with an arsenal of boulders, doesn’t worry about a man with mere rocks,” the general said, allowing himself a small giggle.

“This guy could go toe-to-toe with Jay Leno,” Stoke said, remaining on his feet. Hawke could see that Stokely’s patience was wearing thin. He wanted this done so they could confirm Vicky’s safety, Hawke imagined. He was having similar thoughts himself.

“Watch this,” the general suddenly said.

Reaching back beneath the pillows, Manso withdrew a gleaming sword. At first, Hawke thought it was a broadsword. Then he saw that, of course, it was a machete, polished to a lustrous silver, with precious stones embedded in the ebony handle.

Manso rapped the blade smartly three times on the glass above his head. A moment passed, and then three mermaids floated down through the crystal green layers of water and appeared at the window. There they hovered, naked, save for jeweled tiaras, and their long hair floated about their lovely faces as if blown by a light wind.

“Exquisite, aren’t they?”

“Quite,” Hawke answered. “Indigenous? Or paid by the hour?”

“You know, Commander, I’m beginning to take an intense dislike to you, even though you have done me an enormous service.”

“Service?”

“Yes. You locked up my troublesome brother Carlitos, and so saved me the trouble of killing him myself. Now, tell me why you came here to my island before I kill you.”

“I came here to get someone you took away from me. I succeeded.”

“According to Major Diaz, you killed at least seventy of my men and wounded many more. Your timing was good. Many hostages were to be executed at first light. Including your whore.”

Hawke smiled, letting nothing show.

“Without giving me a chance to meet your demands? Apparently you haven’t read many books on business etiquette, have you, General?”

“Ha! This is a good one! Now tell me, Hawke. You are a businessman. Wealthy, powerful, with many, many powerful connections. I am a man with a country to feed, arm, restore to power. Why can’t we be civilized and work together to rebuild a once proud nation?”

“Work together? Don’t be ridiculous. Victoria Sweet is not the only person you took from me, General,” Hawke said, laughing at the man’s insipid notion.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you, Mr. Hawke.”

“Then let me be perfectly clear, General de Herreras. Thirty years ago, you and your two brothers boarded an unarmed British yacht moored in a small cove near Staniel Cay in the Exumas. She was named the Seahawke. Do you remember that?”

“Seahawke?”

“Yes. That was her name. There were people aboard. A husband and his young wife.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, señor.”

“You murdered them. And you laughed while you did it. You and your brothers.”

“Ah, he’s right, my brother!” Juanito said. “I remember this night! I think we were—”

“Shut up, you idiot! This man is insane. Coming into my house making wild accusations. I won’t stand for it. Guards!”

The guards advanced, racking the slides on their machine guns.

“You were looking for something that night, Manso. Do you remember?” Alex stood and walked over to the glass wall, staring out, his hands clasped behind his back.

“I think you’re mad. Loco, that’s all.”

“I was there, General,” Alex said, whirling around, his eyes blazing. “They were my parents! I was seven years old! I saw it all, what you did to them, you filthy bloody murdering bastard!”

“What are you saying?”

“I was hidden. My father hid me in a small locker. His name was Commander Alexander Hawke. He died saving my life!”

“What is this? I don’t need to listen to this!”

“Yes, you do, General, because at the end of the story comes the map. His name was Alex. Her name was Catherine. He called her Kitty. She was a great actress. They loved each other very much. They only had one child. A small boy who had just turned seven. I was in the very room where you and your brothers tortured and murdered them. I saw everything you did. Everything.”

“It was long ago,” the general said. “Maybe it happened, maybe not. What does it matter? Things are mixed up in your mind.”

“You have no idea how perfectly clear things are in my mind. Now. Send your guards out of the room, General,” Alex said. He was struggling to get his rage under control, taking huge deep breaths, and he became very quiet.

“You are joking, sí?” the general finally said.

“No. We have private business to discuss.”

“Business? Whatever business?”

“The map, General. The one you murdered my parents for. You see, you killed the wrong members of what once was the Hawke family. My parents didn’t have the map that night. I did. I still do.”

“The map! You have the map?”

“I do.”

“I don’t believe you for a second.”

Alex bent and ripped open the Velcro seal of a deep pocket on the right thigh of his tigerstripes. He withdrew a small blue envelope and held it aloft.

“Here. This map was drawn nearly three hundred years ago at Newgate Prison in London. The author penned it just before his appointment with the hangman at Executioner’s Dock in 1705.”

“Open it. Pull it, the map, out. Hold it up. Show me.”

Alex did. Since it was a copy, it was far less fragile than the original. The general bent forward, peering at the document in complete amazement. It certainly looked to be authentic.

“This is not a trick?” Manso asked.

“You believe I would come here and chance my life on a trick?”

Alex pulled a lighter from his fatigues, flicked it lit, and held the flame near to one corner of the document. “Now or never, General. Send the guards out of the room.”

“Juanito!” the general said, sitting straight up on the bed. “Send the guards away. Now! Tell them to wait outside. This is a private matter.”

The man did as he was told, herding the guards outside, shaking his head and muttering. His brother Manso was crazy, but what could he do?

When the guards had retreated from the room, Alex returned the envelope to his pocket and resealed the Velcro fastener. Then he gave Stoke a look and started pacing around the vast oval desk.

“In an odd way,” he began, speaking as he moved about, “the rightful owners of this treasure would seem to be your family, General, not mine.”

“Of course! Why do you think I have spent years in search of the de Herreras treasure!”

“They won’t find it, I’m afraid,” Hawke said. “Scribbled at the bottom of the map is a letter from a notorious pirate. Blackhawke. Heard of him?”

“Of course! One of the most brilliant and ruthless pirates in the Caribbean! He’s the one who stole my family fortune!”

“We all have a skeleton in the closet. He is mine. I am his direct descendant. His map has been in my family for generations. Just before his capture and execution in 1705, Blackhawke realized his final and greatest triumph. He took the largest single prize ever captured.”

“Tell me!” Manso shouted, his eyes glittering.

“Blackhawke engaged a Spanish galleon under command of Admiral Manso de Herreras somewhere off Hispaniola.”

“Yes!” the general shouted. “My noble ancestor! He sailed for England with his billions in stolen silver and gold. To deposit his fortune in the Bank of England. But he never arrived.”

“Yes, General. Your history is good. According to Blackhawke’s letter, de Herreras never reached England because Blackhawke intercepted him and sent him to the bottom. But first, he relieved his burden of all that gold and silver.”

“And then?”

“And then he buried it, of course. Fairly standard practice in those days.”

“So! It’s true! You see, Juanito, all these years, I was right! This Hawke family has a map of our treasure’s location! We will find it!” Manso was flushed with excitement. “We will share! Surely there is more than enough to—”

“No,” Alex said, turning to face him. “I have a far better idea.”

“What could be better than—”

“The map is yours. I want you to have this blood-soaked map, Manso de Herreras. You and you alone.”

“You do?”

“I do indeed,” Hawke said. “But there is one very important condition.”

“I am waiting, señor.”

“Tonight, we’re going to put an end to the nightmare you started thirty years ago, General de Herreras.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Simple, really. If you want the map, you’re going to have to kill me for it.”

56

“Kill you for it?”

The general was sliding catlike off the pillowed bed, a hideous grin pulling his lips back, distorting his face.

“Kill you for it? If that’s what you wish, it can be easily accomplished, Señor Hawke.”

He lifted his silver-bladed machete, turned it this way and that to catch the candlelight. Suddenly, it was spinning high into the air above his head where it paused, then made two or three flashing revolutions and started to descend. Manso was dancing beneath it, watching it.

He grabbed it by the handle, right out of the air, and spun toward Hawke, murderous intent flashing in his eyes.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hawke saw Stoke start to move to intercept the general.

“No!” Hawke shouted. “Stay out of this, Stoke. This is unfinished business. Entirely between the two of us.”

“But, boss, you ain’t got nothing to—”

“An unarmed man with vengeance in his heart is the most dangerous of enemies,” Alex said.

Juan de Herreras, wide-eyed at these amazing events, brandished his .357, motioning for Stoke to back off and take a seat, which he reluctantly did. Hawke gave Stoke a look that said don’t worry about this, but Stoke was hardly reassured.

Manso suddenly lunged toward Hawke and leveled a vicious swipe at his neck. Hawke barely saw it coming but at the last second ducked his head and spun away, unharmed. But the blade had whispered across his chest.

Much too close, Alex thought. Was he really slowing down that much?

“Come now. You’ll have to do a lot better than that, General,” Hawke said, circling around the man, feinting this way and that, the slightly amused smile still on his face.

Enraged, as much by Hawke’s attitude as anything else, the ponytailed general danced toward him again, swinging the blade ferociously as he came. Alex waited for the blade’s final arc, swung at his midsection, then turned and arched his spine away just as the tip of the blade hissed by his belly. He’d stepped aside at the last second and the general, who had put all of his weight into this thrust, pitched forward off balance.

“Not quite so simple as cutting cane, is it, machetero?” Hawke said, leaping to the top of the general’s oval desk. “Cane doesn’t move!”

Watching the general circle the desk, Alex had the unpleasant realization that his heavy camo fatigues and boots were making it tough to move about. He’d just have to manage it somehow. Find his old rhythms.

He could easily kill this man with his bare hands, but something inside him, his pirate blood, was insisting on the sword. He’d seen another machete propped up against a Chinese screen beside one of the opium beds. He’d just have to find a way to get to it.

“You English pig.” Manso sneered. “I will cut your legs off at the knees and stuff them down your throat!”

He took a vicious swipe at knee level but Alex leapt up, tucking his legs beneath him, and nothing was sliced but air.

“You see what I mean, Stoke?” Alex cried, dancing atop the desk. “This Cubano is very brave when it comes to killing women and unarmed men. Our brave spider Araña is so obviously what they say he is, a chiquita!”

“Yes! Señorita Chiquita Banana herself!” Stokely joined in, keeping one eye on the one-sided duel and one eye on the drunken admiral with the pistol aimed at his heart.

Hawke looked down at the man circling in for the kill.

“So. Look at yourself, Manso!” Hawke laughed. “What do you see, chica? I see a little banana general from a little banana republic! Most men would be ashamed to attack an unarmed man. Most men would—”

“Would what, señor?” Manso screamed.

“Would think killing an unarmed man an act of cowardice.”

“He wants a weapon?” Manso roared. “Is that his fucking problem? Then give him a fucking weapon! Juanito, there is a machete behind the Chinese screen. Give it to the Englishman and we’ll see what he is made of!”

Juanito rose and, never taking the gun off Stokely, wobbled over to the nearby screen. He retrieved the machete, hefting it, and looked at his brother.

“Are you sure about this, mi hermano?”

“Give him the fucking thing, Juanito! I’ve had enough of his shit! I’m going to slit his throat and pull out that flapping goddamn tongue!”

The man shrugged his meaty shoulders and tossed the blade carelessly toward Alex, who snatched the handle nimbly out of mid-air.

He took a second to run his finger over the machete blade. It would do. He leapt from the desk and spun around to face Manso, adapting the classic fencing stance, his left hand held rigidly behind his back.

“Do you fence at all, General?” he asked, smiling at the man.

“Fence? What is fence?”

“It’s what cowboys do to ranches, baby!” Stokely exclaimed, and Alex laughed.

The general charged, bringing his blade down as he came, and Alex did his best to parry the furious blow, the sound of metal on metal ringing out in the room. The machete felt unwieldy and strange in his hand. And it was clear that Manso was called a machetero for good reason.

Hawke had a fight on his hands.

With his left hand clenched behind his back, Hawke went on the attack. There was sheer fury in his face now, Stoke had never seen the likes of it, and his thrusts and blows came so rapidly that Manso was retreating, warding off the attack, clearly on the defensive.

“So. You can fight,” Manso said.

“You noticed that,” Hawke replied, spinning like a dancer with a razor-sharp blade for a prop.

Manso stood his ground and laid on three resounding blows in quick succession. Hawke parried all three, but the tip of Manso’s machete somehow caught his cheek, opening a wide gash beneath his eye.

“Ah, English blood,” Manso said. “I developed a taste for it at an early age, you will remember.” Then he danced backwards and actually licked the blood off the tip of his blade.

“Delicious! I’ll cut your heart out and eat it for breakfast!”

“I think not,” Hawke said. He was circling the man now, changing directions, looking for his opening, when suddenly Manso charged directly at him, bellowing like a wounded animal, swinging his blade wildly.

Manso was in his element now, a true machetero from the cane fields. His silver blade came flashing down, Hawke raised his in defense but the blow never came. The general stopped short, pivoted on one heel, then whirled around, bringing his bloody machete up from below.

There was a ferocious clang and Hawke’s blade, brutally ripped from his hand, went flying, clattering across the floor.

The general’s face was suffused with murderous glee as he advanced to finish his victim and claim his rightful prize.

Hawke leapt once more to the top of the desk. The general slashed again, and this time Hawke was not so lucky. He tried to jump away, but the blade sliced through his thick camo trousers and he felt a searing pain in his right thigh.

The little blue envelope fluttered to the floor. The general had sliced open not only his leg, but his pocket.

Two things happened at once. The general stooped to pick up the envelope, and Stokely shouted something at Hawke.

Hawke looked in Stoke’s direction and saw that the man had somehow retrieved his machete and it was now spinning through the air directly toward him.

There was hardly time to finesse snatching it by the handle. He just reached out and seized the machete by the blade, slicing his fingers and palm in the doing. The blood made the handle sticky but at least he now had some ghost of a chance against the crazed machetero.

“General! Up here!” Hawke cried. The general had the little blue envelope clutched triumphantly in his upraised hand.

The general looked up only to see the massive chandelier, with Hawke dangling from it, come swooping through the air toward him. In Hawke’s free hand, the blade was poised.

There came then a sound, an awful sound, of steel on flesh and bone. Of steel through flesh and bone.

An enormous howl of pain exploded from deep in the general’s throat as he looked in horror at his bloody stump of an arm. On the floor at his feet, fingers twitching, lay his bloody hand still clutching the blue envelope.

There was an explosion then, and Hawke, still hanging by one hand from the chandelier, felt and heard a round from Juanito’s .357 whistle past his ear. He turned to see Stokely on his feet, bringing his hand down with tremendous force on the Cuban’s extended forearm. There was another crack from the muzzle of the gun and then the crack of Juanito’s breaking bones.

Hawke released his grip on the swinging chandelier and dropped to the floor.

He saw that Juanito’s gun had gone flying and turned his attention back to the general. He had sunk to his knees, holding his bloody stump against his chest, taking thin, shallow breaths. Deathly pale, head down, the man was clearly in shock.

Alex lifted the thick black ponytail. Then he laid the razor-sharp edge of his heavy blade across the tendons of the man’s exposed neck. Then he raised it and—

“Boss, no!” he heard Stoke shouting from somewhere. He’d lost track of time and place. He knew he had some unfinished business here, something to do with the sword in his hand. Oh, yes. He knew what he had to do.

The machete flashed in the wildly swinging candlelight.

Hawke stopped the deadly descent of the blade inches from the general’s neck.

And emerged from his waking dream.

“No,” he finally whispered, looking down at the man kneeling before him. He bent down then and pressed his lips near his ear. “Listen to me, you disgusting piece of human rubbish. You killed my parents the day after my seventh birthday. For the rest of my life, I’m going to visit you on the anniversary of that date. Watch you rot in your prison hole. That will be my birthday present to myself each year, watching you disappear.”

He put his boot against the man’s back and shoved him forward. The general came to a rest with his face mere inches away from his own severed hand. His dull eyes stared at the hand, unblinking.

“This belongs to my father,” Alex said, and ripped the blue envelope from the dead hand.

The general spoke, a soft guttural moan. Hawke bent to hear his words.

“I didn’t hear that,” Alex said.

“I had your mother twice, you know,” Manso croaked.

“What did you say?” Alex said, bending closer toward him.

“Twice! Yes!” Manso said, in a guttural whisper. “Two times I had your whore of a mother. Once before and once after. And you know what, amigo?”

Alex raised the blade, his face contorted with rage.

“She was better the second time. After she was dead.”

The blade came down with such fury that it clanged furiously on the marble floor as it severed Manso’s head. Alex watched the head skittering across the floor, then looked at the bloody blade in his hand in wonder.

“Guards! Guards!” Juan de Herreras shouted. He charged across the room to where Hawke was kneeling beside his headless brother. In a blind rage, he roared and bellowed and flung himself through the air. Alex saw him coming, tried to roll away and ward him off with the upraised machete, but the man’s eyes were full of a dark red mist and he did not see the blade until it was too late.

Juanito screamed, driving himself forward, further impaling himself on Alex’s machete. The blade soon had pierced his abdomen, gone completely through the man, its point visibly emerging from his broad back. Alex rolled away from under the dead weight and got to his knees.

“Behind the desk! Now!” Stoke shouted. Alex saw him rolling across the floor toward the desk as the Chinese guards burst through the door. Alex heard the staccato sound of the Tsao-6 machine guns and saw splinters and fragments from the heavy oval desk flying even as he rolled behind it.

“Christ!” Hawke said to Stoke. “I thought there were only six of them! It’s the whole bloody Red Army!”

Guards continued to stream into the glass walled structure and direct fire into the general’s desk. Huge chunks were flying off now. It would not take long for the thing to disintegrate.

Stoke saw Juanito’s .357 was lying some five feet beyond the desk. If he could reach it—a guard saw his arm stretch out for the gun and there was a loud thwap as bullets kicked the pistol beyond any possibility of getting his hands on it.

In a matter of seconds the guards would realize that the two men taking cover behind the desk were completely unarmed.

“Got any ideas?” Alex asked Stoke as they huddled under the withering fire.

“Yeah, I guess it’s too late to change the beneficiary on my life insurance,” Stoke said. “Everything’s going to my ex-wife.”

“Well, we could always just shake hands and say—”

Suddenly, there was a huge muffled explosion that shook the glass structure and everything in it.

57

The marble floor heaved up and felt as if it might buckle. The automatic weapons fire stopped as the guards dove to the floor. It felt like an earthquake but sounded like thousands of pounds of TNT. The giant chandelier swung crazily from the top of the dome, creating bizarre patterns of light within the curved glass walls.

There was an ominous crack from above, and Alex looked up.

Emanating from the fixture that secured the chandelier, a spider-web of fissures started to spread in every direction across the glass ceiling above them.

Thin sprays of water started erupting everywhere. You could almost hear the tiny creakings of each little fissure zigzagging across the dome.

“What the devil—” Alex said, looking at Stoke.

“Your new friend Boomer,” Stoke said. “His diversionary tactic, remember? Get everybody safely off the beach? Boomer must have just blown the satchel charges of C-4 and limpet mines that Bravo attached beneath the submarine’s hull. The main shock wave from that explosion should reach upriver to this grotto in about, oh, three seconds—One!”

Hawke and Stokely sprinted around opposite ends of the desk, smashing through the dazed guards just getting to their feet, headed towards the open door. They saw the massive chandelier hurtling to the floor and dodged it by inches.

“Two!” Stoke screamed, as they dove through the door.

A few of the guards were raising their weapons to fire.

“Three!” They were through!

Behind them the unbearable screeching sound of all that glass finally giving way put paid to any notion of the guards bringing down the two men. Alex, in desperation, tried to slam the wooden door shut behind them, but it was too late. A wall of water was already pouring through the doorway, threatening to overwhelm them. They flew down the narrow stone steps, slipping and sliding all the way to the bottom.

The onrushing tide of water now flooded down the stairwell and into the little foyer with the pretty Picasso. There were pillows, documents, all manner of flotsam and jetsam surrounding him. Alex was totally disoriented. How did we get here? Elevator? Right. He noticed that water had already risen above his knees.

“Ain’t no time to wait for that little Chinaman,” Stoke said. “Look, here’s a door!” The door was invisible, save a thin seam that outlined it. Miraculously, Stoke had seen it, and they slammed into it, splintering it open.

Another stairway, seemingly for service staff, led down into darkness.

Again they descended, the flood of water on their heels, and found another door at the bottom. “Ready?” Stoke said, and they put their shoulders to the wood, breaching it.

This was good. The red-carpeted hallway that led to the main stairway. Which way? Left, Alex decided suddenly. “This way!” he shouted, and Stokely followed. “This is it!” Alex cried. “Hurry!”

They were climbing now, up the great curving staircase they’d descended earlier with the late General Juan de Herreras.

“Good thing about water,” Stoke said. “Don’t climb steps too good.”

They gained the main hallway where they’d first met the recently deceased Juanito and his guards. It was wholly deserted. Both men wished they had grabbed weapons from the guards as they’d left the collapsing room. Alex still had his dive knife at least. Stoke had nothing.

They both knew there had to be tangos gathering outside, perhaps hundreds of them.

With extreme caution, they peered around the massive doors of the entrance. The moon was out now, and the whole compound was bathed in its blue-gold glow. A breeze swayed the palms in a lazy dance.

There was no one inside the perimeter wall that they could see. No one in either guardhouse. Beyond, only the dark wall of jungle. They could see the moonlit sea off to their left. Something was burning out there, sending great tendrils of fire and black smoke licking high into the air.

Nighthawke?

Hawke pushed the thought out of his mind as he and Stoke gingerly made their way down the broad stone steps of the entrance. Unarmed, they had no choice now but to simply make a run for the sea and hope to God somebody was out there waiting in an IBS.

They hadn’t taken three steps when the wall of jungle beyond erupted with automatic weapons fire. Hundreds of winking muzzles in the blackness. The air was instantly full of lead, ringing off the iron-work of the gates and fence, kicking up sand at their feet. They dropped to the ground and scrambled back up the steps and inside the entrance of the finca, slamming the heavy wooden doors behind them.

“Holy shit!” Stoke said. “The whole damn Cuban army must be out there waiting for us!”

They knelt beneath a window, a hail of bullets showering them with broken glass. Alex saw Stoke pull something from inside his flak vest.

“What the hell is that?” Hawke asked.

“SatCom phone,” Stoke said, flicking a switch that lit the thing up. “We get lucky, I can raise Fitz or Boomer.”

“Get lucky,” Hawke said.

“Bravo, you copy?” Stoke said into the handheld device.

“Copy, Stoke. What’s going on?”

“Unexpected delay here. What’s burning out there at the LZ? Ain’t you, is it?”

“No. Another nosy Cuban patrol boat. We’ve sunk four. All accounted for here, aboard Nighthawke. We’re in a holding pattern. An IBS is on its way in for your E&E.”

“Yeah, well that’s the problem. We ain’t evading and we certainly ain’t evacuating. We pinned down inside the main hacienda.”

“No problem. We’ll come ashore and pull you out.”

“Belay that, you’d never get ashore. The whole fucking jungle’s full of los tangos cubanos, amigo.”

“Fuck.”

“I was thinking that, too.”

“Stoke,” Hawke said, tapping him on the shoulder. He had risen and was peering out just above the sill of the shattered window.

“They’re moving up into position for a frontal assault. I’ve got an idea.”

“All our problems are over, Boomer,” Stoke said into the SatCom. “Mr. Hawke here has an idea. Stay tuned. Over.”

“Standing by, Skipper, over.”

“Follow me,” Hawke said.

The rounds were zinging overhead with ever increasing intensity as Hawke motioned for Stoke to follow him. They both ran in a low crouch toward the stairway leading up.

“Remember that terrace we saw?” Hawke said, taking the steps two at a time. “The one built out over the sea?”

“Right,” Stoke replied. “What about it?”

“It has to be this way.”

“So?”

“If we can reach it, we go over the wall. Can’t be more than a fifty-foot drop into the sea from up there.”

“Well, it ain’t rocket surgery, boss, but it’s all we got. Let’s go!”

There was a problem with the terrace. The Cubans had thought of it first. Stoke and Alex raced across the broad expanse of white marble and peered down over the edge. There were at least twenty soldiers down there on the rocks with automatic weapons, waiting in case anyone should try to leave the island without saying good-bye. At least ten of them had already started climbing up the rocky cliff that would bring them up to the terrace.

Shots rang out, and pieces of stone just beneath them exploded outwards.

Both men ducked behind the four-foot crushed stone wall that ringed the large patio. The moon was so bright on the expanse of white marble that, if they remained standing, they were as good as dead. Hawke held his breath, waiting to see a grenade come flying over the wall.

“Next idea?” Stoke said.

“I’m thinking,” Hawke replied.

“Think faster,” Stoke said, but Hawke never heard him.

There was an earth-shattering explosion in the rooms just behind them followed by a deafening roar just over their heads. They caught a glimpse of a massive winged shadow that blocked out the sky, something huge screaming over the rooftops.

“Hell was that?”

“That would be an F-14 Super Tomcat,” Hawke said, a smile spreading across his face. “Black Aces Squadron.” Never in his life had Hawke been so happy to see an official representative of the United States Navy.

Two more Tomcats roared overhead in quick succession and then three more. The building shook to its foundations with the impact of the Tomcat’s deadly Sidewinder missiles. Explosions lit up the thick jungle beyond the wall, and Alex heard the screams of wounded soldiers.

Stoke had his SatCom out instantly.

“Boomer! What the hell is going on?”

“U.S. Navy to the rescue, Skipper! Seems like Fidel Castro escaped somehow, got to a phone, and opened Cuban airspace to the American Navy! Friendly fire! Hooo-hahh!!”

“Friendly fire? I’d return their friendly fire if I had any damn bullets! Them flyboys are goddamn shooting at my ass!”

“May I borrow that gadget, Stoke?” Hawke asked.

Stoke handed it to him and Hawke said, “Boomer, this is Hawke. Get that fighter squadron commander on the radio. Tell him he’s got two friendlies on the ground. Make that the large west terrace of the main house, facing the sea. We’d appreciate more fire suppression in the jungle and on the rocks beneath the terrace. Our only way out is a jump into the sea, over.”

“I’ve already spoken to him, sir,” Boomer said. “He’s laying down fire suppression right now, trying to keep the tangos inside the house from rushing you, over.”

“How about below the terrace?” Hawke asked. “We’re going over the side. And we need to go now!”

“Uh, the squadron leader has a better idea, sir. If you look out over the wall, you should be able to see it now.”

Stoke and Hawke crept up to the wall and peered over it. What they saw brought, if not tears to their eyes, certainly a hell of a lot of joy into their lives.

Waves of Navy jets were blacking out the stars, the bright flame of rockets igniting under their swept-back wings and screaming toward targets; and there, a few hundred feet below the formations, skimming in just over the wavetops, was the most beautiful sight of all.

A mammoth U.S. Navy SeaKing helicopter headed directly for the terrace, twin .50 cals firing out both sides as it flared up for a landing.

Little more than half an hour later, Alex Hawke was aboard Nighthawke, sitting at Vicky’s side, holding her hand and whispering to her.

He’d dimmed the lights of the stateroom way down after Froggy had left. The medic had given her something to help her sleep. Hawke couldn’t stop staring at her tender profile. There was a thin sheen of perspiration on her forehead, and her long eyelashes were fluttering on her cheeks. Her beautiful auburn hair, burnished with gold in the dim light, was twisted in knots of tangled cobwebs but to Alex she had never looked more beautiful.

He and Stokely had watched the destruction of Telaraña, their legs hanging out the open hatch of the SeaKing, sitting on either side of the red-hot .50 cal. The machine gun was still chattering loudly just above their heads as the SeaKing swung out across the island and doubled back over what had been the submarine pen. It was now a blackened pile of twisted steel and broken concrete. Two halves of the Soviet Borzoi-class submarine’s hull rose from the rubble. Boomer’s charges had broken her spine. The U.S. Navy had finished the job.

“Hey? You the guys took that Russian boomer out?” Alex heard the chopper pilot ask in his headphones.

“Yep,” Stoke replied. “That would be us.”

“Christ on a bicycle,” the pilot said. “How the hell’d you do that?”

“We, uh, used explosives,” Stoke replied, and there was no further mike chatter.

The SeaKing was flying at fifty feet, and the tang of sea air and the roar of the wind in the open doors made Hawke forget he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. His entire body was thrumming like a wire.

Vicky was safe. With a lot of help from some very brave men, he’d made good on his promise to her father.

The Navy chopper was headed west where the sleek black outline of Nighthawke was waiting on the horizon. Behind him, on the rapidly disappearing hump of the island, towers of fire and black smoke were rising from one end of Telaraña to the other.

There were other fires along the coast, Hawke saw, rebel strongholds under attack from the deadly Black Aces.

Now, in the soft glow of the cabin lights, Alex watched her sleeping.

“Alex?” Vicky struggled to open her eyes. Her lips were parched and bruised and Alex applied a cool washcloth.

“Shhh,” Alex said. “Go to sleep, darling. It’s all right now.”

“But there’s something—”

“There’s nothing. Just sleep. We’ll have you in your own bed soon.”

“No, something I need to tell—important. Please?”

She was straining to rise from the pillow, gripping Alex’s arm fiercely. “You’ve got to know this, Alex. Please,” she whispered in a dry, hoarse voice.

“What is it, darling? What could be so important?”

“The guards. Every day. Didn’t know I was listening, see? But I did. I did, Alex.”

“It doesn’t matter now, darling. It’s over.”

“No! It does matter. I heard…I heard…something.”

“What did you hear, Vicky?” Alex whispered, leaning down so that he could put his ear near her lips.

“They—they were laughing,” she said, nearly strangling on the words. “They were laughing about a bomb they had—kill Americans.”

“Bomb?” Alex said, his attention now riveted to Vicky’s trembling lips.

It had to be Guantánamo. The biological weapon Conch had told him about sitting in Kittyhawke’s cockpit on the JFK flight deck. Hadn’t they found that thing yet? Since the F-14s had attacked he assumed…no, that only meant the women and children had been evacuated from the base. The bomb could still be on the base and—Christ, how long did they have before the thing went off?

“A bomb, Alex,” Vicky whispered. “They said it was hidden where the Americans would never find—-find out. Until too late.”

Alex looked at his watch. It was 0520 in the morning. If he remembered correctly, that meant they had about forty minutes until the thing detonated.

“Where, darling, where they did put the bomb?” Alex could feel his heart trying desperately to get out of his chest.

“A bear,” Vicky said in her small, strangled voice.

“Bear?” Alex was sure he’d misunderstood.

“A teddy bear. Not a real bear. That’s why…why they were all laughing,” Vicky managed. Alex lifted her head and gave her a small sip of water.

“Thank you,” she said. “They thought it was so funny. The bomb inside the teddy bear. Gave it to…to one of the officers’ kids,” Vicky said, trying to get her eyes open. “Someone hid the bomb inside a little girl’s bear. Someone named Gopher, or Gomer, maybe. An American sailor…but a Cuban, too. He’s the one who hid the bomb inside the bear.”

58

“Joe Nettles,” squawked the harsh voice on the Nighthawke’s radio. “And this better be the most important fucking call you ever made, mister.”

“Alexander Hawke here, Admiral. No time to explain who I am. Just ask Admiral Howell or Secretary de los Reyes, but first, just listen.”

“Mister, I got a bomb going off here in ’bout half an hour. Talk.”

“I have just rescued a hostage from the Cubans. She has important information regarding that bomb.”

“Go ahead, son, spit it out for chrissakes!”

“According to Cuban guards she overheard during captivity, you have an extremely lethal biological weapon hidden inside a toy bear.”

“What?”

“An American sailor, name sounds like Gopher or Gomer, inserted the weapon inside a teddy bear and gave it to an officer’s child as a gift.”

A split second of silence was followed by an explosion from the speaker.

“Holy Mother of God!” Nettles screamed. “That stupid asshole who blew himself up! Gomez! Christ! He gave my daughter a big white teddy bear for her birthday! My own goddamn daughter!”

“Sir, I hope this is helpful. I know you—”

“Son, I appreciate the call. My wife, Ginny, and our little baby, Lucinda, and her bear are aboard the John F. Kennedy right now, and I hope you’ll excuse me but—”

“Certainly, sir,” Alex said, but the connection had been broken.

Aboard the Kennedy, the secure phone that linked CINCATFLT, the commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral George Blaine Howell, to the commanding officer, Guantánamo Naval Air Station, rang on the bridge one second later.

Howell, who was on the JFK’s bridge monitoring the takeoffs and landing of nine separate squadrons flying sorties over Cuba, picked it up, knowing who it was.

“Find it yet, Joe?” Howell said.

“Do you know somebody named Alex Hawke?”

“Hell yes, I know him. British billionaire. Ex–Royal Navy. Works for us a lot. Tracked down the boomer the Cubans bought, and definitely on the good-guy side.”

“In that case, I’ve got some bad news, George. The bio-weapon is no longer here at Gitmo. It’s aboard Big John.”

“What did you say?”

“Hawke has a rescued hostage aboard his vessel who says the bomb’s inside a teddy bear given to an officer’s child by somebody named Gomez.”

“Gomez? Sounds familiar—wasn’t he that guy in your minefield couple of days ago?”

“Yeah, same guy. Three weeks ago, the same dickhead gave my daughter Cindy a big white bear for her fourth birthday. It’s gotta be the one, George!”

“Jesus Christ, Joe!”

“Yeah. Cindy takes that goddamn bear everywhere. She’s got it with her now. That bear is somewhere aboard your flagship, partner.”

“How much time have we got, Joe?”

“According to the official Cuban deadline, you’ve got twenty-nine minutes and sixteen seconds. George, goddammit, go find my little girl.”

“God almighty. Okay, I’m on it.”

Admiral Howell hung up and turned to the JFK’s CO, Captain Thomas Mooney. “Sound general quarters, Captain. We’ve got a Level Five biological threat somewhere onboard this ship. Came aboard with the evacuees at Gitmo. I’ve got CDC memos stating that it’s probably a highly lethal new bacteria strain, weapons grade, with a delivery system capable of wiping out everyone at Gitmo.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That bomb is somewhere on this ship. It is hidden inside a toy bear belonging to Gitmo CO Joe Nettles’s daughter. I want that goddamn thing found and neutralized. We have less than half an hour.”

Within five minutes, Captain Mooney’s most trusted aide, Lieutenant Arie L. Kopelman, was sent directly to the converted wardroom where, among others, the Gitmo commander’s wife and daughter were housed. He went to C deck, found their room, and opened the door. The sound of snoring filled the room. Everyone was still fast asleep. He looked at his watch. Twenty-two minutes.

Shouldn’t be a problem.

He entered the darkened cabin, a wardroom where some twenty-five to thirty women and children were currently berthed and, since he had no description of who he was looking for, simply rapped his fist on the bulkhead.

“Mrs. Nettles?” Kopelman said. “Mrs. Joseph Nettles? Would you and your daughter please step out into the companionway? Sorry to disturb you.”

“They’re not here,” a woman’s sleepy voice said. “They were moved yesterday. We were too crowded.”

“Where were they moved?” Kopelman asked, trying not to let the rising panic in his voice show.

“I think one deck down. Wardroom D-7?”

“Thank you,” Kopelman said, and sprinted for the closest stairwell. He took the steps three at a time and burst into the long companionway of D deck. D-7 would be to the left, toward the bow, he thought. Had to be.

It was. He swung open a door marked D-7 and rapped his knuckles hard on the bulkhead.

“I’m looking for Mrs. Joseph Nettles and her daughter,” he said loudly. “Are they in this room?”

“Oh,” he heard a woman’s voice say. “Yes, we are.”

He saw her now, a silhouette sitting up against the far bulkhead. He heard her say, “What on earth do you want?”

“Would you please step out into the companionway? Both of you? It’s very important.”

Kopelman watched the sweeping second hand on his watch. Less than nineteen minutes now, until the ka-boom or whatever it was. In just over a minute, Mrs. Nettles and her four-year-old daughter were standing in front of him, blinking and rubbing sleep from their eyes. Both were wearing nightgowns and robes. It had taken seconds of precious time to find and put on robes.

“I’m Lieutenant Kopelman. This is your daughter Cindy?”

“Yes. How can we help you, Lieutenant?” Ginny Nettles said, wrapping her robe tightly around her.

“I’m looking, actually, for Cindy’s bear,” Kopelman said, not caring how foolish he sounded. “I’ll explain later. But if you don’t mind, ma’am, could you please just step back inside, pick the bear up very carefully, and bring it out here to me?”

“Her teddy bear? Is this a joke?”

“No joke, Mrs. Nettles. Believe me.”

“Well, I would if I could but I can’t. Her bear’s not in there, Lieutenant,” Ginny Nettles said, giving the young officer a look both quizzical and ominous. “Sorry.”

“Not in there?”

“That’s what I said.”

“This is extremely important, Mrs. Nettles. Where, uh, exactly is the bear as we speak?”

“Excuse me, Lieutenant…Kopelman, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What time is it, Lieutenant?”

“Oh-five-forty-five, ma’am. Fifteen minutes before six A.M., ma’am.”

“You know, it’s funny. I’ve been a Navy wife for over thirty years. And I have never, ever encountered anything remotely as ridiculous as this. And that, by God, Lieutenant, is truly saying something!”

“Ma’am, I totally appreciate that. But it is desperately important that I retrieve that bear. Do you understand? I said ‘desperately.’ I can’t say any more.”

“What’s wrong, Lieutenant?” Mrs. Nettles said, her mood turning from annoyance to concern to fear in less than a second.

“We, I mean Admiral Howell needs that bear now,” Kopelman said, looking into her eyes. “That bear is…contaminated. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mrs. Nettles? Right now!”

“Sweetheart, why don’t you tell the nice man where your bear went?” Mrs. Nettles said, bending down to look in her daughter’s face.

“Oh!” Cindy said, as if suddenly remembering, “Teddy went up in an air-o-plane!”

“An airplane?” Kopelman asked, his nerves now twanging from the back of his neck down along each arm, all the way to his fingers. He looked at his watch for the third time in as many minutes.

Thirteen minutes.

“That’s right, Lieutenant, what my daughter says is true. We ran into Cindy’s Uncle Chuck, my husband’s younger brother, who is a wing leader of the Black Aces.”

“Are you saying that Captain Nettles has the bear, ma’am?” Kopelman asked. Perfect little beads of nervous perspiration had popped out all around his hairline.

“Yes, I think so,” Ginny Nettles said, wringing her hands together, worried about where this was going.

“He took the bear on his mission?”

“Yes, he said his squadron was going on a raid somewhere last night and that his niece’s bear might bring the Black Aces good luck.”

Mrs. Nettles was about to say something else, but the young lieutenant had already sprinted halfway down the companionway and into a stairwell.

“Sir!” Kopelman said, bursting onto the bridge deck.

“What have you got, Lieutenant?” Admiral Howell said, studying his face. “Tell me it’s good news, son. We’ve got about ten minutes till all hell breaks loose.”

“I spoke with Mrs. Nettles and her daughter. The bear is with Captain Charles Nettles, sir. He took it along on his mission.”

“He’s got the fucking bear in his cockpit?”

“I believe he does, yes, sir.”

“Are you dead certain about this, son?”

“Aye, aye, sir, as certain as I can be.”

Howell punched a button on the bridge console.

“This is Admiral Howell speaking. Where the fuck is Captain Charles Nettles?”

“Captain Nettles is on final, sir, about ten seconds from touch-down,” the airboss said.

“Christ! Wave him off, goddammit, wave him off!”

Howell walked outside onto the port bridge-wing and looked astern. He could see all the Black Aces were home, save one. Captain Nettles’s F-14 Tomcat was just off Big John’s stern, flared up, seconds from landing.

The orange jackets were out there, the FSO trying to wave off the fighter. It was too late.

“Lieutenant,” Howell said, his voice dead calm. “Would you just go on down to Captain Nettles’s cabin and just make sure he didn’t leave that goddamn bear there? Is that a good idea?”

“Aye, aye, sir!” Kopelman said, and left the bridge-wing at a dead run.

“He’s got his tailhook down, goddammit!” Howell screamed into the mike on the outside console.

“It’s jammed, Admiral,” the airboss said over the speaker.

“Drop the fucking wire! Have him go to full power! Now!”

“Zulu Bravo Leader go to full power! Bolter! Bolter!” they heard the airboss shout.

There was a howl of turbine whine as the F-14’s twin turbofan engines instantly spooled up, both afterburners spouting licks of red-orange and yellow flame as she roared past the bridge, accelerating.

“Go…go…go!” the airboss said as the big fighter rolled and finally lifted off the end of the deck. It immediately dropped, dipped perilously close to the wavetops, then started a climb out.

“Somebody want to tell me what the fuckin’ tarnation is going on around here?” said Captain Nettles over the speaker.

“This is Admiral Howell, Captain. How you doin’, Chuck?”

“Ah, roger that, pardon my French, Admiral.”

“Captain, at the risk of sounding like a complete goddamn moron, let me ask you a question.”

“Shoot, sir.”

“Do you happen to have a white teddy bear in that aircraft, son?”

“Uh…well, as a matter of fact, I do, Admiral.”

“You have no idea how happy that makes me, Captain.”

“I’m sorry, Admiral, I’m afraid I don’t—”

Lieutenant Kopelman appeared at that moment, completely winded, and said, “No bear in his quarters, sir. I turned it upside down!”

“How much time we got left, Lieutenant?” the admiral asked, raising his binoculars to his eyes and tracking the jet fighter.

Kopelman looked at his watch. “A minute, thirty-two seconds, sir!”

“Good, good,” Howell said, then, into the mike, “Chuck, you’re going to need to deep-six that bear, son. Like, right now.”

“Sorry, sir?”

“The bear has a weapon in it, son, and it’s going to explode in about a minute. Maybe less. Okay? So just take her easy, level off, and reduce your airspeed immediately, you copy that?”

“Copy” was the terse one-word answer.

“Okay, you’re looking good, Zulu Bravo. I have you in visual contact. Now, I want you to jettison your canopy.”

“Roger that.”

The canopy blew off instantly, exposing the pilot and his radar intercept officer seated immediately aft of him to a hundred-knot-plus blast of air. Chuck Nettles felt a shuddering bump and the plane instantly started to yaw left and right.

“I think the canopy clipped the starboard rudder, sir!”

“Yes, it did, Chuck, I saw that. Took out a good-sized chunk. Big old piece. But you’ve got a more immediate problem. Can you reach that bear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve got exactly ten seconds to get that bear out of your plane, son.”

Admiral Howell waited, tracking his binocs right with the streaking fighter, holding his breath as if that would keep his heart in place. A smile broke across his face.

A small white object flew out of the cockpit, hit the jetstream, and was blasted backwards and down.

He stayed with the bear all the way, saw it hit the water. For a few endless moments, he thought the goddamn thing might float, but a smile broke across his face as he saw the bear slip beneath the waves.

So much for your goddamn airborne spores, amigos.

The density of the ocean had instantly neutered the Cubans’ weapon.

There was a squawk over the speaker.

“Uh, I’m having a little trouble keeping this bird flying straight,” Nettles said over the speaker. “Busted rudder and all. Anybody got any bright ideas?”

“I’ve had all the good ideas I’m going to have this morning, Chuck. You just saved a lot of lives. I want to thank you for that. I’m going to turn you over to the airboss now. You just bring that big sucker on home, son. Bring her down safely. There’ll be a fifth of George Dickel with your name on it waiting in my wardroom.”

“Copy that,” Captain Nettles said, trying desperately not to let the effect of the blown canopy, destroyed rudder, and the fact that he’d just flown an entire mission with a bomb between his knees show in his voice.

“Bravo Zulu, you are a quarter mile out,” the airboss said. “Turn right to 060 degrees.”

“I can’t do that, she’s not responding to rudder.”

“Well, you’re going to have to land that bird with ailerons and elevators, Bravo Zulu, just like you did out at Coronado in flying school.”

“I can’t remember back that far, sir.”

“Bravo Zulu, you play a little golf, don’t you?”

“Affirmative.”

“Slice or hook?”

“Slice a little.”

“Know how you aim a teensy bit left to correct for that slice?”

“Affirmative.”

“You got a little slice in your current stance. I want you shift your aim left, copy?”

“Left.”

“Easy, easy. Not that much, boy. A teensy. You want to draw it in down the left side of the fairway.”

“How’s that?”

“Call the ball, Bravo Zulu.”

“I have the ball, sir.”

“Come on home, then, Bravo Zulu. Come on home to Papa John.”

59

The third-story sitting room of the old house in Belgrave Square was lit only by a roaring fire. Pelting rain beat against the room’s tall, broad windows. The upper branches of the plane and elm trees outside, dancing violently in the howling wind, clawed and scratched at the glass.

It was a cold, sleeting rain, but the roaring fire Pelham had laid in the great hearth warmed the room and kept the chill of late evening at bay.

Savage filaments of lightning briefly illuminated the whole room, where two people sat side by side on an immense sofa before a crackling blaze. The lightning was followed immediately by an earth-splitting thunderclap powerful enough, it seemed, to shake a good portion of London to its ancient foundations. In the silence that followed, the woman rested her head on the man’s shoulder and spoke in a quiet, sleepy voice.

“My daddy used to say that all the great romances are made in heaven. But so are thunder and lightning.”

Alex Hawke laughed softly, and brushed back a wing of auburn hair, bronzed by the firelight, from her pale forehead. Her eyes were closed, and her long dark lashes lay upon her cheeks, fluttering only when either of them spoke.

“Amazing chap, your father,” Hawke whispered. “Everything he says seems to have quotation marks at either end.”

“A lot of them are unprintable,” Vicky said, yawning deeply, and pressing closer. “He has a few enormously politically incorrect opinions and he’s an ornery old cuss when you cross him.”

“What did he have to say when you rang him up this afternoon?”

“Not much. Sounded very shaky. It’s going to take him a while to get over all those roller-coaster emotions. I promised I’d come right away to look after him. I’m so sorry. I know you were counting on me to—”

“Shh. I understand. You sound tired, Doc.”

“I am, a little. We must have walked the width and breadth of every park in London. It was lovely. My dream of a foggy day in London Town.”

“We missed one. Regent’s Park,” Alex said, stroking her hair. “I wanted to show you Queen Mary’s rose garden. Why are we whispering?”

“I don’t know. You started it. When one person starts, the other just does it automatically. Funny. Do you want some more tea?”

“What I’d love is a small brandy. Curious. I haven’t seen Pelham lurking about in the last hour or two.”

“I saw him sitting in the pantry just after dinner. Sniper was perched on his shoulder, chattering away, while Pelham was doing needlepoint. Very fancy if you ask me, Lord Fauntleroy. What is it?”

“I’m embarrassed to tell you. It’s to be a birthday present. For me, in fact. A waistcoat with the family crest. I’ve tried to convince him to quit before he goes blind, but he feigns deafness whenever I do.”

At that very moment, there was the creak of an ancient door, and the omniscient Pelham Grenville entered the room bearing a large silver tray, which he placed upon the ottoman before the fire.

“Begging your pardon, m’lord. That last flash and clap made me think a splash of brandy might be welcomed.”

“The man is a mind reader, I tell you,” Hawke said, reaching for the heavy crystal decanter. “Thank you kindly, young Pelham.”

Hawke noticed that, in addition to the decanter and small thistle-shaped crystal glasses, there was a most peculiar box on the tray. It was triangular and made of yellowed ivory, with a hawk carved of onyx embedded in the center of the lid.

“I’ve never seen that box before, Pelham,” Alex said. “Quite beautiful.”

“Yes,” Pelham said. “It was a gift to your great-grandfather from David Lloyd-George himself. Something to do with a political triad long lost to the mists of history.”

“Too small for cigars,” Alex observed.

“Indeed,” Pelham said. “Do you mind if I sit a moment?”

“You may sit as long as you wish, of course. Here, let me pour you a brandy,” Alex said, and he did so.

Pelham pulled up a leather winged-back chair and sat down with a small sigh. He sipped at his brandy, then picked up the box and turned it over in his hands. He focused his clear blue eyes on Hawke.

“Your lordship, I’ve been in service for nigh on seventy years. And for the last thirty years, I’ve been waiting for this exact moment,” the old fellow finally said. Then he downed the brandy in one swallow and held out his glass to Hawke for a refill. This done, he sat back against the cushion and looked about the room. The firelight was licking every corner of the huge space, even reaching up into the ceiling moldings high above them.

“I don’t really know quite where to begin, your lordship,” he said at last.

“I find the beginning is usually appropriate,” Hawke said with a gentle laugh. But Pelham was not amused.

“ ’Tis a serious matter I’ve come to discuss, m’lord.”

“Sorry,” Alex said, and getting to his feet, he began pacing back and forth before the fire, hands clasped behind his back. Something fairly momentous was afoot.

“Your grandfather left this box for you in my trust. He was very clear about its disposition. I was to give it to you as soon as I felt that you were in a sufficiently proper state of mind to receive it.”

“I see,” Alex said, nervously glancing over at him. “A proper state of mind, you say. All very mysterious, old thing.”

“Yes. But he had his reasons, as you’ll soon see.”

“And you’ve obviously concluded I’m in this so-called proper state now?”

“Indeed, I have, m’lord,” Pelham said, a smile passing across his face. “It’s been a fairly rough go for you. Especially since your dear grandfather passed on. We all miss him. But I think he would agree that you have traveled long and lonely through a deep dark wood and have just now emerged into a most sunny place.”

“If you mean by all that, that after a bit of hard sledding I have come to feel as happy as any man has a right to be, then you’re correct. I have. Wouldn’t you agree, Victoria?”

She was about to say “Happy as a clam,” thought better of it, and said, “Never happier.”

“See? And, as you well know, Victoria is something of a psychiatrist. So, assuming the matter of my current blissful state is settled, hand over the goods, young Pelham! Let’s take a look!” He held out his hand.

Pelham extended the box, and Hawke took it.

“Like a mystery novel,” Hawke said, running the tips of his fingers over the lid and smiling at them both. “Isn’t it?”

He placed the strange white box upon the mantelpiece, beneath the mammoth painting of the Battle of Trafalgar. Looking at the box from different angles, Hawke continued his pacing. “Only usually a good mystery writer will stick these intriguing objects right up front to hook the reader.”

“For heaven’s sakes, open it, Alex,” Vicky said. “I can’t wait to see!”

“So, in other words,” Hawke said, looking carefully at Pelham, “Grandfather wanted me to have this box when I had come to grips with—what shall we call it—the past?”

“Precisely, m’lord,” Pelham said, eyes shining.

“Well, then, in that case I think this historic event deserves a toast! Pelham, would you pour us each a wee dram of that fine brandy?”

Hawke received his brandy and stood, glass in one hand, the other up on the mantelpiece. He swirled the amber liquid in the snifter and then lifted it in the direction of Vicky and Pelham.

“A toast,” Alex Hawke said, “if you don’t mind.”

When they, too, raised their glasses, he said, “I would like to drink to the memory of my dear mother and father,” Hawke began, his eyes brimming.

Vicky thought his voice would break, but he continued. “These are memories that have only recently come back to me. But as they do come flooding back, they are filled with a joy and happiness I never knew existed. My father was a splendid fellow, handsome and brave beyond measure.”

“Oh, Alex!” Vicky cried, and there were tears in her eyes.

“My mother—my mother was equally endowed with strength, kindness, and beauty. And she possessed all three in abundance. In the seven short years we had together, she managed to instill in the boy whatever few qualities or virtues the man might have.”

A sob escaped Vicky’s trembling lips.

Alex put the glass to his lips and drank deeply.

“To my mother and father,” Alex said, and flung his empty glass into the fire, shattering it against the blackened bricks.

“Hear! Hear!” Pelham shouted, rising to his feet. He raised his glass to Hawke, eyes glistening, downed the brandy in one swallow, then threw his glass into the fireplace. Seconds later, Vicky’s glass followed his into the fire as well.

“And now at last the mysterious box!” Hawke said, drawing the back of his hand across his eyes. “Let’s see what’s inside it, shall we?”

He took the box from the mantel, looked at it for a long moment, and then slowly lifted the lid.

“Why, it’s a key!” he said, and lifted out a large brass key by the black satin ribbon attached to it. “Where there’s a key, there’s a lock.”

“Yes,” Pelham said. “There is. If you’ll both follow me?”

Vicky and Alex followed him out into the great hall and then began ascending the broad curving staircase, a spiral that formed the center of the entire house. There was a skylight at the very top of the great mansion and flashes of lightning pierced down into the gloom. Pelham, a Scot, never lit any more lights in the house than were absolutely necessary.

“Where are we going, old thing?” Hawke asked, as they passed the fourth-floor landing and continued upwards.

“To my rooms, your lordship,” Pelham said simply.

“Your rooms? What on earth is—”