Patriot

CHAPTER 14

The phone rang.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Hawke waited.

It did not ring again.

Game on.

He closed his eyes, sat forward, and concentrated on sensory input. He listened intently to the stillness, heard nothing amiss. He eased back and rested his chin in one hand, periodically sipping his cold coffee and staring into the pitch-black night beyond his windows. The crackling fire he’d lit provided barely enough heat to reach his bones.

The minutes crawled by. Interminable… he fantasized briefly about a short rum and a cigarette but forced himself to concentrate. See, hear, smell, feel…

The wind was up. Shrieking under the eaves and down the chimney. On the seaward side of the house, he could hear the rolling sea booming on the rocks far below and the rain lashing at the windows.

That cold front he’d seen had moved in over the island in the late afternoon; now it seemed like it had been raining all evening. The temperature had plummeted and palm fronds and banana leaves rustled and scratched against the windows. All the doors and shutters had been made fast against the approaching storm. And any random intruder.

There was only one way inside and that was through the front door.

Hawke sat forward once more. He had heard another kind of noise this time, muffled and distant. An automobile, its tyres hissing on the rain-wet tarmac ribbon of the coast road. He got up from his chair facing the front door. Inside the trees a fissure of pure white split the air, illuminating the clouds and all that lay below. He moved quickly from one to another of the northern exposure windows, all facing the solid wall of banana trees and the coast road beyond the groves.

Turn left out of his drive and visitors would eventually wind their way along the coast and reach the Royal Naval Dockyard. Turn right and they had a half hour’s drive until they reached the Bermuda airport. The car seemed to be approaching from the right.

Peering out into the darkness of the groves, he could see distant flashes, hazy arrows of light in the rain-drenched night. The flashes soon resolved into steady twin beams of yellowish light. Periodically, they would flare up and spike the blackness deep within the impenetrable groves. He could see the dense trees out there, their broad green leaves waving wet and storm tossed like the top of the sea.

He was on full alert now.

The wavering headlamp beams would disappear for a few seconds, and then reappear a few seconds closer still, meandering through his groves, stabbing through the trees as if reaching out for him.

Each time a little closer to his cottage…

… came the spider to the fly.

But the fly had no fear.

Moments like these were what Alex Hawke had lived and breathed for all his life. He was good at war. His father had once said that he was a boy born with a heart for any fate. And the fate he’d been born for was war. He felt the reassuring weight of his weapon on his right side. A big six-shot revolver, the most reliable weapon in his arsenal. A single box of ammo in the loose pocket of his pants should he have need of it.

He was wearing loose-fitting black Kunjo pants from Korea. Strapped to his right thigh was a .357 Colt Python revolver in a nylon swivel holster. It was his “Dirty Harry Special”: it had a six-inch barrel, with six magnum parabellum rounds loaded in the cylinder. He wore a black Royal Navy woolen jumper, four sizes too big. It came almost to his knees, giving him freedom of movement and concealing his weapon. He’d cut a hole in the right side pocket so he could keep his hand on his gun without it being seen.

He was barefoot despite the cold tiles beneath his feet…

He padded silently across the dark room, returning to the wooden armchair facing the door. He sat down and waited. He looked at the clock again. Only eight minutes had passed since Ambrose had called him with the agreed-upon signal. Time was elongated, stretching every minute into two or three…

A sudden flash of the headlamps across the ceiling.

Outside, he heard the automobile roll to a stop some twenty or thirty feet from the entrance.

Automobile tyres made a loud crunching sound on the crushed-shell drive leading up to Teakettle Cottage. A primitive alarm system, perhaps, but it worked. He jumped up and went to the window again, pulling back the curtain just as the headlamps were extinguished.

A black sedan, undistinguished, a cheap rental from the airport.

Hello, Spider.

Because of the car’s misty, rain-spattered windows Hawke couldn’t see inside the vehicle. Only the dark silhouette of a large man behind the wheel. He waited for the car’s interior lights to illuminate. It remained dark. There was no movement at all from the driver, and the four doors remained closed.

He went back to his chair, sat, and waited in the dark for a knock on the heavy cedar door.

It didn’t come.

The storm had suddenly died down. The cottage was stone silent save the ticking of the clock above the bar. No noise or movement inside, nor any noise or movement outside. He tried to imagine what Spider might be doing out there. Just sitting in his car, trying to spook his prey? Trying, somewhat successfully, he had to admit, to psyche his opponent out?

Enough of this, Hawke thought, reaching for his weapon. He’d go outside and confront the man there.

He was about to get out of his chair when his thick wooden door suddenly blew inward and off its hinges. A thunderous explosion, a blast of sound and light sufficiently powerful to blind him momentarily and disorient him. His chair was knocked arse over teakettle and he hit the floor hard after upending a very solid oak table.

He was just vaguely aware that his heavy front door was hurtling through space directly toward him when it crashed against the wall behind him, a few feet above his head, and splintered into vicious flying daggers of wood.

Alex got to his feet, shaking his head to clear the circuits. He was shaken, perhaps, but seemingly unscathed. The room was full of smoke and whirling debris, and javelin-sharp splinters of wood littered the floor.

“Hello, Lord Hawke,” a rumbling voice said.

The voice of Spider Payne.

The man was suddenly standing in the doorway. Hawke would know that voice anywhere. Gravelly, edgy, and deep, meant to intimidate. Hawke looked down at his clothes, casually dusting himself off with the back of his hand.

“Next time, try knocking, Spider,” Hawke said with a thin smile.

“Right. I’ll try to remember that.”

All in black Nomex, Artemis Payne was wearing full night-combat fatigues, even a helmet with night-vision goggles. He had an M4A1 assault rifle slung from his shoulder and what looked like a SIG Sauer 9mm sidearm hung from each hip. Clearly he had connections on this island and they had access to the good stuff. They’d provided the assassin with full-bore weapons and gear.

“But then again,” Spider added, “there won’t be any next time for you and me, old buddy.” He took a few steps forward into the room.

“No, I don’t suppose that there will be,” Hawke said, getting to his feet and righting his chair. “I’d invite you in, but you’re already in.”

“Fuck off, Hawke.”

“Spider, I don’t mean to be rude, but have you put on a little weight?”

Hawke realized his voice showed a lot more confidence than he was feeling. He was seriously disadvantaged here, clearly having made the old mistake of bringing a knife to a gunfight. Definitely outgunned here, the big Python suddenly feeling more like a peashooter. His mind went into overdrive. He needed a new plan. Somehow, he had to remove himself from this confrontation and hit the reset button. Had to keep Payne talking. Right now Hawke was in mortal danger and both men knew it.

“Sorry about your old buddy Hook,” Payne said. “I figured I might hear from you when you heard about the old bastard’s accident.”

“The accident.”

“Yeah, well. Shit happens, y’know.”

“So you came here to kill me, too. You think I threw you under the bus for that joint op fiasco in Paris? Nothing to do with it, Spider. Some people think you got a raw deal. Maybe you did.”

“Save it, Alex. I was on North Haven. I went back for the funeral just to see what I could see. What I saw is you and your bosom buddy Brick Kelly huddled up at a back table at the Nebo Lodge. Didn’t take much to figure out what you were talking about. Then I get a phone call from you out of the blue. That’s why I’m here, Lord Hawke. Preemptive strike. You know the drill.”

“Really? Going to be tough to make this one look like natural causes, Spider, my bloody door blown off the hinges and just imagine all the blood…” Hawke had both hands in his pockets under his sweater. He moved his right hand to the Colt Python’s grips and swiveled the holster upward… easing the hammer back to the cocked position… finger applying light pressure to the trigger…

“I don’t give a shit anymore, Alex. Kelly will have the whole fuckin’ CIA on my ass now. My plan was to stay alive as long as I can. And take as many of those Agency assholes with me as I can. You understand that kind of thinking, right? Hell, I can see you doing the same damn thing if you got screwed by MI6 the way I did by CIA. Tell me you wouldn’t because I know—”

Hawke fired twice.

The heavy mag rounds caught Payne high on his right side. Spider spun around in a mad pirouette and staggered backward through the doorway and into the rain. At the same time he brought up the muzzle of his automatic weapon and squeezed off a long burst, the staccato rattle deafening inside the small cottage, bullets spraying everywhere.

Hawke dove behind the upended wooden table. The high-powered rounds splintered bits and chunks of wood all around him. Couldn’t remain here a second longer… his cover was disintegrating before his eyes.

Hawke popped up and fired again.

He missed high and left, but caused Spider to duck down, move sideways on the front steps, and take cover outside behind the exterior wall. Now Spider had his head down and was bullrushing him up the walk.

Hawke turned and bolted down the hallway leading to the seaward part of the house. That’s where his bedroom was and that’s where he’d just decided to make his final stand.

Hawke dashed inside his room.

Spider was right on his heels, pounding down the long hallway, his murderous threats echoing throughout the house.

Inside the small bedroom, Hawke whirled around and slammed the heavy wooden door behind him. He double bolted it and then slid his large mahogany dresser in front of it, thinking of how this could play out, trying to see it in his mind. Spider had come prepared for all-out war. He was wearing ceramic body armor plates inside his combat jumpsuit. In order to survive, Hawke had to put a round between one of the seams between the armor plates… and hope to hit a vital organ.…

And how the hell did you do that staring down the barrel of an assault rifle throwing lead at you? He looked around the room, trying to subdue the fear that was creeping around the edges on his conscious mind… a weapon? Some way out of this… had to be! He spotted one of Pelham’s round needlepoint rugs in the center of the bedroom floor.

Hold on.

There might actually be a way… an escape hatch!