Patriot

CHAPTER 15

Hawke’s bedroom was directly above the sea. A long time ago he’d had the crazy notion of installing a fireman’s pole beneath a trapdoor in his bedroom floor. He would use the brass pillar to slide down the twenty or thirty feet and into the clear blue lagoon that lay just beneath his room. He’d envisioned it as a great way to wake up each morning. Slide naked and half-asleep from his bed, grab the pole, and wake up in the fresh cold seawater… the novelty had soon worn off… but the pole was still there whenever he felt like a quick dunk!

He stepped quickly to the center of his small room. Lifted up the circular hooked rug with a sailboat depicted on it. Beneath it was the round hatch he’d disguised to look like the wooden flooring, never thinking he’d need an escape hatch, but just wanting to have it as a secret, like some bookcase that swung open to reveal a hidden passage.

He hooked his finger under an edge of the trapdoor and lifted.

Spider was now hammering on the heavy bedroom door with his fist, kicking it hard with his heavy boots. Telling Hawke it was over, useless, time to die. It would be the work of a few moments before the powerful brute gained entry.

Yes! Twenty feet directly below Hawke’s room he could just see the gleaming pole disappearing into the dark waves below, frothing up against the rocky walls.

Delirious with frustration, Spider was firing his weapon at the heavy wooden door, splintering the timbers. Hawke knew he didn’t have long—

He jumped, embraced the pole, and slid downward, lowering himself just a couple of feet. Then he reached up and pulled the hatch cover with its attached rug firmly back into place… if Spider got inside now, well, Alex had just bought himself a little time… a minute, maybe two… now…

Go!

He let go and slid swiftly and silently down.

The cold dark water shocked him, pumping even more adrenaline into his system. He got his bearings, clawed at the water, kicking his feet as hard as he could, and swam submerged out the inlet and into open sea.

His head popped up above the surface, expecting to see his little white cottage up on the rocky promontory. Everything was black! Spider had shut the lights off inside. He whirled around in the surf, disoriented, looking for the shoreline. There! The pale pink garden lights up on his terrace. He started clawing water, swimming as hard as he could for land.

A minute later he reached the set of wide stone steps that ascended all the way up the rock face to his broad terrace.

He pulled his weapon from its holster and raced to the top, taking the steps three at a time.

Spider!

Through an exterior window, he’d caught a glimpse of him. He was still out in the hall, slamming his big shoulder against the splintering bedroom door and firing his weapon, screaming loudly in frustration. Hawke sprinted across the terrace, kicked open one of the flimsy exterior doors, and stepped inside.

The hallway leading to his room was to his immediate left. The house was still pitch-black. Spider was inside, a raging beast, firing his weapon blindly.

Moving as quietly and quickly as he could, Hawke entered the darkened hall and paused.

He knew he’d only get one shot at this.

He felt along the wall with his left hand, searching for the light switch. Spider was standing in the doorway and firing into the bedroom in a hailstorm of frustration.

Hawke raised the big revolver, sighting on Spider’s broad back as he paused to take a breath.

Then he flipped the light switch.

The hall was instantly flooded with bright incandescent light.

“Spider!” he cried out, the gun now extended with two hands in front of him, braced in a shooter’s stance.

The big man whirled to face him, his own face a mask of shock and bloodlust. Hawke saw the muzzle of the man’s assault rifle come up, Spider firing crazy rounds, zinging off the marble floor as he raised the weapon toward his enemy.

Hawke fired the Python.

Once into the right side of Spider’s chest, hoping to catch the seam and his heart.

And once more into his right eye.

The man’s skull was slammed back against the door. He was still somehow struggling to lift his weapon as he fired blindly… rounds still ricocheting off the marble floors as all his lights winked out.

And then and there Artemis Payne breathed his last, sliding slowly to the floor, leaving a bloody smear on Alex Hawke’s wall, collapsing into a shapeless black heap of flesh and bone, now rendered useless.

Hawke went to him, knelt down, and pressed two fingers to his carotid artery, just to make sure.

No pulse.

The rogue was finally dead.

“Hullo, Ambrose,” Hawke said, answering his mobile a few moments later. “Are you there? Speak up.”

“Well, since it appears to be you on the phone, one can only deduce that you survived the encounter.”

“Excellent deduction, Constable. One of your best.”

“Do you require any medical help, by chance?”

“That would be nice. Thank you for asking. Where are you? Enjoying a pipe by a cozy fireside somewhere?”

“Hardly. Standing about twenty feet outside what used to be your front door, soaked to the bone and waiting in the pouring rain for all the shooting to die down in there.”

“Ah, you’re here. Well. Do come in, won’t you? Door’s open, as you can see,” Hawke said. “Meet me at the bar, will you? We would seem to owe ourselves a libation, some sort of restorative, I suppose. What’s your pleasure, old warrior?”

Mobile to his ear, Ambrose spoke while he picked his way gingerly through the destruction. “A gin and bitters should do nicely. Boodles, if you have it.”

“I certainly do. A tumbler of best rum would do me nicely.”

“What about your guest? Will he be joining us?”

“Oh, I don’t think he’ll be having anything this evening, thank you. He’s moved on, you see.”

“His departure shall go unlamented, I fear. I’ll see you at the bar. Two minutes.”

“Cheerio, then.”

“Cheerio.”

Hawke looked down at the corpse at his feet. Brass cartridges glittered everywhere on the tile floor. He used one bare foot to roll the man over onto his back, saw one dead black eye staring blindly back at him.

“I should have killed you that night in Tangiers, Payne. I could have done without that funeral in Maine, you miserable prick,” he said.

Alex found Ambrose standing behind the bar, his cold meerschaum pipe jammed into one corner of his mouth, pouring a healthy dollop of Gosling’s rum into Hawke’s favorite tumbler. Congreve smiled as he poured, “Ah, yes, m’lord. The ambrosial nectar of the gods awaits,” he said.

“Indeed.”

Hawke took the proffered glass, downed the contents in a single draught, and held it out for another splash.

“What shall we drink to, then?” Congreve asked, now raising his own glass.

Hawke plucked a gold-ringed cigarette from the silver stirrup cup on the bar, lit up, and thought about his response for a brief moment before speaking.

“Absent friends and dead enemies,” Hawke said, raising his tumbler.

And that was the end of it.

Or so they thought.