Hawke (34 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn Mario Andretti of schoolbus drivers!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a basic snatch.

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

Ambrose saying the target must be taken alive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stoke would take out any guards at the front gate.

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

“Loud and clear,” Ross said.

“Ditto,” Quick said. “Five by five.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two minutes later, he was back.

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

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

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

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

“What up?” Stoke asked Amen.

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

“Weapon?”

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

“Quick?” Stoke said.

“Copy,” he heard in his headphones.

“You guys in position?”

“Roger that.”

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

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

“Boo,” Stoke said, smiling.

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

“Bad idea,” Stoke said.

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

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

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

“Copy,” he heard in his phones.

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

“Twenty seconds,” Quick said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I do, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay. Everybody know what they doin’?”

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

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

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

“Ross?”

“Copy.”

“Out of the woods?”

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

“Sit tight. How’s it look?”

“Quiet.”

“Good quiet or bad quiet?”

“Good.”

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