by Ted Bell
“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 flashin
g 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 chand
elier 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.”