Assassin ah-2

by Ted Bell

“Don’t get defensive, Stoke. Terrible as he is, Fidel was far and away the lesser of two evils. The thugs who tried to overthrow him would have made the Saddam-era Baghdad or Kim’s Pyongang look like Disneyworld.”

  “You right, Boss.”

  “Scissorhands may well be back in Cuba, Stoke,” Alex said, “But Cuba’s a dangerous place for a high-ranking security officer who went with the losing side. We should start in south Florida, I think. If I were Cuban and on the run, that’s where I’d go. Calle Ocho. Little Havana. Great place to hide, Miami.”

  “And where that gun sight was stolen,” Stoke said.

  “At the very least, it would be a good place to begin looking for this fellow,” Hawke said. “Then, the islands.”

  “Ain’t no place the man can hide from me, Boss,” Stoke said. “Look here, you got your hands full with these State Department assassinations. Why don’t you just let me and Ross go find this shithead by our ownselves?”

  “I don’t let other men shoot my foxes, Stoke,” Hawke said quietly.

  Hawke lowered his head and rubbed both eyes with the tips of his fingers. He was, Stoke knew, torn in half. Vicky was gone and wasn’t coming back. Hawke was a man with a vengeful spirit, and the urge to avenge his bride’s vicious murder was powerful. Tearing him apart. But so was his urge to do all in his power to help his old friend Conch.

  In the end, the professional warrior inside him won. Out there somewhere was the man who had killed his beautiful bride. Perhaps the same man who had also just come very close to killing him. And Congreve. But that was personal. Another psychopath was targeting America’s diplomatic corps. And making the world far less stable in the doing. Perhaps the two were one and the same. Perhaps not.

  A few moments later, Hawke looked up and stared hard at Stokely, then, finally, fixed his gaze on Sutherland. Ross could see that he’d made a decision.

  “There is procedure, isn’t there, Ross?”

  “Indeed there is, sir.”

  “Shouldn’t you call your superiors at the Yard about this?” Alex asked. “You still officially report there, and they’ve got jurisdiction in this case.” Sutherland looked mutely at Hawke. It was the question he’d expected and one he did not want to answer.

  “Galling, isn’t it, sir?” Sutherland managed.

  “I’ll answer that one,” Congreve said. “The Yard have told Ross and me to stay completely away from this thing, Alex. Completely.” As Sutherland nodded his head in affirmation, Ambrose added, “By all reports, they’ve not made much headway so far.”

  “Are you going, Ambrose? To Florida, I mean.”

  “I’d recommend sending Ross and Stokely, Alex. I might be of more help in this other matter.” Hawke nodded assent.

  “Good. Go find this son of a bitch, Stoke. You and Ross. Miami, Jamaica, Cuba, wherever the hell he is,” Hawke said. “Don’t kill him unless you have to. Bring him to me. I’d very much like a word with him before he gets turned over to the Yard. A private word.”

  “Yeah,” Stoke said. “We can do that.”

  “I’m going up on deck,” Hawke said. “I need some bloody air.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nantucket Island

  ALEX HAWKE, WEARING A FADED GREY ROYAL NAVY T-SHIRT and a pair of swimming trunks, was up on deck again in the wee hours, his faithful parrot Sniper riding easily on his left shoulder. He had a pocketful of Cheezbits, one of Sniper’s favorite late-night snacks.

  He still needed air. Couldn’t seem to get enough of the stuff.

  A fresh breeze had come up just after midnight and blown most of the fog offshore. A fingernail moon, little more than a sliver of ivory, hung above the horizon in a dark blue sky; there were a few stars, white as bone.

  Cheeeez-us! Cheez-us! Sniper squawked, and Hawke popped another tidbit into the air. The parrot snagged it with her sharp beak and fluttered her wings in appreciation.

  “Good bird, Sniper,” Hawke said. Slushy, the head chef down in the galley, had secretly taught the caviar and cheese–loving bird to say “Cheez-us” and Alex had been unable to cure her of the mildy sacrilegious new habit.

  The recent cold front that had brought heavy rains to the Cape, Martha’s Vineyard, and the island of Nantucket had now gravitated northeast out over the North Atlantic. In its wake, only wispy remnants of misty vapor snaking through the silent streets of old Nantucket Town and wafting through dark forests of sailboat masts in the dead-quiet harbor.

  The remaining heavy air left every surface cool and damp, and the broad teak decks of Blackhawke were slippery underfoot. She was anchored out in open water, a good distance from the harbor entrance as a security measure. Tom Quick wanted a lot of empty water around his boat at a time like this. Room to maneuver or get under way if she was threatened in any way. There wasn’t another yacht within half a mile of her anchorage out here.

  The sharp tang of the breeze coming off the ocean was strong and antiseptic; it felt good as Alex filled his lungs with it. In the owner’s stateroom on the deck just below, he had tossed in his bed for hours, but any notion of sleep he’d had this night was clearly just a dream. Padding across the varnished floorboards to the head, he’d opened the medicine chest and reached for the slim orange vial of a small miracle pill called Ambien.

  Alex Hawke’s personal physician, Dr. Kenneth Beer, had prescribed the sedative when Alex had seen him immediately after Vicky’s funeral in Louisiana. He’d been at his wit’s end over lack of sleep and had decided not to cure it with spirits as was his old custom. Beer was forever trying to convince him that his lifestyle was hardly befitting his profession. Hawke, of course, had never told Ken what he did for a living, but his doctor had taken enough lead out of him to hazard a guess. Hawke’s body was a living testament to Beer’s surgical talents.

  “Hell, Hawke, you’re only as good as your last scar,” Ken would say, stitching him up and sending him on his way.

  Ten milligrams would put him out, and he’d come to depend on this nightly escape hatch. Beer had assured him it wasn’t habit-forming, but Hawke wondered. Freedom from pain of the magnitude he’d been suffering was clearly addictive. He’d replaced the plastic cap without removing a pill, stepped into his still-damp bathing suit and pulled a T-shirt over his head, hoping some fresh air might calm the troubled waters.

  He knew he had things to work through. Things that a narcotized brain studiously avoided during sleep state. Vicky was dead. A month later, his grief was still acute. The case had gone cold from lack of attention. The Yard wasn’t getting anywhere but, stupidly from his point of view, didn’t want any help, either. Stoke and Ross had come up with a plausible suspect. Their case against the Cuban psychopath nicknamed Scissorhands had both motive and opportunity. Hawke at this moment wanted nothing more on earth than to light up his airplane, head down to Miami, and help Stokely and Ross run down the murderous Cuban.

  On another, less personal front, there was this bastard they called the Dog. A cunning devil who was, according to reports Conch and Texas Patterson had shared with him, capable of wreaking unspeakable havoc upon a weakened, vulnerable and increasingly isolated America. But no one, it seemed, had a even a clue as to his true identity or whereabouts. “Go find this guy, Alex,” Conch had said. “And delete him.”

  Hawke’s staunch efforts to keep his personal feelings and his professional obligations separate had not met with much success. But, he’d made his decision to send Stoke out without him and somehow he’d find a way to live with it.

  His first stop had been the bridge, where he’d had a brief chat with his ship’s captain, Briny Fay, regarding an ongoing problem with the boat’s Aegis defense warning systems. The news from Briny was not good. Two of the CPU mainframes that backed up the Aegis had crashed inexplicably, and the techs couldn’t figure out why. Now, as he made his way aft along the port side of the bridge deck, Sniper’s own less sophisticated but highly effective alarm system went off.

  HAWKE! HAWKE! The old parrot screeche
d. Sniper was trained in the ancient pirate ways, riding the master’s shoulder to warn of unseen and unexpected dangers. Like the heavily armed man who now stepped out of the shadows directly in front of him.

  “Hullo,” Hawke said evenly.

  “Sorry, Skipper,” Tommy Quick said, lowering his weapon. “Didn’t hear you coming.”

  “Well, I’m barefoot, Tommy,” Hawke said, a smile in his voice. “So it’s hardly surprising.” The young American was in charge of security aboard this boat and he took his job very seriously. Quick, the former sharpshooter, was a stealth warrior who didn’t care much for surprises and so very rarely experienced any.

  “Still and all, sir,” Quick said, looking down at Hawke’s bare feet, embarrassed.

  “It’s quiet out there, Sarge,” Hawke said, gliding over the awkward moment by casting a glance seaward. There was a new moon and a few bright stars winking behind high, fast-moving clouds.

  Too quiet! Too quiet! Sniper squawked.

  “Too quiet, she’s right, yes, sir,” Quick replied, smiling at the well-worn joke. “The natives are restless.”

  “To hell with the natives,” Hawke said. “What about the bloody tourists?”

  Hawke placed one hand on the rail and gazed down into the sea. The water, some twenty feet below the deck where he stood, was brilliantly illuminated, light blue darkening to deep blue, by a security system of underwater floodlights. It attracted all manner of marine life, including not a few of the large local sharks the famous author Peter Benchley, a Nantucketer himself, had made so notorious.

  “Mind taking Sniper for a bit, Tommy?”

  “Not at all, sir,” he said and held out his arm to the bird.

  “Thanks. Thinking of going for a quick swim, actually, Sarge,” Hawke said, holding out his parrot. The bird flared her wings and alighted on the younger man’s forearm.

  “Swim, sir?”

  “Work a few kinks out.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea, sir?” His employer’s idea of a quick swim might be miles. In open ocean at night with a strong tide running, with possible hostiles in the area, this was definitely not a good idea, at least from a security man’s point of view. On the other hand, Hawke was a former SBS commando. Swimming great distances at night in any weather under any conditions came as naturally to him as strolling around the block during a spring shower.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, security, Skipper. Ship’s at full alert. Because the mainframe is down, our Aegis defensive perimeter only extends…well, you know our situation, sir,” said Quick. “Until we’re up and running again, we’re pretty much a sitting duck.”

  “Yes, there is that,” Hawke said, using one hand to vault himself easily off the deck and up onto the narrow varnished teak handrail. He then stood upright, perched atop the slender rail, facing the sea, perfectly balanced, arms at his side, smiling.

  “I could launch two men in an inflatable to keep an eye on you, Skipper. Not a bad idea under the current—”

  “No need of that,” Hawke said. “Cheers.”

  Dumbstruck, Quick watched Alex Hawke rise up onto the tips of his toes and fly off the rail, executing a pretty good jackknife, extending to his full length to break the surface with little more than a ripple. Quick looked down in time to see Hawke’s curly black head pop back up in the dead center of his entry point, a huge grin on his face.

  “Repel all boarders!” his employer shouted and then he dove down, disappearing amongst schools of varicolored fish, swimming rapidly beneath the huge black hull.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” a voice exploded in Quick’s earpiece.

  “What is it?” Quick said, adjusting the lip-mike of his Motorola headset.

  “Oh, nothing much, sir,” one of the underwater video technicians stationed in the fire control center replied. “The owner just swam up, shoved a shark out of the way and stuck his face in my fisheye lens, that’s all. Big smile on his face. This is not foul play, roger, Sarge? His idea to jump into the deep dark sea full of sharks?”

  “Yeah, his idea, affirmative,” Quick replied.

  “Sounds about right, sir.”

  “Yeah. Not that it’ll do any good, but you guys keep the underwater telephotos on him as long as you can. Cycle a 360 sweep every five minutes. And gimme a heads-up the second he returns.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  “Sonar?”

  “Still down, Sir.”

  “How long ’till the Aegis is back up?”

  “Techs are saying two hours, minimum.”

  “Christ. A sitting duck.”

  “You could say that again.”

  Sitting duck! Sitting duck! Sniper said.

  Hawke swam as hard as he could, slicing through the slight chop. He stopped suddenly, muscles aflame, somehow always knowing precisely where his halfway mark was. Buoyant in mind and body, he let the current take him, relaxing into a dead man’s float, face submerged, limbs hanging down, so heavy they felt more like logs, going with the flow. He let his thoughts float as well, go where they would, and he stayed in this meditative state for some time, lifting his head for air only as often as required.

  He remained that way until a deep cold began to seep into his muscles, telling him it was time to head back. Lifting his head for a deep draught of air before starting the long swim home, he was surprised to see a small pleasure yacht silhouetted against the sky, a darkened cabin cruiser, perhaps forty feet in length. She had neither running lights nor navigation lights illuminated, her motors were silent; she was drifting with the current just like Hawke, treading water some five hundred yards off her port beam.

  Curious.

  He swam towards her, instinctively pulling himself slowly and quietly through the waves. As he drew closer, he saw that she was one of those luxury picnic boats. They were built along the lines of a Maine lobster boat, and if you had a million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, she was yours for the asking. He’d swum to within fifty yards of her when he saw someone switch on a flashlight down below. The curtains were not drawn in the main cabin, and he watched the yellow glow bobbing about, moving forward towards the bow.

  The moving flashlight gave him a fairly good mental picture of the layout below. A salon amidships and a small v-berth stateroom all the way forward. He’d guess a complete power failure except most boats of this size were equipped with gensets, diesel or gasoline powered generators. So what was this strange duck doing floating around out here in the dark in one of the east coast’s major shipping lanes?

  He paddled quietly around to her stern. There was just enough ambient light from the fingernail moon and few visible stars to make out her name and hailing port, emblazoned in gold leaf on her dark blue transom.

  RUNNING TIDE Seal Harbor, Maine

  He swam up to the swim platform at the stern, grasping it with both hands, trying to decide whether to hail the owner and see if he could offer assistance or slip aboard quietly. The main cabin was dark once more. Whoever was down there had either extinguished the flashlight, or taken it forward out of sight. That’s when he saw the small electric motor jury-rigged on a swivel mount to the swim platform. Twenty horsepower. A tiller for steering. A man standing on the platform had enough power to maneuver the forty-footer anywhere he wanted without making a sound.

  Slip aboard quietly.

  He timed the waves slapping under the boarding platform at the stern, waiting for one to lift the boat, waiting for the precise moment when he would swing his weight aboard. With any luck, the rising water would disguise the additional weight suddenly added to the stern. Go! Heaving himself up, he sat on the outer edge of the platform, legs dangling in the water, waiting to slide back into the water instantly if anyone took notice of his arrival. After a minute, he got to his feet, slipped over the transom, and stood on the aft deck looking forward.

  The door to the enclosed pilothouse was hanging ajar. He crossed the teak deck and stepped inside, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the da
rkness.

  To his right, seated behind the wheel at the helm seat, the figure of a large man in a dark watch cap facing straight ahead, not moving. Asleep? Drugged? Alex edged cautiously forward, waiting for the man to swing around with a gun leveled at him. Why was he so paranoid? Ah, right, someone was trying to kill him. When the man made no move to turn and see who was approaching, Alex reached out and put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  The man, dressed in yellow foul-weather gear, slumped backward, and his head suddenly fell back upon the seat cushion with a soft thunk. His mouth gaped in a rictus of death, his eyes were a faint dull gleam under the lowered lids, and the skin of his collapsed cheeks was bluish-white. There was a neat black hole in the middle of his forehead, powder burns around the entrance wound; the coagulated blood puddled in his sunken eyesockets was black in the moonlight.

  There was a gun lying on the seat beside him.

  He saw that it was a Browning nine, the sidearm favored by the U.S. Army and also a number of American police forces. He patted him down, felt a bulge in a breast pocket under the slicker, reached inside and pulled out an alligator wallet. The man was Alan Outer-bridge, age fifty-five, according to his Maine driver’s license. Lived at some place called The Pines on Seal Point, Maine. This was, had been, his Hinckley Talaria 44. And Mr. Outer-bridge was now very dead.

  Roughly a thousand dollars cash was in the wallet, credit cards, a picture of a young girl. He put the back of his hand against the man’s cheek. Guessing, he placed the time of death about two hours earlier.

  Hawke turned toward the companionway. The man down below with the flashlight had hijacked this yacht at gunpoint, then murdered the owner and not for his money. Whatever brought the killer to Nantucket, it wasn’t robbery. And it wasn’t tourism. There was a strong possibility that the blood of Deirdre Slade and her two children was on his hands.

  Alex ducked out through the pilothouse door and quickly retraced his steps back to the transom. He ejected the mag in the grip of the Browning, saw that it was full of hollow-points, reinserted it, and jacked a fresh cartridge into the chamber. He was counting on the wind to carry the sounds away, still, he kept his eye on the pilothouse. If someone should suddenly appear there, Hawke now had a rough idea who it might be, and he would shoot that man without a moment’s hesitation.