Warlord: An Alex Hawke Novel

by Ted Bell

  He pointed his finger and said, “That building there, at the far edge of the graveyard, seems to be the only one remaining with a fairly intact roof. And thus suitable for habitation. I suggest we start our search for evidence there, Alex.”

  The white stone building had no windows. There was only a single wooden door, narrow and low. People were much smaller when this structure had been built centuries earlier. Bad diets. Hawke went through first to save Ambrose the embarrassment of being seen to squeeze his rather substantial girth through the narrow opening.

  Both men played their lights around the four walls and the floor. The dirt ground was covered with small white pebbles as had been some of the pathways throughout the cemetery. In the center of the room, directly beneath a dripping crack in the roof, stood a large, slablike stone table. It looked more like an altar than a place to eat, and Ambrose, looking around, decided that is exactly what it had been. This had been a Pagan house of worship.

  Thunder was still rumbling overhead and periodic flashes of lightning turned the inside of the tiny church a blinding white every few minutes. There was a continuous drip-drip-drip of rain spattering on the stone altar from a ceiling crack above.

  “Look over here, old stick,” Hawke said, his light shining on bits of rotten wood and pieces of decayed fabric cast randomly into a corner.

  Congreve leaned down to inspect it. He had donned a pair of surgical gloves and was using a pair of tweezers to lift the fabric and poke at the thin strips of wood.

  “A cot,” he said, standing up with a rusty metal hinge in his hand. “Bedding. Someone slept here for a time. And ate meals. There are some very rusty cans of Heinz beans over there. Of course, it could have been anyone at all. Campers, birders, and the like.”

  “But it could just as well have been our friend Smith, Ambrose. This debris is at least three or four decades old. If this sanctuary really was a haven for campers or naturalists, there would be far more evidence of recent presence. There is none.”

  “I wholly agree. All we need now is evidence of a crime.”

  “Right. I’ll get the Yard to analyze what’s here. DNA from the bedding perhaps. Prints from the cans.”

  Hawke went on to say, “I think Smith could have lured his victims out to this island and murdered them in this very room. Remote, isolated, uninhabited. Perfect, in fact. And a graveyard conveniently located just outside his front door.”

  Congreve was now inspecting the surface of the stone slab carefully with his flashlight and a magnifying glass. It was remarkably clean, he thought. Dusty maybe, but with very little accumulation of the dirt one would expect. Almost as if it had been scrubbed clean at some point.

  “Alex, there are faint markings on this stone. No pattern. Random slash marks, some quite deep that could well have been made by a knife—hold on—what’s this?” Stepping forward, the toe of his boot had stubbed on something hard beneath the small stones.

  He bent to his knees and swept away some of the tiny white pebbles beneath the slab. There was nothing but the hard-packed earthen floor. But upon closer inspection he found what he’d accidentally hit with his foot. There was a half circle of rusted iron protruding from the soil.

  “Alex, could you step over here for a second? I think I’ve literally stumbled upon something under the altar. I need you to put a light on it while I do some digging.”

  Hawke held the light while Congreve used a small spade to carefully dig the soil away. He quickly uncovered an intact iron ring about four inches in diameter.

  “A catacomb below, do you suppose?” Ambrose said with excitement, and he began to spade away the damp black dirt surrounding the iron ring. He struck wood about three inches down.

  “Or a coffin?” Hawke asked.

  Suddenly both men whipped their heads around at the sound of a low, ugly growl coming from the doorway.

  A black dog, lean and muscular, was peering inside. A feral dog by the looks of him, fangs bared, milk white tusks that could crush through a man’s wrist or calf bone like so much soft clay. The animal stood staring at the two men with a total absence of fear. Alex did not like the stiffened front legs or the ridge of raised hair along the animal’s spine, both signals of an attack. Nor did he like the look in the animal’s black eyes. It was raw hunger. Stringy loops of saliva hung from the long lower jaw full of teeth.

  The animal started slowly moving toward them through the doorway, languid, unafraid.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  NO SUDDEN MOVEMENT,” ALEX SAID to his friend Congreve, barely above a whisper. “Sign of weakness. He’ll attack instantly if he sees it.”

  As Hawke said this he slowly slipped his hand inside his mac and gripped the butt of the SIG Sauer P230 holstered beneath his arm, inserting his finger inside the guard. Because of its relatively small size there was never a telltale bulge. But its magazine capacity was only seven rounds of .380 ammunition.

  On an uninhabited island, this lack of firepower was highly unlikely to be a problem. Now, it had all the makings of one.

  “Shoot him, Alex; look, he’s getting ready to lunge for us!”

  “I will only if I have to,” Hawke said, his gunsight now leveled between the dog’s eyes. “Raise your flashlight slowly above your head and fling it right at him. If it doesn’t scare him off, I will shoot him.”

  “Good Lord,” Congreve said, raising the heavy flashlight with a trembling hand and flinging it at the wild dog. He missed by mere inches, yet the dog didn’t even flinch. He snarled viciously and suddenly leaped forward. Alex Hawke shot him in midair, a quick round to the head. The dog dropped to the ground without a sound, quite dead, barely inside the church door.

  “Back to work,” Hawke said, holstering his weapon.

  “Good Lord,” Congreve said again, staring at the dead animal as he bent to retrieve his flashlight. A dog built like this monster could rip a man to shreds in a matter of seconds. The rough seas he’d crossed were beginning to have a certain charm.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, USING TWO small hand spades, they had cleared away all the soil. A wooden door, old, but hardly ancient, had been buried beneath the altar and hidden beneath a few inches of carefully tamped-down black earth. Hawke grasped the iron ring and pulled.

  The door squealed loudly on its rusted iron hinges but swung open with surprising ease after all these years of disuse. The poisonous air that instantly wafted out of that centuries-old hole in the ground made both men choke and gag.

  Congreve staggered back, eyes watering, kicking dirt and pebbles into the yawning black opening. Hawke leaned forward and played his light about the space below.

  “What’s down there?” Congreve croaked.

  “No idea. But whatever it is, it’s what we came here to find.”

  Hawke leaned deeper into the hole with his light. The only object of note was an ancient stone staircase descending darkly into God only knows what fresh hell lay below.

  “I’m going down there,” he said to Ambrose. “Care to join me?”

  Congreve pulled a white linen handkerchief from somewhere inside his mac and clamped it over his nose and mouth. Seemingly unable to speak, he nodded his head in the affirmative. He crouched by the foul-smelling hole in the earth as Hawke descended; his nose was running and his eyes were tearing so badly he could barely see.

  “You’d better come down and see this, Constable,” Hawke’s voice called seconds later.

  Congreve, despite all his wanton misgivings, went down the worn stone staircase only to find that Hawke had not moved a foot away from the steps.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  Congreve, who’d been busily watching his feet descend the treacherous staircase, raised his eyes and followed the beam of Hawke’s light.

  “Ah,” he said.

  The room was one large square, with an opening at the far side. It looked to be a tunnel leading off into more darkness.

  “Ah, what?” Hawke said.

  “A crypt.” Ambrose played h
is light over the four walls, each completely decorated from floor to ceiling with yellowed human skulls jammed together to form a nightmare decor.

  “I know it’s a crypt, Ambrose. What I’m talking about is that tunnel leading off to God knows where.”

  “Tunnels intrigue me,” Congreve said. “Always have.”

  “And me as well.”

  “This room is either Pagan or Early Christian, I’m not sure. We may find out at the end of that tunnel.”

  “Then let’s proceed with all due haste,” Hawke said, leading the way.

  The tunnel was fairly wide but less than five feet in height, so both men had to stoop to pass through it.

  Hawke figured they’d traveled about a hundred feet when they came into the next room.

  It was round, with a domed ceiling, the entire space decorated like the first, with human skulls crammed together, floor to ceiling. In the very center of the room, directly beneath the dome, was a large circular structure.

  “And what might that be?” Hawke asked, shining his light on the thing. It was a circle of stone, perhaps eight feet in diameter, and it rose about four feet from the earthen floor, which was covered with the small white pebbles. From Ambrose’s vantage point, the structure looked to be empty.

  “Well, it’s definitely not a child’s wading pool,” Congreve said, advancing slowly toward the thing. It was very, very old stone, and the exterior was decorated with carvings and hieroglyphs similar to those on the obelisk in the graveyard above. Ambrose dropped to one knee and began examining the symbols carefully with his omnipresent magnifying glass.

  “Have you been inside the catacombs beneath Rome?” he asked Hawke.

  “No.”

  “You’ll find similar structures there. This is a fountain, oddly enough. At one point, the room surrounding this fountain was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands of human bones.”

  “That fountain is where the smell is coming from.”

  “I noticed that,” Congreve said. “Look inside, please.”

  Hawke held his breath, put one hand on the rim, and looked into the fountain or whatever it was. The stink was coming from the stuff at the bottom, a foul grey sludge that stank to high heaven. Clearly the source of the foul underground air.

  “Disgusting,” Hawke said. “Have a peek.”

  Congreve rose and peered inside.

  “Yes, just as I thought.”

  Saying nothing more, he again donned his latex gloves. Then he leaned over the edge and dipped his right index finger into the pungent muck. Quickly withdrawing it, he held it for the briefest moment under his nose.

  “Hmm.”

  “I hate it when you say that. What the hell is that god-awful stuff?”

  “Sulfuric acid. At one point this fountain was filled to the brim with it.”

  “But who—?”

  “Our mysterious Mr. Smith. This is where he disposed of his victims. He rid himself of the bodies in this Pagan fountain. Submerged his victims in acid, hopefully postmortem. Completely destroyed the physical evidence. Bad luck.”

  “No remains at all?”

  “No. I’m afraid we’ve come all this way for nothing, Alex. Every trace of those poor women’s bodies is gone. I know of cases where someone is tried in the absence of any trace of a body. But they are extremely rare. Only a tiny fraction of them ever come to trial.”

  “Let’s get out of here, then, Ambrose. The stench is unbearable.”

  “I agree. I think we might—Ouch! Damn it!”

  Congreve stood up, rubbing his right knee.

  “What happened?” Hawke said.

  “One of those damned pebbles. Dug right into my knee.”

  He bent to brush it from his trouser leg, hesitated, then plucked it off his flannel trousers and held it to the light.

  “We may be in luck after all,” he said, flicking open his small gold magnifying glass and holding the thing up to his eye for closer inspection.

  “Because of that damn pebble?”

  “It’s not a pebble, Alex; it’s a gallstone. Not animal, either. A human gallstone, in fact.”

  “Is that proof of anything?”

  “Indeed it is. Under a molecular microscope, we might determine the presence of something called Helicobacter.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “DNA. Human DNA.”

  He withdrew a small Ziploc baggie from his rain gear and dropped the precious nugget of evidence inside. Hawke was already halfway through the tunnel, and Congreve quickly followed in his wake.

  Considering the horrific stench underground, he was surprised to find Alex Hawke waiting patiently for him at the bottom of the stone staircase.

  “What is it, Alex?” he said, joining him.

  “Up there.” Hawke pointed with his flashlight. “At the top of the steps.”

  Another feral dog, this one bigger and blacker than the first, stared down at the two men below. Its eyes shone bright red in the gleam of Hawke’s light. The animal’s sharp snout was smeared with red blood. The blood was dripping down, spattering the stone steps below.

  “Cain has been having a go at Abel,” Hawke said.

  “What?” Congreve said, his focus riveted on the gleaming red eyes above.

  “This one’s been munching on his dead brother in the doorway,” Hawke said. “The scent of blood must have drawn him in.”

  “Alex, consider. Would you imagine there are many more of these wild dogs on the island?”

  “Yes. They breed in the wild and they tend to run in packs.”

  “How many more might be out there, would you suppose?”

  “No idea,” Hawke said, pulling out his gun.

  “How many rounds do you have left in your weapon?”

  “One for this major bastard above. Five more for the rest.”

  “I think it’s high time we bid farewell to Mutton Island.”

  “I agree,” Hawke said, raising his gun and shooting the menace at the top of the steps.

  THEY WERE CROSSING ROCKY GROUND, nearing the boat when the wild dog pack began to appear. The first one came slinking out from behind the ruins of a small stone cottage. It followed them, loping along at a distance. Moments later it was joined by two more, racing up from behind. Hawke held the SIG Sauer, a round in the chamber, in his right hand. An expert marksman, he wasn’t worried about hitting his targets. He was worried about having more targets than bullets.

  “Alex?”

  “I know. I saw them. Bummer. Walk faster but do it gradually. We’re almost there.”

  “Bummer?”

  “Slang. Harry Brock talk for bad luck. He says it all the time. California, you know.”

  “Ah, our old chum, Mr. Brock.”

  Alex was conscious of movement on both sides, shadowy figures moving ever closer, stalking them.

  “Slow down,” he said to Congreve. “If they see you running, they’ll attack.”

  “You slow down if you want. I don’t think we can outrun them.”

  “I don’t need to outrun them. I just need to outrun you.”

  “Alex, if you think that is remotely humorous—”

  A dog leaped out of the mist, directly in front of them. He launched himself at Ambrose going for his throat. Hawke fired instantly, and the dog dropped heavily to the ground, mewling in pain, literally a mere foot from Congreve’s Wellies.

  “Run hard for the boat,” he told Ambrose. “Do it now. I’ll lag behind. Dogs will go for the easy meat first, but it won’t take them long to devour this one. Use this knife to slice the mooring line, then shove the boat into the surf. If another dog comes at you, go for his throat with the knife. Stab first, then rip with the saw blade, that’s what it’s for. But for God’s sake, strike to kill. Shout when you’re safely aboard.”

  Congreve looked at the knife and said, “I’m uncomfortable with knives, Alex. Always have been.”

  “You have another choice. When the dog lunges at you, simply grab each of his fo
relegs in midair, grip them tightly, and rip his chest apart. It works; I’ve done it a few times with Chinese police dogs.”

  “I’ll take the knife.”

  “I thought so. Now, go!”

  Congreve didn’t need encouragement. He raced ahead, the saw-toothed assault knife in his hand, soon disappearing into the heavy ground fog. He quickly reached the rocky beach and made his way carefully down the slippery boulders to the shaly beach below. The boat was right where they’d left it, although the flood tide was in a bit and she was almost afloat. That would make it much easier to shove her offshore to wait for Hawke.

  He was about to use Hawke’s assault knife to sever the mooring line when he heard a low growl from above. He whirled round just as the beast leaped from the rocks above, snarling like some demon out of hell. Congreve braced himself, instinctively raising the knife to protect himself, and, seeing that the animal’s throat was exposed as it lunged, he thrust upward with the blade as the dog came down. Instead of withdrawing the knife, he did exactly as Hawke had instructed, almost decapitating the rabid beast in the process.

  It fell to the ground at his feet, dead.

  Ambrose, breathing heavily, simply stood and stared down at the corpse, hardly able to believe what he’d just done, with a knife of all things. It never failed to amaze him what human beings were capable of when they found themselves in extreme circumstances. Sheer instinct, and the will to live, had made even an overweight, middle-aged detective who smoked and drank too much a very formidable foe against a rabid dog.

  HAWKE, PRAYING THAT WHAT LITTLE he remembered of canine behavior was correct, ran forward a hundred yards, turned, and dropped to one knee. He held his pistol in both hands, swinging it in a smooth arc from side to side, the adrenaline rush bringing all of his senses to the fore.

  The dogs converged on the wounded animal, snarling, growling furiously, snapping at one another, all of them fighting for a piece of fresh meat and the taste of warm blood. Couldn’t even count how many. Ten? Fifteen? More maybe.

  It took about a minute for the first one to turn his attention away from the shredded animal on the ground and focus on Hawke. It approached cautiously at first, then broke into a lightning-fast run. Hawke waited until the beast got within twenty yards before he killed it.