Warlord: An Alex Hawke Novel

by Ted Bell

  “Got a better idea?” Harry said, lighting up a fresh unfiltered Camel. He’d stubbed the last one out in the little guy’s left ear. Harry being Harry as usual, he only smoked on certain very special social occasions. Like rendition.

  “Yeah, I got one, Harry. Bad cop, bad cop.”

  “I like it.”

  “Ozzie won’t like it.”

  “Screw Ozzie. He murders schoolchildren on school buses, remember that little tidbit? Three buses in three states in the last three weeks. How many of our kids does he get to kill before we can, you know, really torture the dickhead?”

  “Really pisses me off waterboarding is no longer politically correct,” Stoke said. “I miss it already.”

  “Hopeless nostalgia, man, wasted energy. Listen. I saw a pair of really rusty pliers at the bait station back there in the stern. We could pull his goddamn tongue out, right? Put a big fish hook in it first and then yank—”

  “Then he couldn’t talk at all, Harry.”

  “Good point.”

  “You need your tongue to talk.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

  Stoke saw a baby dolphin suddenly surface about six feet away and then dive under the bow of boat, playing with them, surfacing on the other side before coming around again.

  “I think I just got an idea,” he said, smiling at Harry for the first time all afternoon.

  “Spit it out. Look on your face, it’s a really good one.”

  “Old navy tradition. Really old. Been around since the year 1560. But off the books for centuries so I doubt any of our more ladylike congressmen have passed any goddamn laws against it.”

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  “Follow me,” Stoke said heading aft for the stern cockpit where the big chrome fishing chair was and all the fishing gear was stowed. He did some quick mental calculations: the boat’s beam; the draft. “C’mon, I’ll show you how it works.”

  Harry flicked his smoke overboard, followed Stoke aft, and watched him opening hatch covers in the wide transom until he found the right one, a rope locker. He pulled out two big coils of thick white nylon line, each about thirty feet long, Harry guessed. Stoke quickly tied them together in a manner that suggested prior nautical experience.

  Harry said, “Tie him up? With that? Whoa. But, yeah, very cool idea.”

  “Not tie him up, Harry.”

  “What then?”

  “Go get his sorry ass. I’ll show you right now.”

  Harry was back at the stern with Yoda in about five minutes. Boat was rocking pretty good in these big swells, and the Wizard was looking green about the gills. Shaky. Too bad they’d run out of Dramamine.

  “Want to talk now, Ozzie?” Stoke asked him, leaning down until their noses were almost touching.

  “How does one say ‘go fuck yourself’ in English?” he replied with his elfin smile. “Oh. I remember now. Go fuck yourself.”

  “Easy. Say it again, just one more time, and then try to say it without any teeth.”

  “There is no God but God,” the imam smirked, and repeated his mantra for the hundredth time that day. His idea of name, rank, and serial number. This little dick was really getting on Stoke’s nerves. He’d murdered, or caused to be murdered, nearly two hundred innocent American schoolchildren. And no one could legally lay a hand on him.

  Stoke said, “Not what I had in mind, sportin’ life.” He backhanded the guy across the chops, rattling his teeth.

  “One-track mind,” Harry said, shaking his head in mock disgust.

  “Cut his hands loose,” Stoke said, fed up.

  “Loose? Really? Why?”

  “Just do it. He’s going to need his hands.”

  “Just do it, Harry,” Ozzie said, mimicking Stoke’s accent and holding his hands up to be freed.

  Harry did it. As he turned away, the crazy little killer took a swing at him. Harry laughed and swatted his fist away as if disposing of an annoying fly. “Listen up, pal,” Brock said to him. “You fuck with a truck, you get run over.”

  “You mean…like the World Trade towers?”

  Harry quickly turned his back to the imam, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing the blazing anger in his eyes. As calmly as he could, he said to Stoke, “How about we just cut him into bite-sized pieces and feed him to the sharks?”

  Stoke just stared back at Brock, so angry with the radical Muslim he didn’t trust himself to speak.

  As a result, neither man saw the terrorist snatch the fish knife from the bait station, lift up his prison garb orange shirt, and stick the blade inside his elastic waistband.

  “Now what?” Brock said after a few long moments.

  “We tie this line around his waist. Loop it around a couple of times. Okay, good. Now, nice and tight. He goes right in the middle. Need about twenty feet of line on either side of him.”

  “What the—”

  “Trust me. Do it. Good. Oh, hold up, one more thing.”

  Stoke opened a locker full of scuba gear, dug through it, and pulled out a lead-weighted diver’s belt. He cinched it good and tight around the guy’s waist and tied the two ends of the nylon belt in a square knot.

  “Perfect. Now we walk him forward to the bow. Ozzie? You cool with this? Good man.”

  Harry grabbed one end of the line and marched toward the bow. Stoke had the other end, bringing up the rear, Yoda in the middle, going along to get along.

  “Now what?” Harry said, as they stood at the bow pulpit where the anchor was. Stoke grabbed the little guy by his scrawny neck and lifted him high above his head. Then he stepped out onto the pulpit projecting out from the bow.

  “Okay, this is the good part. I’m just going to swing him around a little, like this, called the ‘helicopter,’ and then throw him in the ocean. Right off the front of the bow…Like that!”

  “Cool!” Harry exclaimed, watching the guy splash down, disappear, and come up floundering, slapping the water to try and stay afloat; Harry was beginning to like this idea more and more.

  “Pull him around to your side. Walk aft with the line. I’ll ease my line to give you enough slack to do it. Don’t let him sink.”

  “Why not?”

  Stoke eased his line and went over to the opposite side of the boat, slowly feeding Harry some slack, the line disappearing under the boat, pulling his own end beneath the keel of the big Vike.

  “Because that’s not how you do this, Harry. Keep him afloat with your end of the line until I get over here in position. Okay, this is good right here.” Stoke had stopped just forward of the wheelhouse, just about amidships.

  “What the hell do we do now?”

  “Keelhaul his ass. Just like the good old days. I bet nobody’s done this in two hundred years. Maybe more.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Hold on, let me tie my end to the railing over here.”

  Stoke did and then crossed over to Harry’s side. He leaned way out over the starboard rail and saw Ozzie bobbing there, kept afloat by Harry’s line.

  “Here’s a question, Ozzie,” Stoke said. “Answer it and I’ll think about not drowning you. Ready?”

  “Ready,” the terrorist said, nodding his head violently. Good sign. Some people just weren’t comfortable out in the open seas with a life jacket made out of lead.

  “Found a name in your computer, homes. Popped up a lot in fact. Somebody named Smith. Who the hell is Smith? You have ten seconds.”

  The guy shook his head no.

  “Sink him,” Stoke said. Harry eased his line and the little guy dropped like a rock. They both watched his bubbles for a minute or so.

  “Okay, bring him up.”

  He popped to the surface, sputtering.

  “Second question,” Stoke said, bending over the rail. “Ready? Good. Another name that seemed to keep coming up in your electronic correspondence. A Sword of Allah bigwig code-named Scimitar. Tell me who he is and you can come back up.”

  “There is no God but God
.”

  “Wrong answer. This time it’s going to be a little tougher, okay, Ozzie?”

  “What now?” Harry said. Stoke crossed back to the opposite port rail and untied his end of the line.

  “We keelhaul him, that’s what. There are two ways to do this. The bad way, and the really bad way.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “I’m going to pull him all the way under the boat’s keel with my end of the line. Slowly. You feed me enough slack so that he just clears the bottom of the boat.”

  “And the really bad way?”

  “You don’t cut him any slack. That way, when I pull, he gets his ass bounced and scraped along about ten or twelve feet of really nasty, razor-sharp barnacles.”

  “Sounds unpleasant.”

  “Yeah. Do not try this one at home. Do it enough times and Ozzie won’t have much skin left. First time, give him slack. We’ll see what happens.”

  Stoke pulled on his end. The imam went down and disappeared under the boat on Harry’s side, Brock feeding Stoke line. Stoke took his time reeling him in, looking at the sweep second hand on his watch, waiting to see the little bastard reappear in the water just below him.

  He brought him up, sputtering and cursing.

  “I’m going to wait until you finish throwing up all that seawater and ask you again. I don’t want to alarm you, but all that splashing you’re doing attracts sharks. Ready? Two names. Smith. And Scimitar.”

  “There is no God but—” He disappeared beneath the waves before he got it all out.

  “Haul him back under, Harry. No slack this time.”

  “Fast or slow?”

  “What do you think?”

  Brock started slowly hauling away, singing a few bars of “Barnacle Bill, the Sailor.”

  FORTY-NINE

  THEY HAULED HIM ABOARD AND STRETCHED him out on the teak foredeck. He was pretty bloody and chopped up from the barnacles. And, by the time Stoke reeled him in, the imam had experienced the thrill of ravenous sharks nipping at his heels because of all the blood in the water. Even now the sharks were circling the boat, looking for fresh meat. “Called keelhauling, Ozzie,” Stoke said, “predates the Geneva Conventions by four hundred years. It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

  Stoke now took the freshwater wash-down hose and cleaned him up a little. Then they took him aft and sat him in the big chrome fishing chair. The imam sat there like a dazed and bloodied Neptune on his nautical throne, staring into space, his protruding eyes wide with real terror.

  He now realized these two animals were capable of anything. This was not quite true, Stoke thought, but it was definitely the right impression to convey under the circumstances.

  Stoke popped a cold Diet Coke snatched from the big cooler full of ice and underhanded Harry a frosty Bud. Both men sat on the gunwales and sipped their drinks, content to watch the dolphins play and let the imam think things over before they went back to work on him. About ten minutes later, having duly considered his situation, Ozzie started singing like a canary on crack.

  “Smith,” he croaked, his chin resting on his chest.

  “Yeah, what about him?” Stoke said, looking up.

  “Englishman. In Afghanistan.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s this Englishman doing in Afghanistan?”

  “Assassination.”

  Stoke stood up and pulled a black leather notepad and pencil from his shirt pocket, then walked over and lifted the guy’s chin up with his beard.

  “Assassination of who?”

  “Harry.”

  “Harry’s not in Afghanistan. Harry’s right here.”

  “No. Prince Harry. Son of Prince Charles.”

  Stoke looked back at Harry Brock who mouthed the words, Ho-ly Shit!

  “Harry. That’s the son who’s serving in the British Army? Right?” Brock asked the prisoner.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought he was in Iraq.”

  “No. Afghanistan.”

  “When is the attempt on his life?” Stoke said.

  “Most imminent.”

  “You telling us the truth? If you’re not, you’re going right back under the boat. As many times as it takes.”

  “Truth. God’s truth.”

  “Harry, on the off chance the little bastard really is telling the truth, you want to go get on the radio and call this in to Langley? Pentagon? This intel needs to get to the CO of the British Army forces in Afghanistan right now.”

  “You’re right,” Harry said, leaping to his feet and disappearing inside the wheelhouse.

  “Okay, little buddy,” Stoke said, pencil poised, “one more. Who the hell is this Scimitar I keep seeing?” The imam, who looked like a guy who’d just climbed out of a bathtub full of piranhas, gave Stoke the evil eye.

  “He is known in my country as the Lion of the Punjab. His name is Sheik Abu al-Rashad.”

  “Sheik Abu al-Rashad. Good boy. I’ve heard that name. How high up? In the Sword of Allah organization?”

  “Most high.”

  “High as you can go? Higher than bin Laden?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do I find this high and mighty Sheik?”

  “Pakistan. Sometimes Afghanistan. Always on the move.”

  “Nomad, huh?”

  “Precisely so. He travels light. Cave to cave, camp to camp.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Islamabad, I think.”

  “Where in Islamabad?”

  “Hospital.”

  “Sick? Injured? Which hospital?”

  “Don’t know. That is the truth, I swear it.”

  Stoke grabbed his beard and lifted his face so that the guy was staring directly into Stoke’s deadly serious eyes.

  Nada.

  “Okay, fine. On your feet. You’re going scuba diving again without the scuba. See all those sharks swimming around the boat? They can’t wait to see your bloody carcass back in the water.”

  “No! No!”

  “All right. Take it from the top, one more time. What. Is. The. Name. Of. The. Hospital?”

  “Quaid-e-Azam International Hospital.”

  “Spell it. Nice and slow,” Stoke said, and copied it down letter for letter.

  “You’re absolutely sure about this hospital? I can go google it right now on my laptop.”

  “I speak the truth.”

  “We’ll see about that. Where does this guy typically hang out when he’s not in the hospital?”

  “Mountains.”

  “Which mountains? You got some pretty serious peaks in Pakistan, right? Like, that’s where K2 is, correct? Second-tallest mountain in the world.”

  “No. K2 is on the Chinese border with Pakistan. He’s mostly in the mountains near Chitral. North-West Frontier Province. Malakand District. Where we fought Winston Churchill in 1885.”

  “Any particular mountain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it have a name?”

  “Wazizabad.”

  “Waz-iz-a-bad. Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  Stoke thrust the pad and pencil into his hands. “Draw me a map. Just rough. Put a black X where this Wazizabad mountain is, got that?”

  The imam started drawing. He was actually a pretty good little artist, once he got into it. Had a horizon line, perspective, the whole deal.

  Harry Brock stuck his head out the door.

  “Hey, Stoke, you should come in here.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “I got through to the director at Langley, delivered the news. Now Alex Hawke is on the radio, patched through out here by the CIA station chief Miami. Says it’s urgent.”

  “Hawke?” Stoke couldn’t believe his ears.

  “You heard me.”

  “Ozzie, you sit tight, buddy. I’ll be right back. This is a fascinating conversation, so don’t take this as an insult. Bossman on the phone, you know how that goes. Harry, will you babysit this badboy while I’m gone?”

  “HEY, BOSS,” STOKE SA
ID, PUTTING on the headphones and pushing the send button on the transmitter. “You’re back! Man, it is great to hear your voice! You sound good.”

  “I am indeed, Stoke, but not surprisingly I need your help.”

  “Say the word. Where are you?”

  “Cannons to the right, cannons to the left. I seem to be stuck in the middle. I’m in London now, but headed out to Pakistan. Like, yesterday. Urgent business requires my presence. Islamabad.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I want you to be ready to go when I go. Start now. I’m going to need you over there. Things could get spicy fast. C wants me to ensure that all the Pakistani nukes are locked down. As you know, the local Pak government is not fond of us snooping around in their backyard. We’ll be going in under the radar, needless to say.”

  “Boss, I was just there six months ago. Doing a small job for Brock, organizing transfers of F-34 aviation fuel to some supersecret U.S. airbase. F-34 is the stuff those Predator missile drones burn. Anyway, I got to know the town and some of the locals pretty well. I know one thing: don’t trust a word the Pakistani Army generals tell you. Half of them are Taliban sympathizers. And the other half are on the fence.”

  “It’s going to be tricky, all right. Your knowledge of the locals is a huge bonus, Stoke. Is Brock with you on that boat?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “You know how I feel about Harry. Always ready to give a helping hand to a man on a ledge a little higher up.”

  “I agree completely. We’re in the same boat, so to speak.”

  “Sometimes I think he has the moral compass of a piece of driftwood. He could be useful to us, however. Good in a firefight. Do you agree? Your call.”

  “Yeah, we could use him all right. At least when he tells you he’s got your back, he doesn’t plan to stick a knife in it.”

  “Right. Tell him I’ll be in touch with you guys the minute I’ve got a departure date scheduled. Be ready to roll at a moment’s notice. Anything interesting going on aboard that fishing boat?”

  “Yeah. We’re interrogating a guy I met in prison. He’s full of information and so was his laptop, some of it possibly true. Lot of chatter about the bombing at Heathrow, the attack on MI5 headquarters, et cetera. You ever heard of somebody named Smith?”