by Ted Bell
Early on, the doctor had urged Top, when his army was at strength, to take the war out of the jungles and mountains and bring it directly to the urban population centers of Latin America. Khan had sent this message to his young lieutenant via a courier in 1995. Along with orders from Khan’s mountain headquarters, the messenger had hand-delivered a small gift to Muhammad’s jungle headquarters, then in Venezuela. It was a very special book by Carlos Marighella.
Until he was ambushed and killed by Brazilian police, Marighella was one of South America’s greatest revolutionary heroes. Just before he died, he had written a handbook offering very practical advice for creating a modern guerilla unit. His slim volume, far ahead of its time, had been written at the dawn of terror. The well-thumbed volume soon became Top’s personal bible. He studied it to the point of memorization and often quoted from it to his staff and field commanders. Marighella’s book, Manual for the Modern Guerilla, had been Top’s Koran.
Papa Top’s sphere of influence now included terrorist cells and guerilla units across the length and breadth of South America. Each of these was a curious amalgam of drug dealers, arms dealers, and common street criminals. Each one had undergone rigorous paramilitary training under Top’s commanders. His melting-pot army consisted of a seething blend of radical leftists, radical Muslims, and common street criminals whose loyalty was vouchsafed only to him.
“Our next stop is across the river,” Top said. “The Robotic Weapons Research Center. Is everyone ready to move on?”
“Yes,” Abu Khan said, eyes glittering in the electric blue light. “Weapons. Let us go and see our glorious Robot Warriors.”
28
OVER THE ATLANTIC
G in!” exclaimed Ambrose Congreve, splaying the winning hand upon the patch of green baize in a perfect fan: three queens, three jacks, and a royal straight. Ambrose, already looking tropical in a three-piece suit of rumpled seersucker, sat back in his seat, took a small sip of his spicy Bloody Bull, and relished the expression on his vanquished opponent’s face.
“Gin?” Hawke said, startled out of his reverie by his opponent’s sudden declaration of victory. He stared at the winning cards magically appearing on the table for a moment and then said, “Impossible.”
“Improbably swift, perhaps, but hardly impossible. Read them and weep, dear boy, for n’ere shall you see their like again.”
“How can you gin? We’ve hardly begun this bloody hand. You only drew three cards.”
“Indeed, I drew three cards. To wit, the third queen, the ace of diamonds, and the jack of spades filling in a lovely straight. Gin is the name of the game, my good fellow, now tote me up. Let’s see what you’re hiding. Unless I’m very much mistaken, I believe I’ve caught you with a gross surplus of costly royalty in your hand. Am I correct?”
Hawke sighed in frustration, and reluctantly began showing his cards. Congreve bent forward, smiling eagerly as out they came. He was not disappointed. Two kings, two jacks, pair of nines, pair of sevens, and some other cats and mice. The hand was worth eighty and change. Not bad, Congreve thought.
“Well, well, well,” Congreve said, picking up the score pad and gleefully adding up the totals. “That puts me ahead by a comfortable margin. Just time for one more hand. I spy something that looks suspiciously like Florida down there.”
Hawke glanced out of his window and experienced a pleasurable shudder of anticipation. The Atlantic far below was shading from a deep blue to a lovely aquamarine near the shoreline as the small jet began its gradual descent toward the eastern coastline of the sprawling peninsula. For the first time since waking, he smiled.
After the recent weeks of damp cold, Alex had been keenly looking forward to leaving gloomy England astern and spending some time in the warm tropical sunshine. According to his crew in the cockpit, they would be landing in time for breakfast on board Blackhawke. It had been over a year since he’d set foot on his beloved vessel.
“I suppose one of us should wake Miss Guinness,” he said.
“Yes. I have to say C has chosen a most decorous aide-de-camp for this adventure. Don’t you agree?”
“She’s not an ADC, that I promise you.”
“What is she, then?”
“A spy.”
Hawke was only half kidding. British SIS had long used female operators. It was not well known, but, during the Second World War, women had been involved in not a few nasty, physical operations. And, since they had always acquitted themselves quite well, there had been little resistance to getting them involved in elite commando or espionage operations ever since. There were several generations of lady operators out there now. Somewhere in the world, Hawke knew, was a cherubic grandmother with a license to kill.
Congreve was trying to get his pipe lit. “A spy? You mean for C? Yes, that would make perfect sense. Sent to keep an eye on you.”
“What else could she be doing?”
“She’s quite brainy, I believe.”
“I don’t need another brain. I’ve got you.”
“Well, I daresay she’s lovely to look at. Remarkable protuberances.”
“Dishy. As long as she keeps her protuberances out of my way. I intend to admire her from afar.”
“She certainly doesn’t have to stay out of mine. I’m quite looking forward to this tropical holiday you know. There’s something bracing about near-naked females splashing in the surf, don’t you agree? Stiffens one up before the fray, I daresay.”
Near naked? Stiffens one up? Hawke looked for a trace of irony in Congreve’s dancing blue eyes, but could find none.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Constable. You’re practically a married man. I promised Diana I’d keep an eye on you and I intend to do so.”
“You remember what Sherlock Holmes had to say on the subject of marriage, my dear fellow? In the Adventure of the Noble Bachelor?”
“No, I do not. And, frankly, I—”
“Gin,” Ambrose said, a small smile of satisfaction playing about his crinkly eyes.
“Again?” Hawke said, throwing his cards down in disgust.
Hawke sensed someone stirring behind him and collapsed back into his seat.
“Oh! Good morning, Mr. Congreve,” Pippa Guinness said, peeking at Ambrose over the back of her reclined seat. She yawned and wiped the sleep from her eyes with the back of her right hand. Hawke, who was facing aft, had his back to her and chose not to acknowledge this greeting by feigning sleep.
He’d made a troublesome discovery the evening prior at the Con-naught Bar. Over drinks with an old colleague who was recently employed at Legoland, he had learned that the lovely Miss Guinness was the source of many of C’s misgivings regarding his Amazon reports. According to his chum, Barry Donohue, Pippa had provided C with her own assessment of the current threat level in the Amazon Triangle. Apparently, she found it significantly lower than Hawke’s own estimates. Told C Hawke was overstating his case.
Hawke wouldn’t have minded that necessarily, but then he’d learned that the young woman had never set foot in the Amazon Basin. Her summary conclusions, passed along to C, were handwritten in the annotated margins of Hawke’s own carefully prepared reports. According to Donohue, all of her conclusions were all based on the accounts of various low-ranking embassy staffers notorious for collecting dated and even erroneous intel in the comfort of their plush offices in Buenos Aires, Caracas, Santiago, and Montevideo. Going out into the field would rarely even occur to them.
It was precisely the reason C had sent Hawke up the river on his “expedition.”
None of this, however, seemed to have occurred to the lovely Miss G. Or, to be honest, C himself.
Hawke suffered no delusions about C’s assigning Pippa Guinness as his “aide” on this trip. The possibility that she was a bona fide field agent was remote. She was tagging along to keep an eye on him and report back to C on all and sundry that she saw and heard in Key West. HM Government had a big stake in Brazil. He was sure the Foreign Secretary
had urged C to keep tabs on its erstwhile field agent whilst he was deep inside the American camp.
Miss Guinness was seated just aft of the forward bulkhead on the left. A flat-screen monitor mounted there showed a GPS map of the lower southeastern United States and displayed their current airspeed, estimated time of arrival, and the time and temperature at their destination. The temperature in Miami, Hawke had noted with satisfaction just before they took off from RAF Sedgwick, was a balmy seventy degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature in London had plummeted into the thirties.
After supper aboard, Hawke’s steward had offered to run a film, presenting Pippa Guinness a choice from the onboard DVD library. She’d chosen Bad Boys, a fairly recent Will Smith comedy shot in Miami. As it happened, the action comedy was one of Hawke’s favorites and he’d watched some of it himself before becoming embroiled in a two-inch thick LATAM file marked MOST SECRET. This he’d been given by C for his in-flight entertainment.
He plowed through his files, studying the charts and tables, mentally rehearsing his upcoming remarks at the Key West conference. It was not as dry as he’d feared. Whoever had prepared it knew their stuff. Having digested three-quarters of the file, he’d nevertheless fallen asleep. Having slept for a few hours, he then resumed studying the thing at first light before falling into Congreve’s sticky web of aces and deuces, kings and queens.
“Good morning, Miss Guinness,” Ambrose said heartily. “How did you sleep?”
“Most comfortably, thank you,” she said. “This certainly beats economy on Virgin Atlantic.”
“Indeed it does,” Ambrose said. “Hawke Air abounds in creature comforts. Would you like some tea, my dear? Coffee? We’re having breakfast on the ground, but I’m sure the galley could scrounge up a scone or two if you’re so inclined. Eggs and toast?”
“Tea would be lovely, thank you. I’ll just pop into the loo and freshen up if I have time.”
“You do. We’re landing in about half an hour.”
“Brilliant,” she said, climbing deftly out of her seat considering the length of her skirt. “How was your gin rummy game? Did you win, Chief Inspector?”
“Handily, my dear, thanks very much.”
After she’d disappeared from the cabin and closed the door to the head, Hawke, who’d been feigning sleep throughout this conversation, brought his seat upright and looked at Congreve.
“Handily?” Hawke asked. “Is that what you said to her, Constable?”
“Mmm.”
“Handily, my arse. Deal the bloody cards.”
29
PORT OF MIAMI
H alf an hour later, Hawke was on the ground. He stepped off the plane onto the tarmac at Opa-locka Airport. The small field handled general aviation overflow from Miami-Dade and was located just seven miles from Miami International. Hawke saw a dark blue Suburban with heavily tinted windows parked just outside the FBO building, about twenty yards away. The familiar figure of Sergeant Tom Quick was striding his way.
“Welcome to Miami, Skipper,” Quick said, extending his hand. The young blond American fellow, an ex-Army sniper, was Hawke’s chief of security and had been overseeing Blackhawke’s refit in Miami these last few months.
“It’s good to see you, sir,” Quick said, taking Hawke’s canvas travel case and slinging it over his shoulder.
“Good to be here,” Hawke said, and meant it. “Cheated death once again, Tommy,” he added, looking back at his gleaming midnight blue airplane. He was always happy to have it on the ground, passengers and airplane all in one piece.
Quick leaned forward and said softly, “A quick update, Skipper. I just got a call from Stokely Jones saying he was on his way to Port of Miami to meet you and wondering if you’d landed. He says he’s got someone he’d like you to meet. A Venezuelan he met down in the Keys. He arrived late last night from Key West where he and his new friend had been in the hospital.”
“Stokely was hurt? How much damage?”
“Nothing life-threatening, I don’t think, but they kept him overnight for observation. According to him, just a scratch. He was badly cut diving on a wreck day before yesterday. Lost a lot of blood. But he sounded upbeat as usual. He says you’ll find his new friend extremely interesting.”
“You have Stokely’s new mobile number here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll call him from the car.”
Congreve had emerged from the plane and, ever the gentleman, was offering Miss Guinness a hand as she descended the few remaining steps to the ground.
“Mr. Congreve, great to see you again,” Tom said, going over to shake hands with Ambrose and relieve him of his carry-on luggage.
“Young Tom, I am delighted to see you as well,” Congreve said, giving Quick his bag. He looked around at the grassy palm-fringed field, stretching his arms skyward and rising up jauntily onto his toes. The man hated flying and was always thrilled to find himself returned to terra firma.
He turned to Quick and said, “Sergeant? May I present Miss Pippa Guinness? Miss Guinness, this strapping young lad is Thomas Quick, formerly of the United States Army and now the man primarily responsible for your security while you’re aboard Blackhawke.”
“Tommy Quick, Miss Guinness,” he said, shaking her hand. “Welcome to the tropics. I’ve got transportation waiting just over there. If everyone’s ready, the stowed luggage will be transferred from the plane while we clear Customs and Immigration. Then we’ll head over to the Port of Miami. We’ve got a piping hot breakfast waiting for you aboard ship.”
“Ship?” she said, eying Hawke. “He owns a ship too?”
“You’ll see,” Quick replied, relieving her of her carry-on luggage.
ABOARD HIS BELOVED Blackhawke at long last, Hawke excused himself shortly after breakfast and made his way forward alone. After an extended journey sealed at high altitude inside an aluminum tube, he was eager for fresh air and solitude. His boat was the only company he needed at present. He wanted to see all of her, feel her, smell her, run his fingers along her varnished rails and gleaming chrome fittings.
Stopping briefly in his aft quarters, he’d gotten quickly out of the gray slacks and black cashmere sweater he’d worn on the flight and slipped eagerly into a familiar old pair of khaki shorts and a faded Royal Navy T-shirt.
The teak decks were warm beneath his bare feet as he made his way toward the bow. Nothing beat the fragrance of freshly scrubbed teak for making a man feel whole again. It signified another trip over the horizon, a new adventure around the next turning. Smiling a salute at passing members of his crew, old friends all, he could literally feel the tension of the last few weeks and months seeping out of him. He reached the deserted bow and gazed down at the sunlit panorama of the great harbor and the blue Atlantic beyond.
Thank God for the sea and the simple light of morning.
Hawke considered for a time how very fortunate he was to be here in this place at this time. And what blessed moments of consolation there sometimes were for all the dark and dangerous hours, the harsh realities of his chosen profession. He was happy to have at least a few days of sun-drenched respite before the grim black work began again. Gray London, the narrow streets shining with rain, was already beginning to recede into distant memory.
Now, standing alone on the foredeck, some thirty feet or more above the water, it was time to widen his horizons a bit. The sun was warm. The clean air, briny with salt, was fresh and cool on his cheek. A tumble of white clouds hid a morning sun climbing the brilliant blue bowl of the eastern sky. Gulls and terns wheeled and cried, diving and swooping over the wrinkled surface of the blue waters of Government Cut.
He took a deep gulp of the salt air, pulled it down the bottom of his lungs and held it until it burned, feeling a purifying fire deep inside his chest.
The boy stood on the burning deck.
Alex smiled at the games his mind played. He was not a man for deep introspection or any kind of angst-ridden self-analysis. He simply didn’t ha
ve time or inclination for such stuff. Emotions and feelings were transitory and not to be trusted. Let his actions bloody well define his character, he’d always thought, because, for better or for worse, that’s who he was.
It suddenly occurred to him, as he stood there in the brilliant sunshine, that it wasn’t until a man reached his stage in life that he was ever fully aware of beauty or nature or even changes in weather. It dawned on him that it was only now, in his early thirties, standing here on the very brink of middle age, that one didn’t take such commonplace things for granted. He took little for granted these days. He accepted that, but wondered why.
Perhaps it had been the tragic loss of his wife Victoria on the steps of a small Cotswolds chapel two years earlier. His heart had been shattered into infinitely small pieces when the sniper’s bullet pierced his young bride’s heart and stole her life while he looked on, helpless. He was quite sure the wound would never heal. God knows it still hurt.
Then, he thought, there was the recent near miss in the Amazon jungle and the death of every one of his dear colleagues on the river.
Or maybe the explanation was far less weighty and solemn. Perhaps Florida was simply working its balmy magic upon him again. Whatever it was, Hawke was suddenly aware of a strong sense of being, not at home, certainly, but of being in precisely the right place at the right time.
“Skipper?”
“Yes?” he turned to see Tom Quick descending the steps curving down from the starboard bridge wing.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but an old friend heard you were aboard. She demanded to see you.”
Hawke’s pet parrot, Sniper, was riding on Quick’s right shoulder.
Hallo, Hawke! Hallo, Hawke! Sniper squawked, flaring her large wings.