by Ted Bell
“Are you ready to go rock this boat?”
“I was born ready,” Stoke said, slamming a fresh mag into the rubber grip of his Beretta.
“Then let’s saddle up,” Hawke said, in a perfect mimicry of Fitz’s gung-ho cry.
They had previously decided there was only one way they could both gain access to the finca and stay alive in the process.
So they dropped to their bellies and crawled like snakes across two hundred yards of open sand, dotted with clumps of devilish sand-spurs. When they reached the guardhouse on the right side, they simply stood up and smiled at the guard.
“Buenas noches, señor,” Hawke said. “Habla inglés? I am Alexander Hawke. This is my colleague Detective Stokely Jones. We would like a word with General de Herreras.”
So saying, Hawke and Stoke stepped back and dropped their submachine guns and sidearms to the ground. Then they each placed their hands on top of their heads. Hawke began whistling an old tune, one Stoke thought he recognized as the theme from Bridge on the River Kwai. He instantly joined in, producing a lively if unlovely harmony.
The stupefied guard instantly emerged from the guardhouse, training his weapon on them. He shouted something in Spanish, and the other guard came running.
The second guard spoke English.
“What de fuck you think, amigo? You kill many of my brothers. Now, we take you to the general? No, we shoot you fucking bastards!”
He squeezed off a burst, the rounds sizzling about three feet over their heads.
While the other guard trained his submachine gun on Stoke, the English-speaking one walked right up to Alex, pulled a jungle knife from a scabbard on his hip, and sliced open the blouse of Alex’s tigerstripes. Then he stuck the point of the blade under his chin. He’d hooked the thin gold chain around Alex’s neck.
The St. George’s Alex had worn since childhood caught the light. The guard ripped the chain and the gold medallion fell to the ground. The man bent down to retrieve it, dangled it in front of Alex’s eyes.
“Vaya con Dios, señor,” the guard said, twisting the knife blade so that it pierced the taut skin.
“Shoot these gringo bastards,” he said, stepping back outside the field of fire. “The white man first.”
The other guard raised his gun and racked his slide but saw that Stokely walked directly between the muzzle of the AK-47 and Alex. The huge black man had a small white handkerchief in his raised right hand.
“Yo! Hold up! Flag of truce, son,” Stoke said. “You can shoot us, I know, but I ain’t recommending it. You think we just walk up, throw down guns ’cause we stupid? No. We got important information your commander wants to get his hands on. This here is Alex Hawke. He famous. Man who been fuckin’ with you. General Manso hears you got him held prisoner, hell, he like to pin a medal on both yo’ asses!”
The two guards looked at each other.
“Fuck your flag of truce,” the guard said. “We have orders to shoot intruders on sight.” He fired a quick burst at Stokely’s feet, the rounds kicking up sand all around him.
Stoke ignored it, gave them his biggest smile. “Aw, see, you ain’t thinkin’ clearly. Trigger happy, is all. You just nervous. Get your finger off that trigger a second, ’less you do something stupid. Cheat y’all selves out of a battlefield promotion. Maybe you boys ought to ring the general’s ass up and tell him you got Alex Hawke hisself down here? He tells you to shoot us, well, hell, we shit out of luck, that’s all. Pull your trigger, Pedro.”
The guard looked at Stoke’s eyes. He didn’t like it, but like all men in his position he was extremely risk averse. He told his colleague to keep his gun on them and ducked back inside the guardhouse.
A minute later, he was back outside.
“Vamonos,” he said. “General de Herreras has agreed to see you.”
“See?” Stoke said to the guard. “Just what I told your ass. You shoot us, you in the deep severe, baby. Now, you a national hero!”
“I’ll take my medal back now,” Hawke said to the guard, but all it got him was a jab to the ribs with the butt of a gun.
Hands still on their heads, Hawke and Stokely were marched through the heavy wrought iron gates and inside the compound. They mounted a wide set of marble steps leading to a pair of massive metal doors.
The doors were from some ancient fortification, heavily decorated with shields and lances. A blinking video monitor picked them up, and the doors swung inward instantly. There was a huge entry hall, with candles guttering in heavy fixtures mounted on the walls. Hawke could see a wide stone staircase curving upwards into the darkness.
Six formidable guards, all in black uniforms with red berets, stood in a semicircle facing them. Hawke was astounded to see that the entire group of guards appeared to be Chinese. Then he remembered hearing Conch say that Raul Castro had long been making overtures toward Beijing. Clearly, they’d passed the overture stage.
Conch would be interested to learn there were highly trained Chinese troops in Cuba. If he lived to tell her about it.
All six guards had Chicom pistols on their hips and lethal-looking Chinese Tsao-6 submachine guns aimed at the bellies of the two prisoners.
Someone then stepped forward from the shadows and, ignoring Stoke, scrutinized Hawke. The man had the dress uniform coat of a highly decorated Cuban general thrown over his silk pajamas. It was barely large enough to cover his enormous paunch.
He poked his silver-plated .357 magnum into Hawke’s stomach until Alex winced, then stepped back and smiled.
“This must be Alexander Hawke himself!” the pajama-clad general said in heavily accented English. “Welcome to el Finca Telaraña!” There was the sour smell of rum and tobacco on the man’s breath. His eyes were red-veined and watery. He was more than a little drunk, Hawke thought. May Day festivities, no doubt.
“Good evening, General. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Hawke said, maintaining the casual smile on his face.
“Why, I am General Juan de Herreras. You’ve not heard of me? I am in charge of the whole Cuban Army!”
“A responsibility that no doubt weighs heavily on your shoulders, General,” Hawke said, eyeing the man carefully, seeing a very old picture in his mind.
It was not the skinny one. Or the very fat one who had the machete at his mother’s throat. No, Congreve had already arrested that monster.
No, this was the other one, he recognized the eyes now, the one who held his mother and—it was all Hawke could do not to lunge at the man and rip out his heart. He knew he had to marshal all this anger, compress it, guard his arsenal of hatred jealously. He was going to need all of it if he were to do what he’d come here to do successfully.
“Ah, of course,” Hawke managed to say. “Now I remember. I believe I made your acquaintance many years ago.”
“Really, señor?” de Herreras said. “I don’t think so. I would remember. In any event, my brother Manso is waiting for you in his study. Since you and your friend here have caused us so much distress in recent days, I warn you that he is not in the best of moods.”
“Pity,” Hawke said. “Perhaps I have something that will cheer him up.”
“Excellent! Please follow me,” the general said, and he strode beyond the curving staircase into the deeper shadows of the great hall. Stoke and Hawke felt the presence of the six guards behind them.
Hawke and Stoke had not seen the second stairway. This one curved down into murky blackness. The sound of the heavy-booted Chinese guards reverberated in the stillness. They had disturbed the sleep of two silky Russian wolfhounds guarding the top of the steps.
It was odd, Hawke thought, how removed this bizarre fortress seemed to be from all the gunfire and bloodshed that had taken place within the huge compound. Perhaps these generals did not dirty their hands with mere soldier’s duty.
When they finally reached the bottom of the steps, there was a long red-carpeted corridor leading in both directions. Alex figured they must be a good forty fe
et underground. The general beckoned, turned right, and walked past several mahogany paneled doors until he stopped abruptly, and knocked on one of them.
It slid open with a hiss, and an elderly Oriental fellow wearing black silk pajamas and white gloves ushered them all inside a massive elevator. He had a wispy little white goatee that looked like milkweed.
“To my brother’s study,” General de Herreras said to the attendant who bowed, then pushed a button.
The elevator came to a gentle stop and the door slid open. The attendant bowed deeply as they all stepped out of his car. Hawke, expecting some grand room, was surprised as they emerged instead into a dark, smallish foyer with a single table along one wall. A gilt-framed painting, lit by an overhead light, dominated the room. Alex bent over to take a look.
An early Picasso in shades of blue.
“This way, gentlemen,” General Juan de Herreras said, pressing his palm against a panel cut in the mahogany. There was a click and a door swung outward revealing a set of steep stone steps leading up. It was suddenly cool and damp inside and the air smelled of, what, chlorine? Alex touched the stone wall. It was wet and mossy. At the top of the steps, two flaming candles hung in iron fixtures on either side of a narrow wooden door.
“After you,” the general said, and Alex and Stoke started climbing.
At the top, they stood aside as the general pushed a number of buttons on a keypad mounted by the door. A green light flashed and the door swung open.
Hawke and Stoke were both struck dumb by what they saw.
The room they entered was circular. The walls and great domed ceiling were made entirely of glass. They revealed what was perhaps the most spectacular underwater view Hawke had ever seen. Huge underwater lights, all hidden, illuminated the scene beyond the glass. Tropical fish of every size and color swam by. Exotic vegetation swayed from the sandy floor.
Above their heads, a great white shark, some twenty feet in length, swam idly by, above the glass dome, followed by a school of barracuda.
“Man living at the bottom of an aquarium,” Stoke whispered. “Look up there.”
Higher above them, at least thirty feet above the glass ceiling, huge stalactites hung down and schools of brilliant fish darted through them. Stalagmites, too, rose from the bottom of the grotto, forming intricate cities of pink and white coral.
The glass room seemed to have been constructed on the sandy floor of some deep natural grotto, most likely fed by the river flowing out to the sea. At this river’s mouth, Hawke thought, the submarine pen where the Borzoi lay.
The tensile strength of the glass had to be enormous, because Alex could discern no seams, no visible means of support. And yet a massive bronze chandelier hung from a fixture at its very center. It provided the only light in the room other than the external underwater illumination. The fixture consisted of finely wrought rings of hammered brass and bronze, getting smaller toward the top.
The largest ring, the lowest, held at least fifty blazing candles, while the top ring held ten or so. It had to be suspended on some kind of hydraulic or electrically powered wire, Hawke thought, capable of being raised and lowered, otherwise, how could you manage to keep all these bloody candles lit? The effect was certainly dramatic, he had to admit.
“Some weird-smelling shit in here, boss,” Stoke said under his breath.
The air was filled with a stupefying sweetish stink, the smell of burning poppy seeds, Hawke realized. He’d walked into an underwater opium den.
“Well, well, well. Alex Hawke himself,” came a sugary voice from the center of the room. Directly beneath the chandelier was a massive oval desk. The owner of that velvet voice was unseen, seated at the desk but hidden by the back of a tall leather chair facing away from the new arrivals. “We finally meet,” the voice said, floating upwards on a cloud of pale opium smoke.
“A dream come true,” Hawke said.
“Let me get a look at this famous Hawke,” the voice said, and a tall, slender man rose serenely from the chair. He was naked from the waist up, his well-muscled back toward them. A long black ponytail reached halfway to his waist.
Hawke sucked down a quick gulp of air as he regarded the man.
There was a spider tattooed on the man’s shoulder. Black with a red spot on its belly.
Spiders were bad. Alex had been terrified of them ever since he’d awoken one night to find one crawling across his face. On his cheek. By his mouth. Had he not awoken, it would have crawled inside—
Hawke managed to let the shock of seeing and hearing this man wash over him without a trace of it registering on his face. By the time the man had pulled a dressing gown from the chair and turned to face him, Hawke had regained the same faintly amused smile he’d been wearing since entering the finca.
As Manso walked around the massive carved oval desk, Hawke eyed him evenly. The candlelight flickered darkly in those dead black eyes set in a face of decidedly feminine beauty. The long hair, still jet black, tied at the back. Too beautiful for a man. Too much raw brutality for a woman.
He was slipping his muscle-corded arms inside a long flowing robe of red Chinese silk trimmed at the neck and cuffs with black pearls.
“The night I first saw you,” Hawke said, “I thought you were a woman.”
“Really?” Manso said. “How very interesting. When was this?”
“It was a very long time ago,” Alex said. “I was just a boy.”
“We were both boys long ago, weren’t we, Señor Hawke?” Manso smiled at the thought. “Something to drink? Or smoke? Our Chinese friends supply us with lovely opium.”
“No, thank you,” Hawke said.
“How about your friend? Who is he, by the way?”
“I can speak for myself. My name is Stokely Jones, United States Navy, retired. NYPD, retired. And I ain’t thirsty either,” Stoke said, dropping his hands from his head for the first time. When Hawke saw the Cubans had no reaction to this, he did the same.
“Shall we relax? Perhaps over there nearer the glass?” Manso said, and he indicated a grouping of mandarin opium beds arranged along one section of the glass wall.
He stretched out languorously on the largest of the beds, strewn with silk pillows of gold and black and red. He stretched, flexing the fingers of both hands.
There was something very odd and studied about the general’s movements, Alex thought. He moved like a fine athlete or dancer, with exaggerated elegance and drama, as if this were his stage and all that happened here was a performance. One whose significance only Manso understood.
Indeed, he and his brother seemed supremely indifferent to the explosive events that had so recently occurred within their own compound.
“Tequila, señor?” General Juan de Herreras said, taking a swig before offering the opened bottle.
“Later, perhaps,” Alex said.
Alex suddenly understood the lack of activity in the big finca. The two de Herreras brothers had clearly just been woken up. One, Juanito, from an alcohol-and drug-induced sleep, the other, Manso, from some blissful dream here in this soundproofed room.
General Juan de Herreras, weaving slightly as he moved, waved his tequila bottle in the general direction of his brother Manso, indicating that they should all join him on the sofas. Alex and Stokely exchanged the briefest of looks, each of them right on the edge, waiting.
Something about the edge. Having worked together for so long, they both knew exactly where it was. All the time.
Alex sat on the corner of the sofa opposite Manso. Stoke remained on his feet, head darting back and forth, his eyes constantly monitoring the six Chinese whose weapons were unwaveringly trained on him.
“A lovely view, is it not, Mr. Hawke?” Manso said. “I modeled this room on a far more modest construction created by my mentor, el doctor. He’s the one who taught me to enjoy killing a man like you. You know of Escobar?”
“Enough to know that I wish I’d been the one to put a bullet in his head. Interesting room. But don
’t threaten me. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses?” Alex said.
“A man with an arsenal of boulders, doesn’t worry about a man with mere rocks,” the general said, allowing himself a small giggle.
“This guy could go toe-to-toe with Jay Leno,” Stoke said, remaining on his feet. Hawke could see that Stokely’s patience was wearing thin. He wanted this done so they could confirm Vicky’s safety, Hawke imagined. He was having similar thoughts himself.
“Watch this,” the general suddenly said.
Reaching back beneath the pillows, Manso withdrew a gleaming sword. At first, Hawke thought it was a broadsword. Then he saw that, of course, it was a machete, polished to a lustrous silver, with precious stones embedded in the ebony handle.
Manso rapped the blade smartly three times on the glass above his head. A moment passed, and then three mermaids floated down through the crystal green layers of water and appeared at the window. There they hovered, naked, save for jeweled tiaras, and their long hair floated about their lovely faces as if blown by a light wind.
“Exquisite, aren’t they?”
“Quite,” Hawke answered. “Indigenous? Or paid by the hour?”
“You know, Commander, I’m beginning to take an intense dislike to you, even though you have done me an enormous service.”
“Service?”
“Yes. You locked up my troublesome brother Carlitos, and so saved me the trouble of killing him myself. Now, tell me why you came here to my island before I kill you.”
“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?”