by Ted Bell
“Behind the desk! Now!” Stoke shouted. Alex saw him rolling across the floor toward the desk as the Chinese guards burst through the door. Alex heard the staccato sound of the Tsao-6 machine guns and saw splinters and fragments from the heavy oval desk flying even as he rolled behind it.
“Christ!” Hawke said to Stoke. “I thought there were only six of them! It’s the whole bloody Red Army!”
Guards continued to stream into the glass walled structure and direct fire into the general’s desk. Huge chunks were flying off now. It would not take long for the thing to disintegrate.
Stoke saw Juanito’s .357 was lying some five feet beyond the desk. If he could reach it—a guard saw his arm stretch out for the gun and there was a loud thwap as bullets kicked the pistol beyond any possibility of getting his hands on it.
In a matter of seconds the guards would realize that the two men taking cover behind the desk were completely unarmed.
“Got any ideas?” Alex asked Stoke as they huddled under the withering fire.
“Yeah, I guess it’s too late to change the beneficiary on my life insurance,” Stoke said. “Everything’s going to my ex-wife.”
“Well, we could always just shake hands and say—”
Suddenly, there was a huge muffled explosion that shook the glass structure and everything in it.
57
The marble floor heaved up and felt as if it might buckle. The automatic weapons fire stopped as the guards dove to the floor. It felt like an earthquake but sounded like thousands of pounds of TNT. The giant chandelier swung crazily from the top of the dome, creating bizarre patterns of light within the curved glass walls.
There was an ominous crack from above, and Alex looked up.
Emanating from the fixture that secured the chandelier, a spider-web of fissures started to spread in every direction across the glass ceiling above them.
Thin sprays of water started erupting everywhere. You could almost hear the tiny creakings of each little fissure zigzagging across the dome.
“What the devil—” Alex said, looking at Stoke.
“Your new friend Boomer,” Stoke said. “His diversionary tactic, remember? Get everybody safely off the beach? Boomer must have just blown the satchel charges of C-4 and limpet mines that Bravo attached beneath the submarine’s hull. The main shock wave from that explosion should reach upriver to this grotto in about, oh, three seconds—One!”
Hawke and Stokely sprinted around opposite ends of the desk, smashing through the dazed guards just getting to their feet, headed towards the open door. They saw the massive chandelier hurtling to the floor and dodged it by inches.
“Two!” Stoke screamed, as they dove through the door.
A few of the guards were raising their weapons to fire.
“Three!” They were through!
Behind them the unbearable screeching sound of all that glass finally giving way put paid to any notion of the guards bringing down the two men. Alex, in desperation, tried to slam the wooden door shut behind them, but it was too late. A wall of water was already pouring through the doorway, threatening to overwhelm them. They flew down the narrow stone steps, slipping and sliding all the way to the bottom.
The onrushing tide of water now flooded down the stairwell and into the little foyer with the pretty Picasso. There were pillows, documents, all manner of flotsam and jetsam surrounding him. Alex was totally disoriented. How did we get here? Elevator? Right. He noticed that water had already risen above his knees.
“Ain’t no time to wait for that little Chinaman,” Stoke said. “Look, here’s a door!” The door was invisible, save a thin seam that outlined it. Miraculously, Stoke had seen it, and they slammed into it, splintering it open.
Another stairway, seemingly for service staff, led down into darkness.
Again they descended, the flood of water on their heels, and found another door at the bottom. “Ready?” Stoke said, and they put their shoulders to the wood, breaching it.
This was good. The red-carpeted hallway that led to the main stairway. Which way? Left, Alex decided suddenly. “This way!” he shouted, and Stokely followed. “This is it!” Alex cried. “Hurry!”
They were climbing now, up the great curving staircase they’d descended earlier with the late General Juan de Herreras.
“Good thing about water,” Stoke said. “Don’t climb steps too good.”
They gained the main hallway where they’d first met the recently deceased Juanito and his guards. It was wholly deserted. Both men wished they had grabbed weapons from the guards as they’d left the collapsing room. Alex still had his dive knife at least. Stoke had nothing.
They both knew there had to be tangos gathering outside, perhaps hundreds of them.
With extreme caution, they peered around the massive doors of the entrance. The moon was out now, and the whole compound was bathed in its blue-gold glow. A breeze swayed the palms in a lazy dance.
There was no one inside the perimeter wall that they could see. No one in either guardhouse. Beyond, only the dark wall of jungle. They could see the moonlit sea off to their left. Something was burning out there, sending great tendrils of fire and black smoke licking high into the air.
Nighthawke?
Hawke pushed the thought out of his mind as he and Stoke gingerly made their way down the broad stone steps of the entrance. Unarmed, they had no choice now but to simply make a run for the sea and hope to God somebody was out there waiting in an IBS.
They hadn’t taken three steps when the wall of jungle beyond erupted with automatic weapons fire. Hundreds of winking muzzles in the blackness. The air was instantly full of lead, ringing off the iron-work of the gates and fence, kicking up sand at their feet. They dropped to the ground and scrambled back up the steps and inside the entrance of the finca, slamming the heavy wooden doors behind them.
“Holy shit!” Stoke said. “The whole damn Cuban army must be out there waiting for us!”
They knelt beneath a window, a hail of bullets showering them with broken glass. Alex saw Stoke pull something from inside his flak vest.
“What the hell is that?” Hawke asked.
“SatCom phone,” Stoke said, flicking a switch that lit the thing up. “We get lucky, I can raise Fitz or Boomer.”
“Get lucky,” Hawke said.
“Bravo, you copy?” Stoke said into the handheld device.
“Copy, Stoke. What’s going on?”
“Unexpected delay here. What’s burning out there at the LZ? Ain’t you, is it?”
“No. Another nosy Cuban patrol boat. We’ve sunk four. All accounted for here, aboard Nighthawke. We’re in a holding pattern. An IBS is on its way in for your E&E.”
“Yeah, well that’s the problem. We ain’t evading and we certainly ain’t evacuating. We pinned down inside the main hacienda.”
“No problem. We’ll come ashore and pull you out.”
“Belay that, you’d never get ashore. The whole fucking jungle’s full of los tangos cubanos, amigo.”
“Fuck.”
“I was thinking that, too.”
“Stoke,” Hawke said, tapping him on the shoulder. He had risen and was peering out just above the sill of the shattered window.
“They’re moving up into position for a frontal assault. I’ve got an idea.”
“All our problems are over, Boomer,” Stoke said into the SatCom. “Mr. Hawke here has an idea. Stay tuned. Over.”
“Standing by, Skipper, over.”
“Follow me,” Hawke said.
The rounds were zinging overhead with ever increasing intensity as Hawke motioned for Stoke to follow him. They both ran in a low crouch toward the stairway leading up.
“Remember that terrace we saw?” Hawke said, taking the steps two at a time. “The one built out over the sea?”
“Right,” Stoke replied. “What about it?”
“It has to be this way.”
“So?”
“If we can reach it, we go
over the wall. Can’t be more than a fifty-foot drop into the sea from up there.”
“Well, it ain’t rocket surgery, boss, but it’s all we got. Let’s go!”
There was a problem with the terrace. The Cubans had thought of it first. Stoke and Alex raced across the broad expanse of white marble and peered down over the edge. There were at least twenty soldiers down there on the rocks with automatic weapons, waiting in case anyone should try to leave the island without saying good-bye. At least ten of them had already started climbing up the rocky cliff that would bring them up to the terrace.
Shots rang out, and pieces of stone just beneath them exploded outwards.
Both men ducked behind the four-foot crushed stone wall that ringed the large patio. The moon was so bright on the expanse of white marble that, if they remained standing, they were as good as dead. Hawke held his breath, waiting to see a grenade come flying over the wall.
“Next idea?” Stoke said.
“I’m thinking,” Hawke replied.
“Think faster,” Stoke said, but Hawke never heard him.
There was an earth-shattering explosion in the rooms just behind them followed by a deafening roar just over their heads. They caught a glimpse of a massive winged shadow that blocked out the sky, something huge screaming over the rooftops.
“Hell was that?”
“That would be an F-14 Super Tomcat,” Hawke said, a smile spreading across his face. “Black Aces Squadron.” Never in his life had Hawke been so happy to see an official representative of the United States Navy.
Two more Tomcats roared overhead in quick succession and then three more. The building shook to its foundations with the impact of the Tomcat’s deadly Sidewinder missiles. Explosions lit up the thick jungle beyond the wall, and Alex heard the screams of wounded soldiers.
Stoke had his SatCom out instantly.
“Boomer! What the hell is going on?”
“U.S. Navy to the rescue, Skipper! Seems like Fidel Castro escaped somehow, got to a phone, and opened Cuban airspace to the American Navy! Friendly fire! Hooo-hahh!!”
“Friendly fire? I’d return their friendly fire if I had any damn bullets! Them flyboys are goddamn shooting at my ass!”
“May I borrow that gadget, Stoke?” Hawke asked.
Stoke handed it to him and Hawke said, “Boomer, this is Hawke. Get that fighter squadron commander on the radio. Tell him he’s got two friendlies on the ground. Make that the large west terrace of the main house, facing the sea. We’d appreciate more fire suppression in the jungle and on the rocks beneath the terrace. Our only way out is a jump into the sea, over.”
“I’ve already spoken to him, sir,” Boomer said. “He’s laying down fire suppression right now, trying to keep the tangos inside the house from rushing you, over.”
“How about below the terrace?” Hawke asked. “We’re going over the side. And we need to go now!”
“Uh, the squadron leader has a better idea, sir. If you look out over the wall, you should be able to see it now.”
Stoke and Hawke crept up to the wall and peered over it. What they saw brought, if not tears to their eyes, certainly a hell of a lot of joy into their lives.
Waves of Navy jets were blacking out the stars, the bright flame of rockets igniting under their swept-back wings and screaming toward targets; and there, a few hundred feet below the formations, skimming in just over the wavetops, was the most beautiful sight of all.
A mammoth U.S. Navy SeaKing helicopter headed directly for the terrace, twin .50 cals firing out both sides as it flared up for a landing.
Little more than half an hour later, Alex Hawke was aboard Nighthawke, sitting at Vicky’s side, holding her hand and whispering to her.
He’d dimmed the lights of the stateroom way down after Froggy had left. The medic had given her something to help her sleep. Hawke couldn’t stop staring at her tender profile. There was a thin sheen of perspiration on her forehead, and her long eyelashes were fluttering on her cheeks. Her beautiful auburn hair, burnished with gold in the dim light, was twisted in knots of tangled cobwebs but to Alex she had never looked more beautiful.
He and Stokely had watched the destruction of Telaraña, their legs hanging out the open hatch of the SeaKing, sitting on either side of the red-hot .50 cal. The machine gun was still chattering loudly just above their heads as the SeaKing swung out across the island and doubled back over what had been the submarine pen. It was now a blackened pile of twisted steel and broken concrete. Two halves of the Soviet Borzoi-class submarine’s hull rose from the rubble. Boomer’s charges had broken her spine. The U.S. Navy had finished the job.
“Hey? You the guys took that Russian boomer out?” Alex heard the chopper pilot ask in his headphones.
“Yep,” Stoke replied. “That would be us.”
“Christ on a bicycle,” the pilot said. “How the hell’d you do that?”
“We, uh, used explosives,” Stoke replied, and there was no further mike chatter.
The SeaKing was flying at fifty feet, and the tang of sea air and the roar of the wind in the open doors made Hawke forget he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. His entire body was thrumming like a wire.
Vicky was safe. With a lot of help from some very brave men, he’d made good on his promise to her father.
The Navy chopper was headed west where the sleek black outline of Nighthawke was waiting on the horizon. Behind him, on the rapidly disappearing hump of the island, towers of fire and black smoke were rising from one end of Telaraña to the other.
There were other fires along the coast, Hawke saw, rebel strongholds under attack from the deadly Black Aces.
Now, in the soft glow of the cabin lights, Alex watched her sleeping.
“Alex?” Vicky struggled to open her eyes. Her lips were parched and bruised and Alex applied a cool washcloth.
“Shhh,” Alex said. “Go to sleep, darling. It’s all right now.”
“But there’s something—”
“There’s nothing. Just sleep. We’ll have you in your own bed soon.”
“No, something I need to tell—important. Please?”
She was straining to rise from the pillow, gripping Alex’s arm fiercely. “You’ve got to know this, Alex. Please,” she whispered in a dry, hoarse voice.
“What is it, darling? What could be so important?”
“The guards. Every day. Didn’t know I was listening, see? But I did. I did, Alex.”
“It doesn’t matter now, darling. It’s over.”
“No! It does matter. I heard…I heard…something.”
“What did you hear, Vicky?” Alex whispered, leaning down so that he could put his ear near her lips.
“They—they were laughing,” she said, nearly strangling on the words. “They were laughing about a bomb they had—kill Americans.”
“Bomb?” Alex said, his attention now riveted to Vicky’s trembling lips.
It had to be Guantánamo. The biological weapon Conch had told him about sitting in Kittyhawke’s cockpit on the JFK flight deck. Hadn’t they found that thing yet? Since the F-14s had attacked he assumed…no, that only meant the women and children had been evacuated from the base. The bomb could still be on the base and—Christ, how long did they have before the thing went off?
“A bomb, Alex,” Vicky whispered. “They said it was hidden where the Americans would never find—-find out. Until too late.”
Alex looked at his watch. It was 0520 in the morning. If he remembered correctly, that meant they had about forty minutes until the thing detonated.
“Where, darling, where they did put the bomb?” Alex could feel his heart trying desperately to get out of his chest.
“A bear,” Vicky said in her small, strangled voice.
“Bear?” Alex was sure he’d misunderstood.
“A teddy bear. Not a real bear. That’s why…why they were all laughing,” Vicky managed. Alex lifted her head and gave her a small sip of water.
“Thank
you,” she said. “They thought it was so funny. The bomb inside the teddy bear. Gave it to…to one of the officers’ kids,” Vicky said, trying to get her eyes open. “Someone hid the bomb inside a little girl’s bear. Someone named Gopher, or Gomer, maybe. An American sailor…but a Cuban, too. He’s the one who hid the bomb inside the bear.”
58
“Joe Nettles,” squawked the harsh voice on the Nighthawke’s radio. “And this better be the most important fucking call you ever made, mister.”
“Alexander Hawke here, Admiral. No time to explain who I am. Just ask Admiral Howell or Secretary de los Reyes, but first, just listen.”
“Mister, I got a bomb going off here in ’bout half an hour. Talk.”
“I have just rescued a hostage from the Cubans. She has important information regarding that bomb.”
“Go ahead, son, spit it out for chrissakes!”
“According to Cuban guards she overheard during captivity, you have an extremely lethal biological weapon hidden inside a toy bear.”
“What?”
“An American sailor, name sounds like Gopher or Gomer, inserted the weapon inside a teddy bear and gave it to an officer’s child as a gift.”
A split second of silence was followed by an explosion from the speaker.
“Holy Mother of God!” Nettles screamed. “That stupid asshole who blew himself up! Gomez! Christ! He gave my daughter a big white teddy bear for her birthday! My own goddamn daughter!”
“Sir, I hope this is helpful. I know you—”
“Son, I appreciate the call. My wife, Ginny, and our little baby, Lucinda, and her bear are aboard the John F. Kennedy right now, and I hope you’ll excuse me but—”
“Certainly, sir,” Alex said, but the connection had been broken.
Aboard the Kennedy, the secure phone that linked CINCATFLT, the commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral George Blaine Howell, to the commanding officer, Guantánamo Naval Air Station, rang on the bridge one second later.
Howell, who was on the JFK’s bridge monitoring the takeoffs and landing of nine separate squadrons flying sorties over Cuba, picked it up, knowing who it was.