A Time for War

by Michael Savage

  “Kick,” the newcomer said.

  The man kicked the phone into the corner where Dover was still huddled.

  “Jacket,” the newcomer said.

  The man held it open to show that he had no other weapons. The newcomer released his grip slightly on the other man. He hoisted him to his feet and pushed him forward. Both hands on his automatic, the newcomer ordered the gasping man to take off his jacket. He had a Glock 21 in a shoulder holster. His partner was ordered to remove it and the man’s cell phone with the same two-fingered grip. They both ended up in the corner with Dover.

  “Grab a pillowcase and put ‘em in,” the newcomer told Dover.

  She did as he’d instructed. Then he motioned her over. She stood behind him.

  “OK, boys,” the man said. “Your tires are punctured on the driver’s side. You call for a ride from here and your number shows up on the lady’s phone bill. Enough for her to prove charges for unlawful entry. You can walk back, though I wouldn’t advise it. That rabbit punch-kick combo to the kidneys is designed to bruise the gluteus medius. Walking could tear it.” He used his head to motion Dover to the door. She opened it. “The keys are still in the ignition,” he said to her. “Get it out of the way then rev up your rental.”

  She nodded, grabbed her handbag and suitcase, and left.

  The newcomer glared at the men in silence until he heard Dover’s engine turn over. “You guys could use more extensive training, what we in the military call ‘Deep Offense,’” he said. “If you want to make me an offer, just call on your cell.”

  Flicking the safety back on and slipping the gun into his belt holster, the newcomer stepped through the door.

  “Go to the Starbucks across the street from Hawke,” the man said as he climbed into the passenger’s side of the rental.

  “I don’t think you need the caffeine,” Dover said.

  “I may want a biscotti,” he deadpanned.

  Dover didn’t know if he was serious. She didn’t care. She swung the car onto the road and sped north toward Clinton Keith.

  “Thank you,” she said as she drove. “I hope.”

  “It’s OK, you’re in good hands,” her passenger said. Dover had placed the pillowcase on the backseat. The man retrieved it and put the guns in the glove compartment. “My name’s Doc Matson. Jack Hatfield asked me to fly down and keep an eye on you.”

  “How did Jack—?” she began, then clapped her lips shut as she replayed the conversation with him in her head. Of course Jack would figure out why she was coming to Murrieta.

  “Our mutual friend is a pretty clever guy,” Doc said. “Though I have to say, for an intelligence agent—I was eavesdropping, sorry—your breadcrumb trail is more like a series of loaves.”

  “I’ve got a lot to learn. Clearly.”

  The traffic on Whitewood was sparse. It thickened when they reached the main road. Fortunately the Starbucks was only a short distance from the intersection.

  “So I’m guessing you have a car at Starbucks?” she ventured.

  “A cab,” he informed her. “I took it from the airport, figured we’d drive your car back. I was watching for a rental driven by someone who matched your description. When you left, I had the driver follow you back to the hotel and drop me off. I waited behind the ice machine to see if anyone from Hawke did the same.” He shook his head. “What a pair of morons. One of them should’ve been watching the street.”

  “Those tires were pretty flat,” Dover said.

  Doc slipped a Bowie knife from a sheath under his left arm. It had a nine-inch blade and a faint, oily smell. “A little grease, slide it deep, the oil keeps it from hissing when you pull it out.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “A greased blade? Cutting rebel throats for the Russians in Chechnya,” he replied. “Men try to breathe through the wounds if you’re holding their mouths—which you do to keep them from shouting. You need to keep the air passage quiet, too.”

  Dover felt her chest tighten. She forced herself to concentrate on the road, on the traffic, not to picture what her passenger had just described.

  “The cab’s waiting in the parking lot so he can jump on the freeway headed south,” Doc said. “For a hundred bucks he’s going to drive the cell phones away from the direction we’re headed. The GPS will put him somewhere in Fallbrook while we’re on the way to Ontario.”

  “What happens when they find him?” Dover asked, trying and failing not to picture a dying rebel.

  “The driver plays dumb, says his fare must’ve forgotten his pillowcase.” Doc grinned. “I’d love to see those guys’ faces when they catch up to him.”

  “That’s why you removed the guns,” Dover said.

  “Bingo. I don’t want him to have trouble if they call the cops.”

  The car reached the Starbucks. Dover was driving on automatic. She saw the sign, swung in without thinking. Doc jumped out. The young woman’s head felt like it was along for the ride: it had stopped trying to process anything that was happening. She was amazed she had figured out why he’d taken the weapons from the pillowcase.

  Doc came running back. “We’re good,” he said. “Back to the Ontario Airport.”

  “I’ll have to see if I can change my reservation,” she said as she spun back onto Clinton Keith Road. She made the light, was no longer afraid of the fast left lane as she headed north on 15.

  “You won’t need a ticket from here,” Doc told her. “I flew down.”

  “As in, your own plane?”

  He nodded. “It’s the only way you can get your own guns into or out of a country.”

  Her passenger was sending a text and Dover stopped talking. There was nothing else she wanted to ask. She was done thinking about anything except getting to the airport—and one thing more.

  Someone at Hawke Industries had a secret to protect, one she had jeopardized. One for which they were willing to TASER her and kidnap her to get her to the airport. She didn’t know if she would ever be safe. She knew that her bridges at the ONI had not just been burned, they’d been blasted. The only way through this was straight ahead.

  Whatever concerns Dover had about the profession of the man sitting beside her, drumming his knees and humming Sousa’s “The Thunderer,” she was grateful to have Doc Matson and Jack Hatfield watching her flank.

  ~ * ~

  Marigot, Saint Martin

  Of all the places Jack had thought he might end up at the flight’s end, the Caribbean was not on his short list. Only the sign on the distant terminal told him where he was, in Saint Martin; Martina was still mute on their destination. Even as they were making their final approach.

  And then it hit his chronically suspicious brain: You should have expected something like this. Maybe it was a long-planned getaway or maybe Hawke is just staying out of the country in case this investigation goes south for him.

  Hawke’s jet came in so low over Maho Beach, Jack could see the faint sheen of wet sand in the moonlight. He thought about the sunseekers who would have thronged the beach that day. Veterans would have ignored the low-flying aircraft; there would have been panic in the eyes and gestures of newcomers.

  Imagine how the Arawak Indians felt when they saw the ships from Spain, he thought.

  It was strange to think of toned, near-naked ladies playing volleyball and the crew of Christopher Columbus on this same clear stretch of waterfront. It was possible that the Indians were wearing even less than vacationers, which was the only backward step he could conjure up. He thought of those men crossing the ocean in a slow-going, wind-driven chamber pot while he flew here faster than the speed of sound. He thought of the diseases that had ravaged the civilization in the Leeward Islands over half a millennium ago and the medicines that prevented them today. He thought of the slavery introduced by the Spanish and the freedom paid for in blood by American soldiers who fought oppression at home and abroad in war after war.

  As t
he jet crossed the chain-link fence and plip-plopped onto the tarmac, he turned his thoughts to Richard Hawke. The man was somewhere on this island. As he recalled from the Fodor’s he’d read before going to Antigua, this region used to be inhabited by hereditary chieftains, not self-made lords. That, too, was different. Whether for better or worse remained to be seen.

  A white stretch limo was waiting on the tarmac. A swarthy Customs agent with a pencil moustache and a pinched grin came out to meet the jet after the steps were lowered, but he did not bother to check Jack’s bag. He did confiscate the popcorn, however, saying that foreign grain was not permitted. Jack didn’t believe that. He just looked like a man who needed a snack.

  Jack said good-bye to Martina. They shook hands. It had been a strange and singular experience being around a woman who was so beautiful without inhabiting or enjoying that beauty. She was only the marketable shell of Hawke’s machine.

  The limo was equipped for a party. There was a digital jukebox, a forty-inch HD TV, Dom Perignon on ice, and a refrigerator with more Iranian caviar, fresh slices of expensive Yubari melons, and the world’s most expensive pie from the Fence Gate Inn in Burnley, Lancashire, England. It was made with two bottles of 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild red wine, Wagyu beef from Kobe, Japan, matsutake mushrooms, and a crust with gold-leaf topping. Jack knew all of this because the car also came equipped with Utako, a stunning young lady who also, by coincidence, came from Kobe. She explained it all as they rolled through the airport gate. She wore the same uniform as Martina and had the same aloof manner. Not that there was time for Jack to try and get to know her any better than he knew Martina. He spent less than ten minutes in the car as it took him not to some mountaintop estate, as he was expecting, but to the Daniel Dutch Marina on Simpson Bay. There he boarded an Aquariva speedboat. Except for its fiberglass hull, the sleek vessel was almost entirely mahogany from the cockpit to the decks, with Gucci print fabric upholstery—waterproof, Utako informed him as they boarded. The pilot, dressed in a tailor-made black suit with the now familiar Hawke logo on his seaman’s cap, immediately revved the two quiet 380 HP Yanmar engines and they took off, planing at 35 knots.

  Jack did not have to ask where they were going.

  Through the forest of moonlit masts belonging to small pleasure boats, he saw the side of the yacht: it was like a brushstroke of gleaming white across the darkness. It bore the name Hi-Lite in bold, black letters.

  Utako must have noticed Jack staring.

  “The lengths of yachts have grown exponentially in just the last decade,” Utako said, loud enough to be heard over the hum of the massive diesel engines, the rush of the wind, and the slap of the hull against the water, “culminating in the launch of Eclipse at five hundred and thirty-three feet. On the list of the world’s largest yachts, which includes royal and state ships, Richard Hawke’s yacht at four hundred and thirty-nine feet is ranked only number eight. But it has very rare features. Built under an extreme blanket of secrecy by Blohm and Voss shipyards, she is one of only two private yachts that are ice-classed. Featuring over forty-eight thousand square feet under air, she has seven decks, including twelve guest cabins, twin master suites, a hangar, several pools, and two helipads, one of which, on the aft deck, is hydraulically retractable. She can accommodate up to twenty-four guests and has a live-aboard crew of twenty-seven, including three security men who were formerly Russian Spetsnaz.”

  What Utako did not mention, of course, Richard Hawke thought as he eavesdropped on their conversation through a computer chip on the young woman’s uniform, was that Hi-Lite was equipped on all sides with components of the Squarebeam technology. The gun-like devices could deactivate the electronics of any threatening vessels as well as emit a blinding light that rendered any opponent incapable of seeing the yacht as Hawke sped away from danger.

  Back on the speedboat, Jack was amused that he had merited the information about the former Spetsnaz. Hawke had a high opinion of his abilities, apparently. “How many guests are there now?” Jack asked.

  Her short, black hair blowing behind her, the young woman said, “I believe you are the only guest.”

  Jack had not expected her to answer. That meant Hawke wanted him to know they would be alone except for his loyal crew. Make him alert, guarded, worried, defensive, carelessly offensive—any number of small, destabilizing reactions.

  “The yacht was especially designed by Mr. Hawke for dining on the topmost deck,” she went on. “That assures privacy from other vessels, from the dock, and also from the crew, and maximizes views from the finished wood alfresco dining table and wraparound seating.”

  Which means we’re having dinner, Jack thought. A courtesy or a coercion?

  They arrived aft of the large white vessel in five minutes flat, climbed the few steps to the main deck. The captain was waiting for them.

  “Russ Browning,” the uniformed man introduced himself, smiling.

  The captain was about forty-five with salt-and-pepper hair showing under his hat. He had a rich tan, a big smile, and perfect teeth. He stood like a seaman, legs slightly apart for balance, spine ramrod straight. Captain Browning radiated the same kind of formal perfection as the Hawke women. Jack wondered which came first, the perfect captain’s bearing or employment by Hawke.

  “Would you care to visit a cabin before meeting Mr. Hawke?” Browning asked.

  “I did everything I needed on his plane,” Jack said, looking around. “This is quite a setup, too.”

  “She is the loveliest vessel in the water,” Browning declared.

  Jack had no way of knowing whether or not that was true. But based on just the mini fridge in the limousine, he was not about to question the captain. At the same time, he thought of the Sea Wrighter. It was small by comparison, cramped, and you felt every buck and heave of the water. But it was home. It was personal. He suddenly missed it very much.

  They made their way through the main salon, which was the size of his Union Street apartment. It had a wet bar, a spotless white carpet, big picture windows, more black-and-white leather sofas, and a pair of Renoirs on the wall. The lamps were by Tiffany, the captain mentioned. Jack didn’t think he meant the singer.

  They continued up to the bridge deck, all the while Jack feeling less and less as though he were on a boat. Even when he saw the bay, he felt like he was in a beachfront hotel. The sway was that minimal, the trappings so un-boatlike.

  Jack wanted to ask Captain Browning about his experiences before joining Hawke—they might bond over their love of smaller boats that one could actually pilot, and that relationship could prove useful—but he didn’t think there was time and he wasn’t sure the seaman would be any more forthcoming than the women had been. It wasn’t a life Jack aspired to, but he could imagine workers not wanting to leave surroundings like the jet and yacht if they didn’t have to.

  From there they went to the sundeck, where Richard Hawke was lying on a black hammock with an e-reader and a clip-on light. The hammock was clearly custom-made, with a wide base made of what looked like matte-black carbon. There was a strange, pinched joint in the middle of the head and foot supports; on the head rail of the hammock was what looked like a photoelectric sensor. The captain explained that the unit “read” the sun, communicated with small, silent motors in the two joints, and kept the hammock facing the sun at all times. It was still oriented to the western horizon and would reset in the morning.

  Jack was overwhelmed rather than impressed.

  Hawke was dressed in a white robe and reading glasses. When he rose, Jack was surprised how stooped and thin he was. He had read about the man’s battle with throat cancer. Even the best doctors and healthiest sunshine could not undo the pallor of what he had endured. As his host walked around the six queen-sized sunning beds built in a large marble well, Jack noticed the Hawke logo embroidered on the back of his robe in black and gold.

  Like a fighter’s robe, Jack thought.

  There was a point a
t which excess became comical self-mockery. The hammock had come indulgently close; the robe crossed the line.

  “Mr. Hatfield,” Hawke said quietly as he approached.

  “Call me Jack,” Jack said.

  “Like Ishmael?” Hawke replied.

  “Helluva question to ask on a boat,” Jack said.

  “Why?” Hawke said. “Ishmael survived.”

  Hawke offered his hand and Jack shook it. The man’s grip was firm enough.

  “It’s odd we’ve never met,” Hawke remarked.

  “We don’t exactly move in the same social circles,” Jack pointed out.

  “True, but we’re nearly neighbors.”

  “Your place in Carmel?”

  “I come to a lot of public events in San Francisco,” Hawke said. “The kind you used to attend.”