by Ted Bell
Hawke had insisted they all smear their faces and hands with black greasepaint and remain completely silent moving through the jungle. He remembered the microphones camouflaged in the trunks of trees that he and Stoke had encountered. Not to mention the three Bahamian guards who’d silently appeared out of nowhere and who would have been only too happy to shoot them on sight or haul them down the hill and into captivity.
At the top of the hill, Hawke was whispering some last-minute instructions to China Moon before she descended the hill to try gain entry to the camp the easy way.
“Take this,” he said, giving her his little peashooter, as his boss, Sir David Trulove, called it. It was a Walther PPK, his favorite. Light and small but lethal. She could easily conceal it in the pocket of her black windbreaker. She nodded her approval.
“If it was good enough for 007, it’s good enough for me,” she said.
“Ready to go?” Hawke asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Remember, we’ll be covering you from up here. We’ve got the high ground. We’ve got clear lines of fire inside the compound. If there’s trouble, we’ll have your back.”
She nodded and disappeared down into the jungle on the hillside.
A few long moments later, they saw her emerge from her cover and walk swiftly up to the main gate. All was still quiet, no activity at the two watchtowers, no sign of life in the windows of the darkened security block.
They could see a metal box, mounted on a large post just outside the gates, giving off a dim glow in the darkness. China stepped up to it, leaned her face inside, and waited for the outcome. Hawke, of course, was praying the damn facial recognition thing would let her in and save them all a lot of trouble.
China stepped back, a smile on her face.
Silently, the two heavy gates swung wide. She strode inside, head high, fearless.
She looked back up at her unseen comrades, who were waiting for her signal on top of the hill, and pumped her right fist in the air a couple of times before retreating back into the shadowy structures behind the guard block to wait for their arrival at the jeeps.
It had occurred to Hawke that, based on the island’s location, so far off the beaten path, and the incredible defenses it had against intruders, it was highly unlikely the camp had ever suffered an enemy intrusion of any kind.
That would certainly account for the laxity they were so fortunate to now encounter.
That was when four powerful searchlights lit up the night. One atop each watchtower at the corners. China was running from the crisscrossing beams, trying to find shelter among all the darkened buildings just as the two brilliant white beams caught up with her. Machine-gun fire erupted instantly from both towers and stitched a line of small explosions in the dirt that almost reached her heels.
The guards who were firing had seen where she’d disappeared, but they had no idea where she’d be hiding by the time they’d reached her.
“Take those bloody towers out, Stoke!” Hawke said.
The big man already had the M320 44mm grenade launcher up in firing position. Hawke could make out two or three shadowy figures emerge at the top of the closest tower. One of them had his high-power binoculars trained on the top of the hill. “Nearest one first,” Hawke said. “Do it now!”
“Tangos out, descending steps. Fire!”
There was a blinding flash of yellow-red flame from the muzzle and a whoosh of sound from the deadly rocket. A second later an explosion obliterated the top of the tower, and Hawke saw three bodies falling to the ground, dead.
Stoke had affixed another grenade to his weapon.
“Guards coming out of the second one, Stoke. Fire!”
The smoke cleared and revealed that the entire watchtower, enveloped in flames, was pitched at an impossible angle, and finally crashing to the ground while still burning. The gates that China had opened with only her pretty face seemed to be stuck in the open position.
Suddenly, powerful searchlights mounted atop the security block rooftop began searching for their position on the hilltop.
“Stoke! Get another round mounted on that damn thing and turn out those bloody lights on the roof.” A second later, the lights were suddenly extinguished by a quick volley of RPGs. The roof of the building was now afire.
“Move out!” Hawke said, and the three warriors raced down through the jungle and bolted across the concrete apron and through the gates, heading straight to the battalion of jeeps lined up a couple of hundred yards behind the guardhouse.
As they raced past the concrete building, a door opened on the side of the solid structure that was the security block.
Stokely Jones Jr., the big man who’d once been a heavy-weapons instructor with the SEALs in Afghanistan, was a fearsome enemy when he had an M320 in his hands. He’d taught his young soldiers how to fire the thing with deadly accuracy, even when they were on the run.
He sighted in on the emerging targets, estimated the range, squeezed the trigger, and put a big bad round of death right through that freaking open door! “That damn party is officially over, boss!” he said with a big smile.
CHAPTER 62
Devil’s Island, the Bahamas
Present Day
Stoke took dead aim and fired the RPG at a trio of guards racing across the concrete apron toward them, automatic weapons spraying fire in their direction.
Seeing the highly explosive round take those three players off the field, Hawke caught Stoke’s attention and gave him a big smile and an “Attaboy, Stoke!”
It was dark again. Hawke saw China dart out of the alley between two bunkhouses and sprint across the open pavement toward the jeeps.
Their luck held. They got into two of the closest jeeps, both with swivel-mounted .50 caliber machine guns bolted down at the rear. Brock took the wheel of the first, and Stoke climbed up into the back and loaded fresh rounds of ammo to both of the guns, the one in his hand and the mounted one.
“You drive,” Hawke called to China. “I’ll be the backseat shooter.”
“Aye-aye, sir!” she said.
“Let’s start ’em up, Mr. Brock,” he said.
They both started their jeeps up and sped across the wide concrete yard to what was actually a large village of identical buildings. The only difference among them was the large white letters stenciled on the walls and the corrugated tin rooftops. There had to be at least fifty or sixty of the damn things.
Hawke had to shout to be heard over the roaring of the two engines. “China,” he called out, “which building was Henry located in?”
“D!” she shouted, and pointed straight ahead to where the undistinguished building marked D was located. “Something doesn’t look right, Alex. I’m not sure this is the same building they took me to that night.”
“Might it be?”
“I suppose. It was a moonless night, very dark, and I was very upset. Maybe I just wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe I misunderstood, and it was building B instead.”
“Let’s just have a quick look,” Hawke said, and China was already hitting the brakes.
She nodded, and everybody climbed out.
China stuck her face into the ID lens beside the single dooor, and open sesame, they were all inside. This room, China saw, was not at all what she remembered.
Everything was white: the walls, the floors, and the ceiling, all the work surfaces, the porcelain sinks, the white protective clothing and face masks hanging from wall pegs as they came in, the neon lights. And everywhere racks of test tubes and countless Bunsen burners.
Hawke knew what he was looking at. And this was no reeducation camp, at least if all the other buildings where built out like this, Hawke thought. No, what this was, was an extremely sophisticated, spotless laboratory. It was a laboratory dedicated to the mass production of extremely high-grade heroin, with an expert
ise and sophistication such as he’d never seen before.
After all the crappy drug labs he’d seen in Asia, he knew it took twenty-four hours to produce twenty pounds of pure heroin. The process was complicated, fraught with danger. If the morphine mix was overheated, the explosion would unleash the fires of Hell on everyone inside. The fumes given off would be poisonous enough to knock an elephant off its feet, and a bad leak could very well kill everyone in the room.
What Hawke now beheld took heroin production to an entirely new, perhaps even global, level. He looked around. This one spotless white room, Hawke believed, was just the tip of the iceberg. It was large, filled with equipment that was expensive and brand-new: vacuum pumps, massive stainless steel electric blenders, electric drying ovens, and sophisticated venting and exhaust systems. By the door where China was standing was the very latest reflux condenser, while next to that were gleaming flasks and test tubes ready to be loaded into an autoclave for sterilization.
“This is nuts,” China said, suddenly standing beside him.
This was the HQ for a meticulous narcotics operation, the Google, the Amazon, the epicenter of a worldwide narcotics operation.
And Hawke realized just how ingenious the Tang brothers had been. They’d built the mammoth facility to resemble one of the mind-control camps seen all over China, where inmates wandered about in rags and slept in bunkrooms overcrowded with sick and dying Muslims. No one would ever think twice about entering such a pestilential prison.
If he had to bet, he’d bet that perhaps just one of the countless identical buildings here was actually used for such a purpose. And that was the one the commandant had shown China that night. The one where Prince Henry was being held. The rest? They were all smack labs, cranking out enough heroin every day to feed the insatiable worldwide demand and supply the high-quality product the Tang crime family had to keep pumping out, year in, year out.
China had unwittingly led him into the very heart of a Tang criminal operation. She had unmasked a vast criminal enterprise charading as a respectable international business. Resorts, hotels, casinos, feature film production, prostitution, white slavery, the whole enchilada, in fact.
This was where Prince Henry had stuck his nose. Not the sub pen or even the white slavery auctions of women at the Castle, as deeply secret and dark as they both were.
No.
This was why they’d held on to Henry, terrified to let him go.
And why they were now, in all likelihood, slowly poisoning the very life out of him! Hawke squinted, having caught a glimpse of pale pink on the eastern horizon. Dawn was drawing nigh and closer by the minute.
“We’re running out of darkness, let’s go! We’ve got to get to that infirmary and get the prince the hell out of there now!” Hawke said, and they raced back outside and into the jeeps. Roaring away, flat out through the narrow streets of the compound.
CHAPTER 63
Devil’s Island, the Bahamas
Present Day
How far away is this bleeding infirmary?” Hawke asked China as they came to an intersection. Hawke, who was manning the swivel-mounted .50 cal machine gun in the rear of the jeep, now kept an eye on his watch. He couldn’t afford to take it for granted that the Chinese transport flight into Nassau would arrive at the estimated time. It might be a few hours late. Or it might be a few hours early. Speed was of the essence now. It was everything.
China said, “This is the main road off to our left. Leads straight through the middle of the camp all the way to the rear entrance, where the hospital is, maybe four miles from here.
“Take a left here, Harry,” she shouted at Brock, tires squealing and smoking, hanging a hard left. “Step on it, Mr. Brock.”
Ten minutes later, the two jeeps were speeding at eighty miles an hour on the main road. They needed to arrive now, get inside that infirmary before the guards knew they were coming, before they could mount a defense.
“Next right!” China shouted again to Brock, as she spun the wheel hard over, putting the jeep up on two wheels to make the turn. Hawke found himself holding on to the bolted-down machine gun just to avoid being ejected from the jeep at this speed. A large white structure loomed up ahead. Had to be the sick bay, had to be.
“This is it!” she said as they both pulled up in front of a six-story white building, a lot of glass and steel, very modern compared to the rustic wood-hewn laboratories. The infirmary had a well-marked emergency room, a flashing red neon high up on the entrance at the side blinking ER . . . ER . . . ER. Illuminated high on the wall above the entrance, big letters in polished steel read:
THIS BUILDING IS A GIFT TO THE PEOPLE OF THE BAHAMAS FROM THE TANG FAMILY, 2014
They all dashed inside the main entrance doors, weapons at the ready.
China coughed loudly to get the attention of the sleepy nurse holding down the fort at the reception desk, at three o’clock in the morning. When the first cough didn’t do the trick, she slammed her machine gun down hard onto the granite counter right in front of Nurse Diesel.
“Oh! Can I help you, miss?” the startled woman said.
“I’m here to see one of your patients! Now, lady!”
While Hawke, Stoke, and Harry hung back and kept to the shadows, China flashed her MSS ID and gold-and-red shield inside its leather wallet.
“I’m an official with the Chinese government. My name is not important. What is important is that we’re here to pick up one of your patients. British national. His name is Henry.”
The nurse, who’d heard that the Chinese Secret Police were en route to the island by medevac chopper to evacuate this patient later on this morning, was doing her best to be polite to this policewoman. She didn’t like the look of that badge one bit. She was nearing retirement, and the last thing she needed was to get sideways with the Chinese Secret Police.
“Yes, yes, of course. I think you’re a little early, but we’ve been expecting you. Top floor. There’s the elevator over there. Push six. Then go to your right to the VIP critical care ward. The duty nurse will show you to his room. He’s in six-oh-two. Don’t be shocked. He’s very weak. Malnourished. Someone’s mistreated him very badly. He’d lost a lot of blood when he arrived here.”
“And just who do you think mistreated him, Nurse?” China said.
“I’m just a receptionist,” the terrified woman said. “I have no idea who’s responsible.”
“I just bet you don’t,” China said in disgust, then turned and walked away.
* * *
—
Hawke pushed six. Once upstairs, they all went right to a pair of double doors with small porthole windows. Clearly, this was the floor where the VIPs got the VIP treatment. The duty nurse clearly had gotten a call from reception and was waiting for them in the corridor, standing by a closed door marked 602.
“He’s in there,” she whispered, pushing the door open for them.
China grabbed Hawke’s hand and silently pulled him over to the young man’s bedside. In the dim light, a gaunt, pale figure was snoring raggedly.
“Oh, my God, Alex. It’s him all right,” she said simply. “Look at him. I cannot believe he’s still alive. . . .”
Hawke joined her. “Yes, it’s Henry. Looks like we got here not a moment too soon,” he said, grateful beyond measure that at least his godson appeared to still be clinging to life. Ever the handsome lad, he was now very thin and grey, with a thin sheen of perspiration on his sallow cheeks and forehead. Hawke checked his pulse. “Sixty-two. Not strong, but just maybe strong enough,” he said, laying his hand gently on the young man’s forehead and removing it. “No fever,” he said quietly.
“Tell me what you need, Chief,” Brock said.
“Couple of things, Mr. Brock. First, go down the hall to the nurses’ station. We need a couple of orderlies with a stretcher and a gurney,” Hawke said. “I saw a few of them p
arked along the wall to the left of the elevator.” He then turned to China, who was holding the boy’s hand. “China?” he said.
“What else can I do for him, Alex?” she asked.
“Go to the nurses’ station down the hall. Flash your badge. Tell them you need white orderly gowns, four of them, and stethoscopes. Go now! Hurry it up.”
Stoke, upon seeing a reddish glow from the window on the ceiling and hearing the swell of voices from the ground below, glanced out the nearest window.
Stoke said, “A whole mess of guards down there, boss. Looks like they’ve barricaded the rear gate and set our two jeeps on fire. We gotta find ourselves a whole new way outta Dodge!”
* * *
—
When the two orderlies arrived with the stretcher and the gurney, Hawke allowed them to carefully remove Henry from the bed to the stretcher and then secure him to the top of the gurney. He then asked the orderlies if they’d mind bringing a saline drip from the nurses’ station and antibiotics as well.
He figured they’d be gone long enough to give them a good ten minutes or so to get the prince out of the building.
As soon as the two orderlies headed left down to the nurses’ station, Hawke and party went right. All four had donned the white orderly gowns. Harry Brock and Stokely were wheeling the prince’s gurney and wondering what in the hell the boss man was up to now.
“This way,” Hawke said. “We’re going down to the emergency room on the ground floor.”
The wide elevator doors slid open, and they rolled the gurney inside. Hawke pushed the button marked ER, and down they went. Arriving there, all walked straight to the exit, not looking at a soul. Nor did anyone look at them. The ER was dead this time of night, and they barged right through the exit doors and down the ramp to where the ambulances were parked.