Pirate ah-3

by Ted Bell

  “What’s that up ahead?” Stoke asked Arnold.

  “Czechoslovakia,” Arnold said.

  “Let’s try not to hit it.”

  Sometimes, Arnold would get so low down, the Lynx and its darting shadow almost kissed. Catch a skid and you’re not sitting on top of the world, Stoke thought, and looked at his watch. If they could stay down on the deck and maintain this speed without cracking up, they’d touch down at Tempelhof well before midnight. It was nice and warm in the cockpit. It had been a long day. Stoke let his head fall back across the seat and closed his eyes.

  “Put it down just there,” Jet said to Arnold, waking him from some dream of swaying palms and convertibles and his beautiful Fancha climbing out of a turquoise pool dripping wet and naked as the day she was born. Soon as all this was over, first-class ticket nonstop to Miami.

  The black helo was approaching the LZ low and dark, no landing lights outside; inside, the cockpit was lit only by a dim red glow from the instrument panel. Stealth chopper. He hoped. Heavy armed resistance at this point would be a problem. He had only the Schmeisser and a few mags of ammo he’d been able to scrounge up going through drawers at the gasthaus. Jet had the dead Arnold’s automatic and two spare mags.

  They approached Tempelhof low and from the rear, away from the entrance where the guards were stationed. Here, boxy apartment complexes and warehouses would hide their approach from the guards at the entrance on the far side of the field. Arnold dropped down below the rooftops. He flew between the buildings, along a narrow deserted street that dead-ended at the fence line. They rose slightly and almost clipped the fence. A darkened helo, coming in low, a hush kit to dampen the engine noise, hell, they had a pretty good chance to arrive unannounced.

  He wasn’t sure what they’d find on the ground, but as they crossed the perimeter and flared up for a landing, he sure as hell felt like they were going into the belly of the beast.

  They set down on a very remote part of the airfield, in the moon-shadow of a rusty hangar that looked like it hadn’t seen much use since “Operation Vittles,” the American airlift that began in 1945. There was a high perimeter wall all around the field, topped with concertina wire, and probably guarded by remote sensors. In the far distance stood an illuminated complex, the huge semicircular building that housed Von Draxis Industries.

  Stoke swung his cockpit door open and was met with a blast of cold air. It felt good, woke him up. So did the snarling hellhound that leaped up out of the darkness behind him and flew bare-fanged across his chest and out the open door. Doing his mental weapons check, minding his own business, he’d clean forgot about Blondi. The Doberman might even the odds up a little bit. Maybe a lot.

  “She had to go,” Jet said by way of explanation.

  “Okay, Arnold,” Stoke said, cocking the Schmeisser, “shut this bird down and sit tight. We’re going to get out, stretch our legs, and figure out what to do next.”

  “We know exactly what to do next,” Jet said. “Let’s get moving.”

  Stoke smiled at Arnold. “Like the lady said, we know exactly what to do next. Let’s get moving.”

  There was an old wooden sign above the door with the faded word Steinhoffer painted on it. Name of a Luftwaffe ace jet-set. The doors were locked. Stoke kept the machine pistol on Arnold and Blondi straining on her leash while Jet unlocked the padlocks on the rusty corrugated hangar doors. The fact that she had a key to this old building was mildly surprising but Stoke kept his mouth shut. They were on her turf now. When a woman had a plan, you had to be prepared to zip your lip and go with it. It had taken him nearly half a century to figure that out.

  Jet got the lock open and pushed back the sliding doors. The hangar was empty except for the gleaming black car.

  “Stokely,” Jet said, “there’s a tool shop at the rear. Get some duct tape and immobilize him. Use a lot. We might be a couple of hours. I’ll take Blondi.”

  “You heard the lady,” Stoke said to Arnold. He handed the leash to Jet. “Let’s go get you taped up.”

  Ten minutes later, having secured Arnold to a heavy wooden workbench that was bolted to a wall, he was back. Jet was squatting on her knees beside the car, talking to Blondi in German. Telling the Doberman the plan, Stoke assumed. He was pretty sure he’d be next to find out what it was.

  “That’s some car,” he said to Jet. And it was. It was maybe the most beautiful machine he’d ever seen. Glinting black in the moonlight that filtered through the skylight, it looked like a high-tech spaceship. “What is it?”

  “Mercedes SLR,” Jet said. “Built in England by McLaren. It’s basically a Formula One race car you can drive on the street. Six hundred eighteen horsepower, top speed of over 320 kilometers per hour.”

  “This is your car?” Stoke said.

  “Schatzi gave it to me when he got bored with it.”

  “And you keep it out here?”

  “If I kept it at my apartment, it would get stolen. I don’t use it that much. This is probably the safest place in Berlin.”

  Stoke was puzzling over the English license plate mounted on the rear. Four letters. SPQR.

  “SPQR,” he said. “What’s that stand for?”

  “It’s an acronym. It stands for Senatus Populusque Romanus. Which means the ‘Senate and People of Rome.’ Schatzi is a big fan of Caesar. Might help you understand who you’re up against.”

  “I’ll take all the help I can get, Jet,” Stoke said. He didn’t ask her why the Q got left out in translation.

  “Get in. We’ll put Blondi in the back.”

  Jet thumbed the remote in her hand. “Mind your head,” she said, “the doors swing up not out. Gullwing, like the old 300SL. Load, Blondi!”

  Stoke climbed in and buckled his belt. The car was so low and sleek, he was amazed there was enough room for someone his size. He looked over at Jet and saw she was adjusting a pair of night-vision goggles over her eyes.

  “I take it out on the Autobahn late at night,” Jet said, “No traffic. I run three hundred kilometers per hour flat out with the lights off. No Polizei.”

  “Anybody saw you, they’d think it was a UFO.”

  The supercharged V-8 roared to life, a beautiful exhaust note burbling from the sidepipes. Jet let it idle for a few seconds, then blipped the accelerator. Just the sound of the thing inside the hangar was enough to push Stoke back in his seat. Then she engaged first gear, popped the clutch, and hit it. The tires lit up and they rocketed forward, went sideways out onto the tarmac, no lights, the rear wheels screeching and smoking.

  It didn’t take long to get across the field. Runways built of ballast stone were ideal for cars like Jet’s. Stoke didn’t even look over at the speedometer. There was a large square building adjacent to the main structure. Jet seemed be headed in that direction but it was pretty blurry outside so Stoke wasn’t sure.

  “Don’t seem to be a whole lot of guards around,” Stoke said.

  “The main entrance is where all the guards are. That’s the only way in or out. They’re not expecting company tonight, either. VDI Security is still waiting for a report on us from Zum Wilden Hund, remember? Besides, nobody really knows what goes on here.”

  “What does go on here?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Tempelhof itself, the main building, looked like something you might have seen in ancient Rome only much, much bigger. “Impressive architecture,” Stoke said as they sped closer.

  “Neoclassical. Albert Speer was Hitler’s personal architect,” Jet said, “no small plans.”

  Jet slowed to below a hundred and used a remote to open a door in the secondary building that was coming up fast. It looked like they were going to go right inside doing about eighty.

  “What’s this building?” Stoke said, gripping the door handle with his right hand.

  “Underground parking,” Jet said, tapping the brakes and spinning the wheel. Once they were inside the doors she stood on the brakes and put the wheel hard over. The SLR did a t
ight three-sixty on the polished cement floor. Jet put it in first and started up again in the direction of a tunnel marked Eingang.

  “Four levels,” she said, pushing the NVG goggles up to the top of her head. “We’re going all the way down to Level Four. Corkscrew turns. Hold on.”

  “I’m beginning to see what Alex Hawke sees in you.”

  “Alex Hawke hasn’t seen anything yet,” Jet said. But she was smiling when she said it.

  After they’d parked and locked up the Mercedes, Jet led him back to an anonymous grey door tucked inside an alcove. A door you’d never find unless you knew it was there.

  “Wilkommen to the Unterwelt,” Jet said, pulling the rusted steel door open.

  “Welcome to what?”

  “The Underworld.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Gulf of Oman

  “YOU LOOK UNHAPPY,” HAWKE SAID TO HARRY BROCK. THEY were standing on the trawler’s stern in the dark. All the ship’s lights were doused. Ahmed was helping them get suited up in wetsuits and high-tech SEAL gear. The equipment included German Draegers, “re-breathers,” that purified and recirculated their oxygen so no tell-tale bubbles marked their progress on the surface. Now that night had fallen, Hawke was reasonably sure the recon mission could be carried out unseen and unnoticed.

  Harry was upset they weren’t using the Swimmer Delivery Vehicle he’d procured from the Navy. And he hadn’t found it amusing when Hawke had said, “Don’t you think that’s a bit of overkill, Irontail? We’re just doing a light recon. We can swim it.”

  The sun had set and the moon had risen while the darkened trawler Cacique poked along the northern tip of the island, looking for a suitable mooring on the rocky coast.

  Cacique had to be sufficiently near the island for the two men to swim to Fort Mahoud’s entrance and back. But the trawler also had to be anchored somewhere out of sight, away from any prying eyes at the fort. After his recent experience aboard the Star of Shanghai, Hawke had a new rule of thumb when it came to unexpectedly dropping in on new friends. Always assume you’re expected, no matter what they tell you.

  They’d managed a pretty good spot. The anchorage was tucked inside a deepwater cove just west of Point Arras on the northwest side of the island. Hawke figured it was maybe a half-mile swim out around the rocky point and then south two thousand yards to the fort’s entrance. The trawler would be invisible in the cove, even from atop the twin towers. He told Ali to drop anchor. Ahmed had brought up the equipment, recently arrived from the United States, from below.

  “You okay?” Hawke asked.

  “Yeah.” Brock was struggling with his regulator. “I’m no fucking water baby, that’s all, Your Lordship. Why do you think I went to all the trouble to get the goddamn SDV, for chrissakes.”

  Hawke smiled and looked at Brock, now smearing night camo paint on his face. “Stay close to Papa. You’ll be all right.”

  “Mr. Hawke, sir! Mr. Brock!” Captain Ali al-Houri was at the rail just above their heads.

  “Yes?”

  “A message just came in over the wire, sir. Urgent. A speech on the radio. I’ve got the shortwave tuned in to BBC, sir! It’s starting in a few minutes, sir.”

  “We’ll be right there.” Hawke slipped off his tank and flippers. So did Brock, who seemed grateful for the reprieve, however temporary.

  The old trawler wasn’t large enough to have a real radio room. The commo equipment was all in the main saloon, sitting on a book-crowded shelf over the nav station. When Hawke came inside the darkened room, Ali was seated at the tiny station, twisting the knob on the ancient Grundig receiver, looking for the strongest signal. They all pulled chairs from the round dining table and gathered around the radio. It was quite homey, Hawke thought.

  “Somebody at Langley sent you a fax?” Brock asked Hawke, who held the flimsy two-page message in his hand, reading it in the dim light. Brock wasn’t accustomed to seeing an archaic fax machine used for the transmission of coded messages from highly sophisticated intelligence agencies.

  “Your boss at Langley. He didn’t sign it, naturally, but that’s who this is from.”

  “What’s he got to say?”

  “Seems the new president of France is about to make a radio address to the nation. The Elysée only announced it an hour ago. According to this, Kelly believes Monsieur Bonaparte’s got some serious problems. Basically, he’s trying to put down an insurrection. He’s got the army and the navy with him, but the populace is up in arms about the assassinations and the impending invasion of Oman. The remnants of Honfleur’s old government are on the attack, too.”

  “What the hell happened to liberté, égalité, fraternité?”

  “According to Brick, the turmoil is a result of French bloggers having a feeding frenzy. They’re all over the chat rooms, accusing Bonaparte and his boys of selling France to the highest bidder. Namely, your little pals in China.”

  “God bless Al Gore for inventing the Internet.”

  “Right—hold on—here he is now…”

  “—and, live now from Paris on BBC One, World Radio Tonight, this is Robert Markham…. President Bonaparte has entered this very uneasy room here at the Elysée Palace. The Salon Napoleon III, with its gilded columns and eagles symbolizing the Empire, is a hectic scene tonight. Bonaparte, resplendent in a military uniform, is shaking hands with some of his highest-ranking military officers…smiling…I must say he seems very relaxed this evening…the question on everyone’s mind is, can he hold on to the seat of power now that he’s got it? He’s stepping up to the microphone…BBC One will provide simultaneous translation of his remarks…here is the new president of France.”

  There was a burst of static, and then President Bonaparte spoke.

  “Good evening. A few short weeks ago, during my tragically short period as your new prime minister, I made my first appeal to France. I asked for perseverance during turmoil and I asked for courage on the road ahead.

  “Tonight, as your new president, my voice is firmer. The tragic deaths of Prime Minister Honfleur and our beloved president Bocquet at the hands of France’s enemies will be avenged. France will recover. Look around you! Thanks in part to my new foreign trade policies, factories across the country are already humming. Wages are up, production is up, unemployment is down. But many Frenchmen won’t believe it. To them I say, ‘You have short memories!’

  “Believe me, this is no time to engage in bitterness or reprisals…or give way to despair. You have not been sold, abandoned, or betrayed. Not to Germany, not to China, not to any country. Those who say so are lying…and throwing you into the arms of the Anglo-American fascists, capitalist warmongers whose greatest fear is the economic and military power of a resurgent France.

  “Yes, we may suffer in the coming weeks. Our troops are headed into battle. We will liberate the brave people of Oman from the tyranny of terror. It will not be easy. I need your trust at this hour. The trust of your hearts and minds. I need your wisdom and patience. Those attributes you will attain only under my leadership. None but those who forget our history, or those enemies of our unity with our new allies, will seek to destroy us.

  “Remember, you are citizens of an old and glorious nation. I speak to you tonight as the proud descendant of Napoleon, the emperor who restored honor and glory to France…and in his name, a name that echoes still down the corridors of history…citizens of France, in the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, I ask you to put down your arms!

  “Forget your anger, your tears. Give me your trust. All for one, and one for all. I, Bonaparte, am that one. And, together with you, I promise that I will protect you from the forces of evil. That one day soon we shall emerge from the dark of the old century…and into the light of the new. Thank you very much. Vive la France!”

  “Guy can talk,” Brock said as the captain reached up to shut off the radio.

  “He’s a megalomaniac who wants to be emperor of Europe,” Hawke said, getting to his feet. “A megalomaniac who needs sto
pping. Let’s go swimming, Mr. Brock.”

  Twenty minutes later, roughly five hundred yards offshore, a head popped out of the sea. It was encased in a half-head ballistic helmet, matte black, with a communication headset and night-vision goggles on a flip-up mount. What little of the face remained visible was smeared black with greasepaint. Ragged clouds scurried by the moon and the surface was choppy. Alex Hawke flipped down his goggles and trod water as he studied the target and fortifications, confident he would not be seen from the towers.

  “You survived,” Hawke said into his boom mike as a second head joined him on the surface.

  “Just trying to keep up, boss,” he heard in his earpiece.

  Hawke said, “Okay, Brock. Simple mission. Reconnoiter, identify, infiltrate, mark it, and get the hell out. Right?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “But for a small problem, it is,” Hawke now told Brock. “Take a look. A new arrival.”

  Brock swung himself around and saw what Hawke was talking about. There was a cutter now moored along the steel dock to the right of the entry steps. A large patrol boat with a French tricolor hanging off her stern. Twin 40mm guns on her fore and after decks. He could make out crewmen on the bow and stern, casting off lines. A powerful spotlight on the bridge was illuminated. She was headed out.

  “Problem,” Hawke said. “If she turns left and heads north around the point, it’s trouble. She’ll find Cacique and probably board her. Even if we started swimming right now, we’d never make it back in time to warn Ali and Ahmed.”

  “So let’s hope she turns right and heads south.”