Pirate: A Thriller

by Ted Bell

  The bolt that held his ejection seat to the floor had failed. That was it. That’s why, when his nose went down, his seat shot along the railing and his helmet and seatback had almost broken through the canopy. At that moment, the nose was jerked upward by unseen forces and the seat slid back down the railing to the floor. Good. Much better. He could swivel his head now. And his neck wasn’t broken.

  He was thinking then that he might just make it out of this bitched-up mess alive. That feeling was short-lived. Terror struck him again when a truly horrifying sound filled his world.

  The screws.

  A loud, deep-pitched whine, rapidly growing closer. The sound was deafening. Overpowering.

  Oh, shit.

  He could see them vaguely now, hanging down below the hull, way back at the stern. There were four of them and they were coming up fast, the cruel blades all but invisible inside whirling clouds, a maelstrom of white water.

  He was aware of fear then. The real thing. It was a fear that he had never even guessed at. He supposed it was just that bloody high-pitched noise triggering all those mental pictures of a particularly bad way to go. Whatever it was, it was working. Inside the hurtling cockpit, Alex Hawke was well and truly afraid.

  There were four massive bronze propellers, each of them over twenty feet across and weighing thirty tons. Four whirling, knifeedged blades, biting and slicing the water. Each screw was mounted to a long shaft, which was connected to a steam turbine powered by one of two nuclear reactors. The ship’s propulsion system generated a half-million horsepower. Each screw was now turning at over two thousand rpm.

  Surging toward those four meat-grinders, Hawke had at last discovered the true meaning of fear. It didn’t creep up and touch your neck with icy fingers. It exploded inside your brain. And made everything numb. He was shivering violently. He clenched his jaw shut to stop his teeth from chattering.

  Alex Hawke’s battered capsule was bouncing along, slicing off spiky chunks of barnacle, heading straight toward them. He could see more clearly how he was going to die now. He visualized being chewed up and spat out in countless pieces even now as he felt a sudden surge of speed bringing him closer and closer to the churning propellers.

  If the noise was intolerable, the view was terrifying. The water amidships was still amazingly clear and as he got closer to the stern he could see the huge billowing clouds of minuscule bubbles, could see the four vortexes the giant screws created, four huge vacuums sucking him aft at a tremendous rate of speed.

  And he was still accelerating.

  He wanted his eyes open now for this last bit. Wanted to see everything. He wanted to stare down the fear as he sped toward his very certain death. He could see the wicked curved blades of each screw in perfect detail as he hurtled headlong into the vortex.

  He forced his eyes to stay wide open.

  He was in the relentless grip of the outboard screw. It was happening. He was entering the roiling pipeline to death. He started spinning now, now that he was in the tube. The vibration and the noise blotted out everything but the looming knife-edges of the whirling blades. The screw seemed to have slowed a fraction, but perhaps it was just his imagination. All in slow motion now.

  He strained against the harness, trying to see it coming. The gaps between the blades were much larger from this angle. But not wide enough with the pod at this forty-five-degree attitude. What if he could get weight suddenly forward? Hope surged. He might even slip through if he could somehow get his nose down—wait—the seat pin was out—the weight of the ejection seat slamming forward again just might be enough to—he grabbed the handles on either side of the cockpit and yanked himself forward with as much force as he could generate.

  It was one last utterly desperate gamble and he might just kill himself doing it. But if the nose was angling downward as he passed between two of the blades, perhaps gravity and hydrodynamics would be on his side. He was no physicist, no expert on wave mechanics, but what the bloody hell, he—

  The seat shot ahead on the rails and he slammed once more into the leading edge of the canopy. His helmet took the brunt of the impact again. He heard a loud pop, the sound of the helmet splitting or maybe the canopy. No water, though. Just fresh sheets of warm blood that drenched his face. He couldn’t see. He thought he felt the nose dip a fraction before merciful blackness descended and surrounded him.

  Disoriented and rolling violently in the screw’s wake, he regained consciousness and suddenly saw the orange sun bouncing on the horizon.

  Somehow, he was still alive.

  He wiped some blood from his eyes and noticed that he was bobbing violently on the ocean’s surface. The forces tossing him about came from the backwash of the Lincoln’s four giant meat grinders. He could see the looming stern of the carrier moving away from him. His heart was pounding against his ribs with such force he felt the bloody organ might rip away from his chest wall. He knew he had to do something to get out of the capsule but he couldn’t control his shaking hands. He tried several times to blow the canopy but he just didn’t seem to have the necessary coordination to do it. Until his third try.

  He blew the canopy.

  And realized very quickly he’d made a very serious mistake. The cockpit capsule immediately began flooding with water. Seawater rose instantly above his knees. It kept rising, slopping around, quickly filling the cockpit. Since the nose had the most air to displace, the capsule nosed over. It submerged and immediately began to sink. He was going straight down fast. He tugged furiously at his harness, clawed at it, shredding his fingertips.

  At about thirty or forty feet beneath the surface, his fingers ripped at the buckles one last time and he managed to wrench himself free. He wriggled out of the harness, kicked away from what little remained of his lost aircraft, and started clawing his way to the surface.

  Breaking the water, he heard a loud thumping noise above and saw a big Sea King helicopter blotting out the sky overhead. One rescue swimmer, already in the water, was paddling furiously toward him. Another stood poised in the open hatch. The downdraft was making the waves worse and Hawke went under, swallowing a pint or two of seawater. He felt the crewman yanking upward on his flight suit. A few seconds later, he was sputtering on the surface again, only to be blindsided by another crashing wave.

  “Christ, sir,” the swimmer shouted at him above the chopper’s roar, somehow looping a line over his head and getting it down over his shoulders. “We almost lost you when she swamped!”

  “Yeah, I know!”

  “Are you crazy, sir? Why the hell did you blow your canopy?”

  Hawke spat out the last saltwater he could summon up from his burning pipes, then wrenched his head around and smiled. His savior was just a kid, couldn’t be much more than twenty years old. The cinch tightened over Hawke’s chest and he was jerked upward, slowly at first, toward the hovering Sea King.

  “Never blow the canopy!” the kid shouted again.

  “Next time this happens,” Hawke shouted down to the kid, “I’ll try to remember not to do that!”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  New York City

  AMBROSE CONGREVE ARRIVED AT 21 WEST FIFTY-SECOND Street in a sunny mood. Why not? He was dining at the “21” club, his favorite watering hole in all of New York. The leisurely stroll down Fifth Avenue in the warm twilight had been delightful. He had suitable accommodations, having been satisfactorily installed in a nice corner room at the Carlyle up on Seventy-sixth and Madison. Plenty of cozy chintz and overstuffed furniture. And there’d been a huge arrangement of hydrangeas waiting in his room when he’d checked in that afternoon.

  The scented blue envelope from the Park Avenue florists, now safely tucked inside his waistcoat pocket, would have to wait. He knew who it was from and that was sufficient.

  He was saving the card. He envisioned ordering an ice-cold martini and then reading her words while standing at the bar waiting for his dinner companion. He was deliberately early. He wanted time to savor Diana
’s note laced with gin.

  “Good evening, Mr. Congreve,” the debonair gentleman standing at the entrance to the dining room said. He offered his hand as Ambrose entered the familiar room, chockablock with model boats, aircraft, and sports memorabilia hung from the ceiling. “It’s good to have you back with us again.”

  Congreve shook the man’s hand warmly. Bruce Snyder, as far as he was concerned, was the heart and soul of the legendary old speakeasy. A tall and good-looking chap with slicked-back hair and impeccable tailoring, Bruce managed to combine an elegant New York sophistication with an easygoing manner that was part and parcel of his Oklahoma upbringing.

  Still, Snyder was the keeper of the flame in this very clubby atmosphere; the arbiter of social stratification within these hallowed walls. It was he who decided whether you were seated at one of the cherished banquettes in the front room or banished to Siberia behind the bar. But Ambrose knew that, unlike many in his position, Snyder was a good man who wore his mantle of power lightly and with genuine bonhomie.

  “I’m meeting someone, Bruce,” Congreve said. “I’m a little early. And thirsty. I thought I might have something cold and clear at the bar first.”

  “Good idea. I’ve saved the banquette table in the corner whenever you’re ready,” Snyder said. “Business or pleasure bring you to New York this trip, Chief Inspector?”

  “Both. Two items are on my personal menu this evening, Bruce. Your delicious lobster and that tough old bird Mariucci. A sort of ‘Surf and Turf,’ I suppose one might say.”

  “He’s not so tough.” Snyder laughed. “Matter of fact, he was in with his granddaughter just the other night. Her birthday.”

  “Moochie didn’t shoot out the candles?”

  Snyder laughed again and walked with him toward the bar. “We make him check his six-shooter at the door. Just give me a shout when you’re ready to sit down.”

  Ambrose ordered a very dry Bombay Sapphire straight up and pulled the small pale blue envelope from his pocket. It was the same shade as the hydrangeas that Diana had sent to the Carlyle. He noticed that his hands were trembling. His martini arrived magically and he put the envelope down, feeling like he needed a drink before he opened it. He really was losing it, he thought—just going starkers and—

  A large beefy hand was on his shoulder.

  “Hiya, sailor, first time in New York?”

  Known as Moochie to his many pals in the metropolis and by less cordial monikers by the many villains he’d sent upriver, Detective Captain John Mariucci had collaborated with Ambrose very successfully on a couple of cases. All ancient history now. Moochie was somewhere north of five feet tall, a barrel-shaped individual with a full black mustache and skin the color of sun-bleached terra-cotta. His neatly trimmed black hair was shot through with grey now, but instead of aging him, it seemed to smooth out some of the rough edges.

  Ambrose slipped Diana’s card back into his waistcoat and shook the man’s hand, trying not to wince at the pain. Moochie had the strongest grip of any man he knew outside of Stokely Jones, but Stokely, at least, knew how to keep his under control.

  He turned to the bartender. “Two more just like this, please, and send them over to our table.”

  “Okay, Chief,” Mariucci said after they’d been seated and he’d swallowed the top half of his drink, “Let’s skip the chase and cut right to the outcome. We’ll renew our acquaintance later. What are you doing in my town and how the hell can I help you do it? Women, a table at Rao’s, what are we talking here?”

  Ambrose smiled and sipped the delicious gin. “Ever hear of a chap named Napoleon Bonaparte?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I think that rings a bell. Short little guy, French, as I remember. Always had his hand inside his jacket like he was going for his frigging piece.”

  “That’s the bird, all right.”

  “He giving you a hard time, Chief Inspector?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, he is.”

  “I’ll kick his ass.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Talk to me, Ambrose, but let’s order a steak first. My treat, by the way, you paid last time I was in London.” Ambrose didn’t argue about the menu or the tab. He was on Moochie’s turf and he knew better. Mariucci signaled to a hovering waiter and informed him that they didn’t need menus, just food. “Two New York strip steaks, rare, French fries, and two Sunset salads with Lorenzo dressing.”

  “You want the steak and the chicken?” the waiter asked, scribbling on his pad. It wasn’t a problem, nothing was a problem, he just wanted to make sure he’d understood.

  “I’m hungry, what can I tell you? Too much food, though, you’re right. So, hold the chicken in the Sunsets, and just bring the lettuce and cabbage part.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Mariucci sat back against the banquette and surveyed the room. It was full of glamorous semifamous and famous faces and Ambrose was sure the seasoned captain could put names to most all of them. Then he looked at Congreve and said, “France has gone crazy, right? Fuck is wrong with those people? They forget a little beach resort called Normandy? Jesus. Speaking of France, you still wearing yellow socks all the time?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Show me.”

  Ambrose stuck his foot out beneath the table and hitched up this trouser leg. He was wearing black Peale wing-tipped loafers and his signature yellow cable-stitched socks from Loro Piano. Mariucci shook his head and frowned. He and Ambrose had never seen eye to eye when it came to gentlemen’s attire.

  “You are a total and complete piece of work, you know that? Now, you were saying about Napoleon?”

  “He had a son. Not many people know that.”

  “I’m one of those people.”

  “The point is that there’s a line coming down through history from the emperor. A man named Luca Bonaparte, one of Napoleon’s direct descendants, is the reason I’m here.”

  “Oh, yeah. The new head of France or some shit like that.”

  “That’s my boy. He’s creating very serious problems for your country and mine.”

  “In that case, he’s a dead man. You want some wine?”

  “It goes without saying.”

  “I’ll get us a nice Barolo. Or a Barbaresco. Any wine that starts with ‘B’ is good Italian wine. I told you that before, right? Tell me more about this Bonaparte guy.”

  “He murdered his father. In Paris, thirty-five-odd years ago. Langley stumbled on an old Deuxième file when digging into Bonaparte’s past. You’ll see it later, I checked it with my hat. I’m actually here at the specific request of your CIA director, Patrick Kelly.”

  “So you knew I got promoted?”

  “I did not. What exalted status do you now occupy?”

  “You said CIA is all. I’m now the Senior NYPD guy on the Federal Anti-Terrorist Advisory Council. ATAC. Which makes me sort of a half-assed fed myself. But with command of all the active-duty cops. Where in Paris did this murder occur?”

  “At Napoleon’s Tomb in 1970.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Yes. At least two. A fellow named Ben Sangster. And his business associate, a chap by the name of Joe Bonanno. Both Americans.”

  “You gotta be shitting me.”

  “I assure you, Mooch, that is the furthest thing from my mind.”

  “Benny Sangster and Joey Bones, sure. I oughta know those two birds, I sent ’em both up. But I do recall at the trial some crap about them working a job in Paris. Something with the Union Corse. You know much about them?”

  “A little. You can read much more in the file.”

  “Tell me what you know about the Corse.”

  “The French Mafia. Brutal, even older than the Unione Siciliano. Started in Corsica, birthplace of Napoleon, as you know. Back in the sixties and seventies, the Corse syndicate had extensive operations right here on the East Coast, mostly smuggling and drug operations. They sometimes worked as tools for European corporations, rather l
ike the Yakuza does for Japanese businesses. The Corse is the only Mafia organization with a political agenda.”

  “Political?”

  “Yes. They funded and organized terrorist actions against non-Euro corporations. That’s where my boy Bonaparte first made a name for himself. Back then, the American families had a turf war going with them.”

  “I see.”

  Congreve said, “Are Sangster and Bonanno still incarcerated?”

  “Incinerated for all I frigging know. I think they got ten to fifteen, something like that. Took a little time-out up at Attica. They’re probably out, far as I know.”

  “I’d very much like to speak with both of them.”

  “And when exactly would you like to have this little chat?”

  “You think you can find them?”

  “I can find anybody, Ambrose. Except Hoffa. Him I can’t fucking find to save my ass. Doesn’t mean I won’t find him, however. Lemme go make a call. When would it be convenient for you to interview these two jailbirds?”

  “Tonight would be ideal.”

  “So there’s really some kind of crisis looming?”

  “Always, Captain,” Ambrose said, “History, as H. G. Wells once remarked, is always a race between education and catastrophe. Right now, catastrophe appears to be ahead by a furlong.”

  Mariucci just looked at him, a smile in his eyes before he spoke. “I’ll make the call. Shouldn’t take five minutes. And don’t touch your steak until I get back, either. As Mrs. Mariucci of Brooklyn once remarked, ‘It ain’t polite.’”

  The Bide-a-Wee Rest Home was on a dark side street off a major thoroughfare called Queens Boulevard. It was a squat three-story building with peeling stucco walls and a steeply pitched wood-shingled roof in need of repair. Congreve and Captain Mariucci had left the uniformed officer sitting behind the wheel of the brand-new Chevy Impala cruiser. They’d parked half a block away and walked. The captain’s idea, and a good one.