by Ted Bell
Hawke fired twice.
The heavy mag rounds caught Payne high on his right side. Spider spun around in a mad pirouette and staggered backward through the doorway and into the rain. At the same time he brought up the muzzle of his automatic weapon and squeezed off a long burst, the staccato rattle deafening inside the small cottage, bullets spraying everywhere.
Hawke dove behind the upended wooden table. The high-powered rounds splintered bits and chunks of wood all around him. Couldn’t remain here a second longer . . . his cover was disintegrating before his eyes.
Hawke popped up and fired again.
He missed high and left, but caused Spider to duck down, move sideways on the front steps, and take cover outside behind the exterior wall. Now Spider had his head down and was bullrushing him up the walk.
Hawke turned and bolted down the hallway leading to the seaward part of the house. That’s where his bedroom was and that’s where he’d just decided to make his final stand.
HAWKE DASHED INSIDE HIS ROOM.
Spider was right on his heels, pounding down the long hallway, his murderous threats echoing throughout the house.
Inside the small bedroom, Hawke whirled around and slammed the heavy wooden door behind him. He double bolted it and then slid his large mahogany dresser in front of it, thinking of how this could play out, trying to see it in his mind. Spider had come prepared for all-out war. He was wearing ceramic body armor plates inside his combat jumpsuit. In order to survive, Hawke had to put a round between one of the seams between the armor plates . . . and hope to hit a vital organ. . . .
And how the hell did you do that staring down the barrel of an assault rifle throwing lead at you? He looked around the room, trying to subdue the fear that was creeping around the edges on his conscious mind . . . a weapon? Some way out of this . . . had to be! He spotted one of Pelham’s round needlepoint rugs in the center of the bedroom floor.
Hold on.
There might actually be a way . . . an escape hatch!
CHAPTER 15
Hawke’s bedroom was directly above the sea. A long time ago he’d had the crazy notion of installing a fireman’s pole beneath a trapdoor in his bedroom floor. He would use the brass pillar to slide down the twenty or thirty feet and into the clear blue lagoon that lay just beneath his room. He’d envisioned it as a great way to wake up each morning. Slide naked and half-asleep from his bed, grab the pole, and wake up in the fresh cold seawater . . . the novelty had soon worn off . . . but the pole was still there whenever he felt like a quick dunk!
He stepped quickly to the center of his small room. Lifted up the circular hooked rug with a sailboat depicted on it. Beneath it was the round hatch he’d disguised to look like the wooden flooring, never thinking he’d need an escape hatch, but just wanting to have it as a secret, like some bookcase that swung open to reveal a hidden passage.
He hooked his finger under an edge of the trapdoor and lifted.
Spider was now hammering on the heavy bedroom door with his fist, kicking it hard with his heavy boots. Telling Hawke it was over, useless, time to die. It would be the work of a few moments before the powerful brute gained entry.
Yes! Twenty feet directly below Hawke’s room he could just see the gleaming pole disappearing into the dark waves below, frothing up against the rocky walls.
Delirious with frustration, Spider was firing his weapon at the heavy wooden door, splintering the timbers. Hawke knew he didn’t have long—
He jumped, embraced the pole, and slid downward, lowering himself just a couple of feet. Then he reached up and pulled the hatch cover with its attached rug firmly back into place . . . if Spider got inside now, well, Alex had just bought himself a little time . . . a minute, maybe two . . . now . . .
Go!
He let go and slid swiftly and silently down.
The cold dark water shocked him, pumping even more adrenaline into his system. He got his bearings, clawed at the water, kicking his feet as hard as he could, and swam submerged out the inlet and into open sea.
His head popped up above the surface, expecting to see his little white cottage up on the rocky promontory. Everything was black! Spider had shut the lights off inside. He whirled around in the surf, disoriented, looking for the shoreline. There! The pale pink garden lights up on his terrace. He started clawing water, swimming as hard as he could for land.
A minute later he reached the set of wide stone steps that ascended all the way up the rock face to his broad terrace.
He pulled his weapon from its holster and raced to the top, taking the steps three at a time.
Spider!
Through an exterior window, he’d caught a glimpse of him. He was still out in the hall, slamming his big shoulder against the splintering bedroom door and firing his weapon, screaming loudly in frustration. Hawke sprinted across the terrace, kicked open one of the flimsy exterior doors, and stepped inside.
The hallway leading to his room was to his immediate left. The house was still pitch-black. Spider was inside, a raging beast, firing his weapon blindly.
Moving as quietly and quickly as he could, Hawke entered the darkened hall and paused.
He knew he’d only get one shot at this.
He felt along the wall with his left hand, searching for the light switch. Spider was standing in the doorway and firing into the bedroom in a hailstorm of frustration.
Hawke raised the big revolver, sighting on Spider’s broad back as he paused to take a breath.
Then he flipped the light switch.
The hall was instantly flooded with bright incandescent light.
“Spider!” he cried out, the gun now extended with two hands in front of him, braced in a shooter’s stance.
The big man whirled to face him, his own face a mask of shock and bloodlust. Hawke saw the muzzle of the man’s assault rifle come up, Spider firing crazy rounds, zinging off the marble floor as he raised the weapon toward his enemy.
Hawke fired the Python.
Once into the right side of Spider’s chest, hoping to catch the seam and his heart.
And once more into his right eye.
The man’s skull was slammed back against the door. He was still somehow struggling to lift his weapon as he fired blindly . . . rounds still ricocheting off the marble floors as all his lights winked out.
And then and there Artemis Payne breathed his last, sliding slowly to the floor, leaving a bloody smear on Alex Hawke’s wall, collapsing into a shapeless black heap of flesh and bone, now rendered useless.
Hawke went to him, knelt down, and pressed two fingers to his carotid artery, just to make sure.
No pulse.
The rogue was finally dead.
“HULLO, AMBROSE,” HAWKE SAID, ANSWERING his mobile a few moments later. “Are you there? Speak up.”
“Well, since it appears to be you on the phone, one can only deduce that you survived the encounter.”
“Excellent deduction, Constable. One of your best.”
“Do you require any medical help, by chance?”
“That would be nice. Thank you for asking. Where are you? Enjoying a pipe by a cozy fireside somewhere?”
“Hardly. Standing about twenty feet outside what used to be your front door, soaked to the bone and waiting in the pouring rain for all the shooting to die down in there.”
“Ah, you’re here. Well. Do come in, won’t you? Door’s open, as you can see,” Hawke said. “Meet me at the bar, will you? We would seem to owe ourselves a libation, some sort of restorative, I suppose. What’s your pleasure, old warrior?”
Mobile to his ear, Ambrose spoke while he picked his way gingerly through the destruction. “A gin and bitters should do nicely. Boodles, if you have it.”
“I certainly do. A tumbler of best rum would do me nicely.”
“What about your guest? Will he be joining us?”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll be having anything this evening, thank you. He’s moved on, you see.”
“His departure shall go unlamented, I fear. I’ll see you at the bar. Two minutes.”
“Cheerio, then.”
“Cheerio.”
Hawke looked down at the corpse at his feet. Brass cartridges glittered everywhere on the tile floor. He used one bare foot to roll the man over onto his back, saw one dead black eye staring blindly back at him.
“I should have killed you that night in Tangiers, Payne. I could have done without that funeral in Maine, you miserable prick,” he said.
ALEX FOUND AMBROSE STANDING BEHIND the bar, his cold meerschaum pipe jammed into one corner of his mouth, pouring a healthy dollop of Gosling’s rum into Hawke’s favorite tumbler. Congreve smiled as he poured, “Ah, yes, m’lord. The ambrosial nectar of the gods awaits,” he said.
“Indeed.”
Hawke took the proffered glass, downed the contents in a single draught, and held it out for another splash.
“What shall we drink to, then?” Congreve asked, now raising his own glass.
Hawke plucked a gold-ringed cigarette from the silver stirrup cup on the bar, lit up, and thought about his response for a brief moment before speaking.
“Absent friends and dead enemies,” Hawke said, raising his tumbler.
And that was the end of it.
Or so they thought.
CHAPTER 16
Gradually, life at Teakettle Cottage returned to something resembling normalcy. Vivid reminders of Spider’s explosive and bloody midnight visit were still readily apparent throughout the property, both inside and outside the small house. Hawke was determined to soldier on in his bombed-out house. And why not? he reasoned. Stoicism and the stiff upper were, after all, twin arteries that ran like broad motorways through the Hawke family bloodlines.
During the last war, in the midst of the London Blitz, his beloved grandfather had gone on with life despite the utter destruction of his large Belgrave Square mansion. It had all come tumbling down around his ears when a barrage of Nazi bombs during the wee small hours had reduced it to smoking rubble.
Grandfather Hawke had cheerfully pitched a striped canvas atop the great mountain of smoking debris, installed a surviving lounge chair, bed, and table, and remained happily ensconced atop his ruined residence for the duration. Or, something like that, so the story goes.
In this present situation, Hawke had so far replaced his splintered front door with one of solid Bermuda cedar, varnished to gleaming perfection. The antique Georgian door knocker, a snarling bulldog, had survived and was remounted. Same with the Georgian dresser in his bedroom.
He and Pelham then set about the thankless task of patching up all the countless bullet holes in the plaster walls and applied paint touch-ups where necessary throughout the bloodstained house.
They had, Hawke reckoned, been able to bleach almost all the blood spatter out of the rear hallway, scene of the final confrontation, as well as the dark brownish-orange splotches from the rugs in the living room. A few years and you’d never notice it, he assured Pelham.
The sprays of bullet holes in the ceilings proved somewhat more problematic for want of a ladder of sufficient height. “Mere pockmarks,” Hawke said to Pelham, staring up at them. “Like the souvenirs the Nazis left along the Mall during the Blitz. Lends the place a certain plucky authenticity, wouldn’t you agree, Pelham? Battle-scarred. I mean to say, it all adds a certain rough-hewn character in my view. Rather charming. Yes?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Not really, m’lord.”
“Not really?”
“No.”
Still, Hawke thought the old place had cleaned up pretty well, he told a weary Pelham later that afternoon in the gardens. They were even now hard at work on the shrubbery and flower beds around the entrance to the house. Digging up the blackened trellis and remains of the climbing roses and burned boxwood hedges that had surrounded the entrance and replacing them with morning glories, high among the pantheon of Hawke’s favorite flowers.
Much of the masonry surrounding the front door was still blackened and gunpowder blasted, but Hawke was not willing to replaster the whole house and repaint it. Damned if he would agree to such a waste of blood, sweat, and treasure. No, he would not. Ivy, more climbing roses, and trailing wisteria would cover a lot of sins, he assured his old friend.
“Looks almost as if nothing sinister had ever happened, wouldn’t you say so, Pelham?” Hawke asked, swiping a soaked handkerchief across his glistening brow and standing back to admire his handiwork. It was a brutally hot day for Bermuda, and he couldn’t wait for his daily ocean swim up to Bloody Bay and back. Six miles, but worth every inch of it.
Pelham, regarding their joint efforts with something akin to dismay, considered a measured response. These conversations were always dicey. His lordship was decidedly upbeat about their progress thus far. And Lord Hawke never, ever, appreciated rain on any of his many and various parades.
“Not quite, sir.”
“Really? What do you mean, ‘not quite’?”
“I mean, m’lord, that the cottage still very much looks like some battered ruin in a war zone. Like someone blew a hole in the house with high-powered explosives and a platoon of heavily armed and jackbooted infantry marched through the place firing at will. With all due respect, m’lord, all that smoke damage up under the eaves, the charred remains of the two lovely old carriage lamps to either side of what was once the front door, the—”
Pelham saw the anger at being challenged in such a way welling up in Lord Hawke. It was most unusual, though sadly more common lately. He’d come to notice the odd tic recurring, a slight trembling of the right hand at moments of stress.
Privately, he had felt for some time that his lordship had suffered a far graver wound over the loss of his cherished Anastasia than even he could admit to himself. He thought the man suffered from a malaise the French called a folie circulaire, a madness that rose up only to recede and manifest itself again and again later.
These horrible disorders afflict, haphazardly, the smart and the simple, and men as well as women. Even great warriors, like Hawke himself, can suffer the affliction, even with the best luck and the most supportive families and the warmest encouragement and the wisest of friends. It’s the inability of all those other things to keep them sane that makes them tragic heroes.
At that moment they heard the distinctly Italian two-tone toot of an automobile horn and turned to see a long, low, red 1927 Lagonda roadster swerving into view, crunching over the shell drive. The former Lady Mars, now Diana Congreve since her joyous wedding last Christmas to Ambrose, was behind the wheel, a colorful scarf streaming from beneath her proud chin.
She appeared to be frowning as she applied the emergency brake.
“Good afternoon, my darling Diana!” Hawke cried, striding toward her automobile, an oversized grin on his face. “Wait until you see all the progress we’ve made today! By God, we are nothing if not two workaholic beavers, am I right, Pelham?”
“Progress?” Lady Mars said, looking askance at the charred devastation around her. “It’s appalling! You two men simply cannot go on living in this horrific state of disrepair,” Diana Congreve said, climbing out of the car, the skirt rising on her long tanned thighs. She turned and lifted a large casserole dish from the rear seat.
“This is for you two bachelors. A cassoulet des legumes. Still warm. I made it myself. Ambrose says the gas and power lines into your house were cut or blown up in the melee and that you two have no ability to cook. Or see. Is that correct?”
She handed off the casserole dish to Pelham and strode with quiet determination into the rubble, stepping over some very sizable chunks of bomb-blasted limestone scattered about what used to be the lawn.
“My God, just look at this place!” she exclaimed.
“Fabulous, is it not?” Hawke beamed, seeing her obvious excitement. “Take note, Pelham. Lady Mars is known throughout the civilized world for her great style and extraordinarily beauti
ful homes.”
“Indeed she is, m’lord.”
“Fabulous it is certainly not, dear boy,” she said, cocking one eyebrow.
“Well, I think we—” Hawke said, looking hastily to Pelham for some support, “we haven’t quite gotten around to repairing everything that was damaged. But, still and all, this . . . uh . . . aromatic cassoulet is awfully kind of you, Diana, and—well, we’ve got to be getting back to work. Finishing touches, you know, the icing on the cake.”
She waved him off and pulled a long handwritten list from inside her green Kelly bag.
“Alex, dear, please take this list and use it. I insist.”
“What is it?”
“The names of everyone you’ll need. My architect. My interior decorator. My painters and roofers. My plumbers. My gardeners. Everybody. I will be happy to provide on-site decorative oversight of the project. In fact, judging by the mess you’ve already made, I must insist upon it. Think of it as spring cleaning!”
Pelham raised a fist to his mouth and coughed his thoroughly discreet cough. He said: “With all due respect, Lady Mars, it will come as no surprise to you to learn that his lordship is a gentleman who likes his spring without the cleaning.”
Diana threw her head back and laughed as Pelham endeavored mightily to maintain a straight face.
“No surprise at all, dear Pelham.”
Hawke looked from one to the other, afraid that he might have missed a joke somewhere along the way.
He said: “Oh, I don’t think any lists and such will be at all necessary, Diana. You see, Pelham and I are quite capable of this kind of thing and—both handy, you know, and—”
Pelham snatched the list out of Hawke’s hand.
“Thank you, madam. I shall make sure this list is put to good use immediately. Last night the rain off the ocean poured in through his lordship’s roof and smashed windows all night long, thereby soaking his bedclothes and leaving him soaked to the skin in the doing of it. Small wonder he hasn’t caught pneumonia. But of course, as you well know, listening to reason is not his strong suit in matters of this nature.”