by Ted Bell
The heavyset man sat back down and said, “Let the record show that Brett Beauregard and his Vulcan Corporation shall be placed on the list of honored members of this tribunal.”
“So moved,” said the secretary and all hands went up in support of the colonel.
The ranking general then gave a brief presentation, outlining the plans for the next phase of what was now being called in the world press “Putin’s Soviet Reintegration.” He stated the obvious need for some sort of “distraction” to cover the coming Russian offensives in the West. And he reiterated the tribunal’s motives for choosing Beauregard to provide the mother country that cover before formally giving the American the floor.
“Comrades,” the colonel began, eliciting knowing smiles around the table. “My team on the ground in Tvas was humbled by your choosing us to come up with a pivotal component of Operation Sword and Shield. We have been hard at work. But what we have conceived and built is a weapon the likes of which the world has not seen before . . . I call it . . . ‘Avenger.’”
A flatscreen monitor was suddenly filled with the image of a flatbed-mounted mobile launch system. The ground-to-air weapon’s design was so radically unlike anything any of them had seen before, they had no idea how to react.
“Tell them what it is, Colonel,” the general said, his eyes full of admiration.
“The Avenger Missile Delivery weapon is completely autonomous. It has self-contained radar and satellite mapping and geotracking. Capable of downing military aircraft from a remote location, obviously. But also sinking a destroyer. And taking out enemy spy satellites at surveillance altitudes. A one-weapon air force, manned or unmanned. Capable of covert high-speed transport to remote locations, firing, and then withdrawal. Nobody will even know Avenger was there. Any enemy satellites overhead will already have been destroyed.”
There was laughter and applause around the table. One man cried out, “Let’s send a few of those into Poland!”
THE INTENSE DISCUSSION OF DIVERSIONARY tactics wore on into the evening until the subject had been exhausted. Krakov said he would announce their decision on Colonel Beauregard’s proposal the next morning. He needed to get the Kremlin in the loop. The general rose, weary, and went to the windows.
Was Putin right? Could Russia really do this? Would no one fight? Not even the Americans when pushed to the limits? Would no one obliterate his beloved Moscow in retribution? Who had the answers? He felt in his gut that Putin and his right-hand man, Uncle Joe, were leading them all down a path fraught with equal measures of opportunity and existential danger. A rocky road that could lead to a rebirth of the new Russian spirit. Or the end of Russia as he had known and loved it.
He looked to the window.
The moon was yellow through the gnarled black trees.
He whispered a silent prayer for his country.
CHAPTER 40
Miami
Stokely Jones Jr. had the top down on the GTO crossing MacArthur Causeway. Not so much for the blue sparks zinging off the wave tops to either side, or the salt air and the South Florida sunshine, as for the throaty exhaust note on his precious metallic black raspberry 1965 Pontiac GTO.
If this wasn’t music to beat the blues, he didn’t know what was. He downshifted to third, whipping back the shiny 8-ball atop the chromed Hurst shifter and double-clutching, just to hear the street-legal deep burble and pop of the heavily modified bored and stroked V-8.
“Sweet,” Sharkey said, dark eyes straight ahead. “And street legal!”
“Ain’t it just, brother?” Stoke said, looking over at him and smiling his trademark megawatt white smile at the little guy. Not that Luis Gonzales-Gonzales, a.k.a., the Sharkman, was really all that little. Besides, he was a tough guy, wiry, but wires of woven steel. But, still, when you personally tip the scales at three-hundred-plus pounds and stand over six foot seven like Stoke did, everybody seems little.
Sharkey, a one-armed Cubano, formerly a fishing guide down in the Keys, was Stokely’s sole employee over at his small office across the water in Coral Gables. Tactics International, founded and funded by Stoke’s best friend in the world, the British espionage cat named Alex Hawke, was a cover operation. They pretended to be helpful to companies planning to shift operations overseas, mostly to Latin America. But what they really did was travel to the four corners looking for bad guys and playing whoop-ass m’lady all day.
Once located, Stoke’s mission was to blow their shit to hell and do it completely off the radar. His number one client, and the bane of his existence, was his partner. He was a CIA field officer, name of Harry Brock. Harry, who caught a lot of shit from Stoke for growing up in a gated golf community in Southern California, was one of those guys who was absolutely convinced he was the toughest and funniest white man alive. The fact that he was neither never seemed to occur to him. Still, if you’re a small operation, pretty much running on a shoestring, the U.S. government and the CIA are pretty good clients to have on your roster.
But, hell, save that stuff for Monday. Here it was Friday evening and they’d had a tough week at Logistics. Some enterprising young Colombians had set up a meth factory to hell and gone out in the Everglades. Los Hermanos, they called themselves, the brothers. They were hooked up with MS13, baddest of all the Latin drug gangs in the country. Pretty bad bunch of gators, Stoke had warned his man Sharkey while they were suiting up in their ass-kicking gear.
Miami Dade PD, another VIP client, had hired Tactics to go out there at night and do their dirty work for them. Go in there in the wee hours aboard two airboats with mounted .50-cals and shut those boys right down. What the local cops had failed to ascertain was that these hombres had built a damn fort out there, surrounded by barbed wire, and they had a thirty-foot-high lookout tower with a few of their own damn .50-cals mounted on top.
That he and Shark had survived that bloody and noisy rumble in the jungle was one thing. That they’d shut the operation down for good was another. To celebrate their newly extended life spans, Shark and Stoke decided to stop at their favorite watering hole, the Mark, for a couple of cold ones on the way home. He’d called his housekeeper on the cell, saying to tell his wife he’d be a little late getting home. Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, rule one.
STOKE AND HIS WIFE, FANCHA, a former Miami Beach nightclub chanteuse and now a famous torch singer with a number-one hit single, lived in a palatial Key Biscayne estate right on Biscayne Bay. Most Friday nights Mr. and Mrs. Jones invited Sharkey and his wife, Maria, over for Stoke’s world-famous BBQ poolside cookout.
The Mark, short for Marker 9, was a notorious gin joint just off the causeway near the Fisher Island ferry. Once a mob spot and then a hangout for dirty cops, it was smoky and smelly maybe, but maybe that’s just the way they liked it. They parked the GTO in the last available spot and made their way through the muggy tropical heat that hung over Miami. Didn’t bother either of them. Stoke, born and raised on 196th Street up in Harlem, loved all of it. Heat and humidity, skeets and sunshine. Bring it.
“After you, amigo,” he said, stepping aside so Shark could enter first. The kid looked good. Rocking a lime green porkpie hat and matching loafers, he rolled in on a tide of smooth. Stoke smiled. He was in the man’s debt. One of the Colombian brothers in the ’Glades had gotten the drop on Stoke while he was busy shooting with a couple of the other brothers. Sharkey, who could use a fillet knife with lightning skill, had dropped the guy before he could pop a plug into Stoke’s brainpan.
Stokely was about to enter the joint when his cell vibrated. He pulled it from his pocket and checked the ID. It was Fancha. She never called this number, ever, unless it was something serious.
“Hey, honey,” Stoke said.
“Hey, baby,” Fancha said. “You going to be late?”
“Yeah. Just stopped at the Mark to buy my coworker a cold one. Won’t be long.”
“I hope not. I’ve got a surprise waiting here for you.”
“Aw, baby, don’t do that to
me now. Hold that thought, okay?”
“Not that kind of surprise.”
“What then?” he asked, smiling, her making him wait for it.
“Alex Hawke just showed up at the door.”
Stunned silence and then Stoke said, “No way! Hawke? Here? Are you kidding me?”
“You think I could make that up? He’s here all right. Going to be staying a few days, too. He brought Alexei with him.”
“Well, damn. Tell him I’ll be there in five. Lemme go get the Sharkman before he orders for us, okay?”
“Something bad happened, Stoke. He didn’t say what. But I can tell. See it in those baby blues of his. Man’s in trouble, honey.”
“I’ll be right there.”
THE GTO PULLED UP AT the big wrought-iron gates of Casa Que Canta seven minutes later despite rush hour. Stoke hit the call button, identified himself, and the heavy gates swung wide. He drove up the narrow drive through a lush jungle of every kind of tropical vegetation, dense, green, and almost dripping with humidity. There were tropical birds twittering away in an old aviary near the house, many of them purchased by Fancha on her recent Latin American tour.
“You got it made, amigo,” the Sharkman said. He was never able to quite register Stoke’s rich and famous lifestyle as that of someone he actually knew.
“Nobody’s ever got it made,” Stoke said quietly. “Ever. This all goes up in smoke in a heartbeat. Everybody’s hanging by a thread, you understand that?”
“Yeah. You right, brother. Sorry.”
“Didn’t mean to bust your balls, rocket man. I’m just worried about my friend, Alex, that’s all. Hop out, we’ll leave the car here at the front.”
Fancha kissed him at the door and led them down a long tiled corridor to the sunny bay side of the sprawling house. Stoke paused in the doorway and saw Hawke down at the pool, swimming in the shallow end with Alexei.
“He say anything yet?”
“No. He’s waiting for you, I think. You guys go put on your bathing suits. I’ll go down there and tell him you’re here.”
“What’s for dinner?”
“BBQ. It’s Friday night, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot,” Stoke said, and headed up the wide curving marble staircase that led to the second and third floors of the mansion. “Come on, Sharkbait, get your suit on, son! Last one in is a dead Latino.”
SHARKEY AND FANCHA STAYED IN the pool, teaching Alexei how to play Marco Polo. Stoke and Alex Hawke took a stroll across the wide green apron of manicured grass that ran down to the white-ruffled bay. A long white dock there extended about fifty feet out into the blue water. Bobbing on her lines at the end was Stoke’s speedboat, a vintage Cigarette painted a fiery red. Her name, Lipstick, was painted on the stern.
“Tell me,” Stoke said, not looking up, but wanting to get the bad news over with.
“They’re getting close,” Hawke said.
“Who is?”
“The Russians. They smuggled a bomb into Alexei’s White House birthday party, for God’s sake! C-4 packed inside a toy helicopter. If it hadn’t have been for Nell . . . Alexei would . . .”
“Nell,” Stoke said. “Is she all right?”
“She’s dead, Stoke. The thing exploded in her hands and blew her . . . blew her . . .”
“Don’t say it. Shake it off, boss, shake it off.”
“What the hell am I to do, Stoke? They killed Nell! If the two of them are not safe at the bloody White House? I mean—where the hell do we go?”
“Listen, boss. We’re not going to let them get close ever again. No matter what it takes.”
“How? How on earth do we do that? He’s not safe, I’m telling you . . . he’s never been safe since the day he was born. They stole his mother and now they’ve killed my darling Nell!”
“I know how much you loved her. And I’m working on it, Cap’n. The old Stoke ain’t ever let you down yet, has he?”
“No.”
“And he ain’t about to start now.”
Hawke turned and looked back up the sweep of close-cropped green to the pool. He could hear Alexei’s distinctive laughter.
“Hear that, Stoke? That’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh since I got back to Washington. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t eat. He’s lost without her. And frankly, so am I.”
“You want to go for a boat ride?”
“I don’t really know what I want to do.”
“Listen. Did you fly down here in your plane?”
“Yeah.”
“From where?”
“A little strip out in Bucks County. Lumberville. Alexei and I drove there after the memorial service for Nell at St. John’s this morning. He cried for most of the trip.”
“Drove straight from D.C.?”
“Right.”
“Who knew where you were headed?”
“No one. Not even the pilots. Not even the president or the Secret Service. I didn’t tell anyone because I intended to decide on a location on the drive north. I had the pilots circle over Princeton, New Jersey, until I chose a remote field that could accommodate the Gulfstream.”
“Who drove you to Princeton?”
“Me. Hired car from Hertz. Low profile. A grey Kia sedan. Random taxi here.”
“So no one has a clue where you are at this exact moment. I mean, including Pelham and Ambrose Congreve. Nobody?”
“No one.”
“That’s a good start.”
“Stoke, Nell died for my son.”
“I know, I know. I am very, very sorry for your loss. She was a hero and a fine woman. And she gave her life, not only for your son, but for all those other children at the White House that day.”
Hawke looked away, his eyes shining. “There was love between us. We talked about getting married. She knew that being married to me was dangerous. But how many people close to me have to die, Stoke? How many?”
They were at the end of the dock now.
“Hop in. I’ll drive,” Stoke said.
“Let me get the lines.”
“Just get in the damn boat, boss.”
Hawke climbed over the gunwale and settled into the bucket seat on the starboard side, strapped himself in. A minute later, Stoke was in the boat and cranking up the twin 400-horsepower engines.
“Hold on,” Stoke said, his hand on the throttle.
“Believe me, I am holding on.”
And Stoke could see, the Hawke man really was holding on. But just barely. And for his life.
CHAPTER 41
Casa Que Canta
You want a nightcap, boss?” Stoke asked Hawke. Standing at the railing overlooking the wide bay lit by pinprick stars, he turned to look at his old friend. Hawke had no reply.
“You okay?” he asked Hawke.
“I will be.”
“Yeah, I know that. Future tense. Present even worse. Past debatable.”
Hawke smiled. A line from Congreve? He couldn’t remember for the life of him.
After a sunset supper spent in the golden light of Stokely’s upstairs porch, Hawke had excused himself. Had to put Alexei to bed. He’d promised Stoke he’d return, but he had spent a long time getting Alexei to sleep.
Stoke waited at the table outside, gazing at the silvery lights on Coconut Grove glimmering across the bay. Normally, it was a view that gave him a lot of pleasure, but not tonight. Tonight, for the first time in a long time, he was afraid.
Hawke was in trouble. He had a look in his eyes that Stoke couldn’t quite find the right word for. And then he did. He looked . . . he looked haunted.
Fancha had given Alex two third-floor bedrooms that adjoined so the child would not feel far away from his father. After finally coaxing his son into bed, Hawke read him a story by E. B. White. It was one that the little boy never tired of hearing. Charlotte’s Web. When, after twenty minutes, his son still couldn’t go to sleep, Hawke simply sat on the edge of Alexei’s bed with a hand on his shoulder, reading softly, until he finally did.
Now the two men sat outside, staring at the carpet of stars over the dark and shining bay.
“He finally go to sleep?” Stoke asked.
“Yes. Poor little guy. He’s brokenhearted. It’s going to take a long time for him to get over the loss of Nell. If he ever does.”
“I figured that much. But listen. Alexei’s safe here. Nobody knows where he is. And we’ve got world-class security around the clock.”
“Why’s that, Stoke? Don’t tell me you’re expecting trouble, too?”
“Somebody stalking Fancha got over the wall one night. I have a night watchman, but the guy was asleep. Stalker got all the way up into our bedroom, standing by the bed looking down at her when I woke up. Unlucky for him.”
“That’s when you got serious about security?”
“Damn straight. When we first got married, I upgraded the security. Cameras front and rear, bulletproof glass in every window, steel-frame doors on the ground level—nothing startling. But. All this you see and don’t see now? Serious shit. I even had a sign up out at the gate said: INTRUDERS WARMLY GREETED WITH GUNFIRE.
“But that was before Fancha made me take it down. You talk about Casa Que Canta today—you talk about the House That Sings? Man, it’s a fortress, boss.”
Hawke looked out into the night. The windy bay, the small waves rolling ashore on Stoke’s white crescent of beach.
“What about the approach from the water?”
“Armed night watchman lives on the top floor of the boathouse down there. Night-vision goggles, security cameras, heat sensors in the sand, motion detectors covering the approach from the bay out to a thousand yards.”
“I wonder. Would you mind if Alexei stayed here for a while? Just until I can take him back to England? Or, a bank vault in Switzerland.”
“Of course, Alex. It’s safe. He’s known me since he was born. And Fancha, she loves that little kid like he was her own. You see them playing together in the pool this afternoon? Man.”
“Stoke, no offense to what you’ve already got in place, but the president has kindly offered to provide Alexei with two DSS agents to be on duty round the clock. One’s a guy I know named Chris Kopeck; works with SO14, Royal Protection Branch, who covers Prince Charles.”