by Ted Bell
Stoke checked his steel Rolex. In four minutes, he was going to open fire on the two towers to either side of the gate and pray for the best while expecting the worst.
HARRY’S OBJECTIVE WAS THIRTY MINUTES away. Up the jungle trail to the command-and-control ops center situated on a hilltop halfway up the mountain. Give him another ten, max, to eliminate any opposition protecting the bunker and missile sites, another fifteen to come down from the hills through the jungle, five to reach the warehouse area if he didn’t face any opposition. The thump-thump of the big M60s told him Stoke was going in.
Roughly half an hour, forty-five minutes, say.
The weather was shit. Winds had increased, and rain was coming down in sheets now. But it was just as bad for the bad guys as it was for the good guys.
CHAPTER 70
Isla de Pinos
Gator! Get yer ass up here!” Brock whispered into his lip mike. He took a quick peek back down the twisting jungle trail they’d just taken up the mountain. Nada. Where the hell had he got to?
Somehow, a moment later, Gator was right by his side, both of them crouched down in the creeping jungle crud beneath a pair of swaying palm trees covered with vines. They were about a thousand yards below the summit of what passed for a mountain on this island. The heavy rains had turned the dense jungle trail they’d taken up from the port into a cascading mud bath. Gator had remarked on the way up that he found it “fun.”
Still, where they were situated was a pretty good vantage point to reconnoiter from. The mountain they’d just climbed was offering a bit of shelter from the raging storm coming from out of the south. From his new position, peering through the curtains of rain, Harry could see the whole harbor spread out below.
He saw three of the six big tower searchlights snap on, meaning Stoke’s guys had successfully breached the perimeter fence and were on the move inside the warehouse district. Biggest thing out there in the harbor was a big black shape moving slowly through the heavy seas.
It was the dark silhouette of Blackhawke, steaming through the harbor mouth. She was ghostlike, with all her lights doused, stem to stern. No running lights, nothing at all showing in the dark.
Harry told Gator to keep his damn eyes open. He stood up and swung his Nikons over to the target and looked around the hilltop for surprises, then zeroed in on his target.
No surprises.
Nothing funky so far. He’d reconned the Cuban command bunker above him down to the nails. He knew how thick the doors were, how thick the walls were. He knew where the windows were and what they were made of and he knew where the outdoor shitter was. The thing was basically a heavily built two-story cement-block building with bulletproof windows only on the seaward side of the structure. The whole rooftop was bristling with antennae, radar dishes whirling around, and all that good stuff, sending and receiving information.
The comms between this building and Moscow were probably humming long about now, Harry surmised. He could hear the Cuban guy inside there now, going, “Hello, Vladimir? Your pal Alex Hawke just showed up in the harbor with a big boat and he’s blowing Sukhois out of the sky and sinking all our little boats. What should we do?”
Only one egress door, located on the ground floor at the rear of the building a few feet from the edge of the tropical jungle creepy crawly shit. A lot of lights on inside upstairs. He could see guys moving around in there. Three, maybe four personnel, tops, upstairs anyway.
Nobody out here making rounds on the grounds, at least not so far. Guards probably fast asleep in the dorm on the ground floor. Hell, it was a rainy night. You wouldn’t want your dog out on a night like this.
“No guards out here, you believe that, Gator?”
“Yeah,” Gator said, “I believe it. Who in their right mind wants to sit outside, soaked to the skin in the middle of a goddamn hurricane? Bored to tears, waiting year in and year out on the off chance they might get to shoot people who never bother to show the fuck up? Who? That’s the goddamn question.”
“Not the Cuban military, apparently,” Harry said.
“Bet yo’ ass it ain’t.”
The good news here and now was this—there was a fairly wide balcony, running around all four sides of the upper story of the building. And it appeared to be empty. Windows on the front, overlooking the harbor, and a wooden door on the side he could see, but no unfriendly activity visible at this point anyway.
Normally, in a situation like this, a CIA field agent like Harry would have gone up a pole and tapped a line. He’d be crouched down here in the weeds, monitoring all the communications going in and out of this building. Finding out who, where, and what the hell is what. Boots-on-the-ground intel. But not now. Tonight, he and Gator were here simply to blow up their shit and take no prisoners.
He looked over at Gator, only his eyes showing through the mudpack, crouched in some cabbage palms. Man looked like a big lanky bug with a great big gun when he had his NVG goggles flipped down. He held that M60 in his arms like it was a newborn baby. Tender. He also had stuck two fat wads of Semtex into the Velcro snap-band around his helmet. Boy was pure badass, that’s all, Harry was glad to see.
“You got this rear door, Gator? Ground-floor entrance?”
“Bet yo’ ass.”
“You, my honky brother, are going to march yourself right up to that back door and rig your charges. I, meanwhile, am going up the side of that wall you’re looking at. When I’m all clear up on that balcony? You will hear my signal. You, then, are going to blow that goddamn door sideways, get your ass inside, start shooting that peashooter, and roll right. Keep shooting until they stop shooting at you. Staircase will be to your left. Soon as you’ve cleared the bottom floor, up the steps you go and step on it. I may need you up there, son. Or you may need me down there. In which case I’ll come down the steps. With me, Gator?”
“Bet yo’ ass.”
“Either way.”
“Bet yo’ ass.”
“You like fried rattlesnake?”
“No.”
“Just checking. Ready?”
“Bet yo’ ass.”
“On my mark . . . five. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . and . . . Mark! Go, Gator, go!”
The tough young cracker linebacker came up and out of that green wall of jungle more like a wide receiver on a post route. Harry watched him zig and zag up the hill, staying low, grabbing a little cover whenever he could, every fifty feet or so, working his way up toward the rear of the building. Brock, meanwhile, had his gun up, his sights on the balcony windows . . . nothing much doing up there, not yet, anyway. Playing cards, shooting the shit, looking at titty magazines probably.
Gator disappeared into a clump of palm trees fifty yards from the rear corner of the building. Since he didn’t come out, Harry figured he’d heard something he didn’t like inside the communications blockhouse. Shit.
Had he and Gator already been made by somebody up there they hadn’t seen? One of the Russian Spetsnaz guys actually guarding the joint? Harry came out of his crouch and sprinted up the hill toward the side of the structure nearest to his position on the trail.
The line of sight from the seaside windows above him was a bit restricted from his angle, and he saw nothing untoward up there as he ran as fast as he could with the heavy machine gun in his hands. Thing either weighed as much as a small refrigerator or he was just getting old.
Gator, sprinting like the athlete he’d been, still hadn’t reappeared. Harry, having approached the building on the run and from a different angle, was now crouching beneath the balcony, his whole body pressed up against the unpainted concrete wall, pondering the best way up the side of the damn thing.
He didn’t ponder long.
He caught the balcony rail with the first toss of the rubber-coated grapnel hook on the business ending of his nylon climbing line. Didn’t make a sound. Okay, Brock, up you go, easy does it. He went up the wall hand over hand, his assault knife in his mouth. This, just in case some numb-
nuts soldier had decided to spend the night sleeping out in the rain up there on the balcony.
Here’s the deal with that. Come over a balcony rail with a jagged dagger in your mouth and you tend to scare people shitless, guard or no guard outside snoozing the night away. He got a hand on the rail and heaved himself up.
Harry took a quick peek over the rail.
The long balcony was empty, at least on this side. Hadn’t seen anybody on the sea side either, so he was good to go. He hauled himself up and over and stood for a second, going over it in his head one more time.
There was the louvered wooden door, closed tight, yellow light seeping through between the slats. He could hear noises inside, a chair scraping, somebody laughing . . . and snoring. Loud snoring. Maybe he and Gator would get lucky—maybe they were all shitfaced in there.
He turned back to the rail, leaned over, and gave the signal.
“Gator’s got that Rama Jama, hoo-ah,” Brock shouted, plenty loud enough for old Gator to hear him down there over all that rain. “Gator’s got that Rama Jama, hoo-ah, hoo-ah!”
GATOR’S BLAST SHOOK THE BUILDING.
Probably shook up the folks inside it, too. Harry already had his hand on the handle of the louvered door. He yanked it open, almost taking it off the hinges, and dove inside, rolling right. He came up and out of it, bringing the fat bastard of a machine gun up, screaming for everyone to get down or get dead at the top of his lungs.
Harry instantly registered five wide-eyed guys about to piss their pants.
“Get the fuck down on the floor!” he screamed at the Cubans. He liked the look on their faces. He wasn’t a man in black right now, he was a maniac in black.
One guy cringed in a skimpy-ass bed with dirty sheets in the far corner by the windows, eating Chinese food; another one over at the windows, hunched over a big telescope, and still three more were moving fast toward him with the pointy end of their weapons pointed directly at Harry Brock himself.
“Okay, don’t listen,” Harry said calmly.
He pulled the trigger that unleashed the monster.
The heavy thump of an M60 firing 500 to 560 rounds per minute, 7.65mm ball rounds unleashed in close quarters was enough to make anybody nervous. And that was before they got cut in half by all that flying lead.
The three hombres who had wanted to shoot him weren’t alive anymore, so Harry turned his attention to the other two. Telescope had a nancy little automatic in his hand but didn’t seem to know what to do with it. Sleepy over in the corner had both hands under a shitty blanket.
Brock saw movement of the guy’s hands under the covers. Something told Harry that not even the coolest of Cuban desperadoes was cool enough to choose this particular moment to jerk off.
“Hands out where I can see them,” he shouted at the guy.
Two hands came out, one of them waving a fucking sawed-off shotgun wildly at him and firing both barrels. Harry opened up with Mr. M60 and saw a cartoon of blood, guts, feathers, and Chinese food exploding where once was somebody’s son.
He whirled around at the sound of Gator shouting over the fierce gunfire below. He strained desperately to hear him—finally heard Gator yell, “Man coming up the stairs! He’s yours!”
HARRY NEVER KNEW WHICH ONE shot him. Telescope behind him or Stair Guy as he reached the top step and they looked at each other. But the rounds caught him in the ribs and knocked him backward to the floor. He’d somehow managed to hold on to that bitching machine gun and keep his hand on the trigger.
“Fuck you both!” he yelled, shaking off the shocks as he got up off the floor. Harry just squeezed the damn trigger and spun round and round on his heels, no targets, just laying down a wall of lead in the air between himself and the two dicks who wanted to kill him.
When he woke up, good old Gator was there, leaning down over him, a sweet look of concern on his face, wiping blood out of his eyes.
“Mr. Brock?” Gator said.
“Yeah? Where am I, slick?”
“Don’t matter where you’re at, sir, you’re still alive is all that counts.”
Harry coughed up a little blood.
“Oh, shit, that hurts. Fuck!” Harry said, squeezing his eyes shut in pain. “Keep talking to me, Gator. I’m fucked.”
“You better unfuck yourself, sir.”
“I can’t move.”
“Well, then, you’re just going to have to suck it up, sir. And that’s ’cause we got to get out of here before the rest of these boys come looking.”
Harry blinked his eyes hard, grimacing as he pressed his fingertips against his ribs, feeling around for bullet holes. He looked around at the room. Looked like a slaughterhouse. The formerly whitewashed walls were awash with bright red blood spatter, and huge chunks of plaster had been blasted out of the ceiling. All the windows overlooking the harbor below had been blown out, only a few jagged panes of glass remaining.
The five previous occupants were scattered in various sizes and shapes all around the room. He saw a big piece of hairy pink stuff with an ear stuck to it up on the ceiling right over Gator’s head. Pieces of dead meat didn’t bother Harry all that much anymore. That was all that was left of them now. No more telescope, no more furniture, no more Chinese takeout, no more poker, no more nothing . . .
He smiled up at his new sidekick.
“You know, Gator, a top New York decorator might disagree with me on this one, but I think this place looks a shitload better now than it did before we arrived. You with me on that?”
“I gotta patch you up quicklike, sir. See if you can walk.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’re fading in and out on me, sir, not making much sense. Commander Hawke was on your radio just now. He says we gotta move out. He’s got another target for us, a 105 Howitzer up there at the top of the mountain. Big damn gun. We gotta take it out.”
“He said that? A fucking 105? Shit, boy, we gotta move out.”
“Yes, sir, we do.”
“Case I die? Let’s you and me get something straight, all right? I am not a ‘sir.’ Never was. My name is Harry. Harry Brock. Got that?”
“I do. But you ain’t fucking dying.”
“You rig charges all around this goddamn building?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And nobody shot you downstairs?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Am I going to die? Tell me the truth. I can take it.”
“Not today, anyway. Mostly shock. Blood loss. Bullets bounced around off your rib cage. One went through your arm into your ass, and the other is somewhere in your left leg. I shot you up real good with morphine. Bandaged you up.”
“Think I can walk?”
“Bet yo’ ass.”
“Well, I guess we oughta move out, huh, buddy?”
“Why not, Harry?”
“Bet yo’ ass.”
CHAPTER 71
Isle of Skye
Something monstrous was moving off Portree Bay.
And young Colin McPhee could not sleep. Too cold. The howling wind? Perhaps a disturbing dream or two? Perhaps his blankets were too thin for the late summer arrival of an early wave of arctic air.
Colin gave up on sleep, got up, and lit a fire. After a brief period of gazing into the flames looking for hidden meaning, he made himself a mug of strong black coffee and walked outside into the darkness. As he stood on his covered porch, scrutinizing the night world, he was looking for fresh pictures to paint and new music to write.
He was a writer, a novelist by trade, a tyro, and his innocent mind was still a youthful and hungry organ. He had a novel he was trying to finish, his first. It was a mystery, of sorts, and a damn fine one by his lights. But an unpredicted conundrum in the closing pages of his tale had him stumped.
How did the bloody thing end?
Blocked, he sought inspiration everywhere.
A seeker, McPhee had become, not only of wisdom and truth, plot and character, but of sensory inputs to inform a
nd color his written words. All in the fervent hope of finally discovering, in that intransigent final chapter he’d yet to pen, just how his mystery would end.
Luckily, he’d soon realized, there were clues everywhere, if only one took the time to look hard enough. You had to focus.
And so McPhee continued his search. Above the land, beneath the stars, a phrase he often repeated to himself. He liked the sound and music of those six words playing inside his head. They seemed to have the power to put a bounce in his step and a smile on his face, even now in the wee small hours before dawn.
He descended five narrow wooden steps from his front door and strode though heavy sea grass, still clumped and wet from an earlier shower, toward the beckoning sea. Everything smelled delicious and alive on the night air. The dewy grass, the salty tang of the wind. In the distance, almost a cliché, he heard the curlew’s cry.
His rough wooden cabin stood at the very edge of the land, beneath the stars and high above the sea. He’d built the house himself when the land had thawed, over the course of that spring and summer. One room and one was enough; a hard labor of love, but he had a snug harbor to show for it. He even had lumber left over, logs enough to burn in the stone fireplace as the days grew short and the nights grew long.
Standing now with his legs wide apart at the edge of the craggy promontory, McPhee turned his face into the stiff sea breeze. He inhaled deeply, tasting that trace of iodine on the wind, the scented bite of dried seaweed wafting up from the beaches below.
McPhee was an artist who cherished his senses, primarily because he had so few other blessings to count as his own. But, here, look below! Waves pounded at the frothing shore. He could watch them roll ashore down there, between the toes of his stiff leather boots; they burbled and hissed, sucking at the rocks as they retreated. And fog, the stealthy grey fog, squeezed through the mountains and oozed in runnels down to the sea.
His coffee had grown cold and it was near dawn. He watched in awe as a curved pinkness at the edge of the dark world came to light. Feeling he was on the brink of some illuminating discovery, he came at last to the long flight of wooden steps leading down to the beach. His tiny sandy crescent of the rocky Scottish coast. The wooden steps were wet and shining with moisture and so he trod them cautiously to the bottom.