by Blake Banner
For a moment I thought of the colonel.
“Sorry, Jane,” I said softly. “This time it’s the only way.”
Sixteen
I limped back into the common room and checked the dead bodies for cells. I found Tony’s iPhone. It still recognized its master’s face and opened up for me. I scrolled through his address book and found Bill. I tried the number and heard it ring in Bill’s pocket. I fished it out—it was a Samsung Galaxy—and slipped it in my own pocket. Then I went into Tony’s settings and set up an alternative appearance for myself so I could open his cell without having to cut off his head and carry it around with me.
Next I prized off the back of Bill’s Galaxy with the South African’s bowie knife, made a few minor adjustments to the battery and carried it back to the storeroom with me. I set it on the valve casings and pulled myself up and knelt beside it. There I set about cutting through the hose with the bowie knife. It was hard, slow work but I eventually cut a deep gash in the thick hose and the gas started gushing out. I held my breath and widened the gash until it was a big, gaping hole. Then I jumped down, left the room and closed the door.
Now what I needed was for the gas to build up, and I figured that would be a minimum of twenty minutes. so I allowed myself a ten-minute rest out in the passage before retracing my steps to the upper deck.
I opened the steel door and stepped into the long, carpeted corridor I had been brought through earlier. There was nobody there. I stayed hunkered down, motionless, for a full minute, listening, but there was nothing to hear but the now subdued hum of the engines.
I moved quickly to the steps and climbed them to the main deck, with the P320 held in front of me in both hands. The staircase swept around in a spiral and I moved up with my back against the wall, slow and steady, listening. There was nothing to hear.
I came finally to the head of the stairs. There was a broad expanse of shiny parquet flooring, a passage to the right and a passage to the left. Straight ahead walnut doors stood open onto a lounge with cream leather sofas and plate-glass windows overlooking the ocean. There were no people there. But beyond the lounge I could see the terrace where I had been sitting before. Cavendish was there with his wife. She had her left side to me and he his back. A white cloth had been laid on the table and they were eating what looked like a lobster. Beside the table there was an ice bucket with a green bottle in it.
I moved quickly through the doors and moved to my right, trying to find the blind spot between Cavendish and his wife. I hunkered down and crouch-ran behind the couches till I came to the wall beside the door to the terrace.
Now I could hear their voices. Cavendish was on the phone.
“Spare me the details, Feliciano. I don’t want to know what you did to her. What did she say?”
He was silent for a while, listening. A couple of times he sighed. Karen said, “What’s he saying?”
I saw him raise his hand and shake his head.
“Well, can’t you be more persuasive? Use some technique. I thought you were supposed to be an expert in this.”
He listened a little longer and asked, “Well, what do you mean by permanent damage?” and a moment later, “No, no, I don’t want her maimed or killed, I told you that from the start. Waterboard her, threaten her, do whatever it takes, but I do not want her physically damaged or killed. That’s final.”
He hung up. Karen poked some lobster in her mouth and spoke around it.
“I really don’t understand the problem. She spoke at the beginning. Why can’t they persuade her to go on speaking?”
“I don’t know. That woman is hard to fathom at the best of times.”
She chewed and stared at him for a while. “Charles, how risky is this? Have you gone too far this time?”
“Don’t be stupid. You know we haven’t. We couldn’t let it slide any farther. Whatever she was doing had to be stopped, and that was final.” He wagged his knife at her like an admonishing finger. “And Bauer had been on several people’s radars for some time already.”
She made a soft grunt and forked more lobster into her mouth. He went on talking.
“Ismael was watching him, Orozco had him in his sites, not to mention central intelligence. The man is a liability!”
“But the Pentagon, Charles! It’s too much. This is getting out of hand.”
“Nonsense, Karen. It had to be done and you know it.”
I had heard enough. I got to my feet and walked out onto the deck. Karen Cavendish made a violent, noisy intake of breath and put her hands to her mouth. Cavendish turned to face me and his eyes bulged.
He said simply, “No,” and struggled to his feet. Karen said, “You can’t be.”
I put my hand on Cavendish’s face and shoved him back in his chair. Then I sat opposite him with the P320 in my lap.
“What are you talking about?”
He swallowed a few times. His chest was rising and falling fast. All he could think of to say was, “Bill, Tony…”
I snapped, “Dead. And the other two. All dead.”
“But how?”
“Because I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley, Cavendish. Now answer me a couple of questions. You’re operating on a skeleton crew, right?” He nodded. “A handful of guys you can trust to take a man out to sea, kill him and dump his body.”
His eyes narrowed like he’d bit into a lemon. “We weren’t really going to…”
“Can it. It’s too late for that. Who were you talking about just now?”
“Nobody…nobody you’d know…”
“Bullshit. You abducted her because Sinaloa and Bloque Meta contacted you about me.”
“No!”
I barked an ugly laugh. “Ismael? Orozco? They came after me in Puerto Rico, and the Company came after me in Panama. They were all pissing in their panties trying to find out who the new kid on the block was. But anybody who got close wound up dead, so they turned to you with your contacts in the White House, the Capitol and the Pentagon. They’d keep supporting your arms trafficking operations, but in exchange you had to find out who that son of a bitch Harry Bauer was working for. Am I close?”
He was shaking his head, blabbering, “No, Harry, not at all…”
Karen blurted out, “Charles, I told you it was too dangerous!”
“Shut up, Karen!”
I ignored them both. “So you abducted Colonel Jane Harris to make her tell you about me.” He didn’t answer. He swallowed. “Why? What made you abduct her? What made you think there was any connection between us?”
He glanced at his wife. She blurted out, “Everyone who knows Jane knows she has no social life. She lives for her work. Yet she had been seen a few times dining with you. There was a rumor in DC that she was seeing a millionaire playboy in New York.”
I shook my head. “No. That’s not enough.”
Cavendish answered. “It had also been noted that Jane went absent prior to certain hits. The hits always seemed to fit into a certain category…” He trailed off. “Friends in the intelligence community started watching her and observed that you and she had some sort of relationship.”
“Friends like Raymond Hirsch?”[3]
“Yes… Are you going to kill us?”
I shook my head. “No, the time for that has passed. Give me your cell phone.” He handed it to me and I slipped it in my pocket. “Now stand up, both of you.”
They stood. Karen spoke in an unsteady voice.
“You said you weren’t going to kill us.”
“And I’m not.”
I jabbed her firmly in the tip of the jaw and she went down like a piece of expensive chiffon. Cavendish gaped at her prone form and then turned his gape on me. I smacked him in the jaw too, a little harder. He didn’t go down like a piece of chiffon. He went down like a sack of shit.
After that I sprinted up the stairs to the bridge and stepped through the door. There were two men in white naval uniforms sitting on leather seats that looked like they’d bee
n stolen from the set of Star Trek. The were both staring out at the horizon. The captain was telling a story, smiling and occasionally chuckling.
I said, “Hi. I’m the guy you’re supposed to dump overboard out on the high seas.”
They both swiveled around and got to their feet. The captain said, “Call Bill.”
I said, “Bill’s dead.” His mouth worked but made no sound. I said, “So’s Tony, and the two other guys. We never got formally introduced so I don’t know their names. But they’re both very dead right now, like Tony and Bill.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to lower the launch for me.”
“Lower the launch?”
“Yes, Captain. Is that especially hard to understand?”
They glanced at each other. The captain said, “What about us? What will you do with us?”
“I don’t want to kill anybody else, pal. The Cavendishes are unconscious downstairs. I haven’t killed them. All I want is to go home, and for them to leave me alone. I have enough information on me to guarantee that. So you won’t be doing them any favors by calling the Coast Guard. Now, if you don’t want me to blow off your kneecaps, lower the launch.”
From where I was I could see it, suspended over the rear of the yacht. The captain turned to his first mate and nodded. His mate pulled a lever and the launch started to descend toward the water. When it touched down on the waves I stepped up to the captain and smacked him in the jaw. He went down and the first mate roared and came at me. He tried to grab me by the collar with both hands. Maybe he was planning a head butt. I slammed down on his elbows with my forearms and smashed my right fist into the tip of his chin. He followed his captain to the land of Nod. I stepped over him, pointed the yacht dead west and cranked the engines up to full power.
Then I ran, scrambling down the winding steps, trying hard to ignore the many pains in my body. I sprinted through the lounge, onto the back terrace where Cavendish and his wife still lay unconscious. There I jumped aboard the launch, disconnected the lines and watched the huge yacht power away toward the horizon. When it was a good half mile away, I called Bill.
The explosion was huge. Not like the explosions you see in the movies. There was no vast fireball—not at first anyway. It was just a loud, hard smack in the air. The whole yacht seemed to shudder and the walls to expand, and all the plate-glass windows erupted in a shower of glass that sprayed, sparkling across the water. Then for a second there was absolute stillness before the whole, massive structure started to crumble and implode. I guess that was when the fuel tanks ignited, because the next thing there was a massive roar of flames that blew a gaping hole through the two top decks, sending red and blue flames and billowing black smoke high into the air.
I stayed long enough to see the boat subside and start to sink beneath the water. Then I hit the starter and got the hell out of there. As I crashed across the waves I called Cobra. A woman’s voice said, “International Solutions, how may I direct your call?”
I gave her my code and my name, and waited while I was put through voice recognition. Then:
“Whom do you wish to speak to, Mr. Bauer?”
“The brigadier.”
“Putting you through.”
A second later the brigadier’s voice came on the line.
“Harry, what have you got?”
“You told me once we don’t run rescue missions.”
“Yes. It’s not strictly true, but that is the policy. Why?”
“I’m fifty miles due west of Avila Beach. That’s about a hundred and sixty miles northwest of Los Angeles as the crow flies. I need a pickup, fast, before the Coast Guard spot me. After that, sir, you and I are going to have a talk.”
“Is that a threat, Harry?”
“I’m not sure yet, sir, but I don’t believe in coincidences. And I have just come upon one hell of a coincidence.”
“I see. Well, we have a seaplane on its way. It’s coming from approximately forty-five miles to your northeast. Set a course to meet it and you should have a visual on each other in about ten or fifteen minutes.”
I swung the wheel, creating a wall of spray on my right.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Harry?”
“Were you ready for me? Did you know I was going to be here?”
“It was one of a number of possibilities. We’ll talk when you arrive.”
He was as good as his word. Twelve minutes later I saw the Grumman Goose coming in low. It circled me, I confirmed to the brigadier that I had a visual and it came down three hundred yards to my portside. I powered the launch over to the rear hatch, where a guy in his fifties with long hair, a beard and jeans was waiting for me. I wiped my prints from the boat, took his hand and he hauled me up.
“Welcome aboard. Make yourself comfortable and we’ll get you ashore in no time.” He winked, slapped me on the shoulder and propelled me toward a table with a couple of leather seats. “I’d offer you a drink, but by the time we’re airborne we’ll be coming down again, so I’ll leave that to Mr. Big.”
“Thanks.” I sat at the table and suddenly felt the weariness drain through me. “Where are we going?”
A nameless place three and a half miles south of San Simeon, couple of bars, couple of restaurants, couple of houses. Passing tourist trade. Nobody asks too many questions. You hear me?”
He said all this from the cockpit door. I told him I heard him and he winked at me again and took the bird leaping across the waves and up into the sky. I sat back and closed my eyes, tried to still my mind, but my rescuer had not exaggerated. Ten minutes later we were descending toward the coast. I wanted nothing more than to eat a large hamburger, down a cold beer with a large whisky chaser and then sleep for twelve hours straight. But I had some tough questions for the brigadier that had to come first. I had the feeling, not for the first time with Cobra, that I had been played and used. I had been in the army long enough to know that sometimes that is the only way you can get things done, but it still made me mad. Especially when it came from the brigadier.
We touched down in a fountain of white spray, the engines growled and whined and we began to slow, then taxied steadily toward a long, wooden jetty that thrust out into the waves from the beach. Through the porthole I could see the brigadier standing, waiting, in beige chinos and a burgundy polo shirt. Beyond him I could see a racing green Morgan, and I just knew it was his.
Seventeen
It wasn’t the kind of car you just drove. It was the kind of car you motored in. It was a convertible two-seater that looked like something out of the 1920s, with sweeping runner boards and big mudguards, but it had two hundred and eighty horses under the hood and could shift from naught to sixty in five seconds. The trim was all walnut and leather.
We cruised down the coast to the village of San Simeon and pulled in at a blue, clapboard cabin on the beach with a white picket fence and a white garage door which yawned open as we approached.
“We were lucky to get this,” he said as he killed the engine and engaged the handbrake. “The alternative would have been the Best Western, which given the state you’re in,” he paused to look me over, “might have been a bit of a problem.”
I scowled at him from the depths of my pain and exhaustion. It was a deep scowl. I reached in my pocket and pulled out Cavendish’s phone. I showed it to him and snarled. “The last conversation on this phone was with the person who is holding the colonel.” His eyes widened. “You track that number, or get a GPS fix on it, and we find out where she is.”
He reached out his hand and I placed the phone in his palm, but I didn’t let go.
“You’d better not be playing me, sir. This is too much of a coincidence.”
“No.” He shook his head, took the phone and climbed out of the car. “Have a shower, Harry. You’ll find fresh clothes up there. I’ll get you some food and we’ll talk it through.”
I nodded and followed him into the house.
It was an open plan
living room, dining room and kitchen all in one, with a breakfast bar and sliding glass doors onto a patio with a gated fence that gave onto the beach. A wooden staircase led to an upper floor where there were three bedrooms and a bathroom.
I climbed the stairs, shedding clothes, and stood under the hot shower for a long time, allowing the powerful jets to soothe the aching bruises and wash away the pain with the shampoo and the soap. Finally I gave myself a five-minute blast of cold water to wake myself up, then toweled myself dry.
In one of the bedrooms I found, as the brigadier had told me, a fresh pair of jeans, a shirt, socks, boots and a jacket.
When I got downstairs the brigadier had made a pot of coffee, he’d fried some English pork sausages, bacon and eggs and piled it all on a couple of hunks of whole wheat toast. My stomach told me that was all a damned good idea. I sat at the table by the glass doors and we ate in silence for ten minutes. When I’d finished I drained my coffee and leaned back.
“You knew the colonel was being watched.”
“Yes.”
He stood, went to a sideboard and pulled out a bottle of the Macallan and two tumblers. He set them down and spoke as he poured. “She became aware of it in Washington. I won’t tell you how because that is need to know. Suffice it to say that she learned that certain parties within the Central Intelligence Agency were becoming curious about her. We knew that those parties had links to both Sinaloa and Bloque Meta, as well as Islamic groups in the Middle East. We also knew that these were the very same people who had been taking an interest in you. Clearly there was a real risk that they would start to talk to each other and start putting two and two together.”
“Cavendish told me they had noticed the colonel had a playboy boyfriend in New York.”