Overkill

by Ted Bell

  “Always.”

  “There are only four of us. We will not be welcomed aboard that big Russian boat with hearts of good cheer and open arms. We’ll likely need all the firepower we can muster, Stoke.”

  Stoke smiled. “This ain’t our first rodeo, Skipper!”

  Hawke looked at him and put his right hand on the big man’s shoulder. It was like scratching concrete.

  “I’ve got to make a long-overdue phone call, Stoke. See you later down in the bar.”

  As soon as Hawke got to his room, he sat down on the side of the bed by the telephone. He lifted the receiver and asked the hotel operator to ring Badrutt’s Palace in St. Moritz.

  “Bonjour,” the Swiss operator said.

  “Yes, I’d like to be connected to a guest in the hotel.”

  “Of course, sir. Who shall I say is calling?”

  “My name is Hawke. Alex Hawke.”

  “Ah. Lord Hawke, of course, sir. Which guest would you like to speak with, please?”

  “Fraulein Sigrid Kissl. She’s in Room 303.”

  “Ah, yes, let me connect you with her straightaway . . . Hold the line, please.”

  Hawke’s heart was pounding on the walls of his chest loudly enough to fill his ears with a dull thunder. He sat and watched the second hand on his watch spin round and round.

  “Hello? I’m still holding. Is anyone there?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, sir, she’s not picking up, I’m afraid.”

  “Please try her again, will you?”

  “Lord Hawke, I’m so sorry. I am just seeing a note from the front desk come up on my computer. It seems that Fraulein Kissl has checked out of the hotel. The doorman says she was in considerable distress.”

  “What? When? When did she check out?”

  “Just this minute, sir. You just missed her.”

  “Did she leave any forwarding address? Was she going to the airport?”

  “I’m afraid we don’t know, sir. Sorry.”

  “Are you sure? Could you check again?”

  “Lord Hawke, I have another client here, waiting. I’ll call you back at this number if I learn anything more, all right? So sorry.”

  Click.

  Hawke stared at the face looking back at him from the ancient gilded mirror hung on the wall.

  “And now you’ve lost her, too,” he whispered to himself.

  Bloody fool.

  He picked up the phone to call Congreve, deciding what to say and not say. “You’ve lost your assistant,” Hawke said.

  “What?”

  “She’s gone. Checked out of the hotel in Zurich and didn’t say where she was going.”

  “What happened, Alex? Did you two have another row? I’d so hoped you two could straighten things out between you . . .”

  “Yes. So did I. She has a lot of personal issues. Maybe we just have to give her some time to wrestle them to the ground.”

  “I’m sorry, Alex. I know how much you love her.”

  “I’ll be all right. I’ve got a bloody plateful of issues all by myself.”

  Some secrets are better kept than revealed, Hawke whispered as he replaced the receiver.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Geneva

  Next morning Uncle Joe bade farewell to Horst, the happy-as-horseshit Swiss sub driver, and climbed back into the Mercedes. Two nights sitting out on the lakeside dock in subfreezing temperatures, covered in snow, and the Merc cranked right up. Traffic was light on the highway that encircles all of Lake Zurich, and he knew he could make good time.

  Instead of hanging a left toward Zurich, he hung a right toward Geneva. About a three-hour drive, he figured, to his destination. The Beau-Rivage Hotel overlooking the sparkling blue waters of Lake Geneva.

  There were now just one or two more errands on President Putin’s hit list of all good things for him to accomplish.

  He felt pretty good about how things had gone so far, with the Sorcerer at the top of the mountain. The man had agreed verbally to consider Putin’s offer to purchase the Alpine fortress. Tonight, when he got back to his room at the hotel in Geneva, he had a call scheduled with Vladimir. A bring-him-up-to-speed call, short and sweet, and nothing but good news.

  Joe chuckled. A mate of his once said Joe Stalingrad was the kind of guy who could make throwing up on the rug seem like some kind of blessed event.

  Now, if only his next meeting, the one with the colonel, was as easy-peasy as the rest had been. But maybe not. Joe knew the man he was going to see had a reputation as a surly American soldier of fortune, and that reputation was justified. He was one tough hombre.

  The American had crossed swords with Putin a couple of years ago, but was now back in Putin’s good graces for one very simple reason. Without this key player, Putin knew he had almost no chance of realizing his dream of a new and glorious Soviet empire.

  The man’s name was Colonel Brett “Beau” Beauregard. There was a name for cats like him, and Joe whispered it softly to himself: “Badass.”

  First in his class at West Point, a highly decorated U.S. Army Ranger, Beauregard rose quickly through the ranks to the rank of colonel. He was as strong as a team of oxen and had been captain of the Army gridiron team that beat Navy to win the big game on Thanksgiving Day 1990. The guy was the real deal, and he’d earned Joe’s respect when they’d worked together, putting a secret army together for Putin in Siberia.

  Beau was the kind of guy more than happy to take a knife to a gunfight.

  The colonel had gained worldwide notoriety as the founder of Vulcan International. Vulcan, basically combat warriors for hire, had started small in the town of Port Arthur, Texas. Eventually they became the largest private army in the world, working with governments of every stripe. At one time, they were simultaneously working with the United States, China, Russia, and Cuba. The colonel worked hard to build firewalls between his competing clients; at one point he was working with both the Iranians and the Israelis.

  They provided military assistance to every country that could afford their services. To Beau’s credit, they never played favorites, and politics never entered into the equation. As Beau was once quoted as saying in the Washington Post, “I’m a soldier of fortune, damn it, and this soldier is out to make his fortune.”

  Vulcan was so successful that by 2003, they were training upward of 80,000 soldiers and sailors at the Port Royal facility, a vast military-industrial complex that had increased in size to over seven thousand acres—more than twelve square miles.

  And then disaster struck.

  It happened at Fallujah. Five of Joe’s contract players were accused by the U.S. government of having wantonly taken the lives of innocent civilians. The worldwide media machine pounced, and the whole world turned on Vulcan. The heroes of Vulcan, who had taken bullets for the Americans, were now labeled as wanton murderers, Wild West cowboys with neither scruples nor morality who would turn on anyone if the price was right.

  Beau himself was an object of scorn and ridicule. In a Fox News Sunday interview with Chris Wallace that Joe watched, the colonel had famously said, “Did some innocent civilians get shot? Hell, yeah. That’s why it’s called war. Did we shoot first? My opinion? No, we did not. I’ve seen the evidence. I stand by my troops.”

  Beau Beauregard lost almost everything in his headlong fall from the pinnacle. But he had invested his earnings all over the world and done quite well. He gave up his PJ, what he called his private jet, and all of his houses, but he held on to his boat. A 150-foot yacht he had named Celestial, which he kept moored at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

  And just when it looked like he was finished, finito, dead meat, the colonel got a phone call. It was from Uncle Joe himself. All was forgiven, Joe said; the president needed ole Beau to come back into the fold. It was time to embark on a mission of historic magnitude. His life was about to get very exciting again. And he was going to get very, very rich.

  There was a beat, and then Beau said, “Lemme ask you a question. I
s it going to beat living on a big fat yacht in Bermuda with hot and cold running honeypots? I mean, come on, Joe, get real! Hell, ain’t nobody shooting at me these days and I’m swimming in pussy.”

  Joe had replied, “Well, hell yeah, Beau. But are you rich?”

  Smiling, he mashed the go pedal. He had to step on it if he wanted to be in time for breakfast.

  Joe gave his name at the front desk, and a phone call later he was rocketing to the top of the building. There was only one door up here and it said PH, so Joe leaned on the buzzer.

  Beau swung the door wide. “Hot damn! I’ll be danged, look who’s washed up! If it ain’t my ole pal Uncle Joe! Hey, Hollywood! Good to see you, son, drag that skinny ass of yours on in! Come on in, I said!”

  Beau on happy pills? Joe wondered, Ritalin or whatever? He stepped inside and looked around. Beau was all over him. Moving in for his close-up, causing Joe to take a step backward.

  “You ever think we’d be doing business again? Huh? The Gruesome Twosome? The Beau and Joe Show?” Joe said, laughing as he shook the colonel’s hand and was swept deeper into the grand penthouse suite. It was moderately vast, celestial ceilings and wall-to-wall windows with breathtaking views overlooking Lake Geneva.

  Joe nodded, gazing around the suite in awe. The decor of the interior was an overstated blend of Trumpian sculpted gilt and old-world grandiosity. But there was another breathtaking view at a card table across the room. There, bathed in sunlight beneath a sunny window, two young women of dubious distinction were sipping champagne and playing canasta at a mahogany game table.

  “And, who might these fine lovelies be, Beau?”

  “Well, that one there on your left is Martina. An actress from London. Calls herself the Human Trampoline. Says she still loves Harvey Weinstein and probably always will. ‘He’s a doll baby,’ she says! And the other one, in the pink bra and panties, that’s Violette, my French niece. Flew over with me from Bermuda. Ladies, where you leave your manners? Back in the barn? Say hey to my ole pal Uncle Joe! He’ll be joining us for supper this evening. Look at him! He’s famous! He’s a goddamn movie star, for crissakes!”

  “Hello, Uncle Joe,” they trilled in singsong fashion, smiling at the Playstation.

  “Hi, honey,” Violette said, arching her back so that her front caught the light, “Can I be in your next picture, sweetie? Here, I’m writing my manger’s number down for you.”

  “Sure!” Joe said, “Could be a star vehicle for you. It’s a remake of the old Russ Meyer classic called “Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!”

  “Groovy!” Violette said, doing a giggly little shimmy-shake right there in her chair.

  That’s when from somewhere behind him, Joe heard a muffled snore. There was someone else in the room, and he turned around to see who the hell it was.

  Chapter Forty

  Over in a dark corner was a tall, rangy guy, deeply tanned, wearing faded Levi’s and a sweat-stained black cowboy shirt. Sound asleep, he was slumped back in his armchair. He had it rocked back on two legs, his long legs extended out before him. If looks could kill, it would only be because this guy had them in spades. On his left calf, he wore a bone-handled bowie knife, sheathed in a fancy Comanche Indian beaded holster. Looked sharp. Meaning the man and the knife. Cowboy boots too, expensive Tony Lama’s, polished to a mirrorlike finish. Top it all off with a sun-faded black Stetson pulled way down over his eyes.

  Asleep? Or dead?

  “Who is that guy?” Joe whispered to Beau. “Aside from being that actor Sam Shepard’s twin brother, I mean.”

  “That’s my newly appointed head of security, son. Ex–Army Ranger, former TV rodeo cowboy star and the best-lookin’, meanest sumbitch ever to come out of Hico, Texas. Walking death. C’mon over here, son, and I’ll introduce you to him. Speaks Russian, too. Married a Russian gal in East Berlin when he was CIA. Said he’d lived with her ten years before he had to kill her.”

  “Wait. He’s CIA?”

  “Not anymore, son. He was CIA. Now he’s just pure paid badassness.”

  “Maybe we just let him sleep, Beau,” Joe said, taking a couple of steps back.

  “Hell, no, he’s all right. Had him a late night at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, so he’s taking her real easy today. Wake up, cowboy!” Beau said, lifting the brim of the cowboy’s sweat-stained hat.

  The man said nothing and was taking his own sweet time about opening his eyes. But when he did, they were blue. They were the coldest, darkest blue-black eyes Joe had ever seen. Holes in his face like piss holes in the snow . . .

  Like dead cold.

  Beau said to him, “Want you to meet somebody, dude, that’s all. Hollywood movie star here, goes by the name of Uncle Joe. Joe, say hello to my old pal here. Name’s Shit Smith.”

  “Say again?” Joe said, looking quizzically at Beau.

  “His name is Shit Smith.”

  “Shit?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Good morning, sir! Very nice to meet you,” Joe said, gushing. “Heard a lot of great things about you! Rodeo cowboy, huh? Man, I do love that rodeo scene. Especially the clowns. A great honor, sir! Very great honor, indeed!”

  The cowboy lifted his brim an eighth of an inch and squinted at the squat little man standing before him with his empty right hand still extended. When the man spoke, it was in measured tones, in words that were barely audible.

  “Calm. The. Fuck. Down,” Shit said, Johnny Cash deep and low-down and barely above a whisper.

  The guy’s eyes, sharp now, sharp as a diamond cutter, bored holes into Joe’s face. After a while, he finally stuck his hand out. Joe shook it with some temerity, worried about the delicate bones in his fingers. But expecting tough, gnarled calluses, Joe found the handshake was civilized, almost weirdly soft and gentle for a rodeo cowboy. Somewhere in the back of his brain, Joe heard a faint ping.

  His gaydar? What the—silently pinging . . . gay! . . . gay! . . . gay! . . . Gaaayyyy?

  Could it possibly be that this badass Texas dude could really be what Joe’s Cuban ex-girlfriend, Juicy Lucy Musso, used to call, a Madalena tímida?

  A long, soft muffin? Shit Smith? Say it ain’t so, Joe!

  “Ow!” Joe squealed, grabbing his right leg. Shit Smith had just kicked him in the shin just below the knee. Hard.

  “Uncle Joe, huh? So, how’s it hangin’, pards?” Shit said. More awake now, the psycho assassin spoke with a deep, slow drawl, one that called up images of cattle drives and tumbleweeds, and dollar-a-shot whiskey.

  “Hanging in there, hanging in there,” Joe said, doubled over in pain and rubbing his shinbone. “What’d you say your name was again?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Hell are you anyway, dude? A total vagina? I said, ‘I didn’t say’!”

  Beau jumped in. “C’mon, Shit, don’t be so damn antisocial. Tell the man your damn name. And don’t kick him anymore.”

  “Name’s Shit Smith,” he whispered, more to himself. He closed his eyes again. “What about it?”

  “Shit Smith?” Joe said, his pale blue eyes full of wonder and fear.

  “Somethin’ wrong with that, little buddy? Got some kind of problem with it, do you, Mr. Movie Star?” Joe froze. He’s seen Shit’s left hand grab hold of that bowie knife.

  “Me? Oh, hell no, no, hell no. It’s great. Terrific name, don’t get me wrong. Who wouldn’t love a name like that? Just unusual, that’s all I’m saying. So I gotta ask, is Shit your real name, or just a nickname?”

  Beau looked at Shit and rolled his eyes, apologizing for all this cheesy New York–esque behavior on Joe’s part.

  Shit said, “Hell, I dunno. Folks been calling me Shit so long I’ve forgotten what t’hell I started out with. Ain’t that right, boss?”

  “You were Shit when I met you, that’s all I know,” Beau said, grinning. “And Shit you’ll always remain, buddy.”

  “Well, there you go,” Shit said, smiling at Uncle Joe for the first t
ime, deciding to maybe give this hinky little dude a pass.

  “Like your boots,” Joe said. “Never saw anything like them. Can I have the number of your shoeshine man? Just kidding, just kidding.”

  “Polish up real good, don’t they? Listen. You ever see me standin’ up real close and personal next to some pretty little split-tail in a short skirt? Gal going full commando . . . know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah?” Joe said, into it. “She’s full commando . . . and?”

  “Yeah. So, you see me doin’ that, Joe, you just plain know ole Shit has a reflected bird’s-eye view of that little gal’s snatch, that he’s looking straight up at that pretty pink snapper courtesy of old Tony Lama and these mirror-polished kicks of mine.”

  “Damn! I had no idea. You mean you can really see all the way up to her goddamn—”

  “Awright, awright, enough, Joe,” Beau said. “Get some shut-eye, Shit. I’ll talk pussy all day long, you know that. But me and Uncle Joe here got some serious-ass bidness to discuss.”

  Shit looked at his boss with a blank, empty stare that even Joe couldn’t read. He said, “Beau, lemme ask you something. Is Joe your real uncle? Or just some cutesy shit uncle?”

  “No. Not real uncle. No. No relation.”

  “Is he a real Hollywood star, then?”

  “Oh, yeah. Totally,” Beau said. “Tell the man the name of your latest picture, Joe.”

  “You mean Flaming Pussies? About the psycho arsonist in the New Orleans whorehouse?”

  “No, no, that was porn. The army one . . .”

  “Oh, yeah. At Paramount. It’s called Little Patton. I play the lead.”

  “Little Patton? Is that what you said?” Shit said, or more like hissed.

  “Yeah. Right. Bingo.”

  Shit said, “Fuck me. Seriously. You play General George S. Patton, my beloved hee-ro? You?” He was going for the knife again . . .

  “No, god no, not the real George S. Patton, Shit. I’m sorry. No, not the real Patton at all! The avatar George Patton. From the future, see. It’s a sci-fi pic. What can I tell ya?”