Overkill

by Ted Bell

  Aw, c’mon, Stoke! Snap out of it!

  What the hell was going on with him?

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  The fish, as advertised on those TV ads for the Florida Keys, were unbelievable. Schools of multicolored blue tangs, angelfish, midnight parrot fish, hogfish, and sergeant majors, in countless numbers, flashed in and out and around what remained of the sunken wreckage on the bottom.

  It was noon, and the sun blazing overhead illuminated the wondrous sights, making Stoke glad that Fancha had okayed this boys-only vacation when he and Shark and Harry Brock had returned from Europe.

  This is fun, he told himself. Relax, for god’s sake.

  The two men explored the rusty remains, swimming in and out of the Havana Star’s gaping hull for perhaps half an hour before turning to serious game fishing. There was no shortage of game, and within the hour, when Sharkey finally mastered his speargun, they’d bagged their limit.

  Sharkey swam for the surface while Stoke remained on the wreck site and dealt with some pesky issues with his regulator. Times like this, equipment issues, Stoke couldn’t help remembering his SEAL days, and his pal Woodie McCracken. He was a twenty-six-year-old SEAL from Asheville, North Carolina, who’d died in these very same waters. He was a good kid, a brother, and one of the funniest men alive.

  Woodie had been Stoke’s dive buddy and best friend at the Key West station, and the accident had happened during intensive dive training in preparation for an overseas deployment. Nobody ever knew what had happened to that kid. To this day, according to the Naval Special Warfare Group, the cause of death was unknown.

  Did he have a heart attack? Stroke? Was it his gear? His regulator?

  Christ, shake it off, Stoke!

  He finally got his damn regulator straightened out and swam for the surface.

  The second Sharkey’s head broke the surface, some fifty yards from where Maria was anchored, he heard the high-powered crack of rapid rifle fire. Rounds blistered the surface of the water all around him as he whirled about, desperately trying to locate the source of fire and lay eyes on whomever was trying to kill him.

  There!

  A blue thirty-footer with a soaring white tuna tower. He saw her name and hailing port emblazoned on the transom and seared into his memory: Wombat. And, below that, Key West, FL.

  The rifleman was atop the swaying tower, with another guy down at the helm, now bringing the bow around to close the distance to the swimmer. Sharkey knew the shooter would assume he was still alive, that he wasn’t already shot dead. He saw the guy as he checked the wind speed and direction before proceeding toward his target.

  It had freshened while they were down on the wreck. Wombat was now thrashing about in choppy, wind-whipped and frothy seas. So he’d caught a break there, at least. The pitching deck of a boat in rough water made for a very iffy shooting platform.

  The wind effect, heavy swaying, was most felt at the top of the tower, Shark thought, as he dove back down. And that wind had been all that had saved his life. He pulled hard for the bottom. Had to warn Stoke that they had a shooter up top.

  He met Stoke on the way up. Stoke was shocked by what he saw.

  Sharkey’s eyes, behind the dive mask, were as wide as saucers, and he used improvised hand signals, finally managing to convey the message of a shooter and the dire situation up top to Stokely Jones.

  “Stay here! I’m going up to see,” Stoke signaled.

  “Roger that.” Sharkey nodded.

  “Give me your speargun,” Stoke indicated, and Sharkey did. Stoke could load and shoot faster and more accurately than any man alive, Stoke had told him.

  Stoke pointed to his dive watch, looked at Sharkman, and held up seven fingers for seven minutes. Then he pointed at the surface and pumped his hand: Surface in seven, Sharkey! Seven!

  Stoke paused just below the surface, just long enough to notch another two spears into his twin guns. Hardly the ideal weapon to use against armed assassins but it would have to do, he thought, kicking hard for the surface.

  The second his head breached, he saw them. Fortune favoring the bold, the assailants luckily had their backs to him for a moment, still trying to locate Sharkey while looking directly into the blinding sun.

  Stoke looked at his dive watch. Shit—Sharkey would surface in five minutes!

  Two men, one driving the boat, one high atop the tower with a rifle with a telescopic scope, swinging the barrel in an arc. The skipper at the helm station below was carving a wide turn to starboard at idle speed. The shooter had binoculars out now. They were in no particular hurry. Their prey would ultimately have to surface.

  The veteran of many tours of underwater combat experience didn’t need much time to calculate their best and probably only chance of survival.

  One of them would need to surface for a moment, in plain sight of the bow, just as the other surfaced unobserved just off the stern. The stern man would have the only shot and he would have to mount the transom platform in order to take it. It was up to the bow man to provide enough distraction to give Stoke, the stern guy, a chance to kill the shooter on the tower with his speargun.

  He swam hard, his powerful legs thrusting him forward in pursuit of the Wombat. Was Sharkey in position off the bow? he wondered. Six minutes and counting on his stopwatch.

  Seven!

  Sharkey surfaced.

  Stoke ducked underwater when he saw the shooter spot him and raise the rifle. Looking for Stokely’s bobbing head in the scope, finger itchy on the trigger. How the hell had the guy acquired him so fast? Shit. The sun reflecting off his dive mask! He ripped it down, letting it hang from around his neck. The guy locking him in the cross hairs and squeezing another round off just as the bobbing head disappeared beneath the waves.

  He clawed his way down deep to where the sun don’t shine.

  From down there, he could see the thin white bubbly streaks as rounds struck the water like tracer bullets before running out of gas. He would stay down thirty seconds, kick hard for twenty yards to a new location, and resurface . . . the shooter would not dare take his eyes off this moving target . . . Stoke would have just time enough to do what he needed to do—he swam for the Wombat, bobbing on the surface some five hundred yards away.

  Stoke, his arms moving like great steel pistons, seemed to heave himself up out of the water and up onto the stern platform in a single fluid motion. The shooter, sporting a long black ponytail, was atop the tuna tower. He was facing forward, firing his assault rifle at Sharkey. Stoke saw the boat driver, same ponytail, same powerful squat body, advance the twin chromed throttles, slowly gathering speed. He was circling in the area of the Sharkman’s last known position . . . closing in.

  “Hey!” Stoke called out, just loud enough to be heard by the shooter upstairs.

  “Wha—” The man spun round to see a giant black man standing on the stern platform. He had a speargun aimed up at his beating heart . . .

  Stoke took dead aim and fired.

  The spear flew straight and true. It struck with great force in the center of the man’s bare chest, driving him backward, the spear going deep, finding his heart. Struggling to keep his balance, fatally wounded, he looked down, stunned. Then his heart exploded and he fell backward, falling, bouncing once, but hard, off the starboard gunwale, and then into the sea.

  Seeing his brother’s body splash into the seawater, the helmsman, tattooed over every square inch of skin, turned to see Stokely at the stern. The Cuban had a TEC-9 machine pistol in his right hand, his left on the throttles, shoving them wide open. The boat came up out of the hole and leapt forward, the twin 300hp Mercury racing engines roaring.

  Automatic pistol rounds were ripping up the teak around Stoke’s feet when he squatted for a millisecond, then used the massive oak trees he called his legs to power up and launch him up and backward onto the transom of the boat. The driver was whipping the wheel back and forth, hard, trying to dislodge Stoke from the deck.

  Stoke, in seriou
s danger of losing his balance, backpedaling to hold it as long as he could, dropped the spent speargun into the sea. He raised Sharkey’s gun in a desperate attempt to fire a second spear. The helmsman leaned on the throttles! Aw, shit, he was going into the drink and . . . he fired.

  Fired and missed! Right then a burst of heavy throttle brought the bow up at a critical angle and a pinwheeling Stokely was jettisoned off the stern transom platform. Worse yet, he was plunged back into the speeding boat’s wake, where he’d likely get chopped into chunks by the twin screws churning like mad beneath the hull.

  Surfacing in the maelstrom of Wombat’s wake, Stoke did a quick 360, shielding his eyes from the sun glare, looking for his friend. Watching the blue sport-fishing boat come round to a course of due south, Tattoo probably headed for Key West. And Sharkey?

  Nothing.

  He suddenly spied Maria at his two o’clock position, about a thousand yards away. He swam for her as hard as he had ever swum, hoping against hope that the tough little Cuban fisherman had not sacrificed his life to save that of Stokely Jones Jr.

  He clambered aboard Sharkey’s boat and hoisted the anchor. Cranking the engines, he noticed what a beautiful day it was. He didn’t feel beautiful, though. War is hell and this was war, Stoke thought, firewalling the throttles and putting the wheel hard over, setting a course for the last place he’d seen Sharkey . . . The sun was dancing on the water and made seeing well nigh impossible. He kept looking.

  And looking.

  But the Sharkey he knew and loved wasn’t there anymore.

  All that remained of the little one-armed fisherman were the circling sharks in a high fever of bloodlust, whipping up the surface water to a bright pink-tinged froth.

  They got his right arm first, Stoke thought, heartbroken sadness washing over him in waves . . .

  And now, fifteen years later, they’ve taken the rest of him.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  London

  London Town was crowded for a Monday morning, but Pelham maneuvered the massive Rolls-Royce Phantom Conquistador through the narrow streets with aplomb. They’d driven down from Oxfordshire via the A40 and M40 in far less time than the usual hour and a half they’d anticipated. And it had given them ample time to stop by Jack Barclay Bentley on Berkeley Square.

  Pelham had noticed an odd whine from the aftermarket supercharger Hawke had ordered. It had been a tricky installation, performed by the German auto tuners, Mansory. The last thing on earth that Alex wanted was to do any damage to that beautiful 7.5 liter engine, a beast capable of putting out 543 bhp.

  “Won’t be but a moment, your lordship,” Pelham said as they pulled majestically into Barclay’s service bay. “I’ll just look in on old Rob, the service manager. He’s expecting me and will want to have a quick peek under the bonnet to see if there’s a problem, sir.”

  “Good, good,” Hawke said from the rear seat. “I’m very happy back here. Just checking my messages.”

  “Very good, m’lord,” Pelham said, and shimmered off into the deeper shadows of the garage.

  As he scrolled down his messages, an email from a name and address he didn’t recognize caught his eye. But he did recognize the white oval symbol with the black letters CH. Confoederatio Helvetica, better known as Switzerland.

  Switzerland? Who the hell . . .

  Someone had sent him a video. One with no note of explanation attached. He opened the file and touched play . . . and—

  His heart caught in his throat and he stopped breathing . . .

  It was Alexei.

  “Hi, Daddy,” his little boy said, smiling into the camera. He was seated on a plush olive-green Windsor chair. Hawke hit pause and brought his iPhone screen up closer to scrutinize. His son was wearing lederhosen with reindeer-horn buttons and old-fashioned lace-up shoes. In his lap was a small dog licking his forearm, a dog Hawke recognized as a West Highland Terrier.

  And he looked, dare he say it . . . happy?

  Yes! Hawke thought, feeling a frisson of happiness himself, shivering up his spine. He’s not only safe and unharmed, but he’s actually happy.

  He pressed play.

  “This is Joe, Daddy!” the little boy said, hefting the dog aloft for his father’s inspection. “He’s my new dog. I named him after Uncle Joe because I like him so much! And, Daddy, my new uncle wants me to say hello to you, too. He’s very nice. He told me that he was a friend of yours and I like him very much, indeed.

  “Oh! I think my puppy needs to go pee, Daddy. Uncle Joe said we’ll make another movie for you real soon . . . and he asked me to tell you that he will never forget how kind you were to him, helping him in Hollywood . . . What’s Hollywood, Daddy? Oh, and it’s been raining . . . raining and raining.”

  And it was over.

  Pelham opened the car door and slipped behind the wheel.

  “Rob said there’s a slight adjustment to the blower needed, m’lord. An easy fix, I just have to schedule an appointment and—are you quite all right, sir?”

  He turned around and saw that his lordship was staring at his mobile, a look of sheer disbelief on his face. And strong emotions roiling behind those ice-blue eyes.

  “Everything all right, sir?” he asked.

  “Yes, Pelham,” Hawke said, and now he seemed to be almost on the verge of laughter. “Everything’s going to be all right. Everything is quite wonderful again!”

  Pelham wondered whom Alex had heard from. But he knew that whomever had messaged him must have had something to do with Alexei.

  “To Black’s, Pelham,” Hawke said cheerily. “Sir David is expecting me, as you know.”

  “Indeed he is, sir,” Pelham said. “Expects too much of you, if you ask me, m’lord.”

  Hawke let it go. What was the use? Pelham had always been overprotective . . .

  Sometimes he felt like he and his beloved valet of thirty-some-odd years had evolved into an old married couple. Pelham, the consummate man’s man, fussed and worried over him like some maiden aunt. And he insisted upon using Hawke’s title, something that Alex would never do himself if he could help it. Nor would he let others use it. “Just Alex is good enough,” he would say.

  Gazing out at the streets of London as they drove along Brook Street and past Claridge’s Hotel, Hawke suddenly said, “Pelham, good lord, this isn’t the right way to Black’s! You know perfectly well I’m already running late and Sir David will be fuming.”

  “I know you’re late, m’lord. That’s why I’m not taking the right route. And why, on the contrary, I’m taking the fastest route.”

  “Oh, do calm down, Pelham. Your self-righteousness knows no bounds, does it?”

  “No, your lordship, I don’t suppose it does. And, rightfully so, might I add, sir.”

  The sigh from the rear was deafening.

  Chapter Sixty

  Black’s Club, midday

  Arriving at Black’s Club, Alex was happy Ambrose Congreve would join them for lunch. This, at the behest of Sir David, saying on the phone the day prior, “I need that super brain of his, Alex. Get Congreve for lunch. Your club.”

  Something clearly was up with the old man.

  Certainly this would be a working lunch. MI6 had been an enormous help in the ongoing search for Alexei. And, Sir David had hinted on the telephone, he had something of a breakthrough in the strange disappearance of Vladimir Putin.

  And Hawke for his part had promised to provide Trulove with newly updated details on Alexei’s kidnapping as well as information regarding the horrific assassination attempt on the life of Stokely Jones. An act that had resulted in the death of one of the two assassins. And the tragic death of Stoke’s friend and colleague, Mr. Gonzales-Gonzales, a colorful Keys fishing guide known as Sharkey.

  Hawke always entered the crowded Men’s Grille, on the third floor at Black’s, with some trepidation. He referred to the assembled posh gentry, a crowd of gentlemen splendidly turned out in Savile Row’s finest bespoke wardrobes, as the Hi-Hi Society.<
br />
  This because, as one passed by the long oak bar en route to one’s table, seemingly hundreds of hellos were exchanged, brief acknowledgments of the lads one had been with at Harrow or Oxbridge, or in Hawke’s case, Eton (where he was a great winner of prizes both on and off the playing fields), followed by the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.

  “Oh, hi-hi,” he said to them. “Hi-hi,” they never failed to reply as he moved through their number. Ahead he saw Sir David at Hawke’s long-held table, sipping his fortifier and reading the Times. The table was directly beneath the massive lead-paned windows that rose up into the darkness near the top of the room. The most beautiful light anywhere, anytime, he’d long believed. “Hullo, Sir David,” Hawke said.

  “You’re late,” Sir David said, barely glancing up at him.

  Hawke had entered his old St. James haunt promptly at half past noon. Sir David Trulove suffered neither fools nor tardiness gladly. He affected a lack of interest in Hawke, sipping his gin cocktail and studying the front page of the paper. “I see the Americans are still at it, accusing their president of being a Russian spy. Bloody hell!”

  Hawke looked at his wristwatch.

  “Hardly late, sir. I believe we said twelve fifteen.”

  “Twelve sixteen is considered late in my circles. It’s now, what, twelve thirty-one?”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Sit down, damn it, and order a drink. We’ve much to discuss.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and sat. Waitstaff was instantly at his elbow. “Oh, hullo, Digby! Didn’t see you there. A rum, please. Gosling’s of course. The Black Seal?”