by Ted Bell
“Ah, well, progress of a sort,” Hawke said, extending his hand toward the pulpit. “In order to enjoy the full splendor of the view, they need to walk out on the pulpit to get out over the water. No need to fear, it’s quite sturdy.”
Congreve told them, and the two Russians, followed by Hawke and Congreve, walked out onto the narrow pulpit. Hawke removed a remote control device hanging from the pulpit’s stainless steel rail. He pushed a button, and the entire pulpit started extending silently forward from the bow of the ship.
“Don’t be alarmed, gentlemen,” Hawke said. “We use this as a gangplank for docking in the Mediterranean. When it’s fully extended, you’ll be able to look back and see the entire superstructure of the yacht. Quite a sight.”
The Russians said something and Congreve translated, “They say the great height makes them nervous.”
“To hell with height,” Hawke said. “Tell them to look at all the bloody sharks circling down below. And ask them if they’d like me to take a picture of them together. A souvenir of the evening. I brought a little camera.”
Congreve told them and both Russians were clutching each other in a boozy embrace and breaking into silly grins.
“What a fabulous photo op,” Hawke said, backing up and putting the small camera to his eye. “Splendid, but I’m a little too close. I’ve got to back up a few feet—hold that smile—yes, this is going to be brilliant. Hold it one more second—” Hawke and Congreve stepped off the pulpit and back onto the bow and the camera flashed.
And then he did something that struck terror into both the Russians’ hearts. He pushed another button on the remote that caused the steel guard railings running along either side of the pulpit to withdraw into the hull. The two arms dealers shouted and clung to each other for dear life, staring down at the sea far below.
They were essentially standing at the end of a narrow diving board forty feet above shark-infested waters. They screamed something in Russian, but Hawke ignored them.
Instead, he drew his sword and walked toward them.
“How much for this Borzoi?” he asked.
“They say one hundred fifty million.”
“Done,” Hawke said. “And the owner of the other Borzoi? I want that name.”
The Russians said a few words.
“Impossible for them to reveal it,” Congreve said.
“Operation Invincible Sword,” Hawke said. “Remember that little fiasco in Bahrain, Comrade Golgolkin?” He flicked his sword tip across the fat man’s belly and said, “Welcome to the sequel.”
Congreve had to smile. Alex Hawke was nothing if not a shrewd negotiator.
15
Gomez looked at his watch. He was already half an hour late for the birthday party.
This was unfortunate because the party was in honor of Lucinda Nettles’s fourth birthday. Little Cindy was the only child of Admiral and Mrs. Joseph Nettles. And Joe Nettles was the commanding officer at the United States Naval Air Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In other words, Joe was Gomez’s boss. El nacho grande here on Gitmo, as they called the joint.
Normally, of course, lowlife swabbies like Gomez didn’t get invited to the CO’s pad for parties, hang out, have a cold one, shoot the shit with the old man himself. But Gomez’s two girls, Amber and Tiffany, were in the same class as Cindy Nettles. And that was the only reason Joe’s wife, Ginny, had even invited them to this damn party, he knew that much for sure. Also, Gomez’s wife, Rita, had gotten pretty palsy-walsy with Mrs. Nettles lately. Went to some friggin’ card game there every week.
Fightin’ Joe ran a tight ship. The invitation with all the little balloons said three o’clock sharp. It had been right there on the refrigerator door all week. Three o’clock it said, and now it was three-forty. And Fightin’ Joe didn’t like it when you were late.
Joe went to Annapolis, but, face it, he was still a damned redneck. Hell, he used go up on those watchtowers sometimes, the ones looking out over no-man’s-land, the minefield around the base perimeter. His friend Sparky Collins was a guard up there. Sparky told him Joe would climb up and say to the guys on guard, bored shitless, “Hey, watch this, boys!”
Joe, knowing the Cubans—the Frontier Guards, they called themselves—were up in their own towers, had their scopes trained on him, goes up there, turns his back on ’em and drops trou! Moons them, for chrissakes. The friggin’ CO of the whole friggin’ outfit! The Marines all went apeshit and everybody started calling him the Moonman.
And then one day he has this fancy-ass barbeque for some big shots from the State Department and he’s laughing, telling them all about mooning the Cubans, and this wise guy from the Cuban Desk says, “But, Admiral, you obviously don’t understand Cuban culture. In Cuba, they don’t see your action as an insult. They see it as an invitation!”
Whoa.
Everybody within hearing range was smart enough not to laugh right out loud except Gomez, who doubled over with tears in his eyes.
Gomez had never been invited back to the CO’s house, which caused his wife Rita to pitch a shitfit every time the Nettleses had a party and they didn’t make the cut. That’s why she was so hopped up about this damn birthday party. Maybe they’d gone from the shitlist to the A list.
Rita and their two daughters had gone straight to the party from school. The party was going to be out around the pool in the CO’s backyard. Man. He could see it all now. All those screaming kids running around with ice cream and Oreos all over their faces. He hoped they’d be serving something besides Kool-Aid for the grown-ups. Maybe he’d stick a couple of his little airplane Stolis in his pockets for insurance.
Gomer, as his buddies on the base called him, had called his wife and explained that he might be a little late getting to the party. He was stopping by the house to finish wrapping a special present for little Cindy. That’s what he was doing now, at the workbench out in his small garage.
He placed a large box on the bench, opened it, and pulled out a teddy bear. One big teddy bear. The biggest, fluffiest one he could find at the base exchange. Thing had to be at least three feet tall. The tag around its neck said it was a Steiff, imported from Germany or somewhere. Expensive, but, hell, he could afford it. He was a goddamn millionaire!
The bear was snow white. And nice and plump, with a big fat belly too, which served his purposes. The idea for the birthday present had come to him over a few too many beers one recent afternoon in the PX. One minute he’d been mulling the whole thing over. The next minute he had it. It was just the way his brain worked. It was an ability that had brought him a long way from the barrios of Miami.
A long way from the gusanos of Little Havana, señor.
Los Gusanos. That’s what Fidel called his people. The Worms. Like his father and all his aunts and uncles. The ones who’d abandoned their homeland and tried to make a better life in America. The worms. He couldn’t decide who was worse, the fidelistas or the americanos. They were all shit, weren’t they? The Cuban people deserved better, he knew that much.
Castro? America? He could give a shit. That’s why he’d agreed to go along with the Million-Dollar Plan, right? No shit, Sherlock.
A toy. He’d been sitting there at the bar, and whammo! The idea had just popped into his brain. Poof! But not just a toy. A toy inside the home of Guantánamo’s commanding officer. A toy in the room of the CO’s little girl. It was perfect. He had actually started giggling when he thought of it, and his buddies at the bar had looked at him funny.
Damn, he was good, though. You had to admit.
He stopped giggling and started gulping. He’d noticed he was drinking a lot of beer lately. Beer and tranks and, at night, cold potato juice, Vitamin V, right out of the freezer. Then a couple more beers before bedtime. It seemed to help. Bam, he was out like a light. Gonzo. Up at six and he never missed a day of work, did he? Hell, he still pumped iron at the gym. He was doing just fine.
But Rita didn’t think so, obviously. She was ragging his ass day and night.
Still bugging him about the goddamn initials on his left hand. A tattoo, he’d told her. It just looked a little weird ’cause it had gotten infected. Then of course she has to know whose initials. Whose? Whose? Some little whore in Havana he’d gotten drunk with? Some AIDS-infected puta?
At that exact moment, a moment when most guys he knew would have lost it, what’s new, he’d nailed it. Just looked her right in the eye and hung it out there.
“MM. ‘My Mother,’” he said.
“Oh.”
“The one who died? Remember her?”
That shut her ass up. But she still never let up about the hootch. Afraid a little booze now and then was ruining his Navy career. As if it wasn’t ruined enough already. You didn’t exactly get promoted for spending a lot of consecutive nights in the brig.
What she didn’t know was that it didn’t goddamn matter! They were rich! That would shut her up on a permanent basis. He’d made them so goddamn rich they could thumb their noses at anybody in the whole stinkpot Navy.
Who wants to be a millionaire?
Rafael Goddamn Gomez, that’s who, and by God, he was one.
He even had this number he could call in Switzerland. He called it every day and gave the guy at the bank his secret account number. They’d give him the current balance in his secret numbered account. Money was growing like weeds over there. Hell, the interest alone was more than his shitty Navy salary.
Did he feel guilty taking all that money? Well, that was a good question. Did Uncle Sam feel guilty about the agony of his sainted mother in that hospital in Havana because of the goddamn U.S. embargo on medicines? That was another good question. How many innocent people had to die in pain before the idiots in Washington lifted that friggin’ blockade?
Guilty? Him?
“I don’t think so,” Gomer said aloud, looking out the greasy garage window at some little kids on their bikes. American kids with lots of Armour hot dogs and Diet Coke and individually wrapped American cheese in the fridge and eardrops in the medicine cabinet if their little ears got little friggin’ earaches. Hell, they even had a McDonald’s here.
Happy Meals! While everybody else in Cuba was going to bed hungry, these little rugrats were wolfing Happy Meals!
Guilty? Not in this friggin’ lifetime.
Gomer took out his pocketknife and flipped open the big blade. He held the teddy bear down on the worktable with one hand and slit it open along the seam under its arm with the other. White stuffing popped out and flew all over the bench. Christ. He looked at his watch again. Four-fifteen. How long did birthday parties generally last anyway?
It would look weird if he didn’t get over there pretty soon. The phone in the kitchen had been ringing off the hook and he was pretty sure it was Rita, wondering what the hell was keeping him. He was doing the best he could, wasn’t he? Providing for his family? There was a cold Budweiser sitting on the table that he didn’t remember bringing out to the garage. Weird. He took a gulp and felt better already. Beer was a goddamn miracle food and nobody ever gave it any credit.
Gomer walked over to his car and pulled the keys out of the ignition. It was an old car, a goddamn embarrassing heap to tell the truth. Well, his days of tooling around in crap like this would be over before you knew it. He had a stack of Corvette magazines under his bed to prove it.
He unlocked the trunk and opened it.
That’s where he’d hidden the package that Julio and Iglesias had given him in Miami. The one they’d wrapped up in his own friggin’ T-shirts and jockeys and put inside his own friggin’ suitcase! Which they’d given back to him in the coffee shop the day he’d agreed to go along with the Big Plan.
The package was in there, right under the spare tire. Since he was the only one who drove the damn car, he figured it’d be pretty safe under there. And there it was, too, right where he stowed it soon as he’d returned from stateside. Man. When you got it going right, you got it going right.
It took him a few minutes to get the package open. First there was all this goddamn Cuban newspaper wrapped in twine. And then all this goddamn bubbly stuff wrapped around the box. And you get that off, then it was goddamn shrink-wrapped inside! Christ. They certainly weren’t making it easy for him. He probably should have done this earlier in the day. Before he’d gone to work.
So he was a little late. Shoot him.
He was curious to see the thing itself. He ripped at the bubble stuff, just throwing it on the floor, trying to get to the box inside. Then he had it. The box was made of some kind of heavy black plastic. High-impact stuff. It had latches on all four sides. He flipped them open, easy.
It was like Christmas. What was in the box?
Oh. A thermos bottle.
That’s what it looked like. A silver thermos with some kind of foam packing all around it. And two other little gizmos packed in the foam right next to it. Everything wrapped in newspaper with some kind of damn Arabic writing on it.
He lifted the thermos out very carefully because he knew what it contained of course. El Motel de los Cucarachas, baby. He set it down on the workbench next to his beer. Careful. Don’t want to knock either of these two babies over! Then he pried the first gizmo out and placed it next to the thermos thing.
The gizmo was round, and threaded inside. And, man, it was heavy. He could see that the threads inside matched the threads outside the bottom of the thermos bottle. He had a vague recollection of the Cubans showing him a drawing, telling him to screw the little gizmo on the—the—what the hell had they called it, the canister.
That’s it. It was a canister, not a thermos bottle. He picked up the gizmo and screwed it to the bottom of the canister. The thing made a little electronic noise that surprised him, but it sounded like a happy noise. Like he’d done it right. Surprise, surprise.
Piece of cake. Birthday cake, he thought, and laughed out loud. You weren’t supposed to laugh at your own jokes, but still.
He turned the whole thing upside down and looked for the switch they’d told him about. They were very nervous that he’d forget the switch, he remembered that. But he hadn’t forgotten to remember, had he? Even though he’d had a little buzz on all day.
The switch was under a little clear red plastic cover that you had to slide back. So far, so good. He slid the cover back and flipped the switch. He took a swig of beer. Then he held the thermos up and looked at the gizmo end. There was a digital readout window with red letters that had now appeared.
He liked the look of the word he saw blinking there. It was just the kind of word that got a whup-ass alpha male like himself hyper-jazzed. In bright red letters it said:
ARMED
How awesome is that? Armed and extremely dangerous. He knew you weren’t supposed to laugh at your own jokes, but you had to chuckle at that one. Okay, now, by the book. Step one: Drink more beer. Step two: Put the thermos inside Mr. Bear, sew up his fat little tummy, and then wrap him all up in the pink paper and the big red ribbon. Put him very carefully into the car.
He’s shaking now, from the inside out. His whole body is thrumming like the frigging G-string on Axl Rose’s Fender Stratocaster.
Okay, the second little gizmo. What had they called it? A soda pop name. 7UP? No, RC. That was it. Leave the second gizmo, a little metal box with an antenna on it, right where it was, inside the black plastic box. He wouldn’t be needing that little item, not until he got The Call. Till then the box could go right back in the trunk under the spare.
Time to amscray on over to the Moonman’s birthday bash.
Easy as peas.
When you’ve totally and completely got your shit together and know exactly what you’re doing, that is.
16
“Nothing stirs the human blood quite like the sight of large dorsal fins knifing through the water,” Hawke said, pointing his sword down toward the sharks circling below. “Wouldn’t you agree, gentlemen?”
Grigory and Nikolai looked ready to vomit.
“Can anyone identify the var
ious species?” Hawke asked. “There are over three hundred and fifty, you know. Look. There’s a big bull for you. I saw a few tigers and even a white-tip earlier. Nasty fellows. Carnivores. Strictly the man-eating meat-and-potatoes type.”
The big Russian had started to edge his way gingerly back toward Hawke, who pointed his rapier directly at the man’s midriff. The man stopped short.
“Here’s my point, Nikolai,” Hawke said, pressing the sword’s sharp tip against the man’s stomach. “You want my hundred fifty million dollars. I want your nuclear sub. But I insist you give me the name of your last customer. All clear?”
Suddenly, Brian Drummond appeared at Hawke’s side carrying a large stainless steel pail. It was filled with two gallons of pulverized fish entrails, guts, gristle, and blood. What fishermen call chum.
“Ah,” Hawke said, “look, Nikolai. Here’s our steward Brian, who’s brought along his chum. Throw it overboard, please, Brian. Bit ripe for my taste.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.” Brian walked to the forwardmost part of the rail and flung the putrid contents of the pail overboard.
Seconds later the water below the extended pulpit was a churning pinkish froth as the sharks went into a feeding frenzy. The Russians looked down in horror.
“Speak up, boys,” Hawke said. “I’m running out of patience, and you are running out of time.” The two men started gibbering.
“They say revealing names is not only unprofessional; it’s suicide,” Congreve said. “To reveal any of their contacts’ identities would mean certain death for both of them.”
“Ask them what, at this point, they think not revealing those identities means.”
The petrified Golgolkin started talking very rapidly. Rasputin was cringing behind him, speechless with terror.
Congreve listened to all this and turned to Hawke.
“Here we go, Alex. He received a DHL parcel containing five million dollars cash and a telephone number,” Congreve translated. “When he called it, the party did not identify himself, but gave another number to call. After countless calls like this, he finally spoke to someone who claimed to be negotiating for a third party. This party wished to buy a Borzoi-class Soviet submarine. He was willing to pay the going price. He insisted on remaining anonymous.”
