by Ted Bell
“You’ll need a gun, I daresay.”
Hawke smiled.
“You know what my American pal Stokely Jones, Jr. always says when someone tells him something as obvious as that?”
“I do not.”
“I am a gun.”
CHAPTER 13
THE PHONE RANG.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Hawke waited.
It did not ring again.
Game on.
Hawke, seated in his armchair facing the door, closed his eyes and concentrated on sensory input. He listened intently, heard nothing amiss. He rested his chin in one hand, periodically sipping his cold coffee and staring into the pitch-black night beyond his windows. The crackling fire he’d lit earlier now provided barely enough heat to reach his bones.
The minutes crawled by. Interminable . . . He fantasized briefly about a short rum and a cigarette but forced himself to concentrate. See, hear, smell, feel . . .
Some fluting bird call in the night startled him awake. He sat forward and looked over at the old station clock hung crookedly above the bar. Three hours had somehow passed. It was almost midnight.
Bloody hell. He must have dozed off, despite all the coffee. The log fire had long gone out and the room felt damp and bone cold. He could see white plumes of warm breath when he exhaled. Beyond his walls, the weather was deteriorating.
The wind was up. Shrieking under the eaves and down the chimney. On the seaward side of the house he could hear the muffled echo of the rolling sea booming on the rocks far below.
That cold front he’d seen had moved in over the island after sunset; now it seemed like it had been raining all evening. The temperature had plummeted and palm fronds and banana leaves rustled and scratched against the windows. All the old wooden shutters had been made fast against the approaching storm. And any random intruder.
There was only one visible way inside, and that was through the front door.
He sat forward once more, listening.
He had heard another kind of noise this time, low and distant. An automobile, its tires hissing on the rain-wet tarmac ribbon of the coast road. He got up from his chair facing the front door. He moved quickly from one to another of the northern exposure windows, all facing the solid wall of banana trees and the coast road beyond the groves.
Turn left out of his drive and you would eventually wind your way along the coast and reach the Royal Navy Dockyards. Turn right and you had a half hour’s drive until you reached the Bermuda airport. The car seemed to be approaching from the right.
The sound of hissing tires on asphalt suddenly ended. The driver had turned off the main road and onto the sandy lane that led to Hawke’s door.
Peering out into the darkness of the groves, he could see distant flashes, hazy arrows of light in the rain-drenched night. The flashes soon resolved into steady twin beams of yellowish illumination. Periodically, they would flare up and spike the blackness deep within the impenetrable banana groves. He could see the dense trees out there, their broad green leaves waving wet and storm-tossed like the sea.
He was on full alert now.
The wavering headlamp beams would disappear for a few seconds, and then reappear after a few seconds closer still, meandering through the groves, stabbing through the trees as if reaching out for him.
Each time a little closer to his cottage . . .
. . . came the spider to the fly.
But the fly had no fear.
Moments like these were what Alex Hawke had lived and breathed for all his life. He was naturally good at war. His father had always said that he was a boy born with a heart for any fate. And the fate he’d been born for was war. He felt the reassuring weight of his weapon on his right side. A big six-shot revolver, the most reliable weapon in his limited arsenal here on Bermuda.
He was wearing loose-fitting black Kunjo pants from Korea. Strapped to his right thigh was a .357 Colt Python revolver in a nylon swivel holster. It was his “Dirty Harry Special”: the six-inch barrel, with six magnum parabellum rounds loaded in the cylinder. He wore a black Royal Navy woolen jumper, four sizes too big. It came almost to his knees, giving him freedom of movement and concealing his weapon. He’d cut a hole in the right side pocket so he could keep his hand on his gun without it being seen.
He was barefoot despite the cold tiles beneath his feet . . .
Hawke padded silently across the dark room, returning to the wooden armchair facing the door. He sat down and waited. He looked at the clock again. Only eight minutes had passed since Ambrose called him with the agreed upon signal. Time was elongated, stretching every minute into two or three . . .
A sudden flash of light stretched across the ceiling.
Outside, he heard the automobile roll to a stop some twenty or thirty feet from the entrance.
Automobile tires made a loud crunching sound on the crushed shell drive leading up to Teakettle Cottage. A primitive alarm system, perhaps, but it worked. He jumped up and went to the window again, pulling back the curtain just as the headlamps were extinguished.
A black sedan, undistinguished, a cheap rental from the airport.
Hello, Spider.
Because of the car’s misty, rain-spattered windows, he couldn’t see inside the vehicle. Only the dark silhouette of a large man behind the wheel. He waited for the car’s interior lights to illuminate. It remained dark inside. There was no movement at all from the driver and the four doors remained closed.
He went back to his chair, sat, and waited in the dark for a knock on the heavy cedar door.
It didn’t come.
The wind had suddenly died down. The cottage was stone silent save for the ticking of the clock above the bar. No noise or movement inside, nor any noise or movement outside. He tried to imagine what Spider might be doing out there. Just sitting in his car, trying to smoke out his prey? Or trying, somewhat successfully, to psyche his opponent out?
Enough of this, he thought, reaching for his weapon. He’d go outside and confront the man there.
He was about to get out of his chair when his thick wooden front door was suddenly blown inward and off its hinges by a thunderous explosion, a blast of sound and light sufficiently powerful that it blinded him momentarily and disoriented him. His chair was knocked backward and he hit the floor hard after upending a very solid oak table.
He was just vaguely aware that his heavy front door was hurtling through space directly toward him when it crashed against the wall behind him, a few feet above his head, and splintered into vicious flying spikes.
He got to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. He was shaken, perhaps, but seemingly unscathed. The room was full of smoke and whirling debris; javelin sharp splinters of wood littered the floor.
“Hello, Hawke,” a rumbling voice from within the clouds of smoke said.
The man was suddenly standing in the doorway, filling the frame. Hawke would have known that voice anywhere. Gravelly, edgy, and deep, meant to intimidate. Hawke looked down at his clothes, casually dusting himself off with the back of his hand.
“Next time, try knocking, Spider,” Hawke said with a thin smile.
“Right. I’ll try and remember that.”
All in black, Payne was wearing full night combat fatigues, even a helmet with night vision goggles. He had an M4A1 assault rifle slung from his shoulder and what looked like a Sig Sauer 9mm sidearm on his hip. Someone he knew on this island had access to the good stuff. And had provided the assassin with full-bore weapons and gear. Clearly, this was not a social call.
“But then again,” Spider added, “there won’t be any next time for you and me, old buddy.” He took a few steps forward into the room.
“No, I don’t suppose that there will be,” Hawke said, righting his chair. “I’d invite you in, but you’re already in.”
Hawke r
ealized his voice showed a lot more confidence than he was feeling right now. He was seriously disadvantaged, clearly having made the old mistake of bringing a metaphorical knife to a legitimate gunfight. Definitely outgunned here, the big Python suddenly feeling more like a peashooter. His mind went into overdrive. He needed a new plan. Somehow, he had to remove himself from this confrontation and hit the reset button.
Had to keep him talking. Right now Hawke was in mortal danger, and both men knew it.
“Sorry about your old buddy Hook,” Payne said, “I figured I might hear from you when you heard about the old man’s accident.”
“The accident.”
“Yeah, well.”
“So you came here to kill me, too. You think I threw you under the bus for that fiasco in Paris? Nothing to do with it, Spider. I think you got a raw deal. We all did. Everything you did was by the book. Strictly legal operation. I know a lot of other agents who are still pissed at the way you were treated. I’m on your side.”
“Save it, Alex. I was on North Haven. I went back for the funeral just to see what I could see. What I saw is you and your bosom buddy Brick Kelly huddled up at a back table at the Nebo Lodge. Didn’t take much to figure out what you were talking about. Then I get a phone call from you out of the blue. That’s why I’m here, Lord Hawke. Preemptive strike. You know the drill.”
“Really? Going to be tough to make this one look accidental, Spider, my bloody door blown off the hinges and all . . .”
Hawke had both hands in his pockets under the cover of his sweater. He surreptitiously moved his right hand to the Colt Python’s grips. He carefully swiveled the holster upward . . . easing the hammer back to the cocked position . . . finger applying light pressure to the trigger . . . all without Spider seeing a thing.
“I don’t give a shit anymore, Alex. Kelly will have the whole goddamn CIA on my ass now. But I plan to stay alive as long as I can. And take as many of those Agency assholes with me as I can. You understand that kind of thinking, right? Hell, I can see you doing the same damn thing if you got screwed by MI6 the way I did by CIA. Tell me you wouldn’t, because I know—”
Hawke fired twice, right through the bulky sweater.
The heavy mag rounds caught Payne high on his right side. He spun around in a mad pirouette and staggered backward through the doorway and into the rain. At the same time, he brought up the muzzle of his automatic weapon and squeezed off a long burst, the staccato rattle deafening inside the small cottage, bullets spraying everywhere.
Hawke dove behind the upended table. The high-powered rounds splintered bits and chunks of wood all around him. Couldn’t remain here a second longer . . . his cover was disintegrating before his eyes.
He popped up and fired again.
He missed high and left, but caused Spider to duck down, move sideways on the front steps and take cover outside behind the exterior wall.
Hawke turned and bolted down the hallway leading to the seaward part of the house, toward his bedroom. Despite all the warning signs, he’d seriously underestimated his enemy. Cocky, that was the only word for his stupid behavior.. And that’s precisely how you got yourself killed in this business.
He needed a few precious seconds to think his way out of that very likely scenario.
CHAPTER 14
HAWKE DASHED INSIDE his room.
Spider was right on his heels, pounding down the long hallway after him.
Inside the small bedroom, Hawke whirled around and slammed the heavy wooden door behind him. He double-bolted it and then slid his large mahogany dresser in front of it, thinking about how this could play out, trying to see it in his mind.
Spider had come prepared for all-out war. He was wearing ceramic body armor plates inside his combat jumpsuit. In order to survive, Hawke had to put a round between one of the seams between the armor plates . . . and hope to hit a vital organ.
And how the hell did you do that staring down the barrel of a roaring machine gun throwing lead at you? He looked around the room, trying to subdue the panic that was creeping around the edges on his conscious mind . . . A weapon? Some way out of this . . . had to be!
He spotted one of Pelham’s round needlepoint rugs in the center of the bedroom floor.
There might be a way . . .
His bedroom was directly above the sea. A long time ago he’d had the crazy notion of installing a fireman’s pole beneath his bedroom floor. His initial idea had been to use it to slide down the twenty or thirty feet to the narrow lagoon that lay just beneath his room. He’d envisioned it as a great way to wake up each morning. Slide naked from his bed, grab the pole, and wake up in the clear cold seawater. The novelty had soon worn off. . . . but the pole was still there!
He stepped to the center of his small room. Lifted up the circular rug with a sailboat on it. Beneath it was the round hatch he’d disguised to match the rest of the wooden flooring. Never thinking he’d need an escape hatch but just have it, a secret like a bookcase that swung open to reveal a hidden passage.
He hooked his finger under an edge and lifted.
Spider was hammering on the door with his fist, kicking it hard with his heavy boots. Telling Hawke it was over, useless, time to die. It would be the work of a few moments before the powerful brute gained entry.
Yes! Twenty feet directly below Hawke’s room lay the small enclosed lagoon that opened out to the open sea. He could see the gleaming pole disappearing into the dark waves below, frothing up against the steep rocky walls.
Angered, Spider was firing his weapon at the door, splintering the timbers. Hawke knew he didn’t have long—
He jumped, grabbed the pole and slid down, lowering himself just a couple of feet. Then he reached up and pulled the hatch cover with its attached rug back into place. Even if Spider got inside the room now, well, he’d just bought himself a little time . . . a minute, maybe . . .
Go!
He let go of the hatch cover and let himself slide. . . .
The cold dark water shocked him, pumping even more adrenaline into his system. He clawed at the water, kicking his feet as hard as he could, and swam submerged out the inlet and into open sea.
He gulped air as his head popped up above the surface, expecting to see the cottage up on the rocky promontory. Everything was black! No horizon, no landmarks. He whirled around, disoriented, looking for the shoreline. There! The misty garden lights up on his terrace! He started clawing water, swimming as hard as he could for land.
A minute later he reached a set of wide stone steps carved into the rock that ascended all the way up to his broad terrace.
He pulled his weapon from its holster and raced to the top, taking the steps three at a time.
There he was!
Through an exterior window, he’d caught a glimpse of Spider Payne. He was still out in the hall, slamming his big shoulder against the splintering bedroom door over and over again, screaming loudly in frustration. Hawke sprinted across the terrace, slid open one of the doors, and stepped inside.
The hallway leading to his room was to his immediate left. The house was still pitch-black. He could hear the door begin to give way . . . Spider, illuminated only be the light from within the room, was seconds away from entering.
Moving as quietly as he could, he entered to the darkened hall and paused.
He knew he’d only get one shot at this.
He felt along the wall with his left hand, searching for the overhead hall light switch. Spider was almost completely through the bedroom door . . .
Hawke raised the Colt revolver, sighting on Spider’s broad back as he paused to take a breath.
Then he flipped the light switch.
The corridor was instantly flooded with bright incandescent light.
“Spider!” he cried out, the gun now extended with two hands in front of him, standing braced in a shooter’s stanc
e.
The big man whirled to face him, his own face a mask of shock and rage. Hawke saw the muzzle of the man’s assault rifle come up, Spider already firing rounds, zinging off the tile floor as he raised the automatic weapon toward his enemy hoping to cut him to ribbons.
Hawke fired the Python.
Once into the center of Spider’s chest, hoping to catch the seam and his heart.
And once into his right eye.
The man’s skull was slammed back against the door. He was still somehow struggling to lift his weapon as he fired blindly . . . rounds still ricocheting off the tile floor as the life drained out of him.
And then and there Spider Payne breathed his last, sliding slowly to the floor, leaving a bloody smear on Alex Hawke’s shattered bedroom door, collapsing into a shapeless black heap of useless flesh and bone.
Hawke went to him, knelt down and pressed two fingers to his carotid artery, just to make sure.
No pulse.
The rogue was finally dead.
CHAPTER 15
“HULLO, AMBROSE,” HAWKE said, answering his mobile a few moments later.
“Well, since it appears to be you on the phone, one can only deduce that you survived the encounter.”
“Excellent deduction, Constable. One of your best.”
“Do you require any assistance, by chance?”
“That would be nice. Where are you? Enjoying a quiet pipe by the fireside somewhere?”
“Hardly. I’m standing about twenty feet outside what used to be your front door, waiting in the pouring rain for all the shooting to die down in there.”
“Ah, you’re here, then. Well. Do come in, won’t you? Doors open, as you can see,” Hawke said. “Meet me at the Monkey Bar, will you? We would seem to owe ourselves a libation, some sort of restorative, I suppose. What’s your pleasure, old warrior?”
“A gin and bitters should do nicely. Boodles, if you have it.”
“I certainly do.”
