Hawke

There came then a sound, an awful sound, of steel on flesh and bone. Of steel through flesh and bone.

An enormous howl of pain exploded from deep in the general’s throat as he looked in horror at his bloody stump of an arm. On the floor at his feet, fingers twitching, lay his bloody hand still clutching the blue envelope.

There was an explosion then, and Hawke, still hanging by one hand from the chandelier, felt and heard a round from Juanito’s .357 whistle past his ear. He turned to see Stokely on his feet, bringing his hand down with tremendous force on the Cuban’s extended forearm. There was another crack from the muzzle of the gun and then the crack of Juanito’s breaking bones.

Hawke released his grip on the swinging chandelier and dropped to the floor.

He saw that Juanito’s gun had gone flying and turned his attention back to the general. He had sunk to his knees, holding his bloody stump against his chest, taking thin, shallow breaths. Deathly pale, head down, the man was clearly in shock.

Alex lifted the thick black ponytail. Then he laid the razor-sharp edge of his heavy blade across the tendons of the man’s exposed neck. Then he raised it and—

“Boss, no!” he heard Stoke shouting from somewhere. He’d lost track of time and place. He knew he had some unfinished business here, something to do with the sword in his hand. Oh, yes. He knew what he had to do.

The machete flashed in the wildly swinging candlelight.

Hawke stopped the deadly descent of the blade inches from the general’s neck.

And emerged from his waking dream.

“No,” he finally whispered, looking down at the man kneeling before him. He bent down then and pressed his lips near his ear. “Listen to me, you disgusting piece of human rubbish. You killed my parents the day after my seventh birthday. For the rest of my life, I’m going to visit you on the a

He put his boot against the man’s back and shoved him forward. The general came to a rest with his face mere inches away from his own severed hand. His dull eyes stared at the hand, unblinking.

“This belongs to my father,” Alex said, and ripped the blue envelope from the dead hand.

The general spoke, a soft guttural moan. Hawke bent to hear his words.

“I didn’t hear that,” Alex said.

“I had your mother twice, you know,” Manso croaked.

“What did you say?” Alex said, bending closer toward him.

“Twice! Yes!” Manso said, in a guttural whisper. “Two times I had your whore of a mother. Once before and once after. And you know what, amigo?”

Alex raised the blade, his face contorted with rage.

“She was better the second time. After she was dead.”

The blade came down with such fury that it clanged furiously on the marble floor as it severed Manso’s head. Alex watched the head skittering across the floor, then looked at the bloody blade in his hand in wonder.

“Guards! Guards!” Juan de Herreras shouted. He charged across the room to where Hawke was kneeling beside his headless brother. In a blind rage, he roared and bellowed and flung himself through the air. Alex saw him coming, tried to roll away and ward him off with the upraised machete, but the man’s eyes were full of a dark red mist and he did not see the blade until it was too late.

Juanito screamed, driving himself forward, further impaling himself on Alex’s machete. The blade soon had pierced his abdomen, gone completely through the man, its point visibly emerging from his broad back. Alex rolled away from under the dead weight and got to his knees.

“Behind the desk! Now!” Stoke shouted. Alex saw him rolling across the floor toward the desk as the Chinese guards burst through the door. Alex heard the staccato sound of the Tsao-6 machine guns and saw splinters and fragments from the heavy oval desk flying even as he rolled behind it.

“Christ!” Hawke said to Stoke. “I thought there were only six of them! It’s the whole bloody Red Army!”

Guards continued to stream into the glass walled structure and direct fire into the general’s desk. Huge chunks were flying off now. It would not take long for the thing to disintegrate.

Stoke saw Juanito’s .357 was lying some five feet beyond the desk. If he could reach it—a guard saw his arm stretch out for the gun and there was a loud thwap as bullets kicked the pistol beyond any possibility of getting his hands on it.

In a matter of seconds the guards would realize that the two men taking cover behind the desk were completely unarmed.

“Got any ideas?” Alex asked Stoke as they huddled under the withering fire.

“Yeah, I guess it’s too late to change the beneficiary on my life insurance,” Stoke said. “Everything’s going to my ex-wife.”

“Well, we could always just shake hands and say—”

Suddenly, there was a huge muffled explosion that shook the glass structure and everything in it.

57

The marble floor heaved up and felt as if it might buckle. The automatic weapons fire stopped as the guards dove to the floor. It felt like an earthquake but sounded like thousands of pounds of TNT. The giant chandelier swung crazily from the top of the dome, creating bizarre patterns of light within the curved glass walls.

There was an ominous crack from above, and Alex looked up.

Emanating from the fixture that secured the chandelier, a spider-web of fissures started to spread in every direction across the glass ceiling above them.

Thin sprays of water started erupting everywhere. You could almost hear the tiny creakings of each little fissure zigzagging across the dome.

“What the devil—” Alex said, looking at Stoke.

“Your new friend Boomer,” Stoke said. “His diversionary tactic, remember? Get everybody safely off the beach? Boomer must have just blown the satchel charges of C-4 and limpet mines that Bravo attached beneath the submarine’s hull. The main shock wave from that explosion should reach upriver to this grotto in about, oh, three seconds—One!”

Hawke and Stokely sprinted around opposite ends of the desk, smashing through the dazed guards just getting to their feet, headed towards the open door. They saw the massive chandelier hurtling to the floor and dodged it by inches.

“Two!” Stoke screamed, as they dove through the door.

A few of the guards were raising their weapons to fire.

“Three!” They were through!

Behind them the unbearable screeching sound of all that glass finally giving way put paid to any notion of the guards bringing down the two men. Alex, in desperation, tried to slam the wooden door shut behind them, but it was too late. A wall of water was already pouring through the doorway, threatening to overwhelm them. They flew down the narrow stone steps, slipping and sliding all the way to the bottom.

The onrushing tide of water now flooded down the stairwell and into the little foyer with the pretty Picasso. There were pillows, documents, all ma

“Ain’t no time to wait for that little Chinaman,” Stoke said. “Look, here’s a door!” The door was invisible, save a thin seam that outlined it. Miraculously, Stoke had seen it, and they slammed into it, splintering it open.

Another stairway, seemingly for service staff, led down into darkness.

Again they descended, the flood of water on their heels, and found another door at the bottom. “Ready?” Stoke said, and they put their shoulders to the wood, breaching it.

This was good. The red-carpeted hallway that led to the main stairway Which way? Left, Alex decided suddenly. “This way!” he shouted, and Stokely followed. “This is it!” Alex cried. “Hurry!”