Hawke

The bus crested a hill, banged down hard, and Amen, sitting up front, said, “This’d be a fine place to stop, Mr. Congreve. This piney wood right here goes on down to the wall at the back of the house.”

Ambrose mashed the brakes and the bus skidded to a stop at the edge of the pine forest. He pulled up the hand brake and turned around in his seat.

“This is where we disembark, gentlemen,” Ambrose said. He pushed the handle that opened the door. “Check your weapons and ammunition. Stay low and stay silent. We will descend this hill in single file and regroup at the wall to the rear of the house. Mr. Jones will lead us in from there.”

Mr. Jones? Nobody ever called him that. Still, man sounds like he knows what he’s doing, Stoke thought. That was good. Rest of these guys, well, he wasn’t used to working with amateurs. This Tommy Quick, of course, now he was a comfort. Had his Remington 700 sniper rifle with a bigass Star-Tron Mark scope on it. Guy was the best sniper in the whole U.S. Army. He could definitely come in handy. Still, this was definitely not your split-second-timing SEAL-type deal.

Hell, hadn’t even had time to recon the place before going in. This would be a first, going in blind. Gain experience, that much was for sure.

“Lock and load, ladies,” Stoke said, getting out of his seat and making his way to the front of the bus. He’d made sure the whole team was equipped with basically the same gear he had, minus the three walkie-talkies. “We going in to get this bad boy, truss him up like a Christmas turkey, and deliver his ass on a platter.”

They moved swiftly down through the pines, their footsteps deadened by a thick carpet of pine needles. Stoke took the lead, Congreve was safely in the middle, and Sutherland, the trailman, brought up the rear. It took less than five minutes to reach the ten-foot stone wall that rimmed the perimeter of Don Carlo’s estate.

Stoke held up his closed fist and the little band huddled around him. It was still pretty dark, but not for long. They had to move quickly. Stoke divided them into two squads. A Squad, led by Tom Quick, would go around the north side of the property. B Squad, led by Stoke, with Ross, Ambrose, and Amen right behind him, would go south.

Stoke would take out any guards at the front gate.

“Test, test, test,” Stoke said into the tiny lip mike that he, Ross, and Quick were now wearing. “Everybody copy?”

“Loud and clear,” Ross said.

“Ditto,” Quick said. “Five by five.”

Stoke looked at his watch and said, “A Squad, go!” Quick and his five men took off in a low, crouched run.

Stoke watched them disappear around the curved wall and then started with his team around the south side. Halfway, they came to a set of heavy wooden gates. He held up his hand and motioned for Amen to come forward.

“What’s this for?” Stoke whispered to Amen, pointing at the gates.

“Way he gets his cars in and out,” Amen said. “Two big Jeeps.” Stoke pondered that a minute. Besides the bus, Stoke had only seen three or four cars on the whole island. All beat-up little taxis.

“Good,” he said. “How much farther around to the guardhouse?”

“Another hundred yards, mebbe,” Amen said under his breath.

“Tap me on the shoulder just before we get within sight of it, you understand?” Amen nodded.

“Hey, Ambrose,” Stoke said, “you cool back there?”

“Never cooler,” Ambrose said, smiling. Had to give the man credit, he wasn’t lying. Seemed like the man had balls, after all.

Stoke hand-signaled his little team and they began to move forward behind him. Just when they had the ocean in sight, Amen tapped him on the shoulder, and Stoke dropped to his knees. The team came to a halt behind him. He pulled the Beretta from his thigh holster and fitted a silencer on the barrel. Then he crawled forward on knees and elbows, the pistol out in front of him.

Two minutes later, he was back.

“No sign of a guard in the window I can see,” he whispered. “Just a blue TV light flickering. First time I ever seen a damn TV satellite dish on a guardhouse.”

“Probably asleep, though,” Amen whispered in his ear. “I’ll go check. Guards all know me. If he’s awake, I’ll just hand him these. I do it all the time. Keeps peace in the family.” He pulled a pint of Jamaican rum and a big hand-rolled spliff of marijuana out of his pants pocket.

“My brother,” Stoke whispered to Amen. “You good, you very good.”

Two minutes later, Amen came crabbing back along the wall, smiling his ass off. Stoke could already pick up the sweet smell of ganja drifting around from the guardhouse.

“What up?” Stoke asked Amen.

“One guy only in there,” Amen said. “Usually, they two. Awake. Got headphones on, listenin’ to his Marley tunes, watchin’ TV. Gave me a big smile.”

“Weapon?”

“Always keeps a machine gun layin’ cross his lap.”

“Quick?” Stoke said.

“Copy,” he heard in his headphones.

“You guys in position?”

“Roger that.”

“Okay,” Stoke said to his team. “Nobody move. I’ll be right back.” He took off in a low crouch.

The guardhouse had three windows. One facing the ocean, two on either side. Long as he stayed low and quiet, no way the guy could pick him up. In seconds, Stoke was crouched just below the north-facing window. A cloud of pungent smoke floated out above his head. Beretta in his hand, he suddenly popped up and looked in the window, not four feet from the guy.

“Boo,” Stoke said, smiling.

The guard looked up, big case of wide-eyes, the gun in his lap already coming up.

“Bad idea,” Stoke said.

The Beretta spit twice and the man’s shirt puffed inward and then outward as blood gushed from the sucking wound made by two shots to the heart. The man pitched forward from his stool. Stoke reached through the window and grabbed his gun just before it clattered to the stone floor.

He saw an old green metal panel on the wall. Lots of toggle-type switches. Not marked in any way. Shit. No way to know which was which. He saw Amen and Ambrose peeking around the corner of the wall and motioned them forward.

“Quick?” Stoke said into his mike. “Copy?”

“Copy,” he heard in his phones.

“Guard is down at the front gate. Looks clear. Let’s link. We’re going in.”

“Twenty seconds,” Quick said.

Stoke turned and handed the guard’s machine gun to Ambrose.

“We might come out this way, Constable,” Stoke said. “We might not. But if we do, you got a great field of fire to cover our retreat from this guardhouse window.” Man looked like he didn’t find this plan agreeable.

“Listen to this very carefully,” Ambrose said. “I’ve been working on this bloody case for thirty years. I’m going into that house and arrest that man either with you or without you.”

Stoke looked at him for a long second, sizing him up.

“Let’s go get him then, Constable,” he said. He leaned back inside the guardhouse. The man on the floor was dead. He looked at the corroded control panel. Some of the switches had to be wired to some security system inside. Which ones? He felt a sudden heat on his shoulder and looked up. Goddamn. The sun had just broken the horizon. Way past time to move.

“Amen, do you believe in God?” Stoke said.

“I believe in Jah,” Amen said. “Jah soon come.”

“Thing is, this Jah of yours, he goin’ to come a whole lot sooner you don’t tell me the God’s honest truth right now, my brother. Ready? Which one of those switches opens the gate? And which one shuts down the alarm system?”

“One on de far left is de gate. Middle one is the main alarm.”

“You understand whose side you’re on here, don’t you, my brother?”

“I do, sir.”

Stoke reached in and flipped the middle switch and the one on the left. If he heard any bells and whistles, he was prepared to shoot Amen on the spot, which he really didn’t want to do, as he’d come to really sort of like the old coot.