Hawke

48

During the short, uneventful flight down to the Exumas, Alex had raised Sutherland on the radio. By the time he’d landed on the mirrored surface of the bay and taxied up to Blackhawke’s stern ramp, he knew most of what had occurred on Staniel Cay the day before.

The news was staggering.

At first hearing, Ross’s recount of the raid on Finca de las Palmas had been simply unbelievable. Alex had been incredulous, then shocked, then exhilarated by what they’d done. Only hours ago, he’d stared at the face of one of the three men who’d killed his parents. Now he learned that one of those men had already been captured and was, this very morning, being arraigned for murder in Nassau.

Hawke also had learned that, while the sunrise raid on Finca de las Palmas had been a success, there had been casualties. Two of Quick’s squad had suffered minor injuries. Ambrose had been hit, but not badly hurt. Most seriously wounded was the man who’d led the raid, Stokely.

As soon as Kittyhawke was safely secured, Hawke raced up to Blackhawke’s sickbay. Stokely was sitting up in bed, haranguing the doctor, when Hawke walked in. Clearly, Dr. Elke Nilsson was not accustomed to being admonished. A blond, blue-eyed Dane, she had signed on two years earlier, when Blackhawke spent one month in Copenhagen harbor on special assignment for the British government.

Alex and Ambrose had successfully broken up a Serbian diamond smuggling ring, flipping witnesses and suspects until they’d climbed the slippery ladder all the way to Milosevic himself. Slobo was a very busy boy. Alex, unfortunately, had gotten a pair of souvenirs of the exploit, courtesy of a Serb gunman.

Dr. Nilsson had come aboard to treat Alex, successfully extracting two bullets embedded in his right buttock, and she’d been hired on the spot. The fact that the new ship’s doctor bore a startling resemblance to her twin sister, the reigning Miss Denmark, had no bearing on Hawke s decision. He vetted her qualifications very carefully after hiring her.

Fortunately, she’d not yet learned enough colloquial English to understand the torrent of undeleted expletives that Stoke was hurling in her direction. The term “booty,” for instance, had not yet entered her lexicon.

“Stoke,” Hawke said, “what’s the problem?” For a man who’d taken a bullet the day before, Stokely looked to be in remarkably fine fettle.

“Problem?” Stoke said. “I’ll tell you what the goddamn problem is. Got her little booty parked on that chair right over there! The hell kind of doctor is she, anyway? Goddamn—”

Alex pulled up a chair by Stokes bed and sat down.

“Calm down, Stoke,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, hell, first she tells me how lucky I am the bullet didn’t hit nothing important. Nothing important? Hell, everything I got is important! Flesh, bones, arteries, all that shit. Not important, my ass.”

“Stoke, she’s just doing her job,” Alex said, smiling at Dr. Nilsson. She had her arms folded across her chest and had gone quite red in the face. At the moment, she was puffing at a charming little banglet of blond hair that kept falling across her face.

“Yeah, okay, then she tells me it ain’t nothing to worry about. ’Course it ain’t, for her ass! Ain’t her goddamn chest got shot, it’s mine! She got a helluva lot more chest to worry about than I do, don’t she? She—”

“Dr. Nilsson,” Alex said, interrupting Stokely, “I’m sure he didn’t mean … uh … perhaps you could leave us alone for—” He didn’t finish because the Danish doctor flung Stokely’s chart at the wall and stormed out of the room.

“Great,” Alex said. “See what you’ve done? Now I’m going to have to go find some way to apologize for you.”

“How you doin’, boss?” Stoke said, a wide grin on his face. “You heard all what happened? Five of the best, my brother!”

“I heard all about it from Ross,” Alex said, slapping Stoke’s palm smartly. “Unbelievable, Stoke.”

“Listen up, my man!” Stoke said. “We kicked us some serious ass yesterday. Serious ass.”

“I can never thank you enough, Stoke. I mean I—”

“Hell, ain’t me you should be thanking, boss. It’s your little buddy Ambrose. That man gets all the credit for this here collar. He been working that case for thirty years, you know. Never told you, did he?”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Alex asked.

“Been working on the case for thirty years. Ambrose.”

“Good Lord,” Hawke said, feeling all the breath go out of him. “I had no idea that Ambrose … none. I can’t imagine that he would …”

It was the first time Stoke had ever seen Alex Hawke speechless.

“Way he works, I guess. Low profile. Him and Ross flew over to Nassau and found some old retired cop who’d kept his file. Had the original police drawings of the three perps. Ambrose took ’em and blew the thing wide open.”

“Absolutely amazing,” Alex said, still stu

“Yeah, pretty good cop after all, ain’t he?” Stoke said, swinging his massive legs over the side of the bed. “Now, go sweet-talk your damn doctor and get her to leave my ass alone. I feel great. And I got a lot of shit to do, boss, got to fill out police reports and all that.”

“Stoke, lie down a minute and listen to me. I’m thankful you’re all right. Ever since I was told you were hurt, I’ve—Stoke, listen. I’m going to need your help. Now. You’re the only one who can help me.”

“All right, now you go

“You’re not going to believe this, but Vicky is alive.”

“What? What the hell you talkin’ about?”

“All I know right now is that somehow, incredible as it seems, Vicky is alive. She’s a hostage, but she’s alive.”

“Hostage of who?”

“The new Cuban government. She’s being held on an island called Telaraсa, just off the southwestern coast of Cuba. It’s a heavily fortified military base.”

“How you know all this, boss?”

“I just listened to this cassette,” Alex said, handing the cassette and a Sony Walkman to Stokely. “It was delivered along with Vicky’s locket to the Swiss embassy in Havana. You should listen to it, too. She quotes the headline from yesterday’s Miami papers. Vicky is alive, believe me.”

Stoke do

“Holy shit, she really is alive,” Stoke said. “That’s wonderful. Now what the hell they want Vicky for, boss?”

“The general believes he can coerce me to intercede on his behalf in Washington. Ridiculous, but there you have it. Unbelievably, Vicky is still alive. But not for long unless we can get her out of there, Stoke. Two big problems. One, she made it plain that any rescue attempt would result in her death along with all the hostages.”

“Just like them goddamn Colombians. I dealt with ’em up in the Medellin mountains. Always say they goin’ shoot the hostages first. And generally do. But we snatched a few live ones, boss.”

“How long does it take to put a hostage rescue plan like that in operation, Stoke?”

“Shit, boss, all depends,” Stoke said. “At a military installation? Five days, minimum. You got to recon the place down to the inch. Know where your hostage is located. Know where the windows are, what kind, how thick the doors and walls are, all that entry and egress kinda shit. You got to intercept all the communication going in and out, so you know who’s who, where they are, and what the hell is what.”

“Stoke,” Alex said, looking at his watch, “I said there were two problems. Here’s problem two, and it’s a big one. At some point, in less than twenty hours from now, the Americans are going to launch fighter squadrons from the John F. Ke