Hawke

“Good fellow. Look at you, Sniper, you’ve grown fat. What have they been feeding you?”

“I saw him eat an entire tin of Beluga last evening,” Ambrose said.

“Well, he deserves it. Don’t you, Sniper? Speaking of which, I think you deserve something as well, Constable.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You’ve had enough excitement for one voyage. While Stokely and I are gone, I want you and Sutherland to go somewhere and relax. Perhaps play a little golf. I know how you love it and I feel guilty keeping you cooped up on the boat for so long.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alex,” Ambrose said. “I’ve enjoyed every second of it! Bloody marvelous expedition. One of our best!”

“I insist, old thing. There must be someplace here in these islands with a golf course worthy of your mighty swing and delicate touch around the greens.”

“Well, in that case, there is one course that Sutherland and I have been looking into. On the odd chance that we might have a little free time, of course.”

“Well, there you have it. Pack up your bags and sticks and go enjoy yourselves. It will do you a world of good. Send me the bill.”

“Very generous, Alex, I must say.”

“Nonsense. What’s the name of the course, by the way? The Lyford Cay Club in Nassau, I imagine.”

“No, no. A lovely old course down in the Dominican Republic, actually. Blessed with a rather poetic name. It’s called Dientes de Perro.”

“Translation?” Alex asked, getting up and stretching his legs.

“I’ll send you a postcard.”

“Well, keep your head down, old boy. Godspeed.”

Ambrose watched his friend saunter away, the parrot bobbing on his shoulder. The tune Hawke was whistling floated back to Ambrose. It had to be thirty years old, but he recognized the lovely melody instantly.

It was the famous theme song from Lady Catherine Hawke’s last film, Southern Belle, the marvelous story of Abigail Lee, a beautiful woman who is killed defending her Low Country South Carolina plantation against a marauding Union army. Coming back from the dead as a ghost, she bedevils and haunts the rapacious Union general who now occupies her beloved ancestral Barnwell Island home.

In a most surprising way, Ambrose thought, sipping his Bloody Mary, Alex Hawke seemed to be coming back from the dead, too. For the first time since he’d met the boy, long ago on Greybeard Island, he could actually say that Alexander Hawke was on the road to peace.

49

Alex banked hard left, and Kittyhawke slipped down through vast canyons of sunlit clouds.

“Is that it, Stoke?” he asked.

There was a narrow slash in the undulating green canopy of trees below. A couple of hundred yards wide and about half a mile long, this gash in the jungle was definitely not on the chart of Martinique spread across Hawke’s knees.

Stoke cocked his head toward the window and said, “That’s it, all right, Bossman. Home of Thunder and Lightning itself. That hangar down there, covered with vines and shit, is where they keep the C-130. Big black mother.”

Alex came around and lined up on the end of the jungle runway, lowered his flaps and got his retractable wheels down. No tower, no air boss scrutinizing his approach and the runway wasn’t even bobbing up and down. Easy peas, as they used to say during his Dartmouth days.

Only when a couple of Jeeps emerged from the trees and raced down the runway to an apron at the far end did he see any signs of life. Once there, both Jeeps turned so that they were facing the incoming airplane and turned their headlights on.

“Means it’s okay to land,” Alex heard Stoke say in his headphones, and he eased the little seaplane in over the treetops and dropped in for a three-point landing.

Ten minutes later, Alex and Stokely were in the back of one of the two Jeeps, bouncing along a dirt road that snaked upwards through the jungle. It was good Stoke had asked for two Jeeps. His SEAL toys filled up most of the second one.

“Wait till you see this joint,” Stoke said. “It is something else.”

Alex had been enjoying the riot of color everywhere he looked. It was like racing through a tu

He was finding the humid heat of Martinique deliciously lush after the dry, sparse vegetation of the Exumas and Bahamas.

“It’s an old fort,” Stoke said. “Place was falling down years ago, when the boys first came down here and bought it. But the troops spent all their spare time fixing it up real good. Look up there, see it?”

The Jeep came over a rise, and Alex saw the small fortress sitting atop one of the many green hills that paraded down to the sea. It looked to be late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, most probably English, Hawke thought, judging by the design of the crenellated battlements and guard towers at the four corners.

Colonized by France in 1635, Martinique had remained a French possession, save three brief periods of foreign occupation by Britain. The old fort was incredibly sited and gleaming white in the morning sunlight. Stoke had not overstated the facts, Alex saw as they drew near, the fortress was indeed something else.

“See all them shiny ca

“Yes,” Hawke said. “Magnificent.”

“Well, guess what,” Stoke said. “They all work. Only fire ’em on special occasions, birthdays and Bastille Days and shit like that. But you should hear those mofos roar. Man, you talk about thunder and lightning!”

“What do they call the fort, Stoke?”

“Well, it had some fancy French name when they first bought it, but the boys renamed it. It’s officially called Fort Whupass now.”

Hawke laughed. “Fort Whupass,” he said, loving the sound of it.

The fellow driving their Jeep, a Martiniquais, who had forearms like lodgepoles sticking out of his olive-green T-shirt, turned around and smiled at him. “Oui, c’est зa! Bienvenue а Fort Whupass, mes amis,” he said in his Creole patois.

“Merci bien,” Hawke replied, looking up into the trees. “Il fait tres beau ici.”

“Oui, merveilleux.”

“Vous кtais ici, maintenant?”

“Non, pour la journйe seulement.”

“Ah, oui, alors —”

The Jeep finally emerged from the dense jungle, and Hawke could see the sandy road ahead, climbing up to the wall of the fortress. He was astounded to see a large rectangular platform being lowered as the Jeep drew near.

“A drawbridge?” Hawke asked, incredulous.

“Damn right, a drawbridge,” Stoke said. “Ain’t regulation without one. And a moat, too, full of big-ass alligators. You going to have a fort you got to do it right! Besides, these boys don’t want nobody sneaking up on they ass.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Stoke looked at him for a beat and then said, “Well, maybe about the alligators. There is a moat, though. Big-ass moat.”

“A moat, Stoke? In Martinique?”

“Well, no, ain’t really no moat either. But they always talkin’ ’bout puttin’ one in. Can’t ever have enough security when every terrorist organization on earth hates your ass. Boys done moved three times in the last fifteen years.”

They were just passing under a tree and Hawke glanced up to see a man in jungle camo perched on a high branch. He was cradling a high-powered rifle with a scope. The sniper saw Hawke staring and waved.

The two Jeeps barreled across the lowered platform, which Hawke saw actually did cover a deep ravine, and screeched to a halt inside the open stone-paved courtyard. There was conspicuous lack of activity inside the fort, just a few dogs sleeping in the shade of a four-story structure of whitewashed stone.