Ted Bell - Hawke

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.

He waited, the Beretta in his hand hanging loosely at his side.

The big black iron gates swung silently inward just as Ross and his team arrived. There were no audible alarms. Stoke waited a minute, his eyes focused on the house, looking for any sign of activity inside. Then he turned to Amen.

“Amen, you the man. Now you sneak back on up to the bus and wait twenty minutes. We don’t show up, you go on home and get back in bed. We all thank you, brother.”

He put his hand on Amen’s shoulder. The man had been invaluable. Then he turned to the seven men who remained gathered at the gate. He felt dumb even asking the question, but under the circumstances, he had to do it. This was not exactly a highly trained SEAL squad that could perform like a bunch of deadly ballet dancers.

“Okay. Everybody know what they doin’?”

They all looked him in the eye and nodded. Good. They may not be cool, but they looked cool. He felt better. Anyway, what the hell. This one was for Alex. All the shit he’d been through, time he got a little back on the plus side.

“Let’s book,” he whispered, and stood back as they passed through the gates, fanned out into the pines, and started climbing. Stoke gave them twenty seconds and then he too started up the hill toward the house.

He started getting glimpses of the place through the trees. Huge. Towers, golden domes, damn house looked like Disney World might if it was on the Strip in Vegas. At the back of his mind was whether or not there was a silent alarm inside the house whenever the gate opened. That might make the whole thing way too interesting. Better not go down that road.

“Ross?”

“Copy.”

“Out of the woods?”

“Edge. We have an open courtyard with a circular drive. Thirty yards to the front door.”

“Sit tight. How’s it look?”

“Quiet.”

“Good quiet or bad quiet?”

“Good.”

Stoke came over a rise and saw his whol e squad crouching along the tree line , weapons ready. So far, nothing looked funky. He crept up and squatted beside Ross. He had the nylon climbing rope in his hands, swinging the hook and looking through the trees up at the third-floor balcony. Because of the thick woods, the house was still in shadow. But people might be waking up in there any minute now.

Middle of the man’s circular driveway was this splashing fountain, all lit up. Three cars in his driveway, all bright red. Two Humvees and what had to be one of those Ferrari Testosterones. Where the hell you gonna drive a Ferrari on this island? Can’t hardly keep a schoolbus on the road at more than twenty.

He looked at Ambrose and started undoing the snaps on his Kevlar vest.

“Since I’m going up the outside of the house, I won’t be needing this,” he said to Ambrose. “Best you wear it since you goin’ inside the front door.”

Ambrose looking at him like he’d lost his mind.

“I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that monstrosity,” the man said.

“You sure as hell might get caught dead you not wearing it, Constable. Now put it the fuck on.”

“I’m quite comfortable with what I’m wearing,” Ambrose said.

“Ain’t no time for this shit, Ambrose, know what I’m sayin’? Alex already lost Vicky. What I’m going to tell him I come back without his best friend, huh?”