Ted Bell - Hawke

Ambrose led them out into the hallway and they headed for the stairs. Ross was in front with the Streetsweeper, supporting Stoke. Next, the prisoner, with Ambrose’s pistol jammed in his back. Ambrose could tell the firelight below was a lot less intense as they started down the broad marble staircase. He saw Stoke tighten his grip around Ross’s neck to steady himself going down the stairs. He heard Quick shout a warning to Ross in his headphones. What the—

Suddenly, rounds whistled by his ear and over his head and he looked down to see three young chaps in T-shirts crouching at the foot of the steps, guns trained directly on them. One guy squeezed off another burst. He felt a sharp jolt of pain, clutched his chest, and fell back hard on the marble steps. Staring at the ceiling, Ambrose managed to move his hands and legs. God in heaven, he was still alive. But they were getting killed up here.

Ross didn’t wait for another shot. His finger snapped shut on the trigger of the Streetsweeper, and it erupted in a rapid series of blasts that blew what was left of the three men right out the front door and down the steps to the driveway.

Ross stuck out his hand, and Ambrose grasped it, pulling himself to his feet.

“Hold on,” Ross said to him, shouldering himself into the Street-sweeper’s strap and getting his other arm under him. “We’re going right out the front door!” They were going down the stairs fast. Then they were outside. Somehow, the sun had come up.

The front steps of the finca were slick with bodies and blood. Stepping over somebody’s blown-off foot, Ambrose somehow managed to tell Ross what he’d seen on the way in. That there were keys in both Humvees. Blood was pumping out of Stokely, even with the handkerchief stuffed inside the wound.

Ambrose dredged up a strength he’d never known and jammed his gun into the back of the prisoner. The chap had been about to run for it.

“I’m all right,” he told Ross. “Let’s just get this bloody bastard the hell out of here!”

Then Ross was behind the wheel of the Humvee, the prisoner next to him up front. Ambrose climbed into the backseat and pressed his pistol against the back of the Cuban’s head. He felt dizzy, and the sight of their prisoner still wearing black and pink silk pajamas, with the matching mask on his head, made him doubt his own mind.

Suddenly a new wave of chaps started coming out on the steps and seemed to be shooting at them. Then they started dropping to the ground, left and right. He thought he saw the sharpshooter Tom Quick in an upstairs window, picking them off with his sniper rifle, putting neat little black holes in people’s foreheads.

“Hold on, Inspector,” Ross said, and he mashed on the accelerator, the Humvee screaming around the fountain, heading for the wooden gates, and taking both of the gates off their hinges as they went crashing through.

“Okay, we have the suspect,” Ambrose heard Ross say in his phones. “We have two casualties needing immediate medical attention. Get your guys the hell out of there! There are keys in the second Humvee at the front door. Use it!”

Two casualties? Ambrose thought. That meant he must be one of them.

That’s when he felt a sharp pain in his chest and all the lights went out.

Vicky had nicknames for most of her Cuban guards.

There was Ace, of the small black plastic comb, who was continually running it through his long black oily locks, swooping it up into an endlessly collapsing pompadour. And X-Ray, who was at least six-five and weighed maybe one hundred thirty pounds. Then there was Big Pimpin’, so called neither because of his enormous size nor his scarlet pimples, which he had in pustulant abundance, but because he was constantly bragging about all the girls he was running in and out of the compound.

And, finally, the one she called Eyes Wide Shut. He was the putative leader of the four, and by far the worst of all. He had never hurt her, thank God, but he never took his eyes off her either. They had taken her bathing suit and jewelry away in exchange for a cotton shift she washed each day.

Eyes made her strip two or three times a day so he could search her. He would poke and prod, smiling all the while. He always found an excuse to get rid of the other three first. Sent them on errands, told them to take a break. Vicky was sure they knew what was going on. But they never said anything.

Eyes was the only one with a key to the manacles that shackled her to the bed. She had to ask his permission whenever she needed to use the bathroom. He always made her leave the door open. Once, when she’d stepped out of the shower, he was standing there in his trademark grungy sweatshirt with his pants down, erect.

“Aw, you think I’m supposed to get upset over a little thing like that?” she’d said.

Maybe he didn’t understand what she’d said, but he understood what she meant. He never did it again. Then, of course, there were the Russians. The fat one. And the weird little one she vaguely remembered as having bought her a drink at the junkanoo.

So far, Eyes had kept the two Russians away from her. She’d learned from X-Ray that they were constantly offering the guards huge sums of U.S. dollars for an hour alone with her. Eyes, so far, had told them to stay away from her or he’d kill them. But you never knew just how long or how far his jealousy would stretch. She reassured herself daily that an ounce of flirtation equaled a pound of protection.

She was going to survive this. No matter what it took. No matter how long it took. At night, she thought of Alex. Worried about how what had happened added to the pain he was already suffering. And she thought of her father. She was all he had. If only there were some way to get word out. Bribe one of the guards? With what?

Eyes. If she could gain his trust, make him intimate promises she’d maybe never have to keep, he could get word out for her. He was both her principal tormentor and her only hope.

Little boys, big guns.

There were eight guards in all, working consecutive twelve-hour shifts. The night shift, she hardly dealt with. She’d talked the doctor who’d examined her that first night into giving her some heavy-duty sleeping pills. So, she either slept, or feigned sleep, from eight at night until eight in the morning when the night guards left. It made the time more bearable.

The guards were all killers and proud of it. She’d heard them bragging about kidnapping and torturing high-ranking journalists and politicians believed to be still loyal to Castro. Some spoke English, and she had three years of college Spanish, and when they got careless, they sat around saying things in front of her.

She listened to every word, and picked up a lot she wasn’t supposed to know; Castro was a guest here. So was his son. So were the former officers of Fidel’s secret police, army, and navy. It was a busy place. “The Hostage Hilton” was how she came to think of it.

Bit by bit, Vicky learned that there was a price on the heads of many people in Cuba. Millions of pesos for a long list of disloyal generals and journalists. Hundreds of thousands for certain “friends of Fidel” who were unfriendly to the new regime. Organized murder was about to become a booming business in Cuba.

Naturally, she didn’t recognize the names, but some of the targets were apparently pro-Castro left-wing bigshots in Miami and New York, too. Meanwhile, an army of boys, just like the ones who guarded her, were roaming the island, murdering whoever got in their way. Cuba was now on the verge of becoming the new Colombia. Lawless. Murderous. Lost.

One afternoon, after Eyes had made her strip, he pointed his gun at her and said in good English, “If there is trouble, any kind of trouble, our orders are to shoot you first. You understand that, chica?”