Ted Bell - Tsar

Desmond stepped back into the fight. His eyes were moving around in his head, and Hawke could see he was forcing them to focus.

“Had enough, son?” Hawke said, keeping his feet moving. He had his breathing going now, feeling good, into it, the blood lust starting to rise.

“Just beginning to piss me off, mon. Thass all you be doin’.”

Hawke saw the anger flash in the kid’s eyes and knew he had a slight chance to win this. Get them mad, that’s how you win fights.

Suddenly, the kid charged him, windmilling, throwing a flurry of wild punches. Hawke got his hands up, catching punches on his arms. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the real punch coming from down low. A haymaker right hook. It was coming up fast and looked as if it could knock over a tall building.

But Hawke slipped that punch and countered with another pair of lethal left hooks to the kid’s ribs. He heard a loud crack, the whole room did, and felt the man’s bone break under his fist. Desmond stopped breathing, but Hawke stayed right on him and threw a fast four-punch combination to his face, wham-wham, wham-wham.

Hawke stepped back. One of his punches had caught Desmond over his right eye, now bleeding profusely, and loops of blood were flying out of both nostrils.

Hawke was vaguely aware that Harry Brock was circling the ring, considering whether or not to step in and stop the fight. But Harry hesitated. He could sense that Hawke must be seeing some fight left in the kid. Hawke clearly wasn’t backing off. He wanted to throw one last shot.

“You want me to stop this?” Brock asked Hawke.

“He hurt my friend. An eye for an eye, a bone for a bone,” Hawke said out of the side of his mouth, his eyes focused only on his target. He wanted more.

Hawke wound up and delivered a big right hand to the jaw. The Jamaican, his jaw broken, folded up like an accordion, collapsing to the filthy floor strewn with broken glass and chicken blood, adding a little of his own to the mixture.

Hawke backed away, saw Harry Brock bending over Desmond’s unconscious body. Harry gave Desmond a fair ten count, allowing him every chance to get back on his feet.

“…Ten!” It was over.

Brock whirled around and grabbed Hawke’s right wrist, thrusting his hand into the air in victory.

The Jamaicans went wild, some of them coming out of their chairs to cheer the victorious Hawke. They didn’t care much who’d won; it had been a hell of a fight. Collapsed in a chair against the wall, Congreve raised his fist in the air, saluting the victory. Sir David even stepped into the ring, pounding his man on the back, shouting into Hawke’s ear words he couldn’t hear because the blood was pounding so hard inside his head.

Hawke saw the defeated Jamaican on the floor, his arms flung out as if someone had thrown him away. He was now stirring about, eyelids fluttering open, moving his lips, and he stepped over to have a word. Desmond’s father, who’d been tending to his son, turned away in disgust. Hawke took his arm and spun him around.

“I don’t want to see your crew on my tail anymore. You understand me? What will happen if I do?”

Coale nodded yes and walked away, defeated.

Hawke then bent over the boy and looked into his blood-filled eyes. He spoke softly, just loud enough so the boy alone could hear him.

“It’s not about age, son, it’s about desire. You had it once and lost it. Maybe you should think hard about trying to get it back.”

“THANK YOU, ALEX,” Congreve said as they stepped outside into the cool night air. “A few more blows to the bum leg with that tire iron, and I’m afraid I’d have been totally out of commission. As it is, I think I’ll need some help getting back to the boat.”

The three Englishmen and Harry Brock had left the building full of drunken Jamaicans behind and were making their way through the dark underbrush toward the sea. Trulove and Hawke had Congreve between them, supporting his weight as they made their way across the rocky ground. Harry was at the rear, covering their retreat with the SAW.

“Are you managing all right, sir?” Hawke asked Sir David. He was huffing and puffing a bit, Congreve being no featherweight these days.

“Indeed, I think I am,” C said. “No teeth missing, just a split lip. Ambrose and I are both in far better shape than the chap you left back there on the floor. Or that fellow out there facedown on the dock. Did you see him, Alex? I demanded medical attention for him, of course. Not that there was much likelihood of it.”

“He’s dead,” Hawke said. “A man named Hoodoo.”

“You know the victim, Alex?” C asked.

“I do, sir. I know who he is, at any rate. Have you any idea what he was doing out here in the middle of the night?”

“Yes, we do,” Congreve said through his pain, speaking slowly and breathing rapidly. “He was delivering weapons to these chaps. Russian machine guns, now stowed in a locked room in the basement. Apparently, there was some disagreement about remuneration, as best we can surmise.”

“Before we were discovered, we’d been hiding under the dock as the guns were being unloaded,” C said. “We couldn’t understand a lot of what was being said, of course-even Ambrose doesn’t speak this particular Jamaican Rasta dialect-but we did hear a name. A man who may be the one selling them these weapons.”

“Who?” Hawke asked. “What name?”

“Chap named Korsakov,” Ambrose said. “Russian. Lives somewhere here on Bermuda. Ever heard of him?”

“Name rings a bell,” Hawke said. “I think that’s who’s been having me followed by the Rastas.”

“Why?”

“No idea, but I intend to find out.”

“Alex? I think you’d best put me down for a moment,” Congreve said. “I’m feeling a bit lightheaded.”

Trulove and Hawke gingerly lowered their friend so that he was seated on a soft clump of grass, his back against the smooth red bark of a gumbo limbo tree.

“Can you make it back down the hill to the dinghy, Constable?” Alex asked his oldest friend, kneeling down beside him.

“I think if I just rest a moment, yes. Should do. It’s a bit-painful, you know.”

“Breathe deeply. Try to relax. We’ll get you to a doctor as quickly as possible.” Hawke had tied his shirt round Congreve’s leg wound, cinching it tight. The blood flow appeared to have ceased. After an already long and difficult recovery, this fresh injury was a serious setback for his old friend.

“Bloody doctors. I thought I was through with them.”

“Anybody smell smoke?” Brock asked, sniffing the air.

“I do,” Trulove said. “Fire somewhere. Where’s the smoke coming from?”

“Down by the water,” Hawke said, “where you left the yawl anchored. We’d better get moving. Ambrose?”

Congreve nodded his head. Sir David and Harry Brock got Ambrose back on his feet and began to descend the steep pathway, Hawke taking the lead.

“Harry and I can take care of Ambrose. You go on ahead, Alex,” C said. “Make sure there are no more unpleasant surprises awaiting us.”

Hawke raced down the steep path and was the first to reach the clearing and the little cove where Diana had left her boat at anchor.

He was the first to see Swagman.

She was adrift and afire.

It looked like a Viking funeral. Someone had loosed her free, torched her, and trimmed her sails to carry her away.

Swagman was already well out, far beyond the reef line, running dead before the wind with all of her blazing sails flying, every last one of them burning brightly. She was lighting up the night sky, afire now from stem to stern, the orange and red flames licking out the windows of her cabin house and racing up her mainmast, and her mainsail had mostly burned clean through, falling away in flaming tatters as she sailed off ablaze toward the black horizon.