Ted Bell - Spy

Stopping briefly in his aft quarters, he’d gotten quickly out of the gray slacks and black cashmere sweater he’d worn on the flight and slipped eagerly into a familiar old pair of khaki shorts and a faded Royal Navy T-shirt.

The teak decks were warm beneath his bare feet as he made his way toward the bow. Nothing beat the fragrance of freshly scrubbed teak for making a man feel whole again. It signified another trip over the horizon, a new adventure around the next turning. Smiling a salute at passing members of his crew, old friends all, he could literally feel the tension of the last few weeks and months seeping out of him. He reached the deserted bow and gazed down at the sunlit panorama of the great harbor and the blue Atlantic beyond.

Thank God for the sea and the simple light of morning.

Hawke considered for a time how very fortunate he was to be here in this place at this time. And what blessed moments of consolation there sometimes were for all the dark and dangerous hours, the harsh realities of his chosen profession. He was happy to have at least a few days of sun-drenched respite before the grim black work began again. Gray London, the narrow streets shining with rain, was already beginning to recede into distant memory.

Now, standing alone on the foredeck, some thirty feet or more above the water, it was time to widen his horizons a bit. The sun was warm. The clean air, briny with salt, was fresh and cool on his cheek. A tumble of white clouds hid a morning sun climbing the brilliant blue bowl of the eastern sky. Gulls and terns wheeled and cried, diving and swooping over the wrinkled surface of the blue waters of Government Cut.

He took a deep gulp of the salt air, pulled it down the bottom of his lungs and held it until it burned, feeling a purifying fire deep inside his chest.

The boy stood on the burning deck.

Alex smiled at the games his mind played. He was not a man for deep introspection or any kind of angst-ridden self-analysis. He simply didn’t have time or inclination for such stuff. Emotions and feelings were transitory and not to be trusted. Let his actions bloody well define his character, he’d always thought, because, for better or for worse, that’s who he was.

It suddenly occurred to him, as he stood there in the brilliant sunshine, that it wasn’t until a man reached his stage in life that he was ever fully aware of beauty or nature or even changes in weather. It dawned on him that it was only now, in his early thirties, standing here on the very brink of middle age, that one didn’t take such commonplace things for granted. He took little for granted these days. He accepted that, but wondered why.

Perhaps it had been the tragic loss of his wife Victoria on the steps of a small Cotswolds chapel two years earlier. His heart had been shattered into infinitely small pieces when the sniper’s bullet pierced his young bride’s heart and stole her life while he looked on, helpless. He was quite sure the wound would never heal. God knows it still hurt.

Then, he thought, there was the recent near miss in the Amazon jungle and the death of every one of his dear colleagues on the river.

Or maybe the explanation was far less weighty and solemn. Perhaps Florida was simply working its balmy magic upon him again. Whatever it was, Hawke was suddenly aware of a strong sense of being, not at home, certainly, but of being in precisely the right place at the right time.

“Skipper?”

“Yes?” he turned to see Tom Quick descending the steps curving down from the starboard bridge wing.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but an old friend heard you were aboard. She demanded to see you.”

Hawke’s pet parrot, Sniper, was riding on Quick’s right shoulder.

Hallo, Hawke! Hallo, Hawke! Sniper squawked, flaring her large wings.

“Good idea, Tommy, let me have her, will you? Hullo, you old buzzard, how the hell have you been? Huh?”

Damifiknow. Hellificare! Sniper replied.

“My sentiments exactly,” Hawke said, stroking her beak with great affection. “I don’t know how I’ve been and I don’t much care, either. Pretty sad lot, are we not?”

What a babe! What a bod! Sniper said, apropos of nothing. Probably just repeating what she’d heard one of the crew remark upon seeing Pippa Guinness coming aboard.

Hawke laughed. Sniper’s language grew increasingly salty with the passing years, a result of her hanging out with the loose crowd that inhabited this great barge of his. But the old girl was trained in the ancient pirate’s ways and often had warned her master of hidden or unseen dangers.

Sniper fluttered her wings and settled easily onto Hawke’s shoulder. He’d had the beautiful bird for many years and it was a comfort to feel her resting there again. She’d gotten him out of more than one scrape, sitting on that shoulder.

Quick said, “She hasn’t had breakfast, Skipper. I brought along her Cheezbits.”

Hawke held up a handful and Sniper eagerly snapped them up.

“All shipshape below, Tommy?” Hawke asked. He’d been on the bridge for a word or two with his captain, but he’d not yet had time to inspect the engine room or the communications and fire control centers.

He’d placed Quick in charge of overseeing some aspects of the yacht’s refit and weapons systems upgrade. The yacht Blackhawke was in truth more warship than wealthy man’s play toy. She had a gleaming black hull and featured an integrated combat system centered on the Aegis weapon system and the SPY-1 multifunction phased array radar. The whole kit had cost him a bloody fortune, but he took the long view in such matters. Blackhawke was both his fortress and his base of operations when on assignment abroad. He could, thankfully, well afford to have a first-rater beneath his feet when he went to sea.

“I can’t say everything went like clockwork, these things never do, but she’s certainly seaworthy, combat ready, and ready to sail, sir.”

“I had a look at the sea trial reports from the Chief Engineer. Hard to read between the lines but, superficially at least, she seems more fit than I left her.”

Quick smiled. “For a two-hundred-forty foot vessel, she runs like a bat out of hell, I’ll tell you that much, Skipper.”

“I want to be under way by midnight.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“What the hell is that noise, Tom?”

“Sounds like somebody arriving down on the dock, sir.”

“An automobile is making that horrendous sound?” Hawke said, moving to the port rail and looking down at the dock. There was a black convertible just pulling up at the foot of the gangplank, an American muscle car with its rear end jacked up at a very severe angle. A loud blat of exhaust wafted up as the monster’s throttle was depressed.

The convertible top suddenly lifted up off the windscreen and began folding back. It revealed Stokely Jones sitting behind the wheel of the wild machine, waving up at him, a big smile stretched across his face.

Hawke smiled back and handed Quick the bird.

Stoke was back. Ambrose was aboard.

His team was together again. They were headed into the thick of it once more.

Alex Hawke was finally feeling alive again.

30

PRAIRIE, TEXAS

L ook outside, Sheriff! What the heck’s going on out there?” Homer said, slamming down his Pepsi and half getting to his feet to look over the top of the booth.

Franklin looked up from his cream of barley soup and sandwich. He twisted his head around so that he, too, could look out the front windows. He saw a man in dungaree coveralls running past the drugstore windows. He was moving at a pretty good clip for a lazy Saturday afternoon. A second later, he saw an old yellow dog bounding after the man, both of them moving lickety-split up the sidewalk.