Warriors (24 page)

“No. We are taking the owner aboard at Southampton. A sybaritic cruise in the Greek isles, as she describes it.”

“Your last port of origin was?”

“Caracas.”

“Right, Caracas. My paperwork says something else. Are you bringing anything into the United States that you now wish to declare?”

“You mean like diseased fruits and vegetables? Like exotic and endangered birds of the rain forest? Rotten avocados?”

“No. I mean like drugs. Or weapons.”

“Ah. No, Lieutenant. In that case, nothing to declare.”

“How many crew aboard?”

“Seven altogether, not counting me.”

“I want you to muster them all here on the bridge. Not now, but right now.”

“Well now, I don’t know if I can do—”

“That’s an order, Captain. I am authorized by my government to search this vessel. If you resist, or cause me and Ensign Brock here even a hint of trouble, we can handle this in a different way. The USCG cutter
Vigorous
is standing by. Would you like me to radio her skipper now and tell them that you are not cooperating?”

“Hell, no, Lieutenant Levy. I ain’t got nothing to hide here, son. You search this old barge all night long, you want to. Ain’t nothing worth spit aboard this vessel but a Rolls-Royce automobile.”

“Make the muster announcement over the PA system, Captain. Get ’em up here on the double. All of them.”

He did, but he wasn’t happy about it.

Once all seven crew members were accounted for, and had been patted down and searched for weapons by Harry Brock, Stoke said to the guy, “Where you from, Cap?”

“Me? Lower Bottom, Kentucky. Know where that is?”

“No. Where is it?”

“Down in the holler. Just below Upper Bottom. My beloved mother was a coal miner’s daughter. My father from Shanghai was another story altogether. Crazy little dude, seriously. Hazardous.”

Stoke nodded and said, “Ensign Brock, guard these men while I initiate the search. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Anybody gives you any trouble, you order in the chopper from the
Vig
. Got it?”

“Aye, sir.”

STOKE STARTED IN THE FORWARD HOLD
.

There were only two objects of any note, covered in canvas drop cloths, which Stoke ripped away. A brand-new Rolls-Royce Ghost in the same emerald green shade as the yacht. And a thirty-foot Aquariva speedboat, an old one, a beauty. Madame Moon apparently knew how to live.

Next, having come up empty in the largest hold, the one located amidships, he headed for the stern. “Nothing forward or amidships,” he said to Harry on the radio. “Going aft.”

He stepped silently through an open door in the after bulkhead and found himself at the top of a steep flight of steel steps leading below, the bottom steps lost in the semidarkness.

Voices.

He took a breath and held it.

Two men down below, talking quietly, unaware that someone was listening. He could smell the cigarette smoke wafting up, could sense them, waiting for him.

The captain had said there were seven crew members, but with these two unaccounted for, he’d apparently meant nine. Big mistake.

If he went down the steps, they’d see his boots before he saw them. Silently, he removed two of the four grenades hanging from his web belt—a flash-bang for disorientation and a smoker to blind them.

He pulled the pins and threw them downward hard enough to bounce off the iron deck below. In the movies you always see the grenades being rolled across the deck. Which gives the bad (or good) guys the opportunity to pick them up and toss them back where they came from. No. Like an onside kick, you bounced those bad apples as hard and fast as you could off the deck.

First, the loud
CRACK
and blinding light of the flash-bang, then the muffled
WHOOMPH
of the smoker. Stoke grabbed the rails on either side of the stairs, raised his feet, and slid rapidly to the now-smoke-filled bottom of the hold.

One of the two guys began firing wildly into the smoke hoping to get lucky. Didn’t work out for him. Stoke saw his muzzle flash and instantly dropped him with his nine-millimeter H&K automatic pistol.

“Your buddy’s dead. Drop your weapon!” he shouted to the other guard, taking a knee and swinging his weapon through an arc. “I want to hear that bad boy hit the deck.”

Silence. He could feel the guy moving to his left inside the smoke, trying to get behind some cover or come up next to him.

“Really? That’s how you want to do this? Last chance.”

The guy was getting closer; Stokely could sense more than hear his rubber-soled advance across the oil-slick deck. Enough. Stoke flicked his assault rifle to full auto and sprayed lead from left to right, the full 180 degrees. He heard the guy scream once and drop heavily to the deck.

“Two tangos down,” he told Harry.

“Motherf—”

“Don’t say it.”

THEY’D BEEN GUARDING A HIDDEN
door.

Thick and heavy, it was locked, but Stoke molded a handful of plastic explosive around the latch and blew it. He switched on his powerful LED torch and peered inside the darkened hold.

Crates.

Stacks of them all the way to the ceiling. Wooden, about twelve feet long by four feet wide, secured by heavy steel bands. Identical Chinese markings in red on each box. He counted them, five stacks of six, thirty. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone, got the Camera Genius app running and snapped a bunch of pictures he could e-mail to Harry, who could e-mail them to the brass at Langley. Now. Tonight. Technology.

“Bingo,” he said into his mike.

“What?” Harry said.

“Don’t know yet. But something and a lot of it down here. Everybody behaving up there?”

“Restless. Wong’s getting itchy.”

“Lice or crabs probably. Look. I’m going to open a crate. I’ll be back in ten. These are bad guys. He had two extra crew down here in the aft hold guarding a stockpile of something. Shot at me without warning. Not alive anymore. Somebody messes with you up there, you mess right back, Harry.”

“Roger that, Stoke. I’m cool.”

The crates were heavy as hell, but he managed to manhandle one of the ones on top down to the deck. They all had the same big red symbol on the lid. Stoke grabbed a shot of it with his iPhone, then started on the steel band with his heavy shears.

Two minutes later he lifted the lid and peered inside the crate.

Five minutes after that he was racing back up three decks to the bridge, on the radio to the CG cutter, describing what he’d found and asking for immediate assistance. The CG skipper said the
Vig
was on her way to arrest the crew and take the vessel in tow, but he was launching the chopper with an assault team now for their immediate safety.

He said the helo would be hovering over the yacht in four minutes max and the team would fast-rope to the deck.

WHEN STOKE STEPPED INSIDE THE
bridge, he could tell the captain was surprised to see him still alive. Not part of the game plan.

“You lied to me, Randy,” Stoke said. “A big no-no.”

“I just drive the bus, pal.”

“Yeah. Now I’m going to throw you under it, pal. You’re toast. And your boys waiting for me in the aft hold? They’re not alive anymore. That send you a signal? Asshole.”

“What’d you find?” Brock asked.

“Drones,” Stoke said. “Attack drones, twelve feet long. Painted with this weird matte-black coating. Every one of them has this symbol on each wing.”

He held up his iPhone so Harry could see the shot he’d taken of the stubby-winged UAV in its crate.

“Jesus. That thing looks seriously badass. Nose cannon. Missile mounts on the wings and shit. What’s that symbol?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Where’s my funky little Chinese interpreter when I need him?”

“Dead. We could use him. But it would be messy.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Stoke looked hard at the
Jade
’s skipper. “Listen up, sideshow, get one your homeboys over there to tell me what this symbol means. Send him over here with his hands up. Now.”

A young Chinese officer came forward, and Stoke held up his cell so the kid could see the picture he’d snapped below.

“What’s that symbol mean, son?” Stoke asked him. “That thing on the wings of the drones.”

“Rheaven,” the guy said, “rhymes with ‘heaven.’”

“In English, please.”

“Raven.”

“Like the bird?” Stoke said.

The guy lowered his eyes and giggled like a girl.

In that moment, Stoke finally understood the meaning of the word
inscrutable
.

C
H A P T E R
  3 0

L
ord Hawke was dressed casually for the weekend. Badly faded jeans ripped at one knee and a black turtleneck jersey. He was reclining in his favorite leather chair, one long leg hooked over the armrest, his foot idly swinging to some imaginary rhythm.

Hawke was smiling at something his guest had just said, but he owned the room; tall, lean, well muscled, still boyish in his midthirties, the startling ice-blue eyes, the thick head of unruly black hair, and the strongly chiseled face that had launched a thousand female daydreams, serving to remind one as always of the late film actor Errol Flynn.

He’s always seemed to me a boy born with a heart for any fate,
his father had said of little Alex the night of his sixth birthday here in the library at Hawkesmoor.

Flynn, the legendary Hollywood actor, had gone to seed, but not Hawke. He was in better shape than men ten years younger, not an ounce of fat on him. Royal Navy regimen. Six miles a day in open ocean whenever he could manage it. He worked at it. Every day. Hard.

Always such an irony,
Ambrose thought. The sixth-richest man in England, a courteous, well-mannered peer of the realm, yet he knew thirty ways to kill you before you knew it with his bare hands.

And always reading. A book to shield him against the world and its terrors.

There was a well-worn volume in his hands right now; Congreve could see the tattered cover of the first edition. Hemingway’s
A Farewell to Arms
for the umpteenth time. God. He’d once asked Hawke what on earth he’d ever learned from Hemingway, a writer he himself had little patience for.

“I don’t rightly know. Not to blow my head off with a shotgun?” Hawke had replied, not even bothering to look up from the pages.

Ambrose turned his attention to the other visitor.

A great bear of a man, he was, and staring down into the blazing fire, warming his hands. He, at least, was well dressed in pale grey flannels and a double-breasted black cashmere blazer. He may have had his back to the door but Congreve was pretty certain as to his identity. It was a man whose very presence indicated trouble ahead. A man whose knowledge and skills at the tradecraft of espionage bordered on the supernatural. Professor Stefan Halter.

He heard a tiny laugh coming from the windows and searched the room.

And then he saw the child.

Hawke’s beloved son, the four-year-old Alexei, was seated cross-legged on the bare floor beneath a window seat. He was wearing white flannel trousers and a fire-engine red sweater over a white turtleneck jumper. He was currently engaged with a battered tin hook-and-ladder fire engine that Ambrose recognized as having once belonged to his father. The boy, his face a mask of concentration, was trying to extend the tiny ladder from the tufted cushion up to the window’s broad sill. His puppy, Harry, asleep in a nearby leather armchair, was blissfully unaware of all their excitement.

Hawke looked up, fired a flash of blue across the room, and laughed at the sight of his old and dearest friend in the world.

“Don’t tell me! These old eyes don’t deceive me, it can only be that Demon of Deduction, that august repository of wisdom and scientific criminalist learning, come to darken my door once more!”

“Good morning, Alex,” Congreve said, smiling.

At the sight of his old friend entering the room, Hawke jumped to his feet, strode across the room. Hawke had a lifelong habit. He left charm trailing in his wake, like it was something incidental to his being, something to be cast off . . . left behind.

He embraced his closest friend, clapping him rather too soundly on the back. Then he placed his hands on Congreve’s shoulders and smiled broadly.

“Ah, yes, Constable, my God, but it’s good to see you! Thanks for coming all the way out here in that bloody blizzard out there. You remember Professor Stefan Halter from Cambridge, of course? Stef, come say hello to former chief inspector Ambrose Congreve. Of Scotland Yard.”

Congreve smiled at the heavyset man who now turned round to face him. He was ruggedly handsome, with bushy black eyebrows and a deceptively warm smile.

“Chief Inspector. How lovely to see you again.”

“Yes, yes, of course, the good Dr. Halter,” Ambrose said. “Delighted you’re here at Hawkesmoor. Your esteemed presence always bodes well for whatever deviltry the future holds. And ill for the devils who perpetrate it.”

Halter laughed and came over to pump the famous criminalist’s hand warmly.

“True enough, sir. I fear I am seldom the bearer of glad tidings, as you well know,” Halter said, his trademark Cheshire grin making a welcome appearance.

“Then I trust you won’t disappoint me this time, Professor.”

“I’m afraid I won’t. It was I who asked Alex to invite you out. We could use your help, sir.”

Hawke smiled. “He told me to remind you to bring your formidable brain along. Did you?”

“Like a certain credit card, one never leaves home without it.”

“Excellent!” Halter said. “The joyful outcome of this nasty business is all but certain.”

Professor Stefan Halter was a life Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was also a rather large cheese at POLIS, the university’s own spy command, the Department of Politics and International Studies. Most of the senior officers at MI6, MI5, the CIA and NSA, and other assorted acronyms did their top-level recruiting at Cambridge.

Many postdoctoral candidates at Cambridge under Halter’s tutelage at POLIS returned to their home countries as counsel to prime ministers, presidents, and the like. To say that this prestigious Cambridge department was highly regarded in international diplomatic and espionage circles would be putting it rather mildly.