He considered calling the Coast Guard on sixteen, then thought better of it. It was, after all, none of his damn business. He just wanted to get back to Lauderdale and sell a few more goddamn Explorers. Now that most folks had forgotten about that goddamn tire fiasco, he was selling cars again.
Reel Thing
was up on a plane, throwing masses of white water to either side of her bow. After a few minutes of high speed and cold beer, Red started to calm down. He throttled back a little. The engines were brand-new and he knew he shouldn’t be running them at such high RPMs. Hadn’t seen the sub on the radar anyway. Lost the sucker.
Then he had another thought, not as comforting.
Hadn’t seen it on the radar because it had submerged.
“Whoo-ee,” Bobby said, lurching into the cabin, spilling beer on the carpet. “That was something.”
“Why the hell’d you turn that light on, Bobby? Goddamn. All we had to do was sit there and mind our own damn business.”
“I wanted to show you that Cuban flag, amigo. That’s all. What the hell’s wrong with you? Big old sub scare your ass?”
“Hell no.”
“Then what’d you run away for then?”
“Bobby. Do yourself a favor. Shut the fuck up.”
“Uh-oh. He’s mad. Well, guess what. I’m going back up top that tuna tower, put on some Waylon, and have a couple of cold beers. So I won’t be in your goddamn way, oh mighty Captain…Kangaroo.”
Bobby pulled a six-pack out of the fridge and slammed the cabin door shut behind him.
Red settled back in his captain’s chair, eased the throttles until they were at cruising speed, and picked up the sat phone. It was only around midnight. Maybe Kath would still be awake and they could have a little chat. He’d tell her he was all fished out and headed home. Tell her about the amazing encounter with the submarine.
He started to punch in his home number.
“Uh, Red?” he heard Bobby say over the speaker.
“What the hell you want now?” But he didn’t like the sound of Bobby’s voice as he finished dialing up his number on the sat phone.
Kath picked up on the first ring. Her voice was sleepy. He’d woken her up.
“Hey, Red, you might want to—”
“Hold on, Bobby, I’m talking to my damn wife! Hey, babe, sorry to wake you. How you doing?”
“You might want to come on up here, little buddy.” Bobby’s voice on the speaker.
“Sleepy,” Kath said. “It’s almost two in the morning, Red.”
“Red? You coming?”
“Sorry, hon, my watch must have stopped. Hold on. I won’t be a sec,” he said into the phone.
Then, into the mike, he said, “Come up there? Goddammit, Bobby! Why the hell would I do that?”
“Something weird going on out here. I don’t know what it is. Off our port beam. Long white thing in the water. Like a trail. Headed in our direction. Looks like it’s coming right at us.”
Red was just sober enough to understand this instantly.
“Honey, something crazy’s going on,” he said to his wife. “Lemme check it out. Hold on.”
He dropped the phone and ran to the portside window. A trail of white, maybe a hundred yards away. He had time enough to say just one word.
“Shit.”
The Soviet Mark III torpedo was traveling at a depth of thirteen feet. It was running at over sixty miles an hour and leaving a huge white wake. The nose of the torpedo was packed with enough explosive to level a city block.
It took only seconds for the torpedo to reach its target. It hit the
Reel Thing
dead amidships.
Red, Bobby, and the
Reel Thing
vanished. They had been atomized.
In Fort Lauderdale, Red’s wife hung up the phone, having heard a fragment of loud noise and then silence. She shook her head, thinking of how much fun Red and Bobby had on these little getaways. Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.
The fire caused by the explosion was climbing into the blackness of the night sky. It was visible for four miles.
Less than a mile away, a man with his eyes glued to the periscope lens of the
José Martí
witnessed the destruction with grim satisfaction.
* * *
Commander Nikita Zukov of the
José Martí
removed his eyes from the rubber eyepiece of the periscope and allowed a wry smile to cross his face.
A fishing boat. He’d just sunk a stupid fishing boat.
He shook his head and flipped up the handles on either side of the periscope. There was a hiss of hydraulics as the tube slid into the deck. Then he turned to face his new crew of would-be submarine officers.
“Direct hit,” he said nonchalantly in Spanish. “Target destroyed.”
The Cuban officers standing around him in the dim red glow of the sub’s control room burst into applause. They brought the scope back up and each took a turn at the eyepiece, watching the orange sky lit by fiery debris falling into the black sea. They were laughing, shouting “bravo,” and clapping each other on the back.
Zukov stood back and watched them in disbelief. The former cold warrior could not decide if he was amused or humiliated by this scene and what had just precipitated it.
His first kill. After a brilliant twenty-year career. His first kill was a fifty-foot sport-fishing boat festooned with outriggers and fishing rods, instead of cruise missiles and eight-inch guns. With a crew of perhaps two men aboard.
The communications officer monitoring all radio transmissions announced that only one call had gone out from the boat and it wasn’t a mayday. The
Martí
’s position had not been revealed before she had sunk them.
Good.
Two American fisherman. Aboard a rich man’s fiberglass toy. Nothing to write home to Moscow about, but it was perhaps a start. First blood, at any rate.
Two figures stepped out of the shadows. It was Admiral de Herreras and the Russian Golgolkin, who’d stood silently by while the officers celebrated.
“May I have a look?” de Herreras said.
Zukov stepped back and let him use the periscope. The admiral studied the flaming debris pool for a moment, then swiveled the eyepiece ninety degrees left and stopped, grunting with satisfaction.
“Comrade Golgolkin, have a look. Is that it?”
Golgolkin put his eyes to the rubber cups, sweat stinging his eyes. His hands were shaking badly and he couldn’t seem to focus the blurry image.
“Is that it,” the admiral shrieked, “or is it not?”
Golglolkin nodded yes and stepped away from the periscope.
“So. Our next target, Commander Zukov,” de Herreras said, grinning with satisfaction. “Have a look.”
Zukov put his eyes to the scope and focused. It was beyond ridiculous. Impossible. A large private yacht, huge, over two hundred feet. Brightly lit. With a massive British flag fluttering in the breeze at her stern. Zukov took a deep breath, remembering Manso’s admonition on the beach early that morning.
“It’s not possible, Admiral,” Zukov said.
“Why not? Comrade Golgolkin here has just informed me that
Blackhawke
is the ship of the man who betrayed us to the Americans. My sources in Washington say he’s aboard. I wish to destroy him.”
“A small fishing boat is one thing. Accidents happen. But this. The loss of life. It would be considered an act of war by the British, Admiral! A huge international incident! Surely you don’t want to—”
“I am the fucking chief of naval operations, let me remind you! Are you refusing a direct order, Commander?”
“Sir, in good conscience I cannot—”
The Cuban admiral unfastened the leather holster that held his sidearm and raised the pistol. It was a silver-plated Smith & Wesson .357 magnum.
“I asked you a question, Commander. Are you refusing a direct order?”
“I am.”
The explosion was instant and deafening inside the cramped control room. A fine red mist erupted from the back of the Russian commander’s skull as brains and bone spattered all over the periscope. He swayed on his feet for a second, then collapsed in a heap on the deck. All of the men, both Russian and Cuban, looked on in horror.
“I am a firm believer in summary justice,” the admiral said. “The man was a traitor. I am now in command of this vessel and I want that boat sunk. Is that clearly understood?”
No one said a word. The silence was as deafening as the gunshot. The already fetid air reeked of cordite and the coppery smell of blood. The Cuban admiral stepped over the body and stared hard at the shocked faces of his crew.
Golgolkin leaned back against the bulkhead and breathed a sigh of relief. Only an hour earlier, he had slipped into Zukov’s quarters and rifled through his orders. Zukov had orders to kill him once the mission was completed. Now that Zukov was dead, perhaps he was safe. He stepped back into the shadows, removed a silver flask from his pocket, and drained it.
“I want someone to take a bearing on this target and sink it,” the admiral said, his face turning bright red. “Now!” he bellowed.
No one moved or spoke. After an endless minute, an officer who had been standing by the ballast control panel stepped forward. He moved slowly through the reddish smoky light, eyes riveted on the Cuban with the pistol in his hand. He dropped to his knees beside the fallen captain.
There, kneeling beside his oldest and dearest friend, he looked up at the glowering admiral with tears of rage in his eyes.
“I am the boat’s executive officer, Comrade Admiral,” he said in Spanish. “Vladimir Kosokov, second in command. This man you have murdered was my boyhood friend in Cuba. I have been his XO in the Soviet Navy for ten years.”
“Very well. I order you to sink that vessel!” the admiral roared.
“In my cabin are orders given me by Commander Zukov. They come directly from General Manso de Herreras. They are explicit, Admiral. They say that if anything should happen to Zukov, I am to assume command, offload you at Staniel Cay, and return the submarine immediately to base.”
The Cuban regarded him in shocked silence. His own brother! Manso would pay for this humiliation.
“Fine. You can die beside your traitorous friend.”
“I would be honored. But I must warn you. This is the most advanced submarine on earth. And I am the only one aboard now capable of getting it safely home. And the only one who knows the codes for fire control sequencing of all weapons. Kill me, and you render the submarine useless. And condemn every man on this vessel, Russian or Cuban, to certain death.”
The admiral raised his pistol once more, his countenance aflame with righteous anger. The crew waited in silence for their death sentence, every eye focused on the finger that would squeeze the trigger.
A tall, thin man emerged from the shadows, shot out his hand, and gripped the admiral’s wrist.
“Give me the gun, Carlitos,” the man said quietly, and the admiral, eyes blazing, did as he was told.
It was the man the crew had been whispering about during the entire voyage. The man who seldom left his cabin and never spoke. The new Cuban head of state security. Rodrigo del Rio.
The man with no eyes.
Alex Hawke sat on the edge of his bed, smoking a cigar and staring at the black telephone. There was a half-empty bottle of scotch whiskey beside the phone.
He shook his head and tried to clear it. This morning, he had awoken in this very bed in the rapturous state of a man in the midst of a love affair. Now he felt as if he had been broken into infinitely small pieces, starting with his heart.
The Bahamian Air-Sea Rescue Teams had called off the search after twelve hours. Hawke, having failed in his pleas to get them to continue, had stayed aloft in his seaplane for another few hours, sweeping in low grid patterns over the empty moonlit waters. Finally, just after midnight, he’d landed in the lagoon and taxied up to the ramp at
Blackhawke’
s stern.
Ambrose and Stoke had been standing there, waiting for him. They started to say something, but Hawke interrupted.
“How?” he said, staring at them angrily, for that’s what he felt now, anger superseding his sadness. “How could one man be so bloody stupid as to allow anyone to swim out into that bloody current? Without a warning? Not a word! How? Answer me!”
Ambrose and Stoke reached out to him but he brushed past them. He paused and turned to face them.
“Here’s the bloody answer! I might as well have drowned her with my own hands! What’s the difference? Murder is murder!”
He climbed four flights of stairs and went straight to his stateroom, where he had remained. He called the bridge and told the captain to call him on the direct line if there was any news. Then he turned off the main phone and opened a bottle of whiskey.
In that way, he had spent an hour or so, drinking and staring at the phone to the bridge, willing it to ring. It didn’t. There had many knocks at his door and he’d ignored them all. At some point, Ambrose had slipped an envelope under his door but he’d ignored that as well.
Somehow, later, he heard the ship’s bell chiming. Four bells. Two o’clock in the morning. Alex rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. Two
A
.
M
., which would make it maybe midnight in Louisiana.
He picked up the half-empty scotch bottle and climbed the stairway leading up one deck, making his way along the companionway to Vicky’s stateroom. Save the low thrumming of generators, the ship was dead quiet. There were a few crewmen about, armed, looking out over the rails to sea. They kept the underwater floodlights on all night now, and monitored the video cameras installed below the waterline twenty-four hours a day.
There was a man out there somewhere who clearly wanted to kill him. Little did that man know his target was already dead.
Her room was just the way she’d left it, hats, blouses, scarves, bathing suits, straw hats, all strewn about the bed. He sat down amongst these things, not quite sure why he’d come here. Unable to stop himself, he picked up her pillow and pressed it to his face. The scent of her perfume, of course, still lingered there.
God.
Then, through eyes blurred with tears, he saw the address book on her nightstand and remembered why he had come here. He opened the book to S and didn’t find what he was looking for. He turned to D and there it was.
Daddy. And a 225 area code. Louisiana.
Even the sight of her handwriting in the address book was unbearable. When he thumbed through its pages, a small envelope fell out. It had his name on it. It wasn’t sealed.
Inside were two tiny photographs. The ones that had been inside his mother’s locket. Then he remembered. She’d vowed to wear the locket always. She must have removed the pictures that morning, not wanting to harm them, realizing they’d be going for a swim on the island.
He remembered the golden locket hanging from her neck, suspended between their bodies, swinging to and fro in the rhythms they were creating, the two of them there on the sand beside the ripples of pale blue waters that lapped the sand. And the swift dark blue waters farther out.
He uttered the one oath he’d always considered himself too much of a gentleman to say and reached for the receiver. He began punching in the number he’d found in the book. He lost track of the number of times the phone rang before anyone picked it up.
“Hello?” a sleepy Southern voice finally said.
“Is this Seven Oaks plantation? LaRoche, Louisiana?” he asked.
“Yes, suh, shore is.”
“This is Alexander Hawke calling. I’d like to speak to Senator Harley Sweet, please.”
“Might be asleep out on the porch, suh. Too hot to sleep indoors, but the senator, he’s not a believer in air-conditioning.”
“I’m sorry to disturb him, but would you please tell him it’s extremely important?”
“Well, if you say so, suh, I surely will do that. Will you hold the phone? I’ll go see if I can rouse him up.”
Alex waited, rubbing his eyes, staring at the framed picture of Vicky and him on her nightstand. They had their arms around each other, standing beside the Serpentine in Hyde Park. When the deep voice suddenly came on the line, it startled him.
“This is Harley Sweet.”
“Senator, we’ve never met. This is Alexander Hawke calling.”
“Alex Hawke! Well, it’s mighty fine to finally hear your voice, son. I’ve been hearing an awful lot about you from my little girl.”
“That’s why I’m calling, Senator. I’m afraid I have some horrible news. There’s been an accident.”
“What do you mean? Is Vicky hurt?”
“Senator, I’m afraid Vicky has been lost.”
There was a long silence, and Alex just held the phone to his ear, numb, staring at her face in the picture.
“Lost? You mean dead? Tell me exactly what happened, Mr. Hawke.”
“We, uh, we went for a picnic this afternoon on a small island. Just Vicky and I.”
“Vicky is my only child, sir.”
“I know that, Senator. I must tell you that I’d far rather be dead myself than giving you this news.”
“Go on, son. Tell me about it.”
“We had a small lunch. After we’d eaten, we both fell asleep on the beach. When I awoke, I didn’t see her. I thought perhaps she’d gone off exploring the island. I didn’t see her swimming, so I looked up and down the beach. I—”
“Please continue, Mr. Hawke. I’m sure this is difficult for you.”
“Sorry, sir. I heard a faint cry coming from the sea. There is a deep channel a few hundred yards offshore. It runs between the island where we’d gone and another island about a mile away.”
“Yes?”
“I could see her. It was Victoria. She was almost two thirds of the way to the other island. I could see that the, uh, current had her. The riptide.”
“What did you do, Mr. Hawke?”
“I swam for her, of course. I tried to keep her in sight. It’s a riptide that runs to the open sea. It was moving very swiftly.”
“You were unable to reach her?”
“I’m a good swimmer. I swam as hard as I could. She was calling to me, saying no, telling me to go back, I think. She might have realized it was useless at that point. I—”
“You gave up.”
“No, sir, I did not. I swam out into the rip. When I looked up, I realized that for every ten yards I was gaining, the tide was opening the gap between us by thirty or forty yards, maybe more.”
“You lost sight of her?”
“I saw her go under. I swam for her. She came up once more and called out something, but by then she was too far away.”
“And then?”
“I watched her go under. She never came back up.”
“My baby is gone?”
“I had Bahamas Air-Sea Rescue and my own men on the scene within fifteen minutes. We continued the search for eight hours without any—without any sign of her, sir.”
“I understand.”
“I’ve ordered the search to resume at first light, Senator. I’m going back out in my own plane as well.”
“I’m certain you’re doing all you can, Mr. Hawke. I appreciate your efforts on my daughter’s behalf. If you’ll excuse me now, I’m going to hang up the phone.”
“Senator, I cannot possibly tell you how grievously sorry I am. This is all my fault.”
“Vicky was a very powerful swimmer, Mr. Hawke. All-American at Tulane. She swam all the way across Lake Pontchartrain when she was thirteen years old. She knew what she was doing. The idea that a current might be too strong would never occur to her.”
“But I should have—”
“My daughter would not have wanted you or anyone else to die needlessly. If there’d been a prayer of you reaching her, I’m sure you…”
“I couldn’t, sir. I couldn’t.”
“Son, listen to me. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you, but if my daughter cared for you, you must be a good man. Vicky grew up in this old tumbledown place. It was just the two of us. Her momma died in childbirth.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“That was a long time ago. There’s a big live oak out at the end of our drive. Sits on top of the levee and you can see clear to the other side of the Mississippi from the topmost branches.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Victoria loved that old tree. Called it the Trinity Oak because it had three big old branches. She’d spend all day up on the highest branch, reading her books, writing her poetry. It’s where she felt closest to God.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not a religious man, Mr. Hawke. But my daughter was. So, I want you to find my little girl. I want to lay her down to rest in her sacred place, that little churchyard that is in the shade of old Trinity.”
“I’ll do everything I can to find her, sir,” Hawke said.
“I believe you will. Goodbye, Mr. Hawke. And don’t drink any more damn whiskey. I find too much of it only makes things worse.”
“Yes, sir. Good-bye, Senator.”
Hawke hung up the phone. He couldn’t bear the scent of her, the sight of her things, a second longer. He rose and wandered back to his own stateroom where he collapsed upon the bed. He stared at the ceiling, trying to make Vicky’s face go away. He could see her perfectly. Her beautiful auburn hair was matted to her forehead. But she wasn’t above him. She was below him. About fifteen feet down in the green water, her arms and legs spread out. Not moving. Drifting and—
Sometime later, there was a squawk from Sniper on his perch, followed by a knock at the door. “Yes? Who is it?”
“It’s Stokely, boss,” said the muffled voice outside.
“What do you want?”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure,” Hawke said, and sat up, drying his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “Why not?” he said, opening the door. He padded back to his bed, leaning his head back against a large white pillow.
“How you feelin’?” Stoke asked, pulling up a chair.
“Ask me something else.”
“I don’t mean to bother you. You hurt. You on the bench. You sidelined. Ambrose sent me down here to check on you. Man thinks you should eat something.”
“He sent you down here to tell me that?”
“No, boss. He wants you to come up to the bridge. The radio guy or whatever picked up something on the satellite TV. News show off the Cuban television. Ambrose taped it and wants you to see it.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. What is it? A fucking cricket match?”
“Naw, it ain’t no crickets. It’s Castro. He’s on the Cuban TV station. Something going down in Cuba. Ambrose said you need to see it is all I’m sayin’. I wouldn’t have bothered you for nothing but—”
WHOOOMPH!
The sound of an explosion, muffled and distant but still enormous, reverberated throughout Hawke’s stateroom. The crystal decanters and glassware on the bar tinkled but didn’t fall.
“Holy Christ, now what?” Hawke said, and picked up the direct line to the bridge.
“What the hell was that, Captain?” Hawke asked when
Blackhawke’
s skipper picked up.
“We’re looking at it now, sir,” the captain said. “An explosion about two miles off our port beam. We had them on radar. They were headed northwest at about twenty knots. Small yacht, fifty feet or so.”
“No SOS prior?” Hawke asked.
“No, sir. They just blew sky high. I’ve ordered the launch lowered. The second officer is on with the Coast Guard now, apprising them of the situation. I’m sending Quick and the launch over to look for survivors. Not much hope by the looks of it, I’m afraid.”
“I’m coming right up.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Come on, Stoke,” Hawke said.
When Hawke reached the bridge, he could still see the fire two miles distant. Congreve and the captain were both standing just outside the wheelhouse on the starboard bridge wing with their binoculars trained on the scene. Alex and Stokely stepped out onto the small bridge deck. The smell of burning fuel had already drifted toward them.
“Sorry to bother you, Alex,” Ambrose said, handing him the binoculars. “But I had no choice. A military coup in Cuba, apparently. Now this poor fellow out there seems to have blown himself up.”
“A Cuban coup. Is that good news or bad news?” Hawke said, raising the glasses to his eyes. There was nothing left of the yacht but flotsam and jetsam floating in a spreading pool of burning fuel.