Hawke: A Novel (15 page)

“Pirates’ lore. Most appropriate after a splendid evening of saberrattling and plank-walking,” Hawke said. Motioning his friend up the stairs, he said, “After you, Constable.”

Once Hawke and Ambrose had made themselves comfortable up on deck, Hawke continued the story of his illustrious ancestor.

The old pirate, upon hearing that the king’s men were in the courtyard, now knew he was not to be spared the hangman’s noose. Collapsing back upon his tattered cot, he uttered one word, “Lost.”

The parson knelt on the cold stone beside him and put his hand out to the man. “Repent with me now, and make your final journey with peace in your soul. I beg of you to—”

“Innocent!” Blackhawke bellowed. “How does an innocent man repent? The king himself long encouraged piracy to fill his coffers. Now that damnable East India Company decides pirates are discouraging the mercantile trades, and suddenly our heads are on the block!”

“Alas, ’tis true.”

“My friends at court, my crew, one and all betray me to save their own skins! It’s these foul traitors must repent their treachery, not Captain Blackhawke!”

“Alas, ’tis true twice over,” the parson said. “Let us go now, and speak with the Lord.”

On their way to the courtyard, the parson took the hapless pirate into the prison chapel for one last chance at redemption. They sat for a moment in the gloom on a long hard pew facing a single coffin draped in black. As was tradition, the doomed prisoners had been forced to sit before the symbolic coffin, quite empty, for hours each day, supposedly doing their penance.

Thick incense floated to the high, vaulted ceilings, but it couldn’t mask the pervasive stench of urine rising in every dark corner; nor could the chants and mournful prayers of the condemned hide the sounds of those wretched souls fornicating on the back benches.

Blackhawke stared silently at the draped coffin, quietly sipping his grog.

“It’s no use, Parson,” he said finally. “It ain’t in me, repentance. Nary a bit of it. I’ll step off into the next world and take me chances as I am.” He pulled the spyglass in which he’d hidden the map from his cloak and slipped it into the parson’s hands.

“This glass is all that’s left to me in this world,” Blackhawke rasped. “’Twas a gift from my wife when first I went to sea. Now I want her to have it as a poor remembrance of her husband. I beg you to see that it makes it safely into her hands. I’ve four gold doubloons sewn into me coat here that are yours, if you’ll give me no more than your sacred word. It’s my last wish.”

“Consider it done, Captain,” the parson said. And Blackhawke ripped open the seam in his coat, withdrew the doubloons, and slipped them to the fellow.

The parson and the pirate emerged into the courtyard.

“I warn you, Parson,” Blackhawke said, angrily eyeing the crewmen who’d betrayed him, some of whom were already in the cart. “I warn you this. An unarmed man full of vengeance is the most dangerous of men. I warrant I’ll rip their treacherous hearts out!”

But in the event, riding in the king’s cart, Blackhawke merely drank grog all the way to the dock. He was simply too tired and too weak and too full of rum to wreak his vengeance. He was thus oblivious to the merry shouts and taunts of the crowds lining the streets leading to the River Thames. By the time he and the other condemned arrived at the place of execution, the parson had to help the old man stagger up the steps to where the hangman waited. The notorious pirate captain would be the first to go.

He stood, with the noose finally around his neck, and looked out over the noisome crowd. He had arranged for some few remaining friends to stand below the gallows and witness his departure. Theirs was a mission of mercy. Since the drop itself seldom did the job, his mates were there to leap up, grab his heels, and yank down to end Blackhawke’s agony quickly.

As it happened, the rope parted, and Blackhawke tumbled to the ground with little more than a bad rope burn round his neck. The dazed man had to be carried once more up the steps to repeat his agonizing departure.

By now, however, the rum fog had dissipated a bit, and it was a much-sobered Blackhawke who had one final revelation. Standing once more upon the precipice, he felt suddenly alive, breathing, conscious. Even the sting of the rope burning around his neck was something to be cherished, and, oddly, the crowd ranged below him now seemed to be cheering. A joyous sendoff for one last epic and uncharted voyage! Yes!

His mind allowed him to stand once more on his quarterdeck, shouting orders fore and aft. Lines cast off, sheets loosed, sails filled with an evening breeze. Bound for the far horizon. Men scrambling like monkeys in the rigging, all color and glory. Bound for that fat yellow moon floating just over that far, far horizon.

Farewell.

Well. This is it then. Torches burning along the riverbanks. The dusky glow of London Town shimmering across the water. Lovely night. Been a good life, hasn’t it, after all? Strongly lived. Well fought and well rewarded. Left the treacherous Caribee and tedious humdrum of the New World’s penny-pinching merchants far astern, hadn’t he?

Been a young man then, still, when he’d taken up the pirate’s adventuresome ways. Loved the endless roll of the boundless blue sea, he had, really. Loved every league and fathom of her, for all his life.

A small sigh escaped his lips and his mates below drew forward, hushed now. All the crowd below quiet now. He would go into the next world unarmed. But he was unafraid and had no doubt he’d conquer the next as he’d done the present.

He’d given some serious thought to his parting shot, looking for a defiant farewell, and he uttered those words now, raw and raspy, but still strong.

“The man without sword is oft the deadliest enemy,” Blackhawke bellowed. “Hear me, Death, and lay on!”

There was a resounding huzzah from below.

He brought the curtain down on this world, squeezing his eyes shut and remembering just as hard as he could:

He sucked one last draught of sweet air into his lungs and then—stepped off into forever.

The next morning they hung Blackhawke’s corpse from a post on the riverbank, in plain view of the passing river traffic. It rotted there for some months, sloughing off flesh, blacker and smaller with every sunrise, a stern and daily reminder of the fate awaiting those foolhardy enough to consider the pirate’s adventuresome ways.

In the end, there was little left of Blackhawke but legend. That, and his sun-bleached bones, tinkling gaily in the wind off the river.

Hawke was silent a moment, having finished his tale. He drained his port, then he stood and raised the empty glass to his friend.

“Hear me then, Death, and lay on!” Hawke said, and flung his glass far out into the nighttime sky.

“Hear! Hear!” Ambrose said, and, getting to his feet, he flung his glass over the rail as well. “Now we’ve sent Captain Blackhawke off to his reward, I’m for bed myself. Good night, Alex. Sleep well.”

“Good night, Ambrose,” Alex said. “Thanks to you, old soul, I’ll no doubt be dreaming of pirates tonight.”

But of course he dreamt of them every night.

At six the next morning, a crewman on the bridge initiated a program that caused the entire stern section of
Blackhawke
to rise upward on massive hydraulic pistons. It revealed a yawning, cavernous hangar, where Hawke garaged a few of his “toys,” as he called them.

The deck and bulkheads of the hangar were brilliantly polished stainless steel and contained only a tiny portion of Hawke’s permanent collection. Among them were the 1932 British Racing Green Bentley, supercharged. A C-type Jaguar, winner of the 1954 Le Mans race, and Alberto Ascari’s Mille Miglia–winning Ferrari Barchetta.

Then there was the seventy-foot-long
Nighthawke,
an offshore powerboat capable of speeds in excess of one hundred miles an hour. Hawke had made many a narrow escape thanks to
Nighthawke’
s powerful turbocharged engines.

One of Hawke’s favorite toys, however, was the shining silver seaplane now being positioned at the top of the ramp. Its lovely streamlined appearance looked like something Raymond Loewy himself might have designed in the early thirties. At a signal, the plane was lowered to the foot of a ramp that stretched directly into the sea. In seconds, the small plane was bobbing merrily on the mirrored surface of the blue water.

The name
Kittyhawke
was painted in script just below the cockpit window. And, under that, a painting of a very pretty young bathing beauty. Sutherland and Quick stood at the foot of the ramp, each holding a mooring line attached to the plane’s pontoons.

Hawke and Congreve stood watching the operation. Hawke was wearing his old Royal Navy flight suit. It was his standard wardrobe whenever he flew the seaplane. He was literally rubbing his hands together in keen anticipation of the flight to Nassau.

“Fine morning for the wild blue yonder,” Hawke exclaimed, taking in a deep breath of salt air.

“Lovely,” Congreve replied, expelling a plume of tobacco smoke the color of old milkglass.

“Now, listen, old boy. I want you to have a bit of fun while I’m gone. Do some more snorkeling. Get some sun. You look like an absolute fish.”

“About that treasure map. I do hope—”

“The box is open on the library desk. If you have to lift it out, there are tweezers in the drawer.”

“I’d like to include Sutherland in my research. He might prove extremely useful.”

“Smashing. Spent some time heading up your cartography section, didn’t he? Best of luck. Who couldn’t use an extra few hundred million in gold?”

“Should be good fun.”

Hawke zipped up his flying suit and put a hand on Congreve’s shoulder.

“I’ve left you all the notes I’ve made over the years. A lot to plow through. All those rainy afternoons at the British Museum digging up contemporaneous maps and manuscripts and what-not.”

“Really? I always imagined you whiling away those hours in a pub somewhere, huddled in a dark corner with a beautiful married woman.”

“Indeed? Well. Some excellent volumes of eighteenth-century history and cartography in the library, as you know. I’ve made a fair bit of progress, but, of course, I don’t read Spanish as well as you do.”

“I was wondering—” Congreve said, and then looked away.

“Yes?”

“I wonder—well, you said you’d been in these islands before,” he said, still not looking Hawke in the eye.

“Yes?”

“Well, I was thinking perhaps that voyage you took might itself have been some kind of treasure-hunting expedition. If the map has been in your family for generations, it might be that—”

“I really have no idea,” Hawke said, his face clouding up. He stepped onto the plane’s pontoon. “I told you. I was so young. I don’t remember anything.”

“Of course. You said that. Sorry.”

“I’m off, then.”

“Please give Victoria my best.”

“Oh, I will indeed,” Hawke said, merry blue eyes and a smile returning to his face. “And mine as well, I should hope.”

“Safe journey,” Congreve said. Hawke patted the rosy cheek of the painted bathing beauty for luck and climbed up into the cockpit. He pulled the door closed after him. The window on Hawke’s side slid open, and his curly black head appeared.

“Back in a few days, I should think,” Hawke shouted. “I’ll ring you right after my meeting at the State Department. Have some fun, will you? Play some golf!”

“Golf!” Congreve exclaimed. “There’s not a golf course within a hundred miles of this bloody place!”

Hawke smiled and pulled the window closed. He looked at the preflight check he’d strapped to his knee. God, he loved this airplane! Just the smell of the thing was enough to make him feel sharply alive. Since arriving in the Exumas, he’d made good use of the little plane, taking her up for early-morning explorations of the surrounding islands.

There were a few loud reports as
Kittyhawke’
s Packard-built Merlin 266 engine fired, and a short blast of flame erupted from the manifold. The engine was a custom version of the one that had powered the Supermarine Spitfires that had won the Battle of Britain.

As the polished steel propeller slowly started to spin, Congreve turned to Ross, who was now standing beside him, holding the plane’s mooring line.

“What’s the weather like between here and Nassau?” he asked his Scotland Yard colleague. “I saw a nasty front moving toward the Bahamas on the weather sat this morning.”

“Should be ideal, then,” Ross said, smiling with evident fondness for Hawke. “You know the skipper. Even as my squadron commander, when we were flying sorties in Tomcats, he was always frustrated he never got to be one of those hurricane hunter chaps. He does love the eye of the storm.”

“No,” Ambrose said with a puff of smoke, “the eye of the storm is far too quiet for Alex Hawke. He loves the storm.”

Ross quickly checked the plane’s exterior controls over, then gave Hawke the thumbs-up. He tossed the last mooring line out toward the pontoon where it was automatically spooled aboard.

The engine noise increased as Hawke ran up the motor. Testing his flaps, ailerons, and rudder, he turned the plane’s nose into the wind. With a sudden roar, the plane surged forward. Congreve, who hated flying contraptions, had to admit the silver plane looked splendid, catching the sun’s early rays on its wings as it darted across the glassy blue water.

The plane lifted, did a quick looping turn, dove back over
Blackhawke’
s stern, waggled its wings in salute, and was gone.

Into the “mild” blue yonder, Congreve thought, furious with himself for not coming up with the joke a few minutes earlier.

As it happened, there would be nothing mild about it.

Hawke gained a little altitude, climbing into his turn northwest. He would be flying right over Hog Island, home of the most famous pig in the Caribbean. The big hairy sow, named Betty, was completely blind and had been the island’s sole inhabitant for years. Hawke had discovered her only a few days earlier, shortly after
Blackhawke’
s arrival in these waters. He, Tom, and Brian had been bonefishing the flats just off the small island’s sandy white beach.

Betty lived on the generosity of the many tourists who would take their boats in near shore. She would come running out of the dense thicket of scrub palms at the sound of their outboard engines and plunge into the sea. She’d swim out toward the cries of the children and their families, who’d always bring Betty’s favorite meals, which consisted of apples, oranges, or potatoes, Hawke had noticed that day, watching the tourists.

Betty would swim right up to the side of the boat, sniffing, and take the food from the delighted children’s hands. Since then, Hawke himself had fed her many times and developed a great fondness for the old sow. On his morning sorties in
Kittyhawke,
he now made a great fuss of “airlifting” supplies in to Betty. In fact, he had a big canvas sack of apples in his lap at this very moment. And he was just coming up on Hog Island.

His method was always the same. Go in low on the first pass so Betty could hear his engine and know breakfast was about to be served. Then he’d bank
Kittyhawke
hard over and fly back out to his original position. By the time he got turned around, he could usually see Betty running through the scrub palms toward the water.

That’s what he did this morning.

He lined up on the island, staying low. The sunlit turquoise water racing beneath his wings was beautiful. Because of the hour, he was flying directly into the rising sun. There she was, he could make her out, still deep in the bush, trotting along. Odd, she’d usually made it to the water at this point.

He slid back his portside window and felt the sudden rush of air and the explosion of engine noise inside the cockpit. He held the sack of apples outside the cockpit, ready to release at just the right moment. Steady, hold your course, nose up, you’re coming in a bit low, and—bombs away! The apples tumbled into the sea. Hawke was laughing, looking ahead for Betty to emerge, when he saw a man all in black stand up in the midst of the scrub palms. What?

The man raised something to his shoulder and seemed to be pointing it directly at Hawke. Then the most amazing thing, Betty bursting from the palms directly behind the fellow and smashing him to the ground! He scrambled to his feet, kicking wildly at the relentless pig and aiming once more at the onrushing airplane.

Bloody hell. He could even see the man’s face now. Rasputin? Yes. Wild-eyed, grinning like a monkey.

Hawke yanked back on his stick just as he saw a puff of white smoke at Rasputin’s shoulder. The plane’s infrared detector warning sounded instantly, telling him what he already knew.

There was a heat-seeking missile screaming toward him, locked on. The bloody Russian had fired a Stinger at him! There it was, Christ, he could
see
the bloody thing hurtling right toward his goddamn nose!

This little chap is really starting to piss me off, Hawke said to himself. His forearm still burned where the Russian had stabbed him with the dagger. He instantly went to full throttle, feeling the full thrust of the Merlin engine kicking in, and banked hard left, then hard right, jinking violently. He had the
Kittyhawke
right down on the deck and his wingtips were brushing the tops of the scrub palms every time he banked her.

His enormous burst of acceleration had confused the missile, and he saw the little silver killer scream beneath his fuselage, missing him by maybe a foot. Maybe less. He didn’t have time to congratulate himself. He knew, even now, the Stinger would be correcting, arcing around and coming at him from behind.

His missile alarm warnings confirmed his fears. Still locked on.

Even for a fighter pilot, the inside loop at low altitude is easily one of the most dangerous maneuvers you can attempt. A flawless execution is critical. It was also, he knew, the only chance he had. He leveled his wings and pulled straight back on the stick.
Kittyhawke
responded instantly, going into an almost vertical climb. The g-forces were enormous, and Hawke was shoved back into his seat, hearing the constant wail of the alarm telling him the missile was still locked on.

At the top of the loop, the hard part started. You had to keep the aircraft with her belly skyward as you came over the top and started your descent. He strained around in his seat, looking for the Stinger. It was sticking right with him.

As he nosed over, the g-forces increased. And so did the airspeed, because he had the plane in a vertical dive, screaming down toward the scrubby little island. This was the most dangerous part, the part where you could easily “red out,” as pilots called blacking out.

He smelled the fire before he saw it. He heard popping noises behind him, electrical, and smoke started to fill the cockpit. The missile must have clipped one of the transponders dangling from the belly of the plane. Now, in addition to the Stinger, he had an electrical fire on his hands.

Well, the fire would have to wait. He just hoped it would wait long enough.

“Bastard,” he shouted, craning his head around and seeing the missile gaining on him. The ground was rushing up so fast, he could literally see crabs scurrying across the sand. Do-or-die time. If he was to have any chance at all, he had to wait until it was too late to pull out.

Then one of two things would happen. He would be obliterated. Or he wouldn’t.

Now! He hauled back on the stick and accelerated out of the dive. He’d come within mere feet of the earth and the plane was slicing through the tops of scrub palms. As long as he didn’t hit anything solid before he got a little altitude—

WHUMPF!!!

The Stinger hit the earth and exploded.

Hawke, busily avoiding the taller palm trees by banking hard left and right, managed a quick look over his shoulder toward the rear of the small cockpit. Flames were licking at the back of his seat and the smoke was starting to burn his eyes. The fire hadn’t waited. It was seconds from spreading out of control. He had to get to the fire extinguisher mounted very inconveniently on the portside bulkhead behind him. The fire was directly between Hawke and the extinguisher.

It’s these little design flaws that make life so interesting, Hawke thought, struggling out of his shoulder belts. He leveled
Kittyhawke,
flipped on the autopilot, and climbed out of his seat.