A Time for War (23 page)

In response, the man reached into a shoulder holster and withdrew an all-black TASER X2 gun. He raised it with both hands and came around the bed.

“Ms. Griffith, you are going to be leaving the premises.”

Dover backed against the wall, into a corner, because there was nowhere else to go. The bathroom was to her left but too far to get to. She guessed from the heft of the weapon and the two long, narrow paddles attached to the front that he would not have to be very close to reach her. She picked up a wastebasket, the only thing that was handy, intending to throw it. Holding a metal object probably would not have afforded her much protection from an electric charge.

She heard a grunt outside. The intruder turned suddenly. Because Dover was no longer in line with the door she could not see what had happened outside. An instant later the driver of the car half-flew, half-stumbled into the motel room, followed by a foot. The foot belonged to a powerfully built man who kicked him in the kidneys and knocked him hard into the side of the cheap desk. The attacker entered the room. He was dressed all in black, including a wool cap, and held an automatic weapon that swept the room and landed on the man with the TASER. He used his heel to kick the door shut.

“Put your left hand up, throw the weapon into the john, then put your right hand up,” the newcomer said to the man. While he spoke he walked up behind the driver, grabbed the collar of his jacket, and twisted. The driver gagged. The newcomer did not relax his grip.

“Whoever you are, you better let him go and leave while you can,” the man with the TASER said.

“Aim for the toilet,” the newcomer said. “I like it when they sizzle.”

The man hesitated while his companion gagged.

“Your friend runs out of air in twenty seconds,” the newcomer said. He extended the weapon at arm's length toward the man with the TASER. “He'll be conscious enough to hear you die with time to spare. And the lady and I will be gone long before those wandering sheriff's deputies get here.”

With a face that reminded Dover of a dragon mask she'd seen in Chinese language studies, the man raised one hand and tossed the TASER in a long arc toward the bathroom. He missed the toilet.

“Back to bad guy boot camp for you,” the newcomer said. “OK. Cell phone next. Left hand, two fingers, on the floor in front of you.”

“I know the drill,” the man said.

“Just making sure,” the newcomer told him. “Not that I had anything to worry about, the way you throw.”

The man took the phone from his belt using his thumb and index finger and let it fall to the worn beige carpet.

“Kick,” the newcomer said.

The man kicked the phone into the corner where Dover was still huddled.

“Jacket,” the newcomer said.

The man held it open to show that he had no other weapons. The newcomer released his grip slightly on the other man. He hoisted him to his feet and pushed him forward. Both hands on his automatic, the newcomer ordered the gasping man to take off his jacket. He had a Glock 21 in a shoulder holster. His partner was ordered to remove it and the man's cell phone with the same two-fingered grip. They both ended up in the corner with Dover.

“Grab a pillowcase and put 'em in,” the newcomer told Dover.

She did as he'd instructed. Then he motioned her over. She stood behind him.

“OK, boys,” the man said. “Your tires are punctured on the driver's side. You call for a ride from here and your number shows up on the lady's phone bill. Enough for her to prove charges for unlawful entry. You can walk back, though I wouldn't advise it. That rabbit punch-kick combo to the kidneys is designed to bruise the gluteus medius. Walking could tear it.” He used his head to motion Dover to the door. She opened it. “The keys are still in the ignition,” he said to her. “Get it out of the way then rev up your rental.”

She nodded, grabbed her handbag and suitcase, and left.

The newcomer glared at the men in silence until he heard Dover's engine turn over. “You guys could use more extensive training, what we in the military call ‘Deep Offense,'” he said. “If you want to make me an offer, just call on your cell.”

Flicking the safety back on and slipping the gun into his belt holster, the newcomer stepped through the door.

“Go to the Starbucks across the street from Hawke,” the man said as he climbed into the passenger's side of the rental.

“I don't think you need the caffeine,” Dover said.

“I may want a biscotti,” he deadpanned.

Dover didn't know if he was serious. She didn't care. She swung the car onto the road and sped north toward Clinton Keith.

“Thank you,” she said as she drove. “I hope.”

“It's OK, you're in good hands,” her passenger said. Dover had placed the pillowcase on the backseat. The man retrieved it and put the guns in the glove compartment. “My name's Doc Matson. Jack Hatfield asked me to fly down and keep an eye on you.”

“How did Jack—?” she began, then clapped her lips shut as she replayed the conversation with him in her head. Of course Jack would figure out why she was coming to Murrieta.

“Our mutual friend is a pretty clever guy,” Doc said. “Though I have to say, for an intelligence agent—I was eavesdropping, sorry—your breadcrumb trail is more like a series of loaves.”

“I've got a lot to learn. Clearly.”

The traffic on Whitewood was sparse. It thickened when they reached the main road. Fortunately the Starbucks was only a short distance from the intersection.

“So I'm guessing you have a car at Starbucks?” she ventured.

“A cab,” he informed her. “I took it from the airport, figured we'd drive your car back. I was watching for a rental driven by someone who matched your description. When you left, I had the driver follow you back to the hotel and drop me off. I waited behind the ice machine to see if anyone from Hawke did the same.” He shook his head. “What a pair of morons. One of them should've been watching the street.”

“Those tires were pretty flat,” Dover said.

Doc slipped a Bowie knife from a sheath under his left arm. It had a nine-inch blade and a faint, oily smell. “A little grease, slide it deep, the oil keeps it from hissing when you pull it out.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“A greased blade? Cutting rebel throats for the Russians in Chechnya,” he replied. “Men try to breathe through the wounds if you're holding their mouths—which you do to keep them from shouting. You need to keep the air passage quiet, too.”

Dover felt her chest tighten. She forced herself to concentrate on the road, on the traffic, not to picture what her passenger had just described.

“The cab's waiting in the parking lot so he can jump on the freeway headed south,” Doc said. “For a hundred bucks he's going to drive the cell phones away from the direction we're headed. The GPS will put him somewhere in Fallbrook while we're on the way to Ontario.”

“What happens when they find him?” Dover asked, trying and failing not to picture a dying rebel.

“The driver plays dumb, says his fare must've forgotten his pillowcase.” Doc grinned. “I'd love to see those guys' faces when they catch up to him.”

“That's why you removed the guns,” Dover said.

“Bingo. I don't want him to have trouble if they call the cops.”

The car reached the Starbucks. Dover was driving on automatic. She saw the sign, swung in without thinking. Doc jumped out. The young woman's head felt like it was along for the ride: it had stopped trying to process anything that was happening. She was amazed she had figured out why he'd taken the weapons from the pillowcase.

Doc came running back. “We're good,” he said. “Back to the Ontario Airport.”

“I'll have to see if I can change my reservation,” she said as she spun back onto Clinton Keith Road. She made the light, was no longer afraid of the fast left lane as she headed north on 15.

“You won't need a ticket from here,” Doc told her. “I flew down.”

“As in, your own plane?”

He nodded. “It's the only way you can get your own guns into or out of a country.”

Her passenger was sending a text and Dover stopped talking. There was nothing else she wanted to ask. She was done thinking about anything except getting to the airport—and one thing more.

Someone at Hawke Industries had a secret to protect, one she had jeopardized. One for which they were willing to TASER her and kidnap her to get her to the airport. She didn't know if she would ever be safe. She knew that her bridges at the ONI had not just been burned, they'd been blasted. The only way through this was straight ahead.

Whatever concerns Dover had about the profession of the man sitting beside her, drumming his knees and humming Sousa's “The Thunderer,” she was grateful to have Doc Matson and Jack Hatfield watching her flank.

Marigot, Saint Martin

Of all the places Jack had thought he might end up at the flight's end, the Caribbean was not on his short list. Only the sign on the distant terminal told him where he was, in Saint Martin; Martina was still mute on their destination. Even as they were making their final approach.

And then it hit his chronically suspicious brain:
You should have expected something like this. Maybe it was a long-planned getaway or maybe Hawke is just staying out of the country in case this investigation goes south for him.

Hawke's jet came in so low over Maho Beach, Jack could see the faint sheen of wet sand in the moonlight. He thought about the sunseekers who would have thronged the beach that day. Veterans would have ignored the low-flying aircraft; there would have been panic in the eyes and gestures of newcomers.

Imagine how the Arawak Indians felt when they saw the ships from Spain,
he thought.

It was strange to think of toned, near-naked ladies playing volleyball and the crew of Christopher Columbus on this same clear stretch of waterfront. It was possible that the Indians were wearing even less than vacationers, which was the only backward step he could conjure up. He thought of those men crossing the ocean in a slow-going, wind-driven chamber pot while he flew here faster than the speed of sound. He thought of the diseases that had ravaged the civilization in the Leeward Islands over half a millennium ago and the medicines that prevented them today. He thought of the slavery introduced by the Spanish and the freedom paid for in blood by American soldiers who fought oppression at home and abroad in war after war.

As the jet crossed the chain-link fence and
plip-plopped
onto the tarmac, he turned his thoughts to Richard Hawke. The man was somewhere on this island. As he recalled from the
Fodor's
he'd read before going to Antigua, this region used to be inhabited by hereditary chieftains, not self-made lords. That, too, was different. Whether for better or worse remained to be seen.

A white stretch limo was waiting on the tarmac. A swarthy Customs agent with a pencil moustache and a pinched grin came out to meet the jet after the steps were lowered, but he did not bother to check Jack's bag. He did confiscate the popcorn, however, saying that foreign grain was not permitted. Jack didn't believe that. He just looked like a man who needed a snack.

Jack said good-bye to Martina. They shook hands. It had been a strange and singular experience being around a woman who was so beautiful without inhabiting or enjoying that beauty. She was only the marketable shell of Hawke's machine.

The limo was equipped for a party. There was a digital jukebox, a forty-inch HD TV, Dom Perignon on ice, and a refrigerator with more Iranian caviar, fresh slices of expensive Yubari melons, and the world's most expensive pie from the Fence Gate Inn in Burnley, Lancashire, England. It was made with two bottles of 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild red wine, Wagyu beef from Kobe, Japan, matsutake mushrooms, and a crust with gold-leaf topping. Jack knew all of this because the car also came equipped with Utako, a stunning young lady who also, by coincidence, came from Kobe. She explained it all as they rolled through the airport gate. She wore the same uniform as Martina and had the same aloof manner. Not that there was time for Jack to try and get to know her any better than he knew Martina. He spent less than ten minutes in the car as it took him not to some mountaintop estate, as he was expecting, but to the Daniel Dutch Marina on Simpson Bay. There he boarded an Aquariva speedboat. Except for its fiberglass hull, the sleek vessel was almost entirely mahogany from the cockpit to the decks, with Gucci print fabric upholstery—waterproof, Utako informed him as they boarded. The pilot, dressed in a tailor-made black suit with the now familiar Hawke logo on his seaman's cap, immediately revved the two quiet 380 HP Yanmar engines and they took off, planing at 35 knots.

Jack did not have to ask where they were going.

Through the forest of moonlit masts belonging to small pleasure boats, he saw the side of the yacht: it was like a brushstroke of gleaming white across the darkness. It bore the name
Hi-Lite
in bold, black letters.

Utako must have noticed Jack staring.

“The lengths of yachts have grown exponentially in just the last decade,” Utako said, loud enough to be heard over the hum of the massive diesel engines, the rush of the wind, and the slap of the hull against the water, “culminating in the launch of
Eclipse
at five hundred and thirty-three feet. On the list of the world's largest yachts, which includes royal and state ships, Richard Hawke's yacht at four hundred and thirty-nine feet is ranked only number eight. But it has very rare features. Built under an extreme blanket of secrecy by Blohm and Voss shipyards, she is one of only two private yachts that are ice-classed. Featuring over forty-eight thousand square feet under air, she has seven decks, including twelve guest cabins, twin master suites, a hangar, several pools, and two helipads, one of which, on the aft deck, is hydraulically retractable. She can accommodate up to twenty-four guests and has a live-aboard crew of twenty-seven, including three security men who were formerly Russian
Spetsnaz.
”