Atlanta Extreme (3 page)

“Yes—at his request, by the way. And it seems that the CIA would like to enlist your help in cleaning up this Wellington Curtis business. As I said, the United States government has no influence in Masagua—”

“That never stopped the CIA before,” Hawker put in.

“You may be right, but in this instance, with the news media doing everything in its power to cripple the president's Central American initiative, the Agency would rather keep a very low profile. Mr. Rehfuss said that they were interested in hiring someone to work free-lance. They would like to hire you again, Hawk.”

“And drop all charges—whatever in hell the charges were?”

“If you agree to follow their orders”—the woman smiled—“for once.”

“And the Agency wants me to go to Masagua and eliminate Curtis?”

“The Agency might,” Hayes put in, “but we don't. I'm saying that as a friend, Hawk. It would be far too dangerous for you to go knocking around in Central America. But I think you could clear up the problems Curtis is causing in Georgia. That's the way to really get to him. That's the way to stop him. Shut off his money supply.”

Hawker thought for a long moment before looking at his old friend. “Jake, I'm anxious as hell to get away from this jet-set life I've been living. But I can't just fly off to Georgia. Not just like that. From what I've heard about Curtis he deserves better. He may have gone insane—but the rumors also may have been started by bullshit journalists. And even if he did stray off the path, maybe it's not too late for someone to bring him back. Maybe someone can straighten him out. You said yourself that he had been doing good work in Masagua. And, frankly, I believe too strongly in his cause to just turn him off like a spigot. I think Wellington Curtis deserves another chance, Jake. He needs to be shown where he has gone wrong.”

Hayes leaned forward, slightly impatient. “And how in the world do you propose to do that, James? Hack your way through the jungle, smile at his guards, wave at his Headhunter Corps, sit down at his feet, and calmly explain to this madman why you are going to have to destroy his American organization if he doesn't get back on track?”

James Hawker stood up, chuckling. “If you'll set up the meeting for me, Jake, that's exactly what I propose to do.…”

So Jake Hayes had arranged the meeting; a meeting with Curtis in Belize at eight
P.M.
at the Fort George Hotel on a Tuesday in June. But Curtis had sent his whore and confidante, Laurene Catocamez, instead. Now the woman had proposed taking him to Guatemala in the morning. By taking his key had she also proposed something more?

It would be a while before Hawker would find out. He exited the hotel to the walkway that led to his room. It was a clear Caribbean dusk: high, bright sliver of moon; orange afterglow of the setting sun; and a balmy wind that smelled of the sea. The Fort George Hotel was well named. Steel fence and barbed wire surrounded the grounds, protecting the outside entrances to the rooms. This was a more accurate picture of paradise in Belize and also of tropical retreats like Jamaica and the Bahamas; tourists had to be fenced away from the citizenry to protect them from the poverty and the crime and the hatred.

Hawker was anxious to get the hell away.

As he approached the door to his ground-floor room a rustling in the bushes drew his attention, a noise from behind. Hawker whirled quickly, reaching for the 9-mm. Beretta holstered beneath the sea-blue worsted blazer that he wore. But he was too late. Standing before him was the huge bearded black man he had seen moments earlier in the bar.

In the man's hand was a long-barreled revolver, pointed at Hawker's face.…

three

“Your name is Hawker? James Hawker?” the big man demanded, walking slowly toward the vigilante. “Answer me!”

Hawker took a deep breath, trying to control the rush of adrenaline charging through him. “I have a policy against making sparkling conversation when someone is holding a gun on me.”

The big man stopped and gave a deep, oily chuckle that was touched with the British accent of the islands. Hawker realized that the man reminded him of someone: Geoffrey Holder on the 7-Up commercials. “You are telling me you don't answer questions at the point of a gun?” The man smiled. “If that is true, Mr. Hawker, then I am very surprised that you are still alive.”

“That makes two of us, friend. Now why don't you just put that weapon away before one of us gets hurt.”

The man laughed again. “Yes, you are the James Hawker I have heard so much about. Calm in tight situations, they told me. Fearless—even taunting—when confronted by deadly force.” The laugh turned into a sneer as the man took a quick step and slapped Hawker sharply across the face. “And do you know what my reply was, Mr. Hawker? I told them you have not yet met me. I told them that before I killed you—and I
will
kill you in a very few minutes—that I would have reduced you to tears, to begging for your life. I told them that I would have you on your knees.”

His muscles tense, all his senses alert for the opening he needed, Hawker gave a mock sniffle as he wiped away the blood that now poured freely from his upper lip. “There,” he said, “I'm in tears. Now I'm begging you: Put that weapon away, you fat fuck, before I stick it up your dirty black ass!”

Hawker got just the reaction he had hoped for. The big man's nostrils flared with anger, and Hawker drew back the revolver to club him with it. As he did, Hawker stepped down on the man's foot, knocked his gun hand away, and drove his fist deep into the man's solar plexus. The huge man gave a guttural
whoof
, bending over in agony, as the vigilante took the huge right arm in his hands and drove it across his knee. The big man let out a shriek as the revolver spun wildly into the air and landed with a clatter on the cement. Hawker reached for the Beretta, but before he could get to it, the black man gave a brutal kick that caught the vigilante on the inside of the thigh, just below and to the left of the scrotum. The force of the blow knocked him to the ground, and his attacker jumped on him.

Wheezing and grunting, the two men fought brutally to get a choke hold on the other's throat. The man was tremendously strong, and Hawker realized quickly that he would probably lose any life-and-death test of strength. But he also realized that what the man had in muscle, he lacked in brains. Hawker pretended for just a moment to be blacking out. Immediately the big man shifted his position so as to get a better grip. At that moment of vulnerability Hawker punched him hard in the throat, used his elbow to club the man's nose flat, then rolled away, reaching for his Beretta.

Realizing that the fight was lost, the black man jumped to his feet with startling speed and vaulted over the barbed-wire-topped fence, ripping his hands and shirt as he did.

Hawker did not shoot as the man disappeared into the darkness. After a few moments he holstered his weapon and began to take inventory of his own physical condition. His upper lip was still bleeding, his throat felt as if he had swallowed ground glass, and his inner thigh hurt like hell. “
Damn
,” he whispered, breathing heavily. “What a night!”

The vigilante carried no handkerchief, so he used a small stick to pick up the man's weapon, careful not to smear whatever prints might be there. Who he could get to lift the prints—or who would even care that he was attacked—he did not know. Protecting the prints was an old cop habit, and he carried the weapon to the door of his hotel room and turned the knob.

It was locked. He had forgotten all about the woman, forgotten that she had left with his key.

Was the big black man her accomplice? Had she taken his key so that he would be left stranded on the walk outside, trying to get in?

Hawker gave the door a savage kick and called himself a foul name. How stupid could he be! A moment later, though, the door to his hotel room swung open. Laurene Catocamez stood looking at him. She wore one of Hawker's T-shirts. The darkness of her nipples stood out in contrast beneath the thin, white material. The shirt billowed out around the glistening swell of her lean hips and revealed the bottom curls of the triangle of her black pubic hair. She leaned against the door seal, a wry, sleepy, bedroom expression on her petulant lips. “Did I hear you call yourself a dumb fuck?” she asked, purring. “From what I have heard, James, dear, you are anything but.…”

The woman stood there looking catlike, extremely desirable, but then her eyes seemed to focus and her expression changed suddenly to one of shock. “James, you've been hurt! My God, what happened to you?”

Hawker realized that he must look like a bloody mess. He shrugged off the woman's efforts to help him and limped past her to the bathroom. He plugged the sink, ran cold water, and dumped in a bucket of ice from the counter. He buried his right fist in the water, then submerged his face until the pain was too much to stand.

“Hand me a towel, damn it,” he sputtered.

The woman found a towel and began to dab at his face. “Why are you so mad at me? Please, tell me what happened!”

Hawker jerked the towel from her and finished drying his face. “What happened, dear lady, is that the man you had posted outside my room failed. He tried to kill me, tried very damn hard, but tonight just wasn't his night. He left with what I truly hope is a fractured arm”—Hawker motioned to the revolver on the counter—“and without his gun.” Hawker tossed the towel away and glared at the woman. “Now, you can make it very easy on yourself, Laurene, by telling me all about it. Or, if you like, I can make you talk. And don't think for an instant that the fact that you are very obviously a woman bothers me.”

The woman's pale mahogany face turned a slow, deep shade of oiled wood. Anger. Outrage. She whirled away from Hawker, yanked one of his jackets off the hanger, and covered herself. “There! Is that better? You really know how to put a woman out of the mood!”

Hawker couldn't believe what he was hearing. “
Me
? Wellington Curtis tries to have me killed on my first night in Belize and you expect me to come in here, jump into bed with you, tell you any little secrets I might be hiding, and then act as happy as a lark? Come on, lady. I don't know what jungle you crawled out of, but people aren't quite so naive in the real world—”

“Why would Colonel Curtis have you killed?” she shouted, interrupting, her fists planted on her hips. “He honestly hopes you have come to help him!”

“Then who in the hell was that guy waiting for me outside? He knew my name; he knew all about me. He wasn't just one of your run-of-the-mill drugged-out island thieves. He was a pro. A dumb pro, but a pro just the same.”

“James, I told you that I am Wellington Curtis's confidante, and I am. So I won't pretend not to know something of your past. Any number of people could have arranged to have that man waiting for you. But my guess is that it was the CIA—aren't they after you too?”

“It couldn't be the CIA because—” Hawker stopped himself in mid-sentence, realizing that he was about to give away some important information. After a moment he looked at the woman. “Get out,” he said. “Now.”

“But my clothes … I'm not even dressed!”

Hawker had taken her by the arm and was leading her to the door. “I'll call the front desk and have them send a maid with a key to your room—”

“I don't have a room!”

“You will when I get off the phone to the front desk.”

Hawker locked the door against the woman's protestations. He opened one of the Belikin beers he had been keeping in the now empty ice bucket and drank half of it in a gulp as he sat by the phone. First he arranged for another room and then got through to the overseas operator. “That's right, Operator,” he said, almost yelling into the phone, “Jerry Rehfuss, Washington, D.C.” He gave her the private telephone number of his former CIA connection, hung up the phone, and waited.

Hawker was soaking his hand in ice water when the phone rang ten minutes later.

The voice at the other end sounded cautious, reluctant to talk, and a million miles away. “James? James Hawker? Is that really you?”

“It's me, Jer. Alive and well—no thanks to you.”

“Ah, James, a public phone line may not be the place to discuss our business—”

“You keep a voltage meter on your end, Jer. You tell
me
: Should we discuss our business?”

“Well, no, probably not. But it depends, James—”

“Someone tried to exercise a contract on me tonight, Jerry,” Hawker said, cutting in. “He gave it a good try, but he fell a little short.”

Rehfuss's voice became even more cautious, and Hawker guessed that there was either someone in the room with him or the line, indeed, was being tapped. “I'm not surprised that they failed, James. You're a good businessman. Tell me, what did this person look like?”

“A big black guy with a beard. The beard might have been fake. He had an island accent, a deep voice. He knew too much about me. It sounds like one of your free-lancers to me. It's a shame, too, Jer, because I had heard that our companies were going to be friends again. I was looking forward to the negotiations.”

“You said it was a large black man, James?” Rehfuss asked, pressing on. “Please be more exact in your description. And you haven't even told me where you're calling from.”

“You don't really expect me to tell you after what happened tonight, do you, Jer?”

“How can I help, James, if you won't trust me?”

“You can help by telling me if your representatives still have orders to exercise that contract. I have his equipment, by the way, and his prints, too, I assume—not that anyone really gives a damn.”

There was a long silence on the Washington end, and Hawker knew that Rehfuss was talking to someone else. He wondered who. Finally the lanky CIA agent came back to the phone. “I hate to admit it, James, but it could be one of our representatives. Orders went out last week that we were going to deal with you on a more friendly basis—temporarily, at least. We were waiting until we closed the deal with you, and apparently not all the orders got through.”