Florida Firefight (19 page)

Hawker tried to keep his voice flat and businesslike. “I can understand why you have to kill me. I know all about your operation, Guillermo, and I know that running drugs is just part of it. A very small part of it. I don't know how you got Winnie. I suppose one of your people told you that we were romantically involved, and you decided she would be an ideal bargaining tool. Well, they were right. I'm willing to bargain—but only if you release Winnie and my friend here. They know nothing about your real operation—”

Guillermo threw his head back and laughed loudly. “Bargain? With you? Really, Mr. Hawker, your spirit is admirable but, in this case, quite silly. You are in my power—”

“I have a detailed report of your operation in a safety deposit box, and I left directions with a friend to open it if I don't return—”

“
Enough!
” Guillermo's face was pallid with anger. “I've heard enough of your insulting stories!” He visibly calmed himself. “You and your party are going to die, Mr. Hawker. Medelli had been with me for some time, so I allowed him to die painlessly. But I owe you no such favors. Would you like to see how you are going to die?” Guillermo's smile was a thin, dark slit. He motioned toward the mulatto giant. “Simio, dispose of their weapons, please.”

The mulatto rumbled across the deck. First he picked up the Ingram. He put one fist around the metal stock and the other around the silencer. Holding it away from his body, he began to bend it. The sweat beaded on his forehead, and his knuckles turned white.

The submachine gun twisted as if it were rubber.

He tossed it aside and crumpled the Colt Commando in the same fashion.

“That is how you are going to die, Mr. Hawker.” Guillermo chuckled. “He will start with your arms. And then he will turn his attention—and his considerable strength—to your legs. You have been a great deal of trouble, and you will not be allowed to die easily. In the end you will beg. Have you ever heard a man begging to be killed? I have—but not so often as the incomparable Simio. You see, gentlemen, Simio enjoys such things. It is how we reward him. See how his eyes now glisten? See how he moves his tongue over his lips, like a hungry cat before it toys with the mouse?” When Hawker did not react, the Colombian diplomat snorted. “Kill them one at a time, Simio. Mr. Hawker first, please. And take your time.”

The mulatto grinned through ragged teeth. He came at Hawker, legs bent in a crouch, hands held high and loose like a wrestler.

Hawker squared himself, left foot slightly forward, left fist at chest level, right fist low and ready.

When Simio was within distance, Hawker faked a quick left, then buried his right fist in the giant's throat. The mulatto was caught off guard and backpedaled across the room and crashed into the stack of scuba tanks. They rolled and clattered across the floor.

“Hawk, watch it!”

From the corner of his eye he saw Guillermo leveling the parabellum at him. Logan moved first, diving toward the diplomat. He hit him thigh high, and hard—but not hard enough.

Guillermo clubbed Logan viciously on the head with the gun, then got off one quick shot.

Hawker saw blood and flesh explode from Logan's back, but somehow the big vet got a fist on the weapon and turned it slowly, slowly toward the Colombian.

There was the
ker-wack
of a shot, but Hawker didn't see the rest. There was a sudden, bone-creaking impact, and he was being driven across the room.

There was a blinding white light, and the ammonia scent of unconsciousness as he was powered onward toward the steel bulkhead—and death.

In the last moment some clarity of thought—instinct, perhaps, from his years of boxing and baseball—told him what to do. He let his knees collapse, and the mulatto plowed over him, colliding face first with the wall.

There was a high-pitched ripping sound, and for a moment Hawker thought it was his own back muscles tearing.

He looked up. Simio was shaking his bloody face, dazed. It would have been funny if the situation hadn't been so deadly—his pants had ripped open on impact, exposing the bulging, dark buttocks.

The mulatto bellowed in rage and came at Hawker, the heavy fists swinging.

He managed to catch the first few punches on his arms and shoulders. It felt as if every punch crushed bone. Then a glancing blow scraped the top of his head, and Hawker tumbled backward over the jumble of aluminum tanks.

He pulled himself shakily to his knees, his back to Simio. He knew he had only one chance to stun the man. He also knew he had to time it perfectly.

He did.

Just as the mulatto reached for him, Hawker swung around hard and caught Simio flush on the ear with his elbow. But the giant did not go down. Hawker began throwing punches at his throat, one after another just like on the heavy bag back in the Bridgeport gym, head low, eyes up, swinging hard with wrists snapping so the knuckles cut like knives, driving with rhythm from the hips, hitting through his target.

The mulatto stopped some of the punches, but not all of them. Hawker was backing him up, seeing the brown face glisten and grow pale, seeing the albino-blue eyes bulge, seeing the giant's anger turn to pure hatred, and he knew this fight would be to the death.

Simio stumbled finally and fell face first to the floor. There was a knife in a sheath on his belt, and Hawker saw the massive right hand feel for it.

With the last of his strength, Hawker grabbed one of the aluminum scuba tanks in both hands and held it overhead, thinking to knock the mulatto unconscious.

But then he had another idea. He pointed the valve at Simio's exposed buttocks, harpooned the tank downward and—because the man beneath him was one of those sick, vicious creatures who injured and murdered for pleasure—Hawker turned the air valve full open.

There was a pressurized
sissssz
, a sudden bloating of the giant's body, then an internal explosion as the mulatto shuddered, dead.

Hawker turned dizzily. Logan lay bleeding on the floor. Guillermo had been shot in the chest, but he was moving … moving toward the parabellum that rested in the middle of the room. Winnie Tiger stood watching with hard, dark eyes.

“Winnie,” Hawker said, his voice oddly raspy. “Get it. Get the gun.”

His voice seemed to startle her. She looked at him quickly, then looked at the automatic. Her step was slow, then faster.

Guillermo was a foot away, reaching with outstretched hand, his burning eyes turned on Hawker.

“Winnie, get the damn gun!”

She grabbed it just before Guillermo did. She looked at the wounded Colombian on the floor, then looked at Hawker. Her face look pale and strange, as if in shock.

Slowly she raised the weapon over Guillermo's head …

“You don't have to kill him, Winnie. You don't have to do that—”

… leveling the parabellum, holding it in small hands, both eyes open and sighting professionally down the barrel …

“For Christ's sake, Winnie, back away from him. He's going to grab your legs—”

… her beautiful Indian face dull and dead, yet filled with a strange seething as she swung the automatic toward Hawker.

“You … you're the cause of all this!” she whispered, for once letting the Spanish accent seep into her voice. “Now I … I must … I must kill
you!
”

“
Hold it!
”

The door of the room jolted open, and Graeme Mellor stood holding a stub-nosed .38. Winnie Tiger jumped and shot off balance, and Mellor fired once, the slug tearing through the shoulder of the white blouse she wore, driving her backward over Guillermo.

Hawker looked at Mellor, stunned, hearing—yet not hearing—Mellor's voice as he kneeled over Winnie Tiger, touching her perfect face with trembling fingers. “She's Guillermo's daughter, Hawk. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't. We've been monitoring the operation for the last six months. She was sent down here to keep an eye on Medelli. He knew it. That was why he tried to have her killed. I got to the Colombian who was supposed to do it, but not before Sandy Rand stumbled onto him.”

Mellor kneeled quickly over Logan, then touched his index finger to Guillermo's neck and then Winnie Tiger's. “Guillermo's dead. Logan and the woman are both still alive, Hawk. We've got to get out of here.”

For the first time Hawker thought of the incendiary bombs. He checked his watch. It was 2:47
A.M.

“We've got to get the plates!” Hawker commanded, already searching the room.

“Plates? What plates? What the hell are you talking about?”

Hawker found the fifty-dollar plate mounted in the printing press. The others were nearby, in a velvet-lined case of mahogany.

“These plates,” Hawker said, holding one up. “The whole drug thing was a cover. They wanted to take over the country, Mellor, and they thought they'd found a way to do it: make their own money and then keep it out of wide circulation by investing it in properties and industry. They weren't getting rich running drugs. That's why no one ever caught them. They were counterfeiting money. Perfect money. Almost.”

Quickly Hawker dropped the plates in his pack and reached for Winnie Tiger's wrist. Her eyes fluttered open, focused, and her soft lips moved as if to speak. Hawker drew closer.

“You … you,” she whispered weakly. “I didn't want to kill you. I loved … I loved you, but I … but I …”

“Later,” said James Hawker. “We can talk later. If you can just hold on for a while longer, we'll have all the time in the world to talk.”

At 3:04
A.M.
, as they waited on Panther Key for the emergency helicopter, the woman who had loved so tenderly only a few days before died in Hawker's arms.

“I'm sorry, Hawk,” Mellor whispered, filled with hurt and disgusted with himself. “I wouldn't have fired if she hadn't fired first. She would have killed you.”

He and Mellor sat side by side in the darkness. Logan groaned, still breathing.

“I know,” Hawker lied. “I know.”

A mile offshore there was a burst of white light, then a thunderous vibration as
Demonio Del Mar
exploded, shooting debris three hundred feet into the night sky.

“Christ,” whispered Graeme Mellor. “How am I going to explain all this to the FBI? How am I going to explain robbing a briefcase full of Colombian money from four guys who want to kill me, then using a damn Stinger missile to blow away their boat? I've got two choices, Hawk. I can spend the next two years testifying before congressional committees and doing paperwork, or I can lie.”

The fiery white glow of the burning ship illuminated the island like summer moonlight. Hawker studied the perfect face of the Indian woman on his lap. It was as if she were sleeping.

“Tell the lie,” said James Hawker softly. “Sometimes the lie is easier …”

epilogue

James Hawker sat in a rich red leather chair in Jacob Montgomery Hayes's den.

Snow floated past the window, collecting on white trees and the silver expanse of Lake Michigan beyond the rolling estate.

Hayes wore his wine-color smoking jacket and had a pipe clenched between his teeth. He was holding his hands out toward the fireplace.

“I'm glad you came, James. I'm glad you finally decided you wanted to talk about it.” He looked up and smiled. “By the way, Buck Hamilton called and said things have never been better on Mahogany Key.
Field and Stream
did a big piece on the Tarpon Inn, and business is booming.” Hayes turned once more to the fire. “I didn't tell him you made me use the four hundred thousand dollars in Colombian currency to pay off the debt. As far as I'm concerned, neither one of you owed me any money in the first place.”

Hawker sat for a long silent minute, studying the man before him. Finally he spoke. “You set me up, Jacob. You knew damn well that it was all connected. You knew what they were doing.”

“Counterfeiting?” He shook his head. “I had no idea.”

“But you knew that Guillermo's operation was responsible for the murder of your son. I figure they tried to buy some of your holdings in South America, or maybe even here in the United States. It was a coincidence that they happened to be working on an island where you used to fish, but you soon put two and two together. And you used me to take revenge.”

Hayes thought for a moment, relighting the pipe. He exhaled fragrant smoke and nodded. “All true,” he said. “I used you.”

Hawker smacked his fist into his hand. “Then that business about working together on a vigilante operation—”

“I meant it!” Hayes said sharply. He sat forward in his chair, his face intense. “Certainly I used you, James. They had killed my son, for God's sake! Have you any idea what that means to a father? But I do want to go ahead—if you'll still have me. Don't you understand? The line between terrorism and vigilante work—the kind of important vigilante work we want to do—is a very fine line indeed. Your police record told me that you were tough enough. But I had to find out if you were smart enough and, more important,
compassionate
enough.”

“It was a test.”

“You're damn right it was a test!” Hayes sighed, and a light smile settled on his face. “If I was wrong to test you, I'm sorry. But I felt it was something I had to do. The big question is, did I pass James Hawker's test?” The husky older man stood and held out his hand. “Well, did I?”

Hawker hesitated. But not for long. There was something in Hayes's shrewd gray eyes that told him there would be no more tests, only trust and honesty from now on.

“What the hell.” Hawker smiled. “We've still got a deal—”

He was interrupted as the door swung open and Hendricks, the butler, entered, pushing Logan in a wheelchair. Logan's face was red, as if he was angry, and it grew redder as he got shakily to his feet. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, saying, “Hey, Hank here says I'm not allowed in the kitchen—”