but at the last second ducked his head and spun away, unharmed. But the blade had whispered across his chest.
Much too close, Alex thought. Was he really slowing down that much?
“Come now. You’ll have to do a lot better than that, General,” Hawke said, circling around the man, feinting this way and that, the slightly amused smile still on his face.
Enraged, as much by Hawke’s attitude as anything else, the ponytailed general danced toward him again, swinging the blade ferociously as he came. Alex waited for the blade’s final arc, swung at his midsection, then turned and arched his spine away just as the tip of the blade hissed by his belly. He’d stepped aside at the last second and the general, who had put all of his weight into this thrust, pitched forward off balance.
“Not quite so simple as cutting cane, is it, machetero?” Hawke said, leaping to the top of the general’s oval desk. “Cane doesn’t move!”
Watching the general circle the desk, Alex had the unpleasant realization that his heavy camo fatigues and boots were making it tough to move about. He’d just have to manage it somehow. Find his old rhythms.
He could easily kill this man with his bare hands, but something inside him, his pirate blood, was insisting on the sword. He’d seen another machete propped up against a Chinese screen beside one of the opium beds. He’d just have to find a way to get to it.
“You English pig.” Manso sneered. “I will cut your legs off at the knees and stuff them down your throat!”
He took a vicious swipe at knee level but Alex leapt up, tucking his legs beneath him, and nothing was sliced but air.
“You see what I mean, Stoke?” Alex cried, dancing atop the desk. “This Cubano is very brave when it comes to killing women and unarmed men. Our brave spider Arana is so obviously what they say he is, a chiquita!”
“Yes! Senorita Chiquita Banana herself!” Stokely joined in, keeping one eye on the one-sided duel and one eye on the drunken admiral with the pistol aimed at his heart.
Hawke looked down at the man circling in for the kill.
“So. Look at yourself, Manso!” Hawke laughed. “What do you see, chica? I see a little banana general from a little banana republic! Most men would be ashamed to attack an unarmed man. Most men would—”
“Would what, senor?” Manso screamed.
“Would think killing an unarmed man an act of cowardice.”
“He wants a weapon?” Manso roared. “Is that his fucking problem? Then give him a fucking weapon! Juanito, there is a machete behind the Chinese screen. Give it to the Englishman and we’ll see what he is made of!”
Juanito rose and, never taking the gun off Stokely, wobbled over to the nearby screen. He retrieved the machete, hefting it, and looked at his brother.
“Are you sure about this, mi hermano?”
“Give him the fucking thing, Juanito! I’ve had enough of his shit! I’m going to slit his throat and pull out that flapping goddamn tongue!”
The man shrugged his meaty shoulders and tossed the blade carelessly toward Alex, who snatched the handle nimbly out of mid-air.
He took a second to run his finger over the machete blade. It would do. He leapt from the desk and spun around to face Manso, adapting the classic fencing stance, his left hand held rigidly behind his back.
“Do you fence at all, General?” he asked, smiling at the man.
“Fence? What is fence?”
“It’s what cowboys do to ranches, baby!” Stokely exclaimed, and Alex laughed.
The general charged, bringing his blade down as he came, and Alex did his best to parry the furious blow, the sound of metal on metal ringing out in the room. The machete felt unwieldy and strange in his hand. And it was clear that Manso was called a machetero for good reason.
Hawke had a fight on his hands.
With his left hand clenched behind his back, Hawke went on the attack. There was sheer fury in his face now, Stoke had never seen the likes of it, and his thrusts and blows came so rapidly that Manso was retreating, warding off the attack, clearly on the defensive.
“So. You can fight,” Manso said.
“You noticed that,” Hawke replied, spinning like a dancer with a razor-sharp blade for a prop.
Manso stood his ground and laid on three resounding blows in quick succession. Hawke parried all three, but the tip of Manso’s machete somehow caught his cheek, opening a wide gash beneath his eye.
“Ah, English blood,” Manso said. “I developed a taste for it at an early age, you will remember.” Then he danced backwards and actually licked the blood off the tip of his blade.
“Delicious! I’ll cut your heart out and eat it for breakfast!”
“I think not,” Hawke said. He was circling the man now, changing directions, looking for his opening, when suddenly Manso charged directly at him, bellowing like a wounded animal, swinging his blade wildly.
Manso was in his element now, a true machetero from the cane fields. His silver blade came flashing down, Hawke raised his in defense but the blow never came. The general stopped short, pivoted on one heel, then whirled around, bringing his bloody machete up from below.
There was a ferocious clang and Hawke’s blade, brutally ripped from his hand, went flying, clattering across the floor.
The general’s face was suffused with murderous glee as he advanced to finish his victim and claim his rightful prize.
Hawke leapt once more to the top of the desk. The general slashed again, and this time Hawke was not so lucky. He tried to jump away, but the blade sliced through his thick camo trousers and he felt a searing pain in his right thigh.
The little blue envelope fluttered to the floor. The general had sliced open not only his leg, but his pocket.
Two things happened at once. The general stooped to pick up the envelope, and Stokely shouted something at Hawke.
Hawke looked in Stoke’s direction and saw that the man had somehow retrieved his machete and it was now spinning through the air directly toward him.
There was hardly time to finesse snatching it by the handle. He just reached out and seized the machete by the blade, slicing his fingers and palm in the doing. The blood made the handle sticky but at least he now had some ghost of a chance against the crazed machetero.
“General! Up here!” Hawke cried. The general had the little blue envelope clutched triumphantly in his upraised hand.
The general looked up only to see the massive chandelier, with Hawke dangling from it, come swooping through the air toward him. In Hawke’s free hand, the blade was poised.
There came then a sound, an awful sound, of steel on flesh and bone. Of steel through flesh and bone.
An enormous howl of pain exploded from deep in the general’s throat as he looked in horror at his bloody stump of an arm. On the floor at his feet, fingers twitching, lay his bloody hand still clutching the blue envelope.
There was an explosion then, and Hawke, still hanging by one hand from the chandelier, felt and heard a round from Juanito’s .357 whistle past his ear. He turned to see Stokely on his feet, bringing his hand down with tremendous force on the Cuban’s extended forearm. There was another crack from the muzzle of the gun and then the crack of Juanito’s breaking bones.
Hawke released his grip on the swinging chandelier and dropped to the floor.
He saw that Juanito’s gun had gone flying and turned his attention back to the general. He had sunk to his knees, holding his bloody stump against his chest, taking thin, shallow breaths. Deathly pale, head down, the man was clearly in shock.
Alex lifted the thick black ponytail. Then he laid the razor-sharp edge of his heavy blade across the tendons of the man’s exposed neck. Then he raised it and—
“Boss, no!” he heard Stoke shouting from somewhere. He’d lost track of time and place. He knew he had some unfinished business here, something to do with the sword in his hand. Oh, yes. He knew what he had to do.
