sleep he’d had this night was clearly just a dream. Padding across the varnished floorboards to the head, he’d opened the medicine chest and reached for the slim orange vial of a small miracle pill called Ambien.
Alex Hawke’s personal physician, Dr. Kenneth Beer, had prescribed the sedative when Alex had seen him immediately after Vicky’s funeral in Louisiana. He’d been at his wit’s end over lack of sleep and had decided not to cure it with spirits as was his old custom. Beer was forever trying to convince him that his lifestyle was hardly befitting his profession. Hawke, of course, had never told Ken what he did for a living, but his doctor had taken enough lead out of him to hazard a guess. Hawke’s body was a living testament to Beer’s surgical talents.
“Hell, Hawke, you’re only as good as your last scar,” Ken would say, stitching him up and sending him on his way.
Ten milligrams would put him out, and he’d come to depend on this nightly escape hatch. Beer had assured him it wasn’t habit-forming, but Hawke wondered. Freedom from pain of the magnitude he’d been suffering was clearly addictive. He’d replaced the plastic cap without removing a pill, stepped into his still-damp bathing suit and pulled a T-shirt over his head, hoping some fresh air might calm the troubled waters.
He knew he had things to work through. Things that a narcotized brain studiously avoided during sleep state. Vicky was dead. A month later, his grief was still acute. The case had gone cold from lack of attention. The Yard wasn’t getting anywhere but, stupidly from his point of view, didn’t want any help, either. Stoke and Ross had come up with a plausible suspect. Their case against the Cuban psychopath nicknamed Scissorhands had both motive and opportunity. Hawke at this moment wanted nothing more on earth than to light up his airplane, head down to Miami, and help Stokely and Ross run down the murderous Cuban.
On another, less personal front, there was this bastard they called the Dog. A cunning devil who was, according to reports Conch and Texas Patterson had shared with him, capable of wreaking unspeakable havoc upon a weakened, vulnerable and increasingly isolated America. But no one, it seemed, had a even a clue as to his true identity or whereabouts. “Go find this guy, Alex,” Conch had said. “And delete him.”
Hawke’s staunch efforts to keep his personal feelings and his professional obligations separate had not met with much success. But, he’d made his decision to send Stoke out without him and somehow he’d find a way to live with it.
His first stop had been the bridge, where he’d had a brief chat with his ship’s captain, Briny Fay, regarding an ongoing problem with the boat’s Aegis defense warning systems. The news from Briny was not good. Two of the CPU mainframes that backed up the Aegis had crashed inexplicably, and the techs couldn’t figure out why. Now, as he made his way aft along the port side of the bridge deck, Sniper’s own less sophisticated but highly effective alarm system went off.
HAWKE! HAWKE! The old parrot screeched. Sniper was trained in the ancient pirate ways, riding the master’s shoulder to warn of unseen and unexpected dangers. Like the heavily armed man who now stepped out of the shadows directly in front of him.
“Hullo,” Hawke said evenly.
“Sorry, Skipper,” Tommy Quick said, lowering his weapon. “Didn’t hear you coming.”
“Well, I’m barefoot, Tommy,” Hawke said, a smile in his voice. “So it’s hardly surprising.” The young American was in charge of security aboard this boat and he took his job very seriously. Quick, the former sharpshooter, was a stealth warrior who didn’t care much for surprises and so very rarely experienced any.
“Still and all, sir,” Quick said, looking down at Hawke’s bare feet, embarrassed.
“It’s quiet out there, Sarge,” Hawke said, gliding over the awkward moment by casting a glance seaward. There was a new moon and a few bright stars winking behind high, fast-moving clouds.
Too quiet! Too quiet! Sniper squawked.
“Too quiet, she’s right, yes, sir,” Quick replied, smiling at the well-worn joke. “The natives are restless.”
“To hell with the natives,” Hawke said. “What about the bloody tourists?”
Hawke placed one hand on the rail and gazed down into the sea. The water, some twenty feet below the deck where he stood, was brilliantly illuminated, light blue darkening to deep blue, by a security system of underwater floodlights. It attracted all manner of marine life, including not a few of the large local sharks the famous author Peter Benchley, a Nantucketer himself, had made so notorious.
“Mind taking Sniper for a bit, Tommy?”
“Not at all, sir,” he said and held out his arm to the bird.
“Thanks. Thinking of going for a quick swim, actually, Sarge,” Hawke said, holding out his parrot. The bird flared her wings and alighted on the younger man’s forearm.
“Swim, sir?”
“Work a few kinks out.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea, sir?” His employer’s idea of a quick swim might be miles. In open ocean at night with a strong tide running, with possible hostiles in the area, this was definitely not a good idea, at least from a security man’s point of view. On the other hand, Hawke was a former SBS commando. Swimming great distances at night in any weather under any conditions came as naturally to him as strolling around the block during a spring shower.
“Why not?”
“Well, security, Skipper. Ship’s at full alert. Because the mainframe is down, our Aegis defensive perimeter only extends…well, you know our situation, sir,” said Quick. “Until we’re up and running again, we’re pretty much a sitting duck.”
“Yes, there is that,” Hawke said, using one hand to vault himself easily off the deck and up onto the narrow varnished teak handrail. He then stood upright, perched atop the slender rail, facing the sea, perfectly balanced, arms at his side, smiling.
“I could launch two men in an inflatable to keep an eye on you, Skipper. Not a bad idea under the current —”
“No need of that,” Hawke said. “Cheers.”
Dumbstruck, Quick watched Alex Hawke rise up onto the tips of his toes and fly off the rail, executing a pretty good jackknife, extending to his full length to break the surface with little more than a ripple. Quick looked down in time to see Hawke’s curly black head pop back up in the dead center of his entry point, a huge grin on his face.
“Repel all boarders!” his employer shouted and then he dove down, disappearing amongst schools of varicolored fish, swimming rapidly beneath the huge black hull.
“Jesus H. Christ!” a voice exploded in Quick’s earpiece.
“What is it?” Quick said, adjusting the lip-mike of his Motorola headset.
“Oh, nothing much, sir,” one of the underwater video technicians stationed in the fire control center replied. “The owner just swam up, shoved a shark out of the way and stuck his face in my fisheye lens, that’s all. Big smile on his face. This is not foul play, roger, Sarge? His idea to jump into the deep dark sea full of sharks?”
“Yeah, his idea, affirmative,” Quick replied.
“Sounds about right, sir.”
“Yeah. Not that it’ll do any good, but you guys keep the underwater telephotos on him as long as you can. Cycle a 360 sweep every five minutes. And gimme a heads-up the second he returns.”
“Aye, aye.”
“Sonar?”
“Still down, Sir.”
“How long ’till the Aegis is back up?”
“Techs are saying two hours, minimum.”
“Christ. A sitting duck.”
“You could say that again.”
Sitting duck! Sitting duck! Sniper said.
Hawke swam as hard as he could, slicing through the slight chop. He stopped suddenly, muscles aflame, somehow always knowing precisely where his halfway mark was. Buoyant in mind and body, he let the current take him, relaxing into a dead man’s float, face submerged, limbs hanging down, so heavy they felt more like logs, going with the flow. He let his thoughts float as well, go where they would, and he stayed in this meditative state for some time, lifting his head for air only as often as required.
