survive. If one flower grows too tall, he cuts it off. Chop, chop.”
Lily advanced toward her with the snub-nosed object extended at the end of her arm, pressed the muzzle into Rose’s bosom, and fired the weapon into her heart. With the choppers still throbbing overhead, and the noise inside the ballroom, the muffled sound of the single round was barely audible. Rose fell toward her, knocking the gun from Lily’s hand, her body landing with a dull thud on top of the weapon. Lily saw that she was dead and vaulted over the balustrade. She fell a good ten feet into the waiting arms of Raed, the driver she had arranged for the evening.
Raed put her down on the ground and looked up, waiting for the next woman to tumble into his arms. Lily grabbed his hand, taking him in tow, and started racing along the narrow dirt path between the curved wall and the thick privet hedge.
“I thought there were two of you,” Raed said, moving swiftly and easily along just behind her.
“No,” she said over her shoulder. “Just me. Hurry. We’re late. The Pasha’s plane is wheels up at Gatwick in less than an hour.”
Alex Hawke was watching the ice melt in Brick’s vodka when he heard something from beyond the open doors he didn’t like at all. A muffled thump followed by a noise that sounded like a hundred-pound sack of flour hitting the bricks. He slammed down his rum and walked quickly towards the French doors, cursing himself and knowing instinctively it was probably already over. All of his alarm systems, usually so reliable, had gone off thirty seconds late.
Still, he was unprepared for what he found. The Italian movie star, alone, face down in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. No sign of the little starlet. And, bleeding hell, no sign of his friend Brick. How the hell? He ran to the balustrade and peered down over the side. The garden below was empty. Nothing.
He dropped to his knees beside the woman, getting an arm under and turning her over, cradling her head as gouts of aortic blood pumped directly from the small entrance wound over her heart. She was moaning and her breathing was keening and shallow. She was conscious, but he knew instantly she wasn’t going to make it. No one could save her now.
He had less than a minute with her. Maybe seconds.
“Who shot you?”
“Oh…so cold.”
“You’re going to be all right. But, you must tell me, my poor woman. Who shot you? Where is the ambassador? Tell me.”
“That…bitch. Lily…she shot…they have all betrayed me…”
“Who? Who betrayed you?”
“All of them…the Pasha and…un fottuto disastro.”
“The American ambassador. Where have they taken him?”
“B-Brick? Beautiful Brick…?”
“Yes. Brick.”
“The Blue Palace…Fatin…you know…in the mountains…”
Her eyes closed. He was losing her.
“Stay with me! The Americans, Francesca, who has been killing all the Americans?”
“Snay bin Wazir,” she whispered, “The Pasha. He…has killed me, too…millions more…Americans…soon… justice.”
And then she was gone.
Lowering her gently to the blood-soaked bricks, he saw the gun. He picked it up carefully with his handkerchief. It was sticky with blood. Plastic, he saw, to avoid the detectors. One shot. One to the heart was usually enough.
“Good God, man, shall I get a doctor?”
Hawke looked up to see Lord Mowbray in the act of lighting his cigar.
“Too late for that I’m afraid. If you’d be so kind as to ask Jack Patterson to step outside. Tall American chap at the bar just to the left of the door. Cowboy boots. Also, get an MI6 agent out here. Anyone will do, but the more senior the better. Tell them to hurry, please, Lord Mowbray. But, don’t cause a stir. I need to have a quiet word alone with Ambassador Kelly’s wife.”
As Mowbray turned to go, Patterson appeared in the doorway. Hawke handed him the murder weapon wrapped in his handkerchief.
“Who is it?” Patterson said, kneeling beside him.
“Francesca d’Agnelli.”
“Dead?”
“Very.”
“The movie star. Damn it. The woman we grilled in Venice. Three times, and came up empty. She was with Stanfield the night he exploded in the Grand Canal. This is ‘the Rose.’ ”
“Yes,” Hawke said. “Murdered two minutes ago by the Lily. They snatched Brick, Jack. They’ve got my best bloody friend.”
“Did she talk?”
“Yeah. Apparently, a hell of a lot of Americans are scheduled to die at the hand of Snay bin Wazir.”
“Jesus Christ,” Patterson said, his face a mask of failure and despair. He took out his satellite mobile phone, flipped it open, and punched in the emergency code for Secretary of State Consuelo de los Reyes. Seconds later, the high-low sound of wailing sirens filled the streets of Mayfair and Hyde Park.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
South Biscayne Bay
COUPLE OF MINUTES INTO WATCHING THE YOUNG CUBAN spec ops guy handle the inflatable boat, Stoke flashed his old Navy SEAL ID at Pepe. It was enough to convince the Cuban commander to let him drive the damn boat, since his own guy seemed scared shitless about going flat out in the rough seas and had the thing running at half throttle. Kid even had trouble keeping the thing going in a straight line.
“Your wake look more like a snake than a stick, son,” Stoke said to the guy, relieving him of duty. “Best let a professional do this heavy weather shit. Find a place to sit and hold on!”
Stoke grabbed the helm, shoved the throttles all the way forward, and the nearly flat-bottomed boat leapt forward, up and out of the water the way it had been designed to run. Boat was fast for reason. It was basically a cafeteria tray with three hundred horsepower stuck on the back.
Stoke got the twin Merc 150’s powering the thing over the wave tops. Waves too big, curling overhead, he just smashed right through them. Other three boats were having trouble keeping up with them, but Stoke wasn’t much for waiting around. As it was, he and Pepe were having a tough time keeping Rodrigo’s rooster tail in sight. Cigarette boats were built for serious speed, those deep “V” hulls sliced right through anything.
It had occurred to him to just call in the cavalry, in this case the U.S. Coast Guard. They’d have a chopper shining a spotlight on this guy’s head in ten minutes. But Stoke wanted this bad boy for himself. He wanted him for Hawke, too. Hadn’t he promised Alex he and Ross would go find him? Run him to ground? Goddamn it, that’s what they were going to do. Stoke was a mission-oriented individual.
Dead or alive, he told Alex when they’d said good-bye two days ago at Logan airport. Stoke liked dead better. Alive, Alex would probably kick Rodrigo’s butt and turn whatever was left of him over to Scotland Yard. Best part about dead, ain’t nobody got to worry about extraditing your ass, you dead. Or, worry about you dissapearing down some loophole.
The four troops sitting in the stern were so excited about his SEAL card, next thing they’d be askin’ for was his damn autograph. Stoke was thinking he wished he had his old crew, Thunder and Lightning, on this thing. Some world-class badass hop-and-pop counterterrorists with him, instead of Rambo Jr. and his teenage commandos sitting back there behind him, all amped up about a real-live SEAL driving the boat instead of worrying about kicking
