When the guards had retreated from the room, Alex returned the envelope to his pocket and resealed the Velcro fastener. Then he gave Stoke a look and started pacing around the vast oval desk.
“In an odd way,” he began, speaking as he moved about, “the rightful owners of this treasure would seem to be your family, General, not mine.”
“Of course! Why do you think I have spent years in search of the de Herreras treasure!”
“They won’t find it, I’m afraid,” Hawke said. “Scribbled at the bottom of the map is a letter from a notorious pirate. Blackhawke. Heard of him?”
“Of course! One of the most brilliant and ruthless pirates in the Caribbean! He’s the one who stole my family fortune!”
“We all have a skeleton in the closet. He is mine. I am his direct descendant. His map has been in my family for generations. Just before his capture and execution in 1705, Blackhawke realized his final and greatest triumph. He took the largest single prize ever captured.”
“Tell me!” Manso shouted, his eyes glittering.
“Blackhawke engaged a Spanish galleon under command of Admiral Manso de Herreras somewhere off Hispaniola.”
“Yes!” the general shouted. “My noble ancestor! He sailed for England with his billions in stolen silver and gold. To deposit his fortune in the Bank of England. But he never arrived.”
“Yes, General. Your history is good. According to Blackhawke’s letter, de Herreras never reached England because Blackhawke intercepted him and sent him to the bottom. But first, he relieved his burden of all that gold and silver.”
“And then?”
“And then he buried it, of course. Fairly standard practice in those days.”
“So! It’s true! You see, Juanito, all these years, I was right! This Hawke family has a map of our treasure’s location! We will find it!” Manso was flushed with excitement. “We will share! Surely there is more than enough to—”
“No,” Alex said, turning to face him. “I have a far better idea.”
“What could be better than—”
“The map is yours. I want you to have this blood-soaked map, Manso de Herreras. You and you alone.”
“You do?”
“I do indeed,” Hawke said. “But there is one very important condition.”
“I am waiting, señor.”
“Tonight, we’re going to put an end to the nightmare you started thirty years ago, General de Herreras.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Simple, really. If you want the map, you’re going to have to kill me for it.”
56
“Kill you for it?”
The general was sliding catlike off the pillowed bed, a hideous grin pulling his lips back, distorting his face.
“Kill you for it? If that’s what you wish, it can be easily accomplished, Señor Hawke.”
He lifted his silver-bladed machete, turned it this way and that to catch the candlelight. Suddenly, it was spinning high into the air above his head where it paused, then made two or three flashing revolutions and started to descend. Manso was dancing beneath it, watching it.
He grabbed it by the handle, right out of the air, and spun toward Hawke, murderous intent flashing in his eyes.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hawke saw Stoke start to move to intercept the general.
“No!” Hawke shouted. “Stay out of this, Stoke. This is unfinished business. Entirely between the two of us.”
“But, boss, you ain’t got nothing to—”
“An unarmed man with vengeance in his heart is the most dangerous of enemies,” Alex said.
Juan de Herreras, wide-eyed at these amazing events, brandished his .357, motioning for Stoke to back off and take a seat, which he reluctantly did. Hawke gave Stoke a look that said don’t worry about this, but Stoke was hardly reassured.
Manso suddenly lunged toward Hawke and leveled a vicious swipe at his neck. Hawke barely saw it coming 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 Araña is so obviously what they say he is, a chiquita!”
“Yes! Señorita 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, señor?” 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.