“Hell was that?”
“That would be an F-14 Super Tomcat,” Hawke said, a smile spreading across his face. “Black Aces Squadron.” Never in his life had Hawke been so happy to see an official representative of the United States Navy.
Two more Tomcats roared overhead in quick succession and then three more. The building shook to its foundations with the impact of the Tomcat’s deadly Sidewinder missiles. Explosions lit up the thick jungle beyond the wall, and Alex heard the screams of wounded soldiers.
Stoke had his SatCom out instantly.
“Boomer! What the hell is going on?”
“U.S. Navy to the rescue, Skipper! Seems like Fidel Castro escaped somehow, got to a phone, and opened Cuban airspace to the American Navy! Friendly fire! Hooo-hahh!!”
“Friendly fire? I’d return their friendly fire if I had any damn bullets! Them flyboys are goddamn shooting at my ass!”
“May I borrow that gadget, Stoke?” Hawke asked.
Stoke handed it to him and Hawke said, “Boomer, this is Hawke. Get that fighter squadron commander on the radio. Tell him he’s got two friendlies on the ground. Make that the large west terrace of the main house, facing the sea. We’d appreciate more fire suppression in the jungle and on the rocks beneath the terrace. Our only way out is a jump into the sea, over.”
“I’ve already spoken to him, sir,” Boomer said. “He’s laying down fire suppression right now, trying to keep the tangos inside the house from rushing you, over.”
“How about below the terrace?” Hawke asked. “We’re going over the side. And we need to go now!”
“Uh, the squadron leader has a better idea, sir. If you look out over the wall, you should be able to see it now.”
Stoke and Hawke crept up to the wall and peered over it. What they saw brought, if not tears to their eyes, certainly a hell of a lot of joy into their lives.
Waves of Navy jets were blacking out the stars, the bright flame of rockets igniting under their swept-back wings and screaming toward targets; and there, a few hundred feet below the formations, skimming in just over the wavetops, was the most beautiful sight of all.
A mammoth U.S. Navy SeaKing helicopter headed directly for the terrace, twin .50 cals firing out both sides as it flared up for a landing.
Little more than half an hour later, Alex Hawke was aboard Nighthawke, sitting at Vicky’s side, holding her hand and whispering to her.
He’d dimmed the lights of the stateroom way down after Froggy had left. The medic had given her something to help her sleep. Hawke couldn’t stop staring at her tender profile. There was a thin sheen of perspiration on her forehead, and her long eyelashes were fluttering on her cheeks. Her beautiful auburn hair, burnished with gold in the dim light, was twisted in knots of tangled cobwebs but to Alex she had never looked more beautiful.
He and Stokely had watched the destruction of Telaraña, their legs hanging out the open hatch of the SeaKing, sitting on either side of the red-hot .50 cal. The machine gun was still chattering loudly just above their heads as the SeaKing swung out across the island and doubled back over what had been the submarine pen. It was now a blackened pile of twisted steel and broken concrete. Two halves of the Soviet Borzoi-class submarine’s hull rose from the rubble. Boomer’s charges had broken her spine. The U.S. Navy had finished the job.
“Hey? You the guys took that Russian boomer out?” Alex heard the chopper pilot ask in his headphones.
“Yep,” Stoke replied. “That would be us.”
“Christ on a bicycle,” the pilot said. “How the hell’d you do that?”
“We, uh, used explosives,” Stoke replied, and there was no further mike chatter.
The SeaKing was flying at fifty feet, and the tang of sea air and the roar of the wind in the open doors made Hawke forget he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. His entire body was thrumming like a wire.
Vicky was safe. With a lot of help from some very brave men, he’d made good on his promise to her father.
The Navy chopper was headed west where the sleek black outline of Nighthawke was waiting on the horizon. Behind him, on the rapidly disappearing hump of the island, towers of fire and black smoke were rising from one end of Telaraña to the other.
There were other fires along the coast, Hawke saw, rebel strongholds under attack from the deadly Black Aces.
Now, in the soft glow of the cabin lights, Alex watched her sleeping.
“Alex?” Vicky struggled to open her eyes. Her lips were parched and bruised and Alex applied a cool washcloth.
“Shhh,” Alex said. “Go to sleep, darling. It’s all right now.”
“But there’s something—”
“There’s nothing. Just sleep. We’ll have you in your own bed soon.”
“No, something I need to tell—important. Please?”
She was straining to rise from the pillow, gripping Alex’s arm fiercely. “You’ve got to know this, Alex. Please,” she whispered in a dry, hoarse voice.
“What is it, darling? What could be so important?”
“The guards. Every day. Didn’t know I was listening, see? But I did. I did, Alex.”
“It doesn’t matter now, darling. It’s over.”
“No! It does matter. I heard…I heard…something.”
“What did you hear, Vicky?” Alex whispered, leaning down so that he could put his ear near her lips.
“They—they were laughing,” she said, nearly strangling on the words. “They were laughing about a bomb they had—kill Americans.”
“Bomb?” Alex said, his attention now riveted to Vicky’s trembling lips.
It had to be Guantánamo. The biological weapon Conch had told him about sitting in Kittyhawke’s cockpit on the JFK flight deck. Hadn’t they found that thing yet? Since the F-14s had attacked he assumed…no, that only meant the women and children had been evacuated from the base. The bomb could still be on the base and—Christ, how long did they have before the thing went off?
“A bomb, Alex,” Vicky whispered. “They said it was hidden where the Americans would never find—-find out. Until too late.”
Alex looked at his watch. It was 0520 in the morning. If he remembered correctly, that meant they had about forty minutes until the thing detonated.
“Where, darling, where they did put the bomb?” Alex could feel his heart trying desperately to get out of his chest.
“A bear,” Vicky said in her small, strangled voice.
“Bear?” Alex was sure he’d misunderstood.
“A teddy bear. Not a real bear. That’s why…why they were all laughing,” Vicky managed. Alex lifted her head and gave her a small sip of water.
“Thank you,” she said. “They thought it was so funny. The bomb inside the teddy bear. Gave it to…to one of the officers’ kids,” Vicky said, trying to get her eyes open. “Someone hid the bomb inside a little girl’s bear. Someone named Gopher, or Gomer, maybe. An American sailor…but a Cuban, too. He’s the one who hid the bomb inside the bear.”
58
“Joe Nettles,” squawked the harsh voice on the Nighthawke’s radio. “And this better be the most important fucking call you ever made, mister.”
“Alexander Hawke here, Admiral. No time to explain who I am. Just ask Admiral Howell or Secretary de los Reyes, but first, just listen.”
“Mister, I got a bomb going off here in ’bout half an hour. Talk.”
“I have just rescued a hostage from the Cubans. She has important information regarding that bomb.”
“Go ahead, son, spit it out for chrissakes!”
“According to Cuban guards she overheard during captivity, you have an extremely lethal biological weapon hidden inside a toy bear.”