“It’s a civilian vessel, Tommy. Not military. The hostage is being smuggled out to China by a single guard. I’m good.”
“With all due respect, sir, I really gotta say—”
Hawke cut him off. “I’m allowing myself just twenty minutes. Time. Mark.”
“Yes, sir. Time: coming up on 23:29.57 GMT…and…mark.”
“Mark. Twenty-three-thirty GMT. Twenty minutes. Mark.”
“Sir, I confirm a fast Zodiac standing off the vessel’s portside stern at precisely twenty-three fifty.”
“Zodiac mission code?”
“She’s mission-coded Chopstick One. Twin Yamaha HPDI 300s. She’ll get you out of there in a hurry. I say again, sir, I believe there should be at least minimal backup. If you’d only—”
Hawke cut him off again.
“Tommy, if I can’t handle a simple snatch aboard an old rust bucket like this I really ought to pack it in. Chopstick One stand by and confirm pickup at eleven-five-oh. Okay? Chop-chop!”
“Aye-aye, sir. There is one thing—”
“Make it snappy. I’m about to do this.”
“If you look back up at your hotel, sir, you’ll see someone standing out on your terrace with binoculars trained on you. One of my guys has a long telephoto on her now. She’s…uh…not wearing much, sir.”
“That will be all, Sergeant,” Hawke said.
He snapped his mobile shut and quickened his pace. He had deliberately left the Ikons hanging on the balustrade, left behind like all the few recently acquired and untraceable possessions in his suite. But why the hell would she—He paused and looked back at the Carlton. With the naked eye, he could just make out Jet’s tiny black silhoutte standing at the balcony of his suite. There was a glowing orange dot, her cigarette. He smiled and waved. The glow was immediately extinguished. Interesting behavior. Was she sad that he’d left or curious about where he was going? Make a mental note, old boy.
Hawke made his way past the long row of charter boats, all moored stern to in the Mediterranean style, and then out along the curvature of an outer breakwater that culminated in a deepwater pier. There was a trickle of passersby, mostly lovers linked arm in arm, out for a stroll now that the weather had changed. Otherwise, the harbor was quiet. The only activity was dead ahead where the Star of Shanghai was moored. Lights atop a pair of very tall cranes created an oasis around the ancient steamer. At her stern, the faded red flag of the People’s Republic of China hung limply in the light breeze.
All the intel he had from Admiral “Blinker” Godfrey at DNI Gibraltar and his old friend Brick Kelly, the director at Langley, suggested this nocturnal visit of his would be a complete surprise to the Chinese operative on board the Star. He was a man operating under the name of Tsing Ping. He was a Te-Wu secret police officer whose dossier Hawke had read twice just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. The man, whose base was an ancient enclave on the Huangpu River, was apparently a human killing machine.
CIA had assured Hawke that both the Te-Wu man and the Chinese skipper aboard the old tramp steamer had no idea the Americans were on to them. They knew that the Americans would think Brock had simply missed a pickup in Morocco, that’s all. Happened all the time. Besides, this guy Brock, whoever he was, was a NOC. Normally such agents, captured in the line of duty, were simply dead men, no questions asked, no answers given.
Unless Hawke got him out tonight, his slow death at the hands of the world’s most sophisticated torturers was a given.
More important, Brock’s superiors in Washington would never learn what secrets were imprinted upon his brain. Kelly wanted him alive. Badly.
Hawke stepped over a mooring line running from a hawser on the Star’s stern to a bollard on the deepwater pier and brought the scene before him into focus.
A couple of seamen were lounging at the stern rail, smoking cigarettes, watching the fog roll into the harbor. Most of the crew was engaged with the loading going on amidships. There was a single lookout standing at the bow. They’d posted a pair of standard-issue guards at the foot of the gangway. Both were wearing greasy orange slickers with rain hoods. One of them was looking at him now, carefully observing his approach. Unlike most such practitioners in his chosen field, this one looked almost alert. Hawke plastered a drunken smile on his face, dropped his right shoulder, and walked loosely toward the man, concealing the narrow blade along the inside of his right forearm.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n,” Hawke said slurrily to the big fellow, laying his left hand easily on his shoulder. “This wouldn’t be the HMS Victory, now would it? Nelson’s barky? Seems I’ve lost me bloody ship.”
The guard sneered, showing his unfortunate teeth, and reached inside his slicker for a weapon.
Hawke instantly inserted the long thin blade precisely five millimeters below the man’s sternum and upward into the thoracic cavity on his left side, found the heart, and ruined it. One small gasp and his eyes went vacant.
Before the first man knew he was dead Hawke had turned and performed an identical procedure on the second, smaller guard. He caught the newly deceased by the collar of his orange waterproof and let him fall silently to the concrete, the dead man’s arms sliding out of the sour-smelling garment as he did so.
In a trice, Hawke shouldered himself into the slicker and raised the hood so that his face was in shadow. As he did, he stifled the wave of self-disgust that usually accompanied such vicious and unexpected violence. He actually hated killing, though it was duty. He took pride in doing it well. It was scant consolation.
Tendrils of fog snaked into the harbor from the sea and wrapped around the old steamer’s stacks as Alex Hawke ascended the slippery gangplank. The Star, save the loading activity amidships, was quiet. Having gained the deck, he paused and looked up at the dimly lit bridge. Shadowy figures moved behind the grimy yellow glass of the pilothouse. Two men at least, maybe three. He would start his search for Harry Brock there. He looked at his watch. He was two minutes in, right on schedule.
To his left, a steep corrugated stairwell leading up, more of a ladder than a staircase. He raced up it, and another like it, and arrived on the starboard-side bridge wing. He paused and listened, feeling the faint shudder and thump of the engines beneath his feet. Inside the pilothouse, he could hear muffled voices and laughter. The door was slightly ajar. He shot out his left leg and slammed it inward, stepping inside the hot and stinking bridge with the Walther extended at the end of his right arm. The look on the faces of the two Chinamen told him his information from Brick was indeed hard fact. They were hiding something. And surprised.
“Evening, gents,” Hawke said, kicking the steel door closed behind him. “Lovely night for it, what?”
“Huh?” said a squat man in grimy coveralls who now moved in front of the fellow in a sheepskin coat who was levering noodles from a box to his hungry mouth. The boxlike man advanced toward Hawke, protecting his captain.
“Bad idea,” Hawke said. Somehow, the gun was now in his left hand and a long blood-stained dagger had appeared in his right. The man kept coming and retreated only when Hawke flicked the blade before his eyes. He had little interest in killing these men, at least until he learned the location and condition of their prisoner. Then he would dispatch them without mercy.
“I’m looking for a reluctant passenger of yours, Captain,” he said to a leather-jacketed man wearing an ancient captain’s cap cocked rakishly over his bushy black brows. “Chap who was shanghaied in Morocco yesterday. Where might I find him?”
The Chinese captain stopped eating his noodles, and, placing the container and chopsticks carefully on a stool, stared at him. Hawke saw something in his eyes and instinctively dove for the floor as rounds from the captain’s silenced automatic pistol stitched a pattern in the bulkhead inches above his head. Hawke rolled left and fired the Walther, putting one slug in the captain’s thigh and sending him crashing back against the wheel.