Ted Bell - Warlord

Warlord

Ted Bell

For Page Lee, who makes it magic

An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Contents

ALEX HAWKE HELD THE BATTERED GOLD Dunhill to the tip...

AT TWO THIRTY THAT SAME FRIDAY afternoon, late for his...

HAD TO BE THE MIDDLE of the night, but Hawke...

PERHAPS THERE WAS A HAPPIER MAN in all of England...

YOU DON'T REALLY MEAN TO SAY, Alex, that we are...

DR. SAHIRA KARIM LOOKED AT HER WATCH. Nearly eight o'clock on...

HIGHGROVE HOUSE, THE HOME PRINCE CHARLES acquired in 1980, had...

HEATHER, YOU ALL RIGHT, BABY GIRL?" she heard her husband...

SERIOUSLY, HARRY, WHAT IN HELL DOES Langley brass think they're...

I'M SERIOUS, HARRY," STOKE SAID, GETTING back to the topic...

THE BAD HUNCH MADE STOKELY JONES scan the beach area...

STOKE SOMEHOW SQUIRMED HIS MASSIVE BULK out from under Harry...

TWO SPECIAL BRANCH DETECTIVES WERE STATIONED on either side of...

LORD MALMSEY NARROWED HIS EYES. Threats had risen dramatically in...

THERE WERE FEW THINGS IN LIFE Alex Hawke treasured more...

LOVELY SPOT, MR. SMITH," FAITH MCGUIRE allowed, rolling onto her side...

LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN STOOD on the glistening tarmac in the...

FIVE INVISIBLE MEN SAT AROUND the battered kitchen table staring...

THE MONTHS PASSED QUICKLY. NOT SURPRISING, Smith thought, what with...

THERE WAS A DEEP LIVE BAIT well in Shadow V's...

CHANDRA FELT AN ALMOST OVERWHELMING URGE to trigger her automatic...

STOKELY JONES DOWNSHIFTED, GRABBING third, accelerating up and over the...

FLASHY BLONDE WITH A HUGE RACK was gunning for him,...

ALEX HAWKE AND AMBROSE CONGREVE HAD flown Hawke's plane across...

THE NAME OF THE ISLAND, THOMAS McMahon, if you please."

I REALLY THINK I AM GOING to be sick, Alex,"...

NO SUDDEN MOVEMENT," ALEX SAID to his friend Congreve, barely...

THE QUEUE WAS TRUDGING FORWARD at last. Smith pulled his...

JOHN BULLINGTON DRUMMOND WAS KNOWN throughout England, Scotland, and Wales...

SO SHE'S GIVING THE FAT GUY a BJ while he's...

HARRY PLOPPED DOWN IN THE CHAIR, settled in, and stared...

DRIVE EXACTLY 39.7 MILES DUE WEST of Palm Beach, Florida,...

C'S OFFICE ON THE TOP FLOOR of MI6 Headquarters, an...

SIR DAVID SAID, "I BELIEVE ALEX Hawke has a question."

SMITH SAT STOCK-STILL IN THE SEMI-GLOOM, transfixed by the flickering...

SMITH HAD ONLY THIS MORNING TAKEN the tiny bedroom on...

IN THE GREY DUSK OF A LATE summer evening, three...

GOOD AFTERNOON, SERGEANT. I'm Detective Michelle Garcia, Palm Beach PD."

STOKE'S FIRST FEW DAYS IN THE SLAM passed pretty much...

THE MUSLIM GENTLEMEN'S READING SOCIETY MET at the far end...

COMMANDER HAWKE HIMSELF," the commanding officer of the British Army...

STAND BY, ZULU, YANKEE GOES GREEN in twenty seconds," Lieutenant...

DAYBREAK. THE VENERABLE THAMES BARGE PUDGE, narrow of beam but...

IT WAS THE VERY FIRST DAY of school and nobody...

THE RED CRESCENT SOCIETY AMBULANCE rolled up Islamabad's Peshawar Road,...

UNDER A TATTERED TENT PITCHED beneath a vast black dome...

HAWKE AND SAHIRA, DELAYED BY TRAFFIC, arrived at the nurses'...

STOKELY JONES TOLD HARRY BROCK HE needed a damn break...

THEY HAULED HIM ABOARD AND STRETCHED him out on the...

BRIXDEN HOUSE, ANCESTRAL HOME to Lady Diana Mars, and countless...

THE MAMMOTH C-130 HERCULES TRANSPORT TOUCHED down at 3:15 in...

ABDUL DAKKON SAID, "THERE IS a VIP section on one...

THE TEAM STRUCK THAT VERY NIGHT, two hours before dawn.

MUHAMMAD IMRAN SPED AWAY from the hospital in the Red...

HAWKE HOVERED OVER THE SEVERELY wounded Pakistani Army officer in...

THE RAT PATROL RODE OUT at dawn; the desert air...

HAWKE, ABDUL DAKKON, AND A NUMBER of solemn-faced Pakistani militia...

THEY CLIMBED HIGHER INTO THE MOUNTAINS. Fewer men, fewer horses,...

THE SMILE DIDN'T LAST LONG. After an hour of climbing,...

A LONE MAN WALKED THROUGH THE DEEP and dusky Scottish...

ALL THIRTY OF THE YOUNG HOMEGROWN U.K. terrorists gathered around...

THINGS WERE GOING HELLWARD FAST. Descending the curving stone steps...

HE TRIED TO GO BACK TO SLEEP, but it was...

THE GOOD NEWS, STOKE THOUGHT, WAS they'd gotten very lucky...

THE JUMPMASTER SHOUTED, "GET READY!" and Stoke, like everyone else,...

IT WAS ON A NASTY NOVEMBER evening some months after...

BERMUDA, PRESENT DAY

A LEX HAWKE HELD THE BATTERED GOLD Dunhill to the tip of his cigarette. First of the day always best, he thought absently, inhaling, padding barefoot across the polished mahogany floor. Expelling a long, thin plume of blue smoke, he sat down, collapsing against the sun-bleached cushions of the upholstered planter's chair.

Pelham, his friend and valet of many years, had all the glass doors of the semi-circular living room at Teakettle Cottage flung open to the terrace. Had Alex Hawke bothered to notice the view, he would have found the riot of purple bougainvillea climbing over the low limestone wall, and, below and beyond that wall, the turquoise sea, ruffled with whitecaps, typically lovely for this time of year in Bermuda.

But he seldom noticed such things anymore.

He'd tried all the usual antidotes for sorrow. Endless walks on endless beaches, the headlong expedition deep into drink, seeking refuge at the bottom of a rum bottle. He'd tried everything, that is, except women. Ambrose Congreve, the retired head of Scotland Yard and Hawke's oldest friend, had unsuccessfully tried no end of schemes to lift Alex's spirits. The latest being women.

"Women?" Alex had said, regretting a dinner party Ambrose and, his fiancee, Diana, were throwing in honor of Diana's beautiful young niece, a recent divorcee from London. "That part is over for me, Ambrose," Hawke said. "My heart's in the grave."

His life had become a sort of floating dream, as most lives are when the mainspring's left out.

His house was a long-abandoned sugar mill, with a crooked chimney on the domed roof that looked like the spout on a teakettle. The whitewashed stone mill house stood against a green havoc of banana trees overlooking the Atlantic. You could hear the waves crashing against jagged rocks some thirty feet below. Familiar Bermuda seabirds were darting about overhead, click-click ing petrels, swooping long-tails and cormorants and frigate birds.

Hawke inhaled deeply, holding the smoke inside his lungs for as long as he could. God, he loved cigarettes. And why not? He rued all those years he'd wasted abstaining from tobacco. That first bite of nicotine afforded life an intense immediacy he seldom felt these days; the whole grey world suddenly awash in colors fresh as wet paint.

Cancer sticks. Yeah, well, nobody lives forever, he said to himself, taking another drag and lazily stretching his long legs.

Alex Hawke, even knee-deep in malaise, was a striking figure of a man. He was tall, well over six feet. He had a full head of thick black hair and a fine, high brow. His nose was long and straight above a sensuous mouth with hints of suppressed cruelty lurking at the edge of every flashing grin. But it was his ice-blue eyes people remembered, eyes that could suddenly widen and send a searing flash across an entire room.

"Up bright and early this morning, m'lord," Pelham Grenville, Hawke's snowy-haired octogenarian butler, said, toddling in from the terrace. He had obviously been out hacking away in the banana groves for he was cradling a fresh-cut bushel of ripe bananas in his arms as he headed for the kitchen.