“Hurt? Wounded?”
“No. Small.”
“Small?”
“Affirmative. He’ll need milk.”
“Milk?”
Hawke heard a voice in the background and then C turning from the phone’s mouthpiece and saying to someone, “Hawke’s coming out. With a hostage. Needs milk, apparently. What? Hell if I know what he’s up to, barmy, if you ask me!”
Then he was back on the phone.
“You’ll have it, Alex. Next steps?”
“My thought was quick armed surface transport to an unmarked helo standing by on the roof of our Saint Petersburg consulate. A quick buzz across the Baltic Sea to Tallinn, and a plane of some sort waiting there in Estonia to bring us in.”
“Consider it done. Are you quite all right, Alex? You sound odd, I must say.”
“Under the circumstances, I’m perhaps the happiest man on earth, sir.”
“I do think you’ve gone a bit mad, Alex, but I’ll take care of these arrangements. At least you’re not dead.”
“At the very least, sir. Thank you for noticing.”
Click.
Seminole, Florida
I
t was hot.
Always hot out here in the damn swamp,
Stokely Jones Jr. thought, emerging from the cool dark shade of the old Baptist church into the searing, wind-inflamed morning. You wouldn’t think they had churches in Hades, but they did. The big man paused at the top of the weathered steps, loosened his tie, mopped his brow, and looked out across the churchyard. Three people were sitting on a shaded bench that wrapped around a tree: Alex Hawke; his son, Alexei; and the pretty young woman who looked after his child.
Miss Spooner is what Hawke called the young woman. Nell Spooner had a small wicker basket of toys on her lap, things to keep little Alexei from getting bored out here in the boonies. She had big almond-shaped blue eyes, honey-blond hair, and a young Princess Diana vibe going on. Sweet innocence, kind that made you automatically warm up to somebody you didn’t know from Adam.
Stoke smiled, seeing the look on Alex Hawke’s face. All the pain that man had been through lately? Replaced with joy. Plain and simple happiness. Stoke swiped his handkerchief across his brow. He just stood there watching the three of them for a few minutes. You live long enough, he was thinking, you get to see that, sometimes, the good really does come with the bad.
And God knows Hawke had had his share of bad lately. Came back from Russia without the woman he loved. But not empty-handed, no sir. Now he had a son. And how he did love that boy, Lord only knows how much. Father and son. But something else, deeper. Like they were twins or something.
The circular wooden bench surrounded a gnarled live oak tree. Standing tall out in the scruffy churchyard. Last hurricane that roared up from Key West took its toll around here. But, like the old rugged cross, that tree had stood its ground.
In the silence he could hear the hum of traffic. Two long miles full of scrub palm, sand fleas, snakes, and gators from here, old U.S. 41, or Alligator Alley, made its way over to Tampa.
Earlier, he and Hawke had passed the Injun Tradin’ Post, the tourist trap where Stoke’s former fellow inmate at the Glades Correctional Institution, a Seminole Indian and local former prizefighter named Chief Johnny Two Guns, had shopped. He was reputed to have bought the fake Seminole tomahawk there that he had murdered his own mother with.
Turns out Two Guns’s late mom was a God-fearing soul, the choirmaster here for nearly fifty years. Small world, right? Full of some really good people and a whole lot of flaming assholes.
Not much of a church, he considered, looking back at it. It was a white frame structure of two stories. Some of the windows had fixed wooden louvers, and some had shutters that folded back. There were also a few stained-glass windows with lots of panes missing. The roof was galvanized sheet iron, corrugated.
Paint was peeling off the steeple, too, he noticed, and then a skeet bit him right on the back of his neck. Damn! He slapped at it, got the sucker, and saw the smear of his own blood in the palm of his hand. Memories. “Heat ’n’ Skeet,” that’s what the U.S. Navy SEALs used to call this backcountry.
Stoke, a former NFL linebacker built like two, had done some secret training not twenty miles from here. Blown up a lot of shit, including more than a few ten-foot gators with grenades dropped from hovering choppers right down their gaping gullets. Messy, but more entertaining than
The Price Is Right
or whatever that crap was they had on TV. Besides, gators ate dogs. And sometimes babies.
Scattered around here and there on the church grounds, somebody had placed big tin buckets of smoldering woody husks that gave off white smoke—homemade mosquito bombs. Stoke murdered another stinging dive-bomber and descended the creaking steps, trying to stand in the white smoke. But the stuff kept shifting away from him in a fluke of nature that made him smile. Sometimes nature was on your side, but mostly not.
Well, all he had to say to that right now was “Hallelujah.”
It was Stokely Jones’s wedding day.
He should be happy, he thought, sweat stinging his eyes. God knows he loved Fancha with all his heart; it was marriage he wasn’t so sure about. His one serious relationship with a woman before this was with a podiatrist from Tenafly, New Jersey. Big old gal, mostly bosom, had half the men in Jersey at her feet, he used to joke. She’d wanted to marry him, too. Morning of the wedding? He’d skipped.
Now, here he was again. Just being inside that church had made him nervous as a damn long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. He hadn’t even meant to propose! One night, out at her palazzo on Key Biscayne, looking at her beautiful face in the moonlight, he’d said, “You know what, baby? I worship the ground you will walk on in a future lifetime.”
Bam. Look at him. Here he was, at a specific church, on a specific date. Getting . . . he almost choked . . . getting
married
.
Grace Baptist Church was located in the town of Seminole, Florida, population 867, most of them black folks and members of the congregation. You had farmers, fishermen, and caneworkers mostly out here. It was the bride’s hometown.
Fancha’s family had emigrated to the States from the Cape Verde islands back in the 1980s. Settled out here in the sawgrass and muck for some unknowable reason. Maybe somebody in the family was a professional alligator wrestler, who knows. Compared to Harlem, where he grew up, this place bit the big one, all he had to say about it.
Grace Baptist was the church Fancha had grown up in, singing in the choir. Not exactly St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Or even the Abyssinian Baptist Church at 132 West 138th Street. Now those were
churches
. You walk in there and you can
feel
the good Lord saying, “This right here, this is the house of the Lord, sinner, and don’t you forget it.”
“Damn, it’s hot!” Stokely Jones said, dropping down on the bench next to his best man, Lord Alexander Hawke. Man flew all the way in from England with his little boy to be here. Cutest little kid you ever saw, dressed in his blue-and-white seersucker suit, short pants, white knee socks, and black patent leather shoes with straps to hold them on. He had his father’s jet-black hair and blazing blue eyes.
Didn’t miss a trick either. Nell Spooner had given him a mayonnaise jar with holes punched in the top and an insect inside to keep him entertained after he’d been through all the toys.
“What’s that in there?” Stoke asked the child. “A cricket?”
“No, sir,” Alexei said, peering into the jar at his new pet. “A grasshopper! Spooner says grasshoppers fly and crickets don’t.”
“Is that right? I didn’t have that information,” Stoke said, ruffling his hair and smiling at the boy’s proud papa.
Hawke, for some unknown reason, looked cool as a damn cucumber just plucked out of the Frigidaire. Had on a pure white linen three-piece suit, not a wrinkle in it, a beautiful blue silk tie, and, despite all the heat and humidity and mosquitoes on this late May morning, he had a big smile on his face.
“What are you so damn chipper about?” Stoke asked him. He’d gotten that word,
chipper,
from Hawke long ago and used it ever since. Liked the sound of it.
“Listen to that choir,” Hawke said.
“What about it?”
“It’s beautiful, that’s what. I’ve never heard music like that. Have you, Miss Spooner?”
“No, sir, I’ve not,” she said. “It is divine, isn’t it?”
Stoke said, “It’s divine, all right; that’s old-time religion you’re listening to now. Gospel music. Angel music. Sacred. Folks are just rehearsing in there now. Choir’s just getting their pipes warmed up. You wait. Whole building’ll be shaking, hands clapping, feet stomping, folks praising the Lord to the rafters when they cut loose, feels like the roof is going to fly off and sail away, I’m telling you.”
“I’m so glad you’re getting married here, Mr. Jones,” Nell Spooner said. “It’s positively wonderful.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” Stoke said, nervously looking around. “Wonderful, just wonderful.”
Stoke pulled a drenched white handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his black suit coat and mopped his brow for the tenth time since he’d come outside. “I’m hot. How come you two aren’t hot?”
Hawke looked over at him and said, “Stokely Jones Jr., you look like a man who needs a drink.”
“Alex, what’d I always tell you? Only thing alcohol’s good for is helping white folks dance. Besides, you know I don’t drink.”
“You don’t get married, either. But you are today. Man’s entitled to a drink on his wedding day. It’s practically obligatory.”
Hawke pulled a shining silver flask from inside his breast pocket and handed it to Stoke.
“What’s in it? Don’t even tell me. I already know what it is. Head-strong, out-and-out, strong-bodied, ram-jam, come-it-strong, lift-me-up, knock-me-down, gen-u-wine moonshine!”
“That’s it, brother. Pure nitro.”
Stoke first sniffed at the idea, then unscrewed the little cap and sniffed at the contents. He wrinkled his nose, frowning at the lack of any smell at all.
“What is this stuff, anyway? Just tell me.”
“Take a swig, big fella. It won’t kill you.”
“If this doesn’t beat all, I don’t know what does. My own best man trying to get me drunk on my own wedding day,” Stoke said, and put the flask to his lips, tentatively lifting the thing.
He took a sip, swallowed, and smiled at his friend sideways.
“Diet Coke? It’s just Diet Coke, isn’t it?”
“Hmm.”
“All I ever drink, Diet Coke.”
“Hmm.”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. That’s called taking care of business. That’s why you, of all the people in the world who would have cheated, lied, and robbed for this job, that’s why you got picked as my best man.” Hawke smiled.
“It’s an honor, Stoke. I love you like a brother.”
“Which I am.”
“Which you definitely are.”
“Uh-oh. Here comes the bride,” Stoke said suddenly, gazing at the winking sunlight on the windshields of a small parade of automobiles now making its way slowly through the tall grass. The narrow, winding, and muddy road leading eventually to the church. “We’d better hustle up and get inside. Bad luck if you see the bride before the ceremony, that right, boss?”
“Absolutely, let’s go. Miss Spooner, you’ve got the ring to give to Alexei when it’s his time?”
“I do, sir. Mr. Brock is kindly holding two seats for us in the last pew of the church right on the center aisle. Alexei and I will wait until everyone is seated before we enter so we don’t cause a fuss. When it’s time for the ring, I’ll make sure to send him on his way to you.”
Stoke had asked Hawke weeks ago if the child could be the ring bearer during the ceremony and Hawke had readily agreed. So he had his team on the field. He’d also asked his buddy, CIA field agent Harry Brock; his sole employee, Luis Gonzales-Gonzales, the one-armed Cuban known as Sharkey; and finally Fast Eddie Falco, the aged security man at his condo in Miami, to be his ushers. He looked at his watch. Shouldn’t they be here by now?
T
he Right Reverend Josiah Jefferson Fletcher, J.J., better known as Fletch when he played defense for the New York Jets, weighed about three hundred pounds and had to use a walker to get around. He and the groom had been rookies together back in the day. After a serious knee injury, Fletch left football, came down here to South Florida, and started Grace Baptist Church—right here in the little Indian town of Seminole. A few years later, he’d been ordained. He’d been preaching the gospel ever since.
Fletch was the man Stoke called late at night when the wolves and the heebie-jeebies and the devil himself was at the door.
Fletch had a small office up on the second floor in the “rectory,” right next to the room where they kept all the choir robes, candles, and hymnals. The three big men could barely fit inside, so Hawke remained standing in the doorway and Stoke took the chair opposite the preacher at his battle-weary desk. Fletch leaned back in his chair and smiled. For a man who’d seen so much human suffering and anguish, the preacher had the biggest, whitest grin Hawke had ever seen on a human being.
“Mighty pleased to meet you, Mr. Hawke,” he said, settling in. “Stokely here tells me you’re a lord,” he said, looking directly at Hawke. “That right?”
Hawke nodded.
“A lord, you say.”
“Hmm.”
Then the reverend stretched his meaty forearms over the desk toward Stoke and said in a stage whisper:
“Ain’t that something, Stoke?”
“What’s that?”
“Him being a lord and all. And here all this time I been thinking there was only just the one.”
Hawke burst out laughing, as much over Fletch’s small joke as at Stoke’s doubled-over laughing fit, Fletch repeatedly slamming his ham-sized fist on the old wooden desk almost hard enough to split it in two.
“Good one, Fletch!” Stoke managed to blurt out.
When they’d all stopped chuckling, Fletch directed his strong gaze at Hawke once more.
“You don’t think our boy Stoke’s going to try and bolt on us, do you? Groom looks a little nervous to me,” the preacher said. “Little green around the gills.”
“That’s why I’m standing here in the doorway.”
The preacher grinned. “Next thing he’ll say he has to use the lavatory up the stairs there. The facilities. But don’t you worry none, Mr. Hawke, I got the window in there nailed shut.”
“Good thinking.” Hawke said.
“Only had one bride left standing at the altar in twentysome odd years. Believe me, it’s not an experience I want to repeat.”
“What happened?” Stoke asked.
“Groom said he had to pee, locked the bathroom door, went out the bathroom window, down the drainpipe, jumped in his car, and left here on two wheels, that’s what happened. Best man had to go out in front of the whole congregation and tell them all to go home. No groom, no wedding. Bride’s father came up out of his pew like a fullback on third and goal, leaped over the rail, and coldcocked that poor boy, a shot straight from the shoulder that slung his jaw loose. Knocked him out cold as I recall it.”