Warlord: An Alex Hawke Novel Read online

  None of the three men were armed.

  The two IRA Provos were attired as if returning from a long day of offshore drift fishing for salmon, and they had taken the trouble to fill the live well with fresh fish. The nets were piled on the deck aft of the small pilothouse. On the boat’s stern, she bore Sligo as her hailing port. Their story was, should they need one, that they’d been offshore fishing, had engine trouble, and were pulling into Mullaghmore for the night, hoping to make repairs next morning, and to return to Sligo Harbor by noon.

  McGirl, with a professional touch Smith admired, periodically squirted oil onto the hot manifold, and the engine was smoking nicely, believably, should anyone official approach and start asking questions.

  “There she is,” Smith said quietly, pointing at a green runabout moored at one end of the town dock. It was well past midnight and no one was about. The little houses dotted on the hillside seemed fast asleep, not a light in a single window. Only the pub at the other end of the town dock showed any signs of life. But this was, Smith reflected, Ireland after all.

  There was a dim, flickering lamp on a post at the far end of the dock, casting yellow light on the Shadow V. She was no gentlemen’s yacht, just a simple twenty-seven-footer, completely open at the stern, with a rounded cuddy cabin forward. She looked good for family outings and lobstering, which is exactly how Mountbatten used her.

  “Tom,” Smith said softly, eyeing the closing distances and the speed of his boat, full knowing this precise moment posed the highest risk of failure. “Circle round and come up from behind her at idle speed. We’ll take Shadow dead slow on our starboard side. Gently, please, Tom, ever so gently.”

  “Done,” Tom said over his shoulder.

  McMahon throttled back to dead slow and did as the assassin had asked. He ghosted to a stop just as they came dead abeam of Mountbatten’s boat, rubbing up against her wooden hull soundlessly. Smith reached across the narrow distance and grabbed the gunwale of Mountbatten’s boat, bringing them to a stop.

  “Good enough, then, gentlemen,” Smith said, quickly and quietly, lifting and deftly placing the fifty-pound rucksack on the teak deck of the open cockpit of the Shadow V. The two IRA men looked at each other. This Smith was surprisingly strong. He was tall and slender, a bookish bloke, they’d imagined. But he clearly took care of himself.

  McMahon stepped out of the pilothouse, shook his hand, and said, “Well, then. Good luck, Mr. Smith. Succeed, and we’ll build a bloody statue of you in Belfast Square someday maybe. Won’t look anything like you, of course, so no worries there.”

  “Or have my name on it, I should hope,” Smith said as he smiled.

  McGirl squeezed Smith’s shoulder and said, “Best of the best, mate. Be dog wide, sir, and don’t get yerself caught. Pray for sunshine tomorrow, ye can be certain they’ll not be leaving this dock if it’s bucketing rain again in the morn.”

  “Oh, I’ve been praying for sunshine tomorrow all my life,” Smith said, pulling the two boats, which had drifted apart, a bit closer together for boarding.

  “Aye. Prayin’s one thing.”

  “There’ll be blood in the water tomorrow, no matter which side God is on, McGirl,” Smith said, easily stepping over the Rose of Tralee’s gunwale and climbing into Shadow V’s cockpit, staying low.

  The whole exchange had taken less than a minute. He heard McMahon engage the throttle, and the Rose slipped off into the dead quiet harbor, not a Gardaí patrol in sight. As he’d hoped, the IRA had been both willing and helpful. They’d played their part to perfection. Now the fate of the devils who had destroyed his world was in his hands alone.

  TWENTY

  THERE WAS A DEEP LIVE BAIT well in Shadow V’s transom. This was where lobster pots were stowed when not in use. The hatch cover provided for a seat for whoever was steering the boat. The assassin crawled toward it on his hands and knees, dragging the heavy rucksack along with him. He knew every inch of this boat, having obtained and studied the original plans from which she was built.

  He even knew why she was painted emerald green; it had been Lady Mountbatten’s favorite color.

  So, when he lifted the hatch cover and placed the lid carefully on the deck, he knew the precise interior dimensions of the bait well. Here the bomb would go. He had designed it to fit snugly down inside the well, once all the lobster pots were removed.

  This he did patiently and quietly, one at a time, on his knees, stacking them neatly on the deck. There was a pub at the shoreside end of the town dock and you never knew when some chap might step outside to stagger home to the wife, so it was best to stay low. The pile of briny-smelling pots grew beside him, and finally he saw there was room enough in the well for the rucksack.

  Carefully, he lifted the bomb and fitted it into the now open space. Perfect. He opened the flap on the rucksack and inserted the detonator, just the way the bomb maker McMahon had shown him. He noticed his hands were shaking a bit, but it was understandable. He hadn’t done a lot of this sort of thing.

  He flicked a drop of nervous perspiration from the tip of his nose and then thumbed the toggle switch that armed the bomb. The small radio detonator carefully sewn inside the seam of his black foul-weather jacket was now a very lethal weapon.

  A little red eye had begun blinking down there in the dark bait well and his heart beat faster.

  About four cubic feet of open space remained above the bomb. He filled it with lobster pots and used most of them to do so. The remainder he heaved over the side, knowing the ebb tide would carry them out before morning. He closed the hatch cover upon which Lord Mountbatten always sat when the boat was under way. He loved his little boat, and Smith knew it.

  It was only a matter of time before—

  He heard two men, mumbling drunkenly, emerge from the pub. They got louder, strolling out to the end of the dock. They were close and there was no time to duck under the cuddy cabin. He flattened himself on the deck, as near to the dockside bulkhead of the boat as he could get. Damn it, he silently cursed. This was no time to be discovered aboard Lord Mountbatten’s boat. He’d kill these two unfortunates if he had to, slit their throats with his fish knife, but that would cause no end of complications. He’d no choice but to lie there, dead still, and hope they were too inebriated to notice him.

  “Ye know what they say about beer, Paddy O’Reilly?”

  “You don’t buy it, ye only rent it.”

  “Exactly,” the first man said.

  “I’d say the day’s rent’s long overdue, wouldn’t you?”

  “Time to bleed the lizards awright, Bucko…”

  He knew exactly what was going to happen. He heard two zippers being yanked down and the shuffling feet of the two men on the dock now standing directly over his head. Two streams of urine spattered on the Shadow V’s deck not a foot from his face. He caught some of it, of course, but he’d his foul-weather gear on and as a child he’d suffered far worse indignities.

  Lying there in the dark, still as stone, watching that black pool of piss spreading across the deck, he smiled. He liked the idea of these two blokes strolling down the dock of an evening, just to relieve themselves on Mountbatten’s pride and joy. “Piss on you, oh mighty Lord Mountbottom,” one of them said as they zipped up, had a wee chuckle, and returned to the pub.

  Lord Mountbottom they call him, Smith said to himself with a smile. The locals’ moniker was a fitting enough tag for the old bastard.

  HE SAW A FEW FLASHLIGHT beams darting among the trees in the forest as he made his way up the hill. Special Protection guards. He’d shed his black foul-weather gear and the balaclava. He was now dressed in a black turtleneck jumper and black trousers, with the black watch cap pulled down over the tops of his ears. He kept just inside the woods at the side of the lane.

  Reaching the hilltop, he skirted the well-guarded Classiebawn estate and moved quickly and silently toward his refuge without incident. It was the end of the summer, and he assumed, correctly, that the Irish Gardaí and t
he Special Branch men assigned to protect Queen Victoria’s grandson would be more interested in a final pint of Guinness or a wee dram of Tullamore than some interloper with murder on his mind.

  He slept that night, fitfully, inside the damp and crumbling ruin of a Norman watchtower. Water seeped from the mossy old stones like tears. The thousand-year-old tower stood amid a copse of green wood overlooking a moonlit Donegal Bay. He tried to sleep, but all night long he was beset by frightful dreams. In one, he was but a small boy, sent out to slay a great fire-breathing dragon, alone, in order to protect his family.

  Unlike St. George, a great knight, he’d only been a defenseless boy, and the dragon had easily engulfed him and his family with great licks of fire. After the dragon slithered away, he saw them all, his father, mother, and sister, as from above, twisted and charred like sticks, strewn about the marble steps leading to the flaming ruins of what had been their home.

  In another dream, one he had frequently, a fire-breathing locomotive pulled into a huge and darkened station pulling a long train of boxcars. When the doors to all the cars were pulled open, gallons of viscous red blood gushed out, flooding the platform. Every single cattle car was full to overflowing with the bloody, horribly mutilated corpses of murdered Moslem women.

  THE NORMAN WATCHTOWER MADE a decent enough shelter. He’d discovered it a few years ago, on one of his earliest surveillance trips to Mullaghmore, and had known immediately that one fine day it would suit his purposes perfectly. At last, a few hours before daybreak, he slept. When he opened his eyes, looking up through the ragged holes of missing stone in the tower, he knew he’d been right about his timing.

  God was with him.

  The morning dawned blue and clear, an almost supernaturally lovely day after all the weeks of drenching rain. There was virtually no wind at all. He was stiff from sleeping on the bare, damp ground, but ten minutes of vigorous stretching and breathing exercises brought him fully awake, his blood coursing through his veins with anticipation of what was to come.

  There was just enough of a spiral stone staircase remaining inside the tower for him to climb to the top. From this splendid vantage point he had a view that included all of Classiebawn Castle and its grounds, the green hills beyond, the narrow lane that led down the hill to Mullaghmore, the harbor, and the placid blue bay sparkling in the morning sun.

  He pulled a fish knife he’d stolen from the Sligo boat from his trouser pocket and quickly slit the seam of his jacket. There, in a waterproof packet, was the detonator. He slid it out of its waxed pouch, unwrapped it, and gazed upon it almost lovingly.

  It was a simple aluminum box, no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. It had a dial that showed battery strength (full), a warning light, and a toggle switch, currently in the “off” position.

  He set the detonator on the wide stone balustrade of the curved wall and raised his binoculars to his eyes. For a few hours, the house was quiet and it was difficult to be patient. Then, around eleven, there was a bustle of activity in and around the castle. Children and dogs racing in and out of the house, slamming doors, nannies pushing strollers to and fro, gardeners cutting fresh flowers in the gardens.

  It looked like the first day of summer, not the last.

  Half an hour later he saw Mountbatten emerge from the front entrance of the castle. He was surrounded by family, by laughing and skipping children, all delighted to see the sun shining at last. The old man was dressed in faded corduroys and a rough pullover. All the members of his family, young and old, were carrying something, a picnic basket, a thermos, a jug of wine.

  He watched Lord Mountbatten march his little army along the drive leading away from the house. They turned, as he knew, hoped, prayed they would, to the right and began descending the hill toward Mullaghmore harbor.

  SHADOW V, A BRILLIANT GREEN in the noonday sun, was waiting at the end of the dock. In no time at all, they’d all boarded, children and adults both clearly excited at the prospect of a day on the water. A young boy, fifteen perhaps and clearly a local, cast off the lines. There was a puff of blue smoke as Mountbatten reached down and started the little three-cylinder diesel engine.

  Then Lord Louis took his normal seat, on the portside hatch cover above the well where the unused lobster pots were normally stowed.

  He bent forward and engaged the throttle and the little boat moved away from the dock. Proceeding at a stately pace, Shadow V slowly eased beyond the harbor’s protecting stone walls until she’d cleared the long jetty. The happy party proceeded along the coast, still barely a stone’s throw from shore, for a few hundred yards. Then they came to a stop so Mountbatten could inspect his lobster pots.

  It was time. Smith whispered a silent prayer to heaven and thumbed the detonator switch. For a moment, nothing happened and he stared in disbelief at the little green boat bobbing there among the lobster pots.

  The sudden explosion shattered the summer stillness into a thousand pieces. A great geyser of splintered wood, blood, oil, and broken bodies shot high into the air. The shock of the blast shook the Norman watchtower to its ancient foundations; indeed, the force of the detonation was felt miles from the fishing village of Mullaghmore. In the roiling bay, nothing remained of Shadow V but countless green splinters of wood, bobbing about everywhere you looked. And then there were the bodies, floating facedown.

  The deed was done.

  The man who had just murdered one of England’s greatest heroes remained steadfastly at his post, moving his glasses back and forth from body to body, desperate to see Mountbatten’s mutilated corpse pulled from the water. Towns people in small boats instantly sped to the rescue. A huge debris field spread across the water, slick with fuel oil, and here and there the small bodies of children floated in the water.

  He didn’t care about the incidental dead; they didn’t trouble him in the slightest. The amount of blood on this English bastard’s hands would never be equaled in ten thousand lifetimes. A small blue fishing vessel came to a stop beside one of the larger of the floating corpses.

  He held his breath, focusing on the face of the corpse. Yes. It was him. Two men pulled what was left of Lord Mountbatten into the boat. Despite grievous injuries, he appeared to be alive, if only just. Smith waited atop the tower just long enough to watch Lord Louis Mountbatten expire. It didn’t take long.

  The man who had betrayed his nation died almost immediately, there on the deck of the small blue boat, both of his legs almost completely severed from his upper body.

  God be praised.

  The great Mountbatten, partitioned at last.

  Now Smith could begin to sound the fathoms of his vengeance against the British Monarchy in earnest. As he made his way down the spiral staircase inside the watchtower, he suddenly realized that he was in no hurry to wreak his terrible havoc. He had a lifetime to plan each exquisite act to perfection and then execute it flawlessly. He would be the very soul of patience. He would strike only when the circumstances were perfect.

  Each and every wound he inflicted would be a moment and a memory to savor.

  And he believed, he knew, in every fiber of his being, that he would never be caught.

  Never.

  In the most solemn and uncharted depths of his dark soul, Smith conceived he had been put upon this earth for one reason: he was born a battle mace to crush a corrupt and rusting crown.

  HOURS AFTER THE HORROR at Mullaghmore shook England and the civilized world to the core, the following statement was issued by the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army in Belfast:

  THE I.R.A. CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EXECUTION OF LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN. THIS OPERATION IS ONE OF THE DISCRIMINATE WAYS WE CAN BRING THE ATTENTION OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE TO THE CONTINUING OCCUPATION OF OUR COUNTRY.

  TWENTY-ONE

  MIAMI BEACH, PRESENT DAY

  CHANDRA FELT AN ALMOST OVERWHELMING URGE to trigger her automatic stiletto and jam the razor-sharp blade straight up through her boss’s jaw. Through his tongue and into the soft
tissue of the palate at the roof of his mouth. She knew the sharpened tip would come to rest at the base of his brain, just behind the nasal cavity. This was one of the exact thrusts the weapon was made for. The kidneys, heart, and behind the ear were the other targets she went for with a great deal of regularity and success.

  She’d been late. That’s why she was being quote-unquote “punished” by this asshole. She’d been sent to Miami International with the van to pick up four new “students” arriving from Islamabad, Pakistan, via Jihad, Dubai, Caracas. Planes out of Venezuela were always late, but he blamed her anyway.

  She took the “students” to the safe house they kept for new arrivals, a run-down two-story bungalow off Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Student housing for terrorists, the IED frat house she called it. They were moving a hundred kids a month through that dump. And Bashi got a big cut out of each and every one he delivered safely into the system.

  Tomorrow, the students would disperse and begin their own personal crime waves. Crimes sufficiently serious to warrant the attention of the police, the courts, and finally the prison system. Then their real mission began. Preaching the hijacked gospel of the Prophet inside whatever joint they landed in.

  Along with the daily religious instruction came bomb building, terror tactics; all this in preparation for the Caliphate, the “Big Day.” It couldn’t come soon enough for her. She hated her job, Miami, and the loathsome pig who often treated her like a bad dog. But he was a rich bastard, and he was exceedingly generous. The gorgeous new Bentley Arnage in her town-house garage was all the reminder she needed of that.

  Tonight, he had kept her waiting for at least a half hour, standing before his desk, not being allowed to speak, while he made endless phone calls to various mullahs and warlords on Afghan mountain-tops using his encrypted sat phone.

  The only thing that kept her homicidal desires in check was the fact that he still owed her money, a lot of money. Enough to live like a princess for the rest of her life. If she killed the fat bastard, she’d never see a penny of it. She just had to roll with it for a little longer, that’s all.