Overkill Read online

  He knew if he ran he would fall; a feeling of severe vertigo had gripped him. He walked, using both hands to hold on to anything solid. He knew the cockpit door would be closed and he knew the traitorous two bastards inside had locked it.

  He’d get only one good kick . . . but he was a lifelong martial artist, a full black belt in judo, and he fucking well knew how to make his kicks count.

  The aluminum door flew inward and he was inside, covering the pilot and copilot with the Makarov.

  “Andrei, Andrei, Andrei,” he whispered, putting the gun on the pilot. “You cunt-hearted bastard. I gave you everything . . . hands up and turn around!”

  “But I . . . please, sir, don’t kill me! They said they would kill my wife and children! They left me no choice but to—”

  “Et tu, Andrei,” said Putin.

  The Makarov popped softly, creating a smoking bloody hole in Markov’s forehead. He pitched forward against the controls, dead. Putin leaned down and snatched the bloodied, gore-filled oxygen mask from his late pilot’s head. With a grimace of disgust, he fitted the disgusting device over his head, covering his nose and mouth. He inhaled hungrily, savoring the bite of the cold oxygen sucked into his starving lungs. He glared at his copilot, breathing deeply.

  He felt himself slowly coming back, his terrified mind settling back into some semblance of normalcy.

  “And, what am I to make of you?” he said, now aiming at the terrified copilot. “I don’t even know your fucking name. Listen carefully. Do exactly as I say and you may live another day. Descend and maintain three thousand meters.”

  “Roger that, sir,” he said, throttling back and easing the airship’s nose downward. “Descend and maintain three thousand.”

  The big four-engine Ilyushin quickly shed altitude.

  “Reduce your airspeed to two hundred kph.”

  “Reducing airspeed to two hundred kph.”

  “Go to full autopilot. Lock it in.”

  “Engaging full auto . . . and . . . locked.”

  “Good work.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now. Get on your feet, you nameless little fuck—I said, on your feet now!”

  “But, sir, someone must fly the airplane! I cannot just . . .”

  “Do as I say or die where you sit. Take off your oxygen mask and hand it to me.”

  The terrified and trembling man did as he was told, then unbuckled his safety harness and stood on legs that felt like jelly. Putin ripped off Andrei’s bloody mask and replaced it with the copilot’s.

  “Please, sir! I have a young family! I didn’t know what Karpov was planning until we were aloft and I would never have—”

  “Have come back and warned me? Put your hands on your head and turn around. Don’t move . . .”

  The doomed man did as he was told.

  Never once taking his eyes off his would-be assassin, he said, “Bang, you’re dead,” and shot him in the back of the head, spattering the cockpit windows with strings of gristle, grey matter, and gore. He lowered the gun, struggling for air. Something wrong with the late copilot’s mask! Then, inhaling deeply, sucking what little oxygen he could into his starving lungs.

  He had an overwhelming desire to lie down, curl up, and go to sleep right there on the cold metal cockpit floor.

  But two far more powerful desires dictated otherwise. The twin instinctive needs for survival and revenge. He left the two dead men on the bloody floor where they lay and staggered back to the wide fuselage door just aft of the galley on the port side of the aircraft. He cast his eyes to the back of the lounge, just briefly. It was the last time he’d lay his eyes on his beloved Kat. The bloody oligarchs had snatched her from him. They would pay.

  Shaking his head violently to maintain consciousness, he somehow disarmed the door, swung the big lever to the open position, kicked the door away, and stepped out into the dirty sherbet skies over France.

  Chapter One

  Christmas Day, St. Moritz

  Two heavily armored Range Rovers, black, with impenetrable inky black windows, emerged from the underground garages at Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in the sleepy little town of St. Moritz. Perhaps the most celebrated hotel in the world, the palace had sadly seen better days. Much better days.

  On the other hand, it was one of those clear, clean days in the Swiss Alps, when the Alpine skies above were shot through with blue and brimming with bright promise. Everything seemed to have been washed clean by the frothy overnight snowfall. Every window in town gleamed.

  The very air itself seemed to sparkle. A foot of squeaky powder had fallen on the rooftops, parks, and ski areas. The black ice of the famous town’s narrow twisting roads was now especially treacherous. Early morning drivers had to mind their speed and brake at every intersection.

  After a long pause for surveillance, the first vehicle, known as the Beast because of its heavy armaments and studded as it was with external gunports, turned left into the snowy white streets of the old town. The second car followed on its heels. Bristling with antennas, this was clearly the communications vehicle. It maintained a distance of precisely fifteen feet from the lead car at all times.

  The twin vehicles did not attract much attention. St. Moritz was no longer the glitzy playground of paparazzi, movie stars, and jet-setters it had once been. Now it was the haunt of Iranian arms dealers, filthy rich Chinese, and bullyboy Russian oil oligarchs. Also, there were people here who simply didn’t know any better, unwitting American tourists who naively believed the town was still home to the chic, the beautiful, and the truly famous.

  It was not.

  All of that jet-set luster was long gone—all of the evanescent golden girl glamour, all of the flashy aristocratic playboys, all the louche old men with their bosomy Parisian nieces, gone. Fled to Gstaad or Courchevel or Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Dolomites. The only thing here now was money. Cold, hard cash. Gobs of it. And most of it, if not all, was in the wrong hands.

  The duplicate Range Rovers, now making their cautious way up the slippery slopes of the Corviglia mountain, were a case in point. You didn’t ride around in cars like these unless you were a man with countless millions in cash and nearly as many enemies.

  The casual observer, upon spotting this little caravan passing by, might simply say, “Bloody Chinese” or “Russian billionaire bastards” or something similar, and look away in disgust. A true member of the Old Guard—or what was left of them, anyway—might punctuate an epithet with the international single-digit salute.

  The radio in the second car crackled. “Arriving in five minutes, sir,” the lead driver said simply.

  “Thanks, Tristan,” came the reply from the rear seat of the trailing car. “A rosy picture out there?”

  “Beautiful day for it, sir.”

  “Indeed. Can you get us any closer to the base station of the lift? Take the service road if you have to.”

  “Done and done,” Tristan replied.

  Now the lead car slowed to a crawl, approaching a turn into the bustling car park. The looming gondola base station was visible on the far side. It had begun to snow again, and the cheery skiers bustling about on this Christmas morning were elated. The Swiss Ski School instructors, all in their signature scarlet snow gear, were all smiles as well. Another powder-packed day, for sure, and the mountain was already bristling with children of all ages.

  Since 1932, Swiss ski schools have maintained a presence at all the winter resorts in Switzerland, providing lessons in all snow sports to learners. Just above the gondola station, one could see the Swiss Snow Kids Village, the Swiss Snow League, and the Swiss Snow Academy. These gentle open lower slopes formed a near-perfect nursery area for ski school children first learning to snowplow and gaining confidence, without the threat of snowboarders and more accomplished skiers whizzing scarily by.

  Christmas Day was the ski school’s big day of the year. A hundred or more excited children were already visible up on the slopes, all decked out in their red parkas
. More were crowded around the base station, waiting with their parents or nannies or siblings to board the aerial tramway.

  Children were there for a morning rehearsal for tonight’s festive holiday event. At dusk would begin the annual children’s Christmas torchlight parade. It promised to be a grand spectacle, with the children, carrying torches, snaking down the broad slopes of the main run as gracefully as they could manage. With their newfound skills, they would create a river of fire flowing down from the summit to the base.

  The lead car slowed, turning into the car park at the gondola base station.

  The lead Range Rover’s driver, having navigated a lot cram-packed with tour buses, cars, and pedestrians, now used a narrow road leading up to the base station itself. It slowed to a stop as close to the gondola as possible.

  Upon seeing the second vehicle come to a stop a few feet behind the first, many of the ski school children and their parents paused and had a look-see. The big black cars had used a service road forbidden to members of the public at large.

  Someone very important, or at least extremely rich and famous, would soon emerge from the car. Royalty? Celebrity gangster? English footballer? Snoop Dog?

  The lead car’s heavy rear door opened very slowly with an audible pneumatic hiss.

  First out was a tall blond man wearing mirrored Ray-Bans and dressed head to toe in the famous scarlet ski kit of the Swiss Ski School. A private instructor? Yes, one hired for the day or the week, anyone would assume. And yet he had an imperious manner, an almost military confidence. And he wore an earbud in his left ear.

  He seemed to be conversing with an unseen colleague, using a lip mike as he surveyed the crowds, systematically swiveling his head left to right and then back again. A ski instructor? Perhaps not. Rather, he looked to be someone easily capable of instantly brandishing heavy weapons plucked from inside his bright red parka.

  The crowd, now sensing, if not unfolding drama, at least something mildly interesting, pressed in for a closer look. The “instructor” then turned his back on them, presumably to help one of his clients out of the big black car. He slowly swung the door open.

  The client was not at all the great personage they’d been expecting. No movie stars here. No, emerging from the cavernous interior of the big black vehicle was a very small and beautiful boy.

  It was a mere child, blinking in the brilliant sunlight, who fell into the waiting arms of the tall man in the red ski kit.

  A radiant boy, not more than seven years old, with thick black hair, enormous ice-blue eyes, and a wondrous smile. Seemingly unaware of his effect on the crowd, he reached up and tugged on the instructor’s parka saying, “Where is Daddy, Tristan?”

  “Right behind you, Alexei!” The big man smiled as he placed the boy down on the well-trampled snow. “Look! There he is! Just now getting out of his car, actually.”

  The boy whirled, spinning around just in time to see his gallant father step out of the rear of the second Range Rover. Lord Alexander Black Hawke at your service. Commander Hawke, former Royal Navy fighter pilot and now a senior counterterrorist officer for MI6, British Secret Service. He had the look of a man who had taken in stride everything the world could throw at him. But one who had flung it all right back, smiling all the while.

  This Lord Hawke was hardly anyone’s picture of an English lord, plump and sheathed in tweed. He moved with a warrior’s bearing, inherited down the centuries from the Knights of the Round Table as well as the proud pirates, the Brotherhood, who plied the waters of the Spanish Main. His lordship was in fact a direct descendant of the infamous pirate captain John Black Hawke, known and feared throughout the Spanish Main as Blackhawke.

  Lord Hawke, addressing the House of Lords on frequent occasions, possessed the visible gravity of a man who had been there and back. Lords (and ladies) had come to know him as a pure and elemental warrior—necessarily violent, riveting, nature itself. Still, he was someone whom men would love to stand a drink . . . and whom women much preferred horizontal. He was, after all, devastatingly good-looking, not to mention, the sixth richest man in England.

  The ski crowd was instinctively wary of this dark Englishman. Wary of the half-smile of certitude on his somewhat cruel mouth. Who was he? Where did he come from? What did he do? A murmur of excited speculation rippled through the crowd.

  Lord Alexander Hawke was tall, well north of six feet. He possessed a full head of unruly jet-black hair, had a chiseled profile, and displayed the deepwater tan of a man who spent a good deal of his life at sea. He had the most astonishing eyes. A gossip columnist for Tatler magazine had once raved that London’s most eligible bachelor had eyes that looked like “two pools of frozen Arctic rain.”

  He was lean but heavily muscled, as would befit a man who swam six miles in open ocean every day of his life that he could. He still performed the Royal Navy’s exercise program upon awakening each morning. He kept fit and consoled himself with the only two vices left to him since he’d given up on women: Gosling’s Bermuda rum and gold-tipped Morland’s cigarettes. He moved with the jaunty confidence of a world-class athlete.

  Like his child, he was almost impossibly attractive.

  No one present had even a clue as to who this elegant gentleman might be. But it was immediately obvious to every one of them that he was somebody.

  “Daddy!” the little boy cried, racing toward the open arms of his father beneath the pristine blue skies.

  “Alexei, Alexei,” the smiling man said, dropping to one knee to embrace his son. “It’s finally Christmas Day! Are you happy, darling?”

  “Oh, yes, Daddy! Ever so happy! May we go up the mountain now? With Tristan? My friends are all waiting for me up at the tram station!”

  “It’s going to be the best Christmas yet, isn’t it, Alexei?”

  “Oh, yes, Daddy! Hurry, let’s go!”

  Chapter Two

  As each arriving gondola discharged passengers, young and cordial Swiss aerial tramway personnel were there to help usher new ones aboard. They ushered ascending passengers through the wide pneumatic doors at the rear of the soon-to-depart gondola. The silver gondolas were state of the art. Luxuriously appointed and very spacious, each one could accommodate fifty passengers.

  As they neared the front of the boarding queue, little Alexei’s bodyguard, a fair-haired young Scotland Yard detective inspector named Tristan Walker, led the way. Walker was a highly respected officer of the Royalty Protection Group known as SO14. These were the men and women responsible for the safety and protection of the queen, her family, and her royal friends.

  Detective Inspector Walker, studying the scene from behind his mirrored glasses, noticed that all the adults were being directed to the forward seating in the tramcar, while the ski school kids were being seated at the rear. He turned to the boy’s father and whispered, “Bit of a problem up ahead, sir.”

  “I see that, Tristan. I don’t want him back there alone.”

  “Adults to the forward end of the car, please, and all ski school students at the rear!” one of the two young Swiss tramway officials said as Alexei’s father boarded first and addressed him.

  “May I have a word?” Hawke said to him, lowering his voice.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “The child directly behind me is my son. I wish to remain with him here at the rear for the ascent.”

  “Not possible, sir. I’m sorry. All adults please move forward. This is so children can be first to exit when we reach the top. It’s a very strict safety policy.”

  “I understand that policy perfectly. My name is Hawke, by the way. I am a British government official. I ask that you waive that policy so that my child remains in my custody.”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing I can do. You’ll have to return to the station office for written permission to waive official policy, sir. Sorry. Please move along.”

  He turned away to assist other passengers. Hawke put a firm hand on his shoulder.

  “List
en to me. The man with my son is a British Royalty Protection officer. SO14. You understand what that means? Inspector Walker will show you his credentials. By international law, you are required not to interfere in his official duties as mandated by Her Majesty the Queen. I suggest you make it easy on yourself. This is no day for an international incident, is it, now? It is Christmas, after all.”

  The young man just shook his head and waved Hawke forward.

  Hawke bent to speak in his son’s ear. “Alexei, Daddy’s going up to the front. Do you want to stay back here with your schoolmates?”

  “Oh, yes, Daddy. These guys are all my friends from school. May I please stay?”

  Hawke looked at the protection officer. “Tristan, this official knows who you are. If you have further trouble sticking with him give me a signal. We’ll just have to disembark and get some kind of permission. Yes?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Show them your Scotland Yard creds, Inspector. Tell them your orders from the British Crown require that you remain within a three-foot perimeter of my son at all times, anywhere in the world.”

  “Yes, sir. No worries, sir. It’s a short ride at least, thirty minutes or so.”

  Hawke smiled and made his way forward with the surge of adults, looking back over his shoulder as Tristan pleaded his case at the rear. He was glad to see the young Swiss chap appear to be relenting. Inspector Walker was now all smiles and nodding at Hawke. Then he and Alexei took their seats side by side beneath the curved window at the very rear of the car. Alexei was plainly delighted, chatting and laughing with all of his newfound friends.

  All was well.

  The rear doors snapped shut. Twenty-five children packed into the rear shouted cheers of joy, stamped their boots, and applauded as the gondola jerked into sudden movement. It shuddered a bit, then left the station, rapidly gaining momentum as it climbed the mountain suspended by the three overhead cables.