Текст книги "Crash Dive"

Автор книги: Ted Bell

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

Eight

Hawke sat in the darkened compartment, smoking incessantly to stay alert. He’d bought a few packs of Sobranie Black Russians in the rail station at St. Petersburg. Despite the black wrapper with its fancy gold tip, they were foul, but effective. The rhythmic click-clack on the tracks threatened to hypnotize him, and he fought it with nicotine. He was seated on one of the small, upholstered chairs in the center of the compartment’s sitting room.

In the adjoining room, mercifully, Alexei was sleeping peacefully on the lower berth, his teddy bear clutched tightly. Hawke had rocked him to sleep and kissed his warm cheek before tucking him in. He’d then propped a sturdy wooden chair against the bedroom door to the train’s corridor, feeling only slightly more secure. He’d left the sliding door between their two rooms open and could hear the reassuring sound of his son snoring softly. It was a sound like no other he’d ever heard.

The only light in Hawke’s tiny room came from a dim violet-blue nightlight, a spiritlike apparition near the floor that gave the small sitting room a rather eerie, stage-set feeling. Like a bad horror film, Hawke thought, some kind of Hammer Films vampire movie.

In his right hand, Hawke held his SIG .45 pistol, a hollow-point round already in the chamber. He’d positioned his chair to one side and in the shadows, so as to be out of the line of fire of someone forcefully entering the room. But he would have a clear shot at anyone coming through that door without an invitation.

He would shoot to kill if, indeed, circumstances warranted it.

For a man expecting a pair of KGB or criminal thugs to burst through his door with guns blazing, Alex Hawke was surprisingly relaxed. He was not the type of man who could be prodded into deciding what he might or might not do under any possible circumstances. And this was certainly not due to bravery, or coolness, or any especially sublime confidence in his own physical prowess or power. It was a powerful instinct to go with his gut and it hadn’t failed him yet.

And, he was, as one of his superior officers in the Royal Navy had said, “Simply good at war.”

From time to time he’d rise and stretch, the long hours of sitting starting to wear on him. He looked at the large face of his black Royal Navy dive watch, the luminous numbers clearly legible. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. He’d been in (or, rather, on) this bloody chair for six full hours.

He could feel himself losing his edge.

Inaction is the enemy of action, he reminded himself. It was time to move.

He rose from the chair and went to check on his son, understanding for the very first time the expression “sleeping like a baby.” He then went to his travel bag and pulled out a loose-fitting black turtlenecked jumper, pulling it over his head. The black trousers he was already wearing would suit his purposes nicely in the darkness of the train’s corridors. He checked his weapon once more and slapped the mag back into the gun.

Slipping the pistol into the nylon holster in the small of his back, he reached up to the shelf and grasped Peter the Great’s battle sword, the gift from Kuragin. The red leather scabbard had a loop that he ran his belt through, the ivory-handled sword now hanging down his right side. His black gabardine greatcoat was swaying on the door hook. He shouldered himself into it and saw in the mirror that only the razor-edged tip of the sword was visible beneath the hem.

If you’re going to a gunfight, best to bring a gun and a knife, even a sword if there’s one handy.

He listened a long moment to Alexei’s soft breathing, then he stepped out into the corridor. He turned and pulled the door closed, locked it from the outside, tried it twice, and turned to his left, headed toward the front of the train.

Before he moved to the rear, he wanted to clear any cars up ahead. At the end of the narrow passageway the door was locked, and Hawke could see his first-class carriage was located just behind the locomotive. He saw the door to the concierge’s compartment, slightly ajar.

For a moment, he considered waking her to ask her to keep an eye out for anyone entering this car. About to rap, he withdrew his hand. Bad things might happen aboard this train tonight, and he wanted no suspicion to fall on him.

He began to move toward the rear of the train.

He’d caught a glimpse of the passenger manifest while the concierge was off making sure all the first-class passengers had what they needed before turning in. Quickly scanning it, he’d identified his foes. The two men who’d joined the train at Tvas were sharing a single compartment in the last second-class sleeping car, just before the club car at the train’s rear. Compartment number 211.

The Red Arrow, racing through the night under a star-spangled black sky, was eleven cars long. Upon reaching the tenth and final sleeping car, he withdrew his pistol and made his way down the darkened corridor until he reached the door marked 211. He tried the knob and found it locked. Pulling a small utility knife and pick from his pocket and inserting it into the lock, he heard a click and slowly pushed the door open.

Empty.

Neither bed had been slept in. There was a half-empty bottle of Imperial vodka on the small table beneath the window and two glasses that appeared to have come from the lavatory. He looked up to the luggage racks above the berths, not surprised to find them empty. These men traveled with only the bare necessities: two guns and a bottle or two of cheap vodka.

They had to be in the club car. He was not at all surprised. KGB officers always ran true to form and he’d rather expected to find them there.

Before he pushed the button that opened the automatic pneumatic sliding doors to the final car, he peered through the frosty windows. The two Russians could be seen on a rounded banquette at the very rear of the car, opposite each other, drinking, smoking, and playing cards. Otherwise, the car appeared to be completely empty, just as you would expect at this hour.

After affixing a short silencer to the SIG’s muzzle, he returned the gun to its holster beneath his left shoulder. Hawke spent many long hours at the Six shooting range practicing his quick draw. He could draw his weapon and fire accurately in less than two-hundredths of a second, about as fast as the blink of an eye. He could also shoot a playing card in half—right through the edge of it—at twenty yards with the first shot, but that was just a killing machine showing off.

He pushed the metal button and the doors whooshed open. It was sleeting fiercely now, and the white flashes of ice in the dark whipped past the speeding train at warp speed.

He stepped inside the smoky club car, walked smiling toward the two men. Three packs of cards were scattered over the table. The air was blue with cigar smoke, and an ashtray had toppled over, leaving some butts on the floor.

His face and posture a mask of composure, whatever lurked inside him well battened down, Hawke said, “Good evening, gentlemen. I do hope I’m not disturbing you.”

The Russians looked up in surprise and grunted something incomprehensible.

He was ready to draw if either made a move for his weapon, but neither did. Instead, they smiled and motioned him toward them as they might an old comrade. The effect that vodka had on one’s ego and the false sense of security it created had never failed to amaze Hawke. But he’d been counting on that effect at this late hour and he was not disappointed. The KGB had a well-known history with vodka and it was one that, over the years, frequently tipped in an MI6 operative’s favor.

“Sit down, sit down,” the one to Hawke’s right said, sliding over. It was the smaller one, not the one who’d tried to touch Alexei.

“Thanks so much, but I can’t stay long. I’ll take a drink though. Can’t sleep. Damnedest thing, insomnia. I’m Alex Hawke, by the way. Didn’t get a chance to introduce myself properly in the dining car, I’m afraid.”

The hefty cretin whose wrist he’d nearly fractured in the dining car poured him a glass of vodka, sloshing some over the side. Hawke stepped nearer to the table, took the drink with his left hand, downing a bit while keeping his eyes moving rapidly side to side, looking for any hint of aggression, and then spoke directly to the large Russian, his low voice dripping with menace.

“You seemed inordinately interested in my dinner companion earlier this evening. As I told you, I’m his bodyguard. You then made a threatening remark. Something about a long journey, perhaps we’d meet again. Well, here we are. We meet again. I don’t usually socialize with drunken thugs and paid assassins, but in your particular case I’m making an exception. I’m armed, of course, so don’t even think of doing anything foolish.”

He caught simultaneous movement, both to his right and left. Hands going for guns on both sides of the round table.

In a single fluid motion he brought his right foot up, viciously ripping the wooden card table from its base, pitching bottles, glasses, cards, ashtrays up into the faces of the two men. At the same time he whipped out his SIG .45 and drew down on the two men before they could get to their weapons.

“Hands in the air. Now. Good. Now, one at a time, slowly remove your guns and throw them toward me. Not at me, on the bloody floor! Mind your manners, boys; I warn you, I’m pretty handy with this peashooter. I make nice tight patterns in foreheads when I shoot.”

The guns clattered to the floor, and the men looked at him, ashen-faced, waiting to be executed.

“I suggest we step out onto the platform. I’ve got a couple of very expensive Cuban cigars, Monte Cristo number 8. I thought you two cretins might enjoy a good smoke at the end of a long day.”

He pulled a single cigar from his breast pocket and passed it beneath his nose, inhaling the pungent aroma.

“Delicious. On your feet. We’ll step out onto the platform behind you. Get a little fresh air and enjoy a good smoke. You first, Ivan, then your comrade. Outside. Now.”

At the rear of the club car was a door opening onto a small half-oval platform with a railing. It was where one could smoke cigars, take the air, or wave farewell to friends at the station.

The Russian pulled the sliding door open. Sleet, snow, and freezing night air came rushing into the club car as first one, then the other, stepped outside.

Hawke remained in the doorway and withdrew the sword from the scabbard at his side.

“I could shoot you now, but I’ve a better idea. My terrible swift sword. I’m descended from a ruthless English pirate, you see. Chap called ‘Blackhawke’ and a right bastard he was too. When he wanted to dispose of someone, he’d make them walk the plank and sleep with the fishes. If they were reluctant, he’d give them encouragement with the tip of his blade. Turn around and face the rear, hands in the air.”

They did so, resigned to their fate now.

“Ivan, up on the rail. Do it now or you’ll get a very long knife in the back and a punctured lung. Your chances of survival are slim in any case, but probably marginally better if you jump. I’m waiting. You may have noticed I’m not a patient man.”

The train was racing through the night at speeds well over one hundred miles an hour, the trackless forests to either side receding in a white blur. The killer climbed clumsily up onto the rail, keeping his balance with one hand desperately clutching the ice-coated overhanging roof.

“Jump, damn you!” Hawke said, prodding the man repeatedly with his new sword. And the man, screaming, jumped to his death, hurling his body into the black night.

“You’re up, old sport. Time to fly.”

The second man turned toward Hawke, pleading for his life in a rush of garbled Russian.

“I’m sure your pleas for mercy are poignant and convincing, but they’re falling on deaf ears. Up on the rail with you, you sniveling bastard. Die like a man, at least.”

As the man struggled up on the rail, Hawke said, “When your employers in Moscow find your frozen carcasses, if they ever do, it will perhaps give them pause before any more such clumsy assassination attempts. I won’t tolerate threats to my son. Now, jump, you miserable shit.”

Hawke pressed the tip of the sword into the man’s fat buttock, “I said jump!”

Wailing in fear, he did just that.

Hawke wiped the blood from the tip of his sword and returned it to the scabbard. It had performed most satisfactorily. Captain Blackhawke would have been proud of his progeny. Then he turned to survey the scene of the crime. He bent to pick up the glass he’d used to drink the vodka. No sense leaving incriminating evidence about, he thought, and he heaved the glass over the rail. Then he closed the door. Messy enough. It looked like there’d been a drunken fight. Anything could have happened. Two passengers would be determined to be missing sometime tomorrow. In this godforsaken tundra, their bodies would not be found for days or weeks, if ever.

A mystery, perhaps not worthy of Dame Agatha Christie, but still a mystery sufficient to suit Hawke’s purposes.

Alexei, his face pink and angelic upon his pillow, looked precisely the way he had when his father had left him. Hawke, feeling relaxed for the first time since boarding the train, took down his false-bottomed travel case and returned his weapon to its compartment. Then he removed the sat phone, poured himself a small whiskey, and returned to the dreaded chair in the sitting parlor.

“Sir David,” Hawke said when his superior at MI6 picked up.

“Hawke?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where the devil have you been? There are no end of rumors, and the least you could have done is to give me some kind of heads-up before you disappeared. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“I’m terribly sorry, sir. It just wasn’t possible. It was a personal matter. I’ll explain it all when I see you.”

“And when might that happy event occur?”

“Tomorrow evening, with any luck. I’ll need a bit of help getting out of here.”

“Where the hell is here?”

“A train. Arriving at the Saint Petersburg rail station around noon tomorrow. The Red Arrow. First-class car just aft of the locomotive. I’ve booked the first two compartments at the forward end of the car. Double-oh-one is the car number. I’m anticipating a decidedly unfriendly reception committee upon arrival on the platform. KGB. I’m going to need armed cover before leaving the train, and the more the better. I’m bringing a hostage out. Very fragile. He’ll require special assistance.”

“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.

Nine

Seminole, Florida

It 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?

The 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.”

Stoke said, “Fletch, that’s reason enough for me not to bolt on you. I’d hate to see what happened if Fancha’s daddy took a shot at my friend Mr. Hawke here.”

“Your personal lord over there does look like he can take care of himself, Stoke.”

“First-class badass, Rev, even though he looks like such a gent in that fancy white suit.”

“You a religious man these days, Stokely?

“I go to church when I can, Rev.”

“What’s it take to keep you from going?”

“I go when I can.”

“A light rain?”

“I go when I can.”

Fletch said, “Well, well, well. I know you got a big old Christian heart and that’s good enough for me. You boys ready? I think it’s time we go out there and give these folks waiting out there a show. Crowd’s getting restless, choir got them all fired up.”