Overkill by Ted Bell

Author:Ted Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Forty-Eight

Conditions were moderately insane just outside the breakwater entrance to the harbor at Juan-les-Pins. The wind had increased since Hawke’s earlier outing in Too Elusive. Stoke was now wrestling with the wheel, having a hell of a time keeping his bow up and right into the wind. This, so she wouldn’t be broadsided by a rogue wave and capsized. Or take a really big one over her stern, which, depending on the size of these walls of water, could simply overwhelm and sink them.

Looking back at the shoreline, Hawke could just make out lights winking on the Croisette, the boulevard that circled the beaches at Cannes, lights strung out in the distance like a glistening diamond necklace, floating in the dark skies above the stormy seas.

Half an hour later, the winds had lessened considerably. Hawke looked at his GPS and saw that he was approximately fifteen miles from the harbor at Juan-les-Pins. And due to weather, there was little chance he’d be interrupted by another vessel.

“Throttle back, Stoke,” Hawke said. “It’s time for the little powwow with our guest of honor here. Bring her up into the wind and engage the autopilot. I’m going to need your help with this.”

“What are you going to do?” Hugo Jadot said, looking a little green about the gills.

“Feeling all right? Seasick?” Hawke asked him. “Sorry, I’m afraid we’re fresh out of Dramamine, Hugo, old sport.”

Hawke had secured the man in the big chrome fishing chair at the stern, with a line tied around his chest and his wrists and ankles secured with dental floss, a little trick Stoke had learned from the Viet Cong when he was back in the shit. Ouch.

“What can I do, boss?” Stoke said, coming aft to help.

“Hold on a second.” Hawke was opening hatch covers in the wide transom. “Here’s what I’m looking for,” he said, hauling out two white nylon lines, each about forty feet long.

“You going to tie his ass up?” Stoke said.

“Not exactly. Going to teach him a little trick I learned in the Royal Navy. How the splendid captains and commanders of yore used to deal with a recalcitrant midshipman or two. Get the lying little shit out of that chair, would you, Stoke?”

Stoke freed the little fellow and said, “What next, bossman?”

“Cut his hands loose. And his ankles.”

“Loose?” Stoke said. “Why would we do that?”

“We’re going to take him forward to the bow. And he’s going to need his hands when we get there.”

“Alex,” Hugo said, “I beg you. As one of my oldest friends—you don’t intend to torture me, do you?”

“Good heavens, no, old sport,” Hawke said. “That would be politically incorrect now, wouldn’t it? No, no. Just a little enhanced interrogation is what we have planned for you.”

“I have rights! I’m a citizen of France!”

“Right, but then you put on that cute little pink nightie and—”

“No! You can’t do this! I insist you—”

“Shut the F up, Hugo,” Stoke said. “When the man wants you to talk, he’ll let you know.”

“Merde,” Hugo muttered.

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