“What do they call the fort, Stoke?”
“Well, it had some fancy French name when they first bought it, but the boys renamed it. It’s officially called Fort Whupass now.”
Hawke laughed. “Fort Whupass,” he said, loving the sound of it.
The fellow driving their Jeep, a Martiniquais, who had forearms like lodgepoles sticking out of his olive-green T-shirt, turned around and smiled at him. “Oui, c’est зa! Bienvenue а Fort Whupass, mes amis,” he said in his Creole patois.
“Merci bien,” Hawke replied, looking up into the trees. “Il fait tres beau ici.”
“Oui, merveilleux.”
“Vous кtais ici, maintenant?”
“Non, pour la journйe seulement.”
“Ah, oui, alors —”
The Jeep finally emerged from the dense jungle, and Hawke could see the sandy road ahead, climbing up to the wall of the fortress. He was astounded to see a large rectangular platform being lowered as the Jeep drew near.
“A drawbridge?” Hawke asked, incredulous.
“Damn right, a drawbridge,” Stoke said. “Ain’t regulation without one. And a moat, too, full of big-ass alligators. You going to have a fort you got to do it right! Besides, these boys don’t want nobody sneaking up on they ass.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Stoke looked at him for a beat and then said, “Well, maybe about the alligators. There is a moat, though. Big-ass moat.”
“A moat, Stoke? In Martinique?”
“Well, no, ain’t really no moat either. But they always talkin’ ’bout puttin’ one in. Can’t ever have enough security when every terrorist organization on earth hates your ass. Boys done moved three times in the last fifteen years.”
They were just passing under a tree and Hawke glanced up to see a man in jungle camo perched on a high branch. He was cradling a high-powered rifle with a scope. The sniper saw Hawke staring and waved.
The two Jeeps barreled across the lowered platform, which Hawke saw actually did cover a deep ravine, and screeched to a halt inside the open stone-paved courtyard. There was conspicuous lack of activity inside the fort, just a few dogs sleeping in the shade of a four-story structure of whitewashed stone.
The hot morning sun and the humidity were enough to make anyone, man or beast, seek shade.
“Where is everybody?” Hawke asked, surprised at the sense of total desolation that pervaded the old fort.
“Sleepin’, most likely,” Stoke said. “Catching Z’s. Boys had a twenty-mile jungle run last night. They all sacked out in the barracks, which is the ground floor. Second floor is the armory. Third floor is communications and computers and shit. Top floor is where we’ll find our guys waiting. They call it the poop deck.”
“Stoke, you seem to know an awful lot about this place. Why’s that?” Hawke asked, following his natural curiosity around the building to take a look.
“Well,” Stoke said, right behind him and looking sheepish, “I did do a little freelance work down here from time to time. When I was NYPD, you know, I’d take all my vacation time in Martinique.”
“That’s how you’d spend your vacation?”
“Shit, boss, counterterrorism is the most fun you can have with your clothes on!”
“My God, what in the world is that?” Hawke said as they rounded the back of the white stone building.
There was an amazing structure just inside the wall at the rear of the courtyard. It looked like a giant cube of green glass, which is just what it was. Constructed of thick, clear green glass building blocks, dazzling in the morning sunlight, the building had to be thirty feet high by thirty feet wide. A perfect square, no windows, no door that Hawke could see.
“Somethin’ else, ain’t it, boss? I knew you’d get a kick out of it!”
“What is it? Looks like an emerald as big as the Ritz.”
“I call it the Emerald City. But it’s really a museum.”
“Museum?”
“The ‘spoils of war’ museum. Where they store all the things they pick up around the world after the shooting dies down. Whatever the enemy leaves on the ground. You wouldn’t believe what’s inside that place.”
“I’d certainly love to see it. How do you get inside?”
“Through a tunnel from the basement of the main building. If there’s time, they’d be happy to show you.”
“Right, Stoke, let’s get going.”
They entered the main building and climbed a narrow set of stone steps carved into the wall. Four flights up, they arrived in a dark corridor that led to a vaulted chamber. Beside a massive wooden door, in a chair leaned back against the wall, a man wearing a white kepi on his head sat reading a book. The novel Citadelle, by Saint-Exupйry, Alex noticed. Required reading for all Legionnaires.
But he was wearing an old navy and gold SEAL T-shirt and khaki shorts, the traditional SEAL daytime uniform. His head was shaved and he had a black beard that hadn’t been trimmed in years. He had a MAC 10 submachine gun slung over the back of the chair and a burning Gauloise hanging from the corner of his mouth. He looked up, saw Stoke approaching, and a huge grin lit up his deeply tanned face.
“Zut alors! Skippair!” the man exclaimed in a heavy French accent. “Incroyable! I heard you were coming down!” He rocked his chair forward and leaped up to embrace Stokely. They pounded each other’s backs sufficiently hard to fracture a normal man’s spine.
“Froggy! Yeah, the Frogman his own self! Shit! I’ve missed your sorry pencil-dick numbnuts ass,” Stoke said, holding him by the shoulders and looking down at him. The man was barely five feet tall and almost that wide. “You still smoking them damn lung darts? What’d I tell you ’bout that?”
“I take it you two know each other,” Hawke said, a little impatiently. The clock, after all, was ticking.
“Stokely Jones is ze meanest woman I ever served under, monsieur,” Froggy said, sticking out his hand to Hawke. “Comment зa va, monsieur? I am ze famous Froggy.”
“Alex Hawke, Froggy,” Hawke said, shaking his hand. “Pleasure.”
“Frogman was in the C.R.A.P. division,” Stoke said. “French Foreign Legion. One of the few French units to serve in the Gulf War.”
“Crap?” Hawke asked, waiting impatiently for the joke.
“Oui,monsieur! Commandos de Recherchй et d’Action en Profondeur! Ze best!” Froggy said, puffing out his chest and saluting.
“Splendid,” Hawke said, looking at his watch. “I think we’re expected.”
“Oui-oui, c’est vrai,” Froggy said, opening the door. “It’s true. Let me tell zem you are arrived.” He stuck a silver bosun’s whistle in his mouth and piped them aboard as they entered the room.
50
Two men rose from a large wooden table where they’d been sitting. Sunlight streamed into the room through open windows on all sides. To the east, Alex could see the dark blue Atlantic rolling to the horizon. To the south and west, the pale blue of the Caribbean Sea. The room was devoid of furniture save the plain wooden rectangle of the table and twelve simple wooden chairs.
There was a sign on one wall, hand lettered in flowery calligraphy. It was the SEAL creed:
The More You Sweat In Training
The Less You Bleed In Combat
There were maps and navigational charts scattered everywhere. Hawke was gratified to see that it was a map of Cuba they’d been poring over. Clearly, they hadn’t been wasting any time since Stoke’s phone call little more than two hours earlier.
Stoke went to each man and embraced him in turn. There was little back-pounding now, just emotion. For a second, Hawke thought they were all going to get leaky on him.