Walker nodded, suddenly serious. “Yeah. Before this all started, I kept getting this feeling there was something out there, but I couldn’t see it or hear it. Must have been that ship.”
“God, I hope they get them!” Claire shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “They killed Robbie.”
Dan leaned over and put his hand on her arm. “They’ll get them,” he said, and as if to confirm his words the radiotelephone peeled a demand.
“Dreamspeaker.”
“Dan, it’s Mike. We’ve got them. Picked them up in Port Hardy. They were headed for Vancouver and stopped in there to refuel.”
“You talking about the chopper or the crew boat?”
“The crew boat. Haven’t tracked the chopper yet. We think it’s a charter from West Coast Helicopters. They’ve got four different bases and it could have come from any of them, so it’s taking a while to sort it out.”
“Huh. Hope you find it. The main guys are probably on it.”
“Well, we’ve got ten of them in Port Hardy and one of them has real short white hair. The guys up there say he might be German. Got a German name, anyway.”
From the corner of his eye, Dan saw the flash of Claire’s smile.
“Hey, that’s great news. He’s one of the kingpins. Anyone have a ponytail? Black hair, pulled back tight?”
“Nope. The rest look like poster boys for a mercenary-recruiting campaign. We think one guy might be from the Middle East somewhere, and maybe a couple more are Hispanic. No ponytails.”
“Huh. So Ponytail is still on the loose, and he’s the one who shot Harry.”
“We’re looking, believe me.” The intensity in Mike’s voice reinforced what he was saying.
“You get the canisters?” Dan asked.
“Yeah. You were right. They had weapons, but here’s the really weird thing. The guys are checking them all out now, but it looks like most of them were fakes.”
“Fakes?” Jesus, he was doing the repeating thing with Mike now.
“Yeah. The guns are the real thing—AK47s mostly. But the bullets are blanks. Don’t know about the grenades yet. They’ve got the bomb squad coming in to check those.”
“Shit! That’s crazy. Doesn’t make any sense. Why would they go to all this trouble for fakes?”
Behind him he heard Claire say, “It wasn’t a fake bullet that killed Harry.”
“Yeah. Good point. Did you hear that? Claire says that it wasn’t a fake bullet that killed Harry. Wasn’t an accident that got her boss Robbie either.”
“Claire? Jesus, you having a party up there? First Walker, now Claire. How many people you got with you?”
Dan smiled. “Just the three of us. But back to the bad guys. You’ve got to find a way to hold them even if the stuff is fake.”
“Oh, we’ll be holding them. The white-haired guy and two of his pals had the real thing on them, guns and bullets, and none of the weapons are registered. Plus, that guy the coast guard found has an interesting story to tell. We’re flying him down now.”
“He the captain of the black ship? Snow Queen?”
“That’s what he says. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“Yeah. Doesn’t sound good, them heading down your way and that UN thing going on. But those fake weapons . . . I dunno about that. Glad I’m not you though.”
“Gee, thanks!” Mike signed off with yet another caution about not going anywhere, and Dan turned to find Walker looking at him oddly.
“They were in a crew boat?” he asked.
Dan nodded. “Yeah. Don’t know where they’d been because there wasn’t any crew boat with the black ship when we saw it, but Claire and I saw it head in to Shoal Bay just after the coast guard got there.”
“Couldn’t have been the same crew boat.”
“Why the hell not? Had to be. How many crew boats are there around here this time of year?”
Walker was shaking his head. “Don’t know about that, but the boys took care of the one that was tied up to the black ship.”
Dan sat down carefully, working hard to bite off the urge to repeat Walker’s words yet again.
“Really. And just how did they do that? Please tell me they didn’t just swim out and sink it.”
Walker’s face crinkled into that same aggravating grin. “Nope. Said they just climbed on board and put a little seawater in the gas tanks. Gonna take a pretty big overhaul before those engines run again.”
Dan sighed. “Right. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”
A peal of laughter raced around the sunlit space and the men both turned to look at Claire.
“What’s so damned funny?” Dan asked.
“You!” she answered, fighting for breath. “You should have seen your face when Walker was talking.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He struggled between indignation and justification, searching for the words he needed to convey what he was feeling. Finally, he had to settle on simple amusement.
“You’ve got to admit it is a pretty amazing story. Here I am, trying to get the marine guys in here, trying to figure out how to call in markers and arrange satellite surveillance and all kinds of high-tech shit, using some fancy restricted radio to contact some pretty important people, and Walker and his friends paddle over in a bunch of goddamn canoes, jump into the ocean, and solve the problem.” He chuckled. “I guess there’s some kind of moral to this story—maybe ‘the simplest way is the best way’ or ‘don’t use a cannon to swat a fly,’ or something.”
Walker shrugged. “We just did what we needed to.”
Dan nodded. “And it worked.”
“But they still have to catch that other guy.” Claire’s smile had disappeared. “He could still be planning something.”
“Pretty hard to do anything without your crew and your weapons,” Walker said.
“Yeah,” Dan agreed. “But I keep thinking about those damn blanks.” He looked back at the stuff spread out on the chart table, rolled a bullet around with his finger, and then picked up a spray bottle and held it up to the light. “What if that whole crew of men and all their weapons were just to create a diversion? Maybe cause a little panic and take attention away from the main event? Don’t need real stuff to do that and there’s no risk of getting caught before the main event. The men wouldn’t even have to know. Probably wouldn’t. But it would create panic and pull all the security and cops out to deal with it. Then one guy on his own could deal with the real target.”
There was complete silence in the wheelhouse as they all considered the idea, and then Dan voiced what they were all thinking.
“Oh shit!” he said and pushed himself up from the table to run for the radio.
THIRTY-THREE
Nasiri sat at the desk in his hotel room, watching the slow dusk creep over the city, muting the colors of cars and pedestrians and trees and buildings till it all took on the soft gray haze of evening. There was nothing left to be done. He was ready. Yesterday he had broken down his weapon, cleaned and reassembled it, and broken it down again. He had then carefully placed the various parts into the specially designed compartments of his Italian leather briefcase. That same briefcase was now stored in a very secure “safe” room at the offices of Mr. Jason Bainbridge, the financial broker with whom he had an appointment the next morning. The beautifully groomed secretary who had put it there for him had even taken him in to show him just how safe it was. It was not an unusual request, she reassured him. Many of their clients asked that their important documents be placed somewhere for safekeeping until they could meet with their broker. It was a service they were glad to offer and certainly not an imposition.
“Actually,” she had said, her voice taking on a note of disapproval, “we probably should have asked all tomorrow’s clients to do the same. We’ve been told there’s going to be security screening for everyone coming into the building.” She moved from disapproval to indignation. “They’re even going to check the staff !”
“For what reason?” Nasiri
had injected an appropriate amount of surprise into the question. “Has there been some kind of problem?”
“Oh, no! Nothing that is of concern,” she’d reassured him. Lifting a thin, pale hand, she’d pointed a red-tipped finger out toward the wood-and-glass building across the street. “There’s a big international conference going on over there and they have some VIPs coming in. Probably politicians.” The disapproval had returned. “It’s just the inconvenience! I can’t imagine how we can possibly keep all our appointments on schedule if they’re going to check everyone.”
“I see. Well, perhaps I will make sure that I arrive a little early,” Nasiri had said. “I would not want to be late for my appointment.”
Thinking about the conversation, Nasiri smiled. He would indeed be early. He needed a little extra time to take care of Mr. Bainbridge before Fernandez’s men began their little charade out front and the panic started. He needed to be ready when all those security forces rushed to evacuate their important guests.
The Bell 206 helicopter skimmed over the turbulent waters of Seymour Narrows and turned toward the long spit of land that curved out into Discovery Channel just north of the city of Campbell River. It hovered briefly over a strip of marshy grassland, then settled gently onto the tarmac in front of a squat gray building. A sign out front announced it as the home of West Coast Helicopters.
The pilot removed his headset and turned to address his passengers. “We’ll be on the ground for about twenty minutes, folks. There’s coffee and snacks inside. I’ll come and get you as soon as we’re finished refueling. Should be about an hour’s flying time down to Vancouver.”
Fernandez opened his door and nodded for the other two to join him. The sooner they reached the sprawling metropolis that was their destination, the better. More than enough things had gone wrong today. He didn’t need anything else.
He scanned the heliport as they walked toward the building. The place looked almost deserted. There was a single chopper way over on the other side of the tarmac in front of another building, but other than that all he could see were some float planes at a dock out on the water. Either business was booming and everybody was out or they were shutting down for the season. He pushed open the door and entered the office. It consisted of one large open space that, like the runway and aprons outside, was mostly empty except for a single agent working behind the counter. The man looked up at them briefly and then returned to what he had been doing.
A stainless steel brewing machine with a confusing array of lights and spigots sat against the back wall. On the counter next to it was a basket of fresh fruit and a plate of muffins and cookies wrapped in plastic. The three men moved toward it in unison. None of them had eaten since the night before, and the prospect of coffee and food was irresistible.
The faint click of the door closing behind them was almost indistinguishable from the sound of their footsteps as they crossed the tiled floor. Fernandez glanced back, thinking perhaps the pilot had followed them in, but there was no one. Must have been the wind. It was only after he had made himself a cup of coffee that he noticed the desk clerk had disappeared. That must have been what he’d heard.
The other two took their drinks over to a cluster of armchairs grouped around a low table in the center of the room, but Fernandez moved back to the wide glass windows that overlooked the terminal. His mind would not let him relax. He had to figure out what was going on. They were so close to their deadline. He could not let something get in the way now. Everything had been going perfectly and then, suddenly, they had been sabotaged. And it had to have been sabotage. Nothing else made sense. But by whom? Harry? Not likely. He had been a willing party in the plan almost from the beginning and would have stood to lose a great deal of money. Besides, he couldn’t have called in the coast guard. He was already dead.
The captain? Possibly, but he had no reason to sink his own ship and he had been with Fernandez from the time the propellers had been fouled until the men left in the dinghy. The coast guard had to have been called after that. That left his own men, and they would have already been over in Shoal Bay and wouldn’t have known there was a problem on Snow Queen. Besides, only Alex and Gunter had had access to a radio. It didn’t make sense. There was something he was missing and he needed to figure it out fast.
Movement caught his eye. A tanker truck was moving slowly across the tarmac in the direction of the helicopter, but there was no other sign of life. He scanned the view again, then came back and sat down. Another hour or so and they would be at the warehouse, preparing the weapons.
He was just reaching for his coffee when he heard another soft click, and the room was suddenly filled with the pounding of heavy boots and screaming voices yelling instructions to get down on the floor. It happened so fast, he had no chance to react. Within seconds the three men were surrounded by an emergency response team in full combat gear and heavily armed with MP5 submachine guns, all of which were trained on their targets. Fernandez closed his eyes as handcuffs were snapped around his wrists. The pain of failure was almost physical, but it was nothing compared to what he knew would happen when his boss found out.
“We got them.”
Mike’s voice, distorted by distance and the speakers, still conveyed both relief and pride. “Picked them up at the heliport in Campbell River. Pilot said they were headed for Vancouver.”
“That’s great news.” Dan was staring out the windshield, watching the marine-police catamaran nose carefully into the cove.
“Yeah,” said Mike. “Now I just have to figure out what the hell they were planning.”
“Gonna be hard for them to do anything now, without their people or their equipment.”
“I don’t know. Still doesn’t feel right. None of it makes any sense. Only two of the guys on the crew boat were armed, and that was just handguns. Nothing with any range or power. And one of the guys from the helicopter—the one with the ponytail—had a gun, but there isn’t much else and most of it is not operational. There has to be something else. It was way too big an operation, way too much planning, for what we’ve got here. They wouldn’t have had a chance of getting through security.”
“Maybe they weren’t aiming for the conference.”
“Maybe.” Mike wasn’t convinced. “But everything points to that and the timing’s right. Shit! I’m not going to be able to sleep till the whole bloody thing is over. There’re some pretty big targets there tomorrow.”
“Yeah. It does seem weird. Wish I could help you more, but I think we’re done up here. Only thing left is I’ve got to go with Hargreaves and show him where we left Robbie.”
“Right. Poor bastard—Robbie, not you. You taking Walker with you?”
Dan laughed. “Thanks. And no, I think I’m going to try to keep Walker as far away from Hargreaves as I can. Don’t think the two of them would be a good mix.”
“Sounds like an interesting guy.”
“Yeah,” said Dan, realizing as he said it the truth of that statement. “He is.”
Mike remained at his desk for a while after Dan had hung up, thinking, allowing his mind to wander, letting all the pieces float. It was something he had learned from Dan and he needed it to work now. Needed to get Dan back on the force too, but that was a whole other story, and he could deal with it later. Right now there was a piece of this puzzle he was missing. Had to be. But what the hell was it?
He got up and wandered onto the concourse. The lights were coming on in the buildings that lined Burrard and West Cordova Streets, and he could feel the mood of the city changing as night descended. The last cruise ship of the season had departed a couple of weeks ago, and the restaurants and bars around the walkway there were filled with the end-of-workday rush. They would all be closed tomorrow morning and the walkway would be shut down with solid barricades to prevent access.
He turned away and walked back toward the ocean. The ferries that connected the north and south shores threw dancing shards of yellow light on the water as
they moved across the inlet. They were too far away to be a serious concern, and each one would have its own security detail anyway. Closer in, there were a few pleasure boats out on the water, stragglers heading back into Coal Harbour marina after a day out on the water, but by tomorrow morning the marina would be closed off, all the would-be sailors kept at the dock by a flotilla of police boats.
To the west, Harbour Green Park was dark, only the leaves of the trees along the pathways visible in the yellow light of the lamp standards. It too would be sealed off in the morning, and although the traffic on Lions Gate Bridge would continue to thunder across the narrow span that linked the cities of the north and south shores, there could be no threat from there. Not only was the distance wrong, but pedestrian access would be closed and the traffic moving too fast. If there was any interruption there, helicopter patrols would be there in an instant.
That left the streets and buildings, and the streets would all be sealed off, traffic diverted well before it reached the area. So what was left? Only the buildings, and except for the cruise-ship terminal, which was closed down, the rest were five-star hotels, and few were positioned in such a way that windows overlooked the entrance to the conference center. Those that were had either locked off the rooms or were hosting the VIPs themselves, and all were subject to intense security. What did that leave?
Damn it! He was missing something. He had to be. He tried to picture the street as it would look the following day. There would be crowds of onlookers clustered behind the barricades that had been set up. Some would be protesters: loud, restless, quick to react, and easy to provoke. It would be easy to get something going there, but why? Some kind of diversion? That would mean something happening somewhere else. A kidnap attempt? That would need a car, and it couldn’t get in. A marksman? But where would a sniper set up?
Mike ran through the drill again as he circled the convention center for a third time. He was walking south toward the emergency exit when his eyes drifted over to the Fairmont Pacific Rim, one of those five-star hotels surrounding the convention center. It had no windows overlooking the entrance, but it was the only one that had a direct view to the east side and the emergency exit. His gaze drifted upward. Twelve stories of luxury suites, all thoroughly checked and the guests cleared, and all the rooms with heavy, sealed glass windows. Above them, the offices of the top financial firm in the city. He had thought about closing it down for the day, but pressure from the local politicos and the big-money boys had finally convinced him to let it stay open. He opted instead to scrutinize the appointments list and implement security screening.
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