Black Violet

by Alex Hyland

Geary eyed me warily. ‘The boat,’ he said.

  ‘It’s going to be relatively empty. If they’re expecting a war, all their men are going to be on shore, right?’

  ‘What about Tully?’ asked Ella.

  ‘I don’t know, but at least this way there’s a chance,’ I said.

  ‘You just want to get your hands on Lizzie and Marcus!’ she said.

  ‘That’s right!’ I replied. ‘But it just so happens that the best way of doing that might also be the best way to save Tully. If we can get our hands on either of them, then we’ve got some bargaining power.’

  ‘And if we can’t?’ said Ella.

  ‘There’s still going to be a crew on board,’ Geary said to me.

  ‘A crew that won’t be expecting us,’ I replied.

  ‘Any of them raise the alarm and we’re done,’ he said.

  ‘All we need is time enough to grab one of them,’ I said. ‘A few minutes and a little luck.’

  Geary thought to himself a moment.

  ‘The boat ain’t going to be anchored anywhere nearby, you can be sure of that,’ he said. ‘How the hell are we going to get on it?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We know a lot of good soldiers,’ said Ella. ‘I say we go to the port.’

  But Geary didn’t look convinced. ‘We’ve got a day to put an operation together, Ella. We don’t know the territory...what numbers we’re up against. We might just be getting a lot of good soldiers killed.’

  Ella stared at him a moment.

  The yacht was our best bet, and she knew it.

  ‘Alright,’ said Geary. ‘We keep low, we keep quiet. We need to get to a phone, fast.’

  10

  Sunrise. We moved as quickly and silently as we could back through the mountains, but with no idea where Marcus’ men might be, it was like walking a blade. Every noise in the trees cut through us. I tried to stay focused, but my mind was a mess – scrambled thoughts about Lizzie and Marcus. They’d stay aboard the yacht, I felt sure of that, but something else was worrying me. They’d been in the back of that Mercedes on Market Street, and I couldn’t understand why. Tully was right – they seemed too remote and powerful to have come into the city just for the necklace. No matter how important it was to them, their men could have dealt with it – their men seemed to be doing everything else. I couldn’t help thinking that they’d come into the city for some other reason. A meeting maybe – a conversation that couldn’t be risked over the phone. I wasn’t sure, but the more I thought about it, the more it troubled me.

  The trees began to thin as we reached the eastern hills of Bitterroot. The distant hush of the highway way below us. We stayed within the tree line as we followed the road south for about a mile – toward a small hotel that Ella had remembered from the map. It sat in a clearing on the other side of the road – a wooden lodge with a diner stretching out to its right. I could see maybe twenty guests. Families. A few cars parked in the front lot.

  ‘You got this?’ said Ella.

  I glanced frostily at her. ‘A car and a phone, yeah, I’ve got it.’

  I took another careful look at the diner, then headed out from the trees, and crossed the road.

  I eyed the exits as I strolled into the diner, but it was more out of habit than necessity. Parents looking after young kids were the easiest lifts on the planet. All you needed to say was, ‘Excuse me, but I think your son just put a coin in his mouth,’ and you had two minutes of blind panic to play with. Normally I wouldn’t do it, but this was an emergency. Two minutes later and I walked out with a Samsung and a set of car keys. I hit the beeper – a silver Toyota Corolla lit up in the parking lot. Geary and Ella emerged from the trees on the other side of the road and jumped into the back of the car. I tossed the phone to Geary and hit the accelerator.

  ‘We can’t use Missoula,’ said Geary. ‘They’ll be covering it.’

  ‘There’s Ravalli County,’ said Ella.

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘Just what I saw on the map.’

  ‘Big enough for a jet?’

  ‘I think so,’ she replied. ‘You’re going to call Dillon?’

  ‘He’s the nearest to us.’

  ‘He’s not going to be happy.’

  ‘I couldn’t give a shit. He owes us.’

  Geary stared at the no-signal icon on the phone. ‘For fuck’s sake, come on!’

  We sped north, back toward Hamilton and cell phone territory. As Geary willed the phone to pick up a signal, I caught Ella staring at me in the rear view mirror. I felt the anger in me rise again – things could have been so different with Jon if she’d just stayed out of it. She shouldn’t have told him. At the very least, she should have confronted me, and given me the chance to speak to him myself. I froze her out and returned my attention to the road.

  The phone picked up a signal. Geary punched in a number.

  ‘Cooper, it’s Geary,’ he said into the phone. ‘Yeah, Tully, I know…I fucking know! Where are you? I need you to put me through to Dillon. Just put me through to Dillon! Stay on the line!’

  Geary waited to be connected.

  ‘Dillon, Geary, where are you?’ he said. ‘I need you at Ravalli Airport, Montana, now. No, fuck that. Ravalli, now, fully loaded. I’ll brief you on the plane. We’re going to be there in an hour, I don’t want to be waiting around for you, do you understand? Ravalli…say it back to me. Yeah, fine, we’re even, just get going!’

  Geary waited for Cooper to pick up the call again.

  ‘Alright, Cooper, tell me what happened,’ he said. He listened for a moment. ‘You know how many?’

  He shook his head to himself, then glanced at Ella. ‘They got Tully on the 101, he was driving to see Max.’

  He returned to Cooper. ‘OK, listen to me. The Bragers have got him, they want this necklace. Yeah. Yeah, Port Vardo. I need you to put an eight-man team together and get airborne...no calls from DND, they could be bugging the lines. I’m going for the yacht.’ He listened a moment. ‘I don’t have time, they’ve given us an eleven a.m. deadline, I need to move east now! Get your team airborne, and call Sam Bradley, we need everything he’s got on the Brager yacht. Okay, go.’

  Geary hung up and shot me a look.

  ‘You know, for a guy who steals cars for living, you drive like my fucking grandmother!’

  I floored the pedal.

  An old McDonnell Douglas DC-9 was waiting for us on the strip at Ravalli. Its faceless gray fuselage loomed over us as we ran toward the stairs beneath its tail. It was covered in dents and patch-worked riveted panels. I’d seen planes like this for sale on the net – forty million dollars when they were new, but you could pick one up now for about four hundred thousand. Some of the cars I stole were worth more than that.

  We climbed into a completely stripped-out cabin. Sheet metal flooring, and bucket seats bolted unceremoniously to the bare ribbed walls. This was a workhorse – a freighter. Dillon appeared at the cockpit door. In his thirties – jeans, flip-flops and a Captain America T-shirt. He sighed and pushed his sunglasses up into his hair.

  ‘So where’re we going?’ he asked.

  ‘East,’ replied Geary. ‘Norway.’

  ‘Norway!’

  ‘Just get us in the air!’

  ‘Who’s paying for this?’

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me, Dillon!’

  Dillon held Geary’s look for a moment, then rolled his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he said.

  ‘How soon can you get us up to the northern coast?’

  ‘We’ll need to make a fuel stop,’ Dillon replied. ‘Baffin Island. Reykjavik. I don’t know, ten hours maybe.’

  Geary checked his watch. ‘That ain’t going to leave us much more than seven hours to get onto the boat, wherever it is.’

  He shot Dillon a look. ‘OK, let’s move,’ he said. ‘And get me patched through to the satellite.’

  ‘You’re already up,’ replied Dillon.

  He nodded toward a pile of mil
itary-style laptops and satellite phones on the rear seats. As Dillon headed back into the cockpit, Geary grabbed a laptop and logged into a site – government, by the look of it. Two passwords later and the screen was full of diagrams and photographs of a large yacht – The Warren Gate. Sleek edges and black glass, it looked like someone had taken a luxury hotel and carved it into a warhead. Geary picked up one of the phones and dialed a number.

  ‘Sam, Geary,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I got it. What am I looking at? Uh-huh. Hang on, I’m going to put you on speaker. Ella Ferrez and Michael Violet. Jon’s brother.’

  Geary hit the speaker button on the phone. Sam’s voice sounded out in gentle Ivy League tones.

  ‘According to MRC, the yacht isn’t transmitting any location data at the moment,’ he said. ‘But we know its position as a result. Four days ago a Russian trawler radioed in a complaint to the Norwegian authorities. Apparently, during bad weather, the trawler nearly ran into a yacht that wasn’t transmitting any ID. The Warren Gate.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Geary.

  ‘Twenty-eight miles north of Svalbard. It’s an island in the Arctic Ocean, about five hundred miles off the Norwegian mainland. There’s a supply station on the island that we know they use.’

  ‘Four days ago?’ said Geary.

  ‘Yeah, but I spoke to Frank Collins at Langley, he keeps tabs on the Bragers as a matter of course. If you look at the bottom of the page, he sent me a satellite photograph.’

  Geary scrolled down the page to a grainy satellite photograph of the ocean at night. Between the clouds I could make out lights that formed the distinctive shark-nosed outline of the yacht.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Geary.

  ‘This was taken seven hours ago,’ said Sam. ‘Twenty-eight miles north of the island…they’ve hardly moved. That said, I’ve been monitoring radio transmissions since you called…there’s been helicopter movement between the yacht and the mainland.’

  ‘Port Vardo?’ said Geary.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Sam.

  Geary glanced at Ella and me. They were flying men out to the port – it was what we were hoping for.

  ‘Listen, I heard about Tully,’ said Sam. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘We’re going to get him back, don’t worry.’

  ‘There’s no one you can go to? What about MacKenzie?’

  Geary laughed. ‘The Bragers are in business with him and half of Washington. Forget it.’

  ‘But you’re talking about the kidnapping of a US citizen.’

  ‘Hopefully,’ said Geary, ‘if we go official, it won’t be a kidnapping for long. Tully will just evaporate into the air. No one’s going to ask any questions, believe me.’

  Sam paused for a moment at the other end of the line.

  ‘Then be careful,’ he said.

  ‘We’re going for the yacht,’ said Geary. ‘What do we need to know?’

  Sam sighed heavily. ‘Well, they run it with a skeleton crew of about twenty.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘It is, but knowing the Bragers, they’re likely to be weapons-trained.’

  Geary nodded.

  ‘Getting off the boat isn’t going to be a problem,’ said Sam. ‘We have the schematics from the company who built it. It has three escape boats housed in bays just above the water line…two at the stern, one at the bow. But getting on it? They’ve got surface-to-air missiles, RAMs, MK-49s…’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Geary. ‘It’s a civilian boat. They can’t have ordnance, they’d have been picked up for it.’

  ‘The Warren Gate isn’t a civilian boat,’ replied Sam. ‘It may be the Bragers’ private yacht, but they had it registered as a government vessel. Officially, it’s part of the Norwegian navy. We can’t touch them.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Geary. He stared at the satellite image of the yacht. ‘Twenty-eight miles off the island...if they’re flying men out from this position, the boat’s not going to move now. Coming in by sea’s our only option.’

  ‘Whatever craft you use is going to need to be very small and very quiet,’ replied Sam. ‘You’ll have polar night on your side, but if they see you in the water, you won’t last a second.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Geary. He sighed. ‘Alright, thanks, Sam.’

  ‘Anything else you need, let me know. Good luck.’

  Geary ended the call and dialed another number.

  ‘Cooper, how soon are you guys in the air?’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘Three hours, fuck.’ He checked his watch, then thought to himself for a moment. ‘You guys ain’t going to get there in time. Alright, listen to me, I’m going to go in first…you prep your team to get us out. No, just get us out! It ain’t going to happen, the fucking thing’s armed…RAMs. Just get us out!’

  He hung up. ‘Fucking missiles,’ he said. He threw me a look. ‘Still want to be a good guy, do you?’

  I stared nervously at the yacht. I might have been shot at a few times, but missiles were something else. But I’d come way too far to back out now. I steadied myself as the plane leaned back and took to the air.

  ‘Alright, we need to pull up everything we can find on Svalbard,’ said Geary. ‘We’re looking for a boat, an RIB, something small. As close to the northern coast as possible. Let’s get to it.’

  Ella nodded. She grabbed the laptop and started pulling up information about coastal research facilities and fuel stations on the island.

  As she and Geary studied photographs and inventories, I trawled through pictures of The Warren Gate. Five hundred and eighty feet of sleek white decks and black windows. A helicopter hunched on a pad near the bow. It was impressive sure enough. A palace in the sea, and well defended. Two faceless white towers rose thirty feet above the main deck – steel housings that I guessed held the missiles. I studied the housings, but found that they didn’t trouble me as much as the photographs did themselves.

  Aside from a couple of images of the yacht undergoing maintenance, every other picture was taken way out at sea. Arctic Ocean, 2011. Norwegian Sea, 2011. North Atlantic, 2015. The Bragers weren’t the kind who docked at Cannes for the film festival. By the look of it they didn’t want anything to do with anybody. And again I found myself wondering why the hell they’d been in San Francisco in the first place. ‘Who’s important enough in San Francisco to bring the Bragers inland?’ I said.

  Geary glanced at me.

  ‘It doesn’t strike you as odd that they were there?’ I said. ‘Tully said they rarely come inland. How rarely?’

  ‘Marcus comes in. But Lizzie? She’s only ever been seen a few times.’

  ‘They wanted the necklace,’ said Ella.

  ‘They wanted it,’ I replied. ‘But that’s not why they came in.’

  She stared at me for a moment. ‘You’re over-thinking it.’

  ‘I’m telling you, they were there for another reason. A meeting.’

  She shook her head.

  Geary continued studying the map, then paused.

  He glanced uneasily at me. ‘Vice President Howard was in the city three days ago,’ he said. ‘It was an unofficial visit. A friend of mine’s on his security detail. He called me.’ Geary then thought better of it. ‘But he’d never meet with them.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘You said yourself, the Bragers are in business with half of Washington.’

  ‘At an arm’s length,’ Geary replied. ‘They’re killers for Christ’s sake. The Vice President would never meet with them.’

  ‘Not officially,’ I said.

  He kept his eyes on me for a moment, then turned to Ella. ‘Do a search,’ he said. ‘Find out if anyone near the President or Vice President is called Miranda.’

  Ella sighed, then typed in the names and hit the enter key. She studied the page, then hit the ‘show more results’ button. She kept reading.

  ‘There’s a Miranda Copeland,’ she said. ‘Head of some animal welfare program, but…’

  ‘Is she still alive?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re wasting time here,�
�� she said.

  ‘Is she!’

  Ella typed in Miranda Copeland’s details, then scanned the results.

  ‘According to her Twitter page, she bought a puppy yesterday,’ said Ella. ‘I don’t know its name. I can probably find out if you want.’

  ‘You know what, fuck you,’ I said.

  Geary grabbed me. ‘We’re all tired, OK!’

  Ella got up from her seat, then shot me a look. ‘You’re an asshole, you know that?’

  I smiled. ‘It took you three days to figure that out, did it?’

  ‘I’m going to find us a boat,’ she said. She grabbed the laptop and headed up the cabin as far from me as possible.

  Geary stared harshly at me. ‘You need to stow this shit between you, you got me!’

  ‘They came in for a meeting with the Vice President,’ I said.

  ‘Even if they did,’ he replied. ‘It ain’t gonna save Tully now. Nor you.’

  He pushed past me and joined Ella at the front to the cabin.

  11

  As the Atlantic darkened below us, I sat alone at the rear of the plane and studied a map of the island. I tried to absorb as much detail as I could, but my thoughts kept returning to the Vice President. His involvement itching away at me. I spun a coin between my fingers and tried to keep my attention on the task at hand.

  Ahead of me Geary got up from his seat beside Ella, then headed down the cabin toward me. He grabbed the laptop and enlarged a location on the map.

  ‘Salvesen Point,’ he said. ‘It’s a fuel station on the northern coast of the island, serves Norwegian and Russian trawlers. According to its inventory it has two rigid-hulled dinghies.’

  I stared at the location – the tip of an icy headland that stretched out into the Arctic Ocean. I scrolled the map south to the island’s only airport.

  ‘It’s a hundred and twenty miles from the airport,’ he said. ‘I figure we can reach the station by eight a.m…that’ll leave us three hours to grab one of the boats and head the twenty-eight miles out to the yacht.’

  I eyed him a second, then reached into my jacket and produced the necklace. It was going to be too risky to take with us.

  ‘What about this?’ I said.