Deepkill

by Michael Kilian

  Gergen doubted he was any kind of Fed. He also doubted he was any kind of Greek. Bear had known a number of Greeks in the Navy, and had spent a lot of time in places like Piraeus in the Navy. This man’s accent was off. He sounded kind of Russian.

  All he’d asked for was a heavy-caliber piece. Bear had told him he’d see what he could turn up, though the order was easy to fill. Bear had a dozen handguns like that in a locker below.

  Bear had asked for two thousand dollars. The alleged Greek had offered only one thousand, which was actually an acceptable street price for the low-quality arms Bear dealt in. Bear had told the man that he’d consider that price—depending on what kind of firearm he was able to produce. The one he had in mind had been used in a failed bank robbery in Baltimore. Bear had picked it up for fifty bucks off one of the gang members who’d been told to ditch the weapon in the harbor.

  Bear was hoping the stranger would consider himself stiffed and not return. But if he did, Bear thought he might agree to the thousand-dollar price. He could give it to Diller as a down payment on the down payment.

  Roy Creed, the chief deckhand and the meanest of Bear’s crew as well as the largest, thumped down onto the tug’s rear deck, dropping a heavy sack by the wheelhouse entrance.

  He poked his large head into the wheelhouse. “I’m here like you said, Bear. Where we goin’?”

  “It depends. If nothing interferes, I’m going to go find that guy who talked to me about an underwater recovery down by Cape Henlopen.”

  Roy considered this, but only briefly. “Okay. I’m goin’ below. You want coffee?”

  “Not yet.”

  Two other crew members showed up shortly afterward. Neither Leonard or Mary Lou made an appearance, but he hadn’t asked for either to do so.

  Bear looked at his watch, then rose from his captain’s chair and went to start the engines. “Stand by fore and aft to cast off. Ready the forward bowline.”

  Turko had walked the length of the quay twice, observing everything and detecting nothing that might indicate the presence of law enforcement or any kind of trouble. It was a quiet day in a not-very-busy port.

  He was dressed in blue jeans and white T-shirt, with a baseball cap pulled down low over his face. There were several men in the dockyard dressed much the same, though their clothes were dirtier. He would attend to that presently.

  For safety’s sake, he made one more trip along the dock. He had noted the location of the tug and seen crew members go aboard, but it still caught him by surprise when the vessel’s engines started.

  Looking to right and left, he hurried toward the boat. The large bearded man he had talked to the night before was in the wheelhouse and at the helm, his eyes on the deckhand who stood at the bow with a mooring line in his hands.

  “Cast off the bowline,” Gergen called out. “Stand by the stern.”

  The crewman efficiently did as commanded, allowing the bow to swing slowly into the current. Turko took a couple of running steps, and leapt aboard.

  Bear snatched up the pistol he kept next to his binoculars to the side of his captain’s chair, whirling as fast as his bulk would allow to face the intruder and scaring himself with how close he came to firing off a shot. When he saw who it was, he lowered the weapon and then took a deep breath before speaking.

  “Mr. Skouros. You oughta find a better way to come aboard. Captains are kinda nervous these days, what with all these bombers on the loose. You could get yourself killed.”

  Skouros eyed him a moment before he spoke. “I’m sorry. But I saw you about to get under way. I wanted to conclude our business before you departed.”

  Bear returned the pistol to its place on the shelf next to the wheel. “Right. You said first thing in the morning. We’re up to the second thing. Maybe even the third.”

  Something less amiable crept into the alleged Greek’s voice. “Do you have it?”

  “The piece?”

  “Yes,” said Skouras. “One automatic pistol. One thousand dollars.”

  “Sure, I got it. But …”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Down the bay, to Lewes.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Down and back? Till mid-afternoon. Maybe longer. I’ve gotta talk to a guy.”

  “May I come along?”

  “Well …”

  “I’ll pay. And I’ll stay out of the way.”

  “You just want to go for a boat ride?”

  “I want to conclude our arrangement. And I want to talk to you about maybe future business.”

  “A hundred dollars,” said Bear, feeling greedy. “That’s the fare.”

  Skouros reached for his wallet. He did this so unhesitatingly, Bear wished he’d asked for more.

  Gergen looked to the aft deckhand. “Cast off the stern line.” When the tug was floating free, he engaged the engine and headed out into the channel, plowing the dirty gray-green water into a foamy furrow.

  Dewey had just given an order to set a course for the north end of Delaware Bay when Westman came onto the bridge.

  “There was a message from the DEA,” said Dewey. “That salvage-tug skipper turned in a bona fide tip last night. They picked up three members of a Philly drug gang. Enough stuff in their SUV to charge them with possession with the intent to distribute.”

  “My office called me about it,” Westman said. “I wasn’t sure it would pay off. I’m surprised I never ran into that fellow before.”

  “Gergen? I don’t think he’s much of a Boy Scout. Probably prefers that he doesn’t run into the likes of you.”

  “Can’t say I want to go on a double date with him either. But maybe I can buy him a beer.”

  “Keep your hand on your wallet if you do,” said DeGroot, watching the river ahead.

  “What’s today’s mission?” Westman asked.

  “We’re at your disposal if you catch a case—or if you catch a part of the big case,” said Dewey. “Otherwise, we patrol the bay. Bridge to the Cape.”

  “What about the shore below Henlopen?”

  “Indian River’s got a forty-seven out. But if something turns up …”

  Westman said nothing. Dewey grinned.

  Turko sat at the stern by himself. Gergen was in the wheel-house with the deckhand named Creed. The other two crewmen were below. Gergen had let him use the binoculars, and Turko was making a point of looking at everything on both sides of the river with them, as well as at every boat and ship they passed.

  Gergen came back to join him, leaving the big crewman at the helm. “I don’t know what you’ve got in mind for that handgun you’re buying off me, but I hope you’re aware of how much heat there is around here because of that attack on the Bay Bridge. The Delmarva Peninsula’s crawling with Feds from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal down to Chincoteague.”

  “My friends and I just want some personal protection.”

  “I’m not a snitch, pal. I’ve stepped over the line selling you this stuff. I’m not going to bust your balls. I’m just offering friendly advice.”

  Turko lifted the glasses to look downriver at an approaching container ship.

  “You’ve never seen ships before?” Gergen asked. “And you’re from Greece?”

  “Of course I’ve seen ships. I like them.” He lowered the glasses.

  “What do you really want that gun for?”

  “We’ve got a job—a heist.” He hoped he’d used the right word.

  “Around here?”

  “Philadelphia. That’s all I’m going to tell you.”

  “A holdup?”

  “No. The firearms are just in case.”

  “I don’t want anything coming back to me.”

  “I know. It won’t. I am grateful to you.”

  “Tell me again who put you onto me?”

  “Guy in a bar. Face like a pig. Named Homer.”

  Bear nodded. “Okay.” He looked down at the binoculars. “You still need these?”

  “If you do
n’t mind. There’s so much to look at out here.”

  “Just don’t drop them. They’re Navy issue. Worth about twelve hundred bucks.”

  “I won’t.”

  Bear took a step toward the wheelhouse.

  “I need explosives.”

  Bear halted. “What?” he said.

  “Got to blow a safe,” said the alleged Mr. Skouras. “A vault. I need C-4. And a detonator.”

  “You know about C-4?”

  “Yes.”

  Now Gergen was scared. He had Coast Guard and Customs sniffing around him, and now this. Was the alleged Skouras a Fed, and this a setup? Or was he the real thing? Either way, Bear wanted nothing more to do with him.

  He came back and sat down next to the Greek, as though fearful someone on the river might hear him. “I don’t deal in that shit, pal.”

  “That man Homer told me you deal in everything.”

  “He exaggerated. Anyway, this is no time to be trying to buy explosives. The FBI will be tracking every sale in four states after what happened on the Bay Bridge.”

  “That’s why I came to you.”

  “Well, you made a mistake. Firearms. Maybe a little dope on the side. Otherwise, I’m just an honest salvage man trying to make a buck on the sea.”

  “You know where explosive can be had, though, don’t you?”

  Gergen searched the man’s eyes, not liking what he found. Whoever he was, he was not a cop or a Fed. He reminded Bear of someone he had known in the SEALs—a man who had been on twenty-eight operations, and must have killed that many people, mostly using his knife. It wasn’t that he enjoyed that kind of thing. It was that he hadn’t cared. All the same as swatting flies. He’d had no friends. And didn’t seem to want any.

  “Maybe you’d better go back to Homer.” Bear stood up.

  “Think about it. I have money to pay.”

  “Sorry, pal. I’m in enough trouble. Let me get you that piece.”

  The “Greek” lifted the binoculars again. “What’s that?”

  Bear squinted. “That’s a nuclear power plant. Farming-dale. One of the biggest.”

  “I’ve not seen one this close before.” Turko let the binoculars sag until he was looking at the waterline. There was a sort of jetty and some sort of breakwater. A boat would not be able to make a fast run-up directly to the perimeter.

  A police boat was anchored just to the side of the jetty. He lowered the glasses.

  “It looks frightening,” he said.

  “You got that right.”

  Turko turned to look at the Delaware side of the river. “What’s over there?”

  “Not much. I’ll be in the wheelhouse.”

  DeGroot lowered his binoculars. “There’s your tugboat friend, Mr. Westman.”

  Erik borrowed the glasses. “I wonder where he’s going. The weather’s good. You had any distress calls?”

  “Negative,” Dewey said.

  DeGroot went out on the bridge wing and waved. He got a wave back from a figure stepping out of the tugboat’s wheelhouse.

  “Maybe he’s headed out to sea and up the Jersey coast. You want to call him on the radio and thank him for the drug bust?”

  “He’d probably not appreciate that—depending on who might be listening.”

  Dewey nodded, his attention turning from the tug to a small freighter dead ahead in the middle of the river.

  The wind was off the land, southwest and running only five to ten knots, with seas only one to two feet beneath a sky of patchy sun and clouds. It was as good as they could ask for what Burt wanted to do, but after nearly three hours of trawling back and forth, they’d had no success. Looking over the chart, Burt had taken them over one of the wrecks that littered the bottom, just to make sure the sonar gear he’d rented was working.

  It was. He had to assume they were looking in the wrong place.

  Idling the engine, Burt called to Joe Whalleys to drop the bow anchor, and slumped in the captain’s chair by the controls. For a moment, Cat was afraid he was going to fetch a bottle forth from one of his hiding places. He hadn’t had a drop all that day and, eager about his task, hadn’t seemed to mind that at all. Now, she feared, he was about to cave.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “We worked it all out.”

  “You can’t expect to get it right with one flight in a Cessna 150,” she said. “And the 1960’s were a long time ago.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m certain now. I should have reenacted that flight a long time ago. This is the place. The landmarks line up. It was like an epiphany. I just know it.”

  Cat took the chair opposite him. Amy was on the deck port-side, watching them both intently.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Burt said. He rubbed his hands over his grizzled face, then turned to look at the cabinet in the control console.

  “I think we’re being kind of impatient, Burt,” she said. “There’s a lot of sea bottom here.”

  “I know.” He lighted a cigarette, eyes to the horizon, then back to shore. “We’ll keep looking.”

  She leaned back in her chair, her attention going to a flight of three gulls soaring obliquely overhead, tilted landward against the wind.

  “How’s the fuel?” she asked.

  “About a quarter full.”

  “Why don’t we give it another hour?” she said. “The weather’s really good.”

  Calling to Whalleys to weigh anchor, Burt gentled the boat forward, creeping it up the slackening anchor line. When the anchor was aboard, he started to turn the wheel to port.

  Cat’s eyes were still fixed on the south.

  “Wait,” she said.

  He ignored her, or didn’t hear her.

  “Burt! Wait!”

  He idled the throttle, turning to her, perplexed.

  “We’ve forgotten something very basic here,” she said.

  “And what is that?” he said, sounding as though he felt she was patronizing him.

  “Velocity.”

  “Velocity?”

  “Have you ever dropped bombs, Burt?”

  “Only the two we’re looking for.”

  “Well I have. GPS precision bombs. We guided them to target after deploying them.”

  “These weren’t precision bombs.”

  “That’s not the point. For all practical purposes, we flew them down. When you’re at speed, Burt, bombs don’t drop straight down. They travel forward, depending on their velocity. I deployed some at targets twenty miles away.”

  “I wasn’t flying a jet.”

  “You jettisoned them at close to two hundred miles an hour. Do you have a calculator?”

  “There’s one below,” said Amy, who had come up to join them. “I’ll get it.”

  Burt said nothing until she returned, and then he only grunted. Cat began making calculations. Making a mistake halfway through, she started over. Burt grunted again, impatient. The boat was turning sideways to the wind.

  Cat extended her arm and thumb, sighting along the coast. “I want to go a mile down the shore.”

  Burt seemed reluctant to concede her point. He should have figured this out years before. “Even if you’re right, they could be anywhere.”

  “Not anywhere. Somewhere. About a mile south. We’ll work our way back up. Try it.”

  Cat took over the helm when they reached the waters she wanted. Sending Burt back to work his little sonar set, she cut the speed to near idle and then began a slow pattern, back and forth, creating a grid, starting at about fifteen feet of depth and working her way out to seventy-five feet. When she reached that outer limit, she changed the pattern, steering the Roberta June toward the shore and then out again, back and forth, over and over, filling a square.

  She was just starting another outward-bound leg when she heard Burt call out to stop. Cat moved the throttle to neutral, then briefly into reverse, then back to neutral, ordering Joe Whalleys to drop anchor. He took his time about it and Cat feared they’d drift too far away.


  But with the anchor set and the boat swinging back, held shoreward by the incoming waves, Burt seemed still to have a target.

  “Cat! Come back here!”

  She did as commanded. “What did you find?”

  “You found it. Take a look.”

  She stepped forward, leaning down close over the green-faced screen. “I see a long blob.”

  “Could be it.”

  “Could be anything.”

  “It’s the right length.”

  “How can we make sure?”

  “Have to go down and look.”

  She glanced at the depth finder. “Twenty-one feet. You could almost do it snorkeling.”

  “Burt! A boat!”

  It was Amy, who was standing on the flying bridge, pointing to something off the port beam. With a flush, Cat turned, expecting to see the Coast Guard cutter. Her happiness faded at the sight of a large tug.

  The big bearded man came aboard looking in a dark mood. “Looking for you all over, Captain Schilling.”

  “You should have called first, ’cause I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time coming all the way out here.”

  “What do you mean? Last time you were all set to sign a contract. Just had to get some money up, you said.”

  “I’m not going to need you after all. Sorry if you went to any trouble.”

  The bearded man looked over all of them, his eyes lingering on Cat. He turned back to Burt reluctantly. “You said you wanted to retrieve something from these waters. Something to do with the military.”

  “All I need to do now is find it.”

  “And have you?”

  Burt shook his head. “No.”

  The bearded man swore, quietly but pointedly. Burt didn’t want him to leave bitter. He got out some good whiskey, Jack Daniel’s Black, and a bag of potato chips from the aft locker. The man looked as though he could consume the whole thing in two munches. Maybe one.

  Bear Gergen passed on the chips, but took a coffee cup full of straight bourbon, downing a third of it in a single gulp.