Deepkill

by Michael Kilian

  Reflexively, Westman hunched down, and she did the same, wondering what might occur should the shackle or tail frame break. A swoop of chain link in the face? Or would the bomb pull apart, exposing its devilish innards to the seawater?

  Too late for such worries, at all events. Whatever was going to happen was going to in a very few seconds.

  The RPMs and the clouds of bubbles increased. The boat’s engine made an irritable, protesting sound. Its anger accumulated. Westman could hear then a second noise—a chordlike reverberation, and then a sort of groan.

  The bomb moved. Another two or three feet of metal became suddenly exposed. But then the movement ceased.

  Was Amy easing off? Had she accidentally shoved the gears into idle? The line seemed a little slack now. The head boat’s propeller had stopped. Then, suddenly, it began whirring like mad—stirring a blizzard of bubbles and aeration. Westman could feel the force of it. There was a wrenching clang and thunk.

  Amy had put the motor in idle, but only in preparation to slam it back into gear and produce a sudden yank on the chain. A jerk pull. There was an enormous wail and moan. With everything engaged, the engine was churning at maximum RPM.

  Sand whirled everywhere about. The bomb shook and shuddered, then came heaving forth, growing in size as it emerged from the sea bottom, looking like some monstrous evil monster being freed from its prison. Its nose emerged from the sand battered and crumpled, ugly and malevolent.

  The boat’s engine stopped. Westman kicked forward, staying close to the bottom, inching his way toward the nose of the bomb.

  What had Robert Oppenheimer said at the first atomic test at Los Alamos? “I am become death.”

  Here was death again. They had pulled it out of the bottom of the sea. They could never get it back into the sandy bottom.

  He examined the nose as carefully as he could. It was crumpled and flattened, like the fender of a car in a smashup. If there was a plutonium trigger housing, it had become lost in the metal mush.

  The stirring above resumed. Pushing himself back up on his feet, Westman looked wildly about for Cat. Something heavy struck the back of his head and he went forward and down—into the sand. Then something hard and abrasive scraped along the side of his leg, burning where it touched.

  He felt a hand take hold of his other ankle and pull, dragging him away. He turned over on his back, looking up through a gray-green fog at a blizzard of bubbles and great heaving shapes. There was a screeching groan, continuing relentlessly.

  He saw Cat’s masked face, moving by, felt her hands as she removed his weight belt. Then he was floating upward, ever upward, arriving at the surface just as he heard a great clanking and clatter, and then an enormous crunch.

  Cat came up beside him, letting her mouthpiece fall free. The inflatable was upside down and Joe Whalleys was swimming toward the Roberta June.

  They started swimming toward it as well, heading for the stern platform. It was covered with twisted metal. The aft rail had been pulled over the stern as though with an enormous pair of pliers. One of the stanchions had been broken off and the other was severely bent. A portion of the hull seemed to be cracked, or at least badly scraped. Hanging perpendicular to this wreckage, looking like some huge landed game fish, was the bomb, still dark and malevolent in this eerie, misty light.

  Chapter 26

  Turko had been watching the Weather Channel for hours. The conditions and forecast had changed significantly, but never the wind direction, which was always from the north or northwest, when it was blowing at all.

  Finally, when he could not stand another “Local on the Eights,” he turned to the other channels in search of a newscast—finding one quickly. They were reporting the recovery of a sport utility vehicle full of bodies that had gone into the Delaware River. For a moment, Turko wondered if the dead might be from another cell that Pec had decided to eliminate, but the reporter eventually revealed that the victims were all African American, and that the murders appeared to be part of a drug-related Philadelphia gang war.

  When the weather forecast finally came on, it was the same as the Weather Channel’s.

  Turko decided he had been sitting there too long and had been drinking too much vodka. He set down his glass, clicked off the television set, and went into the next room.

  “We go tonight,” he said, repeating himself in Russian for the benefit of the Uzbeks. They seemed elated. The Iraqi, whose name was actually Hussein, frowned.

  “The wind is right?” he asked.

  “It will be.”

  “I saw a weather forecast. It said light winds—and from the north.”

  “And northwest. That will be good. Radioactive cloud over Atlantic City. A place of sin,” said Turko. “No better symbol of American values. Greed and sin. Promiscuous women.”

  “But Atlantic City is to the east of the power plant.”

  “It will not escape. And even if the radioactivity should go elsewhere, it doesn’t matter. The mere fact of the blast will panic the nation. Immobilize it. A gigantic blow.”

  “But not like the World Trade Center,” said Hussein.

  “Nothing will be like the World Trade Center. No one will be that effective again.”

  The Iraqi was still doubtful. “The man said it is going to rain.”

  Turko had paid no attention to that, concerned only about the wind direction. “Rain is good.”

  “Why is rain good?”

  “Security guards do not like to stand in the rain. They do not like to go out into the rain. They cannot see very far in the rain.”

  “What about us?”

  “We know where we’re going.” Turko drained his glass. “Now let us go. We need to rent the pontoon boat and prepare the cars.”

  The Iraqi looked at him for an uncomfortably long time. “We must not squander this opportunity.”

  “And we will not. Come now. Please. We must hurry.”

  With the stern rendered unusable by the bomb and rail wreckage, Joe Whalleys hooked the metal ladder over the starboard side. Cat was weighed down by her oxygen tank and days of fatigue, but managed to get aboard with Joe pulling her up over the rail. The Coast Guardsman managed by himself.

  Amy remained at the controls. Schilling was standing by the damaged stern, examining the bomb. His eyes had a slightly maniacal cast, as though he had found the corpse of an old enemy.

  “This is it,” he said finally. “One of ’em, anyway.” He turned to Cat. “They’ll believe us now.”

  She removed her mask and her oxygen gear, letting it fall to the deck with a loud clank. She wanted to get out of her wet suit. “How do we get it to them? You can’t sail up to Dover Air Force Base. Or do you plan to go around the Delmarva and up the Potomac—maybe drop it off at the Pentagon?”

  “Can’t,” Burt said, as though taking her seriously. “The Roberta June won’t fit under Memorial Bridge.”

  “The Roberta June’s not going anywhere,” said Amy. “Has nobody noticed that the engine’s stopped?”

  “I thought you’d turned it off,” Westman said.

  “Nope. It stalled out because something’s caught in the propeller—the line from the float, I’m guessing. Bet it’s wound tight around.”

  Burt looked over the twisted railing. “Shit,” he muttered.

  “We’re going nowhere,” Amy repeated.

  Cat swore as well. Not caring that anyone could see her naked breasts, she peeled off the top of her wet suit, flung it on the deck, and then went below.

  Westman went to the remains of the aft rail. Amy was right. “All right. We’re a vessel in distress. I’ll call the Coast Guard.”

  “I thought you were the Coast Guard,” Amy said.

  “I’m not a Coast Guard cutter.” He pulled off the top of his own wet suit and went below as well, finding Cat in the equipment cabin, where they had left their clothes. She had not yet dressed, and was toweling the seawater and perspiration off her long body. He reached to take the towel, to he
lp her. She snapped it away.

  “Leave me be,” she said.

  “Cat. We’ve done it. You’ve done it. I’m going to call the Cape May Coast Guard station. They’ll come and take the bomb off our hands. It’s over, Cat. You should be happy.”

  She shook her head, as though he were muttering nonsense. “Haven’t you seen the disaster area we’ve made of the stern? It’s a sign. This whole crazy enterprise of ours is cursed. We’ve wrecked the Roberta June and we may well have doomed ourselves with radioactive poisoning as well.”

  “There’s no indication of that. I’ll call the Manteo and she’ll come down and take care of everything. It’s all over, Cat. We’ve won.”

  “They won’t do a thing. The U.S. military isn’t going to lift a finger to help with this. They’ve made that clear. Coast Guard. Air Force. U.S. Navy. It doesn’t matter. We’re stuck.”

  He put his hands on her bare moist shoulders, but she twisted away, going to the shelf where she had left her blouse. She put it on, buttoning it quickly, then pulled on her shorts.

  With effort, he removed the lower part of his wet suit. She paid his nakedness no mind. Instead, as he began to dress, she hurried back up the companionway to the main deck.

  When he came up himself she was seated at the bow, as far as she could be from the bomb. The mist was thinning. They could see to the vague outline of the shore and the breaking surf.

  “I’m calling my cutter,” Westman said to Schilling.

  The old pilot shrugged.

  Erik used his cell phone. There were four rings, and then Dewey’s voice mail came on the line. Westman left a message for the lieutenant to call as soon as possible, then clicked off.

  “Homeland Security,” Cat said derisively.

  Amy sat slumped at the controls, looking unhappy. Joe Whalleys was staring at the bomb. “Can’t believe it,” he said. “I can’t believe we just pulled up an A-bomb.”

  “H-bomb,” corrected Amy.

  Westman tried Dewey again, with the same result. Leaving no message this time, he called Leon Kelly, who answered directly.

  “Are you still in Ocean City?” Westman asked.

  “Wilmington.”

  “Why there?”

  There was a pause. Westman sensed that Kelly was moving around again. “We got some new intelligence,” Kelly said finally. “They’ve had a shooting on the docks up here. You know about the big upturn in stolen cars. Payne figures they may try for the Memorial Bridge, or maybe the Walt Whitman up by Philly. They say they may raise the threat level to red again.”

  “Scare the hell out of the people in Fargo because of something happening in the East.”

  “Now you know why the terrorists like to come here.”

  “Leon, I may need your help.”

  “You got a new lead?”

  Westman spoke very carefully now. “We’ve come upon some nuclear material.”

  “What? Where are you? Who’s ‘we’?”

  “On a fishing boat just south of Cape Henlopen. I’m with some former military people.”

  The agent seemed to be walking still farther. In a moment, Westman heard automobile traffic. “Look,” said Kelly. “I’m at the Wilmington police station with Payne. We’re trying to set up a command center. I can’t talk much longer. Now what kind of nuclear material is this? I mean, is it radioactive? What’s it in?”

  “It’s protected. It’s inside an old bomb. It’s a long, complicated story, but we’ve recovered a Mark-28 H-bomb from the ocean bottom at an underwater ravine called Deepkill. But we damaged the boat in the process and are immobilized. We’re at anchor, maybe two hundred, three hundred yards offshore. We need a tow and someone to take possession of this nuclear weapon.”

  “Jeez, Erik. Sounds like a big fucking deal. But there’s nothing this task force can do about it. We’re deployed up here and …”

  “Can you call the field office?”

  “Sure, but why don’t you? It’s routine. Tell ’em you caught a case and you’re turning it over to them as primary.”

  “This isn’t routine. And it will be more effective if they hear it from you. At all events, I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “I thought you guys could go wherever you wanted.”

  “I work for the federal government too, Leon.”

  “All right. I’ll give them a call. But they’ve probably got their hands full too. This alert …”

  “I appreciate it, Leon. You’re the best they’ve got.”

  “Why aren’t you up here, Erik? You’d think …”

  “I’m supposed to be in Portsmouth.”

  “Is something happening in Portsmouth?”

  “No.”

  “Gotta go, Erik. There’s Payne.”

  Westman thanked the agent again, then stood staring at the cell phone. Calling Dewey one more time, with more disappointment, he said: “I’ll try them on the radio.”

  “No,” said Schilling. “I don’t want to turn this over to the Coast Guard. And the damned FBI’ll just arrest us all as suspected terrorists.”

  “What do you want to do, Burt?” Amy said. “What can we do?”

  Schilling was looking to the shore. “Get a truck.”

  Cat shook her head.

  Burt ignored this. “I’ve got a friend with a garage over near Georgetown. He’s got a flatbed truck that he uses to haul his stock cars to the Dover Speedway and some other tracks. It has a winch rig because he makes side money hauling fisherman’s cars out of the sand when they get stuck on the state beaches.”

  “Does this truck float?” Cat asked.

  “Won’t need to.” Schilling explained his idea. They’d tow the Roberta June close to shore with the inflatable and ground her. Then they’d go borrow the truck and wait for low tide. They’d be able to run a line from the truck winch to the bomb and drag it ashore and onto the truck bed. Then they could take it anywhere.

  Cat had come back to the main deck. “It’ll take an hour or more to walk from here to Lewes to get a car. By the time you get back from Georgetown with that truck, it’ll be after dark.”

  “Low tide’s just after eleven,” Schilling said. The times of the tides were doubtless the chief facts he kept in mind every day. “I’ve got enough lights. We can probably get that fouled cable off the propeller at the same time.”

  Amy was smiling at him. “You never told me you were so smart, Burt.”

  He grinned in reply. It occurred to Cat there was something more between them than Amy’s willingness to go to bed with the old guy. Probably had been for some time, even though he hadn’t realized it.

  Cat studied the bomb. “You don’t think this thing is killing us with radioactivity as we speak?”

  “It looks more or less just like it did when we loaded it forty years ago. Don’t think there’re any metal fractures or perforations. Except for Mikulski, none of my crew died of anything. Nobody got radiation sickness.”

  “Okay, Burt,” Cat said. “I’ll help you. I don’t exactly have a heavy date tonight.”

  “This is about as heavy a date as you’ll ever have,” Westman said.

  Cat eyed him coldly, then sighed, giving him a friendly punch on the arm. “Let’s get to work.”

  “You’ll stick with us?” Schilling asked Westman.

  “It’s probably the most useful thing I can be doing at this moment.”

  “What about Portsmouth, and your admiral?” Cat asked.

  “We’re trained to act on our own initiative.”

  “That won’t stop them from kicking you out of the service.”

  “We’re also trained to take risks.”

  Amy did her job well, steering the Roberta June at an angle as Cat hauled it shoreward with the inflatable, so the head boat would slide up easily into the shallow water rather than have the bow plow into the bottom sand.

  When this was accomplished and the anchor dropped again, Joe Whalleys ferried Cat, Schilling, and the Coast Guardsman to the beach, and
then brought the inflatable back, tying it fast to the railing on the starboard side where he’d put the ladder.

  “They’re going to be gone a long time,” he said, dropping into the seat next to Amy’s.

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, would you mind if I got myself another beer?”

  “No, not so long as it doesn’t give you ideas.”

  “Got no ideas, Amy. Just thirsty.”

  “Then bring me one too.”

  She leaned back in the chair, swiveling to the right to watch the three trudge along the beach, heading north. Cat and the Coastie walked close together, with Burt following just behind, but dragging a little.

  That morning, he’d promised Amy that “if anything happened” to him, the boat would be hers. A year or two from this foggy, nasty day, she could be captain—one of the Lewes head-boat captains.

  And she’d do a damn sight better job of it than Burt had been doing.

  He was falling behind the other two now. Cat took note of that and stopped, waiting for Burt to catch up. He was nuts about her. Amy had long been well aware of that. But he liked Amy too. And she liked him. And was very, very nice to him. Cat was all wrapped up in problems. Except for the work with the bomb and a belt or two together, she’d have no time for Burt. Not with that Coast Guard guy around.

  Amy’s life was in order, and looking good, as it never really had been before. She felt happy. She had a future. She was safe.

  The mist was shifting—rising to landward, closing from seaward, opening wide to the north. She thought for a moment she saw the outline of another boat in that direction—a squat silhouette too large to be another fishing craft. But the veil of mist descended again and it was lost to her.

  She turned again toward the shore. The fog had lifted there enough for her to see the horizon, and something she hadn’t expected—a great, dark wall of threatening cloud that seemed to rise ever heavenward as it moved toward her. If there were winds to match its evil look, the Roberta June would be in for a hell of a knocking. The weather report had predicted only rain. This looked to be a damned lot more than that.

  Joe set down her beer and resumed his seat. “Do you think we’ll get some extra money out of this?”