Deepkill

by Michael Kilian

  “I said noon tomorrow,” Gergen said.

  “Be quiet,” Turko said in a voice as cold as winter. “Go sit next to the woman.”

  Dewey went hurriedly to the cutter’s bridge, DeGroot following after.

  “Any incidents?” Dewey asked Kelleter, going to one of the forward windows. The Manteo was pointing out to sea, the bright lights of Ocean City spreading away to port; the dark, soft shape of the north end of Assateague visible to starboard.

  “Nothing.”

  “Radio messages?”

  “Activities Baltimore. Cape May. Both asking our position and status.”

  “No orders?”

  “Just to keep them advised of our position.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Telephone call from Buzzard’s Point.”

  “And?”

  “Admiral dePayse.”

  “For Chief Warrant Officer Westman?”

  “For you. She wants you to apprehend Chief Warrant Officer Westman and hold him. She thinks you know where he is.”

  DeGroot shook his head. Dewey went to the chart table. “Prepare to get under way,” he said.

  Westman and Cat untied the tarpaulin from the rails of the pontoon boat so they’d have room to move about, but left the canvas covering the bomb. The slowly moving car had moved on, turning back toward the main thoroughfare. Westman waited until he was sure there was no other nearby traffic before attempting to start the big outboard.

  He went to the control console. He’d had considerable experience with boat theft in his time and had become thoroughly acquainted with hot-wiring techniques. But the cowling over the engine controls was made of thick fiberglass and of a piece with the hull. In the darkness, he could find no way to get at the wiring. In not anticipating this obstacle, he had been singularly dumb.

  “Burt,” he said, looking aft. “I can’t get at the wires. Any ideas?”

  Schilling came over and squatted beside the controls. “Cat,” he said. “Check beneath the rear seat. See if there isn’t a toolbox by the battery.”

  She moved quickly. “Screwdriver, pliers, and wrench. And a grappling hook.”

  “Bring it all.”

  Burt used the screwdriver to punch out the ignition core, then lifted it and the wiring with the pliers. When they caught and refused to budge farther, he inserted the end of the hook in the opening and, jerking it hard, broke the casing wide, making a noise almost as loud as a gunshot.

  In a moment, he had the wires clear of the ignition-lock core, and a moment after that, with a brief shower of sparks, connected the right pair. The engine commenced a throbbing rumble.

  “Stand by the lines,” he said.

  Pec had left it to Turko to take the lead in negotiating with Gergen, presuming on his abilities as a lawyer with long experience dealing with criminals.

  Their goal was to determine the location of the bomb and acquire the means to remove it, so they might then eliminate Gergen and his people and move on. Gergen wanted the money and to escape—and to be rid of the bomb, which would be a hazard for anyone to possess. Turko decided the best initial approach was to be friendly.

  “We could not stay where we were,” Turko said to Gergen. “There are police and government agents everywhere up there. We wish to leave the area as soon as possible.”

  “How did you plan to take the bomb with you?” Gergen asked. “In a suitcase?”

  “By truck. We have a rental truck waiting not far from here.”

  Gergen pondered this, wondering where and how they might make the transfer. “I don’t suppose you brought the money,” he said.

  Turko looked to Pec, who gave a quick nod. “We brought some money,” Turko said. “All we have at our disposal.”

  “We can give you one hundred thousand dollars,” said Pec. “We have it in our vehicle.”

  “But you must tell us where you have the bomb,” Turko said. “We want to see it. Now.”

  Bear contemplated the two dead men on the floor. Diller was staring at him with one eye. The inescapable fact was that they all had to get out of Ocean City as soon as possible. There was no time for dickering.

  He hadn’t checked on the amount, but there had to be a very large reward for this terrorist crew. What he needed most was for the Tangos to be on the road with the bomb so he could call the Feds to interdict them.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll take the hundred grand. And I’ll help you get the bomb aboard your truck.”

  “No. We will do that. Just tell us where it is.”

  Gergen shook his head. “Sorry. My way or no way.”

  Pec spoke to Ibn the Saudi in Arabic, saying, “Kill him.” He was looking at Leonard Ruger.

  Ibn got up and went to Leonard, putting the gun to his head. “Tell us.” Gergen began to laugh. Turko was puzzled. “He is your cousin,” Turko said.

  “I was about to do that myself when you came in,” Bear said.

  Turko aimed his pistol at Mary Lou.

  “She’s his wife,” Gergen said, laughing some more, regretting the dark look he got from her. He stood up, much like a giant Kodiak rising on its hind legs. “We’re not going to let you kill us and take off with the bomb. That’s what would happen if I told you where it is, but it’s not going to happen, pal. I’ll show you the merchandise. But we’ll all go together, with my people backing me up. You’re going to need us anyway. You won’t be able to pull this off without us.”

  Pec nodded to Ibn, who quickly fired a shot through Leonard’s head, splattering the top of the couch and the wall beyond with blood and something worse. Pec appeared pleased.

  The woman began sobbing. Gergen was smiling.

  “That changes nothing,” he said. “In fact, you helped me out. I owe you.”

  Pec was now irritated—his more normal state—but appeared not to know what to do. “What are you suggesting?” Turko asked Gergen.

  “I’m not suggesting,” he said. “I’m telling you what’s going to happen. Me and my crew are going to get into the big Lincoln Navigator outside. You follow us, and we’ll take you to the bomb. We’ll help you get it onto your truck. You’ll give us the hundred thousand. Then you go your way and we’ll go ours. The cops’ll be after all of us, you know. We have as much reason to get the hell out of here as you do.”

  Pec and Turko communicated with silent glances. “Very well,” said Turko.

  Bear went over to his dead cousin, who no longer looked like Jimmy Dean. He reached into the right front pocket of the man’s jeans. “We’ll need his keys,” he said. Finding them, he jangled them a moment, then confronted Turko again, assuming command. “There’s a dead body out by the street, in case you haven’t noticed. We need to bring him in here.”

  With Schilling at the controls of the heavily laden pontoon boat, they moved down the channel as quietly as possible, passing under the Harry Kelly Bridge, which led to the mainland, and heading for the lighted buoy that marked the intersection with the channel that connected with the inlet. Schilling started to increase their speed a little, then abruptly pushed the control handle into idle.

  “What’s wrong?” Westman asked.

  “Just thought of something.” Burt looked back. “Cat, would you check the fuel tank?”

  Cat went aft. There was just enough light from the city and its amusement park to see by, and what she found was not a happy sight.

  “Nearly empty, Burt,” she called out.

  “There’s not an auxiliary tank?”

  “None that I can find.”

  He leaned back in the seat, letting the boat drift in the gentle swells. “We’ll never make it to Wallops. Not anywhere near.”

  “Can’t we stop for fuel someplace?” she asked.

  “There’s a campground marina eight or nine miles down the bay, but I don’t think it’s open at night and I’m not sure we can make it.”

  Westman looked up the shore toward the bridge. “We better not go back there.”

  “That p
retty well leaves us without anywhere to go,” Schilling said. He lighted a cigarette, then took out his pint bottle.

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Cat, moving closer to Schilling. “Ocean City Airport’s just two or three miles down, just at the first narrows.”

  “How am I going to get gasoline there?”

  “You’re not. There’s a marsh with a good two feet of water all alongside it—and a long, narrow cut that runs from the bay all the way up to the parking lot. You can run this boat right up to the end and be within a few feet of the truck, if we can get it there. Then we can do what we were going to do at the beach south of Henlopen. Drag the bomb ashore with a winch. Get it on the truck. We can drive to Wallops.”

  Burt took another whiskey swig. “How’re we going to do that? The truck’s back in Ocean City.”

  “We’ll have to put to shore and go get the truck. One of us can drive it around to the airport.”

  “I think that’s our only chance,” Westman said.

  “Cat, you come with me,” Burt said. “I don’t know that airport, and we’ll have to drive through it without lights.”

  She wanted to stay with Westman. “Can you handle this boat without us?”

  “Coast Guard, ma’am.”

  “Right. Sorry. Take the helm then, and put us ashore by the parking lot where we had that chat with your Mr. Dewey.”

  Westman waited as Burt unsteadily removed himself from his seat and let Erik take his place.

  “You going to make it, Burt?” Cat asked.

  “You bet.” He sat down on the seat opposite, holding to its back. “You better drive the truck, though.”

  At the terrorists’ strong suggestion, Bear and Mary Lou rode in the rearmost seat of the van, while two of the terrorists rode in the Lincoln Navigator with Roy Creed and the rest of Bear’s crew. Creed was driving and leading the way.

  Gergen didn’t mind so much because it gave him an opportunity to move the transaction along.

  “You said you had the money in the car,” he said as they got under way.

  None of the Tangos spoke.

  “If it is in here, I’d like to see it,” Bear said, feeling inexplicably bold. Maybe it was having Mary Lou sitting next to him. “If I don’t get to, I’m not showing you the bomb.”

  “Your man in the other car is doing that.”

  “No, he isn’t. He’s taking you to the docks. He won’t show you where the bomb is unless I tell him to.”

  He felt Mary Lou stiffen. He supposed he was making her nervous with this bravado.

  The man who called himself Skouras leaned close to the one Bear took to be the boss, speaking in a foreign language Bear didn’t recognize.

  “Okay,” said the boss. He had the man in the front seat hand over a backpack Unzipping it, he thrust it toward Bear’s face.

  Bear took it, peering inside. There were many paper-bound stacks of hundred-dollar bills. It looked right.

  He handed it back. “Good. We’re almost there.”

  When they’d parked, he suggested everyone stay in the cars, except for Creed, the alleged Skouras, and one of the other Tangos. Mary Lou got out on her own accord and no one stopped her.

  “It’s on a boat,” Bear said. “The best way to handle it is to get it across the bay to one of the boat ramps over there on the other side and get it on a trailer you can run into the water. Then you can load it onto your truck from that.”

  The alleged Skouras nodded. “A good idea.”

  “Come on then,” Bear said. He began walking out on the dock, passing the line of personal watercraft and then the empty pontoon boat. He went all the way out to the end and stood looking out at the lights across the bay.

  “There’s nothing on this pontoon boat,” Skouras said.

  “I know. It’s not on that boat.”

  “What boat is it on then?”

  Bear took a deep breath, and then exhaled, slowly, his eyes still fixed on the distant reach of night-dark water. “On a boat out there.”

  Chapter 34

  Cat killed the truck’s headlights as she turned off Stephen Decatur Highway onto Airport Road. After passing through several thick groves of trees, they finally came to a wide clear space and the airport itself. There were a few lights on here and there among the buildings, though she assumed the facility was closed, except for military use.

  She could see the two Hercules C-130’s still parked at the west side of the field. She presumed they were being guarded, but she wasn’t going anywhere near the cumbersome-looking aircraft and she didn’t expect a sentry to abandon his post to investigate anything happening elsewhere on the field.

  Holding the truck at low speed, she quietly proceeded into the long rectangular parking lot, turning left toward the east end of it. There were a half-dozen or so cars parked near the small terminal building, but she guessed they had been left overnight. Cat recognized a couple of them as having been there for more than a week.

  She pulled to a creaking halt just at the edge of the lot, the watery cut visible as a long glimmer leading from the edge of the parking lot out to the bay through the marshland.

  “Do you think Erik can find us?” she asked Burt.

  He was smoking another cigarette, his haggard face looking a bit macabre in its glow. “Coast Guard. He’d better.”

  “I don’t know the tides tonight.”

  He consulted his watch. “High tide was more than an hour ago. It’s falling.”

  “Damn.”

  “We got one lucky break. They laid the bomb onto the pontoon boat with the rear end toward the bow. He can come in prow-first and we can just yank it right off of there.”

  “There’s all that railing up front. It’ll be in the way.”

  “It’s aluminum. We’ll use the winch to pull it off and then hook up the bomb.”

  She was still gripping the steering wheel, though the truck was not moving. “Do you realize how crazy this is?”

  “Nothing’s crazier than building one of those things in the first place.” He opened the door and carefully stepped down to the pavement in old-man fashion. “Come on, I’ll help you back the truck around.”

  Westman proceeded slowly, keeping the outboard engine noise low and avoiding making a wake. He steered as near as he could to the western shore of the bay, rumbling along in the manner of a trolling fisherman and bearing in mind the shallowness of the water. The marshland beside him was alive with sounds—frogs, insects in profusion, night birds calling—but not quite enough to cover the noise of his passing. Sounds carried far at night over water.

  While passing the inlet, he’d caught sight of the departing Manteo, stern to the land and heading out to sea. There was nothing else moving along the channel; nothing at all visible or audible ahead of him in the bay. He was alone on this long, long stretch of water.

  Then, in a slowly gathering awareness, he sensed that he wasn’t. He could hear somewhere in the vagueness behind him a faint buzz. Within a minute or two, it became the familiar whine of a personal watercraft. The machine was quickly joined by others. He hated the obnoxious craft in the best of times. Now they’d become objects of dread.

  Westman had his Coast Guard-issue Beretta with him, but no extra clip. Like the FBI, the CGIS trained its agents not to take on adversaries unless they had superior numbers and firepower. The H-bomb at his feet, he supposed, didn’t count.

  He felt very vulnerable all by himself, but was immensely relieved that Cat and Burt Schilling were now out of danger. If there was gunfire, he trusted they would take it as a sign to get the hell out as fast as possible.

  Gergen had taken all six of Leonard’s water-going motorcycles, putting Creed and his two other guys aboard three of them and giving the others to Skouras’s people, while taking the pontoon boat himself. One of the Tangos had fallen off his PWC almost immediately, making too tight a turn. But they’d hauled him out and righted the watercraft quickly enough. The little flotilla was moving line-abreast down the bay,
with the pontoon boat he was driving serving as flagship. If their prey was on this waterway, they’d catch them. No doubt about it.

  Sitting hunched over the controls, Bear tried to keep what the Navy called “situational awareness” while surrounded by these foreign bastards. The man called Skouras—and Bear now was absolutely certain that was not his name—was on his boat, sitting in the side seat just ahead of him. The head Tango was across the deck from Skouras and the largest of these foreigners was sitting right behind Bear. He was thankful that at least they’d allowed Mary Lou aboard. She was in the seat opposite him, with arms folded tightly across her chest and her head hanging down. She might have been someone awaiting execution. Were it not for the fact that the alleged Skouras and his mean-looking master needed them to retrieve the bomb and get it aboard some sort of transport, execution might have been the order of the night.

  Bear figured it still might—if he wasn’t very, very careful and very, very smart.

  Smarter than them anyway. The idiots had left the backpack with the money in the van.

  Bear considered the mission orders he’d issued himself that night:

  Get the nuclear device into the hands of the Tangos.

  Separate himself, Mary Lou, and his crew from them as quickly as possible.

  Contact the Feds and make them understand and respond to what was going down with the nuclear device.

  Retrieve the money from the Tangos’ vehicle and hide it—fast.

  “Discover” the bodies at Leonard’s place and inform the local cops and the Feds about that.

  Bear had been given more difficult assignments in his time. In the first Gulf War, he and his team had snatched an Iraqi colonel from occupied Kuwait before the launch of the ground war, suffering no casualties and inflicting fifteen on the enemy.

  The easiest part of this job would be taking out the old pilot and the blond. The two other crew members who’d been on the head boat were extremely dead, and Bear couldn’t imagine how they’d pick up reinforcements down here in Leonard Land. Maybe the gray-haired Coast Guard agent had joined them, but there was no sign of any other Coasties. No sign of police interest thus far.